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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Artist and Public, by Kenyon Cox
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Artist and Public
+       And Other Essays On Art Subjects
+
+Author: Kenyon Cox
+
+Release Date: September 5, 2005 [EBook #16655]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTIST AND PUBLIC ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ARTIST AND PUBLIC
+
+AND OTHER
+ESSAYS ON ART SUBJECTS
+
+
+BY
+KENYON COX
+
+
+
+[Illustration: From a photograph by Braun, Clement & Co.
+Plate 1.--Millet. "The Goose Girl."
+In the collection of Mme. Saulnier, Bordeaux.]
+
+
+
+
+ARTIST AND PUBLIC
+
+AND OTHER
+ESSAYS ON ART SUBJECTS
+
+
+BY
+KENYON COX
+
+
+_WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS_
+
+
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+NEW YORK   MCMXIV
+
+
+
+
+_Copyright, 1914, by Charles Scribner's Sons
+Published September, 1914_
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+J.D.C.
+
+IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF UNFAILING KINDNESS
+THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In "The Classic Point of View," published three years ago, I endeavored
+to give a clear and definitive statement of the principles on which all
+my criticism of art is based. The papers here gathered together, whether
+earlier or later than that volume, may be considered as the more
+detailed application of those principles to particular artists, to whole
+schools and epochs, even, in one case, to the entire history of the
+arts. The essay on Raphael, for instance, is little else than an
+illustration of the chapter on "Design"; that on Millet illustrates the
+three chapters on "The Subject in Art," on "Design," and on "Drawing";
+while "Two Ways of Painting" contrasts, in specific instances, the
+classic with the modern point of view.
+
+But there is another thread connecting these essays, for all of them
+will be found to have some bearing, more or less direct, upon the
+subject of the title essay. "The Illusion of Progress" elaborates a
+point more slightly touched upon in "Artist and Public"; the careers of
+Raphael and Millet are capital instances of the happy productiveness of
+an artist in sympathy with his public or of the difficulties, nobly
+conquered in this case, of an artist without public appreciation; the
+greatest merit attributed to "The American School" is an abstention
+from the extravagances of those who would make incomprehensibility a
+test of greatness. Finally, the work of Saint-Gaudens is a noble example
+of art fulfilling its social function in expressing and in elevating the
+ideals of its time and country.
+
+This last essay stands, in some respects, upon a different footing from
+the others. It deals with the work and the character of a man I knew and
+loved, it was originally written almost immediately after his death, and
+it is therefore colored, to some extent, by personal emotion. I have
+revised it, rearranged it, and added to it, and I trust that this
+coloring may be found to warm, without falsifying, the picture.
+
+The essay on "The Illusion of Progress" was first printed in "The
+Century," that on Saint-Gaudens in "The Atlantic Monthly." The others
+originally appeared in "Scribner's Magazine."
+
+KENYON COX.
+
+Calder House,
+Croton-on-Hudson,
+June 6, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ESSAY                             PAGE
+
+  I.  ARTIST AND PUBLIC              1
+ II.  JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET          44
+III.  THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS      77
+ IV.  RAPHAEL                       99
+  V.  TWO WAYS OF PAINTING         134
+ VI.  THE AMERICAN SCHOOL          149
+VII.  AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS       169
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+MILLET:
+ 1. "The Goose Girl," _Saulnier Collection, Bordeaux_     _Frontispiece_
+                                                             FACING PAGE
+ 2. "The Sower," _Vanderbilt Collection, Metropolitan Museum, New York_  46
+ 3. "The Gleaners," _The Louvre_                                      50
+ 4. "The Spaders"                                                     54
+ 5. "The Potato Planter," _Shaw Collection_                           58
+ 6. "The Grafter," _William Rockefeller Collection_                   62
+ 7. "The New-Born Calf," _Art Institute, Chicago_                     66
+ 8. "The First Steps,"                                                70
+ 9. "The Shepherdess," _Chauchard Collection, Louvre_                 72
+10. "Spring," _The Louvre_                                            74
+
+RAPHAEL:
+11. "Poetry," _The Vatican_                                          112
+12. "The Judgment of Solomon," _The Vatican_                         114
+13. The "Disputa," _The Vatican_                                     116
+14. "The School of Athens," _The Vatican_                            118
+15. "Parnassus," _The Vatican_                                       120
+16. "Jurisprudence," _The Vatican_                                   122
+17. "The Mass of Bolsena," _The Vatican_                             124
+18. "The Deliverance of Peter," _The Vatican_                        126
+19. "The Sibyls," _Santa Maria della Pace, Rome_                     128
+20. "Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami," _Gardner Collection_            130
+
+JOHN S. SARGENT:
+21. "The Hermit," _Metropolitan Museum, New York_                    136
+
+TITIAN:
+22. "Saint Jerome in the Desert," _Brera Gallery, Milan_             142
+
+SAINT-GAUDENS:
+23. "Plaquette Commemorating Cornish Masque"                         182
+24. "Amor Caritas"                                                   196
+25. "The Butler Children"                                            206
+26. "Sarah Redwood Lee"                                              208
+27. "Farragut," _Madison Square, New York_                           212
+28. "Lincoln," _Chicago, Ill._                                       214
+29. "Deacon Chapin," _Springfield, Mass._                            216
+30. "Adams Memorial," _Washington, D.C._                             218
+31. "Shaw Memorial," _Boston, Mass._                                 220
+32. "Sherman," _The Plaza, Central Park, New York_                   224
+
+
+
+
+ARTIST AND PUBLIC
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ARTIST AND PUBLIC
+
+
+In the history of art, as in the history of politics and in the history
+of economics, our modern epoch is marked off from all preceding epochs
+by one great event, the French Revolution. Fragonard, who survived that
+Revolution to lose himself in a new and strange world, is the last at
+the old masters; David, some sixteen years his junior, is the first of
+the moderns. Now if we look for the most fundamental distinction between
+our modern art and the art of past times, I believe we shall find it to
+be this: the art of the past was produced for a public that wanted it
+and understood it, by artists who understood and sympathized with their
+public; the art of our time has been, for the most part, produced for a
+public that did not want it and misunderstood it, by artists who
+disliked and despised the public for which they worked. When artist and
+public were united, art was homogeneous and continuous. Since the
+divorce of artist and public art has been chaotic and convulsive.
+
+That this divorce between the artist and his public--this dislocation of
+the right and natural relations between them--has taken place is
+certain. The causes of it are many and deep-lying in our modern
+civilization, and I can point out only a few of the more obvious ones.
+
+The first of these is the emergence of a new public. The art of past
+ages had been distinctively an aristocratic art, created for kings and
+princes, for the free citizens of slave-holding republics, for the
+spiritual and intellectual aristocracy of the church, or for a luxurious
+and frivolous nobility. As the aim of the Revolution was the
+destruction of aristocratic privilege, it is not surprising that a
+revolutionary like David should have felt it necessary to destroy the
+traditions of an art created for the aristocracy. In his own art of
+painting he succeeded so thoroughly that the painters of the next
+generation found themselves with no traditions at all. They had not only
+to work for a public of enriched bourgeois or proletarians who had never
+cared for art, but they had to create over again the art with which they
+endeavored to interest this public. How could they succeed? The rift
+between artist and public had begun, and it has been widening ever
+since.
+
+If the people had had little to do with the major arts of painting and
+sculpture, there had yet been, all through the Middle Ages and the
+Renaissance, a truly popular art--an art of furniture making, of
+wood-carving, of forging, of pottery. Every craftsman was an artist in
+his degree, and every artist was but a craftsman of a superior sort. Our
+machine-making, industrial civilization, intent upon material progress
+and the satisfaction of material wants, has destroyed this popular art;
+and at the same time that the artist lost his patronage from above he
+lost his support from below. He has become a superior person, a sort of
+demi-gentleman, but he has no longer a splendid nobility to employ him
+or a world of artist artisans to surround him and understand him.
+
+And to the modern artist, so isolated, with no tradition behind him, no
+direction from above and no support from below, the art of all times and
+all countries has become familiar through modern means of communication
+and modern processes of reproduction. Having no compelling reason for
+doing one thing rather than another, or for choosing one or another way
+of doing things, he is shown a thousand things that he may do and a
+thousand ways of doing them. Not clearly knowing his own mind he hears
+the clash and reverberation of a thousand other minds, and having no
+certainties he must listen to countless theories.
+
+Mr. Vedder has spoken of a certain "home-made" character which he
+considers the greatest defect of his art, the character of an art
+belonging to no distinctive school and having no definite relation to
+the time and country in which it is produced. But it is not Mr. Vedder's
+art alone that is home-made. It is precisely the characteristic note of
+our modern art that all of it that is good for anything is home-made or
+self-made. Each artist has had to create his art as best he could out of
+his own temperament and his own experience--has sat in his corner like a
+spider, spinning his web from his own bowels. If the art so created was
+essentially fine and noble the public has at last found it out, but only
+after years of neglect have embittered the existence and partially
+crippled the powers of its creator. And so, to our modern imagination,
+the neglected and misunderstood genius has become the very type of the
+great artist, and we have allowed our belief in him to color and distort
+our vision of the history of art. We have come to look upon the great
+artists of all times as an unhappy race struggling against the
+inappreciation of a stupid public, starving in garrets and waiting long
+for tardy recognition.
+
+The very reverse of this is true. With the exception of Rembrandt, who
+himself lived in a time of political revolution and of the emergence to
+power of a burgher class, you will scarce find an unappreciated genius
+in the whole history of art until the beginning of the nineteenth
+century. The great masters of the Renaissance, from Giotto to Veronese,
+were men of their time, sharing and interpreting the ideals of those
+around them, and were recognized and patronized as such. Rembrandt's
+greatest contemporary, Rubens, was painter in ordinary to half the
+courts of Europe, and Velazquez was the friend and companion of his
+king. Watteau and Boucher and Fragonard painted for the frivolous
+nobility of the eighteenth century just what that nobility wanted, and
+even the precursors of the Revolution, sober and honest Chardin, Greuze
+the sentimental, had no difficulty in making themselves understood,
+until the revolutionist David became dictator to the art of Europe and
+swept them into the rubbish heap with the rest.
+
+It is not until the beginning of what is known as the Romantic movement,
+under the Restoration, that the misunderstood painter of genius
+definitely appears. Millet, Corot, Rousseau were trying, with
+magnificent powers and perfect single-mindedness, to restore the art of
+painting which the Revolution had destroyed. They were men of the utmost
+nobility and simplicity of character, as far as possible from the
+gloomy, fantastic, vain, and egotistical person that we have come to
+accept as the type of unappreciated genius; they were classically minded
+and conservative, worshippers of the great art of the past; but they
+were without a public and they suffered bitter discouragement and long
+neglect. Upon their experience is founded that legend of the
+unpopularity of all great artists which has grown to astonishing
+proportions. Accepting this legend, and believing that all great artists
+are misunderstood, the artist has come to cherish a scorn of the public
+for which he works and to pretend a greater scorn than he feels. He
+cannot believe himself great _unless_ he is misunderstood, and he hugs
+his unpopularity to himself as a sign of genius and arrives at that
+sublime affectation which answers praise of his work with an exclamation
+of dismay: "Is it as bad as that?" He invents new excesses and
+eccentricities to insure misunderstanding, and proclaims the doctrine
+that, as anything great must be incomprehensible, so anything
+incomprehensible must be great. And the public has taken him, at least
+partly, at his word. He may or may not be great, but he is certainly
+incomprehensible and probably a little mad. Until he succeeds the public
+looks upon the artist as a more or less harmless lunatic. When he
+succeeds it is willing to exalt him into a kind of god and to worship
+his eccentricities as a part of his divinity. So we arrive at a belief
+in the insanity of genius. What would Raphael have thought of such a
+notion, or that consummate man of the world, Titian? What would the
+serene and mighty Veronese have thought of it, or the cool, clear-seeing
+Velazquez? How his Excellency the Ambassador of his Most Catholic
+Majesty, glorious Peter Paul Rubens, would have laughed!
+
+It is this lack of sympathy and understanding between the artist and his
+public--this fatal isolation of the artist--that is the cause of nearly
+all the shortcomings of modern art; of the weakness of what is known as
+official or academic art no less than of the extravagance of the art of
+opposition. The artist, being no longer a craftsman, working to order,
+but a kind of poet, expressing in loneliness his personal emotions, has
+lost his natural means of support. Governments, feeling a responsibility
+for the cultivation of art which was quite unnecessary in the days when
+art was spontaneously produced in answer to a natural demand, have
+tried to put an artificial support in its place. That the artist may
+show his wares and make himself known, they have created exhibitions;
+that he may be encouraged they have instituted medals and prizes; that
+he may not starve they have made government purchases. And these
+well-meant efforts have resulted in the creation of pictures which have
+no other purpose than to hang in exhibitions, to win medals, and to be
+purchased by the government and hung in those more permanent exhibitions
+which we call museums. For this purpose it is not necessary that a
+picture should have great beauty or great sincerity. It _is_ necessary
+that it should be large in order to attract attention and sufficiently
+well drawn and executed to seem to deserve recognition. And so was
+evolved the salon picture, a thing created for no man's pleasure, not
+even the artist's; a thing which is neither the decoration of a public
+building nor the possible ornament of a private house; a thing which,
+after it has served its temporary purpose, is rolled up and stored in a
+loft or placed in a gallery where its essential emptiness becomes more
+and more evident as time goes on. Such government-encouraged art had at
+least the merit of a well-sustained and fairly high level of
+accomplishment in the more obvious elements of painting. But as
+exhibitions became larger and larger and the competition engendered by
+them grew fiercer, it became increasingly difficult to attract attention
+by mere academic merit. So the painters began to search for
+sensationalism of subject, and the typical salon picture, no longer
+decorously pompous, began to deal in blood and horror and sensuality. It
+was Regnault who began this sensation hunt, but it has been carried much
+further since his day than he can have dreamed of, and the modern salon
+picture is not only tiresome but detestable.
+
+The salon picture, in its merits and its faults, is peculiarly French,
+but the modern exhibition has sins to answer for in other countries than
+France. In England it has been responsible for a great deal of
+sentimentality and anecdotage which has served to attract the attention
+of a public that could not be roused to interest in mere painting.
+Everywhere, even in this country, where exhibitions are relatively small
+and ill-attended, it has caused a certain stridency and blatancy, a
+keying up to exhibition pitch, a neglect of finer qualities for the sake
+of immediate effectiveness.
+
+Under our modern conditions the exhibition has become a necessity, and
+it would be impossible for our artists to live or to attain a reputation
+without it. The giving of medals and prizes and the purchase of works
+of art by the state may be of more doubtful utility, though such efforts
+at the encouragement of art probably do more good than harm. But there
+is one form of government patronage that is almost wholly beneficial,
+and that the only form of it which we have in this country--the awarding
+of commissions for the decoration of public buildings. The painter of
+mural decorations is in the old historical position, in sound and
+natural relations to the public. He is doing something which is wanted
+and, if he continues to receive commissions, he may fairly assume that
+he is doing it in a way that is satisfactory. With the decorative or
+monumental sculptor he is almost alone among modern artists in being
+relieved of the necessity of producing something in the isolation of his
+studio and waiting to see if any one will care for it; of trying,
+against the grain, to produce something that he thinks may appeal to
+the public because it does not appeal to himself; or of attempting to
+bamboozle the public into buying what neither he nor the public really
+cares for. If he does his best he may feel that he is as fairly earning
+his livelihood as his fellow workmen, the blacksmith and the
+stonecutter, and is as little dependent as they upon either charity or
+humbug. The best that government has done for art in France is the
+commissioning of the great decorative paintings of Baudry and Puvis. In
+this country, also, governments, national, State, or municipal, are
+patronizing art in the best possible way, and in making buildings
+splendid for the people are affording opportunity for the creation of a
+truly popular art.
+
+Without any artificial aid from the government the illustrator has a
+wide popular support and works for the public in a normal way; and,
+therefore, illustration has been one of the healthiest and most
+vigorous forms of modern art. The portrait-painter, too, is producing
+something he knows to be wanted, and, though his art has had to fight
+against the competition of the photograph and has been partially
+vulgarized by the struggle of the exhibitions, it has yet remained, upon
+the whole, comprehensible and human; so that much of the soundest art of
+the past century has gone into portraiture. It is the painters of
+pictures, landscape or genre, who have most suffered from the
+misunderstanding between artist and public. Without guidance some of
+them have hewed a path to deserved success. Others have wandered into
+strange byways and no-thoroughfares.
+
+The nineteenth century is strewn with the wrecks of such misunderstood
+and misunderstanding artists, but it was about the sixties when their
+searching for a way began to lead them in certain clearly marked
+directions. There are three paths, in especial, which have been followed
+since then by adventurous spirits: the paths of æstheticism, of
+scientific naturalism, and of pure self-expression; the paths of
+Whistler, of Monet, and of Cézanne.
+
+Whistler was an artist of refined and delicate talent with great
+weaknesses both in temperament and training; being also a very clever
+man and a brilliant controversialist, he proceeded to erect a theory
+which should prove his weaknesses to be so many virtues, and he nearly
+succeeded in convincing the world of its validity. Finding the
+representation of nature very difficult, he decided that art should not
+concern itself with representation but only with the creation of
+"arrangements" and "symphonies." Having no interest in the subject of
+pictures, he proclaimed that pictures should have no subjects and that
+any interest in the subject is vulgar. As he was a cosmopolitan with no
+local ties, he maintained that art had never been national; and as he
+was out of sympathy with his time, he taught that "art happens" and that
+"there never was an artistic period." According to the Whistlerian
+gospel, the artist not only has now no point of contact with the public,
+but he should not have and never has had any. He has never been a man
+among other men, but has been a dreamer "who sat at home with the women"
+and made pretty patterns of line and color because they pleased him. And
+the only business of the public is to accept "in silence" what he
+chooses to give them.
+
+This kind of rootless art he practised. Some of the patterns he produced
+are delightful, but they are without imagination, without passion,
+without joy in the material and visible world--the dainty diversions of
+a dilettante. One is glad that so gracefully slender an art should
+exist, but if it has seemed great art to us it is because our age is so
+poor in anything better. To rank its creator with the abounding masters
+of the past is an absurdity.
+
+In their efforts to escape from the dead-alive art of the salon picture,
+Monet and the Impressionists took an entirely different course. The
+gallery painter's perfunctory treatment of subject bored them, and they
+abandoned subject almost as entirely as Whistler had done. The sound if
+tame drawing and the mediocre painting of what they called official art
+revolted them as it revolted Whistler; but while he nearly suppressed
+representation they could see in art nothing but representation. They
+wanted to make that representation truer, and they tried to work a
+revolution in art by the scientific analysis of light and the
+invention of a new method of laying on paint. Instead of joining in
+Whistler's search for pure pattern they fixed their attention on facts
+alone, or rather on one aspect of the facts, and in their occupation
+with light and the manner of representing it they abandoned form almost
+as completely as they had abandoned significance and beauty.
+
+So it happened that Monet could devote some twenty canvases to the study
+of the effects of light, at different hours of the day, upon two straw
+stacks in his farmyard. It was admirable practice, no doubt, and neither
+scientific analysis nor the study of technical methods is to be
+despised; but the interest of the public, after all, is in what an
+artist does, not in how he learns to do it. The twenty canvases together
+formed a sort of demonstration of the possibilities of different kinds
+of lighting. Any one of them, taken singly, is but a portrait of two
+straw stacks, and the world will not permanently or deeply care about
+those straw stacks. The study of light is, in itself, no more an
+exercise of the artistic faculties than the study of anatomy or the
+study of perspective; and while Impressionism has put a keener edge upon
+some of the tools of the artist, it has inevitably failed to produce a
+school of art.
+
+After Impressionism, what? We have no name for it but
+Post-Impressionism. Such men as Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh recognized
+the sterility of Impressionism and of a narrow æstheticism, while they
+shared the hatred of the æsthetes and the Impressionists for the current
+art of the salons. No more than the æsthetes or the Impressionists were
+they conscious of any social or universal ideals that demanded
+expression. The æsthetes had a doctrine; the Impressionists had a method
+and a technic. The Post-Impressionists had nothing, and were driven to
+the attempt at pure self-expression--to the exaltation of the great god
+Whim. They had no training, they recognized no traditions, they spoke to
+no public. Each was to express, as he thought best, whatever he happened
+to feel or to think, and to invent, as he went along, the language in
+which he should express it. I think some of these men had the elements
+of genius in them and might have done good work; but their task was a
+heart-breaking and a hopeless one. An art cannot be improvised, and an
+artist must have some other guide than unregulated emotion. The path
+they entered upon had been immemorially marked "no passing"; for many of
+them the end of it was suicide or the madhouse.
+
+But whatever the aberrations of these, the true
+Post-Impressionists--whatever the ugliness, the eccentricity, or the
+moral dinginess into which they were betrayed--I believe them to have
+been, in the main, honest if unbalanced and ill-regulated minds.
+Whatever their errors, they paid the price of them in poverty, in
+neglect, in death. With those who pretend to be their descendants to-day
+the case is different; they are not paying for their eccentricity or
+their madness, they are making it pay.
+
+The enormous engine of modern publicity has been discovered by these
+men. They have learned to advertise, and they have found that morbidity,
+eccentricity, indecency, extremes of every kind and of any degree are
+capital advertisement. If one cannot create a sound and living art, one
+can at least make something odd enough to be talked about; if one cannot
+achieve enduring fame, one may make sure of a flaming notoriety. And, as
+a money-maker, present notoriety is worth more than future fame, for the
+speculative dealer is at hand. His interest is in "quick returns" and
+he has no wish to wait until you are famous--or dead--before he can sell
+anything you do. His process is to buy anything he thinks he can "boom,"
+to "boom" it as furiously as possible, and to sell it before the "boom"
+collapses. Then he will exploit something else, and there's the rub.
+Once you have entered this mad race for notoriety, there is no drawing
+out of it. The same sensation will not attract attention a second time;
+you must be novel at any cost. You must exaggerate your exaggerations
+and out-Herod Herod, for others have learned how easy the game is to
+play, and are at your heels. It is no longer a matter of
+misunderstanding and being misunderstood by the public; it is a matter
+of deliberately flouting and outraging the public--of assuming
+incomprehensibility and antagonism to popular feeling as signs of
+greatness. And so is founded what Frederic Harrison has called the
+"shock-your-grandmother school."
+
+It is with profound regret that one must name as one of the founders of
+this school an artist of real power, who has produced much admirable
+work--Auguste Rodin. At the age of thirty-seven he attained a sudden and
+resounding notoriety, and from that time he has been the most talked-of
+artist in Europe. He was a consummate modeller, a magnificent workman,
+but he had always grave faults and striking mannerisms. These faults and
+mannerisms he has latterly pushed to greater and greater extremes while
+neglecting his great gift, each work being more chaotic and fragmentary
+in composition, more hideous in type, more affected and emptier in
+execution, until he has produced marvels of mushiness and incoherence
+hitherto undreamed of and has set up as public monuments fantastically
+mutilated figures with broken legs or heads knocked off. Now, in his
+old age, he is producing shoals of drawings the most extraordinary of
+which few are permitted to see. Some selected specimens of them hang in
+a long row in the Metropolitan Museum, and I assure you, upon my word as
+a lifelong student of drawing, they are quite as ugly and as silly as
+they look. There is not a touch in them that has any truth to nature,
+not a line that has real beauty or expressiveness. They represent the
+human figure with the structure of a jellyfish and the movement of a
+Dutch doll; the human face with an expression I prefer not to
+characterize. If they be not the symptoms of mental decay, they can be
+nothing but the means of a gigantic mystification.
+
+With Henri Matisse we have not to deplore the deliquescence of a great
+talent, for we have no reason to suppose he ever had any. It is true
+that his admirers will assure you he could once draw and paint as
+everybody does; what he could _not_ do was to paint enough better than
+everybody does to make his mark in the world; and he was a quite
+undistinguished person until he found a way to produce some effect upon
+his grandmother the public by shocking her into attention. His method is
+to choose the ugliest models to be found; to put them into the most
+grotesque and indecent postures imaginable; to draw them in the manner
+of a savage, or a depraved child, or a worse manner if that be possible;
+to surround his figures with blue outlines half an inch wide; and to
+paint them in crude and staring colors, brutally laid on in flat masses.
+Then, when his grandmother begins to "sit up," she is told with a grave
+face that this is a reaction from naturalism, a revival of abstract line
+and color, a subjective art which is not the representation of nature
+but the expression of the artist's soul. No wonder she gasps and
+stares!
+
+It seemed, two or three years ago, that the limit of mystification had
+been reached--that this comedy of errors could not be carried further;
+but human ingenuity is inexhaustible, and we now have whole schools,
+Cubists, Futurists, and the like, who joyously vie with each other in
+the creation of incredible pictures and of irreconcilable and
+incomprehensible theories. The public is inclined to lump them all
+together and, so far as their work is concerned, the public is not far
+wrong; yet in theory Cubism and Futurism are diametrically opposed to
+each other. It is not easy to get any clear conception of the doctrines
+of these schools, but, so far as I am able to understand them--and I
+have taken some pains to do so--they are something like this:
+
+Cubism is static; Futurism is kinetic. Cubism deals with bulk; Futurism
+deals with motion. The Cubist, by a kind of extension of Mr. Berenson's
+doctrine of "tactile values," assumes that the only character of objects
+which is of importance to the artist is their bulk and solidity--what he
+calls their "volumes." Now the form in which volume is most easily
+apprehended is the cube; do we not measure by it and speak of the cubic
+contents of anything? The inference is easy: reduce all objects to forms
+which can be bounded by planes and defined by straight lines and angles;
+make their cubic contents measurable to the eye; transform drawing into
+a burlesque of solid geometry; and you have, at once, attained to the
+highest art. The Futurist, on the other hand, maintains that we know
+nothing but that things are in flux. Form, solidity, weight are
+illusions. Nothing exists but motion. Everything is changing every
+moment, and if anything were still we ourselves are changing. It is,
+therefore, absurd to give fixed boundaries to anything or to admit of
+any fixed relations in space. If you are trying to record your
+impression of a face it is certain that by the time you have done one
+eye the other eye will no longer be where it was--it may be at the other
+side of the room. You must cut nature into small bits and shuffle them
+about wildly if you are to reproduce what we really see.
+
+Whatever its extravagance, Cubism remains a form of graphic art. However
+pedantic and ridiculous its transformation of drawing, it yet recognizes
+the existence of drawing. Therefore, to the Futurist, Cubism is
+reactionary. What difference does it make, he asks, whether you draw a
+head round or square? Why draw a head at all? The Futurist denies the
+fundamental postulates of the art of painting. Painting has always, and
+by definition, represented upon a surface objects supposed to lie
+beyond it and to be seen through it. Futurism pretends to place the
+spectator inside the picture and to represent things around him or
+behind him as well as those in front of him. Painting has always assumed
+the single moment of vision, and, though it has sometimes placed more
+than one picture on the same canvas, it has treated each picture as seen
+at a specific instant of time. Futurism attempts systematically to
+combine the past and the future with the present, as if all the pictures
+in a cinematograph film were to be printed one over the other; to paint
+no instant but to represent the movement of time. It aims at nothing
+less than the abrogation of all recognized laws, the total destruction
+of all that has hitherto passed for art.
+
+Do you recall the story of the man who tried to count a litter of pigs,
+but gave it up because one little pig ran about so fast that he could
+not be counted? One finds oneself in somewhat the same predicament when
+one tries to describe these "new movements" in art. The movement is so
+rapid and the men shift their ground so quickly that there is no telling
+where to find them. You have no sooner arrived at some notion of the
+difference between Cubism and Futurism than you find your Cubist doing
+things that are both Cubist and Futurist, or neither Cubist nor
+Futurist, according as you look at them. You find things made up of
+geometrical figures to give volume, yet with all the parts many times
+repeated to give motion. You find things that have neither bulk nor
+motion but look like nothing so much as a box of Chinese tangrams
+scattered on a table. Finally, you have assemblages of lines that do not
+draw anything, even cubes or triangles; and we are assured that there
+is now a newest school of all, called Orphism, which, finding still some
+vestiges of intelligibility in any assemblage of lines, reduces
+everything to shapeless blotches. Probably the first of Orphic pictures
+was that produced by the quite authentic donkey who was induced to smear
+a canvas by lashing a tail duly dipped in paint. It was given a title as
+Orphic as the painting, was accepted by a jury anxious to find new forms
+of talent, and was hung in the _Salon d'Automne._
+
+In all this welter of preposterous theories there is but one thing
+constant--one thing on which all these theorists are agreed. It is that
+all this strange stuff is symbolic and shadows forth the impressions and
+emotions of the artist: represents not nature but his feeling about
+nature; is the expression of his mind or, as they prefer to call it, his
+soul. It may be so. All art is symbolic; images are symbols; words are
+symbols; all communication is by symbols. But if a symbol is to serve
+any purpose of communication between one mind and another it must be a
+symbol accepted and understood by both minds. If an artist is to choose
+his symbols to suit himself, and to make them mean anything he chooses,
+who is to say what he means or whether he means anything? If a man were
+to rise and recite, with a solemn voice, words like "Ajakan maradak
+tecor sosthendi," would you know what he meant? If he wished you to
+believe that these symbols express the feeling of awe caused by the
+contemplation of the starry heavens, he would have to tell you so _in
+your own language_; and even then you would have only his word for it.
+He may have meant them to express that, but do they? The apologists of
+the new schools are continually telling us that we must give the
+necessary time and thought to learn the language of these men before we
+condemn them. Why should we? Why should not they learn the universal
+language of art? It is they who are trying to say something. When they
+have learned to speak that language and have convinced us that they have
+something to say in it which is worth listening to, then, and not till
+then, we may consent to such slight modification of it as may fit it
+more closely to their thought.
+
+If these gentlemen really believe that their capriciously chosen symbols
+are fit vehicles for communication with others, why do they fall back on
+that old, old symbol, the written word? Why do they introduce, in the
+very midst of a design in which everything else is dislocated, a name or
+a word in clear Roman letters? Or why do they give their pictures titles
+and, lest you should neglect to look in the catalogue, print the title
+quite carefully and legibly in the corner of the picture itself? They
+know that they must set you to hunting for their announced subject or
+you would not look twice at their puzzles.
+
+Now, there is only one word for this denial of all law, this
+insurrection against all custom and tradition, this assertion of
+individual license without discipline and without restraint; and that
+word is "anarchy." And, as we know, theoretic anarchy, though it may not
+always lead to actual violence, is a doctrine of destruction. It is so
+in art, and these artistic anarchists are found proclaiming that the
+public will never understand or accept their art while anything remains
+of the art of the past, and demanding that therefore the art of the past
+shall be destroyed. It is actual, physical destruction of pictures and
+statues that they call for, and in Italy, that great treasury of the
+world's art, has been raised the sinister cry: "Burn the museums!" They
+have not yet taken to the torch, but if they were sincere they would do
+it; for their doctrine calls for nothing less than the reduction of
+mankind to a state of primitive savagery that it may begin again at the
+beginning.
+
+Fortunately, they are not sincere. There may be among them those who
+honestly believe in that exaltation of the individual and that revolt
+against all law which is the danger of our age. But, for the most part,
+if they have broken from the fold and "like sheep have gone astray,"
+they have shown a very sheep-like disposition to follow the bell-wether.
+They are fond of quoting a saying of Gauguin's that "one must be either
+a revolutionist or a plagiary"; but can any one tell these
+revolutionists apart? Can any one distinguish among them such definite
+and logically developed personalities as mark even schoolmen and
+"plagiarists" like Meissonier and Gérôme? If any one of these men stood
+alone, one might believe his eccentricities to be the mark of an extreme
+individuality; one cannot believe it when one finds the same
+eccentricities in twenty of them.
+
+No, it is not for the sake of unhampered personal development that young
+artists are joining these new schools; it is because they are offered a
+short cut to a kind of success. As there are no more laws and no more
+standards, there is nothing to learn. The merest student is at once set
+upon a level with the most experienced of his instructors, and boys and
+girls in their teens are hailed as masters. Art is at last made easy,
+and there are no longer any pupils, for all have become teachers. To
+borrow Doctor Johnson's phrase, "many men, many women, and many
+children" could produce art after this fashion; and they do.
+
+So right are the practitioners of this puerile art in their proclaimed
+belief that the public will never accept it while anything else exists,
+that one might be willing to treat it with the silent contempt it
+deserves were it not for the efforts of certain critics and writers for
+the press to convince us that it ought to be accepted. Some of these men
+seem to be intimidated by the blunders of the past. Knowing that
+contemporary criticism has damned almost every true artist of the
+nineteenth century, they are determined not to be caught napping; and
+they join in shouts of applause as each new harlequin steps upon the
+stage. They forget that it is as dangerous to praise ignorantly as to
+blame unjustly, and that the railer at genius, though he may seem more
+malevolent, will scarce appear so ridiculous to posterity as the dupe of
+the mountebank. Others of them are, no doubt, honest victims of that
+illusion of progress to which we are all more or less subject--to that
+ingrained belief that all evolution is upward and that the latest thing
+must necessarily be the best. They forget that the same process which
+has relieved man of his tail has deprived the snake of his legs and the
+kiwi of his wings. They forget that art has never been and cannot be
+continuously progressive; that it is only the sciences connected with
+art that are capable of progress; and that the "Henriade" is not a
+greater poem than the "Divine Comedy" because Voltaire has learned the
+falsity of the Ptolemaic astronomy. Finally, these writers, like other
+people, desire to seem knowing and clever; and if you appear to admire
+vastly what no one else understands you pass for a clever man.
+
+I have looked through a good deal of the writings of these "up-to-date"
+critics in the effort to find something like an intelligible argument
+or a definite statement of belief. I have found nothing but the
+continually repeated assumption that these new movements, in all their
+varieties, are "living" and "vital." I can find no grounds stated for
+this assumption and can suppose only that what is changing with great
+rapidity is conceived to be alive; yet I know nothing more productive of
+rapid changes than putrefaction.
+
+Do not be deceived. This is not vital art, it is decadent and corrupt.
+True art has always been the expression by the artist of the ideals of
+his time and of the world in which he lived--ideals which were his own
+because he was a part of that world. A living and healthy art never has
+existed and never can exist except through the mutual understanding and
+co-operation of the artist and his public. Art is made for man and has a
+social function to perform. We have a right to demand that it shall be
+both human and humane; that it shall show some sympathy in the artist
+with our thoughts and our feelings; that it shall interpret our ideals
+to us in that universal language which has grown up in the course of
+ages. We have a right to reject with pity or with scorn the stammerings
+of incompetence, the babble of lunacy, or the vaporing of imposture. But
+mutual understanding implies a duty on the part of the public as well as
+on the part of the artist, and we must give as well as take. We must be
+at the pains to learn something of the language of art in which we bid
+the artist speak. If we would have beauty from him we must sympathize
+with his aspiration for beauty. Above all, if we would have him
+interpret for us our ideals we must have ideals worthy of such
+interpretation. Without this co-operation on our part we may have a
+better art than we deserve, for noble artists will be born, and they
+will give us an art noble in its essence however mutilated and shorn of
+its effectiveness by our neglect. It is only by being worthy of it that
+we can hope to have an art we may be proud of--an art lofty in its
+inspiration, consummate in its achievement, disciplined in its strength.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
+
+
+Jean François Millet, who lived hard and died poor, is now perhaps the
+most famous artist of the nineteenth century. His slightest work is
+fought for by dealers and collectors, and his more important pictures,
+if they chance to change hands, bring colossal and almost incredible
+prices. And of all modern reputations his, so far as we can see, seems
+most likely to be enduring. If any painter of the immediate past is
+definitively numbered with the great masters, it is he. Yet the popular
+admiration for his art is based on a I misapprehension almost as
+profound as that of those contemporaries who decried and opposed him.
+They thought him violent, rude, ill-educated, a "man of the woods," a
+revolutionist, almost a communist. We are apt to think of him as a
+gentle sentimentalist, a soul full of compassion for the hard lot of the
+poor, a man whose art achieves greatness by sheer feeling rather than by
+knowledge and intellect. In spite of his own letters, in spite of the
+testimony of many who knew him well, in spite of more than one piece of
+illuminating criticism, these two misconceptions endure; and, for the
+many, Millet is still either the painter of "The Man with the Hoe," a
+powerful but somewhat exceptional work, or the painter of "L'Angelus,"
+precisely the least characteristic picture he ever produced. There is a
+legendary Millet, in many ways a very different man from the real one,
+and, while the facts of his life are well known and undisputed, the
+interpretation of them is colored by preconceptions and strained to make
+them fit the legend.
+
+Altogether too much, for instance, has been made of the fact that
+Millet was born a peasant. He was so, but so were half the artists and
+poets who come up to Paris and fill the schools and the cafés of the
+student quarters. To any one who has known these young _rapins_, and
+wondered at the grave and distinguished members of the Institute into
+which many of them have afterward developed, it is evident that this
+studious youth--who read Virgil in the original and Homer and
+Shakespeare and Goethe in translations--probably had a much more
+cultivated mind and a much sounder education than most of his fellow
+students under Delaroche. Seven years after this Norman farmer's son
+came to Paris, with a pension of 600 francs voted by the town council of
+Cherbourg, the son of a Breton sabot-maker followed him there with a
+precisely similar pension voted by the town council of Roche-sur-Yon;
+and the pupil of Langlois had had at least equal opportunities with
+the pupil of Sartoris. Both cases were entirely typical of French
+methods of encouraging the fine arts, and the peasant origin of Millet
+is precisely as significant as the peasant origin of Baudry.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 2.--Millet. "The Sower."
+In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vanderbilt collection.]
+
+Baudry persevered in the course marked out for him and, after failing
+three times, received the _Prix de Rome_ and became the pensioner of the
+state. Millet took umbrage at Delaroche's explanation that his support
+was already pledged to another candidate for the prize, and left the
+_atelier_ of that master after little more than a year's work. But that
+he had already acquired most of what was to be learned there is shown,
+if by nothing else, by the master's promise to push him for the prize
+the year following. This was in 1838, and for a year or two longer
+Millet worked in the life classes of Suisse and Boudin without a master.
+His pension was first cut down and then withdrawn altogether, and he
+was thrown upon his own resources. His struggles and his poverty during
+the next few years were those of many a young artist, aggravated, in his
+case, by two imprudent marriages. But during all the time that he was
+painting portraits in Cherbourg or little nudes in Paris he was steadily
+gaining reputation and making friends. If we had not the pictures
+themselves to show us how able and how well-trained a workman he was,
+the story told us by Wyatt Eaton, in "Modern French Masters," would
+convince us. It was in the last year of Millet's life that he told the
+young American how, in his early days, a dealer would come to him for a
+picture and, "having nothing painted, he would offer the dealer a book
+and ask him to wait for a little while that he might add a few touches
+to the picture." He would then go into his studio and take a fresh
+canvas, or a panel, and in two hours bring out a little nude figure,
+which he had painted during that time, and for which he would receive
+twenty or twenty-five francs. It was the work of this time that Diaz
+admired for its color and its "immortal flesh painting"; that caused
+Guichard, a pupil of Ingres, to tell his master that Millet was the
+finest draughtsman of the new school; that earned for its author the
+title of "master of the nude."
+
+He did all kinds of work in these days, even painting signs and
+illustrating sheet music, and it was all capital practice for a young
+man, but it was not what he wanted to do. A great deal has been made of
+the story of his overhearing some one speak of him as "a fellow who
+never paints anything but naked women," and he is represented as
+undergoing something like a sudden conversion and as resolving to "do no
+more of the devil's work." As a matter of fact, he had, from the
+first, wanted to paint "men at work in the fields," with their "fine
+attitudes," and he only tried his hand at other things because he had
+his living to earn. Sensier saw what seems to have been the first sketch
+for "The Sower" as early as 1847, and it existed long before that, while
+"The Winnower" was exhibited in 1848; and the overheard conversation is
+said to have taken place in 1849. There was nothing indecent or immoral
+in Millet's early work, and the best proof that he felt no moral
+reprobation for the painting of the nude--as what true painter,
+especially in France, ever did?--is that he returned to it in the height
+of his power and, in the picture of the little "Goose Girl" (Pl. 1) by
+the brook side, her slim, young body bared for the bath, produced the
+loveliest of his works. No, what happened to Millet in 1849 was simply
+that he resolved to do no more pot-boiling, to consult no one's taste
+but his own, to paint what he pleased and as he pleased, if he starved
+for it. He went to Barbizon for a summer's holiday and to escape the
+cholera. He stayed there because living was cheap and the place was
+healthful, and because he could find there the models and the subjects
+on which he built his highly abstract and ideal art.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 3.--Millet. "The Gleaners."
+In the Louvre.]
+
+At Barbizon he neither resumed the costume nor led the life of a
+peasant. He wore sabots, as hundreds of other artists have done, before
+and since, when living in the country in France. Sabots are very cheap
+and very dry and not uncomfortable when you have acquired the knack of
+wearing them. In other respects he dressed and lived like a small
+bourgeois, and was _monsieur_ to the people about him. Barbizon was
+already a summer resort for artists before he came there, and the inn
+was full of painters; while others, of whom Rousseau was one, were
+settled there more or less permanently. It is but a short distance from
+Paris, and the exhibitions and museums were readily accessible. The life
+that Millet lived there was that of many poor, self-respecting,
+hard-working artists, and if he had been a landscape painter that life
+would never have seemed in any way exceptional. It is only because he
+was a painter of the figure that it seems odd he should have lived in
+the country; only because he painted peasants that he has been thought
+of as a peasant himself. If he accepted the name, with a kind of pride,
+it was in protest against the frivolity and artificiality of the
+fashionable art of the day. But if too much has been made of Millet's
+peasant origin, perhaps hardly enough has been made of his race. It is
+at least interesting that the two Frenchmen whose art has most in
+common with his, Nicolas Poussin and Pierre Corneille, should have been
+Normans like himself. In the severely restrained, grandly simple,
+profoundly classical work of these three men, that hard-headed,
+strong-handed, austere, and manly race has found its artistic
+expression.
+
+For Millet is neither a revolutionary nor a sentimentalist, nor even a
+romanticist; he is essentially a classicist of the classicists, a
+conservative of the conservatives, the one modern exemplar of the grand
+style. It is because his art is so old that it was "too new" for even
+Corot to understand it; because he harked back beyond the
+pseudoclassicism of his time to the great art of the past, and was
+classic as Phidias and Giotto and Michelangelo were classic, that he
+seemed strange to his contemporaries. In everything he was conservative.
+He hated change; he wanted things to remain as they had always been. He
+did not especially pity the hard lot of the peasant; he considered it
+the natural and inevitable lot of man who "eats bread in the sweat of
+his brow." He wanted the people he painted "to look as if they belonged
+to their place--as if it would be impossible for them ever to think of
+being anything else but what they are." In the herdsman and the
+shepherd, the sower and the reaper, he saw the immemorial types of
+humanity whose labors have endured since the world began and were
+essentially what they now are when Virgil wrote his "Georgics" and when
+Jacob kept the flocks of Laban. This is the note of all his work. It is
+the permanent, the essential, the eternally significant that he paints.
+The apparent localization of his subjects in time and place is an
+illusion. He is not concerned with the nineteenth century or with
+Barbizon but with mankind. At the very moment when the English
+Pre-raphaelites were trying to found a great art on the exhaustive
+imitation of natural detail, he eliminated detail as much as possible.
+At the very beginning of our modern preoccupation with the direct
+representation of facts, he abandoned study from the model almost
+entirely and could say that he "had never painted from nature." His
+subjects would have struck the amiable Sir Joshua as trivial, yet no one
+has ever more completely followed that writer's precepts. His confession
+of faith is in the words, "One must be able to make use of the trivial
+for the expression of the sublime"; and this painter of "rustic genre"
+is the world's greatest master of the sublime after Michelangelo.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 4.--Millet. "The Spaders."]
+
+The comparison with Michelangelo is inevitable and has been made again
+and again by those who have felt the elemental grandeur of Millet's
+work. As a recent writer has remarked: "An art highly intellectualized,
+so as to convey a great idea with the lucidity of language, must needs
+be controlled by genius akin to that which inspired the ceiling
+paintings of the Sistine Chapel."[A] This was written of the Trajanic
+sculptors, whose works both Michelangelo and Millet studied and admired,
+and indeed it is to this old Roman art, or to the still older art of
+Greece, that one must go for the truest parallel of Millet's temper and
+his manner of working. He was less impatient, less romantic and
+emotional than Michelangelo; he was graver, quieter, more serene; and if
+he had little of the Greek sensuousness and the Greek love of physical
+beauty, he had much of the antique clarity and simplicity. To express
+his idea clearly, logically, and forcibly; to make a work of art that
+should be "all of a piece" and in which "things should be where they
+are for a purpose"; to admit nothing for display, for ornament, even for
+beauty, that did not necessarily and inevitably grow out of his central
+theme, and to suppress with an iron rigidity everything useless or
+superfluous--this was his constant and conscious effort. It is an ideal
+eminently austere and intellectual--an ideal, above all, especially and
+eternally classic.
+
+[A] Eugénie Strong, "Roman Sculpture," p. 224.
+
+Take, for an instance, the earliest of his masterpieces, the first great
+picture by which he marked his emancipation and his determination
+henceforth to produce art as he understood it without regard to the
+preferences of others. Many of his preliminary drawings and studies
+exist and we can trace, more or less clearly, the process by which the
+final result was arrived at. At first we have merely a peasant sowing
+grain; an everyday incident, truly enough observed but nothing more.
+Gradually the background is cut down, the space restricted, the figure
+enlarged until it fills its frame as a metope of the Parthenon is
+filled. The gesture is ever enlarged and given more sweep and majesty,
+the silhouette is simplified and divested of all accidental or
+insignificant detail. A thousand previous observations are compared and
+resumed in one general and comprehensive formula, and the typical has
+been evolved from the actual. What generations of Greek sculptors did in
+their slow perfectioning of certain fixed types he has done almost at
+once. We have no longer a man sowing, but "The Sower" (Pl. 2),
+justifying the title he instinctively gave it by its air of permanence,
+of inevitability, of universality. All the significance which there is
+or ever has been for mankind in that primæval action of sowing the seed
+is crystallized into its necessary expression. The thing is done once
+for all, and need never--can never be done again. Has any one else
+had this power since Michelangelo created his "Adam"?
+
+[Illustration: Plate 5.--Millet. "The Potato Planters."
+In the Quincy A. Shaw Collection.]
+
+If even Millet never again attained quite the august impressiveness of
+this picture it is because no other action of rustic man has so wide or
+so deep a meaning for us as this of sowing. All the meaning there is in
+an action he could make us feel with entire certainty, and always he
+proceeds by this method of elimination, concentration, simplification,
+insistence on the essential and the essential only. One of the most
+perfect of all his pictures--more perfect than "The Sower" on account of
+qualities of mere painting, of color, and of the rendering of landscape,
+of which I shall speak later--is "The Gleaners" (Pl. 3). Here one figure
+is not enough to express the continuousness of the movement; the utmost
+simplification will not make you feel, as powerfully as he wishes you to
+feel it, the crawling progress, the bending together of back and
+thighs, the groping of worn fingers in the stubble. The line must be
+reinforced and reduplicated, and a second figure, almost a facsimile of
+the first, is added. Even this is not enough. He adds a third figure,
+not gathering the ear, but about to do so, standing, but stooped forward
+and bounded by one great, almost uninterrupted curve from the peak of
+the cap over her eyes to the heel which half slips out of the sabot, and
+the thing is done. The whole day's work is resumed in that one moment.
+The task has endured for hours and will endure till sunset, with only an
+occasional break while the back is half-straightened--there is not time
+to straighten it wholly. It is the triumph of significant composition,
+as "The Sower" is the triumph of significant draughtsmanship.
+
+Or, when an action is more complicated and difficult of suggestion, as
+is that, for instance, of digging, he takes it at the beginning and at
+the end, as in "The Spaders" (Pl. 4), and makes you understand
+everything between. One man is doubled over his spade, his whole weight
+brought to bear on the pressing foot which drives the blade into the
+ground. The other, with arms outstretched, gives the twisting motion
+which lets the loosened earth fall where it is to lie. Each of these
+positions is so thoroughly understood and so definitely expressed that
+all the other positions of the action are implied in them. You feel the
+recurrent rhythm of the movement and could almost count the falling of
+the clods.
+
+So far did Millet push the elimination of non-essentials that his heads
+have often scarcely any features, his hands, one might say, are without
+fingers, and his draperies are so simplified as to suggest the witty
+remark that his peasants are too poor to afford any folds in their
+garments. The setting of the great, bony planes of jaw and cheek and
+temple, the bulk and solidity of the skull, and the direction of the
+face--these were, often enough, all he wanted of a head. Look at the
+hand of the woman in "The Potato Planters" (Pl. 5), or at those of the
+man in the same picture, and see how little detail there is in them, yet
+how surely the master's sovereign draughtsmanship has made you feel
+their actual structure and function! And how inevitably the garments,
+with their few and simple folds, mould and accent the figures beneath
+them, "becoming, as it were, a part of the body and expressing, even
+more than the nude, the larger and simpler forms of nature"! How
+explicitly the action of the bodies is registered, how perfectly the
+amount of effort apparent is proportioned to the end to be attained! One
+can feel, to an ounce, it seems, the strain upon the muscles implied by
+that hoe-full of earth. Or look at the easier attitude of "The
+Grafter" (Pl. 6), engaged upon his gentler task, and at the monumental
+silhouette of the wife, standing there, babe in arms, a type of eternal
+motherhood and of the fruitfulness to come.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 6.--Millet. "The Grafter."
+In the collection of William Rockefeller.]
+
+Oftener than anything, perhaps, it was the sense of weight that
+interested Millet. It is the adjustment of her body to the weight of the
+child she carries that gives her statuesque pose to the wife of the
+grafter. It is the drag of the buckets upon the arms that gives her
+whole character to the magnificent "Woman Carrying Water," in the
+Vanderbilt collection. It is the erect carriage, the cautious, rhythmic
+walk, keeping step together, forced upon them by the sense of weight,
+which gives that gravity and solemnity to the bearers of "The New-Born
+Calf" (Pl. 7), which was ridiculed by Millet's critics as more befitting
+the bearers of the bull Apis or the Holy Sacrament. The artist himself
+was explicit in this instance as in that of the "Woman Carrying Water."
+"The expression of two men carrying a load on a litter," he says,
+"naturally depends on the weight which rests upon their arms. Thus, if
+the weight is equal, their expression will be the same, whether they
+bear the Ark of the Covenant or a calf, an ingot of gold or a stone."
+Find that expression, whether in face or figure, render it clearly,
+"with largeness and simplicity," and you have a great, a grave, a
+classic work of art. "We are never so truly Greek," he said, "as when we
+are simply painting our own impressions." Certainly his own way of
+painting his impressions was more Greek than anything else in the whole
+range of modern art.
+
+In the epic grandeur of such pictures as these there is something akin
+to sadness, though assuredly Millet did not mean them to be sad. Did he
+not say of the "Woman Carrying Water": "I have avoided, as I always do,
+with a sort of horror, everything that might verge on the sentimental"?
+He wished her to seem "to do her work simply and cheerfully ... as a
+part of her daily task and the habit of her life." And he was not always
+in the austere and epical mood. He could be idyllic as well, and if he
+could not see "the joyous side" of life or nature he could feel and make
+us feel the charm of tranquillity. Indeed, this remark of his about the
+joyous side of things was made in the dark, early days when life was
+hardest for him. He broadened in his view as he grew older and
+conditions became more tolerable, and he has painted a whole series of
+little pictures of family life and of childhood that, in their smiling
+seriousness, are endlessly delightful. The same science, the same
+thoughtfulness, the same concentration and intellectual grasp that
+defined for us the superb gesture of "The Sower" have gone to the
+depiction of the adorable uncertainty, between walking and falling, of
+those "First Steps" (Pl. 8) from the mother's lap to the outstretched
+arms of the father; and the result, in this case as in the other, is a
+thing perfectly and permanently expressed. Whatever Millet has done is
+done. He has "characterized the type," as it was his dream to do, and
+written "hands off" across his subject for all future adventurers.
+
+Finally, he rises to an almost lyric fervor in that picture of the
+little "Goose Girl" bathing, which is one of the most purely and
+exquisitely beautiful things in art. In this smooth, young body
+quivering with anticipation of the coolness of the water; in these
+rounded, slender limbs with their long, firm, supple lines; in the
+unconscious, half-awkward grace of attitude and in the glory of
+sunlight splashing through the shadow of the willows, there is a whole
+song of joy and youth and the goodness of the world. The picture exists
+in a drawing or pastel, which has been photographed by Braun, as well as
+in the oil-painting, and Millet's habit of returning again and again to
+a favorite subject renders it difficult to be certain which is the
+earlier of the two; but I imagine this drawing to be a study for the
+picture. At first sight the figure in it is more obviously beautiful
+than in the other version, and it is only after a time that one begins
+to understand the changes that the artist was impelled to make. It is
+almost too graceful, too much like an antique nymph. No one could find
+any fault with it, but by an almost imperceptible stiffening of the line
+here and there, a little greater turn of the foot upon the ankle and of
+the hand upon the wrist, the figure in the painting has been given an
+accent of rusticity that makes it more human, more natural, and more
+appealing. She is no longer a possible Galatea or Arethusa, she is only
+a goose girl, and we feel but the more strongly on that account the
+eternal poem of the healthy human form.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 7.--Millet. "The New-Born Calf."
+In the Art Institute, Chicago.]
+
+The especial study of the nineteenth century was landscape, and Millet
+was so far a man of his time that he was a great landscape painter; but
+his treatment of landscape was unlike any other, and, like his own
+treatment of the figure, in its insistence on essentials, its
+elimination of the accidental, its austere and grand simplicity. I have
+heard, somewhere, a story of his saying, in answer to praise of his work
+or inquiry as to his meaning: "I was trying to express the difference
+between the things that lie flat and the things that stand upright."
+That is the real motive of one of his masterpieces--one that in some
+moods seems the greatest of them all--"The Shepherdess" (Pl. 9), that
+is, or used to be, in the Chauchard collection. In this nobly tranquil
+work, in which there is no hint of sadness or revolt, are to be found
+all his usual inevitableness of composition and perfection of
+draughtsmanship--note the effect of repetition in the sheep, "forty
+feeding like one"--but the glory of the picture is in the infinite
+recession of the plain that lies flat, the exact notation of the
+successive positions upon it of the things that stand upright, from the
+trees and the hay wain in the extreme distance, almost lost in sky,
+through the sheep and the sheep-dog and the shepherdess herself,
+knitting so quietly, to the dandelions in the foreground, each with its
+"aureole" of light. Of these simple, geometrical relations, and of the
+enveloping light and air by which they are expressed, he has made a hymn
+of praise.
+
+The background of "The Gleaners," with its baking stubble-field under
+the midday sun, its grain stacks and laborers and distant farmstead, all
+tremulous in the reflected waves of heat, indistinct and almost
+indecipherable yet unmistakable, is nearly as wonderful; and no one has
+ever so rendered the solemnity and the mystery of night as has he in the
+marvellous "Sheepfold" of the Walters collection. But the greatest of
+all his landscapes--one of the greatest landscapes ever painted--is his
+"Spring" (Pl. 10), of the Louvre, a pure landscape this time, containing
+no figure. In the intense green of the sunlit woods against the black
+rain-clouds that are passing away, in the jewel-like brilliancy of the
+blossoming apple-trees, and the wet grass in that clear air after the
+shower; in the glorious rainbow drawn in dancing light across the sky,
+we may see, if anywhere in art, some reflection of the "infinite
+splendors" which Millet tells us he saw in nature.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 8.--Millet. "The First Steps."]
+
+In the face of such results as these it seems absurd to discuss the
+question whether or not Millet was technically a master of his trade, as
+if the methods that produced them could possibly be anything but good
+methods for the purpose; but it is still too much the fashion to say and
+think that the great artist was a poor painter--to speak slightingly of
+his accomplishment in oil-painting and to seem to prefer his drawings
+and pastels to his pictures. We have seen that he was a supremely able
+technician in his pot-boiling days and that the color and handling of
+his early pictures were greatly admired by so brilliant a virtuoso as
+Diaz. But this "flowery manner" would not lend itself to the expression
+of his new aims and he had to invent another. He did so stumblingly at
+first, and the earliest pictures of his grand style have a certain
+harshness and ruggedness of surface and heaviness of color which his
+critics could not forgive any more than the Impressionists, who have
+outdone that ruggedness, can forgive him his frequent use of a warm
+general tone inclining to brownness. His ideal of form and of
+composition he possessed complete from the beginning; his mastery of
+light and color and the handling of materials was slower of acquirement;
+but he did acquire it, and in the end he is as absolute a master of
+painting as of drawing. He did not see nature in blue and violet, as
+Monet has taught us to see it, and little felicities and facilities of
+rendering, and anything approaching cleverness or the parade of
+virtuosity he hated; but he knew just what could be done with thick or
+thin painting, with opaque or transparent pigment, and he could make his
+few and simple colors say anything he chose. In his mature work there is
+a profound knowledge of the means to be employed and a great economy
+in their use, and there is no approach to indiscriminate or meaningless
+loading. "Things are where they are for a purpose," and if the surface
+of a picture is rough in any place it is because just that degree of
+roughness was necessary to attain the desired effect. He could make mere
+paint express light as few artists have been able to do--"The
+Shepherdess" is flooded with it--and he could do this without any
+sacrifice of the sense of substance in the things on which the light
+falls. If some of his canvases are brown it is because brown seemed to
+him the appropriate note to express what he had to say; "The Gleaners"
+glows with almost the richness of a Giorgione, and other pictures are
+honey-toned or cool and silvery or splendidly brilliant. And in whatever
+key he painted, the harmony of his tones and colors is as large, as
+simple, and as perfect as the harmony of his lines and masses.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 9.--Millet. "The Shepherdess."
+In the Chauchard collection, Louvre.]
+
+But if we cannot admit that Millet's drawings are better than his
+paintings, we may be very glad he did them. His great epic of the soil
+must have lacked many episodes, perhaps whole books and cantos, if it
+had been written only in the slower and more elaborate method. The
+comparative slightness and rapidity of execution of his drawings and
+pastels enabled him to register many inventions and observations that we
+must otherwise have missed, and many of these are of the highest value.
+His long training in seizing the essential in anything he saw enabled
+him, often, to put more meaning into a single rapid line than another
+could put into a day's painful labor, and some of his slightest sketches
+are astonishingly and commandingly expressive. Other of his drawings
+were worked out and pondered over almost as lovingly as his completest
+pictures. But so instinctively and inevitably was he a composer that
+everything he touched is a complete whole--his merest sketch or his most
+elaborated design is a unit. He has left no fragments. His paintings,
+his countless drawings, his few etchings and woodcuts are all of a
+piece. About everything there is that air of finality which marks the
+work destined to become permanently a classic.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 10.--Millet. "Spring."
+In the Louvre.]
+
+Here and there, by one or another writer, most or all of what I have
+been trying to say has been said already. It is the more likely to be
+true. And if these true things have been said, many other things have
+been said also which seem to me not so true, or little to the purpose,
+so that the image I have been trying to create must differ, for better
+or for worse, from that which another might have made. At least I may
+have looked at the truth from a slightly different angle and so have
+shown it in a new perspective. And, at any rate, it is well that true
+things should be said again from time to time. It can do no harm that
+one more person should endeavor to give a reason for his admiration of a
+great and true artist and should express his conviction that among the
+world's great masters the final place of Jean François Millet is not
+destined to be the lowest.
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS[B]
+
+[B] Read before the joint meeting of The American Academy of Arts and
+Letters and The National Institute of Arts and Letters, December 13, 1912.
+
+
+In these days all of us, even Academicians, are to some extent believers
+in progress. Our golden age is no longer in the past, but in the future.
+We know that our early ancestors were a race of wretched cave-dwellers,
+and we believe that our still earlier ancestors were possessed of tails
+and pointed ears. Having come so far, we are sometimes inclined to
+forget that not every step has been an advance and to entertain an
+illogical confidence that each future step must carry us still further
+forward; having indubitably progressed in many things, we think of
+ourselves as progressing in all. And as the pace of progress in science
+and in material things has become more and more rapid, we have come to
+expect a similar pace in art and letters, to imagine that the art of the
+future must be far finer than the art of the present or than that of the
+past, and that the art of one decade, or even of one year, must
+supersede that of the preceding decade or the preceding year, as the
+1913 model in automobiles supersedes the model of 1912. More than ever
+before "To have done is to hang quite out of fashion," and the only
+title to consideration is to do something quite obviously new or to
+proclaim one's intention of doing something newer. The race grows madder
+and madder. It was scarce two years since we first heard of "Cubism"
+when the "Futurists" were calling the "Cubists" reactionary. Even the
+gasping critics, pounding manfully in the rear, have thrown away all
+impedimenta of traditional standards in the desperate effort to keep up
+with what seems less a march than a stampede.
+
+But while we talk so loudly of progress in the arts we have an uneasy
+feeling that we are not really progressing. If our belief in our own art
+were as full-blooded as was that of the great creative epochs, we should
+scarce be so reverent of the art of the past. It is, perhaps, a sign of
+anæmia that we have become founders of museums and conservers of old
+buildings. If we are so careful of our heritage, it is surely from some
+doubt of our ability to replace it. When art has been vigorously alive
+it has been ruthless in its treatment of what has gone before. No
+cathedral builder thought of reconciling his own work to that of the
+builder who preceded him; he built in his own way, confident of its
+superiority. And when the Renaissance builder came, in his turn, he
+contemptuously dismissed all mediæval art as "Gothic" and barbarous, and
+was as ready to tear down an old façade as to build a new one. Even the
+most cock-sure of our moderns might hesitate to emulate Michelangelo in
+his calm destruction of three frescoes by Perugino to make room for his
+own "Last Judgment." He, at least, had the full courage of his
+convictions, and his opinion of Perugino is of record.
+
+Not all of us would consider even Michelangelo's arrogance entirely
+justified, but it is not only the Michelangelos who have had this belief
+in themselves. Apparently the confidence of progress has been as great
+in times that now seem to us decadent as in times that we think of as
+truly progressive. The past, or at least the immediate past, has always
+seemed "out of date," and each generation, as it made its entrance on
+the stage, has plumed itself upon its superiority to that which was
+leaving it. The architect of the most debased baroque grafted his
+"improvements" upon the buildings of the high Renaissance with an
+assurance not less than that with which David and his contemporaries
+banished the whole charming art of the eighteenth century. Van Orley and
+Frans Floris were as sure of their advance upon the ancient Flemish
+painting of the Van Eycks and of Memling as Rubens himself must have
+been of his advance upon them.
+
+We can see plainly enough that in at least some of these cases the sense
+of progress was an illusion. There was movement, but it was not always
+forward movement. And if progress was illusory in some instances, may it
+not, possibly, have been so in all? It is at least worth inquiry how far
+the fine arts have ever been in a state of true progress, going forward
+regularly from good to better, each generation building on the work of
+its predecessors and surpassing that work, in the way in which science
+has normally progressed when material conditions were favorable.
+
+If, with a view to answering this question, we examine, however
+cursorily, the history of the five great arts, we shall find a somewhat
+different state of affairs in the case of each. In the end it may be
+possible to formulate something like a general rule that shall accord
+with all the facts. Let us begin with the greatest and simplest of the
+arts, the art of poetry.
+
+In the history of poetry we shall find less evidence of progress than
+anywhere else, for it will be seen that its acknowledged masterpieces
+are almost invariably near the beginning of a series rather than near
+the end. Almost as soon as a clear and flexible language has been formed
+by any people, a great poem has been composed in that language, which
+has remained not only unsurpassed, but unequalled, by any subsequent
+work. Homer is for us, as he was for the Greeks, the greatest of their
+poets; and if the opinion could be taken of all cultivated readers in
+those nations that have inherited the Greek tradition, it is doubtful
+whether he would not be acclaimed the greatest poet of the ages. Dante
+has remained the first of Italian poets, as he was one of the earliest.
+Chaucer, who wrote when our language was transforming itself from
+Anglo-Saxon into English, has still lovers who are willing for his sake
+to master what is to them almost a foreign tongue, and yet other lovers
+who ask for new translations of his works into our modern idiom; while
+Shakespeare, who wrote almost as soon as that transformation had been
+accomplished, is universally reckoned one of the greatest of world
+poets. There have, indeed, been true poets at almost all stages of the
+world's history, but the pre-eminence of such masters as these can
+hardly be questioned, and if we looked to poetry alone for a type of the
+arts, we should almost be forced to conclude that art is the reverse of
+progressive. We should think of it as gushing forth in full splendor
+when the world is ready for it, and as unable ever again to rise to the
+level of its fount.
+
+The art of architecture is later in its beginning than that of poetry,
+for it can exist only when men have learned to build solidly and
+permanently. A nomad may be a poet, but he cannot be an architect; a
+herdsman might have written the Book of Job, but the great builders are
+dwellers in cities. But since men first learned to build they have never
+quite forgotten how to do so. At all times there have been somewhere
+peoples who knew enough of building to mould its utility into forms of
+beauty, and the history of architecture may be read more continuously
+than that of any other art. It is a history of constant change and of
+continuous development, each people and each age forming out of the old
+elements a new style which should express its mind, and each style
+reaching its point of greatest distinctiveness only to begin a further
+transformation into something else; but is it a history of progress?
+Building, indeed, has progressed at one time or another. The Romans,
+with their domes and arches, were more scientific builders than the
+Greeks, with their simple post and lintel, but were they better
+architects? We of to-day, with our steel construction, can scrape the
+sky with erections that would have amazed the boldest of mediæval
+craftsmen; can we equal his art? If we ask where in the history of
+architecture do its masterpieces appear, the answer must be: "Almost
+anywhere." Wherever men have had the wealth and the energy to build
+greatly, they have builded beautifully, and the distinctions are less
+between style and style or epoch and epoch than between building and
+building: The masterpieces of one time are as the masterpieces of
+another, and no man may say that the nave of Amiens is finer than the
+Parthenon or that the Parthenon is nobler than the nave of Amiens. One
+may say only that each is perfect in its kind, a supreme expression of
+the human spirit.
+
+Of the art of music I must speak with the diffidence becoming to the
+ignorant; but it seems to me to consist of two elements and to contain
+an inspirational art as direct and as simple as that of poetry, and a
+science so difficult that its fullest mastery is of very recent
+achievement. In melodic invention it is so far from progressive that its
+most brilliant masters are often content to elaborate and to decorate a
+theme old enough to have no history--a theme the inventor of which has
+been so entirely forgotten that we think of it as sprung not from the
+mind of one man, but from that of a whole people, and call it a
+folk-song. The song is almost as old as the race, but the symphony has
+had to wait for the invention of many instruments and for a mastery of
+the laws of harmony, and so symphonic music is a modern art. We are
+still adding new instruments to the orchestra and admitting to our
+compositions new combinations of sounds, but have we in a hundred years
+made any essential progress even in this part of the art? Have we
+produced anything, I will not say greater, but anything as great as the
+noblest works of Bach and Beethoven?
+
+Already, and before considering the arts of painting and sculpture, we
+are coming within sight of our general law. This law seems to be that,
+so far as an art is dependent upon any form of exact knowledge, so far
+it partakes of the nature of science and is capable of progress. So far
+as it is expressive of a mind and soul, its greatness is dependent upon
+the greatness of that mind and soul, and it is incapable of progress. It
+may even be the reverse of progressive, because as an art becomes more
+complicated and makes ever greater demands upon technical mastery, it
+becomes more difficult as a medium of expression, while the mind to be
+expressed becomes more sophisticated and less easy of expression in any
+medium. It would take a greater mind than Homer's to express modern
+ideas in modern verse with Homer's serene perfection; it would take,
+perhaps, a greater mind than Bach's to employ all the resources of
+modern music with his glorious ease and directness. And greater minds
+than those of Bach and Homer the world has not often the felicity to
+possess.
+
+The arts of painting and sculpture are imitative arts above all others,
+and therefore more dependent than any others upon exact knowledge, more
+tinged with the quality of science. Let us see how they illustrate our
+supposed law.
+
+Sculpture depends, as does architecture, upon certain laws of proportion
+in space which are analogous to the laws of proportion in time and in
+pitch upon which music is founded. But as sculpture represents the human
+figure, whereas architecture and music represent nothing, sculpture
+requires for its perfection the mastery of an additional science, which
+is the knowledge of the structure and movement of the human body. This
+knowledge may be acquired with some rapidity, especially in times and
+countries where man is often seen unclothed. So, in the history of
+civilizations, sculpture developed early, after poetry, but with
+architecture, and before painting and polyphonic music. It reached the
+greatest perfection of which it is capable in the age of Pericles, and
+from that time progress was impossible to it, and for a thousand years
+its movement was one of decline. After the dark ages sculpture was one
+of the first arts to revive; and again it develops rapidly--though not
+so rapidly as before, conditions of custom and climate being less
+favorable to it--until it reaches, in the first half of the sixteenth
+century, something near its former perfection. Again it can go no
+further; and since then it has changed but has not progressed. In
+Phidias, by which name I would signify the sculptor of the pediments of
+the Parthenon, we have the coincidence of a superlatively great artist
+with the moment of technical and scientific perfection in the art, and a
+similar coincidence crowns the work of Michelangelo with a peculiar
+glory. But, apart from the work of these two men, a the essential value
+of a work of sculpture is by no means always equal to its technical and
+scientific completeness. There are archaic statues that are almost as
+nobly beautiful as any work by Phidias and more beautiful than almost
+any work that has been done since his time. There are bits of Gothic
+sculpture that are more valuable expressions of human feeling than
+anything produced by the contemporaries of Buonarroti. Even in times of
+decadence a great artist has created finer things than could be
+accomplished by a mediocre talent of the great epochs, and the world
+could ill spare the Victory of Samothrace or the portrait busts of
+Houdon.
+
+As sculpture is one of the simplest of the arts, painting is one of the
+most complicated. The harmonies it constructs are composed of almost
+innumerable elements of lines and forms and colors and degrees of
+light and dark, and the science it professes is no less than that of the
+visible aspect of the whole of nature--a science so vast that it never
+has been and perhaps never can be mastered in its totality. Anything
+approaching a complete art of painting can exist only in an advanced
+stage of civilization. An entirely complete art of painting never has
+existed and probably never will exist. The history of painting, after
+its early stages, is a history of loss here balancing gain there, of a
+new means of expression acquired at the cost of an old one.
+
+We know comparatively little of the painting of antiquity, but we have
+no reason to suppose that that art, however admirable, ever attained to
+ripeness, and we know that the painting of the Orient has stopped short
+at a comparatively early stage of development. For our purpose the art
+to be studied is the painting of modern times in Europe from its origin
+in the Middle Ages. Even in the beginning, or before the beginning,
+while painting is a decadent reminiscence of the past rather than a
+prophecy of the new birth, there are decorative splendors in the
+Byzantine mosaics hardly to be recaptured. Then comes primitive
+painting, an art of the line and of pure color with little modulation
+and no attempt at the rendering of solid form. It gradually attains to
+some sense of relief by the use of degrees of light and less light; but
+the instant it admits the true shadow the old brightness and purity of
+color have become impossible. The line remains dominant for a time and
+is carried to the pitch of refinement and beauty, but the love for solid
+form gradually overcomes it, and in the art of the high Renaissance it
+takes a second place. Then light-and-shade begins to be studied for its
+own sake; color, no longer pure and bright, but deep and resonant, comes
+in again; the line vanishes altogether, and even form becomes
+secondary. The last step is taken by Rembrandt, and even color is
+subordinated to light-and-shade, which exists alone in a world of
+brownness. At every step there has been progress, but there has also
+been regress. Perhaps the greatest balance of gain against loss and the
+nearest approach to a complete art of painting were with the great
+Venetians. The transformation is still going on, and in our own day we
+have conquered some corners of the science of visible aspects which were
+unexplored by our ancestors. But the balance has turned against us; our
+loss has been greater than our gain; and our art, even in its scientific
+aspect, is inferior to that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
+
+And just because there never has been a complete art of painting,
+entirely rounded and perfected, it is the clearer to us that the final
+value of a work in that art never has depended on its approach to such
+completion. There is no one supreme master of painting but a long
+succession of masters of different yet equal glory. If the masterpieces
+of architecture are everywhere because there has often been a complete
+art of architecture, the masterpieces of painting are everywhere for the
+opposite reason. And if we do not always value a master the more as his
+art is more nearly complete, neither do we always value him especially
+who has placed new scientific conquests at the disposal of art. Palma
+Vecchio painted by the side of Titian, but he is only a minor master;
+Botticelli remained of the generation before Leonardo, but he is one of
+the immortal great. Paolo Ucello, by his study of perspective, made a
+distinct advance in pictorial science, but his interest for us is purely
+historic; Fra Angelico made no advance whatever, but he practised
+consummately the current art as he found it, and his work is eternally
+delightful. At every stage of its development the art of painting has
+been a sufficient medium for the expression of a great man's mind; and
+wherever and whenever a great man has practised it, the result has been
+a great and permanently valuable work of art.
+
+For this seems, finally, to be the law of all the arts--the one
+essential prerequisite to the production of a great work of art is a
+great man. You cannot have the art without the man, and when you have
+the man you have the art. His time and his surroundings will color him;
+his art will not be at one time or place precisely what it might be at
+another; but at bottom the art is the man and at all times and in all
+countries is just as great as the man.
+
+Let us clear our minds, then, of the illusion that there is in any
+important sense such a thing as progress in the fine arts. We may with
+a clear conscience judge every new work for what it appears in itself to
+be, asking of it that it be noble and beautiful and reasonable, not that
+it be novel or progressive. If it be great art it will always be novel
+enough, for there will be a great mind behind it, and no two great minds
+are alike. And if it be novel without being great, how shall we be the
+better off? There are enough forms of mediocre or evil art in the world
+already. Being no longer intimidated by the fetich of progress, when a
+thing calling itself a work of art seems to us hideous and degraded,
+indecent and insane, we shall have the courage to say so and shall not
+care to investigate it further. Detestable things have been produced in
+the past, and they are none the less detestable because we are able to
+see how they came to be produced. Detestable things are produced now,
+and they will be no more admirable if we learn to understand the minds
+that create them. Even should such things prove to be not the mere
+freaks of a diseased intellect that they seem but a necessary outgrowth
+of the conditions of the age and a true prophecy of "the art of the
+future," they are not necessarily the better for that. It is only that
+the future will be very unlucky in its art.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+RAPHAEL
+
+
+There used to be on the cover of the "Portfolio Monographs" little
+medallions of Raphael and Rembrandt, placed there, as the editor, Mr.
+Hamerton, has somewhere explained, as portraits of the two most widely
+influential artists that ever lived. In the eighteenth century, one
+imagines, Rembrandt's presence by the side of Raphael would have been
+thought little less than a scandal. To-day it is Raphael's place that
+would be contested, and he would be superseded, likely enough, by
+Velazquez.
+
+There is no more striking instance of the vicissitudes of critical
+opinion than the sudden fall of Raphael from his conceded rank as "the
+prince of painters." Up to the middle of the nineteenth century his
+right to that title was so uncontested that it alone was a sufficient
+identification of him--only one man could possibly be meant. That he
+should ever need defending or re-explaining to a generation grown cold
+to him would have seemed incredible. Then came the rediscovery of an
+earlier art that seemed more frank and simple than his; still later the
+discovery of Rembrandt and Velazquez--the romanticist and the
+naturalist--and Raphael, as a living influence, almost ceased to exist.
+It was but a few years ago that the author of a volume of essays on art
+was gravely praised by a reviewer for the purely accidental circumstance
+that that volume contained no essay on Raphael; and a little later the
+writer of a book on the pictures in Rome "had to confess unutterable
+boredom" in the presence of the Stanze of the Vatican.
+
+It is not probable that any critic who greatly valued his reputation, or
+who had any serious reputation to value, would take quite this tone;
+but, leaving out of consideration the impressionistic and ultra-modern
+criticism which ignores Raphael altogether, it is instructive to note
+the way in which a critic so steeped in Italian art as Mr. Berenson
+approaches the fallen prince. The artist who used to be considered the
+greatest of draughtsmen he will hardly admit to be a draughtsman at all,
+ranking him far below Pollaiuolo and positively speaking of him as "a
+poor creature, most docile and patient." As a colorist and a manipulator
+of paint, he places him with Sebastiano del Piombo--that is, among the
+mediocrities. Almost the only serious merit, from his point of view,
+which he will allow him is a mastery in the rendering of space, shared
+in nearly equal measure by Perugino, as, to some extent, by nearly all
+the painters of the Umbrian school. For, while he admits that Raphael
+was the greatest master of composition that Europe has produced, he
+evidently thinks of composition, as do so many other moderns, as a
+matter of relatively little importance.
+
+It is not Raphael's popularity that is in question; that is, perhaps, as
+great as ever it was. His works, in one form or another of reproduction,
+from the finest carbon print to the cheapest lithograph, are still to be
+found, in the humblest homes as in the most splendid, in nearly every
+quarter of the globe. That popularity was always based on what Berenson
+calls the "illustrative" qualities of Raphael's work, on the beauty of
+his women, the majesty of his men; on his ability to tell a story as we
+like it told and to picture a world that we wish might be real. One may
+not be prepared to consider these illustrative qualities so negligible
+as do many modern critics, or to echo Mr. Berenson's phrase about "that
+which in art ... is so unimportant as what ... we call beauty." One
+might point out that the greatest artists, from Phidias to Rembrandt,
+have occupied themselves with illustration, and that to formulate the
+ideals of a race and an epoch is no mean task. But, for the moment, we
+may neglect all that, our present inquiry being why an artist, once
+counted the greatest of all, is no longer considered very significant by
+those who measure by purely artistic standards rather than by that of
+illustrative success and consequent popularity.
+
+We may also leave out of our present consideration Raphael's achievement
+in the suggestion of space. It is a very real quality and a high one. It
+has doubtless always been an important element in the enjoyability of
+Raphael's art, as it is almost the only enjoyable element, for many of
+us, in the art of Perugino. But it is an element that has only very
+recently been clearly perceived to exist. If it was enjoyed by the
+artists and critics, from Raphael's day almost to our own, they were
+unconscious of the fact, and the probability is that we enjoy it more
+than they did. It will not account for the estimation in which they held
+Raphael, and still less will it account for the relative lack of
+interest in him to-day.
+
+In truth the reason why many modern critics and painters almost dislike
+Raphael is the very reason for which he was so greatly revered. Coming
+in the nick of time, at the close of an epoch of investigation, himself
+a man of wide culture and quick intellect but of no special originality
+or emotional power, he learned from all his predecessors what they had
+to teach and, choosing from the elements of their art those which were
+suited to his purpose, formed a perfectly balanced and noble style which
+was immediately accepted as the only style suitable to the expression of
+lofty ideas in monumental form. He became the lawgiver, the founder of
+classicism, the formulator of the academic ideal. Not to admire him was
+to confess oneself a barbarian, and even those who did not really care
+for his art hardly dared to say so. As long as the academic ideal
+retained any validity his supremacy endured, and it was only with the
+definitive turning of modern art into the paths of romanticism and
+naturalism that revolt became possible.
+
+But when the world became tired of Raphaelism it inevitably became
+unjust to Raphael. It forgot that it was not he who had made his art the
+test of that of others--who had erected what, with him, was a
+spontaneous and original creation into a rigid system of laws. It
+confounded him with his followers and imitators, and, being bored by
+them, began to find the master himself a bore.
+
+For, eclectic as he was by nature, and founder as he was of the academic
+régime, the "grand style" of Raphael was yet a new and personal
+contribution to art. He drew from many sources, but the principle of
+combination was his own. His originality was in that mastery of
+composition which no one has ever denied him, but which is very
+differently rated as a quality of art by different temperaments. Almost
+everything specifically Raphaelesque in his work is the offspring of
+that power of design in which he is still the unapproached master.
+Modern criticism is right in denying that he was a draughtsman, if by
+draughtsman is meant one deeply preoccupied with form and structure for
+its own sake. His distinction was to invest the human figure with such
+forms as should best fit it to play its part in a scheme of monumental
+composition. The "style" of his draperies, so much and so justly
+admired, is composition of draperies. He was not a colorist as Titian
+was a colorist, or a painter as Velazquez was a painter--he was just so
+much of a colorist and a painter as is compatible with being the
+greatest of decorative designers. Everything in his finest works is
+entirely subordinated to the beauty and expressiveness of composition,
+and nothing is allowed to have too great an individual interest for its
+predestined part in the final result. Probably he could not have drawn
+like Michelangelo or painted like Hals--certainly, when he once
+understood himself, he would not have desired to do so.
+
+Even in his early work he showed his gifts as a composer, and some of
+the small pictures of his Florentine period are quite perfect in
+design. Nothing could be better composed within their restricted field
+than the "Madonna del Cardellino" or the "Belle Jardinière." Nearly at
+the end of the period he made his greatest failure, the "Entombment" of
+the Borghese Gallery. It was his most ambitious effort up to this time
+and he wanted to put everything that he had learned into it, to draw
+like Michelangelo and to express emotion like Mantegna. He made a host
+of studies for it, tried it this way and that, lost all spontaneity and
+all grasp of the ensemble. What he finally produced is a thing of
+fragments, falling far below his models in the qualities he was
+attempting to rival and redeemed by little or nothing of the quality
+proper to himself. But, apparently, it answered its purpose. It freed
+him from preoccupation with the work of others. When his great
+opportunity came to him, in the commission to decorate the Camera della
+Segnatura, his painfully acquired knowledge was sufficiently at his
+command to give him no further trouble. He could concentrate himself on
+the essential part of his problem, the creation of an entirely
+appropriate, dignified, and beautiful decorative design. It was the work
+for which he was born, and he succeeded so immediately and so admirably
+in it that neither he nor any one else has ever been able to fill such
+spaces so perfectly again.
+
+There are fourteen important compositions in the room. The decoration of
+the ceiling had already been begun by Sodoma, and Sodoma's decorative
+framework Raphael allowed to remain; partly, perhaps, from courtesy,
+more probably because its general disposition was admirable and not to
+be improved on. If Sodoma had begun any of the larger paintings which
+were to fill his frames they were removed to make way for the new work.
+There has always been a great deal of discussion as to whether Raphael
+himself invented the admirable scheme of subjects by which the room was
+made to illustrate the Renaissance ideal of culture with its division
+into the four great fields of learning: divinity, philosophy (including
+science), poetry, and law. In reality, the question is of little
+importance. There seems to be at least one bit of internal evidence, to
+be mentioned presently, that even here the artist did not have a
+perfectly free hand, as we know he did not later. Whoever thought of the
+subjects, it was Raphael who discovered how to treat them in such a way
+as to make of this room the most perfectly planned piece of decoration
+in the world. Sodoma had left, on the vaulting, four circular medallions
+and four rectangular spaces which were to be filled with figure
+compositions. In the circles, each directly above one of the great wall
+spaces, Raphael placed figures personifying Theology, Philosophy,
+Poetry and Justice; in the rectangles he illustrated these subjects with
+the stories of "The Fall of Man," "Apollo and Marsyas," and "The
+Judgment of Solomon," and with that figure, leaning over a celestial
+globe, which must be meant for Science. All of these panels are on
+curved surfaces, and Raphael's decorative instinct led him, on this
+account and to preserve the supremacy of the great wall spaces below, to
+suppress all distance, placing his figures against a background of
+simulated gold mosaic and arranging them, virtually, upon one plane.
+There is, therefore, no possible question of "space composition" here.
+These panels depend for their effect entirely upon composition in two
+dimensions--upon the perfect balancing of filled and empty spaces, the
+invention of interesting shapes, and the arrangement of beautiful lines.
+It is the pattern that counts, and the pattern is perfect.
+
+The "Poetry" (Pl. 11) is the most beautiful of the medallions, but they
+are all much alike: a draped female figure in the middle, seated to give
+it scale, large enough to fill the height of the circle amply but
+without crowding, and winged _putti_, bearing inscribed tablets, on
+either side. There are other ways of filling a circle acceptably, as
+Botticelli had shown and as Raphael was to show again in more than one
+_tondo_, but for their situation, marking the principal axes of the
+room, there is no way so adequate as this. As Mr. Blashfield has said,
+speaking from experience: "When a modern painter has a medallion to fill
+and has tried one arrangement after another, he inevitably realizes that
+it is Raphael who has found the best ordering that could be found; and
+the modern painter builds upon his lines, laid down so distinctly that
+the greater the practice of the artist the more complete becomes his
+realization of Raphael's comprehension of essentials in composition."
+Not only so, but the modern painter finds as inevitably that, accepting
+this ordering as the best, even then he cannot add another figure to
+these four. He may, perhaps, draw it better in detail or give more
+character to the head, but he cannot capture that felicity of spacing,
+that absoluteness of balance, that variety and vivacity combined with
+monumental repose. The more his nature and training have made him a
+designer the more certainly he feels, before that single medallion of
+Poetry, that he is in the presence of the inimitable master of design.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 11.--Raphael. "Poetry."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+If the composition of the rectangles is less inevitable it is only
+because the variety of ways in which such simple rectangles may be
+filled is almost infinite. Composition more masterly than that of the
+"Judgment of Solomon" (Pl. 12), for instance, you will find nowhere; so
+much is told in a restricted space, yet with no confusion, the space is
+so admirably filled and its shape so marked by the very lines that
+enrich and relieve it. It is as if the design had determined the space
+rather than the space the design. If you had a tracing of the figures in
+the midst of an immensity of white paper you could not bound them by any
+other line than that of the actual frame. One of the most remarkable
+things about it is the way in which the angles, which artists usually
+avoid and disguise, are here sharply accented. A great part of the
+dignity and importance given to the king is due to the fact that his
+head fills one of these angles, and the opposite one contains the hand
+of the executioner and the foot by which the living child is held aloft,
+and to this point the longest lines of the picture lead. The dead
+child and the indifferent mother fill the lower corners. In the middle,
+herself only half seen and occupying little space, is the true mother,
+and it seems that her explosive energy, as she rushes to the rescue of
+her child, has forced all these other figures back to the confines of
+the picture. Compare this restless yet subtly balanced composition, full
+of oblique lines and violent movement, with the gracious, placid
+formality of the "Adam and Eve," and you will have some notion of the
+meaning of this gift of design.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 12.--Raphael. "The Judgment of Solomon."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+But it is the frescoes on the four walls of this room which are
+Raphael's greatest triumphs--the most perfect pieces of monumental
+decoration in the world. On the two longer walls, nearly unbroken
+lunettes of something over a semicircle, he painted the two great
+compositions of Theology and Philosophy known as the "Disputa" and the
+"School of Athens." The "Disputa" (Pl. 13), the earlier of the two, has
+the more connection with the art of the past. The use of gilded relief
+in the upper part recalls the methods of Pintoricchio, and the hint of
+the whole arrangement was doubtless taken from those semidomes which
+existed in many churches. But what an original idea it was to transform
+the flat wall of a room into the apse of a cathedral, and what a
+solemnity it imparts to the discussion that is going on! The upper part
+is formal in the extreme, as it need be for the treatment of such a
+theme, but even here there is variety as well as stateliness in the
+attitudes and the spacing. In the lower part the variety becomes almost
+infinite, yet there is never a jar--not a line or a fold of drapery that
+mars the supreme order of the whole. Besides the uncounted cherubs which
+float among the rays of glory or support the cloudy thrones of the
+saints and prophets, there are between seventy and eighty figures in
+the picture; yet the hosts of heaven and the church on earth seem
+gathered about the altar with its sacred wafer--the tiny circle which is
+the focus of the great composition and the inevitable goal of all
+regards, as it is the central mystery of Catholic dogma.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 13.--Raphael. The "Disputa."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+Opposite, in the "School of Athens" (Pl. 14), the treatment is different
+but equally successful. The hieratic majesty of the "Disputa" was here
+unnecessary, but a tranquil and spacious dignity was to be attained, and
+it is attained through the use of vertical and horizontal lines--the
+lines of stability and repose, while the bounding curve is echoed again
+and again in the diminishing arches of the imagined vaulting. The
+figures, fewer in number than in the "Disputa" and confined to the lower
+half of the composition, are ranged in two long lines across the
+picture; but the nearer line is broken in the centre and the two
+figures on the steps, serving as connecting-links between the two ranks,
+give to the whole something of that semicircular grouping so noticeable
+in the companion picture. The bas-reliefs upon the architecture and the
+great statues of Apollo and Minerva above them draw the eye upward at
+the sides, and this movement is intensified by the arrangement of the
+lateral groups of figures. By these means the counter curve to the arch
+above, the one fixed necessity, apparently, of the lunette, is
+established. It is more evident in the perspective curve of the painted
+dome. Cover this line with a bit of paper, or substitute for it a
+straight lintel like that seen beyond, and you will be surprised to find
+how much of the beauty of the picture has disappeared. The grouping of
+the figures themselves, the way they are played about into clumps or
+separated to give greater importance, by isolation, to a particular
+head, is even more beyond praise than in the "Disputa." The whole design
+has but one fault, and that is an afterthought. In the cartoon the
+disproportioned bulk of Heraclitus, thrust into the foreground and
+writing in an impossible attitude on a desk in impossible perspective,
+is not to be found. It is such a blot upon the picture that one cannot
+believe that Raphael added it of his own motion; rather it must have
+been placed there at the dictation of some meddling cardinal or learned
+humanist who, knowing nothing of art, could not see why any vacant space
+should not be filled with any figure whose presence seemed to him
+historically desirable. One is tempted to suspect even, so clumsy is the
+figure and so out of scale with its neighbors, that the master refused
+to disfigure his work himself and left the task to one of his
+apprentices. If it had been done by one of them, say Giulio Romano,
+after the picture was entirely completed and at the time of the
+"Incendio del' Borgo," it could not be more out of keeping.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 14.--Raphael. "The School of Athens."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+Each of these walls has a doorway at one end, and the way in which these
+openings are dissimulated and utilized is most ingenious, particularly
+in the "Disputa," where the bits of parapet which play an important part
+at either side of the composition, one pierced, the other solid, were
+suggested solely by the presence of this door. In the end walls the
+openings, large windows much higher than the doors, become of such
+importance that the whole nature of the problem is changed. It is the
+pierced lunette that is to be dealt with, and Raphael has dealt with it
+in two entirely different ways. One wall is symmetrical, the window in
+the middle, and on that wall he painted the "Parnassus" (Pl. 15), Apollo
+and the Muses in the centre with groups of poets a little lower on
+either side and other groups filling the spaces to right and left of the
+window head. At first sight the design seems less symmetrical and formal
+than the others, with a lyrical freedom befitting the subject, but in
+reality it is no less perfect in its ponderation. The group of trees
+above Apollo and the reclining figures either side of him accent the
+centrality of his position. From this point the line of heads rises in
+either direction to the figures of Homer and of the Muse whose back is
+turned to the spectator, and the perpendicularity of these two figures
+carries upward into the arch the vertical lines of the window. From this
+point the lateral masses of foliage take up the drooping curve and unite
+it to the arch, and this curve is strongly reinforced by the building up
+toward either side of the foreground groups and by the disposition of
+the arms of Sappho and of the poets immediately behind her, while, to
+disguise its formality, it is contradicted by the long line of Sappho's
+body, which echoes that of the bearded poet immediately to the right of
+the window and gives a sweep to the left to the whole lower part of the
+composition. It is the immediate and absolute solution of the problem,
+and so small a thing as the scarf of the back-turned Muse plays its
+necessary part in it, balancing, as it does, the arm of the Muse who
+stands highest on the left and establishing one of a number of
+subsidiary garlands that play through and bind together the wonderful
+design.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 15.--Raphael. "Parnassus."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+The window in the opposite wall is to one side of the middle, and here
+Raphael meets the new problem with a new solution. He places a separate
+picture in each of the unequal rectangles, carries a simulated cornice
+across at the level of the window head, and paints, in the segmental
+lunette thus left, the so-called "Jurisprudence" (Pl. 16), which
+seems to many decorators the most perfect piece of decorative design
+that even Raphael ever created--the most perfect piece of design,
+therefore, in the world. Its subtlety of spacing, its exquisiteness of
+line, its monumental simplicity, rippled through with a melody of
+falling curves from end to end, are beyond description--the reader must
+study them for himself in the illustration. One thing he might miss were
+not his attention called to it--the ingenious way in which the whole
+composition is adjusted to a diagonal axis that the asymmetry of the
+wall may be minimized. Draw an imaginary straight line from the boss in
+the soffit of the arch through the middle of the Janus-head of Prudence.
+It will accurately bisect the central group, composed of this figure and
+her two attendant genii, will pass through her elevated left knee, the
+centre of a system of curves, and the other end of it will strike the
+top of the post or mullion that divides the window opening into two
+parts.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 16.--Raphael. "Jurisprudence."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+This single room, the Camera della Segnatura, marks the brief blossoming
+time of Raphael's art, an art consummate in science yet full of a
+freshness and spontaneity--the dew still upon it--as wonderful as its
+learning. The master himself could not duplicate it. He tried for
+Venetian warmth of color in the "Mass of Bolsena" (Pl. 17) and
+experimented with tricks of illumination in the "Deliverance of Peter"
+(Pl. 18), and in these two compositions, struck out new and admirable
+ways of filling pierced lunettes. The balancing, in the one, of the
+solitary figure of the pope against the compact group of seven
+figures--a group that has to be carried up above the curved screen in
+order to counteract the importance given to Julius by his isolation and
+by the greater mass of his supporting group below--is a triumph of
+arrangement; and here, again, it is notable that the bleeding wafer, the
+necessary centre of interest, is situated on a straight line drawn
+diagonally from the keystone of the arch to the centre of the window
+head, and almost exactly half-way between these two points, while the
+great curve of the screen leads to it from either side. In the
+symmetrically pierced lunette opposite, the distribution of the space
+into three distinct but united pictures, the central one seen through
+the grating of the prison, is a highly ingenious and, on the whole, an
+acceptable variant on previous inventions. But these two are the last of
+the Vatican frescoes that show Raphael's infallible instinct as a
+composer. He grows tired, exaggerates his mannerisms, gives a greater
+and greater share of the work to his pupils. The later Stanze are either
+pompous or confused, or both, until we reach the higgledy-piggledy of
+the "Burning of the Borgo" or that inextricable tangle, suggestive of
+nothing so much as of a dish of macaroni, the "Battle of Constantine," a
+picture painted after the master's death, but for which he probably left
+something in the way of sketches.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 17.--Raphael. "The Mass of Bolsena."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+Yet even in what seems this decadence of his talent Raphael only needed
+a new problem to revive his admirable powers in their full splendor. In
+1514 he painted the "Sibyls" (Pl. 19) of Santa Maria della Pace, in a
+frieze-shaped panel cut by a semicircular arch, and the new shape given
+him to fill inspired a composition as perfect in itself and as
+indisputably the only right one for the place as anything he ever did.
+Among his latest works were the pendentives of the Farnesina, with the
+story of Cupid and Psyche--works painted and even drawn by his pupils,
+coarse in types and heavy in color but altogether astonishing in freedom
+and variety of design. The earlier painters covered their vaulting
+with ornamental patterns in which spaces were reserved for independent
+pictures, like the rectangles of the Stanza della Segnatura. It was a
+bold innovation when Michelangelo discarded this system and placed in
+the pendentives of the Sistine his colossal figures of the Prophets and
+the Sibyls, each on its architectural throne. It was reserved for
+Raphael to take a step that no earlier painter could have dreamed of and
+to fill these triangular spaces with free groups relieved against a
+clear sky which is the continuous background of the whole series. One
+may easily think the earlier system more architecturally fitting, but
+the skill with which these groups are composed, their perfect
+naturalness, their exhaustless variety, the perfection with which they
+fill these awkward shapes, as it were inevitably and without effort, is
+nothing short of amazing. It is decoration of a festal and informal
+order--the decoration of a kind of summer house, fitted for pleasure,
+rather than of a stately chamber--but it is decoration the most
+consummate, the fitting last word of the greatest master of decorative
+design that the world has seen.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 18.--Raphael. "The Deliverance of Peter."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+It is this master designer that is the real Raphael, and, but for the
+element of design always present in the least of his works, the charming
+illustrator, the mere "painter of Madonnas," might be allowed to sink
+comfortably into artistic oblivion without cause for protest. But there
+is another Raphael we could spare less easily, Raphael the
+portrait-painter. The great decorators have nearly always been great
+portrait-painters as well, although--perhaps because--there is little
+resemblance between the manner of feeling and working necessary for
+success in the two arts. The decorator, constantly occupied with
+relations of line and space which have little to do with imitation,
+finds in the submissive attention to external fact necessary to success
+in portraiture a source of refreshment and of that renewed contact with
+nature which is constantly necessary to art if it is not to become too
+arid an abstraction. Certainly it was so with Raphael, and the master of
+design has left us a series of portraits comparable only to those of
+that other great designer whose fate was to leave little but portraits
+behind him, Hans Holbein. Allowing for the necessary variation of type
+and costume in their models and for the difference between an Italian
+and a northern education, their methods are singularly alike. Raphael
+has greater elegance and feeling for style, Holbein a richer color sense
+and, above all, a finer craftsmanship, an unapproachable material
+perfection. They have the same quiet, intense observation, the same
+impeccable accuracy, the same preoccupation with the person before them
+and with nothing else--an individuality to be presented with all it
+contains, neither more nor less--to be rendered entirely, and without
+flattery as without caricature. There have been portrait-painters who
+were greater painters, in the more limited sense of the word, than these
+two, and there has been at least one painter whose imaginative sympathy
+gave an inner life to his portraits absent from theirs, but in the
+essential qualities of portraiture, as distinguished from all other
+forms of art, perhaps no one else has quite equalled them. One can give
+no greater praise to the "Castiglione" or the "Donna Velata" than to say
+that they are fit to hang beside the "Georg Gyze" or the "Christina of
+Milan"; and at least one portrait by Raphael, the "Tommaso Inghirami,"
+in the collection of Mrs. Gardner (Pl. 20)--the original of which the
+picture in the Pitti Palace is a replica--has a beauty of surface and
+of workmanship almost worthy of Holbein himself.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 19.--Raphael. "The Sibyls."
+Santa Maria della Pace, Rome.]
+
+[Illustration: Plate 20.--Raphael. "Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami."
+In the collection of Mrs. Gardner.]
+
+Raphael's portraits alone, had he done nothing else, would justify a
+great reputation, but they form so relatively small a part of his work
+that they may almost be neglected in examining his claims to the rank
+that used to be assigned him among the world's greatest artists. It is,
+after all, his unique mastery of composition that is his chief title to
+fame, and his glory must always be in proportion to the estimation in
+which that quality is held. It was because composition was to him a
+comparatively unimportant part of painting that Velazquez thought little
+of Raphael. It is because, for them, composition, as a distinct element
+of art, has almost ceased to exist that so many modern painters and
+critics decry Raphael altogether. The decorators have always known that
+design is the essence of their art, and therefore they have always
+appreciated the greatest of designers. That is why Paul Baudry, in the
+third quarter of the nineteenth century, idolized Raphael and based his
+own art upon that of the great Umbrian. To-day, in our own country,
+mural decoration is again becoming a living art, and the desire for the
+appropriate decoration of important buildings with monumental works of
+painting is more wide-spread, perhaps, than it has been anywhere at any
+time since the Italian Renaissance. So surely as the interest in
+decorative painting and the knowledge of its true principles become more
+widely spread, so surely will the name of Raphael begin to shine again
+with something of its ancient splendor.
+
+But design is something more than the essential quality of mural
+decoration--it is the common basis of all the arts, the essential thing
+in art itself. Each of the arts has its qualities proper to it alone,
+and it may be right to estimate the painter, the sculptor, the
+architect, or the musician according to his eminence in those qualities
+which are distinctive of his particular art and which separate it most
+sharply from the other arts. In that sense we are right to call Frans
+Hals a greater painter than Raphael. But if we estimate a man's artistry
+by the same standard, whatever the form of art in which it expresses
+itself, rating him by his power of co-ordinating and composing notes or
+forms or colors into a harmonious and beautiful unity, then must we
+place Raphael pretty near where he used to be placed, admitting but a
+choice few of the very greatest to any equality with him. If we no
+longer call him "the prince of painters" we must call him one of the
+greatest artists among those who have practised the art of painting.
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+TWO WAYS OF PAINTING
+
+
+Among the modern paintings in the Metropolitan Museum is a brilliant and
+altogether remarkable little picture by John Sargent, entitled "The
+Hermit" (Pl. 21). Mr. Sargent is a portrait-painter by vocation, and the
+public knows him best as a penetrating and sometimes cruel reader of
+human character. He is a mural painter by avocation and capable, on
+occasion, of a monumental formality. In this picture, as in the
+wonderful collection of watercolors in the Brooklyn Institute of Arts
+and Sciences, one fancies one sees the essential John Sargent, working
+for himself alone without regard to external demands, and doing what he
+really cares most to do. In such work he is a modern of the moderns
+and, in the broadest sense of the word, a thorough Impressionist. Not
+that he shows himself a disciple of Monet or occupies himself with the
+broken touch or the division of tones--his method is as direct as that
+of Sorolla and his impressionism is of the same kind--a bending of all
+his energies to the vivid realization of the effect of the scene
+rendered as one might perceive it in the first flash of vision if one
+came upon it unexpectedly. This picture is better than Sorolla--it is
+better than almost any one. It is perhaps the most astonishing
+realization of the modern ideal, the most accomplished transcript of the
+actual appearance of nature, that has yet been produced. It is because
+of its great merit, because of its extraordinary success in what it
+attempts, that it leads one to the serious consideration of the nature
+of the attempt and of the gain and loss involved in the choice that
+modern art has made.
+
+The picture is exactly square--the choice of this form is, of itself,
+typically modern in its unexpectedness--and represents a bit of rough
+wood interior under intense sunlight. The light is studied for its
+brilliancy rather than for its warmth, and if the picture has a fault,
+granted the point of view of the painter, it is in a certain coldness of
+color; but such conditions of glaring and almost colorless light do
+exist in nature. One sees a few straight trunks of some kind of pine or
+larch, a network of branches and needles, a tumble of moss-spotted and
+lichened rocks, a confusion of floating lights and shadows, and that is
+all. The conviction of truth is instantaneous--it is an actual bit of
+nature, just as the painter found it. One is there on that ragged
+hillside, half dazzled by the moving spots of light, as if set down
+there suddenly, with no time to adjust one's vision. Gradually one's
+eyes clear and one is aware, first of a haggard human head with tangled
+beard and unkempt hair, then of an emaciated body. There is a man in the
+wood! And then--did they betray themselves by some slight
+movement?--there are a couple of slender antelopes who were but now
+invisible and who melt into their surroundings again at the slightest
+inattention. It is like a pictorial demonstration of protective coloring
+in men and animals.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 21.--Sargent. "The Hermit."
+In the Metropolitan Museum of Art.]
+
+Now, almost any one can see how superbly all this is rendered. Any one
+can marvel at and admire the free and instantaneous handling, the web of
+slashing and apparently meaningless brush strokes which, at a given
+distance, take their places by a kind of magic and _are_ the things they
+represent. But it takes a painter to know how justly it is observed. In
+these days no painter, whatever may be his deepest convictions, can
+escape the occasional desire to be modern; and most of us have
+attempted, at one time or another, the actual study of the human figure
+in the open air. We have taken our model into a walled garden or a deep
+wood or the rocky ravine of a brook and have set ourselves seriously to
+find out what a naked man or woman really looks like in the setting of
+outdoor nature. And we have found just what Sargent has painted. The
+human figure, as a figure, has ceased to exist. Line and structure and
+all that we have most cared for have disappeared. Even the color of
+flesh has ceased to count, and the most radiant blond skin of the
+fairest woman has become an insignificant pinkish spot no more important
+than a stone and not half so important as a flower. Humanity is absorbed
+into the landscape.
+
+Obviously, there are two courses open to the painter. If he is a modern
+by feeling and by training, full of curiosity and of the scientific
+temper, caring more for the investigation of the aspects of nature and
+the rendering of natural light and atmosphere than for the telling of a
+story or the construction of a decoration, he will, if he is able
+enough, treat his matter much as Sargent has treated it. The figure will
+become, for him, only an incident in the landscape. It will be important
+only as a thing of another texture and another color, valuable for the
+different way in which it receives the light and reflects the sky, just
+as rocks and foliage and water and bare earth are valuable. For to the
+true Impressionist light and atmosphere are the only realities, and
+objects exist only to provide surfaces for the play of light and
+atmosphere. He will abandon all attempt at rendering the material and
+physical significance of the human form and will still less concern
+himself with its spiritual significance. He will gain a great vividness
+of illusion, and he may console himself for what he loses with the
+reflection that he has expressed the true relation of man to the
+universe--that he has expressed either man's insignificance or man's
+oneness with nature, according as his temper is pessimistic or
+optimistic.
+
+If, on the other hand, the painter is one to whom the figure as a figure
+means much; one to whom line and bulk and modelling are the principal
+means of expression, and who cares for the structure and stress of bone
+and muscle; if the glow and softness of flesh appeal strongly to him;
+above all, if he has the human point of view and thinks of his figures
+as people engaged in certain actions, having certain characters,
+experiencing certain states of mind and body; then he will give up the
+struggle with the truths of aspect that seem so vital to the painter of
+the other type and, by a frank use of conventions, will seek to
+increase the importance of his figure at the expense of its
+surroundings. He will give it firmer lines and clearer edges, will
+strengthen its light and shade, will dwell upon its structure or its
+movement and expression. He will so compose his landscape as to
+subordinate it to his figure and will make its lines echo and accentuate
+that figure's action or repose. When he has accomplished his task he
+will have painted not man insignificant before nature but man dominating
+nature.
+
+For an example of this way of representing man's relation to the world
+about him, let us take Titian's "Saint Jerome" (Pl. 22)--a picture
+somewhat similar to Sargent's in subject and in the relative size of the
+figure and its surroundings. Titian has here given more importance to
+the landscape than was common in his day. He also has meant, as Sargent
+has, to make a great deal of the wilderness to which his saint has
+retired, and to make his saint a lonely human being in a savage place.
+But the saint and his emotion is, after all, what interests Titian most,
+and the wildness of nature is valuable to him mainly for its sympathy
+with this emotion. He wants to give a single powerful feeling and to
+give it with the utmost dramatic force--to give it theatrically even,
+one might admit of this particular picture; for it is by no means so
+favorable an example of Titian's method, or of the older methods of art
+in general, as is Sargent's "Hermit" of the modern way of seeing and
+painting. To attain this end he simplifies and arranges everything. He
+lowers the pitch of his coloring to a sombre glow and concentrates the
+little light upon his kneeling figure. He spends all his knowledge on so
+drawing and modelling that figure as to make you feel to the utmost its
+bulk and reality and the strain upon its muscles and tendons, and he
+so places everything else on his canvas as to intensify its action and
+expression. The gaze of the saint is fixed upon a crucifix high on the
+right of the picture, and the book behind him, the lines of the rocks,
+the masses of the foliage, even the general formation of the ground, are
+so disposed as to echo and reinforce the great diagonal. There is a
+splendid energy of invention in the drawing of the tree stems, but the
+effect is clear and simple with nothing of Sargent's dazzle and
+confusion. As for the lion, he is a mere necessary mark of
+identification, and Titian has taken no interest in him.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 22.--Titian. "St. Jerome in the Desert."
+In the Brera Gallery, Milan.]
+
+Now, it is evident that there is not nearly so much literal truth to the
+appearance of nature in this picture as in Sargent's. It is not only
+that it would never have occurred to Titian to try to paint the
+glittering spottiness of sunlight splashing through leafage, or to
+attempt to raise his key of light to something like that of nature, at
+the cost of fulness of color. It is not merely that he translates and
+simplifies and neglects certain truths that the world had not yet
+learned to see. He deliberately and intentionally falsifies. He knew as
+well as we do that a natural landscape would not arrange itself in such
+lines and masses for the purpose of throwing out the figure and of
+enhancing its emotion. But to him natural facts were but so much
+material, to be treated as he pleased for the carrying out of his
+purpose. He was a colorist and a chiaroscurist; and he had a great deal
+more interest in light and in landscape than most of the painters of his
+time. If he had been pre-eminently a draughtsman, like Michelangelo, he
+would have reduced his light and shade to the amount strictly necessary
+to give that powerful modelling of the figure which is the draughtsman's
+means of expression, would have greatly increased the relative size and
+importance of the figure, and would have reduced the landscape to a
+barely intelligible symbol. Had he been a linealist, like Botticelli, he
+would have eliminated modelling almost altogether, would have
+concentrated his attention upon the edges of things, and would have
+reduced his picture to a flat pattern in which the beauty and
+expressiveness of the lines should be almost the only attraction.
+
+For all art is an exchange of gain against loss--you cannot have
+Sargent's truth of impression and Titian's truth of emotion in the same
+picture, nor Michelangelo's beauty of structure with Botticelli's beauty
+of line. To be a successful artist is to know what you want and to get
+it at any necessary sacrifice, though the greatest artists maintain a
+noble balance and sacrifice no more than is necessary. And if a painter
+of to-day is like-minded with these older masters he will have to
+express himself much in their manner. He will have to make, with his
+eyes open, the sacrifices which they made, more or less unconsciously,
+and to deny a whole range of truths with which his fellows are occupied
+that he may express clearly and forcibly the few truths which he has
+chosen.
+
+All truths are good, and all ways of painting are legitimate that are
+necessary to the expression of any truth. I am not here concerned to
+show that one way is better than another or one set of truths more
+important than another set of truths. For the present I am desirous only
+of showing why there is more than one way--of explaining the necessity
+of different methods for the expression of different individualities and
+different ways of envisaging nature and art. But a little while ago it
+was the modern or impressionistic manner that needed explanation. It
+was new, it was revolutionary, and it was misunderstood and disliked. A
+generation of critics has been busy in explaining it, a generation of
+artists has been busy in practising it, and now the balance has turned
+the other way. The pressure of conformity is upon the other side, and it
+is the older methods that need justification and explanation. The
+prejudices of the workers and the writers have gradually and naturally
+become the prejudices of at least a part of the public, and it has
+become necessary to show that the small minority of artists who still
+follow the old roads do so not from ignorance or stupidity or a stolid
+conservatism, still less from mere wilful caprice, but from necessity,
+because those roads are the only ones that can lead them where they wish
+to go. No more magnificent demonstration of the qualities possible to
+the purely modern methods of painting has been made than this brilliant
+little picture of Sargent's. All the more is it a demonstration of the
+qualities impossible to these methods. If such qualities have any
+permanent value and interest for the modern world it is a gain for art
+that some painters should try to keep alive the methods that render
+possible their attainment.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE AMERICAN SCHOOL
+
+
+In the catalogues of our museums you may find entries like this: "John
+Smith, American school; The Empty Jug" or what-not. In such entries
+little more than a bare statement of nationality is intended. John Smith
+is an American, by birth or adoption; that is all that the statement is
+meant to convey. But the question occurs: Have we an American school in
+a more specific sense than this? Have we a body of painters with certain
+traits in common and certain differences from the painters of other
+countries? Has our production in painting sufficient homogeneity and
+sufficient national and local accent to entitle it to the name of
+American school in the sense in which there is, undoubtedly, a French
+school and an English school?
+
+Under the conditions of to-day there are no longer anywhere such
+distinctive local schools as existed in the Renaissance. In Italy, in
+those days, there were not only such great schools as the Venetian, the
+Florentine, and the Umbrian, differing widely in their point of view,
+their manner of seeing, and their technical traditions--each little town
+had a school with something characteristic that separated its painters
+from those of other schools in the surrounding towns. To-day every one
+knows and is influenced by the work of every one else, and it is only
+broad national characteristics that still subsist. Modern pictures are
+singularly alike, but, on the whole, it is still possible to tell an
+English picture from a French one, and a German or Italian picture from
+either. We may still speak of a Dutch school or a Spanish school with
+some reasonableness. Is it similarly and equally reasonable to speak of
+an American school? Does a room full of American pictures have a
+different look from a room full of pictures by artists of any other
+nationality? Does one feel that the pictures in such a room have a
+something in common that makes them kin and a something different that
+distinguishes them from the pictures of all other countries? I think the
+answer must be in the affirmative.
+
+We have already passed the stage of mere apprenticeship, and it can no
+longer be said that our American painters are mere reflections of their
+European masters. Twenty or even ten years ago there may have been some
+truth in the accusation. To-day many of our younger painters have had no
+foreign training at all, or have had such as has left no specific mark of a
+particular master; and from the work of most of our older painters it would
+be difficult to guess who their masters were without reference to a
+catalogue. They have, through long work in America and under American
+conditions, developed styles of their own bearing no discoverable
+resemblance to the styles of their first instructors. To take specific
+examples, who would imagine from the mural paintings of Blashfield or the
+decorations by Mowbray in the University Club of New York that either had
+been a pupil of Bonnat? Or who, looking at the exquisite landscapes or
+delicate figure pieces of Weir, would find anything to recall the name of
+Gérôme? Some of the pupils of Carolus Duran are almost the only painters we
+have who acquired in their school-days a distinctive method of work which
+still marks their production, and even they are hardly distinguishable
+to-day from others; for the method of Duran, as modified and exemplified by
+John Sargent, has become the method of all the world, and a pupil of Carolus
+simply paints in the modern manner, like the rest. Those American painters
+who have adopted the impressionist point of view, again, have modified its
+technic to suit their own purposes and are at least as different from the
+Impressionists of France as are the Impressionists of Scandinavia. We have
+painters who are undeniably influenced by Whistler, but so have other
+countries--the school of Whistler is international--and, after all, Whistler
+was an American. In short, the resemblances between American painting and
+the painting of other countries are to-day no greater than the resemblances
+between the painting of any two of those countries. And I think the
+differences between American painting and that of other countries are quite
+as great as, if not greater than, the differences between the paintings of
+any two of those countries.
+
+Another accusation that used to be heard against our painters has been
+out-lived. We used to be told, with some truth, that we had learned to
+paint but had nothing to say with our painting, that we produced
+admirable studies but no pictures. The accusation never was true of our
+landscape-painting. Whatever may be the final estimation of the works of
+Inness and Wyant, there can be no doubt that they produced
+pictures--things conceived and worked out to give one definite and
+complete impression; things in which what was presented and what was
+eliminated were equally determined by a definite purpose; things in
+which accident and the immediate dominance of nature had little or no
+part. As for Winslow Homer, whether in landscape or figure painting, his
+work was unfailingly pictorial, whatever else it might be. He was a
+great and original designer, and every canvas of his was completely and
+definitely composed--a quality which at once removes from the category
+of mere sketches and studies even his slighter and more rapid
+productions. And our landscape-painters of to-day are equally painters
+of pictures. Some of them might be thought, by a modern taste, too
+conventionally painters of pictures--too much occupied with composition
+and tone and other pictorial qualities at the expense of freshness of
+observation--while our briskest and most original observers have, many
+of them, a power of design and a manner of casting even their freshest
+observations into pictorial form that is as admirable as it is
+remarkable.
+
+No one could enter one of our exhibitions without feeling the definitely
+pictorial quality of American landscape-painting, but these exhibitions
+do less justice to the achievement of our figure-painters. The principal
+reason for this is that many of our most serious figure-painters have
+been so much occupied with mural decoration that their work seldom
+appears in the exhibitions at all, while the work that they have done is
+so scattered over our vast country that we rather forget its existence
+and, assuredly, have little realization of its amount. It is one of the
+defects of our exhibition system that work of this kind, while it is, of
+course, on permanent exhibition in the place for which it is painted, is
+hardly ever "exhibited," in the ordinary sense, in the centres where it
+is produced. The regular visitor to the Paris salons might know almost
+all that has been done in France in the way of mural painting. The
+public of our American exhibitions knows only vaguely and by hearsay
+what our mural painters have done and are doing. It is true that such
+work is infinitely better seen in place, but it is a pity it cannot be
+seen, even imperfectly, by the people who attend our exhibitions--people
+who can rarely have the necessary knowledge to read such collections of
+sketches, studies, and photographs as are shown at the exhibitions of
+the Architectural League, where, alone, our mural painters can show
+anything. If it were seen it would surely alter the estimation in which
+American figure-painting is held. Such work as was done by the late John
+La Farge, such work as is being done by Blashfield and Mowbray and
+Simmons and a dozen others, if not, in the most limited sense of the
+word, pictorial, is even further removed from the mere sketch or
+study--the mere bit of good painting--than is the finest easel picture.
+
+But it is not only in mural decoration that serious figure-painting is
+being done in this country. I do not see how any one can deny the name
+of pictures to the genre paintings of Mr. Tarbell and Mr. Paxton unless
+he is prepared to deny pictorial quality to the whole Dutch school of
+the seventeenth century; and the example of these men is influencing a
+number of others toward the production of thoroughly thought-out and
+executed genre pictures. We have long had such serious figure-painters
+as Thayer and Brush, Dewing and Weir. The late Louis Loeb was attempting
+figure subjects of a very elaborate sort. To-day every exhibition shows
+an increasing number of worthy efforts at figure-painting in either the
+naturalistic or the ideal vein. We have pictures with subjects
+intelligently chosen and intelligibly treated, pictures with a pattern
+and a clear arrangement of line and mass, pictures soundly drawn and
+harmoniously colored as well as admirably painted.
+
+The painters of America are no longer followers of foreign masters or
+students learning technic and indifferent to anything else. They are a
+school producing work differing in character from that of other schools
+and at least equal in quality to that of any school existing to-day.
+
+If so much may be taken as proved, the question remains for
+consideration: What are the characteristics of the American school of
+painting? Its most striking characteristic is one that may be considered
+a fault or a virtue according to the point of view and the
+prepossessions of the observer. It is a characteristic that has
+certainly been a cause of the relatively small success of American work
+at recent international exhibitions. The American school is, among the
+schools of to-day, singularly old-fashioned. This characteristic has,
+undoubtedly, puzzled and repelled the foreigner. It is a time when the
+madness for novelty seems to be carrying everything before it, when
+anything may be accepted so long as it is or seems new, when the effort
+of all artists is to get rid of conventions and to shake off the
+"shackles of tradition." Here is a new people in the blessed state of
+having no traditions to shake off and from whom, therefore, some peppery
+wildness might be expected for the tickling of jaded palates. Behold,
+they are sturdily setting themselves to recover for art the things the
+others have thrown away! They are trying to revive the old fashion of
+thoughtful composition, the old fashion of good drawing, the old fashion
+of lovely color, and the old fashion of sound and beautiful workmanship.
+
+This conservatism of American painting, however, is not of the kind that
+still marks so much of the painting of England. Excepting exceptions,
+English painting is somewhat stolidly staying where it was. America's
+conservatism is ardent, determined, living. It is not standing still;
+it is going somewhere as rapidly as possible--it might, perhaps, be more
+truly called not conservatism but reaction. We have, of course, our
+ultramodernists, but their audacities are mild compared to those of the
+French or German models they imitate. We have, even more of course, the
+followers of the easiest way--the practitioners of current and accepted
+methods who are alike everywhere. But our most original and most
+distinguished painters, those who give the tone to our exhibitions and
+the national accent to our school, are almost all engaged in trying to
+get back one or another of the qualities that marked the great art of
+the past. They have gone back of the art of the day and are retying the
+knots that should bind together the art of all ages.
+
+This tendency shows itself strongly even in those whose work seems, at
+first sight, most purely naturalistic or impressionistic. Among those
+of our painters who have adopted and retained the impressionist technic,
+with its hatching of broken colors, the two most notable are Mr. Hassam
+and Mr. Weir. But Mr. Hassam, at his best, is a designer with a sense of
+balance and of classic grace almost equal to that of Corot, and he often
+uses the impressionist method to express otherwise the delicate shimmer
+of thin foliage that Corot loved. Nay, so little is he a pure
+naturalist, he cannot resist letting the white sides of naked nymphs
+gleam among his tree trunks--he cannot refrain from the artist's
+immemorial dream of Arcady. As for Mr. Weir, surely nothing could be
+more unlike the instantaneousness of true impressionism than his
+long-brooded-over, subtle-toned, infinitely sensitive art.
+
+There is little dreaminess in the work of Mr. Tarbell and the growing
+number of his followers. Theirs is almost a pure naturalism, a "making
+it like." Yet, notably in the work of Mr. Tarbell himself, and to some
+extent in that of the others, there is an elegance of arrangement, a
+thoroughness in the notation of gradations of light, a beauty and a
+charm that were learned of no modern. Their art is an effort to bring
+back the artistic quality of the most artistic naturalism ever
+practised, that of Vermeer of Delft.
+
+Others of our artists are going still further back in the history of art
+for a part of their inspiration. Mr. Brush has always been a linealist
+and a student of form, but his earlier canvases, admirable as they were,
+were those of a docile pupil of Gérôme applying the thoroughness of
+Gérôme's method to a new range of subjects and painting the American
+Indian as Gérôme had painted the modern Egyptian. In recent years each
+new picture of his has shown more clearly the influence of the early
+Italians--each has been more nearly a symphony of pure line.
+
+Even in purely technical matters our painters have been experimenting
+backward, trying to recover lost technical beauties. The last pictures
+of Louis Loeb were underpainted throughout in monochrome, the final
+colors being applied in glazes and rubbings, and to-day a number of
+others, landscape and figure painters, are attempting to restore and
+master this, the pure Venetian method, while still others, among them
+Emil Carlsen, are reviving the use of tempera.
+
+But it is in our mural painting even more than elsewhere that the
+conservative or reactionary tendency of American painting is most
+clearly marked. John La Farge was always himself, but when the general
+movement in mural painting began in this country with the Chicago
+World's Fair and the subsequent decoration of the Library of Congress,
+the rest of us were much under the influence of Puvis de Chavannes. Even
+then the design was not his, but was founded on earlier examples of
+decorative composition, but his pale tones were everywhere. Little by
+little the study of the past has taught us better. American mural
+painting has grown steadily more monumental in design, and at the same
+time it has grown richer and fuller in color. To-day, while it is not
+less but more personal and original than it was, it has more kinship
+with the noble achievements of Raphael and Veronese than has any other
+modern work extant.
+
+And this brings us to the second characteristic of the American school
+of painting: it is rapidly becoming a school of color. We have still
+plenty of painters who work in the blackish or chalky or muddy and
+opaque tones of modern art, but I think we have more men who produce
+rich and powerful color and more men who produce subtle and delicate
+color than any other modern school. The experiments in reviving old
+technical methods have been undertaken for the sake of purity and
+luminosity of color and have largely succeeded. The pictures of Mr.
+Tarbell are far more colored than those of the European painter whose
+work is, in some ways, most analogous to his, M. Joseph Bail. Mr.
+Hassam's color is always sparkling and brilliant, Mr. Dewing's delicate
+and charming, Mr. Weir's subtle and harmonious and sometimes very full.
+Even Mr. Brush's linear arrangements are clothed in sombre but often
+richly harmonious tones, and the decorative use of powerful color is the
+main reliance of such painters as Hugo Ballin. But the note of color
+runs through the school and one hardly needs to name individual men.
+Whether our landscapists glaze and scumble with the tonalists, or use
+some modification of the impressionist hatching, it is for the sake of
+color; and even our most forthright and dashing wielders of the big
+brush often achieve a surprising power of resonant coloring.
+
+Power, fulness, and beauty of coloring are hardly modern qualities. Much
+as impressionism has been praised for restoring color to a colorless
+art, its result has been, too often, to substitute whitishness for
+blackishness. Color has characterized no modern painting since that of
+Delacroix and Millet as it characterizes much of the best American
+painting. The love for and the success in color of our school is, after
+all, a part of its conservatism.
+
+It may seem an odd way of praising a modern school to call it the least
+modern of any. It _would_ be an odd way of praising that school if its
+lack of modernness were a mere matter of lagging behind or of standing
+still and marking time. But if the "march of progress" has been
+down-hill--if the path that is trod leads into a swamp or over a
+precipice--then there may be most hopefulness for those who can 'bout
+face and march the other way. I have, elsewhere in this volume, given at
+some length some of my reasons for thinking that modern art has been
+following a false route and is in danger of perishing in the bog or
+falling over the cliff. If it is so we may congratulate ourselves that
+those of our painters who are still following the rest of the world have
+not so nearly reached the end of the road, and that those who are more
+independent have discovered in time what that end is and have turned
+back.
+
+It is because it is least that of to-day that I believe our art may be
+that of to-morrow--it is because it is, of all art now going, that which
+has most connection with the past that I hope the art of America may
+prove to be the art of the future.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS[C]
+
+[C] Address delivered before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on
+February 22, 1908. Now revised and enlarged.
+
+
+Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin, Ireland, on the first day of
+March, 1848, but was brought to America at the age of six months. His
+childhood and youth were passed in the city of New York, as was a great
+part of his working life; and though his origin was foreign, lifelong
+associations had stamped him indelibly an American. The greater part of
+his work was done in America; almost all of it was done for America; and
+I do not think it is fancy that sees in his art the expression of a
+distinctively American spirit. Yet from his mixed French and Irish
+blood he may well have derived that mingling of the Latin sense of form
+with a Celtic depth of sentiment which was so markedly characteristic of
+his genius.
+
+His father, Bernard Paul Ernest Saint-Gaudens, was a shoemaker from the
+little town of Aspet in Haute-Garonne, only a few miles from the town of
+Saint-Gaudens, from which the family must have drawn its origin and its
+name. His mother was Mary McGuinness, a native of Dublin. Augustus
+Saint-Gaudens was one of several children born to this couple and not
+the only artist among them, for his younger brother Louis also attained
+some reputation as a sculptor, though his entire lack of ambition
+prevented his achieving all that was expected of him by those who knew
+his delicate talent. The boy Augustus attended the public schools of New
+York and received there all the formal education he ever had; but at
+thirteen it was necessary for him to face the problem of earning his
+living. His artistic proclivities were probably already well marked, and
+to give them some scope, while assuring him a regular trade at which
+money could be earned, he was apprenticed in the good old way to a cameo
+cutter named Louis Avet, said to be the first man to cut stone cameos in
+the United States. Thus it came about that the greatest of American
+sculptors had much such a practical apprenticeship as a Florentine of
+the fifteenth century might have had. He himself always spoke of it as
+"one of the most fortunate things that ever happened to him" and
+attributed much of his success to the habit of faithful labor acquired
+at this time. Probably, also, the habit of thinking in terms of relief,
+fostered by years of work at this ancient art, was not without influence
+in the moulding of his talent.
+
+His relations with Avet lasted from 1861 to 1864, when his master
+quarrelled with him and abruptly dismissed him from his shop. The boy
+was already a determined person; he believed that he had suffered an
+injustice, and, though Avet went to his parents and tried to induce them
+to send him back, he refused to return. A new master was found for him
+in the person of a shell-cameo cutter named Jules LeBrethon, and with
+him Saint-Gaudens remained three years. During his six years'
+apprenticeship under his two masters the youth showed already that
+energy and power of will that made him what he was. He meant to be
+something more than an artisan, and he spent his evenings in the
+classes, first of the Cooper Union, afterward of the National Academy of
+Design, in the hard study of drawing, the true foundation of all the
+fine arts. It was one of the elements of his superiority in his
+profession that he could draw as few sculptors can, and he always felt
+that he owed an especial debt to the Cooper Union, which he was glad to
+repay when he modelled the statue of its venerable founder. Of the other
+institution by whose freely given instruction he had profited, the
+National Academy of Design, he became one of the most honored members.
+By 1867, when he was nineteen years old, he had saved a little money and
+was master of a trade that could be relied on to bring in more, and he
+determined to go to Paris and begin the serious study of sculpture. He
+worked, for a time, at the Petite École, and entered the studio of
+Jouffroy in the École des Beaux-Arts in 1868, remaining until 1870.
+During this time, and afterward, he was self-supporting, working half
+his time at cameo cutting until his efforts at sculpture on a larger
+scale began to bring in an income.
+
+When the Franco-Prussian War broke out Paris ceased to be a place for
+the carrying on of the serious study of art, and Saint-Gaudens went to
+Rome, where his associates were the French prizemen of the day, of whom
+Mercié was one. He remained there until 1874, except for a visit to New
+York in the winter of 1872-3 for the purpose of modelling a bust of
+Senator Evarts, and one or two other busts, which were put into marble
+upon his return to Rome. In those Roman days he executed his first
+statue, a "Hiawatha," one of his few studies of the nude, and a
+"Silence," a not very characteristic draped figure which yet fills with
+some impressiveness her niche at the head of the grand stairway of the
+Masonic Temple on Twenty-fourth Street.
+
+From 1875 to 1877 he had a studio in New York, where he seems to have
+executed some of his earliest portrait reliefs. During these years he
+came into contact with La Farge, for whom he turned painter and aided
+in the execution of the decorations of Trinity Church in Boston. It was
+at this time, also, that he received his first commissions for important
+public work, those for the Farragut statue in Madison Square, the
+Randall at Sailors' Snug Harbor, and the angels for Saint Thomas's
+Church. He had married Augusta F. Homer in 1877, and in that year,
+taking his bride and his commissions with him, he returned to Paris,
+feeling, as many another young Paris-bred artist has felt, that there
+only could such important works be properly carried out. The "Farragut"
+was completed and exhibited in the plaster at the Salon of 1880, and
+from that time his success was assured. For the rest of his life he was
+constantly busy, receiving almost more commissions for work of
+importance than it was possible for him to carry out. He returned to New
+York in 1880, and in 1881 he opened the studio in Thirty-sixth Street,
+where he remained for sixteen years and where so many of his greatest
+works were executed. From that studio came many of his exquisite
+portraits in relief, his caryatids and angelic figures, such as those
+for the Morgan tomb, so unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1882 (a fate
+since shared by the earlier angels of Saint Thomas's), the great statues
+of Lincoln and Chapin, the "Shaw Memorial," and the "Adams Memorial";
+and in it was done all the preliminary work of the great equestrian
+monument to General Sherman.
+
+It is in these years of his prime that he will ever be most fondly
+remembered by those--and they are many--who had the privilege of his
+friendship. Admittedly our foremost sculptor, and one of the founders of
+the Society of American Artists, he became at once a person of
+importance in the world of art; and as his brilliant career developed
+he established intimate relationships with an ever-widening circle of
+men in every walk of life, while no one who ever knew him well can have
+felt anything but an abiding affection for him. That long, white studio
+became a familiar meeting-place for all who were interested in any form
+of art; and the Sunday afternoon concerts that were held there for many
+years will be looked back to with regret as long as any of their
+auditors remain alive.
+
+This studio was given up when Saint-Gaudens went abroad for the third
+time, in 1897, to execute the Sherman group, and he never resumed his
+residence in New York. In 1885 he had purchased a property at Cornish,
+N.H., just across the Connecticut River from Windsor, Vt., and when he
+returned to this country in 1900, covered with fresh honors but an ill
+man, he made what had been a summer home his permanent abode. He named
+it Aspet, after his father's birthplace, and there he erected two
+studios and finished his Sherman statue. In these studios were executed
+the second "Lincoln," the Parnell statue for Dublin, and much other
+work. The larger studio was burned in 1904, but was rebuilt and the lost
+work re-begun and carried to a conclusion. What can never be quite
+replaced were two portraits of himself. A study, of the head only, in
+the collection of the National Academy of Design and a sketch by Will H.
+Low, painted in Paris in 1877, are now the only existing portraits of
+him done from life in his best years. The Metropolitan Museum possesses
+a portrait of him in his last years, by Miss Ellen Emmet, and a replica,
+painted since his death, of my own earlier portrait.
+
+From the illness he brought back from Paris in 1900 Saint-Gaudens never
+recovered. At times he showed something of his old vigor and was able
+not only to do fine work but to indulge more in out-of-door sports than
+he had ever done in his youth, while a growing love for nature and for
+literature made his life fuller, in some respects, than in the days when
+his own art more entirely absorbed him. But year by year his strength
+grew less and his intervals of freedom from pain grew shorter, and he
+was more and more forced to rely upon the corps of able and devoted
+assistants which he gathered about him. He developed to an extraordinary
+extent the faculty of communicating his ideas and desires to others and
+of producing through their hands work essentially his own and of a
+quality entirely beyond their ability; but it was at the cost of a
+strain upon brain and nerve almost infinitely greater than would have
+been involved in work done with his own hand. In the summer of 1906 he
+broke down utterly, the work of his studio was interrupted, and he
+ceased to see even his most intimate friends. He rallied somewhat from
+this attack, and began again his heroic struggle against fate, directing
+the work of assistants while himself so weak that he had to be carried
+from the house to the studio. The end came on the evening of August 3,
+1907. He died as he had lived, a member of no church, but a man of pure
+and lofty character. As he had wished, his body was cremated, and his
+ashes were temporarily deposited in the cemetery at Windsor, Vt., across
+the river from his home. An informal funeral service was held in his
+private studio on August 7, attended by friends and neighbors and by a
+few old friends from a distance; but the gathering could include but a
+few of the many who felt his death as a personal loss.
+
+The merits of Saint-Gaudens's work were fully recognized in his
+lifetime. He was an officer of the Legion of Honor, a Corresponding
+Member of the Institute of France, a member of half a dozen academies,
+and the bearer of honorary degrees from the universities of Harvard,
+Yale, and Princeton. But of all the honors he received there were two,
+one of a public, the other of a private nature, which he himself valued
+most highly: the one as showing the estimation in which his art was held
+by his fellow artists, the other as an evidence of the personal
+affection felt for him by his friends. At the Pan-American Exposition in
+1901, upon the unanimous recommendation of the Jury of Fine Arts,
+composed of painters, sculptors, and architects, he was awarded a
+special diploma and medal of honor, "apart from and above all other
+awards," an entirely exceptional honor, which marked him as the first of
+American artists, as previously received honors had marked him one of
+the greatest sculptors of his time. On June 23, 1905, the artistic and
+literary colony which had gradually grown up about his home in Cornish
+celebrated the twentieth anniversary of his coming there by a fête and
+open-air masque held in the groves of Aspet. The beauty of this
+spectacle has become almost legendary. The altar with its columned
+canopy, which served for a background to the play, still stands, or
+recently stood, though much dilapidated by weather, as it was
+immortalized by the sculptor himself in a commemorative plaquette (Pl.
+23) which is among the most charming of his minor works. He planned if
+he had lived to perpetuate it in enduring marble, and this task has now
+been taken up by his wife, who means to dedicate the monument as a
+fitting memorial to a great artist and a noble man in the place he loved
+as his chosen home.
+
+Some part of the vivid and lovable personality of Augustus
+Saint-Gaudens must have been visible, almost at a glance, to any one who
+ever came in contact with him--to any one, even, who ever saw his
+portrait. In his spare but strong-knit figure, his firm but supple
+hands, his manner of carrying himself, his every gesture, one felt the
+abounding vitality, the almost furious energy of the man. That
+extraordinary head, with its heavy brow beetling above the small but
+piercing eyes, its red beard and crisp, wiry hair, its projecting jaw
+and great, strongly modelled nose, was alive with power--with power of
+intellect no less than of will. His lack of early education gave him a
+certain diffidence and a distrust of his own gifts of expression. He was
+apt to overrate the mere verbal facility of others and to underestimate
+himself in the comparison--indeed, a certain humility was strongly
+marked in him, even as regards his art, though he was self-confident
+also. When he was unconstrained his great powers of observation, his
+shrewdness of judgment, his bubbling humor, and a picturesque vivacity
+of phrase not uncommon among artists made him one of the most entrancing
+of talkers.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 23.--Saint-Gaudens. "Plaquette Commemorating Cornish Masque."]
+
+Underneath his humor and his gayety, however, there lay a deep-seated
+Celtic melancholy, and beside his energy was an infinite patience at the
+service of an exacting artistic conscience. The endless painstaking of
+his work and the time he took over it were almost proverbial. He was
+twelve years engaged upon the "Shaw Memorial" and eleven upon the
+"Sherman," and, though he did much other work while these were in
+progress, yet it was his constant revision, his ever-renewed striving
+for perfection that kept them so long achieving. The "Diana" of the
+Madison Square Garden was taken down from her tower because he and the
+architect, Stanford White, thought her too large, and was entirely
+remodelled on a smaller scale. And with this patience went a gentleness,
+a sweetness, a delicate sensitiveness, and an abounding humanity and
+sympathy. He could be almost ruthless in the assertion of his will when
+the interests of his art or of justice seemed to demand it, yet there
+was a tender-heartedness in him which made it distressing to him to
+inflict pain on any one. The conflict of these elements in his nature
+sometimes made his actions seem inconsistent and indecipherable even to
+those who knew him. He would be long-suffering, compromising,
+disinclined to strike; but when he was at last roused the blow would be
+as staggering as it was unexpected. It was as if he struck the harder to
+have done with it and to spare himself the pain of striking again.
+
+It was his whole-hearted devotion to his art which caused his rare acts
+of self-assertion, and it was this same devotion, no less than his
+natural kindliness, that made him ever helpful to younger artists who
+showed any promise of future worth. Even in his last days of unspeakable
+suffering he would summon what was left of his old strength to give a
+word of criticism and advice, above all, a word of commendation, to any
+one who needed the one or had earned the other. The essential goodness
+of the man was most felt by those who stood nearest him, and most of
+all, perhaps, by his actual coworkers. He could command, as few have
+been able to do, the love and devotion of his assistants. To all who
+knew him the man himself seemed finer, rarer, sweeter than his work, and
+the gap he has left in their lives will be even more impossible to fill
+than his place in American art.
+
+But the personality of an artist, though he be a great one, is for the
+memory of his private friends. It is only as it colors his art that it
+is of public interest. It is his art itself, his gift to the world, that
+the world cares for; it is of the kind and quality of that art, the
+nature and the degree of its greatness, that the world wishes to hear.
+Because the man was my friend I have wished to give some glimpse of the
+manner of man he was; because the artist was the greatest our country
+has produced I am to try to give some idea of his art, of the elements
+of its strength, and of the limitations which are as necessary as its
+qualities.
+
+The time of Saint-Gaudens's study in Paris was a time of great
+importance in the development of modern sculpture, and, although
+Jouffroy was not himself a sculptor of the highest rank, his studio was
+a centre for what was then the new movement in the sculpture of France.
+The essential thing in this movement was the abandoning of the formal
+imitation of second-rate antiques and the substitution of the sculpture
+of the Italian Renaissance as a source of inspiration and of the direct
+study of nature as a means of self-expression. There had always been
+individual sculptors of power and originality in France, but the
+movement of the French school of sculpture, as a whole, away from the
+pseudo classicism which had long dominated it was really inaugurated by
+Paul Dubois only a few years before Saint-Gaudens's arrival in Paris.
+Many of the men destined to a brilliant part in the history of modern
+sculpture were trained in the _atelier_ of Jouffroy. Falguière and
+Saint-Marceau had but just left that studio when the young American
+entered it, and Mercié was his fellow student there. Dalou and Rodin
+have since made these men seem old-fashioned and academic, but they
+were then, and for many years afterward, the heads of the new school;
+and of this new school, so different from anything he had known in
+America, Saint-Gaudens inevitably became a part. His own pronounced
+individuality, and perhaps his comparative isolation during the years of
+his greatest productivity, gave his art a character of its own, unlike
+any other, but to the French school of sculpture of the third quarter of
+the nineteenth century he essentially belonged.
+
+Of course, his style was not formed in a moment. His "Hiawatha" seems,
+to-day, much such a piece of neo-classicism as was being produced by
+other men in the Rome of that time, and the "Silence," though somewhat
+more modern in accent, is an academic work such as might have been
+expected from a docile pupil of his master. The relief of angels for the
+reredos of Saint Thomas's Church is the earliest important work which
+shows his personal manner. It was undertaken in collaboration with John
+La Farge, and perhaps the influence of La Farge, and of that eminently
+picturesque genius Stanford White, mingled with that of the younger
+French school in forming its decorative and almost pictorial character.
+It was a kind of improvisation, done at prodigious speed and without
+study from nature--a sketch rather than a completed work of art, but a
+sketch to be slowly developed into the reliefs of the Farragut pedestal,
+the angels of the Morgan tomb, the caryatids of the Vanderbilt
+mantelpiece, and, at length, into such a masterpiece as the
+"Amor-Caritas." In each of these developments the work becomes less
+picturesque and more formal, the taste is purified, the exuberance of
+decorative feeling is more restrained. The final term is reached in the
+caryatids for the Albright Gallery at Buffalo--works of his last days,
+when his hands were no longer able to shape the clay, yet essentially
+his though he never touched them; works of an almost austere nobility of
+style, the most grandly monumental figures he ever produced.
+
+The commonest criticism on Saint-Gaudens's art has been that it is not,
+primarily, sculptural in its inspiration; and, in a sense, the criticism
+is justified. One need not, perhaps, greatly care whether it is true or
+not. It is, after all, only a matter of definition, and if we were
+forbidden to call his work sculpture at all and required to find another
+name for it, the important fact that it is art--art of the finest, the
+most exquisite, at times the most powerful--would in no wise be altered.
+Ghiberti went beyond the traditions of sculpture in relief, introduced
+perspective into his compositions, modelled trees and rocks and clouds
+and cast them in bronze, made pictures, if you like, instead of reliefs.
+Does any one care? Is it not enough that they are beautiful pictures?
+The gates of the Baptistry of Florence are still worthy, as the greatest
+sculptor since the Greeks thought them, to be the gates of paradise. A
+work of art remains a work of art, call it what you please, and a thing
+of beauty will be a joy forever, whether or not you can pigeonhole it in
+some ready-made category. After all, the critical pigeonholes are made
+for the things, not the things for the pigeonholes. The work is there,
+and if it does not fit your preconceived definition the fault is as
+likely to be in the definition as in the work itself.
+
+And the first and most essential thing to note about the art of Augustus
+Saint-Gaudens is that it is always art of the purest--free in an
+extraordinary degree from the besetting sins of naturalism and the
+scientific temper on the one hand and of the display of cleverness and
+technical brilliancy on the other. Never more than in our own day have
+these been the great temptations of an able artist: that he should in
+the absorption of study forget the end in the means and produce
+demonstrations of anatomy or of the laws of light rather than statues or
+pictures; or that he should, in the joy of exercising great talents,
+seem to say, "See how well I can do it!" and invent difficulties for the
+sake of triumphantly resolving them, becoming a virtuoso rather than a
+creator. Of the meaner temptation of mere sensationalism--the desire to
+attract attention by ugliness and eccentricity lest one should be unable
+to secure it by truth and beauty--one need not speak. It is the
+temptation of vulgar souls. But great and true artists have yielded,
+occasionally or habitually, to these other two; Saint-Gaudens never
+does. I know no work of his to which raw nature has been admitted, in
+which a piece of study has been allowed to remain as such without the
+moulding touch of art to subdue it to its place; and I know only one
+which has any spice of bravura--the Logan statue--and the bravura is
+there because the subject seemed to demand it, not because the artist
+wished it. The dash and glitter are those of "Black Jack Logan," not of
+Saint-Gaudens. The sculptor strove to render them as he strove to render
+higher qualities at other times, but they remain antipathetic to his
+nature, and the statue is one of the least satisfactory of his works. He
+is essentially the artist--the artificer of beauty--ever bent on the
+making of a lovely and significant thing; and the study of nature and
+the resources of his craft are but tools and are never allowed to become
+anything more.
+
+If, then, the accusation that Saint-Gaudens's art is not sculptural
+means that he was a designer rather than a modeller, that he cared for
+composition more than for representation, that the ensemble interested
+him more than the details, I would cheerfully admit that the accusation
+is well founded. Such marvels of rendering as Rodin could give us,
+before he lost himself in the effort to deserve that reputation as a
+profound thinker which has been thrust upon him, were not for
+Saint-Gaudens. The modelling of the _morceau_ was not particularly his
+affair. The discrimination of hard and soft, of bone and muscle and
+integument, the expression of tension where a fleshy tissue is tightly
+drawn over the framework beneath, or of weight where it falls away from
+it--these were not the things that most compelled his interest or in
+which he was most successful. For the human figure as a figure, for the
+inherent beauty of its marvellous mechanism, he did not greatly care.
+The problems of bulk and mass and weight and movement which have
+occupied sculptors from the beginning were not especially his problems.
+It may have been due to the nature of the commissions he received that,
+after the "Hiawatha" of his student days, he modelled no nude except the
+"Diana" of the tower--a purely decorative figure, designed for distant
+effect, in which structural modelling would have been out of place
+because invisible. But it was not accident that in such draped figures
+as the "Amor-Caritas" (Pl. 24) or the caryatids of the Vanderbilt
+mantelpiece there is little effort to make the figure visible beneath
+the draperies. In the hands of a master of the figure--of one of those
+artists to whom the expressiveness and the beauty of the human structure
+is all in all--drapery is a means of rendering the masses and the
+movement of the figure more apparent than they would be in the nude. In
+such works as these it is a thing beautiful in itself, for its own
+ripple and flow and ordered intricacy. The figure is there beneath
+the drapery, but the drapery is expressive of the mood of the artist and
+of the sentiment of the work rather than especially explanatory of the
+figure.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 24.--Saint-Gaudens. "Amor Caritas."]
+
+First of all, by nature and by training, Saint-Gaudens was a designer,
+and exquisiteness of design was the quality he most consciously strove
+for--the quality on which he expended his unresting, unending,
+persevering toil. From the start one feels that design is his principal
+preoccupation, that he is thinking mainly of the pattern of the whole,
+its decorative effect and play of line, its beauty of masses and spaces,
+its fitness for its place and its surroundings; in a word, its
+composition. In the beginning, as a workman in the shop of the cameo
+cutter, he was concerned with a kind of art in which perfection of
+composition is almost the sole claim to serious consideration. Then he
+produces a multiplicity of small reliefs, dainty, exquisite, infallibly
+charming in their arrangement--things which are so dependent on design
+for their very existence that they seem scarcely modelled at all. He
+goes on to decorative figures in the round, to heroic statues, to
+monumental groups, but always it is design that he thinks of first and
+last--design, now, in three dimensions rather than in two--design
+properly sculptural rather than pictorial, in so much as it deals with
+bosses and concaves, with solid matter in space--but still design. This
+power of design rises to higher uses as time goes on, is bent to the
+interpretation of lofty themes and the expression of deep emotions, but
+it is in its nature the same power that produced the delicate, ethereal
+beauty of the reliefs. The infinite fastidiousness of a master designer,
+constantly reworking and readjusting his design, that every part shall
+be perfect and that no fold or spray of leafage shall be out of its
+proper place, never satisfied that his composition is beyond improvement
+while an experiment remains untried--this is what cost him years of
+labor. His first important statue, the "Farragut," is a masterpiece of
+restrained and elegant yet original and forceful design--a design, too,
+that includes the pedestal and the bench below, and of which the figures
+in bas-relief are almost as important a part as the statue itself. In
+later and maturer work, with a more clarified taste and a deeper
+feeling, he can reach such unsurpassable expressiveness of composition
+as is shown in the "Shaw Memorial" or the great equestrian statue of
+Sherman.
+
+Saint-Gaudens's mastery of low relief was primarily a matter of this
+power of design, but it was conditioned also upon two other qualities:
+knowledge of drawing and extreme sensitiveness to delicate modulation of
+surface. And by drawing I mean not merely knowledge of form and
+proportion and the exact rendering of these, in which sense a statue may
+be said to be well drawn if its measurements are correct--I mean that
+much more subtle and difficult art, the rendering in two dimensions only
+of the appearance of objects of three dimensions. Sculpture in the round
+is the simplest and, in a sense, the easiest of the arts. It deals with
+actual form--a piece of sculpture does not merely look like the form of
+an object, it _is_ the form of an object. Leaving out of the count, for
+the moment, the refinements and the illusions which may be added to
+it--which must be added to it to make it art--it is the reproduction in
+another material of the actual forms of things. Something which shall
+answer for it, to the uninitiate, may be produced by merely casting
+natural objects; and there is a great deal that is called sculpture
+which scarcely aims at anything more than the production, by a more
+difficult method, of something like a plaster cast from nature. It is
+the very simplicity of the art that makes its difficulty, for to avoid
+the look of casting and achieve the feeling of art requires the most
+delicate handling and the most powerful inspiration, and there is need
+in the art of sculpture for the rarest qualities of the greatest minds.
+The art of drawing is entirely different. It is all illusion, it deals
+only in appearances. Its aim is to depict on a flat surface the aspect
+of objects supposed to stand behind it and to be seen through it, and
+its means are two branches of the science of optics. It is based on the
+study of perspective and on the study of the way light falls upon
+objects and reveals their shapes and the direction of their surfaces by
+the varying degrees of their illumination. Of this art a sculptor in the
+round need not necessarily know anything, and, in fact, many of them,
+unfortunately, know altogether too little of it. The maker of a statue
+need not think about foreshortenings: if he gives the correct form the
+foreshortening will take care of itself. Sometimes it does so in a
+disastrous manner! Theoretically he need not worry over light and shade,
+although of course he does, in practice, think about it and rely upon
+it, more or less. If he gives the true forms they will necessarily have
+the true light and shade. But low relief, standing between sculpture and
+drawing, is really more closely related to drawing than to sculpture--is
+really a kind of drawing--and this is why so few sculptors succeed in
+it.
+
+It is a kind of drawing but an exceedingly difficult kind--the most
+delicate and difficult of any of the arts that deal with form alone. As
+to the contour, it stands on the same ground with drawing in any other
+material. The linear part of it requires exactly the same degree and
+the same kind of talent as linear design with a pen or with a burin. But
+for all that stands within the contour, for the suggestion of interior
+forms and the illusion of solidity, it depends on means of the utmost
+subtlety. It exists, as all drawing does, by light and shade, but the
+shadows are not produced by the mere darkening of the surface--they are
+produced by projections and recessions, by the inclination of the planes
+away from or toward the light. The lower the relief the more subtle and
+tender must be the variation of the surface which produces them, and
+therefore success in relief is one of the best attainable measures of a
+sculptor's fineness of touch and perfection of craftsmanship. But as the
+light and shade is produced by actual forms which are yet quite unlike
+the true forms of nature, it follows that the artist in relief can never
+imitate either the shape or the depth of the shadow he sees in nature.
+His art becomes one of suggestions and equivalents--an art which can
+give neither the literal truth of form nor the literal truth of
+aspect--an art at the farthest remove from direct representation. And
+success in it becomes, therefore, one of the best tests of a sculptor's
+artistry--of his ability to produce essential beauty by the treatment of
+his material, rather than to imitate successfully external fact.
+
+As the degree of relief varies, also, from the lowest possible to that
+highest relief which, nearly approaches sculpture in the round, the
+problems involved constantly vary. At each stage there is a new
+compromise to be made, a new adjustment to find, between fact and
+illusion, between the real form and the desired appearance. And there
+may be a number of different degrees of relief in the same work, even in
+different parts of the same figure, so that the art of relief becomes
+one of the most complicated and difficult of arts. It has not, indeed,
+the added complication of color, but neither has it the resources of
+color, success in which will more or less compensate for failure
+elsewhere. There is no permissible failure in bas-relief, any more than
+in sculpture in the round, and its difficulties are far greater. Nothing
+but truest feeling, completest knowledge, consummate skill will serve.
+
+This explanation may give some measure of what I mean when I say that I
+believe Augustus Saint-Gaudens the most complete master of relief since
+the fifteenth century.
+
+He has produced a series of works which run through the whole range of
+the art, from lowest relief to highest; from things of which the relief
+is so infinitesimal that they seem as if dreamed into existence rather
+than wrought in bronze or marble to things which are virtually engaged
+statues; from things which you fear a chance touch might brush away,
+like a pastel of Whistler's, to things as solid and enduring in
+appearance as in actual material. And in all these things there is the
+same inevitable mastery of design and of drawing, the same infinite
+resource and the same technical perfection. The "Butler Children" (Pl.
+25), the "Schiff Children," the "Sarah Redwood Lee" (Pl. 26), to name
+but a few of his masterpieces of this kind, are in their perfection of
+spacing, their grace of line, their exquisite and ethereal illusiveness
+of surface, comparable only to the loveliest works of the Florentine
+Renaissance; while the assured mastery of the most complicated problems
+of relief evinced in the "Shaw Memorial"--a mastery which shows, in the
+result, no trace of the strenuous and long-continued effort that it
+cost--is unsurpassed--I had almost said unequalled--in any work of any
+epoch.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 25.--Saint-Gaudens. "The Butler Children."]
+
+Illustration can give but a faint idea of the special beauties of this
+or that particular work in this long series. It can show no more than
+the composition and the draughtsmanship. The refinement of workmanship,
+the sensitiveness and subtlety of modelling, can be appreciated only
+before the works themselves. And this sensitiveness and delicacy of
+workmanship, this mastery of the problems of relief, with its reliance
+on illusion and its necessary abstention from realization, is applied to
+sculpture in the round, and becomes with Saint-Gaudens, as it did with
+the sculptors of the Florentine Renaissance, the means of escape from
+the matter of fact. The concrete art of sculpture becomes an art of
+mystery and of suggestion--an art having affinities with that of
+painting. Hollows are filled up, shadows are obliterated, lines are
+softened or accentuated, as the effect may require, details are
+eliminated or made prominent as they are less or more essential and
+significant, as they hinder or aid the expressiveness of the whole. It
+is by such methods that beauty is achieved, that the most unpromising
+material is subdued to the purposes of art, that even our hideous modern
+costume may be made to yield a decorative effect. Pure sculpture, as the
+ancients understood it, the art of form _per se_, demands the nude
+figure, or a costume which reveals it rather than hides it. The costume
+of to-day reveals as little of the figure as possible, and, unlike
+mediæval armor, it has no beauty of its own. A painter may make it
+interesting by dwelling on color or tone or texture, or may so lose it
+in shadow that it ceases to count at all except as a space of darkness.
+A sculptor can do none of these things, and if he is to make it serve
+the ends of beauty he has need of all the resourcefulness and all the
+skill of the master of low relief. It was fortunate that the artist
+whose greatest task was to commemorate the heroes of the Civil War
+should have had the temperament and the training of such a master, and I
+know of no other sculptor than Saint-Gaudens who has so magnificently
+succeeded in the rendering of modern clothing--no other who could have
+made the uniform of Farragut or the frock coat of Lincoln as interesting
+as the armor of Colleone or the toga of Augustus.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 26.--Saint-Gaudens. "Sarah Redwood Lee."]
+
+But if the genius of Saint-Gaudens was primarily a decorative genius--if
+it was, even, in his earlier work, a trifle picturesque, so that, as he
+said himself, he had "to fight against picturesqueness," his work was
+never pictorial. He never indulged in perspective or composed his
+reliefs on more than one plane; never took such liberties with the
+traditions of sculpture as did Ghiberti, or painted pictures in bronze
+or marble as more than one modern has done. His very feeling for
+decoration kept him from pictorial realism, and his fight against
+picturesqueness was nobly won. His design becomes ever cleaner and more
+classic; by years of work and of experience he becomes stronger and
+stronger in the more purely sculptural qualities--attains a grasp of
+form and structure only second to his mastery of composition. He is
+always a consummate artist--in his finest works he is a great sculptor
+in the strictest sense of the word.
+
+I have dwelt somewhat at length upon technical matters because technical
+power is the first necessity for an artist; because technical mastery is
+that for which he consciously endeavors; because the technical language
+of his art is the necessary vehicle of expression for his thoughts and
+emotions, and determines, even, the nature of the thoughts and emotions
+he shall express. But while the technical accomplishment of an artist
+is the most necessary part of his art, without which his imagination
+would be mute, it is not the highest or the most significant part of it.
+I have tried to show that Saint-Gaudens was a highly accomplished
+artist, the equal of any of his contemporaries, the superior of most.
+What made him something much more than this--something infinitely more
+important for us--was the vigor and loftiness of his imagination.
+Without his imaginative power he would have been an artist of great
+distinction, of whom any country might be proud; with it he became a
+great creator, able to embody in enduring bronze the highest ideals and
+the deepest feelings of a nation and of a time.
+
+It is a penetrating and sympathetic imagination that gave him his
+unerring grasp of character, that enabled him to seize upon the
+significant elements of a personality, to divine the attitude and the
+gesture that should reveal it, to eliminate the unessential, to present
+to us the man. This is the imagination of the portrait-painter, and
+Saint-Gaudens has shown it again and again, in many of his reliefs and
+memorial tablets, above all in his portrait statues. He showed it
+conclusively in so early a work as the "Farragut" (Pl. 27), a work that
+remains one of the modern masterpieces of portrait statuary. The man
+stands there forever, feet apart, upon his swaying deck, his glass in
+one strong hand, cool, courageous, ready, full of determination but
+absolutely without bluster or braggadocio, a sailor, a gentleman, and a
+hero. He showed it again, and with ampler maturity, in that august
+figure of "Lincoln" (Pl. 28), grandly dignified, austerely simple,
+sorrowfully human, risen from the chair of state that marks his office,
+but about to speak as a man to men, his bent head and worn face
+filled with a sense of power, but even more with the sadness of
+responsibility--filled, above all, with a yearning, tender passion of
+sympathy and love. In imaginative presentation of character, in nobility
+of feeling and breadth of treatment, no less than in perfection of
+workmanship, these are among the world's few worthy monuments to its
+great men.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 27.--Saint-Gaudens. "Farragut."]
+
+And they are monuments to Americans by an American. Saint-Gaudens had
+lived through the time of the Civil War, had felt, as a boy, the stir of
+its great happenings in his blood, and its epic emotions had become a
+part of his consciousness, deep-seated at the roots of his nature. The
+feelings of the American people were his feelings, and his
+representations of these and of other heroes of that great struggle are
+among the most national as they are among the most vital things that our
+country has produced in art.
+
+But if Saint-Gaudens's imagination was thus capable of raising the
+portrait to the dignity of the type, it was no less capable of endowing
+the imagined type with all the individuality of the portrait. In the
+"Deacon Chapin" (Pl. 29), of Springfield, we have a purely ideal
+production, the finest embodiment of New England Puritanism in our art,
+for no portrait of the real Chapin existed. This swift-striding,
+stern-looking old man, who clasps his Bible as Moses clasped the tables
+of the law and grips his peaceful walking-stick as though it were a
+sword, is a Puritan of the Puritans; but he is an individual also--a
+rough-hewn piece of humanity with plenty of the old Adam about him--an
+individual so clearly seen and so vigorously characterized that one can
+hardly believe the statue an invention or realize that no such old
+Puritan deacon ever existed in the flesh. Something of this imaginative
+quality there is in almost everything Saint-Gaudens touched, even in
+his purely decorative figures. His angels and caryatides are not
+classical goddesses but modern women, lovely, but with a personal and
+particular loveliness, not insisted upon but delicately suggested. And
+it is not the personality of the model who chanced to pose for them but
+an invented personality, the expression of the nobility, the sweetness,
+and the pure-mindedness of their creator. And in such a figure as that
+of the "Adams Memorial" (Pl. 30), in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington,
+his imaginative power reaches to a degree of impressiveness almost
+unequalled in modern art. One knows of nothing since the tombs of the
+Medici that fills one with the same hushed awe as this shrouded, hooded,
+deeply brooding figure, rigid with contemplation, still with an eternal
+stillness, her soul rapt from her body on some distant quest. Is she
+Nirvana? Is she The Peace of God? She has been given many names--her
+maker would give her none. Her meaning is mystery; she is the
+everlasting enigma.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 28.--Saint-Gaudens. "Lincoln."]
+
+Not the greatest artist could twice sound so deep a note as this. The
+figure remains unique in the work of the sculptor as it is unique in the
+art of the century. Yet, perhaps, Saint-Gaudens's greatest works are two
+in which all the varied elements of his genius find simultaneous
+expression; into which his mastery of composition, his breadth and
+solidity of structure, his technical skill, his insight into character,
+and his power of imagination enter in nearly equal measure: the "Shaw
+Memorial" and the great equestrian group of the "Sherman Monument."
+
+The "Shaw Memorial" (Pl. 31) is a relief, but a relief of many planes.
+The marching troops are in three files, one behind the other, the
+varying distances from the spectator marked by differences of the degree
+of projection. Nearer than all of them is the equestrian figure of Shaw
+himself, the horse and rider modelled nearly but not quite in the round.
+The whole scale of relief was altered in the course of the work, after
+it had once been nearly completed, and the mastery of the infinitely
+complicated problem of relief in many degrees is supreme. But all the
+more because the scheme was so full and so varied, the artist has
+carefully avoided the pictorial in his treatment. There is no
+perspective, the figures being all on the same scale, and there is no
+background, no setting of houses or landscape. Everywhere, between and
+above the figures, is the flat surface which is the immemorial tradition
+of sculpture in relief; and the fact that it _is_ a surface,
+representing nothing, is made more clear by the inscription written upon
+it--an inscription placed there, consciously or unconsciously, that it
+might have that very effect. The composition is magnificent, whether for
+its intrinsic beauty of arrangement--its balancing of lines and
+spaces--or for its perfect expressiveness. The rhythmic step of marching
+men is perfectly rendered, and the guns fill the middle of the panel in
+an admirable pattern, without confusion or monotony. The heads are
+superb in characterization, strikingly varied and individual, yet each a
+strongly marked racial type, unmistakably African in all its forms.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 29.--Saint-Gaudens. "Deacon Chapin."]
+
+These are merits, and merits of a very high order, enough of themselves
+to place the work in the front rank of modern sculpture, but they are,
+after all, its minor merits. What makes it the great thing it is is the
+imaginative power displayed in it--the depth of emotion expressed, and
+expressed with perfect simplicity and directness and an entire
+absence of parade. The negro troops are marching steadily, soberly,
+with high seriousness of purpose, and their white leader rides beside
+them, drawn sword in hand, but with no military swagger, courageous, yet
+with a hint of melancholy, ready not only to lay down his life but to
+face, if need be, an ignominious death for the cause he believes to be
+just. And above them, laden with poppy and with laurels, floats the
+Death Angel pointing out the way.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, Curtis & Cameron.
+Plate 30.--Saint-Gaudens. "Adams Memorial."]
+
+It is a work which artists may study again and again with growing
+admiration and increasing profit, yet it is one that has found its way
+straight to the popular heart. It is not always--it is not often--that
+the artists and the public are thus at one. When they are it is safe to
+assume that the work they equally admire is truly great--that it belongs
+to the highest order of noble works of art.
+
+The Sherman group (Pl. 32), though it has been more criticised than the
+"Shaw Memorial," seems to me, if possible, an even finer work. The main
+objection to it has been that it is not sufficiently "monumental," and,
+indeed, it has not the massiveness nor the repose of such a work as
+Donatello's "Gattamelata," the greatest of all equestrian statues. It
+could not well have these qualities in the same degree, its motive being
+what it is, but they are, perhaps, not ill exchanged for the character
+and the nationalism so marked in horse and rider and for the
+irresistible onward rush of movement never more adequately expressed. In
+all other respects the group seems to me almost beyond criticism. The
+composition--composition, now, in the round and to be considered from
+many points of view--builds up superbly; the flow of line in wing and
+limb and drapery is perfect; the purely sculptural problems of
+anatomical rendering, equine and human, are thoroughly resolved; the
+modelling, as such, is almost as fine as the design.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De. W.C. Ward.
+Plate 31.--Saint-Gaudens. "Shaw Memorial."]
+
+To the boyish Saint-Gaudens Sherman had seemed the typical American
+hero. To the matured artist he had sat for an admirable bust. The
+sculptor had thus an unusual knowledge of his subject, a perfect
+sympathy with his theme; and he has produced a work of epic sweep and
+significance. Tall and erect, the general sits his horse, his military
+cloak bellying out behind him, his trousers strapped down over his
+shoes, his hat in his right hand, dropping at arm's length behind his
+knee, his bare head like that of an old eagle, looking straight forward.
+The horse is as long and thin as his rider, with a tremendous stride;
+and his big head, closely reined in, twitches viciously at the bridle.
+Before the horse and rider, upon the ground, yet as if new-lighted there
+from an aerial existence, half walks, half flies, a splendid winged
+figure, one arm outstretched, the other brandishing the palm--Victory
+leading them on. She has a certain fierce wildness of aspect, but her
+rapt gaze and half-open mouth indicate the seer of visions--peace is
+ahead, and an end of war. On the bosom of her gown is broidered the
+eagle of the United States, for she is an American Victory, as this is
+an American man on an American horse; and the broken pine bough beneath
+the horse's feet localizes the victorious march--it is the march through
+Georgia to the sea.
+
+Long ago I expressed my conviction that the "Sherman Monument" is third
+in rank of the great equestrian statues of the world. To-day I am not
+sure that that conviction remains unaltered. Donatello's "Gattamelata"
+is unapproached and unapproachable in its quiet dignity; Verrocchio's
+"Colleone" is unsurpassed in picturesque attractiveness. Both are
+consecrated by the admiration of centuries. To-day I am not sure that
+this work of an American sculptor is not, in its own way, equal to
+either of them.
+
+There are those who are troubled by the introduction of the symbolical
+figures in such works as the "Shaw Memorial" and the Sherman statue;
+and, indeed, it was a bold enterprise to place them where they are,
+mingling thus in the same work the real and the ideal, the actual and
+the allegorical. But the boldness seems to me abundantly justified by
+success. In either case the entire work is pitched to the key of these
+figures; the treatment of the whole is so elevated by style and so
+infused with imagination that there is no shock of unlikeness or
+difficulty of transition. And these figures are not merely necessary to
+the composition, an essential part of its beauty--they are even more
+essential to the expression of the artist's thought. Without that
+hovering Angel of Death, the negro troops upon the "Shaw Memorial" might
+be going anywhere, to battle or to review. We should have a passing
+regiment, nothing more. Without the striding Victory before him, the
+impetuous movement of Sherman's horse would have no especial
+significance. And these figures are no mere conventional allegories;
+they are true creations. To their creator the unseen was as real as the
+seen--nay, it was more so. That Shaw was riding to his death at the
+command of duty was, the only thing that made Shaw memorable. That
+Sherman was marching to a victory the fruits of which should be peace
+was the essential thing about Sherman. Death and Duty--Victory and
+Peace--in each case the compound ideal found its expression in a figure
+entirely original and astonishingly living: a _person_ as truly as Shaw
+or Sherman themselves. He could not have left them out. It were
+better to give up the work entirely than to do it otherwise than as he
+saw it.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 32.--Saint-Gaudens. "Sherman."]
+
+I have described and discussed but a few of the many works of this great
+artist, choosing those which seem to me the most significant and the
+most important, and in doing so I have keenly felt the inadequacy of
+words to express the qualities of an art which exists by forms.
+Fortunately, the works themselves are, for the most part, readily
+accessible. In the originals, in casts, or in photographs, they may be
+studied by every one. Nothing is more difficult than to estimate justly
+the greatness of an object that is too near to us--it is only as it
+recedes into the distance that the mountain visibly overtops its
+neighboring hills. It is difficult to understand that this man so lately
+familiar to us, moving among us as one of ourselves, is of the company
+of the immortals. Yet I believe, as we make this study of his works, as
+we yield ourselves to the graciousness of his charm or are exalted by
+the sweep of his imagination, we shall come to feel an assured
+conviction that Augustus Saint-Gaudens was not merely the most
+accomplished artist of America, not merely one of the foremost sculptors
+of his time--we shall feel that he is one of those great, creative
+minds, transcending time and place, not of America or of to-day, but of
+the world and forever.
+
+Where, among such minds, he will take his rank we need not ask. It is
+enough that he is among them. Such an artist is assuredly a benefactor
+of his country, and it is eminently fitting that his gift to us should
+be acknowledged by such tribute as we can pay him. By his works in other
+lands and by his world-wide fame he sheds a glory upon the name of
+America, helping to convince the world that here also are those who
+occupy themselves with the things of the spirit, that here also are
+other capabilities than those of industrial energy and material success.
+In his many minor works he has endowed us with an inexhaustible heritage
+of beauty--beauty which is "about the best thing God invents." He is the
+educator of our taste and of more than our taste--of our sentiment and
+our emotions. In his great monuments he has not only given us fitting
+presentments of our national heroes; he has expressed, and in expressing
+elevated, our loftiest ideals; he has expressed, and in expressing
+deepened, our profoundest feelings. He has become the voice of all that
+is best in the American people, and his works are incentives to
+patriotism and lessons in devotion to duty.
+
+But the great and true artist is more than a benefactor of his country,
+he is a benefactor of the human race. The body of Saint-Gaudens is
+ashes, but his mind, his spirit, his character have taken on enduring
+forms and are become a part of the inheritance of mankind. And if, in
+the lapse of ages, his very name should be forgotten--as are the names
+of many great artists who have gone before him--yet his work will
+remain; and while any fragment of it is decipherable the world will be
+the richer in that he lived.
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: In the Table of Illustrations and in the caption for
+plate 17, Bolensa was corrected to Bolsena.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Artist and Public, by Kenyon Cox
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Artist And Public, by Kenyon Cox.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Artist and Public, by Kenyon Cox
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Artist and Public
+       And Other Essays On Art Subjects
+
+Author: Kenyon Cox
+
+Release Date: September 5, 2005 [EBook #16655]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTIST AND PUBLIC ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h1>ARTIST AND PUBLIC</h1>
+
+<h2>AND OTHER<br />
+ESSAYS ON ART SUBJECTS</h2>
+
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+<h2>KENYON COX</h2>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><a name="p01_t" id="p01_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
+
+<a href="images/p01.jpg">
+<img src="images/p01_t.jpg" width="320" height="258"
+alt="From a photograph by Braun, Clement &amp; Co. Plate 1.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Goose Girl.&quot; In the collection of Mme. Saulnier, Bordeaux."
+title="From a photograph by Braun, Clement &amp; Co. Plate 1.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Goose Girl.&quot; In the collection of Mme. Saulnier, Bordeaux." />
+</a><span class="caption">From a photograph by Braun, Clement &amp; Co. Plate 1.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Goose Girl.&quot; In the collection of Mme. Saulnier, Bordeaux.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>ARTIST AND PUBLIC</h1>
+
+<h2>AND OTHER<br />
+ESSAYS ON ART SUBJECTS</h2>
+
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+<h2>KENYON COX</h2>
+
+
+<h3><i>WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS</i></h3>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center">CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS<br />
+NEW YORK&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;MCMXIV
+</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>Copyright, 1914, by Charles Scribner's Sons<br />
+Published September, 1914</i>
+</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center">TO<br />
+J.D.C.<br />
+IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF UNFAILING KINDNESS<br />
+THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
+</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+<div style="margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%;">
+
+<p>In "The Classic Point of View," published three years ago, I endeavored
+to give a clear and definitive statement of the principles on which all
+my criticism of art is based. The papers here gathered together, whether
+earlier or later than that volume, may be considered as the more
+detailed application of those principles to particular artists, to whole
+schools and epochs, even, in one case, to the entire history of the
+arts. The essay on Raphael, for instance, is little else than an
+illustration of the chapter on "Design"; that on Millet illustrates the
+three chapters on "The Subject in Art," on "Design," and on "Drawing";
+while "Two Ways of Painting" contrasts, in specific instances, the
+classic with the modern point of view.</p>
+
+<p>But there is another thread connecting these essays, for all of them
+will be found to have some bearing, more or less direct, upon the
+subject of the title essay. "The Illusion of Progress" elaborates a
+point more slightly touched upon in "Artist and Public"; the careers of
+Raphael and Millet are capital instances of the happy productiveness of
+an artist in sympathy with his public or of the difficulties, nobly
+conquered in this case, of an artist without public appreciation; the
+greatest merit attributed to "The American School" is an abstention
+from the extravagances of those who would make incomprehensibility a
+test of greatness. Finally, the work of Saint-Gaudens is a noble example
+of art fulfilling its social function in expressing and in elevating the
+ideals of its time and country.</p>
+
+<p>This last essay stands, in some respects, upon a different footing from
+the others. It deals with the work and the character of a man I knew and
+loved, it was originally written almost immediately after his death, and
+it is therefore colored, to some extent, by personal emotion. I have
+revised it, rearranged it, and added to it, and I trust that this
+coloring may be found to warm, without falsifying, the picture.</p>
+
+<p>The essay on "The Illusion of Progress" was first printed in "The
+Century," that on Saint-Gaudens in "The Atlantic Monthly." The others
+originally appeared in "Scribner's Magazine."</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+KENYON COX.</p>
+
+<p>
+Calder House,<br />
+Croton-on-Hudson,<br />
+June 6, 1914.<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap"><small>essay</small></span></td><td align='right'><span class="smcap"><small>page</small></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>I.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#I">Artist and Public</a></span></td><td align='right'>1</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>II.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#II">Jean Fran&ccedil;ois Millet</a></span></td><td align='right'>44</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>III.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#III">The Illusion of Progress</a></span></td><td align='right'>77</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>IV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#IV">Raphael</a></span></td><td align='right'>99</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>V.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#V">Two Ways of Painting</a></span></td><td align='right'>134</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>VI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#VI">The American School</a></span></td><td align='right'>149</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>VII.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#VII">Augustus Saint-Gaudens</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></td><td align='right'>169</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="Illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Millet</span>:</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p01_t">"The Goose Girl,"</a><i> Saulnier Collection, Bordeaux</i></td><td align='right'><i>Frontispiece</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><span class="smcap"><small>facing page</small></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>2.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p02_t">"The Sower,"</a><i> Vanderbilt Collection, Metropolitan Museum, New York</i></td><td align='right'>46</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>3.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p03_t">"The Gleaners,"</a><i> The Louvre</i></td><td align='right'>50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>4.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p04_t">"The Spaders"</a></td><td align='right'>54</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>5.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p05_t">"The Potato Planter,"</a><i> Shaw Collection</i></td><td align='right'>58</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>6.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p06_t">"The Grafter,"</a><i> William Rockefeller Collection</i></td><td align='right'>62</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>7.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p07_t">"The New-Born Calf,"</a><i> Art Institute, Chicago</i></td><td align='right'>66</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>8.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p08_t">"The First Steps,"</a></td><td align='right'>70</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>9.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p09_t">"The Shepherdess,"</a><i> Chauchard Collection, Louvre</i></td><td align='right'>72</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>10.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p10_t">"Spring,"</a><i> The Louvre</i></td><td align='right'>74</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Raphael</span>:</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>11.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p11_t">"Poetry,"</a><i> The Vatican</i></td><td align='right'>112</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>12.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p12_t">"The Judgment of Solomon,"</a><i> The Vatican</i></td><td align='right'>114</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>13.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p13_t">The "Disputa,"</a><i> The Vatican</i></td><td align='right'>116</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>14.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p14_t">"The School of Athens,"</a><i> The Vatican</i></td><td align='right'>118</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>15.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p15_t">"Parnassus,"</a><i> The Vatican</i></td><td align='right'>120</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>16.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p16_t">"Jurisprudence,"</a><i> The Vatican</i></td><td align='right'>122</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>17.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p17_t">"The Mass of Bolsena,"</a><i> The Vatican</i></td><td align='right'>124</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>18.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p18_t">"The Deliverance of Peter,"</a><i> The Vatican</i></td><td align='right'>126</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>19.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p19_t">"The Sibyls,"</a><i> Santa Maria della Pace, Rome</i></td><td align='right'>128</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>20.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p20_t">"Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami,"</a><i> Gardner Collection</i></td><td align='right'>130</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">John S. Sargent</span>:</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>21.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p21_t">"The Hermit,"</a><i> Metropolitan Museum, New York</i></td><td align='right'>136</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Titian</span>:</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>22.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p22_t">"Saint Jerome in the Desert,"</a><i> Brera Gallery, Milan</i></td><td align='right'>142</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Saint-Gaudens</span>:</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>23.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p23_t">"Plaquette Commemorating Cornish Masque"</a></td><td align='right'>182</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>24.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p24_t">"Amor Caritas"</a></td><td align='right'>196</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>25.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p25_t">"The Butler Children"</a></td><td align='right'>206</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>26.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p26_t">"Sarah Redwood Lee"</a></td><td align='right'>208</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>27.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p27_t">"Farragut,"</a><i> Madison Square, New York</i></td><td align='right'>212</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>28.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p28_t">"Lincoln,"</a><i> Chicago, Ill.</i></td><td align='right'>214</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>29.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p29_t">"Deacon Chapin,"</a><i> Springfield, Mass.</i></td><td align='right'>216</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>30.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p30_t">"Adams Memorial,"</a><i> Washington, D.C.</i></td><td align='right'>218</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>31.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p31_t">"Shaw Memorial,"</a><i> Boston, Mass.</i></td><td align='right'>220</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>32.</td><td align='left'><a href="#p32_t">"Sherman,"</a><i> The Plaza, Central Park, New York</i></td><td align='right'>224</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>ARTIST AND PUBLIC</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+<h2>ARTIST AND PUBLIC</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the history of art, as in the history of politics and in the history
+of economics, our modern epoch is marked off from all preceding epochs
+by one great event, the French Revolution. Fragonard, who survived that
+Revolution to lose himself in a new and strange world, is the last at
+the old masters; David, some sixteen years his junior, is the first of
+the moderns. Now if we look for the most fundamental distinction between
+our modern art and the art of past times, I believe we shall find it to
+be this: the art of the past was produced for a public that wanted it
+and understood it, by artists who understood and sympathized with their
+public; the art of our time has been, for the most part, produced for a
+public that did not want it and misunderstood it, by artists who
+disliked and despised the public for which they worked. When artist and
+public were united, art was homogeneous and continuous. Since the
+divorce of artist and public art has been chaotic and convulsive.</p>
+
+<p>That this divorce between the artist and his public&mdash;this dislocation of
+the right and natural relations between them&mdash;has taken place is
+certain. The causes of it are many and deep-lying in our modern
+civilization, and I can point out only a few of the more obvious ones.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these is the emergence of a new public. The art of past
+ages had been distinctively an aristocratic art, created for kings and
+princes, for the free citizens of slave-holding republics, for the
+spiritual and intellectual aristocracy of the church, or for a luxurious
+and frivolous nobility. As the aim of the Revolution was the
+destruction of aristocratic privilege, it is not surprising that a
+revolutionary like David should have felt it necessary to destroy the
+traditions of an art created for the aristocracy. In his own art of
+painting he succeeded so thoroughly that the painters of the next
+generation found themselves with no traditions at all. They had not only
+to work for a public of enriched bourgeois or proletarians who had never
+cared for art, but they had to create over again the art with which they
+endeavored to interest this public. How could they succeed? The rift
+between artist and public had begun, and it has been widening ever
+since.</p>
+
+<p>If the people had had little to do with the major arts of painting and
+sculpture, there had yet been, all through the Middle Ages and the
+Renaissance, a truly popular art&mdash;an art of furniture making, of
+wood-carving, of forging, of pottery. Every craftsman was an artist in
+his degree, and every artist was but a craftsman of a superior sort. Our
+machine-making, industrial civilization, intent upon material progress
+and the satisfaction of material wants, has destroyed this popular art;
+and at the same time that the artist lost his patronage from above he
+lost his support from below. He has become a superior person, a sort of
+demi-gentleman, but he has no longer a splendid nobility to employ him
+or a world of artist artisans to surround him and understand him.</p>
+
+<p>And to the modern artist, so isolated, with no tradition behind him, no
+direction from above and no support from below, the art of all times and
+all countries has become familiar through modern means of communication
+and modern processes of reproduction. Having no compelling reason for
+doing one thing rather than another, or for choosing one or another way
+of doing things, he is shown a thousand things that he may do and a
+thousand ways of doing them. Not clearly knowing his own mind he hears
+the clash and reverberation of a thousand other minds, and having no
+certainties he must listen to countless theories.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Vedder has spoken of a certain "home-made" character which he
+considers the greatest defect of his art, the character of an art
+belonging to no distinctive school and having no definite relation to
+the time and country in which it is produced. But it is not Mr. Vedder's
+art alone that is home-made. It is precisely the characteristic note of
+our modern art that all of it that is good for anything is home-made or
+self-made. Each artist has had to create his art as best he could out of
+his own temperament and his own experience&mdash;has sat in his corner like a
+spider, spinning his web from his own bowels. If the art so created was
+essentially fine and noble the public has at last found it out, but only
+after years of neglect have embittered the existence and partially
+crippled the powers of its creator. And so, to our modern imagination,
+the neglected and misunderstood genius has become the very type of the
+great artist, and we have allowed our belief in him to color and distort
+our vision of the history of art. We have come to look upon the great
+artists of all times as an unhappy race struggling against the
+inappreciation of a stupid public, starving in garrets and waiting long
+for tardy recognition.</p>
+
+<p>The very reverse of this is true. With the exception of Rembrandt, who
+himself lived in a time of political revolution and of the emergence to
+power of a burgher class, you will scarce find an unappreciated genius
+in the whole history of art until the beginning of the nineteenth
+century. The great masters of the Renaissance, from Giotto to Veronese,
+were men of their time, sharing and interpreting the ideals of those
+around them, and were recognized and patronized as such. Rembrandt's
+greatest contemporary, Rubens, was painter in ordinary to half the
+courts of Europe, and Velazquez was the friend and companion of his
+king. Watteau and Boucher and Fragonard painted for the frivolous
+nobility of the eighteenth century just what that nobility wanted, and
+even the precursors of the Revolution, sober and honest Chardin, Greuze
+the sentimental, had no difficulty in making themselves understood,
+until the revolutionist David became dictator to the art of Europe and
+swept them into the rubbish heap with the rest.</p>
+
+<p>It is not until the beginning of what is known as the Romantic movement,
+under the Restoration, that the misunderstood painter of genius
+definitely appears. Millet, Corot, Rousseau were trying, with
+magnificent powers and perfect single-mindedness, to restore the art of
+painting which the Revolution had destroyed. They were men of the utmost
+nobility and simplicity of character, as far as possible from the
+gloomy, fantastic, vain, and egotistical person that we have come to
+accept as the type of unappreciated genius; they were classically minded
+and conservative, worshippers of the great art of the past; but they
+were without a public and they suffered bitter discouragement and long
+neglect. Upon their experience is founded that legend of the
+unpopularity of all great artists which has grown to astonishing
+proportions. Accepting this legend, and believing that all great artists
+are misunderstood, the artist has come to cherish a scorn of the public
+for which he works and to pretend a greater scorn than he feels. He
+cannot believe himself great <i>unless</i> he is misunderstood, and he hugs
+his unpopularity to himself as a sign of genius and arrives at that
+sublime affectation which answers praise of his work with an exclamation
+of dismay: "Is it as bad as that?" He invents new excesses and
+eccentricities to insure misunderstanding, and proclaims the doctrine
+that, as anything great must be incomprehensible, so anything
+incomprehensible must be great. And the public has taken him, at least
+partly, at his word. He may or may not be great, but he is certainly
+incomprehensible and probably a little mad. Until he succeeds the public
+looks upon the artist as a more or less harmless lunatic. When he
+succeeds it is willing to exalt him into a kind of god and to worship
+his eccentricities as a part of his divinity. So we arrive at a belief
+in the insanity of genius. What would Raphael have thought of such a
+notion, or that consummate man of the world, Titian? What would the
+serene and mighty Veronese have thought of it, or the cool, clear-seeing
+Velazquez? How his Excellency the Ambassador of his Most Catholic
+Majesty, glorious Peter Paul Rubens, would have laughed!</p>
+
+<p>It is this lack of sympathy and understanding between the artist and his
+public&mdash;this fatal isolation of the artist&mdash;that is the cause of nearly
+all the shortcomings of modern art; of the weakness of what is known as
+official or academic art no less than of the extravagance of the art of
+opposition. The artist, being no longer a craftsman, working to order,
+but a kind of poet, expressing in loneliness his personal emotions, has
+lost his natural means of support. Governments, feeling a responsibility
+for the cultivation of art which was quite unnecessary in the days when
+art was spontaneously produced in answer to a natural demand, have
+tried to put an artificial support in its place. That the artist may
+show his wares and make himself known, they have created exhibitions;
+that he may be encouraged they have instituted medals and prizes; that
+he may not starve they have made government purchases. And these
+well-meant efforts have resulted in the creation of pictures which have
+no other purpose than to hang in exhibitions, to win medals, and to be
+purchased by the government and hung in those more permanent exhibitions
+which we call museums. For this purpose it is not necessary that a
+picture should have great beauty or great sincerity. It <i>is</i> necessary
+that it should be large in order to attract attention and sufficiently
+well drawn and executed to seem to deserve recognition. And so was
+evolved the salon picture, a thing created for no man's pleasure, not
+even the artist's; a thing which is neither the decoration of a public
+building nor the possible ornament of a private house; a thing which,
+after it has served its temporary purpose, is rolled up and stored in a
+loft or placed in a gallery where its essential emptiness becomes more
+and more evident as time goes on. Such government-encouraged art had at
+least the merit of a well-sustained and fairly high level of
+accomplishment in the more obvious elements of painting. But as
+exhibitions became larger and larger and the competition engendered by
+them grew fiercer, it became increasingly difficult to attract attention
+by mere academic merit. So the painters began to search for
+sensationalism of subject, and the typical salon picture, no longer
+decorously pompous, began to deal in blood and horror and sensuality. It
+was Regnault who began this sensation hunt, but it has been carried much
+further since his day than he can have dreamed of, and the modern salon
+picture is not only tiresome but detestable.</p>
+
+<p>The salon picture, in its merits and its faults, is peculiarly French,
+but the modern exhibition has sins to answer for in other countries than
+France. In England it has been responsible for a great deal of
+sentimentality and anecdotage which has served to attract the attention
+of a public that could not be roused to interest in mere painting.
+Everywhere, even in this country, where exhibitions are relatively small
+and ill-attended, it has caused a certain stridency and blatancy, a
+keying up to exhibition pitch, a neglect of finer qualities for the sake
+of immediate effectiveness.</p>
+
+<p>Under our modern conditions the exhibition has become a necessity, and
+it would be impossible for our artists to live or to attain a reputation
+without it. The giving of medals and prizes and the purchase of works
+of art by the state may be of more doubtful utility, though such efforts
+at the encouragement of art probably do more good than harm. But there
+is one form of government patronage that is almost wholly beneficial,
+and that the only form of it which we have in this country&mdash;the awarding
+of commissions for the decoration of public buildings. The painter of
+mural decorations is in the old historical position, in sound and
+natural relations to the public. He is doing something which is wanted
+and, if he continues to receive commissions, he may fairly assume that
+he is doing it in a way that is satisfactory. With the decorative or
+monumental sculptor he is almost alone among modern artists in being
+relieved of the necessity of producing something in the isolation of his
+studio and waiting to see if any one will care for it; of trying,
+against the grain, to produce something that he thinks may appeal to
+the public because it does not appeal to himself; or of attempting to
+bamboozle the public into buying what neither he nor the public really
+cares for. If he does his best he may feel that he is as fairly earning
+his livelihood as his fellow workmen, the blacksmith and the
+stonecutter, and is as little dependent as they upon either charity or
+humbug. The best that government has done for art in France is the
+commissioning of the great decorative paintings of Baudry and Puvis. In
+this country, also, governments, national, State, or municipal, are
+patronizing art in the best possible way, and in making buildings
+splendid for the people are affording opportunity for the creation of a
+truly popular art.</p>
+
+<p>Without any artificial aid from the government the illustrator has a
+wide popular support and works for the public in a normal way; and,
+therefore, illustration has been one of the healthiest and most
+vigorous forms of modern art. The portrait-painter, too, is producing
+something he knows to be wanted, and, though his art has had to fight
+against the competition of the photograph and has been partially
+vulgarized by the struggle of the exhibitions, it has yet remained, upon
+the whole, comprehensible and human; so that much of the soundest art of
+the past century has gone into portraiture. It is the painters of
+pictures, landscape or genre, who have most suffered from the
+misunderstanding between artist and public. Without guidance some of
+them have hewed a path to deserved success. Others have wandered into
+strange byways and no-thoroughfares.</p>
+
+<p>The nineteenth century is strewn with the wrecks of such misunderstood
+and misunderstanding artists, but it was about the sixties when their
+searching for a way began to lead them in certain clearly marked
+directions. There are three paths, in especial, which have been followed
+since then by adventurous spirits: the paths of &aelig;stheticism, of
+scientific naturalism, and of pure self-expression; the paths of
+Whistler, of Monet, and of C&eacute;zanne.</p>
+
+<p>Whistler was an artist of refined and delicate talent with great
+weaknesses both in temperament and training; being also a very clever
+man and a brilliant controversialist, he proceeded to erect a theory
+which should prove his weaknesses to be so many virtues, and he nearly
+succeeded in convincing the world of its validity. Finding the
+representation of nature very difficult, he decided that art should not
+concern itself with representation but only with the creation of
+"arrangements" and "symphonies." Having no interest in the subject of
+pictures, he proclaimed that pictures should have no subjects and that
+any interest in the subject is vulgar. As he was a cosmopolitan with no
+local ties, he maintained that art had never been national; and as he
+was out of sympathy with his time, he taught that "art happens" and that
+"there never was an artistic period." According to the Whistlerian
+gospel, the artist not only has now no point of contact with the public,
+but he should not have and never has had any. He has never been a man
+among other men, but has been a dreamer "who sat at home with the women"
+and made pretty patterns of line and color because they pleased him. And
+the only business of the public is to accept "in silence" what he
+chooses to give them.</p>
+
+<p>This kind of rootless art he practised. Some of the patterns he produced
+are delightful, but they are without imagination, without passion,
+without joy in the material and visible world&mdash;the dainty diversions of
+a dilettante. One is glad that so gracefully slender an art should
+exist, but if it has seemed great art to us it is because our age is so
+poor in anything better. To rank its creator with the abounding masters
+of the past is an absurdity.</p>
+
+<p>In their efforts to escape from the dead-alive art of the salon picture,
+Monet and the Impressionists took an entirely different course. The
+gallery painter's perfunctory treatment of subject bored them, and they
+abandoned subject almost as entirely as Whistler had done. The sound if
+tame drawing and the mediocre painting of what they called official art
+revolted them as it revolted Whistler; but while he nearly suppressed
+representation they could see in art nothing but representation. They
+wanted to make that representation truer, and they tried to work a
+revolution in art by the scientific analysis of light and the
+invention of a new method of laying on paint. Instead of joining in
+Whistler's search for pure pattern they fixed their attention on facts
+alone, or rather on one aspect of the facts, and in their occupation
+with light and the manner of representing it they abandoned form almost
+as completely as they had abandoned significance and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>So it happened that Monet could devote some twenty canvases to the study
+of the effects of light, at different hours of the day, upon two straw
+stacks in his farmyard. It was admirable practice, no doubt, and neither
+scientific analysis nor the study of technical methods is to be
+despised; but the interest of the public, after all, is in what an
+artist does, not in how he learns to do it. The twenty canvases together
+formed a sort of demonstration of the possibilities of different kinds
+of lighting. Any one of them, taken singly, is but a portrait of two
+straw stacks, and the world will not permanently or deeply care about
+those straw stacks. The study of light is, in itself, no more an
+exercise of the artistic faculties than the study of anatomy or the
+study of perspective; and while Impressionism has put a keener edge upon
+some of the tools of the artist, it has inevitably failed to produce a
+school of art.</p>
+
+<p>After Impressionism, what? We have no name for it but
+Post-Impressionism. Such men as C&eacute;zanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh recognized
+the sterility of Impressionism and of a narrow &aelig;stheticism, while they
+shared the hatred of the &aelig;sthetes and the Impressionists for the current
+art of the salons. No more than the &aelig;sthetes or the Impressionists were
+they conscious of any social or universal ideals that demanded
+expression. The &aelig;sthetes had a doctrine; the Impressionists had a method
+and a technic. The Post-Impressionists had nothing, and were driven to
+the attempt at pure self-expression&mdash;to the exaltation of the great god
+Whim. They had no training, they recognized no traditions, they spoke to
+no public. Each was to express, as he thought best, whatever he happened
+to feel or to think, and to invent, as he went along, the language in
+which he should express it. I think some of these men had the elements
+of genius in them and might have done good work; but their task was a
+heart-breaking and a hopeless one. An art cannot be improvised, and an
+artist must have some other guide than unregulated emotion. The path
+they entered upon had been immemorially marked "no passing"; for many of
+them the end of it was suicide or the madhouse.</p>
+
+<p>But whatever the aberrations of these, the true
+Post-Impressionists&mdash;whatever the ugliness, the eccentricity, or the
+moral dinginess into which they were betrayed&mdash;I believe them to have
+been, in the main, honest if unbalanced and ill-regulated minds.
+Whatever their errors, they paid the price of them in poverty, in
+neglect, in death. With those who pretend to be their descendants to-day
+the case is different; they are not paying for their eccentricity or
+their madness, they are making it pay.</p>
+
+<p>The enormous engine of modern publicity has been discovered by these
+men. They have learned to advertise, and they have found that morbidity,
+eccentricity, indecency, extremes of every kind and of any degree are
+capital advertisement. If one cannot create a sound and living art, one
+can at least make something odd enough to be talked about; if one cannot
+achieve enduring fame, one may make sure of a flaming notoriety. And, as
+a money-maker, present notoriety is worth more than future fame, for the
+speculative dealer is at hand. His interest is in "quick returns" and
+he has no wish to wait until you are famous&mdash;or dead&mdash;before he can sell
+anything you do. His process is to buy anything he thinks he can "boom,"
+to "boom" it as furiously as possible, and to sell it before the "boom"
+collapses. Then he will exploit something else, and there's the rub.
+Once you have entered this mad race for notoriety, there is no drawing
+out of it. The same sensation will not attract attention a second time;
+you must be novel at any cost. You must exaggerate your exaggerations
+and out-Herod Herod, for others have learned how easy the game is to
+play, and are at your heels. It is no longer a matter of
+misunderstanding and being misunderstood by the public; it is a matter
+of deliberately flouting and outraging the public&mdash;of assuming
+incomprehensibility and antagonism to popular feeling as signs of
+greatness. And so is founded what Frederic Harrison has called the
+"shock-your-grandmother school."</p>
+
+<p>It is with profound regret that one must name as one of the founders of
+this school an artist of real power, who has produced much admirable
+work&mdash;Auguste Rodin. At the age of thirty-seven he attained a sudden and
+resounding notoriety, and from that time he has been the most talked-of
+artist in Europe. He was a consummate modeller, a magnificent workman,
+but he had always grave faults and striking mannerisms. These faults and
+mannerisms he has latterly pushed to greater and greater extremes while
+neglecting his great gift, each work being more chaotic and fragmentary
+in composition, more hideous in type, more affected and emptier in
+execution, until he has produced marvels of mushiness and incoherence
+hitherto undreamed of and has set up as public monuments fantastically
+mutilated figures with broken legs or heads knocked off. Now, in his
+old age, he is producing shoals of drawings the most extraordinary of
+which few are permitted to see. Some selected specimens of them hang in
+a long row in the Metropolitan Museum, and I assure you, upon my word as
+a lifelong student of drawing, they are quite as ugly and as silly as
+they look. There is not a touch in them that has any truth to nature,
+not a line that has real beauty or expressiveness. They represent the
+human figure with the structure of a jellyfish and the movement of a
+Dutch doll; the human face with an expression I prefer not to
+characterize. If they be not the symptoms of mental decay, they can be
+nothing but the means of a gigantic mystification.</p>
+
+<p>With Henri Matisse we have not to deplore the deliquescence of a great
+talent, for we have no reason to suppose he ever had any. It is true
+that his admirers will assure you he could once draw and paint as
+everybody does; what he could <i>not</i> do was to paint enough better than
+everybody does to make his mark in the world; and he was a quite
+undistinguished person until he found a way to produce some effect upon
+his grandmother the public by shocking her into attention. His method is
+to choose the ugliest models to be found; to put them into the most
+grotesque and indecent postures imaginable; to draw them in the manner
+of a savage, or a depraved child, or a worse manner if that be possible;
+to surround his figures with blue outlines half an inch wide; and to
+paint them in crude and staring colors, brutally laid on in flat masses.
+Then, when his grandmother begins to "sit up," she is told with a grave
+face that this is a reaction from naturalism, a revival of abstract line
+and color, a subjective art which is not the representation of nature
+but the expression of the artist's soul. No wonder she gasps and
+stares!</p>
+
+<p>It seemed, two or three years ago, that the limit of mystification had
+been reached&mdash;that this comedy of errors could not be carried further;
+but human ingenuity is inexhaustible, and we now have whole schools,
+Cubists, Futurists, and the like, who joyously vie with each other in
+the creation of incredible pictures and of irreconcilable and
+incomprehensible theories. The public is inclined to lump them all
+together and, so far as their work is concerned, the public is not far
+wrong; yet in theory Cubism and Futurism are diametrically opposed to
+each other. It is not easy to get any clear conception of the doctrines
+of these schools, but, so far as I am able to understand them&mdash;and I
+have taken some pains to do so&mdash;they are something like this:</p>
+
+<p>Cubism is static; Futurism is kinetic. Cubism deals with bulk; Futurism
+deals with motion. The Cubist, by a kind of extension of Mr. Berenson's
+doctrine of "tactile values," assumes that the only character of objects
+which is of importance to the artist is their bulk and solidity&mdash;what he
+calls their "volumes." Now the form in which volume is most easily
+apprehended is the cube; do we not measure by it and speak of the cubic
+contents of anything? The inference is easy: reduce all objects to forms
+which can be bounded by planes and defined by straight lines and angles;
+make their cubic contents measurable to the eye; transform drawing into
+a burlesque of solid geometry; and you have, at once, attained to the
+highest art. The Futurist, on the other hand, maintains that we know
+nothing but that things are in flux. Form, solidity, weight are
+illusions. Nothing exists but motion. Everything is changing every
+moment, and if anything were still we ourselves are changing. It is,
+therefore, absurd to give fixed boundaries to anything or to admit of
+any fixed relations in space. If you are trying to record your
+impression of a face it is certain that by the time you have done one
+eye the other eye will no longer be where it was&mdash;it may be at the other
+side of the room. You must cut nature into small bits and shuffle them
+about wildly if you are to reproduce what we really see.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever its extravagance, Cubism remains a form of graphic art. However
+pedantic and ridiculous its transformation of drawing, it yet recognizes
+the existence of drawing. Therefore, to the Futurist, Cubism is
+reactionary. What difference does it make, he asks, whether you draw a
+head round or square? Why draw a head at all? The Futurist denies the
+fundamental postulates of the art of painting. Painting has always, and
+by definition, represented upon a surface objects supposed to lie
+beyond it and to be seen through it. Futurism pretends to place the
+spectator inside the picture and to represent things around him or
+behind him as well as those in front of him. Painting has always assumed
+the single moment of vision, and, though it has sometimes placed more
+than one picture on the same canvas, it has treated each picture as seen
+at a specific instant of time. Futurism attempts systematically to
+combine the past and the future with the present, as if all the pictures
+in a cinematograph film were to be printed one over the other; to paint
+no instant but to represent the movement of time. It aims at nothing
+less than the abrogation of all recognized laws, the total destruction
+of all that has hitherto passed for art.</p>
+
+<p>Do you recall the story of the man who tried to count a litter of pigs,
+but gave it up because one little pig ran about so fast that he could
+not be counted? One finds oneself in somewhat the same predicament when
+one tries to describe these "new movements" in art. The movement is so
+rapid and the men shift their ground so quickly that there is no telling
+where to find them. You have no sooner arrived at some notion of the
+difference between Cubism and Futurism than you find your Cubist doing
+things that are both Cubist and Futurist, or neither Cubist nor
+Futurist, according as you look at them. You find things made up of
+geometrical figures to give volume, yet with all the parts many times
+repeated to give motion. You find things that have neither bulk nor
+motion but look like nothing so much as a box of Chinese tangrams
+scattered on a table. Finally, you have assemblages of lines that do not
+draw anything, even cubes or triangles; and we are assured that there
+is now a newest school of all, called Orphism, which, finding still some
+vestiges of intelligibility in any assemblage of lines, reduces
+everything to shapeless blotches. Probably the first of Orphic pictures
+was that produced by the quite authentic donkey who was induced to smear
+a canvas by lashing a tail duly dipped in paint. It was given a title as
+Orphic as the painting, was accepted by a jury anxious to find new forms
+of talent, and was hung in the <i>Salon d'Automne.</i></p>
+
+<p>In all this welter of preposterous theories there is but one thing
+constant&mdash;one thing on which all these theorists are agreed. It is that
+all this strange stuff is symbolic and shadows forth the impressions and
+emotions of the artist: represents not nature but his feeling about
+nature; is the expression of his mind or, as they prefer to call it, his
+soul. It may be so. All art is symbolic; images are symbols; words are
+symbols; all communication is by symbols. But if a symbol is to serve
+any purpose of communication between one mind and another it must be a
+symbol accepted and understood by both minds. If an artist is to choose
+his symbols to suit himself, and to make them mean anything he chooses,
+who is to say what he means or whether he means anything? If a man were
+to rise and recite, with a solemn voice, words like "Ajakan maradak
+tecor sosthendi," would you know what he meant? If he wished you to
+believe that these symbols express the feeling of awe caused by the
+contemplation of the starry heavens, he would have to tell you so <i>in
+your own language</i>; and even then you would have only his word for it.
+He may have meant them to express that, but do they? The apologists of
+the new schools are continually telling us that we must give the
+necessary time and thought to learn the language of these men before we
+condemn them. Why should we? Why should not they learn the universal
+language of art? It is they who are trying to say something. When they
+have learned to speak that language and have convinced us that they have
+something to say in it which is worth listening to, then, and not till
+then, we may consent to such slight modification of it as may fit it
+more closely to their thought.</p>
+
+<p>If these gentlemen really believe that their capriciously chosen symbols
+are fit vehicles for communication with others, why do they fall back on
+that old, old symbol, the written word? Why do they introduce, in the
+very midst of a design in which everything else is dislocated, a name or
+a word in clear Roman letters? Or why do they give their pictures titles
+and, lest you should neglect to look in the catalogue, print the title
+quite carefully and legibly in the corner of the picture itself? They
+know that they must set you to hunting for their announced subject or
+you would not look twice at their puzzles.</p>
+
+<p>Now, there is only one word for this denial of all law, this
+insurrection against all custom and tradition, this assertion of
+individual license without discipline and without restraint; and that
+word is "anarchy." And, as we know, theoretic anarchy, though it may not
+always lead to actual violence, is a doctrine of destruction. It is so
+in art, and these artistic anarchists are found proclaiming that the
+public will never understand or accept their art while anything remains
+of the art of the past, and demanding that therefore the art of the past
+shall be destroyed. It is actual, physical destruction of pictures and
+statues that they call for, and in Italy, that great treasury of the
+world's art, has been raised the sinister cry: "Burn the museums!" They
+have not yet taken to the torch, but if they were sincere they would do
+it; for their doctrine calls for nothing less than the reduction of
+mankind to a state of primitive savagery that it may begin again at the
+beginning.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, they are not sincere. There may be among them those who
+honestly believe in that exaltation of the individual and that revolt
+against all law which is the danger of our age. But, for the most part,
+if they have broken from the fold and "like sheep have gone astray,"
+they have shown a very sheep-like disposition to follow the bell-wether.
+They are fond of quoting a saying of Gauguin's that "one must be either
+a revolutionist or a plagiary"; but can any one tell these
+revolutionists apart? Can any one distinguish among them such definite
+and logically developed personalities as mark even schoolmen and
+"plagiarists" like Meissonier and G&eacute;r&ocirc;me? If any one of these men stood
+alone, one might believe his eccentricities to be the mark of an extreme
+individuality; one cannot believe it when one finds the same
+eccentricities in twenty of them.</p>
+
+<p>No, it is not for the sake of unhampered personal development that young
+artists are joining these new schools; it is because they are offered a
+short cut to a kind of success. As there are no more laws and no more
+standards, there is nothing to learn. The merest student is at once set
+upon a level with the most experienced of his instructors, and boys and
+girls in their teens are hailed as masters. Art is at last made easy,
+and there are no longer any pupils, for all have become teachers. To
+borrow Doctor Johnson's phrase, "many men, many women, and many
+children" could produce art after this fashion; and they do.</p>
+
+<p>So right are the practitioners of this puerile art in their proclaimed
+belief that the public will never accept it while anything else exists,
+that one might be willing to treat it with the silent contempt it
+deserves were it not for the efforts of certain critics and writers for
+the press to convince us that it ought to be accepted. Some of these men
+seem to be intimidated by the blunders of the past. Knowing that
+contemporary criticism has damned almost every true artist of the
+nineteenth century, they are determined not to be caught napping; and
+they join in shouts of applause as each new harlequin steps upon the
+stage. They forget that it is as dangerous to praise ignorantly as to
+blame unjustly, and that the railer at genius, though he may seem more
+malevolent, will scarce appear so ridiculous to posterity as the dupe of
+the mountebank. Others of them are, no doubt, honest victims of that
+illusion of progress to which we are all more or less subject&mdash;to that
+ingrained belief that all evolution is upward and that the latest thing
+must necessarily be the best. They forget that the same process which
+has relieved man of his tail has deprived the snake of his legs and the
+kiwi of his wings. They forget that art has never been and cannot be
+continuously progressive; that it is only the sciences connected with
+art that are capable of progress; and that the "Henriade" is not a
+greater poem than the "Divine Comedy" because Voltaire has learned the
+falsity of the Ptolemaic astronomy. Finally, these writers, like other
+people, desire to seem knowing and clever; and if you appear to admire
+vastly what no one else understands you pass for a clever man.</p>
+
+<p>I have looked through a good deal of the writings of these "up-to-date"
+critics in the effort to find something like an intelligible argument
+or a definite statement of belief. I have found nothing but the
+continually repeated assumption that these new movements, in all their
+varieties, are "living" and "vital." I can find no grounds stated for
+this assumption and can suppose only that what is changing with great
+rapidity is conceived to be alive; yet I know nothing more productive of
+rapid changes than putrefaction.</p>
+
+<p>Do not be deceived. This is not vital art, it is decadent and corrupt.
+True art has always been the expression by the artist of the ideals of
+his time and of the world in which he lived&mdash;ideals which were his own
+because he was a part of that world. A living and healthy art never has
+existed and never can exist except through the mutual understanding and
+co-operation of the artist and his public. Art is made for man and has a
+social function to perform. We have a right to demand that it shall be
+both human and humane; that it shall show some sympathy in the artist
+with our thoughts and our feelings; that it shall interpret our ideals
+to us in that universal language which has grown up in the course of
+ages. We have a right to reject with pity or with scorn the stammerings
+of incompetence, the babble of lunacy, or the vaporing of imposture. But
+mutual understanding implies a duty on the part of the public as well as
+on the part of the artist, and we must give as well as take. We must be
+at the pains to learn something of the language of art in which we bid
+the artist speak. If we would have beauty from him we must sympathize
+with his aspiration for beauty. Above all, if we would have him
+interpret for us our ideals we must have ideals worthy of such
+interpretation. Without this co-operation on our part we may have a
+better art than we deserve, for noble artists will be born, and they
+will give us an art noble in its essence however mutilated and shorn of
+its effectiveness by our neglect. It is only by being worthy of it that
+we can hope to have an art we may be proud of&mdash;an art lofty in its
+inspiration, consummate in its achievement, disciplined in its strength.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+<h2>JEAN FRAN&Ccedil;OIS MILLET</h2>
+
+
+<p>Jean Fran&ccedil;ois Millet, who lived hard and died poor, is now perhaps the
+most famous artist of the nineteenth century. His slightest work is
+fought for by dealers and collectors, and his more important pictures,
+if they chance to change hands, bring colossal and almost incredible
+prices. And of all modern reputations his, so far as we can see, seems
+most likely to be enduring. If any painter of the immediate past is
+definitively numbered with the great masters, it is he. Yet the popular
+admiration for his art is based on a I misapprehension almost as
+profound as that of those contemporaries who decried and opposed him.
+They thought him violent, rude, ill-educated, a "man of the woods," a
+revolutionist, almost a communist. We are apt to think of him as a
+gentle sentimentalist, a soul full of compassion for the hard lot of the
+poor, a man whose art achieves greatness by sheer feeling rather than by
+knowledge and intellect. In spite of his own letters, in spite of the
+testimony of many who knew him well, in spite of more than one piece of
+illuminating criticism, these two misconceptions endure; and, for the
+many, Millet is still either the painter of "The Man with the Hoe," a
+powerful but somewhat exceptional work, or the painter of "L'Angelus,"
+precisely the least characteristic picture he ever produced. There is a
+legendary Millet, in many ways a very different man from the real one,
+and, while the facts of his life are well known and undisputed, the
+interpretation of them is colored by preconceptions and strained to make
+them fit the legend.</p>
+
+<p>Altogether too much, for instance, has been made of the fact that
+Millet was born a peasant. He was so, but so were half the artists and
+poets who come up to Paris and fill the schools and the caf&eacute;s of the
+student quarters. To any one who has known these young <i>rapins</i>, and
+wondered at the grave and distinguished members of the Institute into
+which many of them have afterward developed, it is evident that this
+studious youth&mdash;who read Virgil in the original and Homer and
+Shakespeare and Goethe in translations&mdash;probably had a much more
+cultivated mind and a much sounder education than most of his fellow
+students under Delaroche. Seven years after this Norman farmer's son
+came to Paris, with a pension of 600 francs voted by the town council of
+Cherbourg, the son of a Breton sabot-maker followed him there with a
+precisely similar pension voted by the town council of Roche-sur-Yon;
+and the pupil of Langlois had had at least equal opportunities with
+the pupil of Sartoris. Both cases were entirely typical of French
+methods of encouraging the fine arts, and the peasant origin of Millet
+is precisely as significant as the peasant origin of Baudry.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p02_t" id="p02_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figright"  style="width: 238px;">
+
+<a href="images/p02.jpg">
+<img src="images/p02_t.jpg" width="238" height="300"
+alt="Plate 2.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Sower.&quot; In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vanderbilt collection."
+title="Plate 2.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Sower.&quot; In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vanderbilt collection." />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 2.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Sower.&quot; In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vanderbilt collection.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Baudry persevered in the course marked out for him and, after failing
+three times, received the <i>Prix de Rome</i> and became the pensioner of the
+state. Millet took umbrage at Delaroche's explanation that his support
+was already pledged to another candidate for the prize, and left the
+<i>atelier</i> of that master after little more than a year's work. But that
+he had already acquired most of what was to be learned there is shown,
+if by nothing else, by the master's promise to push him for the prize
+the year following. This was in 1838, and for a year or two longer
+Millet worked in the life classes of Suisse and Boudin without a master.
+His pension was first cut down and then withdrawn altogether, and he
+was thrown upon his own resources. His struggles and his poverty during
+the next few years were those of many a young artist, aggravated, in his
+case, by two imprudent marriages. But during all the time that he was
+painting portraits in Cherbourg or little nudes in Paris he was steadily
+gaining reputation and making friends. If we had not the pictures
+themselves to show us how able and how well-trained a workman he was,
+the story told us by Wyatt Eaton, in "Modern French Masters," would
+convince us. It was in the last year of Millet's life that he told the
+young American how, in his early days, a dealer would come to him for a
+picture and, "having nothing painted, he would offer the dealer a book
+and ask him to wait for a little while that he might add a few touches
+to the picture." He would then go into his studio and take a fresh
+canvas, or a panel, and in two hours bring out a little nude figure,
+which he had painted during that time, and for which he would receive
+twenty or twenty-five francs. It was the work of this time that Diaz
+admired for its color and its "immortal flesh painting"; that caused
+Guichard, a pupil of Ingres, to tell his master that Millet was the
+finest draughtsman of the new school; that earned for its author the
+title of "master of the nude."</p>
+
+<p>He did all kinds of work in these days, even painting signs and
+illustrating sheet music, and it was all capital practice for a young
+man, but it was not what he wanted to do. A great deal has been made of
+the story of his overhearing some one speak of him as "a fellow who
+never paints anything but naked women," and he is represented as
+undergoing something like a sudden conversion and as resolving to "do no
+more of the devil's work." As a matter of fact, he had, from the
+first, wanted to paint "men at work in the fields," with their "fine
+attitudes," and he only tried his hand at other things because he had
+his living to earn. Sensier saw what seems to have been the first sketch
+for "The Sower" as early as 1847, and it existed long before that, while
+"The Winnower" was exhibited in 1848; and the overheard conversation is
+said to have taken place in 1849. There was nothing indecent or immoral
+in Millet's early work, and the best proof that he felt no moral
+reprobation for the painting of the nude&mdash;as what true painter,
+especially in France, ever did?&mdash;is that he returned to it in the height
+of his power and, in the picture of the little "Goose Girl" (Pl. 1) by
+the brook side, her slim, young body bared for the bath, produced the
+loveliest of his works. No, what happened to Millet in 1849 was simply
+that he resolved to do no more pot-boiling, to consult no one's taste
+but his own, to paint what he pleased and as he pleased, if he starved
+for it. He went to Barbizon for a summer's holiday and to escape the
+cholera. He stayed there because living was cheap and the place was
+healthful, and because he could find there the models and the subjects
+on which he built his highly abstract and ideal art.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p03_t" id="p03_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 320px;">
+
+<a href="images/p03.jpg">
+<img src="images/p03_t.jpg" width="320" height="239" alt="Plate 3.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Gleaners.&quot; In the Louvre." title="Plate 3.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Gleaners.&quot;In the Louvre." />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 3.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Gleaners.&quot; In the Louvre.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>At Barbizon he neither resumed the costume nor led the life of a
+peasant. He wore sabots, as hundreds of other artists have done, before
+and since, when living in the country in France. Sabots are very cheap
+and very dry and not uncomfortable when you have acquired the knack of
+wearing them. In other respects he dressed and lived like a small
+bourgeois, and was <i>monsieur</i> to the people about him. Barbizon was
+already a summer resort for artists before he came there, and the inn
+was full of painters; while others, of whom Rousseau was one, were
+settled there more or less permanently. It is but a short distance from
+Paris, and the exhibitions and museums were readily accessible. The life
+that Millet lived there was that of many poor, self-respecting,
+hard-working artists, and if he had been a landscape painter that life
+would never have seemed in any way exceptional. It is only because he
+was a painter of the figure that it seems odd he should have lived in
+the country; only because he painted peasants that he has been thought
+of as a peasant himself. If he accepted the name, with a kind of pride,
+it was in protest against the frivolity and artificiality of the
+fashionable art of the day. But if too much has been made of Millet's
+peasant origin, perhaps hardly enough has been made of his race. It is
+at least interesting that the two Frenchmen whose art has most in
+common with his, Nicolas Poussin and Pierre Corneille, should have been
+Normans like himself. In the severely restrained, grandly simple,
+profoundly classical work of these three men, that hard-headed,
+strong-handed, austere, and manly race has found its artistic
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>For Millet is neither a revolutionary nor a sentimentalist, nor even a
+romanticist; he is essentially a classicist of the classicists, a
+conservative of the conservatives, the one modern exemplar of the grand
+style. It is because his art is so old that it was "too new" for even
+Corot to understand it; because he harked back beyond the
+pseudoclassicism of his time to the great art of the past, and was
+classic as Phidias and Giotto and Michelangelo were classic, that he
+seemed strange to his contemporaries. In everything he was conservative.
+He hated change; he wanted things to remain as they had always been. He
+did not especially pity the hard lot of the peasant; he considered it
+the natural and inevitable lot of man who "eats bread in the sweat of
+his brow." He wanted the people he painted "to look as if they belonged
+to their place&mdash;as if it would be impossible for them ever to think of
+being anything else but what they are." In the herdsman and the
+shepherd, the sower and the reaper, he saw the immemorial types of
+humanity whose labors have endured since the world began and were
+essentially what they now are when Virgil wrote his "Georgics" and when
+Jacob kept the flocks of Laban. This is the note of all his work. It is
+the permanent, the essential, the eternally significant that he paints.
+The apparent localization of his subjects in time and place is an
+illusion. He is not concerned with the nineteenth century or with
+Barbizon but with mankind. At the very moment when the English
+Pre-raphaelites were trying to found a great art on the exhaustive
+imitation of natural detail, he eliminated detail as much as possible.
+At the very beginning of our modern preoccupation with the direct
+representation of facts, he abandoned study from the model almost
+entirely and could say that he "had never painted from nature." His
+subjects would have struck the amiable Sir Joshua as trivial, yet no one
+has ever more completely followed that writer's precepts. His confession
+of faith is in the words, "One must be able to make use of the trivial
+for the expression of the sublime"; and this painter of "rustic genre"
+is the world's greatest master of the sublime after Michelangelo.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p04_t" id="p04_t"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 320px;">
+
+<a href="images/p04.jpg">
+<img src="images/p04_t.jpg" width="320" height="225"
+alt="Plate 4.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Spaders.&quot;"
+title="Plate 4.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Spaders.&quot;" />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 4.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Spaders.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The comparison with Michelangelo is inevitable and has been made again
+and again by those who have felt the elemental grandeur of Millet's
+work. As a recent writer has remarked: "An art highly intellectualized,
+so as to convey a great idea with the lucidity of language, must needs
+be controlled by genius akin to that which inspired the ceiling
+paintings of the Sistine Chapel."<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> This was written of the Trajanic
+sculptors, whose works both Michelangelo and Millet studied and admired,
+and indeed it is to this old Roman art, or to the still older art of
+Greece, that one must go for the truest parallel of Millet's temper and
+his manner of working. He was less impatient, less romantic and
+emotional than Michelangelo; he was graver, quieter, more serene; and if
+he had little of the Greek sensuousness and the Greek love of physical
+beauty, he had much of the antique clarity and simplicity. To express
+his idea clearly, logically, and forcibly; to make a work of art that
+should be "all of a piece" and in which "things should be where they
+are for a purpose"; to admit nothing for display, for ornament, even for
+beauty, that did not necessarily and inevitably grow out of his central
+theme, and to suppress with an iron rigidity everything useless or
+superfluous&mdash;this was his constant and conscious effort. It is an ideal
+eminently austere and intellectual&mdash;an ideal, above all, especially and
+eternally classic.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Eug&eacute;nie Strong, "Roman Sculpture," p. 224.</p></div>
+
+<p>Take, for an instance, the earliest of his masterpieces, the first great
+picture by which he marked his emancipation and his determination
+henceforth to produce art as he understood it without regard to the
+preferences of others. Many of his preliminary drawings and studies
+exist and we can trace, more or less clearly, the process by which the
+final result was arrived at. At first we have merely a peasant sowing
+grain; an everyday incident, truly enough observed but nothing more.
+Gradually the background is cut down, the space restricted, the figure
+enlarged until it fills its frame as a metope of the Parthenon is
+filled. The gesture is ever enlarged and given more sweep and majesty,
+the silhouette is simplified and divested of all accidental or
+insignificant detail. A thousand previous observations are compared and
+resumed in one general and comprehensive formula, and the typical has
+been evolved from the actual. What generations of Greek sculptors did in
+their slow perfectioning of certain fixed types he has done almost at
+once. We have no longer a man sowing, but "The Sower" (Pl. 2),
+justifying the title he instinctively gave it by its air of permanence,
+of inevitability, of universality. All the significance which there is
+or ever has been for mankind in that prim&aelig;val action of sowing the seed
+is crystallized into its necessary expression. The thing is done once
+for all, and need never&mdash;can never be done again. Has any one else
+had this power since Michelangelo created his "Adam"?</p>
+
+<p><a name="p05_t" id="p05_t"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 320px;">
+
+<a href="images/p05.jpg">
+<img src="images/p05_t.jpg" width="320" height="251"
+alt="Plate 5.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Potato Planters.&quot; In the Quincy A. Shaw Collection."
+title="Plate 5.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Potato Planters.&quot; In the Quincy A. Shaw Collection." />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 5.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Potato Planters.&quot; In the Quincy A. Shaw Collection.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>If even Millet never again attained quite the august impressiveness of
+this picture it is because no other action of rustic man has so wide or
+so deep a meaning for us as this of sowing. All the meaning there is in
+an action he could make us feel with entire certainty, and always he
+proceeds by this method of elimination, concentration, simplification,
+insistence on the essential and the essential only. One of the most
+perfect of all his pictures&mdash;more perfect than "The Sower" on account of
+qualities of mere painting, of color, and of the rendering of landscape,
+of which I shall speak later&mdash;is "The Gleaners" (Pl. 3). Here one figure
+is not enough to express the continuousness of the movement; the utmost
+simplification will not make you feel, as powerfully as he wishes you to
+feel it, the crawling progress, the bending together of back and
+thighs, the groping of worn fingers in the stubble. The line must be
+reinforced and reduplicated, and a second figure, almost a facsimile of
+the first, is added. Even this is not enough. He adds a third figure,
+not gathering the ear, but about to do so, standing, but stooped forward
+and bounded by one great, almost uninterrupted curve from the peak of
+the cap over her eyes to the heel which half slips out of the sabot, and
+the thing is done. The whole day's work is resumed in that one moment.
+The task has endured for hours and will endure till sunset, with only an
+occasional break while the back is half-straightened&mdash;there is not time
+to straighten it wholly. It is the triumph of significant composition,
+as "The Sower" is the triumph of significant draughtsmanship.</p>
+
+<p>Or, when an action is more complicated and difficult of suggestion, as
+is that, for instance, of digging, he takes it at the beginning and at
+the end, as in "The Spaders" (Pl. 4), and makes you understand
+everything between. One man is doubled over his spade, his whole weight
+brought to bear on the pressing foot which drives the blade into the
+ground. The other, with arms outstretched, gives the twisting motion
+which lets the loosened earth fall where it is to lie. Each of these
+positions is so thoroughly understood and so definitely expressed that
+all the other positions of the action are implied in them. You feel the
+recurrent rhythm of the movement and could almost count the falling of
+the clods.</p>
+
+<p>So far did Millet push the elimination of non-essentials that his heads
+have often scarcely any features, his hands, one might say, are without
+fingers, and his draperies are so simplified as to suggest the witty
+remark that his peasants are too poor to afford any folds in their
+garments. The setting of the great, bony planes of jaw and cheek and
+temple, the bulk and solidity of the skull, and the direction of the
+face&mdash;these were, often enough, all he wanted of a head. Look at the
+hand of the woman in "The Potato Planters" (Pl. 5), or at those of the
+man in the same picture, and see how little detail there is in them, yet
+how surely the master's sovereign draughtsmanship has made you feel
+their actual structure and function! And how inevitably the garments,
+with their few and simple folds, mould and accent the figures beneath
+them, "becoming, as it were, a part of the body and expressing, even
+more than the nude, the larger and simpler forms of nature"! How
+explicitly the action of the bodies is registered, how perfectly the
+amount of effort apparent is proportioned to the end to be attained! One
+can feel, to an ounce, it seems, the strain upon the muscles implied by
+that hoe-full of earth. Or look at the easier attitude of "The
+Grafter" (Pl. 6), engaged upon his gentler task, and at the monumental
+silhouette of the wife, standing there, babe in arms, a type of eternal
+motherhood and of the fruitfulness to come.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p06_t" id="p06_t"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 320px;">
+
+<a href="images/p06.jpg">
+<img src="images/p06_t.jpg" width="320" height="257"
+alt="Plate 6.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Grafter.&quot; In the collection of William Rockefeller."
+title="Plate 6.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Grafter.&quot; In the collection of William Rockefeller." />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 6.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Grafter.&quot; In the collection of William Rockefeller.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Oftener than anything, perhaps, it was the sense of weight that
+interested Millet. It is the adjustment of her body to the weight of the
+child she carries that gives her statuesque pose to the wife of the
+grafter. It is the drag of the buckets upon the arms that gives her
+whole character to the magnificent "Woman Carrying Water," in the
+Vanderbilt collection. It is the erect carriage, the cautious, rhythmic
+walk, keeping step together, forced upon them by the sense of weight,
+which gives that gravity and solemnity to the bearers of "The New-Born
+Calf" (Pl. 7), which was ridiculed by Millet's critics as more befitting
+the bearers of the bull Apis or the Holy Sacrament. The artist himself
+was explicit in this instance as in that of the "Woman Carrying Water."
+"The expression of two men carrying a load on a litter," he says,
+"naturally depends on the weight which rests upon their arms. Thus, if
+the weight is equal, their expression will be the same, whether they
+bear the Ark of the Covenant or a calf, an ingot of gold or a stone."
+Find that expression, whether in face or figure, render it clearly,
+"with largeness and simplicity," and you have a great, a grave, a
+classic work of art. "We are never so truly Greek," he said, "as when we
+are simply painting our own impressions." Certainly his own way of
+painting his impressions was more Greek than anything else in the whole
+range of modern art.</p>
+
+<p>In the epic grandeur of such pictures as these there is something akin
+to sadness, though assuredly Millet did not mean them to be sad. Did he
+not say of the "Woman Carrying Water": "I have avoided, as I always do,
+with a sort of horror, everything that might verge on the sentimental"?
+He wished her to seem "to do her work simply and cheerfully ... as a
+part of her daily task and the habit of her life." And he was not always
+in the austere and epical mood. He could be idyllic as well, and if he
+could not see "the joyous side" of life or nature he could feel and make
+us feel the charm of tranquillity. Indeed, this remark of his about the
+joyous side of things was made in the dark, early days when life was
+hardest for him. He broadened in his view as he grew older and
+conditions became more tolerable, and he has painted a whole series of
+little pictures of family life and of childhood that, in their smiling
+seriousness, are endlessly delightful. The same science, the same
+thoughtfulness, the same concentration and intellectual grasp that
+defined for us the superb gesture of "The Sower" have gone to the
+depiction of the adorable uncertainty, between walking and falling, of
+those "First Steps" (Pl. 8) from the mother's lap to the outstretched
+arms of the father; and the result, in this case as in the other, is a
+thing perfectly and permanently expressed. Whatever Millet has done is
+done. He has "characterized the type," as it was his dream to do, and
+written "hands off" across his subject for all future adventurers.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, he rises to an almost lyric fervor in that picture of the
+little "Goose Girl" bathing, which is one of the most purely and
+exquisitely beautiful things in art. In this smooth, young body
+quivering with anticipation of the coolness of the water; in these
+rounded, slender limbs with their long, firm, supple lines; in the
+unconscious, half-awkward grace of attitude and in the glory of
+sunlight splashing through the shadow of the willows, there is a whole
+song of joy and youth and the goodness of the world. The picture exists
+in a drawing or pastel, which has been photographed by Braun, as well as
+in the oil-painting, and Millet's habit of returning again and again to
+a favorite subject renders it difficult to be certain which is the
+earlier of the two; but I imagine this drawing to be a study for the
+picture. At first sight the figure in it is more obviously beautiful
+than in the other version, and it is only after a time that one begins
+to understand the changes that the artist was impelled to make. It is
+almost too graceful, too much like an antique nymph. No one could find
+any fault with it, but by an almost imperceptible stiffening of the line
+here and there, a little greater turn of the foot upon the ankle and of
+the hand upon the wrist, the figure in the painting has been given an
+accent of rusticity that makes it more human, more natural, and more
+appealing. She is no longer a possible Galatea or Arethusa, she is only
+a goose girl, and we feel but the more strongly on that account the
+eternal poem of the healthy human form.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p07_t" id="p07_t"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 320px;">
+
+<a href="images/p07.jpg">
+<img src="images/p07_t.jpg" width="320" height="254"
+alt="Plate 7.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The New-Born Calf.&quot; In the Art Institute, Chicago."
+title="Plate 7.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The New-Born Calf.&quot; In the Art Institute, Chicago." />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 7.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The New-Born Calf.&quot; In the Art Institute, Chicago.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The especial study of the nineteenth century was landscape, and Millet
+was so far a man of his time that he was a great landscape painter; but
+his treatment of landscape was unlike any other, and, like his own
+treatment of the figure, in its insistence on essentials, its
+elimination of the accidental, its austere and grand simplicity. I have
+heard, somewhere, a story of his saying, in answer to praise of his work
+or inquiry as to his meaning: "I was trying to express the difference
+between the things that lie flat and the things that stand upright."
+That is the real motive of one of his masterpieces&mdash;one that in some
+moods seems the greatest of them all&mdash;"The Shepherdess" (Pl. 9), that
+is, or used to be, in the Chauchard collection. In this nobly tranquil
+work, in which there is no hint of sadness or revolt, are to be found
+all his usual inevitableness of composition and perfection of
+draughtsmanship&mdash;note the effect of repetition in the sheep, "forty
+feeding like one"&mdash;but the glory of the picture is in the infinite
+recession of the plain that lies flat, the exact notation of the
+successive positions upon it of the things that stand upright, from the
+trees and the hay wain in the extreme distance, almost lost in sky,
+through the sheep and the sheep-dog and the shepherdess herself,
+knitting so quietly, to the dandelions in the foreground, each with its
+"aureole" of light. Of these simple, geometrical relations, and of the
+enveloping light and air by which they are expressed, he has made a hymn
+of praise.</p>
+
+<p>The background of "The Gleaners," with its baking stubble-field under
+the midday sun, its grain stacks and laborers and distant farmstead, all
+tremulous in the reflected waves of heat, indistinct and almost
+indecipherable yet unmistakable, is nearly as wonderful; and no one has
+ever so rendered the solemnity and the mystery of night as has he in the
+marvellous "Sheepfold" of the Walters collection. But the greatest of
+all his landscapes&mdash;one of the greatest landscapes ever painted&mdash;is his
+"Spring" (Pl. 10), of the Louvre, a pure landscape this time, containing
+no figure. In the intense green of the sunlit woods against the black
+rain-clouds that are passing away, in the jewel-like brilliancy of the
+blossoming apple-trees, and the wet grass in that clear air after the
+shower; in the glorious rainbow drawn in dancing light across the sky,
+we may see, if anywhere in art, some reflection of the "infinite
+splendors" which Millet tells us he saw in nature.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p08_t" id="p08_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 320px;">
+
+<a href="images/p08.jpg">
+<img src="images/p08_t.jpg" width="320" height="206"
+alt="Plate 8.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The First Steps.&quot;"
+title="Plate 8.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The First Steps.&quot;" />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 8.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The First Steps.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the face of such results as these it seems absurd to discuss the
+question whether or not Millet was technically a master of his trade, as
+if the methods that produced them could possibly be anything but good
+methods for the purpose; but it is still too much the fashion to say and
+think that the great artist was a poor painter&mdash;to speak slightingly of
+his accomplishment in oil-painting and to seem to prefer his drawings
+and pastels to his pictures. We have seen that he was a supremely able
+technician in his pot-boiling days and that the color and handling of
+his early pictures were greatly admired by so brilliant a virtuoso as
+Diaz. But this "flowery manner" would not lend itself to the expression
+of his new aims and he had to invent another. He did so stumblingly at
+first, and the earliest pictures of his grand style have a certain
+harshness and ruggedness of surface and heaviness of color which his
+critics could not forgive any more than the Impressionists, who have
+outdone that ruggedness, can forgive him his frequent use of a warm
+general tone inclining to brownness. His ideal of form and of
+composition he possessed complete from the beginning; his mastery of
+light and color and the handling of materials was slower of acquirement;
+but he did acquire it, and in the end he is as absolute a master of
+painting as of drawing. He did not see nature in blue and violet, as
+Monet has taught us to see it, and little felicities and facilities of
+rendering, and anything approaching cleverness or the parade of
+virtuosity he hated; but he knew just what could be done with thick or
+thin painting, with opaque or transparent pigment, and he could make his
+few and simple colors say anything he chose. In his mature work there is
+a profound knowledge of the means to be employed and a great economy
+in their use, and there is no approach to indiscriminate or meaningless
+loading. "Things are where they are for a purpose," and if the surface
+of a picture is rough in any place it is because just that degree of
+roughness was necessary to attain the desired effect. He could make mere
+paint express light as few artists have been able to do&mdash;"The
+Shepherdess" is flooded with it&mdash;and he could do this without any
+sacrifice of the sense of substance in the things on which the light
+falls. If some of his canvases are brown it is because brown seemed to
+him the appropriate note to express what he had to say; "The Gleaners"
+glows with almost the richness of a Giorgione, and other pictures are
+honey-toned or cool and silvery or splendidly brilliant. And in whatever
+key he painted, the harmony of his tones and colors is as large, as
+simple, and as perfect as the harmony of his lines and masses.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p09_t" id="p09_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 320px;">
+
+<a href="images/p09.jpg">
+<img src="images/p09_t.jpg" width="320" height="263"
+alt="Plate 9.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Shepherdess.&quot; In the Chauchard collection, Louvre."
+title="Plate 9.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Shepherdess.&quot; In the Chauchard collection, Louvre." />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 9.&mdash;Millet. &quot;The Shepherdess.&quot; In the Chauchard collection, Louvre.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But if we cannot admit that Millet's drawings are better than his
+paintings, we may be very glad he did them. His great epic of the soil
+must have lacked many episodes, perhaps whole books and cantos, if it
+had been written only in the slower and more elaborate method. The
+comparative slightness and rapidity of execution of his drawings and
+pastels enabled him to register many inventions and observations that we
+must otherwise have missed, and many of these are of the highest value.
+His long training in seizing the essential in anything he saw enabled
+him, often, to put more meaning into a single rapid line than another
+could put into a day's painful labor, and some of his slightest sketches
+are astonishingly and commandingly expressive. Other of his drawings
+were worked out and pondered over almost as lovingly as his completest
+pictures. But so instinctively and inevitably was he a composer that
+everything he touched is a complete whole&mdash;his merest sketch or his most
+elaborated design is a unit. He has left no fragments. His paintings,
+his countless drawings, his few etchings and woodcuts are all of a
+piece. About everything there is that air of finality which marks the
+work destined to become permanently a classic.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p10_t" id="p10_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 320px;">
+
+<a href="images/p10.jpg">
+<img src="images/p10_t.jpg" width="320" height="229"
+alt="Plate 10.&mdash;Millet. &quot;Spring.&quot; In the Louvre."
+title="Plate 10.&mdash;Millet. &quot;Spring.&quot; In the Louvre." />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 10.&mdash;Millet. &quot;Spring.&quot; In the Louvre.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Here and there, by one or another writer, most or all of what I have
+been trying to say has been said already. It is the more likely to be
+true. And if these true things have been said, many other things have
+been said also which seem to me not so true, or little to the purpose,
+so that the image I have been trying to create must differ, for better
+or for worse, from that which another might have made. At least I may
+have looked at the truth from a slightly different angle and so have
+shown it in a new perspective. And, at any rate, it is well that true
+things should be said again from time to time. It can do no harm that
+one more person should endeavor to give a reason for his admiration of a
+great and true artist and should express his conviction that among the
+world's great masters the final place of Jean Fran&ccedil;ois Millet is not
+destined to be the lowest.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+<h2>THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a></h2>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Read before the joint meeting of The American Academy of
+Arts and Letters and The National Institute of Arts and Letters,
+December 13, 1912.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>In these days all of us, even Academicians, are to some extent believers
+in progress. Our golden age is no longer in the past, but in the future.
+We know that our early ancestors were a race of wretched cave-dwellers,
+and we believe that our still earlier ancestors were possessed of tails
+and pointed ears. Having come so far, we are sometimes inclined to
+forget that not every step has been an advance and to entertain an
+illogical confidence that each future step must carry us still further
+forward; having indubitably progressed in many things, we think of
+ourselves as progressing in all. And as the pace of progress in science
+and in material things has become more and more rapid, we have come to
+expect a similar pace in art and letters, to imagine that the art of the
+future must be far finer than the art of the present or than that of the
+past, and that the art of one decade, or even of one year, must
+supersede that of the preceding decade or the preceding year, as the
+1913 model in automobiles supersedes the model of 1912. More than ever
+before "To have done is to hang quite out of fashion," and the only
+title to consideration is to do something quite obviously new or to
+proclaim one's intention of doing something newer. The race grows madder
+and madder. It was scarce two years since we first heard of "Cubism"
+when the "Futurists" were calling the "Cubists" reactionary. Even the
+gasping critics, pounding manfully in the rear, have thrown away all
+impedimenta of traditional standards in the desperate effort to keep up
+with what seems less a march than a stampede.</p>
+
+<p>But while we talk so loudly of progress in the arts we have an uneasy
+feeling that we are not really progressing. If our belief in our own art
+were as full-blooded as was that of the great creative epochs, we should
+scarce be so reverent of the art of the past. It is, perhaps, a sign of
+an&aelig;mia that we have become founders of museums and conservers of old
+buildings. If we are so careful of our heritage, it is surely from some
+doubt of our ability to replace it. When art has been vigorously alive
+it has been ruthless in its treatment of what has gone before. No
+cathedral builder thought of reconciling his own work to that of the
+builder who preceded him; he built in his own way, confident of its
+superiority. And when the Renaissance builder came, in his turn, he
+contemptuously dismissed all medi&aelig;val art as "Gothic" and barbarous, and
+was as ready to tear down an old fa&ccedil;ade as to build a new one. Even the
+most cock-sure of our moderns might hesitate to emulate Michelangelo in
+his calm destruction of three frescoes by Perugino to make room for his
+own "Last Judgment." He, at least, had the full courage of his
+convictions, and his opinion of Perugino is of record.</p>
+
+<p>Not all of us would consider even Michelangelo's arrogance entirely
+justified, but it is not only the Michelangelos who have had this belief
+in themselves. Apparently the confidence of progress has been as great
+in times that now seem to us decadent as in times that we think of as
+truly progressive. The past, or at least the immediate past, has always
+seemed "out of date," and each generation, as it made its entrance on
+the stage, has plumed itself upon its superiority to that which was
+leaving it. The architect of the most debased baroque grafted his
+"improvements" upon the buildings of the high Renaissance with an
+assurance not less than that with which David and his contemporaries
+banished the whole charming art of the eighteenth century. Van Orley and
+Frans Floris were as sure of their advance upon the ancient Flemish
+painting of the Van Eycks and of Memling as Rubens himself must have
+been of his advance upon them.</p>
+
+<p>We can see plainly enough that in at least some of these cases the sense
+of progress was an illusion. There was movement, but it was not always
+forward movement. And if progress was illusory in some instances, may it
+not, possibly, have been so in all? It is at least worth inquiry how far
+the fine arts have ever been in a state of true progress, going forward
+regularly from good to better, each generation building on the work of
+its predecessors and surpassing that work, in the way in which science
+has normally progressed when material conditions were favorable.</p>
+
+<p>If, with a view to answering this question, we examine, however
+cursorily, the history of the five great arts, we shall find a somewhat
+different state of affairs in the case of each. In the end it may be
+possible to formulate something like a general rule that shall accord
+with all the facts. Let us begin with the greatest and simplest of the
+arts, the art of poetry.</p>
+
+<p>In the history of poetry we shall find less evidence of progress than
+anywhere else, for it will be seen that its acknowledged masterpieces
+are almost invariably near the beginning of a series rather than near
+the end. Almost as soon as a clear and flexible language has been formed
+by any people, a great poem has been composed in that language, which
+has remained not only unsurpassed, but unequalled, by any subsequent
+work. Homer is for us, as he was for the Greeks, the greatest of their
+poets; and if the opinion could be taken of all cultivated readers in
+those nations that have inherited the Greek tradition, it is doubtful
+whether he would not be acclaimed the greatest poet of the ages. Dante
+has remained the first of Italian poets, as he was one of the earliest.
+Chaucer, who wrote when our language was transforming itself from
+Anglo-Saxon into English, has still lovers who are willing for his sake
+to master what is to them almost a foreign tongue, and yet other lovers
+who ask for new translations of his works into our modern idiom; while
+Shakespeare, who wrote almost as soon as that transformation had been
+accomplished, is universally reckoned one of the greatest of world
+poets. There have, indeed, been true poets at almost all stages of the
+world's history, but the pre-eminence of such masters as these can
+hardly be questioned, and if we looked to poetry alone for a type of the
+arts, we should almost be forced to conclude that art is the reverse of
+progressive. We should think of it as gushing forth in full splendor
+when the world is ready for it, and as unable ever again to rise to the
+level of its fount.</p>
+
+<p>The art of architecture is later in its beginning than that of poetry,
+for it can exist only when men have learned to build solidly and
+permanently. A nomad may be a poet, but he cannot be an architect; a
+herdsman might have written the Book of Job, but the great builders are
+dwellers in cities. But since men first learned to build they have never
+quite forgotten how to do so. At all times there have been somewhere
+peoples who knew enough of building to mould its utility into forms of
+beauty, and the history of architecture may be read more continuously
+than that of any other art. It is a history of constant change and of
+continuous development, each people and each age forming out of the old
+elements a new style which should express its mind, and each style
+reaching its point of greatest distinctiveness only to begin a further
+transformation into something else; but is it a history of progress?
+Building, indeed, has progressed at one time or another. The Romans,
+with their domes and arches, were more scientific builders than the
+Greeks, with their simple post and lintel, but were they better
+architects? We of to-day, with our steel construction, can scrape the
+sky with erections that would have amazed the boldest of medi&aelig;val
+craftsmen; can we equal his art? If we ask where in the history of
+architecture do its masterpieces appear, the answer must be: "Almost
+anywhere." Wherever men have had the wealth and the energy to build
+greatly, they have builded beautifully, and the distinctions are less
+between style and style or epoch and epoch than between building and
+building: The masterpieces of one time are as the masterpieces of
+another, and no man may say that the nave of Amiens is finer than the
+Parthenon or that the Parthenon is nobler than the nave of Amiens. One
+may say only that each is perfect in its kind, a supreme expression of
+the human spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Of the art of music I must speak with the diffidence becoming to the
+ignorant; but it seems to me to consist of two elements and to contain
+an inspirational art as direct and as simple as that of poetry, and a
+science so difficult that its fullest mastery is of very recent
+achievement. In melodic invention it is so far from progressive that its
+most brilliant masters are often content to elaborate and to decorate a
+theme old enough to have no history&mdash;a theme the inventor of which has
+been so entirely forgotten that we think of it as sprung not from the
+mind of one man, but from that of a whole people, and call it a
+folk-song. The song is almost as old as the race, but the symphony has
+had to wait for the invention of many instruments and for a mastery of
+the laws of harmony, and so symphonic music is a modern art. We are
+still adding new instruments to the orchestra and admitting to our
+compositions new combinations of sounds, but have we in a hundred years
+made any essential progress even in this part of the art? Have we
+produced anything, I will not say greater, but anything as great as the
+noblest works of Bach and Beethoven?</p>
+
+<p>Already, and before considering the arts of painting and sculpture, we
+are coming within sight of our general law. This law seems to be that,
+so far as an art is dependent upon any form of exact knowledge, so far
+it partakes of the nature of science and is capable of progress. So far
+as it is expressive of a mind and soul, its greatness is dependent upon
+the greatness of that mind and soul, and it is incapable of progress. It
+may even be the reverse of progressive, because as an art becomes more
+complicated and makes ever greater demands upon technical mastery, it
+becomes more difficult as a medium of expression, while the mind to be
+expressed becomes more sophisticated and less easy of expression in any
+medium. It would take a greater mind than Homer's to express modern
+ideas in modern verse with Homer's serene perfection; it would take,
+perhaps, a greater mind than Bach's to employ all the resources of
+modern music with his glorious ease and directness. And greater minds
+than those of Bach and Homer the world has not often the felicity to
+possess.</p>
+
+<p>The arts of painting and sculpture are imitative arts above all others,
+and therefore more dependent than any others upon exact knowledge, more
+tinged with the quality of science. Let us see how they illustrate our
+supposed law.</p>
+
+<p>Sculpture depends, as does architecture, upon certain laws of proportion
+in space which are analogous to the laws of proportion in time and in
+pitch upon which music is founded. But as sculpture represents the human
+figure, whereas architecture and music represent nothing, sculpture
+requires for its perfection the mastery of an additional science, which
+is the knowledge of the structure and movement of the human body. This
+knowledge may be acquired with some rapidity, especially in times and
+countries where man is often seen unclothed. So, in the history of
+civilizations, sculpture developed early, after poetry, but with
+architecture, and before painting and polyphonic music. It reached the
+greatest perfection of which it is capable in the age of Pericles, and
+from that time progress was impossible to it, and for a thousand years
+its movement was one of decline. After the dark ages sculpture was one
+of the first arts to revive; and again it develops rapidly&mdash;though not
+so rapidly as before, conditions of custom and climate being less
+favorable to it&mdash;until it reaches, in the first half of the sixteenth
+century, something near its former perfection. Again it can go no
+further; and since then it has changed but has not progressed. In
+Phidias, by which name I would signify the sculptor of the pediments of
+the Parthenon, we have the coincidence of a superlatively great artist
+with the moment of technical and scientific perfection in the art, and a
+similar coincidence crowns the work of Michelangelo with a peculiar
+glory. But, apart from the work of these two men, the essential value
+of a work of sculpture is by no means always equal to its technical and
+scientific completeness. There are archaic statues that are almost as
+nobly beautiful as any work by Phidias and more beautiful than almost
+any work that has been done since his time. There are bits of Gothic
+sculpture that are more valuable expressions of human feeling than
+anything produced by the contemporaries of Buonarroti. Even in times of
+decadence a great artist has created finer things than could be
+accomplished by a mediocre talent of the great epochs, and the world
+could ill spare the Victory of Samothrace or the portrait busts of
+Houdon.</p>
+
+<p>As sculpture is one of the simplest of the arts, painting is one of the
+most complicated. The harmonies it constructs are composed of almost
+innumerable elements of lines and forms and colors and degrees of
+light and dark, and the science it professes is no less than that of the
+visible aspect of the whole of nature&mdash;a science so vast that it never
+has been and perhaps never can be mastered in its totality. Anything
+approaching a complete art of painting can exist only in an advanced
+stage of civilization. An entirely complete art of painting never has
+existed and probably never will exist. The history of painting, after
+its early stages, is a history of loss here balancing gain there, of a
+new means of expression acquired at the cost of an old one.</p>
+
+<p>We know comparatively little of the painting of antiquity, but we have
+no reason to suppose that that art, however admirable, ever attained to
+ripeness, and we know that the painting of the Orient has stopped short
+at a comparatively early stage of development. For our purpose the art
+to be studied is the painting of modern times in Europe from its origin
+in the Middle Ages. Even in the beginning, or before the beginning,
+while painting is a decadent reminiscence of the past rather than a
+prophecy of the new birth, there are decorative splendors in the
+Byzantine mosaics hardly to be recaptured. Then comes primitive
+painting, an art of the line and of pure color with little modulation
+and no attempt at the rendering of solid form. It gradually attains to
+some sense of relief by the use of degrees of light and less light; but
+the instant it admits the true shadow the old brightness and purity of
+color have become impossible. The line remains dominant for a time and
+is carried to the pitch of refinement and beauty, but the love for solid
+form gradually overcomes it, and in the art of the high Renaissance it
+takes a second place. Then light-and-shade begins to be studied for its
+own sake; color, no longer pure and bright, but deep and resonant, comes
+in again; the line vanishes altogether, and even form becomes
+secondary. The last step is taken by Rembrandt, and even color is
+subordinated to light-and-shade, which exists alone in a world of
+brownness. At every step there has been progress, but there has also
+been regress. Perhaps the greatest balance of gain against loss and the
+nearest approach to a complete art of painting were with the great
+Venetians. The transformation is still going on, and in our own day we
+have conquered some corners of the science of visible aspects which were
+unexplored by our ancestors. But the balance has turned against us; our
+loss has been greater than our gain; and our art, even in its scientific
+aspect, is inferior to that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.</p>
+
+<p>And just because there never has been a complete art of painting,
+entirely rounded and perfected, it is the clearer to us that the final
+value of a work in that art never has depended on its approach to such
+completion. There is no one supreme master of painting but a long
+succession of masters of different yet equal glory. If the masterpieces
+of architecture are everywhere because there has often been a complete
+art of architecture, the masterpieces of painting are everywhere for the
+opposite reason. And if we do not always value a master the more as his
+art is more nearly complete, neither do we always value him especially
+who has placed new scientific conquests at the disposal of art. Palma
+Vecchio painted by the side of Titian, but he is only a minor master;
+Botticelli remained of the generation before Leonardo, but he is one of
+the immortal great. Paolo Ucello, by his study of perspective, made a
+distinct advance in pictorial science, but his interest for us is purely
+historic; Fra Angelico made no advance whatever, but he practised
+consummately the current art as he found it, and his work is eternally
+delightful. At every stage of its development the art of painting has
+been a sufficient medium for the expression of a great man's mind; and
+wherever and whenever a great man has practised it, the result has been
+a great and permanently valuable work of art.</p>
+
+<p>For this seems, finally, to be the law of all the arts&mdash;the one
+essential prerequisite to the production of a great work of art is a
+great man. You cannot have the art without the man, and when you have
+the man you have the art. His time and his surroundings will color him;
+his art will not be at one time or place precisely what it might be at
+another; but at bottom the art is the man and at all times and in all
+countries is just as great as the man.</p>
+
+<p>Let us clear our minds, then, of the illusion that there is in any
+important sense such a thing as progress in the fine arts. We may with
+a clear conscience judge every new work for what it appears in itself to
+be, asking of it that it be noble and beautiful and reasonable, not that
+it be novel or progressive. If it be great art it will always be novel
+enough, for there will be a great mind behind it, and no two great minds
+are alike. And if it be novel without being great, how shall we be the
+better off? There are enough forms of mediocre or evil art in the world
+already. Being no longer intimidated by the fetich of progress, when a
+thing calling itself a work of art seems to us hideous and degraded,
+indecent and insane, we shall have the courage to say so and shall not
+care to investigate it further. Detestable things have been produced in
+the past, and they are none the less detestable because we are able to
+see how they came to be produced. Detestable things are produced now,
+and they will be no more admirable if we learn to understand the minds
+that create them. Even should such things prove to be not the mere
+freaks of a diseased intellect that they seem but a necessary outgrowth
+of the conditions of the age and a true prophecy of "the art of the
+future," they are not necessarily the better for that. It is only that
+the future will be very unlucky in its art.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+<h2>RAPHAEL</h2>
+
+
+<p>There used to be on the cover of the "Portfolio Monographs" little
+medallions of Raphael and Rembrandt, placed there, as the editor, Mr.
+Hamerton, has somewhere explained, as portraits of the two most widely
+influential artists that ever lived. In the eighteenth century, one
+imagines, Rembrandt's presence by the side of Raphael would have been
+thought little less than a scandal. To-day it is Raphael's place that
+would be contested, and he would be superseded, likely enough, by
+Velazquez.</p>
+
+<p>There is no more striking instance of the vicissitudes of critical
+opinion than the sudden fall of Raphael from his conceded rank as "the
+prince of painters." Up to the middle of the nineteenth century his
+right to that title was so uncontested that it alone was a sufficient
+identification of him&mdash;only one man could possibly be meant. That he
+should ever need defending or re-explaining to a generation grown cold
+to him would have seemed incredible. Then came the rediscovery of an
+earlier art that seemed more frank and simple than his; still later the
+discovery of Rembrandt and Velazquez&mdash;the romanticist and the
+naturalist&mdash;and Raphael, as a living influence, almost ceased to exist.
+It was but a few years ago that the author of a volume of essays on art
+was gravely praised by a reviewer for the purely accidental circumstance
+that that volume contained no essay on Raphael; and a little later the
+writer of a book on the pictures in Rome "had to confess unutterable
+boredom" in the presence of the Stanze of the Vatican.</p>
+
+<p>It is not probable that any critic who greatly valued his reputation, or
+who had any serious reputation to value, would take quite this tone;
+but, leaving out of consideration the impressionistic and ultra-modern
+criticism which ignores Raphael altogether, it is instructive to note
+the way in which a critic so steeped in Italian art as Mr. Berenson
+approaches the fallen prince. The artist who used to be considered the
+greatest of draughtsmen he will hardly admit to be a draughtsman at all,
+ranking him far below Pollaiuolo and positively speaking of him as "a
+poor creature, most docile and patient." As a colorist and a manipulator
+of paint, he places him with Sebastiano del Piombo&mdash;that is, among the
+mediocrities. Almost the only serious merit, from his point of view,
+which he will allow him is a mastery in the rendering of space, shared
+in nearly equal measure by Perugino, as, to some extent, by nearly all
+the painters of the Umbrian school. For, while he admits that Raphael
+was the greatest master of composition that Europe has produced, he
+evidently thinks of composition, as do so many other moderns, as a
+matter of relatively little importance.</p>
+
+<p>It is not Raphael's popularity that is in question; that is, perhaps, as
+great as ever it was. His works, in one form or another of reproduction,
+from the finest carbon print to the cheapest lithograph, are still to be
+found, in the humblest homes as in the most splendid, in nearly every
+quarter of the globe. That popularity was always based on what Berenson
+calls the "illustrative" qualities of Raphael's work, on the beauty of
+his women, the majesty of his men; on his ability to tell a story as we
+like it told and to picture a world that we wish might be real. One may
+not be prepared to consider these illustrative qualities so negligible
+as do many modern critics, or to echo Mr. Berenson's phrase about "that
+which in art ... is so unimportant as what ... we call beauty." One
+might point out that the greatest artists, from Phidias to Rembrandt,
+have occupied themselves with illustration, and that to formulate the
+ideals of a race and an epoch is no mean task. But, for the moment, we
+may neglect all that, our present inquiry being why an artist, once
+counted the greatest of all, is no longer considered very significant by
+those who measure by purely artistic standards rather than by that of
+illustrative success and consequent popularity.</p>
+
+<p>We may also leave out of our present consideration Raphael's achievement
+in the suggestion of space. It is a very real quality and a high one. It
+has doubtless always been an important element in the enjoyability of
+Raphael's art, as it is almost the only enjoyable element, for many of
+us, in the art of Perugino. But it is an element that has only very
+recently been clearly perceived to exist. If it was enjoyed by the
+artists and critics, from Raphael's day almost to our own, they were
+unconscious of the fact, and the probability is that we enjoy it more
+than they did. It will not account for the estimation in which they held
+Raphael, and still less will it account for the relative lack of
+interest in him to-day.</p>
+
+<p>In truth the reason why many modern critics and painters almost dislike
+Raphael is the very reason for which he was so greatly revered. Coming
+in the nick of time, at the close of an epoch of investigation, himself
+a man of wide culture and quick intellect but of no special originality
+or emotional power, he learned from all his predecessors what they had
+to teach and, choosing from the elements of their art those which were
+suited to his purpose, formed a perfectly balanced and noble style which
+was immediately accepted as the only style suitable to the expression of
+lofty ideas in monumental form. He became the lawgiver, the founder of
+classicism, the formulator of the academic ideal. Not to admire him was
+to confess oneself a barbarian, and even those who did not really care
+for his art hardly dared to say so. As long as the academic ideal
+retained any validity his supremacy endured, and it was only with the
+definitive turning of modern art into the paths of romanticism and
+naturalism that revolt became possible.</p>
+
+<p>But when the world became tired of Raphaelism it inevitably became
+unjust to Raphael. It forgot that it was not he who had made his art the
+test of that of others&mdash;who had erected what, with him, was a
+spontaneous and original creation into a rigid system of laws. It
+confounded him with his followers and imitators, and, being bored by
+them, began to find the master himself a bore.</p>
+
+<p>For, eclectic as he was by nature, and founder as he was of the academic
+r&eacute;gime, the "grand style" of Raphael was yet a new and personal
+contribution to art. He drew from many sources, but the principle of
+combination was his own. His originality was in that mastery of
+composition which no one has ever denied him, but which is very
+differently rated as a quality of art by different temperaments. Almost
+everything specifically Raphaelesque in his work is the offspring of
+that power of design in which he is still the unapproached master.
+Modern criticism is right in denying that he was a draughtsman, if by
+draughtsman is meant one deeply preoccupied with form and structure for
+its own sake. His distinction was to invest the human figure with such
+forms as should best fit it to play its part in a scheme of monumental
+composition. The "style" of his draperies, so much and so justly
+admired, is composition of draperies. He was not a colorist as Titian
+was a colorist, or a painter as Velazquez was a painter&mdash;he was just so
+much of a colorist and a painter as is compatible with being the
+greatest of decorative designers. Everything in his finest works is
+entirely subordinated to the beauty and expressiveness of composition,
+and nothing is allowed to have too great an individual interest for its
+predestined part in the final result. Probably he could not have drawn
+like Michelangelo or painted like Hals&mdash;certainly, when he once
+understood himself, he would not have desired to do so.</p>
+
+<p>Even in his early work he showed his gifts as a composer, and some of
+the small pictures of his Florentine period are quite perfect in
+design. Nothing could be better composed within their restricted field
+than the "Madonna del Cardellino" or the "Belle Jardini&egrave;re." Nearly at
+the end of the period he made his greatest failure, the "Entombment" of
+the Borghese Gallery. It was his most ambitious effort up to this time
+and he wanted to put everything that he had learned into it, to draw
+like Michelangelo and to express emotion like Mantegna. He made a host
+of studies for it, tried it this way and that, lost all spontaneity and
+all grasp of the ensemble. What he finally produced is a thing of
+fragments, falling far below his models in the qualities he was
+attempting to rival and redeemed by little or nothing of the quality
+proper to himself. But, apparently, it answered its purpose. It freed
+him from preoccupation with the work of others. When his great
+opportunity came to him, in the commission to decorate the Camera della
+Segnatura, his painfully acquired knowledge was sufficiently at his
+command to give him no further trouble. He could concentrate himself on
+the essential part of his problem, the creation of an entirely
+appropriate, dignified, and beautiful decorative design. It was the work
+for which he was born, and he succeeded so immediately and so admirably
+in it that neither he nor any one else has ever been able to fill such
+spaces so perfectly again.</p>
+
+<p>There are fourteen important compositions in the room. The decoration of
+the ceiling had already been begun by Sodoma, and Sodoma's decorative
+framework Raphael allowed to remain; partly, perhaps, from courtesy,
+more probably because its general disposition was admirable and not to
+be improved on. If Sodoma had begun any of the larger paintings which
+were to fill his frames they were removed to make way for the new work.
+There has always been a great deal of discussion as to whether Raphael
+himself invented the admirable scheme of subjects by which the room was
+made to illustrate the Renaissance ideal of culture with its division
+into the four great fields of learning: divinity, philosophy (including
+science), poetry, and law. In reality, the question is of little
+importance. There seems to be at least one bit of internal evidence, to
+be mentioned presently, that even here the artist did not have a
+perfectly free hand, as we know he did not later. Whoever thought of the
+subjects, it was Raphael who discovered how to treat them in such a way
+as to make of this room the most perfectly planned piece of decoration
+in the world. Sodoma had left, on the vaulting, four circular medallions
+and four rectangular spaces which were to be filled with figure
+compositions. In the circles, each directly above one of the great wall
+spaces, Raphael placed figures personifying Theology, Philosophy,
+Poetry and Justice; in the rectangles he illustrated these subjects with
+the stories of "The Fall of Man," "Apollo and Marsyas," and "The
+Judgment of Solomon," and with that figure, leaning over a celestial
+globe, which must be meant for Science. All of these panels are on
+curved surfaces, and Raphael's decorative instinct led him, on this
+account and to preserve the supremacy of the great wall spaces below, to
+suppress all distance, placing his figures against a background of
+simulated gold mosaic and arranging them, virtually, upon one plane.
+There is, therefore, no possible question of "space composition" here.
+These panels depend for their effect entirely upon composition in two
+dimensions&mdash;upon the perfect balancing of filled and empty spaces, the
+invention of interesting shapes, and the arrangement of beautiful lines.
+It is the pattern that counts, and the pattern is perfect.</p>
+
+<p>The "Poetry" (Pl. 11) is the most beautiful of the medallions, but they
+are all much alike: a draped female figure in the middle, seated to give
+it scale, large enough to fill the height of the circle amply but
+without crowding, and winged <i>putti</i>, bearing inscribed tablets, on
+either side. There are other ways of filling a circle acceptably, as
+Botticelli had shown and as Raphael was to show again in more than one
+<i>tondo</i>, but for their situation, marking the principal axes of the
+room, there is no way so adequate as this. As Mr. Blashfield has said,
+speaking from experience: "When a modern painter has a medallion to fill
+and has tried one arrangement after another, he inevitably realizes that
+it is Raphael who has found the best ordering that could be found; and
+the modern painter builds upon his lines, laid down so distinctly that
+the greater the practice of the artist the more complete becomes his
+realization of Raphael's comprehension of essentials in composition."
+Not only so, but the modern painter finds as inevitably that, accepting
+this ordering as the best, even then he cannot add another figure to
+these four. He may, perhaps, draw it better in detail or give more
+character to the head, but he cannot capture that felicity of spacing,
+that absoluteness of balance, that variety and vivacity combined with
+monumental repose. The more his nature and training have made him a
+designer the more certainly he feels, before that single medallion of
+Poetry, that he is in the presence of the inimitable master of design.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p11_t" id="p11_t"></a>
+</p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 306px;">
+
+<a href="images/p11.jpg">
+<img src="images/p11_t.jpg" width="306" height="300" alt="Plate 11.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;Poetry.&quot; In the Vatican." title="Plate 11.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;Poetry.&quot; In the Vatican." />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 11.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;Poetry.&quot; In the Vatican.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>If the composition of the rectangles is less inevitable it is only
+because the variety of ways in which such simple rectangles may be
+filled is almost infinite. Composition more masterly than that of the
+"Judgment of Solomon" (Pl. 12), for instance, you will find nowhere; so
+much is told in a restricted space, yet with no confusion, the space is
+so admirably filled and its shape so marked by the very lines that
+enrich and relieve it. It is as if the design had determined the space
+rather than the space the design. If you had a tracing of the figures in
+the midst of an immensity of white paper you could not bound them by any
+other line than that of the actual frame. One of the most remarkable
+things about it is the way in which the angles, which artists usually
+avoid and disguise, are here sharply accented. A great part of the
+dignity and importance given to the king is due to the fact that his
+head fills one of these angles, and the opposite one contains the hand
+of the executioner and the foot by which the living child is held aloft,
+and to this point the longest lines of the picture lead. The dead
+child and the indifferent mother fill the lower corners. In the middle,
+herself only half seen and occupying little space, is the true mother,
+and it seems that her explosive energy, as she rushes to the rescue of
+her child, has forced all these other figures back to the confines of
+the picture. Compare this restless yet subtly balanced composition, full
+of oblique lines and violent movement, with the gracious, placid
+formality of the "Adam and Eve," and you will have some notion of the
+meaning of this gift of design.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p12_t" id="p12_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 255px;">
+
+<a href="images/p12.jpg">
+<img src="images/p12_t.jpg" width="255" height="320" alt="Plate 12.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;The Judgment of Solomon.&quot;
+In the Vatican." title="The Judgment of Solomon" />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 12.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;The Judgment of Solomon.&quot;
+In the Vatican.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But it is the frescoes on the four walls of this room which are
+Raphael's greatest triumphs&mdash;the most perfect pieces of monumental
+decoration in the world. On the two longer walls, nearly unbroken
+lunettes of something over a semicircle, he painted the two great
+compositions of Theology and Philosophy known as the "Disputa" and the
+"School of Athens." The "Disputa" (Pl. 13), the earlier of the two, has
+the more connection with the art of the past. The use of gilded relief
+in the upper part recalls the methods of Pintoricchio, and the hint of
+the whole arrangement was doubtless taken from those semidomes which
+existed in many churches. But what an original idea it was to transform
+the flat wall of a room into the apse of a cathedral, and what a
+solemnity it imparts to the discussion that is going on! The upper part
+is formal in the extreme, as it need be for the treatment of such a
+theme, but even here there is variety as well as stateliness in the
+attitudes and the spacing. In the lower part the variety becomes almost
+infinite, yet there is never a jar&mdash;not a line or a fold of drapery that
+mars the supreme order of the whole. Besides the uncounted cherubs which
+float among the rays of glory or support the cloudy thrones of the
+saints and prophets, there are between seventy and eighty figures in
+the picture; yet the hosts of heaven and the church on earth seem
+gathered about the altar with its sacred wafer&mdash;the tiny circle which is
+the focus of the great composition and the inevitable goal of all
+regards, as it is the central mystery of Catholic dogma.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p13_t" id="p13_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 400px;">
+
+<a href="images/p13.jpg">
+<img src="images/p13_t.jpg" width="400" height="294" alt="Plate 13.&mdash;Raphael. The &quot;Disputa.&quot;
+In the Vatican." title="The Disputa" />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 13.&mdash;Raphael. The &quot;Disputa.&quot;
+In the Vatican.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Opposite, in the "School of Athens" (Pl. 14), the treatment is different
+but equally successful. The hieratic majesty of the "Disputa" was here
+unnecessary, but a tranquil and spacious dignity was to be attained, and
+it is attained through the use of vertical and horizontal lines&mdash;the
+lines of stability and repose, while the bounding curve is echoed again
+and again in the diminishing arches of the imagined vaulting. The
+figures, fewer in number than in the "Disputa" and confined to the lower
+half of the composition, are ranged in two long lines across the
+picture; but the nearer line is broken in the centre and the two
+figures on the steps, serving as connecting-links between the two ranks,
+give to the whole something of that semicircular grouping so noticeable
+in the companion picture. The bas-reliefs upon the architecture and the
+great statues of Apollo and Minerva above them draw the eye upward at
+the sides, and this movement is intensified by the arrangement of the
+lateral groups of figures. By these means the counter curve to the arch
+above, the one fixed necessity, apparently, of the lunette, is
+established. It is more evident in the perspective curve of the painted
+dome. Cover this line with a bit of paper, or substitute for it a
+straight lintel like that seen beyond, and you will be surprised to find
+how much of the beauty of the picture has disappeared. The grouping of
+the figures themselves, the way they are played about into clumps or
+separated to give greater importance, by isolation, to a particular
+head, is even more beyond praise than in the "Disputa." The whole design
+has but one fault, and that is an afterthought. In the cartoon the
+disproportioned bulk of Heraclitus, thrust into the foreground and
+writing in an impossible attitude on a desk in impossible perspective,
+is not to be found. It is such a blot upon the picture that one cannot
+believe that Raphael added it of his own motion; rather it must have
+been placed there at the dictation of some meddling cardinal or learned
+humanist who, knowing nothing of art, could not see why any vacant space
+should not be filled with any figure whose presence seemed to him
+historically desirable. One is tempted to suspect even, so clumsy is the
+figure and so out of scale with its neighbors, that the master refused
+to disfigure his work himself and left the task to one of his
+apprentices. If it had been done by one of them, say Giulio Romano,
+after the picture was entirely completed and at the time of the
+"Incendio del' Borgo," it could not be more out of keeping.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p14_t" id="p14_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 400px;">
+
+<a href="images/p14.jpg">
+<img src="images/p14_t.jpg" width="400" height="280" alt="Plate 14.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;The School of Athens.&quot;
+In the Vatican." title="The School of Athens" />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 14.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;The School of Athens.&quot;
+In the Vatican.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Each of these walls has a doorway at one end, and the way in which these
+openings are dissimulated and utilized is most ingenious, particularly
+in the "Disputa," where the bits of parapet which play an important part
+at either side of the composition, one pierced, the other solid, were
+suggested solely by the presence of this door. In the end walls the
+openings, large windows much higher than the doors, become of such
+importance that the whole nature of the problem is changed. It is the
+pierced lunette that is to be dealt with, and Raphael has dealt with it
+in two entirely different ways. One wall is symmetrical, the window in
+the middle, and on that wall he painted the "Parnassus" (Pl. 15), Apollo
+and the Muses in the centre with groups of poets a little lower on
+either side and other groups filling the spaces to right and left of the
+window head. At first sight the design seems less symmetrical and formal
+than the others, with a lyrical freedom befitting the subject, but in
+reality it is no less perfect in its ponderation. The group of trees
+above Apollo and the reclining figures either side of him accent the
+centrality of his position. From this point the line of heads rises in
+either direction to the figures of Homer and of the Muse whose back is
+turned to the spectator, and the perpendicularity of these two figures
+carries upward into the arch the vertical lines of the window. From this
+point the lateral masses of foliage take up the drooping curve and unite
+it to the arch, and this curve is strongly reinforced by the building up
+toward either side of the foreground groups and by the disposition of
+the arms of Sappho and of the poets immediately behind her, while, to
+disguise its formality, it is contradicted by the long line of Sappho's
+body, which echoes that of the bearded poet immediately to the right of
+the window and gives a sweep to the left to the whole lower part of the
+composition. It is the immediate and absolute solution of the problem,
+and so small a thing as the scarf of the back-turned Muse plays its
+necessary part in it, balancing, as it does, the arm of the Muse who
+stands highest on the left and establishing one of a number of
+subsidiary garlands that play through and bind together the wonderful
+design.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p15_t" id="p15_t"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 400px;">
+
+<a href="images/p15.jpg">
+<img src="images/p15_t.jpg" width="400" height="284" alt="Plate 15.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;Parnassus.&quot;
+In the Vatican." title="Parnassus" />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 15.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;Parnassus.&quot;
+In the Vatican.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The window in the opposite wall is to one side of the middle, and here
+Raphael meets the new problem with a new solution. He places a separate
+picture in each of the unequal rectangles, carries a simulated cornice
+across at the level of the window head, and paints, in the segmental
+lunette thus left, the so-called "Jurisprudence" (Pl. 16), which
+seems to many decorators the most perfect piece of decorative design
+that even Raphael ever created&mdash;the most perfect piece of design,
+therefore, in the world. Its subtlety of spacing, its exquisiteness of
+line, its monumental simplicity, rippled through with a melody of
+falling curves from end to end, are beyond description&mdash;the reader must
+study them for himself in the illustration. One thing he might miss were
+not his attention called to it&mdash;the ingenious way in which the whole
+composition is adjusted to a diagonal axis that the asymmetry of the
+wall may be minimized. Draw an imaginary straight line from the boss in
+the soffit of the arch through the middle of the Janus-head of Prudence.
+It will accurately bisect the central group, composed of this figure and
+her two attendant genii, will pass through her elevated left knee, the
+centre of a system of curves, and the other end of it will strike the
+top of the post or mullion that divides the window opening into two
+parts.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p16_t" id="p16_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 400px;">
+
+<a href="images/p16.jpg">
+<img src="images/p16_t.jpg" width="400" height="267" alt="Plate 16.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;Jurisprudence.&quot;
+In the Vatican." title="Jurisprudence" />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 16.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;Jurisprudence.&quot;
+In the Vatican.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>This single room, the Camera della Segnatura, marks the brief blossoming
+time of Raphael's art, an art consummate in science yet full of a
+freshness and spontaneity&mdash;the dew still upon it&mdash;as wonderful as its
+learning. The master himself could not duplicate it. He tried for
+Venetian warmth of color in the "Mass of Bolsena" (Pl. 17) and
+experimented with tricks of illumination in the "Deliverance of Peter"
+(Pl. 18), and in these two compositions, struck out new and admirable
+ways of filling pierced lunettes. The balancing, in the one, of the
+solitary figure of the pope against the compact group of seven
+figures&mdash;a group that has to be carried up above the curved screen in
+order to counteract the importance given to Julius by his isolation and
+by the greater mass of his supporting group below&mdash;is a triumph of
+arrangement; and here, again, it is notable that the bleeding wafer, the
+necessary centre of interest, is situated on a straight line drawn
+diagonally from the keystone of the arch to the centre of the window
+head, and almost exactly half-way between these two points, while the
+great curve of the screen leads to it from either side. In the
+symmetrically pierced lunette opposite, the distribution of the space
+into three distinct but united pictures, the central one seen through
+the grating of the prison, is a highly ingenious and, on the whole, an
+acceptable variant on previous inventions. But these two are the last of
+the Vatican frescoes that show Raphael's infallible instinct as a
+composer. He grows tired, exaggerates his mannerisms, gives a greater
+and greater share of the work to his pupils. The later Stanze are either
+pompous or confused, or both, until we reach the higgledy-piggledy of
+the "Burning of the Borgo" or that inextricable tangle, suggestive of
+nothing so much as of a dish of macaroni, the "Battle of Constantine," a
+picture painted after the master's death, but for which he probably left
+something in the way of sketches.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p17_t" id="p17_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 400px;">
+
+<a href="images/p17.jpg">
+<img src="images/p17_t.jpg" width="400" height="291" alt="Plate 17.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;The Mass of Bolsena.&quot;
+In the Vatican." title="The Mass of Bolsena" />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 17.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;The Mass of Bolsena.&quot;
+In the Vatican.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Yet even in what seems this decadence of his talent Raphael only needed
+a new problem to revive his admirable powers in their full splendor. In
+1514 he painted the "Sibyls" (Pl. 19) of Santa Maria della Pace, in a
+frieze-shaped panel cut by a semicircular arch, and the new shape given
+him to fill inspired a composition as perfect in itself and as
+indisputably the only right one for the place as anything he ever did.
+Among his latest works were the pendentives of the Farnesina, with the
+story of Cupid and Psyche&mdash;works painted and even drawn by his pupils,
+coarse in types and heavy in color but altogether astonishing in freedom
+and variety of design. The earlier painters covered their vaulting
+with ornamental patterns in which spaces were reserved for independent
+pictures, like the rectangles of the Stanza della Segnatura. It was a
+bold innovation when Michelangelo discarded this system and placed in
+the pendentives of the Sistine his colossal figures of the Prophets and
+the Sibyls, each on its architectural throne. It was reserved for
+Raphael to take a step that no earlier painter could have dreamed of and
+to fill these triangular spaces with free groups relieved against a
+clear sky which is the continuous background of the whole series. One
+may easily think the earlier system more architecturally fitting, but
+the skill with which these groups are composed, their perfect
+naturalness, their exhaustless variety, the perfection with which they
+fill these awkward shapes, as it were inevitably and without effort, is
+nothing short of amazing. It is decoration of a festal and informal
+order&mdash;the decoration of a kind of summer house, fitted for pleasure,
+rather than of a stately chamber&mdash;but it is decoration the most
+consummate, the fitting last word of the greatest master of decorative
+design that the world has seen.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p18_t" id="p18_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 320px;">
+
+<a href="images/p18.jpg">
+<img src="images/p18_t.jpg" width="320" height="244" alt="Plate 18.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;The Deliverance of Peter.&quot;
+In the Vatican." title="The Deliverance of Peter" />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 18.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;The Deliverance of Peter.&quot;
+In the Vatican.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is this master designer that is the real Raphael, and, but for the
+element of design always present in the least of his works, the charming
+illustrator, the mere "painter of Madonnas," might be allowed to sink
+comfortably into artistic oblivion without cause for protest. But there
+is another Raphael we could spare less easily, Raphael the
+portrait-painter. The great decorators have nearly always been great
+portrait-painters as well, although&mdash;perhaps because&mdash;there is little
+resemblance between the manner of feeling and working necessary for
+success in the two arts. The decorator, constantly occupied with
+relations of line and space which have little to do with imitation,
+finds in the submissive attention to external fact necessary to success
+in portraiture a source of refreshment and of that renewed contact with
+nature which is constantly necessary to art if it is not to become too
+arid an abstraction. Certainly it was so with Raphael, and the master of
+design has left us a series of portraits comparable only to those of
+that other great designer whose fate was to leave little but portraits
+behind him, Hans Holbein. Allowing for the necessary variation of type
+and costume in their models and for the difference between an Italian
+and a northern education, their methods are singularly alike. Raphael
+has greater elegance and feeling for style, Holbein a richer color sense
+and, above all, a finer craftsmanship, an unapproachable material
+perfection. They have the same quiet, intense observation, the same
+impeccable accuracy, the same preoccupation with the person before them
+and with nothing else&mdash;an individuality to be presented with all it
+contains, neither more nor less&mdash;to be rendered entirely, and without
+flattery as without caricature. There have been portrait-painters who
+were greater painters, in the more limited sense of the word, than these
+two, and there has been at least one painter whose imaginative sympathy
+gave an inner life to his portraits absent from theirs, but in the
+essential qualities of portraiture, as distinguished from all other
+forms of art, perhaps no one else has quite equalled them. One can give
+no greater praise to the "Castiglione" or the "Donna Velata" than to say
+that they are fit to hang beside the "Georg Gyze" or the "Christina of
+Milan"; and at least one portrait by Raphael, the "Tommaso Inghirami,"
+in the collection of Mrs. Gardner (Pl. 20)&mdash;the original of which the
+picture in the Pitti Palace is a replica&mdash;has a beauty of surface and
+of workmanship almost worthy of Holbein himself.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p19_t" id="p19_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 350px;">
+
+<a href="images/p19.jpg">
+<img src="images/p19t.jpg" width="350" height="246" alt="Plate 19.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;The Sibyls.&quot;
+Santa Maria della Pace, Rome." title="The Sibyls" />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 19.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;The Sibyls.&quot;
+Santa Maria della Pace, Rome.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Raphael's portraits alone, had he done nothing else, would justify a
+great reputation, but they form so relatively small a part of his work
+that they may almost be neglected in examining his claims to the rank
+that used to be assigned him among the world's greatest artists. It is,
+after all, his unique mastery of composition that is his chief title to
+fame, and his glory must always be in proportion to the estimation in
+which that quality is held. It was because composition was to him a
+comparatively unimportant part of painting that Velazquez thought little
+of Raphael. It is because, for them, composition, as a distinct element
+of art, has almost ceased to exist that so many modern painters and
+critics decry Raphael altogether. The decorators have always known that
+design is the essence of their art, and therefore they have always
+appreciated the greatest of designers. That is why Paul Baudry, in the
+third quarter of the nineteenth century, idolized Raphael and based his
+own art upon that of the great Umbrian. To-day, in our own country,
+mural decoration is again becoming a living art, and the desire for the
+appropriate decoration of important buildings with monumental works of
+painting is more wide-spread, perhaps, than it has been anywhere at any
+time since the Italian Renaissance. So surely as the interest in
+decorative painting and the knowledge of its true principles become more
+widely spread, so surely will the name of Raphael begin to shine again
+with something of its ancient splendor.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p20_t" id="p20_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 256px;">
+
+<a href="images/p20.jpg">
+<img src="images/p20_t.jpg" width="256" height="360" alt="Plate 20.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami.&quot;
+In the collection of Mrs. Gardner." title="Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami" />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 20.&mdash;Raphael. &quot;Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami.&quot;
+In the collection of Mrs. Gardner.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But design is something more than the essential quality of mural
+decoration&mdash;it is the common basis of all the arts, the essential thing
+in art itself. Each of the arts has its qualities proper to it alone,
+and it may be right to estimate the painter, the sculptor, the
+architect, or the musician according to his eminence in those qualities
+which are distinctive of his particular art and which separate it most
+sharply from the other arts. In that sense we are right to call Frans
+Hals a greater painter than Raphael. But if we estimate a man's artistry
+by the same standard, whatever the form of art in which it expresses
+itself, rating him by his power of co-ordinating and composing notes or
+forms or colors into a harmonious and beautiful unity, then must we
+place Raphael pretty near where he used to be placed, admitting but a
+choice few of the very greatest to any equality with him. If we no
+longer call him "the prince of painters" we must call him one of the
+greatest artists among those who have practised the art of painting.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+<h2>TWO WAYS OF PAINTING</h2>
+
+
+<p>Among the modern paintings in the Metropolitan Museum is a brilliant and
+altogether remarkable little picture by John Sargent, entitled "The
+Hermit" (Pl. 21). Mr. Sargent is a portrait-painter by vocation, and the
+public knows him best as a penetrating and sometimes cruel reader of
+human character. He is a mural painter by avocation and capable, on
+occasion, of a monumental formality. In this picture, as in the
+wonderful collection of watercolors in the Brooklyn Institute of Arts
+and Sciences, one fancies one sees the essential John Sargent, working
+for himself alone without regard to external demands, and doing what he
+really cares most to do. In such work he is a modern of the moderns
+and, in the broadest sense of the word, a thorough Impressionist. Not
+that he shows himself a disciple of Monet or occupies himself with the
+broken touch or the division of tones&mdash;his method is as direct as that
+of Sorolla and his impressionism is of the same kind&mdash;a bending of all
+his energies to the vivid realization of the effect of the scene
+rendered as one might perceive it in the first flash of vision if one
+came upon it unexpectedly. This picture is better than Sorolla&mdash;it is
+better than almost any one. It is perhaps the most astonishing
+realization of the modern ideal, the most accomplished transcript of the
+actual appearance of nature, that has yet been produced. It is because
+of its great merit, because of its extraordinary success in what it
+attempts, that it leads one to the serious consideration of the nature
+of the attempt and of the gain and loss involved in the choice that
+modern art has made.</p>
+
+<p>The picture is exactly square&mdash;the choice of this form is, of itself,
+typically modern in its unexpectedness&mdash;and represents a bit of rough
+wood interior under intense sunlight. The light is studied for its
+brilliancy rather than for its warmth, and if the picture has a fault,
+granted the point of view of the painter, it is in a certain coldness of
+color; but such conditions of glaring and almost colorless light do
+exist in nature. One sees a few straight trunks of some kind of pine or
+larch, a network of branches and needles, a tumble of moss-spotted and
+lichened rocks, a confusion of floating lights and shadows, and that is
+all. The conviction of truth is instantaneous&mdash;it is an actual bit of
+nature, just as the painter found it. One is there on that ragged
+hillside, half dazzled by the moving spots of light, as if set down
+there suddenly, with no time to adjust one's vision. Gradually one's
+eyes clear and one is aware, first of a haggard human head with tangled
+beard and unkempt hair, then of an emaciated body. There is a man in the
+wood! And then&mdash;did they betray themselves by some slight
+movement?&mdash;there are a couple of slender antelopes who were but now
+invisible and who melt into their surroundings again at the slightest
+inattention. It is like a pictorial demonstration of protective coloring
+in men and animals.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p21_t" id="p21_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 319px;">
+
+<a href="images/p21.jpg">
+<img src="images/p21_t.jpg" width="319" height="320" alt="Plate 21.&mdash;Sargent. &quot;The Hermit.&quot;
+In the Metropolitan Museum of Art." title="The Hermit" />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 21.&mdash;Sargent. &quot;The Hermit.&quot;
+In the Metropolitan Museum of Art.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Now, almost any one can see how superbly all this is rendered. Any one
+can marvel at and admire the free and instantaneous handling, the web of
+slashing and apparently meaningless brush strokes which, at a given
+distance, take their places by a kind of magic and <i>are</i> the things they
+represent. But it takes a painter to know how justly it is observed. In
+these days no painter, whatever may be his deepest convictions, can
+escape the occasional desire to be modern; and most of us have
+attempted, at one time or another, the actual study of the human figure
+in the open air. We have taken our model into a walled garden or a deep
+wood or the rocky ravine of a brook and have set ourselves seriously to
+find out what a naked man or woman really looks like in the setting of
+outdoor nature. And we have found just what Sargent has painted. The
+human figure, as a figure, has ceased to exist. Line and structure and
+all that we have most cared for have disappeared. Even the color of
+flesh has ceased to count, and the most radiant blond skin of the
+fairest woman has become an insignificant pinkish spot no more important
+than a stone and not half so important as a flower. Humanity is absorbed
+into the landscape.</p>
+
+<p>Obviously, there are two courses open to the painter. If he is a modern
+by feeling and by training, full of curiosity and of the scientific
+temper, caring more for the investigation of the aspects of nature and
+the rendering of natural light and atmosphere than for the telling of a
+story or the construction of a decoration, he will, if he is able
+enough, treat his matter much as Sargent has treated it. The figure will
+become, for him, only an incident in the landscape. It will be important
+only as a thing of another texture and another color, valuable for the
+different way in which it receives the light and reflects the sky, just
+as rocks and foliage and water and bare earth are valuable. For to the
+true Impressionist light and atmosphere are the only realities, and
+objects exist only to provide surfaces for the play of light and
+atmosphere. He will abandon all attempt at rendering the material and
+physical significance of the human form and will still less concern
+himself with its spiritual significance. He will gain a great vividness
+of illusion, and he may console himself for what he loses with the
+reflection that he has expressed the true relation of man to the
+universe&mdash;that he has expressed either man's insignificance or man's
+oneness with nature, according as his temper is pessimistic or
+optimistic.</p>
+
+<p>If, on the other hand, the painter is one to whom the figure as a figure
+means much; one to whom line and bulk and modelling are the principal
+means of expression, and who cares for the structure and stress of bone
+and muscle; if the glow and softness of flesh appeal strongly to him;
+above all, if he has the human point of view and thinks of his figures
+as people engaged in certain actions, having certain characters,
+experiencing certain states of mind and body; then he will give up the
+struggle with the truths of aspect that seem so vital to the painter of
+the other type and, by a frank use of conventions, will seek to
+increase the importance of his figure at the expense of its
+surroundings. He will give it firmer lines and clearer edges, will
+strengthen its light and shade, will dwell upon its structure or its
+movement and expression. He will so compose his landscape as to
+subordinate it to his figure and will make its lines echo and accentuate
+that figure's action or repose. When he has accomplished his task he
+will have painted not man insignificant before nature but man dominating
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>For an example of this way of representing man's relation to the world
+about him, let us take Titian's "Saint Jerome" (Pl. 22)&mdash;a picture
+somewhat similar to Sargent's in subject and in the relative size of the
+figure and its surroundings. Titian has here given more importance to
+the landscape than was common in his day. He also has meant, as Sargent
+has, to make a great deal of the wilderness to which his saint has
+retired, and to make his saint a lonely human being in a savage place.
+But the saint and his emotion is, after all, what interests Titian most,
+and the wildness of nature is valuable to him mainly for its sympathy
+with this emotion. He wants to give a single powerful feeling and to
+give it with the utmost dramatic force&mdash;to give it theatrically even,
+one might admit of this particular picture; for it is by no means so
+favorable an example of Titian's method, or of the older methods of art
+in general, as is Sargent's "Hermit" of the modern way of seeing and
+painting. To attain this end he simplifies and arranges everything. He
+lowers the pitch of his coloring to a sombre glow and concentrates the
+little light upon his kneeling figure. He spends all his knowledge on so
+drawing and modelling that figure as to make you feel to the utmost its
+bulk and reality and the strain upon its muscles and tendons, and he
+so places everything else on his canvas as to intensify its action and
+expression. The gaze of the saint is fixed upon a crucifix high on the
+right of the picture, and the book behind him, the lines of the rocks,
+the masses of the foliage, even the general formation of the ground, are
+so disposed as to echo and reinforce the great diagonal. There is a
+splendid energy of invention in the drawing of the tree stems, but the
+effect is clear and simple with nothing of Sargent's dazzle and
+confusion. As for the lion, he is a mere necessary mark of
+identification, and Titian has taken no interest in him.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p22_t" id="p22_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+
+<a href="images/p22.jpg">
+<img src="images/p22_t.jpg" width="250" height="400" alt="Plate 22.&mdash;Titian. &quot;St. Jerome in the Desert.&quot;
+In the Brera Gallery, Milan." title="St. Jerome in the Desert" />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 22.&mdash;Titian. &quot;St. Jerome in the Desert.&quot;
+In the Brera Gallery, Milan.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Now, it is evident that there is not nearly so much literal truth to the
+appearance of nature in this picture as in Sargent's. It is not only
+that it would never have occurred to Titian to try to paint the
+glittering spottiness of sunlight splashing through leafage, or to
+attempt to raise his key of light to something like that of nature, at
+the cost of fulness of color. It is not merely that he translates and
+simplifies and neglects certain truths that the world had not yet
+learned to see. He deliberately and intentionally falsifies. He knew as
+well as we do that a natural landscape would not arrange itself in such
+lines and masses for the purpose of throwing out the figure and of
+enhancing its emotion. But to him natural facts were but so much
+material, to be treated as he pleased for the carrying out of his
+purpose. He was a colorist and a chiaroscurist; and he had a great deal
+more interest in light and in landscape than most of the painters of his
+time. If he had been pre-eminently a draughtsman, like Michelangelo, he
+would have reduced his light and shade to the amount strictly necessary
+to give that powerful modelling of the figure which is the draughtsman's
+means of expression, would have greatly increased the relative size and
+importance of the figure, and would have reduced the landscape to a
+barely intelligible symbol. Had he been a linealist, like Botticelli, he
+would have eliminated modelling almost altogether, would have
+concentrated his attention upon the edges of things, and would have
+reduced his picture to a flat pattern in which the beauty and
+expressiveness of the lines should be almost the only attraction.</p>
+
+<p>For all art is an exchange of gain against loss&mdash;you cannot have
+Sargent's truth of impression and Titian's truth of emotion in the same
+picture, nor Michelangelo's beauty of structure with Botticelli's beauty
+of line. To be a successful artist is to know what you want and to get
+it at any necessary sacrifice, though the greatest artists maintain a
+noble balance and sacrifice no more than is necessary. And if a painter
+of to-day is like-minded with these older masters he will have to
+express himself much in their manner. He will have to make, with his
+eyes open, the sacrifices which they made, more or less unconsciously,
+and to deny a whole range of truths with which his fellows are occupied
+that he may express clearly and forcibly the few truths which he has
+chosen.</p>
+
+<p>All truths are good, and all ways of painting are legitimate that are
+necessary to the expression of any truth. I am not here concerned to
+show that one way is better than another or one set of truths more
+important than another set of truths. For the present I am desirous only
+of showing why there is more than one way&mdash;of explaining the necessity
+of different methods for the expression of different individualities and
+different ways of envisaging nature and art. But a little while ago it
+was the modern or impressionistic manner that needed explanation. It
+was new, it was revolutionary, and it was misunderstood and disliked. A
+generation of critics has been busy in explaining it, a generation of
+artists has been busy in practising it, and now the balance has turned
+the other way. The pressure of conformity is upon the other side, and it
+is the older methods that need justification and explanation. The
+prejudices of the workers and the writers have gradually and naturally
+become the prejudices of at least a part of the public, and it has
+become necessary to show that the small minority of artists who still
+follow the old roads do so not from ignorance or stupidity or a stolid
+conservatism, still less from mere wilful caprice, but from necessity,
+because those roads are the only ones that can lead them where they wish
+to go. No more magnificent demonstration of the qualities possible to
+the purely modern methods of painting has been made than this brilliant
+little picture of Sargent's. All the more is it a demonstration of the
+qualities impossible to these methods. If such qualities have any
+permanent value and interest for the modern world it is a gain for art
+that some painters should try to keep alive the methods that render
+possible their attainment.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+<h2>THE AMERICAN SCHOOL</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the catalogues of our museums you may find entries like this: "John
+Smith, American school; The Empty Jug" or what-not. In such entries
+little more than a bare statement of nationality is intended. John Smith
+is an American, by birth or adoption; that is all that the statement is
+meant to convey. But the question occurs: Have we an American school in
+a more specific sense than this? Have we a body of painters with certain
+traits in common and certain differences from the painters of other
+countries? Has our production in painting sufficient homogeneity and
+sufficient national and local accent to entitle it to the name of
+American school in the sense in which there is, undoubtedly, a French
+school and an English school?</p>
+
+<p>Under the conditions of to-day there are no longer anywhere such
+distinctive local schools as existed in the Renaissance. In Italy, in
+those days, there were not only such great schools as the Venetian, the
+Florentine, and the Umbrian, differing widely in their point of view,
+their manner of seeing, and their technical traditions&mdash;each little town
+had a school with something characteristic that separated its painters
+from those of other schools in the surrounding towns. To-day every one
+knows and is influenced by the work of every one else, and it is only
+broad national characteristics that still subsist. Modern pictures are
+singularly alike, but, on the whole, it is still possible to tell an
+English picture from a French one, and a German or Italian picture from
+either. We may still speak of a Dutch school or a Spanish school with
+some reasonableness. Is it similarly and equally reasonable to speak of
+an American school? Does a room full of American pictures have a
+different look from a room full of pictures by artists of any other
+nationality? Does one feel that the pictures in such a room have a
+something in common that makes them kin and a something different that
+distinguishes them from the pictures of all other countries? I think the
+answer must be in the affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>We have already passed the stage of mere apprenticeship, and it can no
+longer be said that our American painters are mere reflections of their
+European masters. Twenty or even ten years ago there may have been some
+truth in the accusation. To-day many of our younger painters have had no
+foreign training at all, or have had such as has left no specific mark
+of a particular master; and from the work of most of our older painters
+it would be difficult to guess who their masters were without reference
+to a catalogue. They have, through long work in America and under
+American conditions, developed styles of their own bearing no
+discoverable resemblance to the styles of their first instructors. To
+take specific examples, who would imagine from the mural paintings of
+Blashfield or the decorations by Mowbray in the University Club of New
+York that either had been a pupil of Bonnat? Or who, looking at the
+exquisite landscapes or delicate figure pieces of Weir, would find
+anything to recall the name of G&eacute;r&ocirc;me? Some of the pupils of Carolus
+Duran are almost the only painters we have who acquired in their
+school-days a distinctive method of work which still marks their
+production, and even they are hardly distinguishable to-day from
+others; for the method of Duran, as modified and exemplified by John
+Sargent, has become the method of all the world, and a pupil of Carolus
+simply paints in the modern manner, like the rest. Those American
+painters who have adopted the impressionist point of view, again, have
+modified its technic to suit their own purposes and are at least as
+different from the Impressionists of France as are the Impressionists of
+Scandinavia. We have painters who are undeniably influenced by Whistler,
+but so have other countries&mdash;the school of Whistler is
+international&mdash;and, after all, Whistler was an American. In short, the
+resemblances between American painting and the painting of other
+countries are to-day no greater than the resemblances between the
+painting of any two of those countries. And I think the differences
+between American painting and that of other countries are quite as
+great as, if not greater than, the differences between the paintings of
+any two of those countries.</p>
+
+<p>Another accusation that used to be heard against our painters has been
+out-lived. We used to be told, with some truth, that we had learned to
+paint but had nothing to say with our painting, that we produced
+admirable studies but no pictures. The accusation never was true of our
+landscape-painting. Whatever may be the final estimation of the works of
+Inness and Wyant, there can be no doubt that they produced
+pictures&mdash;things conceived and worked out to give one definite and
+complete impression; things in which what was presented and what was
+eliminated were equally determined by a definite purpose; things in
+which accident and the immediate dominance of nature had little or no
+part. As for Winslow Homer, whether in landscape or figure painting, his
+work was unfailingly pictorial, whatever else it might be. He was a
+great and original designer, and every canvas of his was completely and
+definitely composed&mdash;a quality which at once removes from the category
+of mere sketches and studies even his slighter and more rapid
+productions. And our landscape-painters of to-day are equally painters
+of pictures. Some of them might be thought, by a modern taste, too
+conventionally painters of pictures&mdash;too much occupied with composition
+and tone and other pictorial qualities at the expense of freshness of
+observation&mdash;while our briskest and most original observers have, many
+of them, a power of design and a manner of casting even their freshest
+observations into pictorial form that is as admirable as it is
+remarkable.</p>
+
+<p>No one could enter one of our exhibitions without feeling the definitely
+pictorial quality of American landscape-painting, but these exhibitions
+do less justice to the achievement of our figure-painters. The principal
+reason for this is that many of our most serious figure-painters have
+been so much occupied with mural decoration that their work seldom
+appears in the exhibitions at all, while the work that they have done is
+so scattered over our vast country that we rather forget its existence
+and, assuredly, have little realization of its amount. It is one of the
+defects of our exhibition system that work of this kind, while it is, of
+course, on permanent exhibition in the place for which it is painted, is
+hardly ever "exhibited," in the ordinary sense, in the centres where it
+is produced. The regular visitor to the Paris salons might know almost
+all that has been done in France in the way of mural painting. The
+public of our American exhibitions knows only vaguely and by hearsay
+what our mural painters have done and are doing. It is true that such
+work is infinitely better seen in place, but it is a pity it cannot be
+seen, even imperfectly, by the people who attend our exhibitions&mdash;people
+who can rarely have the necessary knowledge to read such collections of
+sketches, studies, and photographs as are shown at the exhibitions of
+the Architectural League, where, alone, our mural painters can show
+anything. If it were seen it would surely alter the estimation in which
+American figure-painting is held. Such work as was done by the late John
+La Farge, such work as is being done by Blashfield and Mowbray and
+Simmons and a dozen others, if not, in the most limited sense of the
+word, pictorial, is even further removed from the mere sketch or
+study&mdash;the mere bit of good painting&mdash;than is the finest easel picture.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not only in mural decoration that serious figure-painting is
+being done in this country. I do not see how any one can deny the name
+of pictures to the genre paintings of Mr. Tarbell and Mr. Paxton unless
+he is prepared to deny pictorial quality to the whole Dutch school of
+the seventeenth century; and the example of these men is influencing a
+number of others toward the production of thoroughly thought-out and
+executed genre pictures. We have long had such serious figure-painters
+as Thayer and Brush, Dewing and Weir. The late Louis Loeb was attempting
+figure subjects of a very elaborate sort. To-day every exhibition shows
+an increasing number of worthy efforts at figure-painting in either the
+naturalistic or the ideal vein. We have pictures with subjects
+intelligently chosen and intelligibly treated, pictures with a pattern
+and a clear arrangement of line and mass, pictures soundly drawn and
+harmoniously colored as well as admirably painted.</p>
+
+<p>The painters of America are no longer followers of foreign masters or
+students learning technic and indifferent to anything else. They are a
+school producing work differing in character from that of other schools
+and at least equal in quality to that of any school existing to-day.</p>
+
+<p>If so much may be taken as proved, the question remains for
+consideration: What are the characteristics of the American school of
+painting? Its most striking characteristic is one that may be considered
+a fault or a virtue according to the point of view and the
+prepossessions of the observer. It is a characteristic that has
+certainly been a cause of the relatively small success of American work
+at recent international exhibitions. The American school is, among the
+schools of to-day, singularly old-fashioned. This characteristic has,
+undoubtedly, puzzled and repelled the foreigner. It is a time when the
+madness for novelty seems to be carrying everything before it, when
+anything may be accepted so long as it is or seems new, when the effort
+of all artists is to get rid of conventions and to shake off the
+"shackles of tradition." Here is a new people in the blessed state of
+having no traditions to shake off and from whom, therefore, some peppery
+wildness might be expected for the tickling of jaded palates. Behold,
+they are sturdily setting themselves to recover for art the things the
+others have thrown away! They are trying to revive the old fashion of
+thoughtful composition, the old fashion of good drawing, the old fashion
+of lovely color, and the old fashion of sound and beautiful workmanship.</p>
+
+<p>This conservatism of American painting, however, is not of the kind that
+still marks so much of the painting of England. Excepting exceptions,
+English painting is somewhat stolidly staying where it was. America's
+conservatism is ardent, determined, living. It is not standing still;
+it is going somewhere as rapidly as possible&mdash;it might, perhaps, be more
+truly called not conservatism but reaction. We have, of course, our
+ultramodernists, but their audacities are mild compared to those of the
+French or German models they imitate. We have, even more of course, the
+followers of the easiest way&mdash;the practitioners of current and accepted
+methods who are alike everywhere. But our most original and most
+distinguished painters, those who give the tone to our exhibitions and
+the national accent to our school, are almost all engaged in trying to
+get back one or another of the qualities that marked the great art of
+the past. They have gone back of the art of the day and are retying the
+knots that should bind together the art of all ages.</p>
+
+<p>This tendency shows itself strongly even in those whose work seems, at
+first sight, most purely naturalistic or impressionistic. Among those
+of our painters who have adopted and retained the impressionist technic,
+with its hatching of broken colors, the two most notable are Mr. Hassam
+and Mr. Weir. But Mr. Hassam, at his best, is a designer with a sense of
+balance and of classic grace almost equal to that of Corot, and he often
+uses the impressionist method to express otherwise the delicate shimmer
+of thin foliage that Corot loved. Nay, so little is he a pure
+naturalist, he cannot resist letting the white sides of naked nymphs
+gleam among his tree trunks&mdash;he cannot refrain from the artist's
+immemorial dream of Arcady. As for Mr. Weir, surely nothing could be
+more unlike the instantaneousness of true impressionism than his
+long-brooded-over, subtle-toned, infinitely sensitive art.</p>
+
+<p>There is little dreaminess in the work of Mr. Tarbell and the growing
+number of his followers. Theirs is almost a pure naturalism, a "making
+it like." Yet, notably in the work of Mr. Tarbell himself, and to some
+extent in that of the others, there is an elegance of arrangement, a
+thoroughness in the notation of gradations of light, a beauty and a
+charm that were learned of no modern. Their art is an effort to bring
+back the artistic quality of the most artistic naturalism ever
+practised, that of Vermeer of Delft.</p>
+
+<p>Others of our artists are going still further back in the history of art
+for a part of their inspiration. Mr. Brush has always been a linealist
+and a student of form, but his earlier canvases, admirable as they were,
+were those of a docile pupil of G&eacute;r&ocirc;me applying the thoroughness of
+G&eacute;r&ocirc;me's method to a new range of subjects and painting the American
+Indian as G&eacute;r&ocirc;me had painted the modern Egyptian. In recent years each
+new picture of his has shown more clearly the influence of the early
+Italians&mdash;each has been more nearly a symphony of pure line.</p>
+
+<p>Even in purely technical matters our painters have been experimenting
+backward, trying to recover lost technical beauties. The last pictures
+of Louis Loeb were underpainted throughout in monochrome, the final
+colors being applied in glazes and rubbings, and to-day a number of
+others, landscape and figure painters, are attempting to restore and
+master this, the pure Venetian method, while still others, among them
+Emil Carlsen, are reviving the use of tempera.</p>
+
+<p>But it is in our mural painting even more than elsewhere that the
+conservative or reactionary tendency of American painting is most
+clearly marked. John La Farge was always himself, but when the general
+movement in mural painting began in this country with the Chicago
+World's Fair and the subsequent decoration of the Library of Congress,
+the rest of us were much under the influence of Puvis de Chavannes. Even
+then the design was not his, but was founded on earlier examples of
+decorative composition, but his pale tones were everywhere. Little by
+little the study of the past has taught us better. American mural
+painting has grown steadily more monumental in design, and at the same
+time it has grown richer and fuller in color. To-day, while it is not
+less but more personal and original than it was, it has more kinship
+with the noble achievements of Raphael and Veronese than has any other
+modern work extant.</p>
+
+<p>And this brings us to the second characteristic of the American school
+of painting: it is rapidly becoming a school of color. We have still
+plenty of painters who work in the blackish or chalky or muddy and
+opaque tones of modern art, but I think we have more men who produce
+rich and powerful color and more men who produce subtle and delicate
+color than any other modern school. The experiments in reviving old
+technical methods have been undertaken for the sake of purity and
+luminosity of color and have largely succeeded. The pictures of Mr.
+Tarbell are far more colored than those of the European painter whose
+work is, in some ways, most analogous to his, M. Joseph Bail. Mr.
+Hassam's color is always sparkling and brilliant, Mr. Dewing's delicate
+and charming, Mr. Weir's subtle and harmonious and sometimes very full.
+Even Mr. Brush's linear arrangements are clothed in sombre but often
+richly harmonious tones, and the decorative use of powerful color is the
+main reliance of such painters as Hugo Ballin. But the note of color
+runs through the school and one hardly needs to name individual men.
+Whether our landscapists glaze and scumble with the tonalists, or use
+some modification of the impressionist hatching, it is for the sake of
+color; and even our most forthright and dashing wielders of the big
+brush often achieve a surprising power of resonant coloring.</p>
+
+<p>Power, fulness, and beauty of coloring are hardly modern qualities. Much
+as impressionism has been praised for restoring color to a colorless
+art, its result has been, too often, to substitute whitishness for
+blackishness. Color has characterized no modern painting since that of
+Delacroix and Millet as it characterizes much of the best American
+painting. The love for and the success in color of our school is, after
+all, a part of its conservatism.</p>
+
+<p>It may seem an odd way of praising a modern school to call it the least
+modern of any. It <i>would</i> be an odd way of praising that school if its
+lack of modernness were a mere matter of lagging behind or of standing
+still and marking time. But if the "march of progress" has been
+down-hill&mdash;if the path that is trod leads into a swamp or over a
+precipice&mdash;then there may be most hopefulness for those who can 'bout
+face and march the other way. I have, elsewhere in this volume, given at
+some length some of my reasons for thinking that modern art has been
+following a false route and is in danger of perishing in the bog or
+falling over the cliff. If it is so we may congratulate ourselves that
+those of our painters who are still following the rest of the world have
+not so nearly reached the end of the road, and that those who are more
+independent have discovered in time what that end is and have turned
+back.</p>
+
+<p>It is because it is least that of to-day that I believe our art may be
+that of to-morrow&mdash;it is because it is, of all art now going, that which
+has most connection with the past that I hope the art of America may
+prove to be the art of the future.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+<h2>AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a></h2>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> Address delivered before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and
+Sciences on February 22, 1908. Now revised and enlarged.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin, Ireland, on the first day of
+March, 1848, but was brought to America at the age of six months. His
+childhood and youth were passed in the city of New York, as was a great
+part of his working life; and though his origin was foreign, lifelong
+associations had stamped him indelibly an American. The greater part of
+his work was done in America; almost all of it was done for America; and
+I do not think it is fancy that sees in his art the expression of a
+distinctively American spirit. Yet from his mixed French and Irish
+blood he may well have derived that mingling of the Latin sense of form
+with a Celtic depth of sentiment which was so markedly characteristic of
+his genius.</p>
+
+<p>His father, Bernard Paul Ernest Saint-Gaudens, was a shoemaker from the
+little town of Aspet in Haute-Garonne, only a few miles from the town of
+Saint-Gaudens, from which the family must have drawn its origin and its
+name. His mother was Mary McGuinness, a native of Dublin. Augustus
+Saint-Gaudens was one of several children born to this couple and not
+the only artist among them, for his younger brother Louis also attained
+some reputation as a sculptor, though his entire lack of ambition
+prevented his achieving all that was expected of him by those who knew
+his delicate talent. The boy Augustus attended the public schools of New
+York and received there all the formal education he ever had; but at
+thirteen it was necessary for him to face the problem of earning his
+living. His artistic proclivities were probably already well marked, and
+to give them some scope, while assuring him a regular trade at which
+money could be earned, he was apprenticed in the good old way to a cameo
+cutter named Louis Avet, said to be the first man to cut stone cameos in
+the United States. Thus it came about that the greatest of American
+sculptors had much such a practical apprenticeship as a Florentine of
+the fifteenth century might have had. He himself always spoke of it as
+"one of the most fortunate things that ever happened to him" and
+attributed much of his success to the habit of faithful labor acquired
+at this time. Probably, also, the habit of thinking in terms of relief,
+fostered by years of work at this ancient art, was not without influence
+in the moulding of his talent.</p>
+
+<p>His relations with Avet lasted from 1861 to 1864, when his master
+quarrelled with him and abruptly dismissed him from his shop. The boy
+was already a determined person; he believed that he had suffered an
+injustice, and, though Avet went to his parents and tried to induce them
+to send him back, he refused to return. A new master was found for him
+in the person of a shell-cameo cutter named Jules LeBrethon, and with
+him Saint-Gaudens remained three years. During his six years'
+apprenticeship under his two masters the youth showed already that
+energy and power of will that made him what he was. He meant to be
+something more than an artisan, and he spent his evenings in the
+classes, first of the Cooper Union, afterward of the National Academy of
+Design, in the hard study of drawing, the true foundation of all the
+fine arts. It was one of the elements of his superiority in his
+profession that he could draw as few sculptors can, and he always felt
+that he owed an especial debt to the Cooper Union, which he was glad to
+repay when he modelled the statue of its venerable founder. Of the other
+institution by whose freely given instruction he had profited, the
+National Academy of Design, he became one of the most honored members.
+By 1867, when he was nineteen years old, he had saved a little money and
+was master of a trade that could be relied on to bring in more, and he
+determined to go to Paris and begin the serious study of sculpture. He
+worked, for a time, at the Petite &Eacute;cole, and entered the studio of
+Jouffroy in the &Eacute;cole des Beaux-Arts in 1868, remaining until 1870.
+During this time, and afterward, he was self-supporting, working half
+his time at cameo cutting until his efforts at sculpture on a larger
+scale began to bring in an income.</p>
+
+<p>When the Franco-Prussian War broke out Paris ceased to be a place for
+the carrying on of the serious study of art, and Saint-Gaudens went to
+Rome, where his associates were the French prizemen of the day, of whom
+Merci&eacute; was one. He remained there until 1874, except for a visit to New
+York in the winter of 1872-3 for the purpose of modelling a bust of
+Senator Evarts, and one or two other busts, which were put into marble
+upon his return to Rome. In those Roman days he executed his first
+statue, a "Hiawatha," one of his few studies of the nude, and a
+"Silence," a not very characteristic draped figure which yet fills with
+some impressiveness her niche at the head of the grand stairway of the
+Masonic Temple on Twenty-fourth Street.</p>
+
+<p>From 1875 to 1877 he had a studio in New York, where he seems to have
+executed some of his earliest portrait reliefs. During these years he
+came into contact with La Farge, for whom he turned painter and aided
+in the execution of the decorations of Trinity Church in Boston. It was
+at this time, also, that he received his first commissions for important
+public work, those for the Farragut statue in Madison Square, the
+Randall at Sailors' Snug Harbor, and the angels for Saint Thomas's
+Church. He had married Augusta F. Homer in 1877, and in that year,
+taking his bride and his commissions with him, he returned to Paris,
+feeling, as many another young Paris-bred artist has felt, that there
+only could such important works be properly carried out. The "Farragut"
+was completed and exhibited in the plaster at the Salon of 1880, and
+from that time his success was assured. For the rest of his life he was
+constantly busy, receiving almost more commissions for work of
+importance than it was possible for him to carry out. He returned to New
+York in 1880, and in 1881 he opened the studio in Thirty-sixth Street,
+where he remained for sixteen years and where so many of his greatest
+works were executed. From that studio came many of his exquisite
+portraits in relief, his caryatids and angelic figures, such as those
+for the Morgan tomb, so unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1882 (a fate
+since shared by the earlier angels of Saint Thomas's), the great statues
+of Lincoln and Chapin, the "Shaw Memorial," and the "Adams Memorial";
+and in it was done all the preliminary work of the great equestrian
+monument to General Sherman.</p>
+
+<p>It is in these years of his prime that he will ever be most fondly
+remembered by those&mdash;and they are many&mdash;who had the privilege of his
+friendship. Admittedly our foremost sculptor, and one of the founders of
+the Society of American Artists, he became at once a person of
+importance in the world of art; and as his brilliant career developed
+he established intimate relationships with an ever-widening circle of
+men in every walk of life, while no one who ever knew him well can have
+felt anything but an abiding affection for him. That long, white studio
+became a familiar meeting-place for all who were interested in any form
+of art; and the Sunday afternoon concerts that were held there for many
+years will be looked back to with regret as long as any of their
+auditors remain alive.</p>
+
+<p>This studio was given up when Saint-Gaudens went abroad for the third
+time, in 1897, to execute the Sherman group, and he never resumed his
+residence in New York. In 1885 he had purchased a property at Cornish,
+N.H., just across the Connecticut River from Windsor, Vt., and when he
+returned to this country in 1900, covered with fresh honors but an ill
+man, he made what had been a summer home his permanent abode. He named
+it Aspet, after his father's birthplace, and there he erected two
+studios and finished his Sherman statue. In these studios were executed
+the second "Lincoln," the Parnell statue for Dublin, and much other
+work. The larger studio was burned in 1904, but was rebuilt and the lost
+work re-begun and carried to a conclusion. What can never be quite
+replaced were two portraits of himself. A study, of the head only, in
+the collection of the National Academy of Design and a sketch by Will H.
+Low, painted in Paris in 1877, are now the only existing portraits of
+him done from life in his best years. The Metropolitan Museum possesses
+a portrait of him in his last years, by Miss Ellen Emmet, and a replica,
+painted since his death, of my own earlier portrait.</p>
+
+<p>From the illness he brought back from Paris in 1900 Saint-Gaudens never
+recovered. At times he showed something of his old vigor and was able
+not only to do fine work but to indulge more in out-of-door sports than
+he had ever done in his youth, while a growing love for nature and for
+literature made his life fuller, in some respects, than in the days when
+his own art more entirely absorbed him. But year by year his strength
+grew less and his intervals of freedom from pain grew shorter, and he
+was more and more forced to rely upon the corps of able and devoted
+assistants which he gathered about him. He developed to an extraordinary
+extent the faculty of communicating his ideas and desires to others and
+of producing through their hands work essentially his own and of a
+quality entirely beyond their ability; but it was at the cost of a
+strain upon brain and nerve almost infinitely greater than would have
+been involved in work done with his own hand. In the summer of 1906 he
+broke down utterly, the work of his studio was interrupted, and he
+ceased to see even his most intimate friends. He rallied somewhat from
+this attack, and began again his heroic struggle against fate, directing
+the work of assistants while himself so weak that he had to be carried
+from the house to the studio. The end came on the evening of August 3,
+1907. He died as he had lived, a member of no church, but a man of pure
+and lofty character. As he had wished, his body was cremated, and his
+ashes were temporarily deposited in the cemetery at Windsor, Vt., across
+the river from his home. An informal funeral service was held in his
+private studio on August 7, attended by friends and neighbors and by a
+few old friends from a distance; but the gathering could include but a
+few of the many who felt his death as a personal loss.</p>
+
+<p>The merits of Saint-Gaudens's work were fully recognized in his
+lifetime. He was an officer of the Legion of Honor, a Corresponding
+Member of the Institute of France, a member of half a dozen academies,
+and the bearer of honorary degrees from the universities of Harvard,
+Yale, and Princeton. But of all the honors he received there were two,
+one of a public, the other of a private nature, which he himself valued
+most highly: the one as showing the estimation in which his art was held
+by his fellow artists, the other as an evidence of the personal
+affection felt for him by his friends. At the Pan-American Exposition in
+1901, upon the unanimous recommendation of the Jury of Fine Arts,
+composed of painters, sculptors, and architects, he was awarded a
+special diploma and medal of honor, "apart from and above all other
+awards," an entirely exceptional honor, which marked him as the first of
+American artists, as previously received honors had marked him one of
+the greatest sculptors of his time. On June 23, 1905, the artistic and
+literary colony which had gradually grown up about his home in Cornish
+celebrated the twentieth anniversary of his coming there by a f&ecirc;te and
+open-air masque held in the groves of Aspet. The beauty of this
+spectacle has become almost legendary. The altar with its columned
+canopy, which served for a background to the play, still stands, or
+recently stood, though much dilapidated by weather, as it was
+immortalized by the sculptor himself in a commemorative plaquette (Pl.
+23) which is among the most charming of his minor works. He planned if
+he had lived to perpetuate it in enduring marble, and this task has now
+been taken up by his wife, who means to dedicate the monument as a
+fitting memorial to a great artist and a noble man in the place he loved
+as his chosen home.</p>
+
+<p>Some part of the vivid and lovable personality of Augustus
+Saint-Gaudens must have been visible, almost at a glance, to any one who
+ever came in contact with him&mdash;to any one, even, who ever saw his
+portrait. In his spare but strong-knit figure, his firm but supple
+hands, his manner of carrying himself, his every gesture, one felt the
+abounding vitality, the almost furious energy of the man. That
+extraordinary head, with its heavy brow beetling above the small but
+piercing eyes, its red beard and crisp, wiry hair, its projecting jaw
+and great, strongly modelled nose, was alive with power&mdash;with power of
+intellect no less than of will. His lack of early education gave him a
+certain diffidence and a distrust of his own gifts of expression. He was
+apt to overrate the mere verbal facility of others and to underestimate
+himself in the comparison&mdash;indeed, a certain humility was strongly
+marked in him, even as regards his art, though he was self-confident
+also. When he was unconstrained his great powers of observation, his
+shrewdness of judgment, his bubbling humor, and a picturesque vivacity
+of phrase not uncommon among artists made him one of the most entrancing
+of talkers.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p23_t" id="p23_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 247px;">
+
+<a href="images/p23.jpg">
+<img src="images/p23_t.jpg" width="247" height="400" alt="Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 23.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Plaquette Commemorating Cornish Masque.&quot;" title="Plaquette Commemorating Cornish Masque" />
+</a><span class="caption">Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 23.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Plaquette Commemorating Cornish Masque.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Underneath his humor and his gayety, however, there lay a deep-seated
+Celtic melancholy, and beside his energy was an infinite patience at the
+service of an exacting artistic conscience. The endless painstaking of
+his work and the time he took over it were almost proverbial. He was
+twelve years engaged upon the "Shaw Memorial" and eleven upon the
+"Sherman," and, though he did much other work while these were in
+progress, yet it was his constant revision, his ever-renewed striving
+for perfection that kept them so long achieving. The "Diana" of the
+Madison Square Garden was taken down from her tower because he and the
+architect, Stanford White, thought her too large, and was entirely
+remodelled on a smaller scale. And with this patience went a gentleness,
+a sweetness, a delicate sensitiveness, and an abounding humanity and
+sympathy. He could be almost ruthless in the assertion of his will when
+the interests of his art or of justice seemed to demand it, yet there
+was a tender-heartedness in him which made it distressing to him to
+inflict pain on any one. The conflict of these elements in his nature
+sometimes made his actions seem inconsistent and indecipherable even to
+those who knew him. He would be long-suffering, compromising,
+disinclined to strike; but when he was at last roused the blow would be
+as staggering as it was unexpected. It was as if he struck the harder to
+have done with it and to spare himself the pain of striking again.</p>
+
+<p>It was his whole-hearted devotion to his art which caused his rare acts
+of self-assertion, and it was this same devotion, no less than his
+natural kindliness, that made him ever helpful to younger artists who
+showed any promise of future worth. Even in his last days of unspeakable
+suffering he would summon what was left of his old strength to give a
+word of criticism and advice, above all, a word of commendation, to any
+one who needed the one or had earned the other. The essential goodness
+of the man was most felt by those who stood nearest him, and most of
+all, perhaps, by his actual coworkers. He could command, as few have
+been able to do, the love and devotion of his assistants. To all who
+knew him the man himself seemed finer, rarer, sweeter than his work, and
+the gap he has left in their lives will be even more impossible to fill
+than his place in American art.</p>
+
+<p>But the personality of an artist, though he be a great one, is for the
+memory of his private friends. It is only as it colors his art that it
+is of public interest. It is his art itself, his gift to the world, that
+the world cares for; it is of the kind and quality of that art, the
+nature and the degree of its greatness, that the world wishes to hear.
+Because the man was my friend I have wished to give some glimpse of the
+manner of man he was; because the artist was the greatest our country
+has produced I am to try to give some idea of his art, of the elements
+of its strength, and of the limitations which are as necessary as its
+qualities.</p>
+
+<p>The time of Saint-Gaudens's study in Paris was a time of great
+importance in the development of modern sculpture, and, although
+Jouffroy was not himself a sculptor of the highest rank, his studio was
+a centre for what was then the new movement in the sculpture of France.
+The essential thing in this movement was the abandoning of the formal
+imitation of second-rate antiques and the substitution of the sculpture
+of the Italian Renaissance as a source of inspiration and of the direct
+study of nature as a means of self-expression. There had always been
+individual sculptors of power and originality in France, but the
+movement of the French school of sculpture, as a whole, away from the
+pseudo classicism which had long dominated it was really inaugurated by
+Paul Dubois only a few years before Saint-Gaudens's arrival in Paris.
+Many of the men destined to a brilliant part in the history of modern
+sculpture were trained in the <i>atelier</i> of Jouffroy. Falgui&egrave;re and
+Saint-Marceau had but just left that studio when the young American
+entered it, and Merci&eacute; was his fellow student there. Dalou and Rodin
+have since made these men seem old-fashioned and academic, but they
+were then, and for many years afterward, the heads of the new school;
+and of this new school, so different from anything he had known in
+America, Saint-Gaudens inevitably became a part. His own pronounced
+individuality, and perhaps his comparative isolation during the years of
+his greatest productivity, gave his art a character of its own, unlike
+any other, but to the French school of sculpture of the third quarter of
+the nineteenth century he essentially belonged.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, his style was not formed in a moment. His "Hiawatha" seems,
+to-day, much such a piece of neo-classicism as was being produced by
+other men in the Rome of that time, and the "Silence," though somewhat
+more modern in accent, is an academic work such as might have been
+expected from a docile pupil of his master. The relief of angels for the
+reredos of Saint Thomas's Church is the earliest important work which
+shows his personal manner. It was undertaken in collaboration with John
+La Farge, and perhaps the influence of La Farge, and of that eminently
+picturesque genius Stanford White, mingled with that of the younger
+French school in forming its decorative and almost pictorial character.
+It was a kind of improvisation, done at prodigious speed and without
+study from nature&mdash;a sketch rather than a completed work of art, but a
+sketch to be slowly developed into the reliefs of the Farragut pedestal,
+the angels of the Morgan tomb, the caryatids of the Vanderbilt
+mantelpiece, and, at length, into such a masterpiece as the
+"Amor-Caritas." In each of these developments the work becomes less
+picturesque and more formal, the taste is purified, the exuberance of
+decorative feeling is more restrained. The final term is reached in the
+caryatids for the Albright Gallery at Buffalo&mdash;works of his last days,
+when his hands were no longer able to shape the clay, yet essentially
+his though he never touched them; works of an almost austere nobility of
+style, the most grandly monumental figures he ever produced.</p>
+
+<p>The commonest criticism on Saint-Gaudens's art has been that it is not,
+primarily, sculptural in its inspiration; and, in a sense, the criticism
+is justified. One need not, perhaps, greatly care whether it is true or
+not. It is, after all, only a matter of definition, and if we were
+forbidden to call his work sculpture at all and required to find another
+name for it, the important fact that it is art&mdash;art of the finest, the
+most exquisite, at times the most powerful&mdash;would in no wise be altered.
+Ghiberti went beyond the traditions of sculpture in relief, introduced
+perspective into his compositions, modelled trees and rocks and clouds
+and cast them in bronze, made pictures, if you like, instead of reliefs.
+Does any one care? Is it not enough that they are beautiful pictures?
+The gates of the Baptistry of Florence are still worthy, as the greatest
+sculptor since the Greeks thought them, to be the gates of paradise. A
+work of art remains a work of art, call it what you please, and a thing
+of beauty will be a joy forever, whether or not you can pigeonhole it in
+some ready-made category. After all, the critical pigeonholes are made
+for the things, not the things for the pigeonholes. The work is there,
+and if it does not fit your preconceived definition the fault is as
+likely to be in the definition as in the work itself.</p>
+
+<p>And the first and most essential thing to note about the art of Augustus
+Saint-Gaudens is that it is always art of the purest&mdash;free in an
+extraordinary degree from the besetting sins of naturalism and the
+scientific temper on the one hand and of the display of cleverness and
+technical brilliancy on the other. Never more than in our own day have
+these been the great temptations of an able artist: that he should in
+the absorption of study forget the end in the means and produce
+demonstrations of anatomy or of the laws of light rather than statues or
+pictures; or that he should, in the joy of exercising great talents,
+seem to say, "See how well I can do it!" and invent difficulties for the
+sake of triumphantly resolving them, becoming a virtuoso rather than a
+creator. Of the meaner temptation of mere sensationalism&mdash;the desire to
+attract attention by ugliness and eccentricity lest one should be unable
+to secure it by truth and beauty&mdash;one need not speak. It is the
+temptation of vulgar souls. But great and true artists have yielded,
+occasionally or habitually, to these other two; Saint-Gaudens never
+does. I know no work of his to which raw nature has been admitted, in
+which a piece of study has been allowed to remain as such without the
+moulding touch of art to subdue it to its place; and I know only one
+which has any spice of bravura&mdash;the Logan statue&mdash;and the bravura is
+there because the subject seemed to demand it, not because the artist
+wished it. The dash and glitter are those of "Black Jack Logan," not of
+Saint-Gaudens. The sculptor strove to render them as he strove to render
+higher qualities at other times, but they remain antipathetic to his
+nature, and the statue is one of the least satisfactory of his works. He
+is essentially the artist&mdash;the artificer of beauty&mdash;ever bent on the
+making of a lovely and significant thing; and the study of nature and
+the resources of his craft are but tools and are never allowed to become
+anything more.</p>
+
+<p>If, then, the accusation that Saint-Gaudens's art is not sculptural
+means that he was a designer rather than a modeller, that he cared for
+composition more than for representation, that the ensemble interested
+him more than the details, I would cheerfully admit that the accusation
+is well founded. Such marvels of rendering as Rodin could give us,
+before he lost himself in the effort to deserve that reputation as a
+profound thinker which has been thrust upon him, were not for
+Saint-Gaudens. The modelling of the <i>morceau</i> was not particularly his
+affair. The discrimination of hard and soft, of bone and muscle and
+integument, the expression of tension where a fleshy tissue is tightly
+drawn over the framework beneath, or of weight where it falls away from
+it&mdash;these were not the things that most compelled his interest or in
+which he was most successful. For the human figure as a figure, for the
+inherent beauty of its marvellous mechanism, he did not greatly care.
+The problems of bulk and mass and weight and movement which have
+occupied sculptors from the beginning were not especially his problems.
+It may have been due to the nature of the commissions he received that,
+after the "Hiawatha" of his student days, he modelled no nude except the
+"Diana" of the tower&mdash;a purely decorative figure, designed for distant
+effect, in which structural modelling would have been out of place
+because invisible. But it was not accident that in such draped figures
+as the "Amor-Caritas" (Pl. 24) or the caryatids of the Vanderbilt
+mantelpiece there is little effort to make the figure visible beneath
+the draperies. In the hands of a master of the figure&mdash;of one of those
+artists to whom the expressiveness and the beauty of the human structure
+is all in all&mdash;drapery is a means of rendering the masses and the
+movement of the figure more apparent than they would be in the nude. In
+such works as these it is a thing beautiful in itself, for its own
+ripple and flow and ordered intricacy. The figure is there beneath
+the drapery, but the drapery is expressive of the mood of the artist and
+of the sentiment of the work rather than especially explanatory of the
+figure.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p24_t" id="p24_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 207px;">
+
+<a href="images/p24.jpg">
+<img src="images/p24_t.jpg" width="207" height="400" alt="Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 24.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Amor Caritas.&quot;" title="Amor Caritas" />
+</a><span class="caption">Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 24.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Amor Caritas.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>First of all, by nature and by training, Saint-Gaudens was a designer,
+and exquisiteness of design was the quality he most consciously strove
+for&mdash;the quality on which he expended his unresting, unending,
+persevering toil. From the start one feels that design is his principal
+preoccupation, that he is thinking mainly of the pattern of the whole,
+its decorative effect and play of line, its beauty of masses and spaces,
+its fitness for its place and its surroundings; in a word, its
+composition. In the beginning, as a workman in the shop of the cameo
+cutter, he was concerned with a kind of art in which perfection of
+composition is almost the sole claim to serious consideration. Then he
+produces a multiplicity of small reliefs, dainty, exquisite, infallibly
+charming in their arrangement&mdash;things which are so dependent on design
+for their very existence that they seem scarcely modelled at all. He
+goes on to decorative figures in the round, to heroic statues, to
+monumental groups, but always it is design that he thinks of first and
+last&mdash;design, now, in three dimensions rather than in two&mdash;design
+properly sculptural rather than pictorial, in so much as it deals with
+bosses and concaves, with solid matter in space&mdash;but still design. This
+power of design rises to higher uses as time goes on, is bent to the
+interpretation of lofty themes and the expression of deep emotions, but
+it is in its nature the same power that produced the delicate, ethereal
+beauty of the reliefs. The infinite fastidiousness of a master designer,
+constantly reworking and readjusting his design, that every part shall
+be perfect and that no fold or spray of leafage shall be out of its
+proper place, never satisfied that his composition is beyond improvement
+while an experiment remains untried&mdash;this is what cost him years of
+labor. His first important statue, the "Farragut," is a masterpiece of
+restrained and elegant yet original and forceful design&mdash;a design, too,
+that includes the pedestal and the bench below, and of which the figures
+in bas-relief are almost as important a part as the statue itself. In
+later and maturer work, with a more clarified taste and a deeper
+feeling, he can reach such unsurpassable expressiveness of composition
+as is shown in the "Shaw Memorial" or the great equestrian statue of
+Sherman.</p>
+
+<p>Saint-Gaudens's mastery of low relief was primarily a matter of this
+power of design, but it was conditioned also upon two other qualities:
+knowledge of drawing and extreme sensitiveness to delicate modulation of
+surface. And by drawing I mean not merely knowledge of form and
+proportion and the exact rendering of these, in which sense a statue may
+be said to be well drawn if its measurements are correct&mdash;I mean that
+much more subtle and difficult art, the rendering in two dimensions only
+of the appearance of objects of three dimensions. Sculpture in the round
+is the simplest and, in a sense, the easiest of the arts. It deals with
+actual form&mdash;a piece of sculpture does not merely look like the form of
+an object, it <i>is</i> the form of an object. Leaving out of the count, for
+the moment, the refinements and the illusions which may be added to
+it&mdash;which must be added to it to make it art&mdash;it is the reproduction in
+another material of the actual forms of things. Something which shall
+answer for it, to the uninitiate, may be produced by merely casting
+natural objects; and there is a great deal that is called sculpture
+which scarcely aims at anything more than the production, by a more
+difficult method, of something like a plaster cast from nature. It is
+the very simplicity of the art that makes its difficulty, for to avoid
+the look of casting and achieve the feeling of art requires the most
+delicate handling and the most powerful inspiration, and there is need
+in the art of sculpture for the rarest qualities of the greatest minds.
+The art of drawing is entirely different. It is all illusion, it deals
+only in appearances. Its aim is to depict on a flat surface the aspect
+of objects supposed to stand behind it and to be seen through it, and
+its means are two branches of the science of optics. It is based on the
+study of perspective and on the study of the way light falls upon
+objects and reveals their shapes and the direction of their surfaces by
+the varying degrees of their illumination. Of this art a sculptor in the
+round need not necessarily know anything, and, in fact, many of them,
+unfortunately, know altogether too little of it. The maker of a statue
+need not think about foreshortenings: if he gives the correct form the
+foreshortening will take care of itself. Sometimes it does so in a
+disastrous manner! Theoretically he need not worry over light and shade,
+although of course he does, in practice, think about it and rely upon
+it, more or less. If he gives the true forms they will necessarily have
+the true light and shade. But low relief, standing between sculpture and
+drawing, is really more closely related to drawing than to sculpture&mdash;is
+really a kind of drawing&mdash;and this is why so few sculptors succeed in
+it.</p>
+
+<p>It is a kind of drawing but an exceedingly difficult kind&mdash;the most
+delicate and difficult of any of the arts that deal with form alone. As
+to the contour, it stands on the same ground with drawing in any other
+material. The linear part of it requires exactly the same degree and
+the same kind of talent as linear design with a pen or with a burin. But
+for all that stands within the contour, for the suggestion of interior
+forms and the illusion of solidity, it depends on means of the utmost
+subtlety. It exists, as all drawing does, by light and shade, but the
+shadows are not produced by the mere darkening of the surface&mdash;they are
+produced by projections and recessions, by the inclination of the planes
+away from or toward the light. The lower the relief the more subtle and
+tender must be the variation of the surface which produces them, and
+therefore success in relief is one of the best attainable measures of a
+sculptor's fineness of touch and perfection of craftsmanship. But as the
+light and shade is produced by actual forms which are yet quite unlike
+the true forms of nature, it follows that the artist in relief can never
+imitate either the shape or the depth of the shadow he sees in nature.
+His art becomes one of suggestions and equivalents&mdash;an art which can
+give neither the literal truth of form nor the literal truth of
+aspect&mdash;an art at the farthest remove from direct representation. And
+success in it becomes, therefore, one of the best tests of a sculptor's
+artistry&mdash;of his ability to produce essential beauty by the treatment of
+his material, rather than to imitate successfully external fact.</p>
+
+<p>As the degree of relief varies, also, from the lowest possible to that
+highest relief which, nearly approaches sculpture in the round, the
+problems involved constantly vary. At each stage there is a new
+compromise to be made, a new adjustment to find, between fact and
+illusion, between the real form and the desired appearance. And there
+may be a number of different degrees of relief in the same work, even in
+different parts of the same figure, so that the art of relief becomes
+one of the most complicated and difficult of arts. It has not, indeed,
+the added complication of color, but neither has it the resources of
+color, success in which will more or less compensate for failure
+elsewhere. There is no permissible failure in bas-relief, any more than
+in sculpture in the round, and its difficulties are far greater. Nothing
+but truest feeling, completest knowledge, consummate skill will serve.</p>
+
+<p>This explanation may give some measure of what I mean when I say that I
+believe Augustus Saint-Gaudens the most complete master of relief since
+the fifteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>He has produced a series of works which run through the whole range of
+the art, from lowest relief to highest; from things of which the relief
+is so infinitesimal that they seem as if dreamed into existence rather
+than wrought in bronze or marble to things which are virtually engaged
+statues; from things which you fear a chance touch might brush away,
+like a pastel of Whistler's, to things as solid and enduring in
+appearance as in actual material. And in all these things there is the
+same inevitable mastery of design and of drawing, the same infinite
+resource and the same technical perfection. The "Butler Children" (Pl.
+25), the "Schiff Children," the "Sarah Redwood Lee" (Pl. 26), to name
+but a few of his masterpieces of this kind, are in their perfection of
+spacing, their grace of line, their exquisite and ethereal illusiveness
+of surface, comparable only to the loveliest works of the Florentine
+Renaissance; while the assured mastery of the most complicated problems
+of relief evinced in the "Shaw Memorial"&mdash;a mastery which shows, in the
+result, no trace of the strenuous and long-continued effort that it
+cost&mdash;is unsurpassed&mdash;I had almost said unequalled&mdash;in any work of any
+epoch.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p25_t" id="p25_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 333px;">
+
+<a href="images/p25.jpg">
+<img src="images/p25_t.jpg" width="333" height="350" alt="Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 25.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;The Butler Children.&quot;" title="The Butler Children" />
+</a><span class="caption">Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 25.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;The Butler Children.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Illustration can give but a faint idea of the special beauties of this
+or that particular work in this long series. It can show no more than
+the composition and the draughtsmanship. The refinement of workmanship,
+the sensitiveness and subtlety of modelling, can be appreciated only
+before the works themselves. And this sensitiveness and delicacy of
+workmanship, this mastery of the problems of relief, with its reliance
+on illusion and its necessary abstention from realization, is applied to
+sculpture in the round, and becomes with Saint-Gaudens, as it did with
+the sculptors of the Florentine Renaissance, the means of escape from
+the matter of fact. The concrete art of sculpture becomes an art of
+mystery and of suggestion&mdash;an art having affinities with that of
+painting. Hollows are filled up, shadows are obliterated, lines are
+softened or accentuated, as the effect may require, details are
+eliminated or made prominent as they are less or more essential and
+significant, as they hinder or aid the expressiveness of the whole. It
+is by such methods that beauty is achieved, that the most unpromising
+material is subdued to the purposes of art, that even our hideous modern
+costume may be made to yield a decorative effect. Pure sculpture, as the
+ancients understood it, the art of form <i>per se</i>, demands the nude
+figure, or a costume which reveals it rather than hides it. The costume
+of to-day reveals as little of the figure as possible, and, unlike
+medi&aelig;val armor, it has no beauty of its own. A painter may make it
+interesting by dwelling on color or tone or texture, or may so lose it
+in shadow that it ceases to count at all except as a space of darkness.
+A sculptor can do none of these things, and if he is to make it serve
+the ends of beauty he has need of all the resourcefulness and all the
+skill of the master of low relief. It was fortunate that the artist
+whose greatest task was to commemorate the heroes of the Civil War
+should have had the temperament and the training of such a master, and I
+know of no other sculptor than Saint-Gaudens who has so magnificently
+succeeded in the rendering of modern clothing&mdash;no other who could have
+made the uniform of Farragut or the frock coat of Lincoln as interesting
+as the armor of Colleone or the toga of Augustus.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p26_t" id="p26_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 206px;">
+
+<a href="images/p26.jpg">
+<img src="images/p26_t.jpg" width="206" height="400" alt="Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 26.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Sarah Redwood Lee.&quot;" title="Sarah Redwood Lee" />
+</a><span class="caption">Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 26.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Sarah Redwood Lee.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But if the genius of Saint-Gaudens was primarily a decorative genius&mdash;if
+it was, even, in his earlier work, a trifle picturesque, so that, as he
+said himself, he had "to fight against picturesqueness," his work was
+never pictorial. He never indulged in perspective or composed his
+reliefs on more than one plane; never took such liberties with the
+traditions of sculpture as did Ghiberti, or painted pictures in bronze
+or marble as more than one modern has done. His very feeling for
+decoration kept him from pictorial realism, and his fight against
+picturesqueness was nobly won. His design becomes ever cleaner and more
+classic; by years of work and of experience he becomes stronger and
+stronger in the more purely sculptural qualities&mdash;attains a grasp of
+form and structure only second to his mastery of composition. He is
+always a consummate artist&mdash;in his finest works he is a great sculptor
+in the strictest sense of the word.</p>
+
+<p>I have dwelt somewhat at length upon technical matters because technical
+power is the first necessity for an artist; because technical mastery is
+that for which he consciously endeavors; because the technical language
+of his art is the necessary vehicle of expression for his thoughts and
+emotions, and determines, even, the nature of the thoughts and emotions
+he shall express. But while the technical accomplishment of an artist
+is the most necessary part of his art, without which his imagination
+would be mute, it is not the highest or the most significant part of it.
+I have tried to show that Saint-Gaudens was a highly accomplished
+artist, the equal of any of his contemporaries, the superior of most.
+What made him something much more than this&mdash;something infinitely more
+important for us&mdash;was the vigor and loftiness of his imagination.
+Without his imaginative power he would have been an artist of great
+distinction, of whom any country might be proud; with it he became a
+great creator, able to embody in enduring bronze the highest ideals and
+the deepest feelings of a nation and of a time.</p>
+
+<p>It is a penetrating and sympathetic imagination that gave him his
+unerring grasp of character, that enabled him to seize upon the
+significant elements of a personality, to divine the attitude and the
+gesture that should reveal it, to eliminate the unessential, to present
+to us the man. This is the imagination of the portrait-painter, and
+Saint-Gaudens has shown it again and again, in many of his reliefs and
+memorial tablets, above all in his portrait statues. He showed it
+conclusively in so early a work as the "Farragut" (Pl. 27), a work that
+remains one of the modern masterpieces of portrait statuary. The man
+stands there forever, feet apart, upon his swaying deck, his glass in
+one strong hand, cool, courageous, ready, full of determination but
+absolutely without bluster or braggadocio, a sailor, a gentleman, and a
+hero. He showed it again, and with ampler maturity, in that august
+figure of "Lincoln" (Pl. 28), grandly dignified, austerely simple,
+sorrowfully human, risen from the chair of state that marks his office,
+but about to speak as a man to men, his bent head and worn face
+filled with a sense of power, but even more with the sadness of
+responsibility&mdash;filled, above all, with a yearning, tender passion of
+sympathy and love. In imaginative presentation of character, in nobility
+of feeling and breadth of treatment, no less than in perfection of
+workmanship, these are among the world's few worthy monuments to its
+great men.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p27_t" id="p27_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 285px;">
+
+<a href="images/p27.jpg">
+<img src="images/p27_t.jpg" width="285" height="360" alt="Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 27.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Farragut.&quot;" title="Farragut" />
+</a><span class="caption">Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 27.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Farragut.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And they are monuments to Americans by an American. Saint-Gaudens had
+lived through the time of the Civil War, had felt, as a boy, the stir of
+its great happenings in his blood, and its epic emotions had become a
+part of his consciousness, deep-seated at the roots of his nature. The
+feelings of the American people were his feelings, and his
+representations of these and of other heroes of that great struggle are
+among the most national as they are among the most vital things that our
+country has produced in art.</p>
+
+<p>But if Saint-Gaudens's imagination was thus capable of raising the
+portrait to the dignity of the type, it was no less capable of endowing
+the imagined type with all the individuality of the portrait. In the
+"Deacon Chapin" (Pl. 29), of Springfield, we have a purely ideal
+production, the finest embodiment of New England Puritanism in our art,
+for no portrait of the real Chapin existed. This swift-striding,
+stern-looking old man, who clasps his Bible as Moses clasped the tables
+of the law and grips his peaceful walking-stick as though it were a
+sword, is a Puritan of the Puritans; but he is an individual also&mdash;a
+rough-hewn piece of humanity with plenty of the old Adam about him&mdash;an
+individual so clearly seen and so vigorously characterized that one can
+hardly believe the statue an invention or realize that no such old
+Puritan deacon ever existed in the flesh. Something of this imaginative
+quality there is in almost everything Saint-Gaudens touched, even in
+his purely decorative figures. His angels and caryatides are not
+classical goddesses but modern women, lovely, but with a personal and
+particular loveliness, not insisted upon but delicately suggested. And
+it is not the personality of the model who chanced to pose for them but
+an invented personality, the expression of the nobility, the sweetness,
+and the pure-mindedness of their creator. And in such a figure as that
+of the "Adams Memorial" (Pl. 30), in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington,
+his imaginative power reaches to a degree of impressiveness almost
+unequalled in modern art. One knows of nothing since the tombs of the
+Medici that fills one with the same hushed awe as this shrouded, hooded,
+deeply brooding figure, rigid with contemplation, still with an eternal
+stillness, her soul rapt from her body on some distant quest. Is she
+Nirvana? Is she The Peace of God? She has been given many names&mdash;her
+maker would give her none. Her meaning is mystery; she is the
+everlasting enigma.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p28_t" id="p28_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 285px;">
+
+<a href="images/p28.jpg">
+<img src="images/p28_t.jpg" width="285" height="360" alt="Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 28.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Lincoln.&quot;" title="Lincoln" />
+</a><span class="caption">Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 28.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Lincoln.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Not the greatest artist could twice sound so deep a note as this. The
+figure remains unique in the work of the sculptor as it is unique in the
+art of the century. Yet, perhaps, Saint-Gaudens's greatest works are two
+in which all the varied elements of his genius find simultaneous
+expression; into which his mastery of composition, his breadth and
+solidity of structure, his technical skill, his insight into character,
+and his power of imagination enter in nearly equal measure: the "Shaw
+Memorial" and the great equestrian group of the "Sherman Monument."</p>
+
+<p>The "Shaw Memorial" (Pl. 31) is a relief, but a relief of many planes.
+The marching troops are in three files, one behind the other, the
+varying distances from the spectator marked by differences of the degree
+of projection. Nearer than all of them is the equestrian figure of Shaw
+himself, the horse and rider modelled nearly but not quite in the round.
+The whole scale of relief was altered in the course of the work, after
+it had once been nearly completed, and the mastery of the infinitely
+complicated problem of relief in many degrees is supreme. But all the
+more because the scheme was so full and so varied, the artist has
+carefully avoided the pictorial in his treatment. There is no
+perspective, the figures being all on the same scale, and there is no
+background, no setting of houses or landscape. Everywhere, between and
+above the figures, is the flat surface which is the immemorial tradition
+of sculpture in relief; and the fact that it <i>is</i> a surface,
+representing nothing, is made more clear by the inscription written upon
+it&mdash;an inscription placed there, consciously or unconsciously, that it
+might have that very effect. The composition is magnificent, whether for
+its intrinsic beauty of arrangement&mdash;its balancing of lines and
+spaces&mdash;or for its perfect expressiveness. The rhythmic step of marching
+men is perfectly rendered, and the guns fill the middle of the panel in
+an admirable pattern, without confusion or monotony. The heads are
+superb in characterization, strikingly varied and individual, yet each a
+strongly marked racial type, unmistakably African in all its forms.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p29_t" id="p29_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 225px;">
+
+<a href="images/p29.jpg">
+<img src="images/p29_t.jpg" width="225" height="360" alt="Plate 29.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Deacon Chapin.&quot;" title="Deacon Chapin" />
+</a><span class="caption">Plate 29.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Deacon Chapin.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>These are merits, and merits of a very high order, enough of themselves
+to place the work in the front rank of modern sculpture, but they are,
+after all, its minor merits. What makes it the great thing it is is the
+imaginative power displayed in it&mdash;the depth of emotion expressed, and
+expressed with perfect simplicity and directness and an entire
+absence of parade. The negro troops are marching steadily, soberly,
+with high seriousness of purpose, and their white leader rides beside
+them, drawn sword in hand, but with no military swagger, courageous, yet
+with a hint of melancholy, ready not only to lay down his life but to
+face, if need be, an ignominious death for the cause he believes to be
+just. And above them, laden with poppy and with laurels, floats the
+Death Angel pointing out the way.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p30_t" id="p30_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 266px;">
+
+<a href="images/p30.jpg">
+<img src="images/p30_t.jpg" width="266" height="357" alt="Copyright, Curtis &amp; Cameron.
+Plate 30.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Adams Memorial.&quot;" title="Adams Memorial" />
+</a><span class="caption">Copyright, Curtis &amp; Cameron.
+Plate 30.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Adams Memorial.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It is a work which artists may study again and again with growing
+admiration and increasing profit, yet it is one that has found its way
+straight to the popular heart. It is not always&mdash;it is not often&mdash;that
+the artists and the public are thus at one. When they are it is safe to
+assume that the work they equally admire is truly great&mdash;that it belongs
+to the highest order of noble works of art.</p>
+
+<p>The Sherman group (Pl. 32), though it has been more criticised than the
+"Shaw Memorial," seems to me, if possible, an even finer work. The main
+objection to it has been that it is not sufficiently "monumental," and,
+indeed, it has not the massiveness nor the repose of such a work as
+Donatello's "Gattamelata," the greatest of all equestrian statues. It
+could not well have these qualities in the same degree, its motive being
+what it is, but they are, perhaps, not ill exchanged for the character
+and the nationalism so marked in horse and rider and for the
+irresistible onward rush of movement never more adequately expressed. In
+all other respects the group seems to me almost beyond criticism. The
+composition&mdash;composition, now, in the round and to be considered from
+many points of view&mdash;builds up superbly; the flow of line in wing and
+limb and drapery is perfect; the purely sculptural problems of
+anatomical rendering, equine and human, are thoroughly resolved; the
+modelling, as such, is almost as fine as the design.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p31_t" id="p31_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 400px;">
+
+<a href="images/p31.jpg">
+<img src="images/p31_t.jpg" width="400" height="299" alt="Copyright, De. W.C. Ward.
+Plate 31.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Shaw Memorial.&quot;" title="Shaw Memorial" />
+</a><span class="caption">Copyright, De. W.C. Ward.
+Plate 31.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Shaw Memorial.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>To the boyish Saint-Gaudens Sherman had seemed the typical American
+hero. To the matured artist he had sat for an admirable bust. The
+sculptor had thus an unusual knowledge of his subject, a perfect
+sympathy with his theme; and he has produced a work of epic sweep and
+significance. Tall and erect, the general sits his horse, his military
+cloak bellying out behind him, his trousers strapped down over his
+shoes, his hat in his right hand, dropping at arm's length behind his
+knee, his bare head like that of an old eagle, looking straight forward.
+The horse is as long and thin as his rider, with a tremendous stride;
+and his big head, closely reined in, twitches viciously at the bridle.
+Before the horse and rider, upon the ground, yet as if new-lighted there
+from an aerial existence, half walks, half flies, a splendid winged
+figure, one arm outstretched, the other brandishing the palm&mdash;Victory
+leading them on. She has a certain fierce wildness of aspect, but her
+rapt gaze and half-open mouth indicate the seer of visions&mdash;peace is
+ahead, and an end of war. On the bosom of her gown is broidered the
+eagle of the United States, for she is an American Victory, as this is
+an American man on an American horse; and the broken pine bough beneath
+the horse's feet localizes the victorious march&mdash;it is the march through
+Georgia to the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Long ago I expressed my conviction that the "Sherman Monument" is third
+in rank of the great equestrian statues of the world. To-day I am not
+sure that that conviction remains unaltered. Donatello's "Gattamelata"
+is unapproached and unapproachable in its quiet dignity; Verrocchio's
+"Colleone" is unsurpassed in picturesque attractiveness. Both are
+consecrated by the admiration of centuries. To-day I am not sure that
+this work of an American sculptor is not, in its own way, equal to
+either of them.</p>
+
+<p>There are those who are troubled by the introduction of the symbolical
+figures in such works as the "Shaw Memorial" and the Sherman statue;
+and, indeed, it was a bold enterprise to place them where they are,
+mingling thus in the same work the real and the ideal, the actual and
+the allegorical. But the boldness seems to me abundantly justified by
+success. In either case the entire work is pitched to the key of these
+figures; the treatment of the whole is so elevated by style and so
+infused with imagination that there is no shock of unlikeness or
+difficulty of transition. And these figures are not merely necessary to
+the composition, an essential part of its beauty&mdash;they are even more
+essential to the expression of the artist's thought. Without that
+hovering Angel of Death, the negro troops upon the "Shaw Memorial" might
+be going anywhere, to battle or to review. We should have a passing
+regiment, nothing more. Without the striding Victory before him, the
+impetuous movement of Sherman's horse would have no especial
+significance. And these figures are no mere conventional allegories;
+they are true creations. To their creator the unseen was as real as the
+seen&mdash;nay, it was more so. That Shaw was riding to his death at the
+command of duty was, the only thing that made Shaw memorable. That
+Sherman was marching to a victory the fruits of which should be peace
+was the essential thing about Sherman. Death and Duty&mdash;Victory and
+Peace&mdash;in each case the compound ideal found its expression in a figure
+entirely original and astonishingly living: a <i>person</i> as truly as Shaw
+or Sherman themselves. He could not have left them out. It were
+better to give up the work entirely than to do it otherwise than as he
+saw it.</p>
+
+<p><a name="p32_t" id="p32_t"></a></p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 350px;">
+
+<a href="images/p32.jpg">
+<img src="images/p32_t.jpg" width="350" height="327" alt="Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 32.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Sherman.&quot;" title="Sherman" />
+</a><span class="caption">Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 32.&mdash;Saint-Gaudens. &quot;Sherman.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>I have described and discussed but a few of the many works of this great
+artist, choosing those which seem to me the most significant and the
+most important, and in doing so I have keenly felt the inadequacy of
+words to express the qualities of an art which exists by forms.
+Fortunately, the works themselves are, for the most part, readily
+accessible. In the originals, in casts, or in photographs, they may be
+studied by every one. Nothing is more difficult than to estimate justly
+the greatness of an object that is too near to us&mdash;it is only as it
+recedes into the distance that the mountain visibly overtops its
+neighboring hills. It is difficult to understand that this man so lately
+familiar to us, moving among us as one of ourselves, is of the company
+of the immortals. Yet I believe, as we make this study of his works, as
+we yield ourselves to the graciousness of his charm or are exalted by
+the sweep of his imagination, we shall come to feel an assured
+conviction that Augustus Saint-Gaudens was not merely the most
+accomplished artist of America, not merely one of the foremost sculptors
+of his time&mdash;we shall feel that he is one of those great, creative
+minds, transcending time and place, not of America or of to-day, but of
+the world and forever.</p>
+
+<p>Where, among such minds, he will take his rank we need not ask. It is
+enough that he is among them. Such an artist is assuredly a benefactor
+of his country, and it is eminently fitting that his gift to us should
+be acknowledged by such tribute as we can pay him. By his works in other
+lands and by his world-wide fame he sheds a glory upon the name of
+America, helping to convince the world that here also are those who
+occupy themselves with the things of the spirit, that here also are
+other capabilities than those of industrial energy and material success.
+In his many minor works he has endowed us with an inexhaustible heritage
+of beauty&mdash;beauty which is "about the best thing God invents." He is the
+educator of our taste and of more than our taste&mdash;of our sentiment and
+our emotions. In his great monuments he has not only given us fitting
+presentments of our national heroes; he has expressed, and in expressing
+elevated, our loftiest ideals; he has expressed, and in expressing
+deepened, our profoundest feelings. He has become the voice of all that
+is best in the American people, and his works are incentives to
+patriotism and lessons in devotion to duty.</p>
+
+<p>But the great and true artist is more than a benefactor of his country,
+he is a benefactor of the human race. The body of Saint-Gaudens is
+ashes, but his mind, his spirit, his character have taken on enduring
+forms and are become a part of the inheritance of mankind. And if, in
+the lapse of ages, his very name should be forgotten&mdash;as are the names
+of many great artists who have gone before him&mdash;yet his work will
+remain; and while any fragment of it is decipherable the world will be
+the richer in that he lived.</p>
+
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+<div><br /></div>
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p class="center"><i>[Transcriber's Note: In the Table of Illustrations and in the caption for
+plate 17, Bolensa was corrected to Bolsena.]</i></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Artist and Public, by Kenyon Cox
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Artist and Public, by Kenyon Cox
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Artist and Public
+       And Other Essays On Art Subjects
+
+Author: Kenyon Cox
+
+Release Date: September 5, 2005 [EBook #16655]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTIST AND PUBLIC ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ARTIST AND PUBLIC
+
+AND OTHER
+ESSAYS ON ART SUBJECTS
+
+
+BY
+KENYON COX
+
+
+
+[Illustration: From a photograph by Braun, Clement & Co.
+Plate 1.--Millet. "The Goose Girl."
+In the collection of Mme. Saulnier, Bordeaux.]
+
+
+
+
+ARTIST AND PUBLIC
+
+AND OTHER
+ESSAYS ON ART SUBJECTS
+
+
+BY
+KENYON COX
+
+
+_WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS_
+
+
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+NEW YORK   MCMXIV
+
+
+
+
+_Copyright, 1914, by Charles Scribner's Sons
+Published September, 1914_
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+J.D.C.
+
+IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF UNFAILING KINDNESS
+THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In "The Classic Point of View," published three years ago, I endeavored
+to give a clear and definitive statement of the principles on which all
+my criticism of art is based. The papers here gathered together, whether
+earlier or later than that volume, may be considered as the more
+detailed application of those principles to particular artists, to whole
+schools and epochs, even, in one case, to the entire history of the
+arts. The essay on Raphael, for instance, is little else than an
+illustration of the chapter on "Design"; that on Millet illustrates the
+three chapters on "The Subject in Art," on "Design," and on "Drawing";
+while "Two Ways of Painting" contrasts, in specific instances, the
+classic with the modern point of view.
+
+But there is another thread connecting these essays, for all of them
+will be found to have some bearing, more or less direct, upon the
+subject of the title essay. "The Illusion of Progress" elaborates a
+point more slightly touched upon in "Artist and Public"; the careers of
+Raphael and Millet are capital instances of the happy productiveness of
+an artist in sympathy with his public or of the difficulties, nobly
+conquered in this case, of an artist without public appreciation; the
+greatest merit attributed to "The American School" is an abstention
+from the extravagances of those who would make incomprehensibility a
+test of greatness. Finally, the work of Saint-Gaudens is a noble example
+of art fulfilling its social function in expressing and in elevating the
+ideals of its time and country.
+
+This last essay stands, in some respects, upon a different footing from
+the others. It deals with the work and the character of a man I knew and
+loved, it was originally written almost immediately after his death, and
+it is therefore colored, to some extent, by personal emotion. I have
+revised it, rearranged it, and added to it, and I trust that this
+coloring may be found to warm, without falsifying, the picture.
+
+The essay on "The Illusion of Progress" was first printed in "The
+Century," that on Saint-Gaudens in "The Atlantic Monthly." The others
+originally appeared in "Scribner's Magazine."
+
+KENYON COX.
+
+Calder House,
+Croton-on-Hudson,
+June 6, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ESSAY                             PAGE
+
+  I.  ARTIST AND PUBLIC              1
+ II.  JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET          44
+III.  THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS      77
+ IV.  RAPHAEL                       99
+  V.  TWO WAYS OF PAINTING         134
+ VI.  THE AMERICAN SCHOOL          149
+VII.  AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS       169
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+MILLET:
+ 1. "The Goose Girl," _Saulnier Collection, Bordeaux_     _Frontispiece_
+                                                             FACING PAGE
+ 2. "The Sower," _Vanderbilt Collection, Metropolitan Museum, New York_  46
+ 3. "The Gleaners," _The Louvre_                                      50
+ 4. "The Spaders"                                                     54
+ 5. "The Potato Planter," _Shaw Collection_                           58
+ 6. "The Grafter," _William Rockefeller Collection_                   62
+ 7. "The New-Born Calf," _Art Institute, Chicago_                     66
+ 8. "The First Steps,"                                                70
+ 9. "The Shepherdess," _Chauchard Collection, Louvre_                 72
+10. "Spring," _The Louvre_                                            74
+
+RAPHAEL:
+11. "Poetry," _The Vatican_                                          112
+12. "The Judgment of Solomon," _The Vatican_                         114
+13. The "Disputa," _The Vatican_                                     116
+14. "The School of Athens," _The Vatican_                            118
+15. "Parnassus," _The Vatican_                                       120
+16. "Jurisprudence," _The Vatican_                                   122
+17. "The Mass of Bolsena," _The Vatican_                             124
+18. "The Deliverance of Peter," _The Vatican_                        126
+19. "The Sibyls," _Santa Maria della Pace, Rome_                     128
+20. "Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami," _Gardner Collection_            130
+
+JOHN S. SARGENT:
+21. "The Hermit," _Metropolitan Museum, New York_                    136
+
+TITIAN:
+22. "Saint Jerome in the Desert," _Brera Gallery, Milan_             142
+
+SAINT-GAUDENS:
+23. "Plaquette Commemorating Cornish Masque"                         182
+24. "Amor Caritas"                                                   196
+25. "The Butler Children"                                            206
+26. "Sarah Redwood Lee"                                              208
+27. "Farragut," _Madison Square, New York_                           212
+28. "Lincoln," _Chicago, Ill._                                       214
+29. "Deacon Chapin," _Springfield, Mass._                            216
+30. "Adams Memorial," _Washington, D.C._                             218
+31. "Shaw Memorial," _Boston, Mass._                                 220
+32. "Sherman," _The Plaza, Central Park, New York_                   224
+
+
+
+
+ARTIST AND PUBLIC
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ARTIST AND PUBLIC
+
+
+In the history of art, as in the history of politics and in the history
+of economics, our modern epoch is marked off from all preceding epochs
+by one great event, the French Revolution. Fragonard, who survived that
+Revolution to lose himself in a new and strange world, is the last at
+the old masters; David, some sixteen years his junior, is the first of
+the moderns. Now if we look for the most fundamental distinction between
+our modern art and the art of past times, I believe we shall find it to
+be this: the art of the past was produced for a public that wanted it
+and understood it, by artists who understood and sympathized with their
+public; the art of our time has been, for the most part, produced for a
+public that did not want it and misunderstood it, by artists who
+disliked and despised the public for which they worked. When artist and
+public were united, art was homogeneous and continuous. Since the
+divorce of artist and public art has been chaotic and convulsive.
+
+That this divorce between the artist and his public--this dislocation of
+the right and natural relations between them--has taken place is
+certain. The causes of it are many and deep-lying in our modern
+civilization, and I can point out only a few of the more obvious ones.
+
+The first of these is the emergence of a new public. The art of past
+ages had been distinctively an aristocratic art, created for kings and
+princes, for the free citizens of slave-holding republics, for the
+spiritual and intellectual aristocracy of the church, or for a luxurious
+and frivolous nobility. As the aim of the Revolution was the
+destruction of aristocratic privilege, it is not surprising that a
+revolutionary like David should have felt it necessary to destroy the
+traditions of an art created for the aristocracy. In his own art of
+painting he succeeded so thoroughly that the painters of the next
+generation found themselves with no traditions at all. They had not only
+to work for a public of enriched bourgeois or proletarians who had never
+cared for art, but they had to create over again the art with which they
+endeavored to interest this public. How could they succeed? The rift
+between artist and public had begun, and it has been widening ever
+since.
+
+If the people had had little to do with the major arts of painting and
+sculpture, there had yet been, all through the Middle Ages and the
+Renaissance, a truly popular art--an art of furniture making, of
+wood-carving, of forging, of pottery. Every craftsman was an artist in
+his degree, and every artist was but a craftsman of a superior sort. Our
+machine-making, industrial civilization, intent upon material progress
+and the satisfaction of material wants, has destroyed this popular art;
+and at the same time that the artist lost his patronage from above he
+lost his support from below. He has become a superior person, a sort of
+demi-gentleman, but he has no longer a splendid nobility to employ him
+or a world of artist artisans to surround him and understand him.
+
+And to the modern artist, so isolated, with no tradition behind him, no
+direction from above and no support from below, the art of all times and
+all countries has become familiar through modern means of communication
+and modern processes of reproduction. Having no compelling reason for
+doing one thing rather than another, or for choosing one or another way
+of doing things, he is shown a thousand things that he may do and a
+thousand ways of doing them. Not clearly knowing his own mind he hears
+the clash and reverberation of a thousand other minds, and having no
+certainties he must listen to countless theories.
+
+Mr. Vedder has spoken of a certain "home-made" character which he
+considers the greatest defect of his art, the character of an art
+belonging to no distinctive school and having no definite relation to
+the time and country in which it is produced. But it is not Mr. Vedder's
+art alone that is home-made. It is precisely the characteristic note of
+our modern art that all of it that is good for anything is home-made or
+self-made. Each artist has had to create his art as best he could out of
+his own temperament and his own experience--has sat in his corner like a
+spider, spinning his web from his own bowels. If the art so created was
+essentially fine and noble the public has at last found it out, but only
+after years of neglect have embittered the existence and partially
+crippled the powers of its creator. And so, to our modern imagination,
+the neglected and misunderstood genius has become the very type of the
+great artist, and we have allowed our belief in him to color and distort
+our vision of the history of art. We have come to look upon the great
+artists of all times as an unhappy race struggling against the
+inappreciation of a stupid public, starving in garrets and waiting long
+for tardy recognition.
+
+The very reverse of this is true. With the exception of Rembrandt, who
+himself lived in a time of political revolution and of the emergence to
+power of a burgher class, you will scarce find an unappreciated genius
+in the whole history of art until the beginning of the nineteenth
+century. The great masters of the Renaissance, from Giotto to Veronese,
+were men of their time, sharing and interpreting the ideals of those
+around them, and were recognized and patronized as such. Rembrandt's
+greatest contemporary, Rubens, was painter in ordinary to half the
+courts of Europe, and Velazquez was the friend and companion of his
+king. Watteau and Boucher and Fragonard painted for the frivolous
+nobility of the eighteenth century just what that nobility wanted, and
+even the precursors of the Revolution, sober and honest Chardin, Greuze
+the sentimental, had no difficulty in making themselves understood,
+until the revolutionist David became dictator to the art of Europe and
+swept them into the rubbish heap with the rest.
+
+It is not until the beginning of what is known as the Romantic movement,
+under the Restoration, that the misunderstood painter of genius
+definitely appears. Millet, Corot, Rousseau were trying, with
+magnificent powers and perfect single-mindedness, to restore the art of
+painting which the Revolution had destroyed. They were men of the utmost
+nobility and simplicity of character, as far as possible from the
+gloomy, fantastic, vain, and egotistical person that we have come to
+accept as the type of unappreciated genius; they were classically minded
+and conservative, worshippers of the great art of the past; but they
+were without a public and they suffered bitter discouragement and long
+neglect. Upon their experience is founded that legend of the
+unpopularity of all great artists which has grown to astonishing
+proportions. Accepting this legend, and believing that all great artists
+are misunderstood, the artist has come to cherish a scorn of the public
+for which he works and to pretend a greater scorn than he feels. He
+cannot believe himself great _unless_ he is misunderstood, and he hugs
+his unpopularity to himself as a sign of genius and arrives at that
+sublime affectation which answers praise of his work with an exclamation
+of dismay: "Is it as bad as that?" He invents new excesses and
+eccentricities to insure misunderstanding, and proclaims the doctrine
+that, as anything great must be incomprehensible, so anything
+incomprehensible must be great. And the public has taken him, at least
+partly, at his word. He may or may not be great, but he is certainly
+incomprehensible and probably a little mad. Until he succeeds the public
+looks upon the artist as a more or less harmless lunatic. When he
+succeeds it is willing to exalt him into a kind of god and to worship
+his eccentricities as a part of his divinity. So we arrive at a belief
+in the insanity of genius. What would Raphael have thought of such a
+notion, or that consummate man of the world, Titian? What would the
+serene and mighty Veronese have thought of it, or the cool, clear-seeing
+Velazquez? How his Excellency the Ambassador of his Most Catholic
+Majesty, glorious Peter Paul Rubens, would have laughed!
+
+It is this lack of sympathy and understanding between the artist and his
+public--this fatal isolation of the artist--that is the cause of nearly
+all the shortcomings of modern art; of the weakness of what is known as
+official or academic art no less than of the extravagance of the art of
+opposition. The artist, being no longer a craftsman, working to order,
+but a kind of poet, expressing in loneliness his personal emotions, has
+lost his natural means of support. Governments, feeling a responsibility
+for the cultivation of art which was quite unnecessary in the days when
+art was spontaneously produced in answer to a natural demand, have
+tried to put an artificial support in its place. That the artist may
+show his wares and make himself known, they have created exhibitions;
+that he may be encouraged they have instituted medals and prizes; that
+he may not starve they have made government purchases. And these
+well-meant efforts have resulted in the creation of pictures which have
+no other purpose than to hang in exhibitions, to win medals, and to be
+purchased by the government and hung in those more permanent exhibitions
+which we call museums. For this purpose it is not necessary that a
+picture should have great beauty or great sincerity. It _is_ necessary
+that it should be large in order to attract attention and sufficiently
+well drawn and executed to seem to deserve recognition. And so was
+evolved the salon picture, a thing created for no man's pleasure, not
+even the artist's; a thing which is neither the decoration of a public
+building nor the possible ornament of a private house; a thing which,
+after it has served its temporary purpose, is rolled up and stored in a
+loft or placed in a gallery where its essential emptiness becomes more
+and more evident as time goes on. Such government-encouraged art had at
+least the merit of a well-sustained and fairly high level of
+accomplishment in the more obvious elements of painting. But as
+exhibitions became larger and larger and the competition engendered by
+them grew fiercer, it became increasingly difficult to attract attention
+by mere academic merit. So the painters began to search for
+sensationalism of subject, and the typical salon picture, no longer
+decorously pompous, began to deal in blood and horror and sensuality. It
+was Regnault who began this sensation hunt, but it has been carried much
+further since his day than he can have dreamed of, and the modern salon
+picture is not only tiresome but detestable.
+
+The salon picture, in its merits and its faults, is peculiarly French,
+but the modern exhibition has sins to answer for in other countries than
+France. In England it has been responsible for a great deal of
+sentimentality and anecdotage which has served to attract the attention
+of a public that could not be roused to interest in mere painting.
+Everywhere, even in this country, where exhibitions are relatively small
+and ill-attended, it has caused a certain stridency and blatancy, a
+keying up to exhibition pitch, a neglect of finer qualities for the sake
+of immediate effectiveness.
+
+Under our modern conditions the exhibition has become a necessity, and
+it would be impossible for our artists to live or to attain a reputation
+without it. The giving of medals and prizes and the purchase of works
+of art by the state may be of more doubtful utility, though such efforts
+at the encouragement of art probably do more good than harm. But there
+is one form of government patronage that is almost wholly beneficial,
+and that the only form of it which we have in this country--the awarding
+of commissions for the decoration of public buildings. The painter of
+mural decorations is in the old historical position, in sound and
+natural relations to the public. He is doing something which is wanted
+and, if he continues to receive commissions, he may fairly assume that
+he is doing it in a way that is satisfactory. With the decorative or
+monumental sculptor he is almost alone among modern artists in being
+relieved of the necessity of producing something in the isolation of his
+studio and waiting to see if any one will care for it; of trying,
+against the grain, to produce something that he thinks may appeal to
+the public because it does not appeal to himself; or of attempting to
+bamboozle the public into buying what neither he nor the public really
+cares for. If he does his best he may feel that he is as fairly earning
+his livelihood as his fellow workmen, the blacksmith and the
+stonecutter, and is as little dependent as they upon either charity or
+humbug. The best that government has done for art in France is the
+commissioning of the great decorative paintings of Baudry and Puvis. In
+this country, also, governments, national, State, or municipal, are
+patronizing art in the best possible way, and in making buildings
+splendid for the people are affording opportunity for the creation of a
+truly popular art.
+
+Without any artificial aid from the government the illustrator has a
+wide popular support and works for the public in a normal way; and,
+therefore, illustration has been one of the healthiest and most
+vigorous forms of modern art. The portrait-painter, too, is producing
+something he knows to be wanted, and, though his art has had to fight
+against the competition of the photograph and has been partially
+vulgarized by the struggle of the exhibitions, it has yet remained, upon
+the whole, comprehensible and human; so that much of the soundest art of
+the past century has gone into portraiture. It is the painters of
+pictures, landscape or genre, who have most suffered from the
+misunderstanding between artist and public. Without guidance some of
+them have hewed a path to deserved success. Others have wandered into
+strange byways and no-thoroughfares.
+
+The nineteenth century is strewn with the wrecks of such misunderstood
+and misunderstanding artists, but it was about the sixties when their
+searching for a way began to lead them in certain clearly marked
+directions. There are three paths, in especial, which have been followed
+since then by adventurous spirits: the paths of aestheticism, of
+scientific naturalism, and of pure self-expression; the paths of
+Whistler, of Monet, and of Cezanne.
+
+Whistler was an artist of refined and delicate talent with great
+weaknesses both in temperament and training; being also a very clever
+man and a brilliant controversialist, he proceeded to erect a theory
+which should prove his weaknesses to be so many virtues, and he nearly
+succeeded in convincing the world of its validity. Finding the
+representation of nature very difficult, he decided that art should not
+concern itself with representation but only with the creation of
+"arrangements" and "symphonies." Having no interest in the subject of
+pictures, he proclaimed that pictures should have no subjects and that
+any interest in the subject is vulgar. As he was a cosmopolitan with no
+local ties, he maintained that art had never been national; and as he
+was out of sympathy with his time, he taught that "art happens" and that
+"there never was an artistic period." According to the Whistlerian
+gospel, the artist not only has now no point of contact with the public,
+but he should not have and never has had any. He has never been a man
+among other men, but has been a dreamer "who sat at home with the women"
+and made pretty patterns of line and color because they pleased him. And
+the only business of the public is to accept "in silence" what he
+chooses to give them.
+
+This kind of rootless art he practised. Some of the patterns he produced
+are delightful, but they are without imagination, without passion,
+without joy in the material and visible world--the dainty diversions of
+a dilettante. One is glad that so gracefully slender an art should
+exist, but if it has seemed great art to us it is because our age is so
+poor in anything better. To rank its creator with the abounding masters
+of the past is an absurdity.
+
+In their efforts to escape from the dead-alive art of the salon picture,
+Monet and the Impressionists took an entirely different course. The
+gallery painter's perfunctory treatment of subject bored them, and they
+abandoned subject almost as entirely as Whistler had done. The sound if
+tame drawing and the mediocre painting of what they called official art
+revolted them as it revolted Whistler; but while he nearly suppressed
+representation they could see in art nothing but representation. They
+wanted to make that representation truer, and they tried to work a
+revolution in art by the scientific analysis of light and the
+invention of a new method of laying on paint. Instead of joining in
+Whistler's search for pure pattern they fixed their attention on facts
+alone, or rather on one aspect of the facts, and in their occupation
+with light and the manner of representing it they abandoned form almost
+as completely as they had abandoned significance and beauty.
+
+So it happened that Monet could devote some twenty canvases to the study
+of the effects of light, at different hours of the day, upon two straw
+stacks in his farmyard. It was admirable practice, no doubt, and neither
+scientific analysis nor the study of technical methods is to be
+despised; but the interest of the public, after all, is in what an
+artist does, not in how he learns to do it. The twenty canvases together
+formed a sort of demonstration of the possibilities of different kinds
+of lighting. Any one of them, taken singly, is but a portrait of two
+straw stacks, and the world will not permanently or deeply care about
+those straw stacks. The study of light is, in itself, no more an
+exercise of the artistic faculties than the study of anatomy or the
+study of perspective; and while Impressionism has put a keener edge upon
+some of the tools of the artist, it has inevitably failed to produce a
+school of art.
+
+After Impressionism, what? We have no name for it but
+Post-Impressionism. Such men as Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh recognized
+the sterility of Impressionism and of a narrow aestheticism, while they
+shared the hatred of the aesthetes and the Impressionists for the current
+art of the salons. No more than the aesthetes or the Impressionists were
+they conscious of any social or universal ideals that demanded
+expression. The aesthetes had a doctrine; the Impressionists had a method
+and a technic. The Post-Impressionists had nothing, and were driven to
+the attempt at pure self-expression--to the exaltation of the great god
+Whim. They had no training, they recognized no traditions, they spoke to
+no public. Each was to express, as he thought best, whatever he happened
+to feel or to think, and to invent, as he went along, the language in
+which he should express it. I think some of these men had the elements
+of genius in them and might have done good work; but their task was a
+heart-breaking and a hopeless one. An art cannot be improvised, and an
+artist must have some other guide than unregulated emotion. The path
+they entered upon had been immemorially marked "no passing"; for many of
+them the end of it was suicide or the madhouse.
+
+But whatever the aberrations of these, the true
+Post-Impressionists--whatever the ugliness, the eccentricity, or the
+moral dinginess into which they were betrayed--I believe them to have
+been, in the main, honest if unbalanced and ill-regulated minds.
+Whatever their errors, they paid the price of them in poverty, in
+neglect, in death. With those who pretend to be their descendants to-day
+the case is different; they are not paying for their eccentricity or
+their madness, they are making it pay.
+
+The enormous engine of modern publicity has been discovered by these
+men. They have learned to advertise, and they have found that morbidity,
+eccentricity, indecency, extremes of every kind and of any degree are
+capital advertisement. If one cannot create a sound and living art, one
+can at least make something odd enough to be talked about; if one cannot
+achieve enduring fame, one may make sure of a flaming notoriety. And, as
+a money-maker, present notoriety is worth more than future fame, for the
+speculative dealer is at hand. His interest is in "quick returns" and
+he has no wish to wait until you are famous--or dead--before he can sell
+anything you do. His process is to buy anything he thinks he can "boom,"
+to "boom" it as furiously as possible, and to sell it before the "boom"
+collapses. Then he will exploit something else, and there's the rub.
+Once you have entered this mad race for notoriety, there is no drawing
+out of it. The same sensation will not attract attention a second time;
+you must be novel at any cost. You must exaggerate your exaggerations
+and out-Herod Herod, for others have learned how easy the game is to
+play, and are at your heels. It is no longer a matter of
+misunderstanding and being misunderstood by the public; it is a matter
+of deliberately flouting and outraging the public--of assuming
+incomprehensibility and antagonism to popular feeling as signs of
+greatness. And so is founded what Frederic Harrison has called the
+"shock-your-grandmother school."
+
+It is with profound regret that one must name as one of the founders of
+this school an artist of real power, who has produced much admirable
+work--Auguste Rodin. At the age of thirty-seven he attained a sudden and
+resounding notoriety, and from that time he has been the most talked-of
+artist in Europe. He was a consummate modeller, a magnificent workman,
+but he had always grave faults and striking mannerisms. These faults and
+mannerisms he has latterly pushed to greater and greater extremes while
+neglecting his great gift, each work being more chaotic and fragmentary
+in composition, more hideous in type, more affected and emptier in
+execution, until he has produced marvels of mushiness and incoherence
+hitherto undreamed of and has set up as public monuments fantastically
+mutilated figures with broken legs or heads knocked off. Now, in his
+old age, he is producing shoals of drawings the most extraordinary of
+which few are permitted to see. Some selected specimens of them hang in
+a long row in the Metropolitan Museum, and I assure you, upon my word as
+a lifelong student of drawing, they are quite as ugly and as silly as
+they look. There is not a touch in them that has any truth to nature,
+not a line that has real beauty or expressiveness. They represent the
+human figure with the structure of a jellyfish and the movement of a
+Dutch doll; the human face with an expression I prefer not to
+characterize. If they be not the symptoms of mental decay, they can be
+nothing but the means of a gigantic mystification.
+
+With Henri Matisse we have not to deplore the deliquescence of a great
+talent, for we have no reason to suppose he ever had any. It is true
+that his admirers will assure you he could once draw and paint as
+everybody does; what he could _not_ do was to paint enough better than
+everybody does to make his mark in the world; and he was a quite
+undistinguished person until he found a way to produce some effect upon
+his grandmother the public by shocking her into attention. His method is
+to choose the ugliest models to be found; to put them into the most
+grotesque and indecent postures imaginable; to draw them in the manner
+of a savage, or a depraved child, or a worse manner if that be possible;
+to surround his figures with blue outlines half an inch wide; and to
+paint them in crude and staring colors, brutally laid on in flat masses.
+Then, when his grandmother begins to "sit up," she is told with a grave
+face that this is a reaction from naturalism, a revival of abstract line
+and color, a subjective art which is not the representation of nature
+but the expression of the artist's soul. No wonder she gasps and
+stares!
+
+It seemed, two or three years ago, that the limit of mystification had
+been reached--that this comedy of errors could not be carried further;
+but human ingenuity is inexhaustible, and we now have whole schools,
+Cubists, Futurists, and the like, who joyously vie with each other in
+the creation of incredible pictures and of irreconcilable and
+incomprehensible theories. The public is inclined to lump them all
+together and, so far as their work is concerned, the public is not far
+wrong; yet in theory Cubism and Futurism are diametrically opposed to
+each other. It is not easy to get any clear conception of the doctrines
+of these schools, but, so far as I am able to understand them--and I
+have taken some pains to do so--they are something like this:
+
+Cubism is static; Futurism is kinetic. Cubism deals with bulk; Futurism
+deals with motion. The Cubist, by a kind of extension of Mr. Berenson's
+doctrine of "tactile values," assumes that the only character of objects
+which is of importance to the artist is their bulk and solidity--what he
+calls their "volumes." Now the form in which volume is most easily
+apprehended is the cube; do we not measure by it and speak of the cubic
+contents of anything? The inference is easy: reduce all objects to forms
+which can be bounded by planes and defined by straight lines and angles;
+make their cubic contents measurable to the eye; transform drawing into
+a burlesque of solid geometry; and you have, at once, attained to the
+highest art. The Futurist, on the other hand, maintains that we know
+nothing but that things are in flux. Form, solidity, weight are
+illusions. Nothing exists but motion. Everything is changing every
+moment, and if anything were still we ourselves are changing. It is,
+therefore, absurd to give fixed boundaries to anything or to admit of
+any fixed relations in space. If you are trying to record your
+impression of a face it is certain that by the time you have done one
+eye the other eye will no longer be where it was--it may be at the other
+side of the room. You must cut nature into small bits and shuffle them
+about wildly if you are to reproduce what we really see.
+
+Whatever its extravagance, Cubism remains a form of graphic art. However
+pedantic and ridiculous its transformation of drawing, it yet recognizes
+the existence of drawing. Therefore, to the Futurist, Cubism is
+reactionary. What difference does it make, he asks, whether you draw a
+head round or square? Why draw a head at all? The Futurist denies the
+fundamental postulates of the art of painting. Painting has always, and
+by definition, represented upon a surface objects supposed to lie
+beyond it and to be seen through it. Futurism pretends to place the
+spectator inside the picture and to represent things around him or
+behind him as well as those in front of him. Painting has always assumed
+the single moment of vision, and, though it has sometimes placed more
+than one picture on the same canvas, it has treated each picture as seen
+at a specific instant of time. Futurism attempts systematically to
+combine the past and the future with the present, as if all the pictures
+in a cinematograph film were to be printed one over the other; to paint
+no instant but to represent the movement of time. It aims at nothing
+less than the abrogation of all recognized laws, the total destruction
+of all that has hitherto passed for art.
+
+Do you recall the story of the man who tried to count a litter of pigs,
+but gave it up because one little pig ran about so fast that he could
+not be counted? One finds oneself in somewhat the same predicament when
+one tries to describe these "new movements" in art. The movement is so
+rapid and the men shift their ground so quickly that there is no telling
+where to find them. You have no sooner arrived at some notion of the
+difference between Cubism and Futurism than you find your Cubist doing
+things that are both Cubist and Futurist, or neither Cubist nor
+Futurist, according as you look at them. You find things made up of
+geometrical figures to give volume, yet with all the parts many times
+repeated to give motion. You find things that have neither bulk nor
+motion but look like nothing so much as a box of Chinese tangrams
+scattered on a table. Finally, you have assemblages of lines that do not
+draw anything, even cubes or triangles; and we are assured that there
+is now a newest school of all, called Orphism, which, finding still some
+vestiges of intelligibility in any assemblage of lines, reduces
+everything to shapeless blotches. Probably the first of Orphic pictures
+was that produced by the quite authentic donkey who was induced to smear
+a canvas by lashing a tail duly dipped in paint. It was given a title as
+Orphic as the painting, was accepted by a jury anxious to find new forms
+of talent, and was hung in the _Salon d'Automne._
+
+In all this welter of preposterous theories there is but one thing
+constant--one thing on which all these theorists are agreed. It is that
+all this strange stuff is symbolic and shadows forth the impressions and
+emotions of the artist: represents not nature but his feeling about
+nature; is the expression of his mind or, as they prefer to call it, his
+soul. It may be so. All art is symbolic; images are symbols; words are
+symbols; all communication is by symbols. But if a symbol is to serve
+any purpose of communication between one mind and another it must be a
+symbol accepted and understood by both minds. If an artist is to choose
+his symbols to suit himself, and to make them mean anything he chooses,
+who is to say what he means or whether he means anything? If a man were
+to rise and recite, with a solemn voice, words like "Ajakan maradak
+tecor sosthendi," would you know what he meant? If he wished you to
+believe that these symbols express the feeling of awe caused by the
+contemplation of the starry heavens, he would have to tell you so _in
+your own language_; and even then you would have only his word for it.
+He may have meant them to express that, but do they? The apologists of
+the new schools are continually telling us that we must give the
+necessary time and thought to learn the language of these men before we
+condemn them. Why should we? Why should not they learn the universal
+language of art? It is they who are trying to say something. When they
+have learned to speak that language and have convinced us that they have
+something to say in it which is worth listening to, then, and not till
+then, we may consent to such slight modification of it as may fit it
+more closely to their thought.
+
+If these gentlemen really believe that their capriciously chosen symbols
+are fit vehicles for communication with others, why do they fall back on
+that old, old symbol, the written word? Why do they introduce, in the
+very midst of a design in which everything else is dislocated, a name or
+a word in clear Roman letters? Or why do they give their pictures titles
+and, lest you should neglect to look in the catalogue, print the title
+quite carefully and legibly in the corner of the picture itself? They
+know that they must set you to hunting for their announced subject or
+you would not look twice at their puzzles.
+
+Now, there is only one word for this denial of all law, this
+insurrection against all custom and tradition, this assertion of
+individual license without discipline and without restraint; and that
+word is "anarchy." And, as we know, theoretic anarchy, though it may not
+always lead to actual violence, is a doctrine of destruction. It is so
+in art, and these artistic anarchists are found proclaiming that the
+public will never understand or accept their art while anything remains
+of the art of the past, and demanding that therefore the art of the past
+shall be destroyed. It is actual, physical destruction of pictures and
+statues that they call for, and in Italy, that great treasury of the
+world's art, has been raised the sinister cry: "Burn the museums!" They
+have not yet taken to the torch, but if they were sincere they would do
+it; for their doctrine calls for nothing less than the reduction of
+mankind to a state of primitive savagery that it may begin again at the
+beginning.
+
+Fortunately, they are not sincere. There may be among them those who
+honestly believe in that exaltation of the individual and that revolt
+against all law which is the danger of our age. But, for the most part,
+if they have broken from the fold and "like sheep have gone astray,"
+they have shown a very sheep-like disposition to follow the bell-wether.
+They are fond of quoting a saying of Gauguin's that "one must be either
+a revolutionist or a plagiary"; but can any one tell these
+revolutionists apart? Can any one distinguish among them such definite
+and logically developed personalities as mark even schoolmen and
+"plagiarists" like Meissonier and Gerome? If any one of these men stood
+alone, one might believe his eccentricities to be the mark of an extreme
+individuality; one cannot believe it when one finds the same
+eccentricities in twenty of them.
+
+No, it is not for the sake of unhampered personal development that young
+artists are joining these new schools; it is because they are offered a
+short cut to a kind of success. As there are no more laws and no more
+standards, there is nothing to learn. The merest student is at once set
+upon a level with the most experienced of his instructors, and boys and
+girls in their teens are hailed as masters. Art is at last made easy,
+and there are no longer any pupils, for all have become teachers. To
+borrow Doctor Johnson's phrase, "many men, many women, and many
+children" could produce art after this fashion; and they do.
+
+So right are the practitioners of this puerile art in their proclaimed
+belief that the public will never accept it while anything else exists,
+that one might be willing to treat it with the silent contempt it
+deserves were it not for the efforts of certain critics and writers for
+the press to convince us that it ought to be accepted. Some of these men
+seem to be intimidated by the blunders of the past. Knowing that
+contemporary criticism has damned almost every true artist of the
+nineteenth century, they are determined not to be caught napping; and
+they join in shouts of applause as each new harlequin steps upon the
+stage. They forget that it is as dangerous to praise ignorantly as to
+blame unjustly, and that the railer at genius, though he may seem more
+malevolent, will scarce appear so ridiculous to posterity as the dupe of
+the mountebank. Others of them are, no doubt, honest victims of that
+illusion of progress to which we are all more or less subject--to that
+ingrained belief that all evolution is upward and that the latest thing
+must necessarily be the best. They forget that the same process which
+has relieved man of his tail has deprived the snake of his legs and the
+kiwi of his wings. They forget that art has never been and cannot be
+continuously progressive; that it is only the sciences connected with
+art that are capable of progress; and that the "Henriade" is not a
+greater poem than the "Divine Comedy" because Voltaire has learned the
+falsity of the Ptolemaic astronomy. Finally, these writers, like other
+people, desire to seem knowing and clever; and if you appear to admire
+vastly what no one else understands you pass for a clever man.
+
+I have looked through a good deal of the writings of these "up-to-date"
+critics in the effort to find something like an intelligible argument
+or a definite statement of belief. I have found nothing but the
+continually repeated assumption that these new movements, in all their
+varieties, are "living" and "vital." I can find no grounds stated for
+this assumption and can suppose only that what is changing with great
+rapidity is conceived to be alive; yet I know nothing more productive of
+rapid changes than putrefaction.
+
+Do not be deceived. This is not vital art, it is decadent and corrupt.
+True art has always been the expression by the artist of the ideals of
+his time and of the world in which he lived--ideals which were his own
+because he was a part of that world. A living and healthy art never has
+existed and never can exist except through the mutual understanding and
+co-operation of the artist and his public. Art is made for man and has a
+social function to perform. We have a right to demand that it shall be
+both human and humane; that it shall show some sympathy in the artist
+with our thoughts and our feelings; that it shall interpret our ideals
+to us in that universal language which has grown up in the course of
+ages. We have a right to reject with pity or with scorn the stammerings
+of incompetence, the babble of lunacy, or the vaporing of imposture. But
+mutual understanding implies a duty on the part of the public as well as
+on the part of the artist, and we must give as well as take. We must be
+at the pains to learn something of the language of art in which we bid
+the artist speak. If we would have beauty from him we must sympathize
+with his aspiration for beauty. Above all, if we would have him
+interpret for us our ideals we must have ideals worthy of such
+interpretation. Without this co-operation on our part we may have a
+better art than we deserve, for noble artists will be born, and they
+will give us an art noble in its essence however mutilated and shorn of
+its effectiveness by our neglect. It is only by being worthy of it that
+we can hope to have an art we may be proud of--an art lofty in its
+inspiration, consummate in its achievement, disciplined in its strength.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET
+
+
+Jean Francois Millet, who lived hard and died poor, is now perhaps the
+most famous artist of the nineteenth century. His slightest work is
+fought for by dealers and collectors, and his more important pictures,
+if they chance to change hands, bring colossal and almost incredible
+prices. And of all modern reputations his, so far as we can see, seems
+most likely to be enduring. If any painter of the immediate past is
+definitively numbered with the great masters, it is he. Yet the popular
+admiration for his art is based on a I misapprehension almost as
+profound as that of those contemporaries who decried and opposed him.
+They thought him violent, rude, ill-educated, a "man of the woods," a
+revolutionist, almost a communist. We are apt to think of him as a
+gentle sentimentalist, a soul full of compassion for the hard lot of the
+poor, a man whose art achieves greatness by sheer feeling rather than by
+knowledge and intellect. In spite of his own letters, in spite of the
+testimony of many who knew him well, in spite of more than one piece of
+illuminating criticism, these two misconceptions endure; and, for the
+many, Millet is still either the painter of "The Man with the Hoe," a
+powerful but somewhat exceptional work, or the painter of "L'Angelus,"
+precisely the least characteristic picture he ever produced. There is a
+legendary Millet, in many ways a very different man from the real one,
+and, while the facts of his life are well known and undisputed, the
+interpretation of them is colored by preconceptions and strained to make
+them fit the legend.
+
+Altogether too much, for instance, has been made of the fact that
+Millet was born a peasant. He was so, but so were half the artists and
+poets who come up to Paris and fill the schools and the cafes of the
+student quarters. To any one who has known these young _rapins_, and
+wondered at the grave and distinguished members of the Institute into
+which many of them have afterward developed, it is evident that this
+studious youth--who read Virgil in the original and Homer and
+Shakespeare and Goethe in translations--probably had a much more
+cultivated mind and a much sounder education than most of his fellow
+students under Delaroche. Seven years after this Norman farmer's son
+came to Paris, with a pension of 600 francs voted by the town council of
+Cherbourg, the son of a Breton sabot-maker followed him there with a
+precisely similar pension voted by the town council of Roche-sur-Yon;
+and the pupil of Langlois had had at least equal opportunities with
+the pupil of Sartoris. Both cases were entirely typical of French
+methods of encouraging the fine arts, and the peasant origin of Millet
+is precisely as significant as the peasant origin of Baudry.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 2.--Millet. "The Sower."
+In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vanderbilt collection.]
+
+Baudry persevered in the course marked out for him and, after failing
+three times, received the _Prix de Rome_ and became the pensioner of the
+state. Millet took umbrage at Delaroche's explanation that his support
+was already pledged to another candidate for the prize, and left the
+_atelier_ of that master after little more than a year's work. But that
+he had already acquired most of what was to be learned there is shown,
+if by nothing else, by the master's promise to push him for the prize
+the year following. This was in 1838, and for a year or two longer
+Millet worked in the life classes of Suisse and Boudin without a master.
+His pension was first cut down and then withdrawn altogether, and he
+was thrown upon his own resources. His struggles and his poverty during
+the next few years were those of many a young artist, aggravated, in his
+case, by two imprudent marriages. But during all the time that he was
+painting portraits in Cherbourg or little nudes in Paris he was steadily
+gaining reputation and making friends. If we had not the pictures
+themselves to show us how able and how well-trained a workman he was,
+the story told us by Wyatt Eaton, in "Modern French Masters," would
+convince us. It was in the last year of Millet's life that he told the
+young American how, in his early days, a dealer would come to him for a
+picture and, "having nothing painted, he would offer the dealer a book
+and ask him to wait for a little while that he might add a few touches
+to the picture." He would then go into his studio and take a fresh
+canvas, or a panel, and in two hours bring out a little nude figure,
+which he had painted during that time, and for which he would receive
+twenty or twenty-five francs. It was the work of this time that Diaz
+admired for its color and its "immortal flesh painting"; that caused
+Guichard, a pupil of Ingres, to tell his master that Millet was the
+finest draughtsman of the new school; that earned for its author the
+title of "master of the nude."
+
+He did all kinds of work in these days, even painting signs and
+illustrating sheet music, and it was all capital practice for a young
+man, but it was not what he wanted to do. A great deal has been made of
+the story of his overhearing some one speak of him as "a fellow who
+never paints anything but naked women," and he is represented as
+undergoing something like a sudden conversion and as resolving to "do no
+more of the devil's work." As a matter of fact, he had, from the
+first, wanted to paint "men at work in the fields," with their "fine
+attitudes," and he only tried his hand at other things because he had
+his living to earn. Sensier saw what seems to have been the first sketch
+for "The Sower" as early as 1847, and it existed long before that, while
+"The Winnower" was exhibited in 1848; and the overheard conversation is
+said to have taken place in 1849. There was nothing indecent or immoral
+in Millet's early work, and the best proof that he felt no moral
+reprobation for the painting of the nude--as what true painter,
+especially in France, ever did?--is that he returned to it in the height
+of his power and, in the picture of the little "Goose Girl" (Pl. 1) by
+the brook side, her slim, young body bared for the bath, produced the
+loveliest of his works. No, what happened to Millet in 1849 was simply
+that he resolved to do no more pot-boiling, to consult no one's taste
+but his own, to paint what he pleased and as he pleased, if he starved
+for it. He went to Barbizon for a summer's holiday and to escape the
+cholera. He stayed there because living was cheap and the place was
+healthful, and because he could find there the models and the subjects
+on which he built his highly abstract and ideal art.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 3.--Millet. "The Gleaners."
+In the Louvre.]
+
+At Barbizon he neither resumed the costume nor led the life of a
+peasant. He wore sabots, as hundreds of other artists have done, before
+and since, when living in the country in France. Sabots are very cheap
+and very dry and not uncomfortable when you have acquired the knack of
+wearing them. In other respects he dressed and lived like a small
+bourgeois, and was _monsieur_ to the people about him. Barbizon was
+already a summer resort for artists before he came there, and the inn
+was full of painters; while others, of whom Rousseau was one, were
+settled there more or less permanently. It is but a short distance from
+Paris, and the exhibitions and museums were readily accessible. The life
+that Millet lived there was that of many poor, self-respecting,
+hard-working artists, and if he had been a landscape painter that life
+would never have seemed in any way exceptional. It is only because he
+was a painter of the figure that it seems odd he should have lived in
+the country; only because he painted peasants that he has been thought
+of as a peasant himself. If he accepted the name, with a kind of pride,
+it was in protest against the frivolity and artificiality of the
+fashionable art of the day. But if too much has been made of Millet's
+peasant origin, perhaps hardly enough has been made of his race. It is
+at least interesting that the two Frenchmen whose art has most in
+common with his, Nicolas Poussin and Pierre Corneille, should have been
+Normans like himself. In the severely restrained, grandly simple,
+profoundly classical work of these three men, that hard-headed,
+strong-handed, austere, and manly race has found its artistic
+expression.
+
+For Millet is neither a revolutionary nor a sentimentalist, nor even a
+romanticist; he is essentially a classicist of the classicists, a
+conservative of the conservatives, the one modern exemplar of the grand
+style. It is because his art is so old that it was "too new" for even
+Corot to understand it; because he harked back beyond the
+pseudoclassicism of his time to the great art of the past, and was
+classic as Phidias and Giotto and Michelangelo were classic, that he
+seemed strange to his contemporaries. In everything he was conservative.
+He hated change; he wanted things to remain as they had always been. He
+did not especially pity the hard lot of the peasant; he considered it
+the natural and inevitable lot of man who "eats bread in the sweat of
+his brow." He wanted the people he painted "to look as if they belonged
+to their place--as if it would be impossible for them ever to think of
+being anything else but what they are." In the herdsman and the
+shepherd, the sower and the reaper, he saw the immemorial types of
+humanity whose labors have endured since the world began and were
+essentially what they now are when Virgil wrote his "Georgics" and when
+Jacob kept the flocks of Laban. This is the note of all his work. It is
+the permanent, the essential, the eternally significant that he paints.
+The apparent localization of his subjects in time and place is an
+illusion. He is not concerned with the nineteenth century or with
+Barbizon but with mankind. At the very moment when the English
+Pre-raphaelites were trying to found a great art on the exhaustive
+imitation of natural detail, he eliminated detail as much as possible.
+At the very beginning of our modern preoccupation with the direct
+representation of facts, he abandoned study from the model almost
+entirely and could say that he "had never painted from nature." His
+subjects would have struck the amiable Sir Joshua as trivial, yet no one
+has ever more completely followed that writer's precepts. His confession
+of faith is in the words, "One must be able to make use of the trivial
+for the expression of the sublime"; and this painter of "rustic genre"
+is the world's greatest master of the sublime after Michelangelo.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 4.--Millet. "The Spaders."]
+
+The comparison with Michelangelo is inevitable and has been made again
+and again by those who have felt the elemental grandeur of Millet's
+work. As a recent writer has remarked: "An art highly intellectualized,
+so as to convey a great idea with the lucidity of language, must needs
+be controlled by genius akin to that which inspired the ceiling
+paintings of the Sistine Chapel."[A] This was written of the Trajanic
+sculptors, whose works both Michelangelo and Millet studied and admired,
+and indeed it is to this old Roman art, or to the still older art of
+Greece, that one must go for the truest parallel of Millet's temper and
+his manner of working. He was less impatient, less romantic and
+emotional than Michelangelo; he was graver, quieter, more serene; and if
+he had little of the Greek sensuousness and the Greek love of physical
+beauty, he had much of the antique clarity and simplicity. To express
+his idea clearly, logically, and forcibly; to make a work of art that
+should be "all of a piece" and in which "things should be where they
+are for a purpose"; to admit nothing for display, for ornament, even for
+beauty, that did not necessarily and inevitably grow out of his central
+theme, and to suppress with an iron rigidity everything useless or
+superfluous--this was his constant and conscious effort. It is an ideal
+eminently austere and intellectual--an ideal, above all, especially and
+eternally classic.
+
+[A] Eugenie Strong, "Roman Sculpture," p. 224.
+
+Take, for an instance, the earliest of his masterpieces, the first great
+picture by which he marked his emancipation and his determination
+henceforth to produce art as he understood it without regard to the
+preferences of others. Many of his preliminary drawings and studies
+exist and we can trace, more or less clearly, the process by which the
+final result was arrived at. At first we have merely a peasant sowing
+grain; an everyday incident, truly enough observed but nothing more.
+Gradually the background is cut down, the space restricted, the figure
+enlarged until it fills its frame as a metope of the Parthenon is
+filled. The gesture is ever enlarged and given more sweep and majesty,
+the silhouette is simplified and divested of all accidental or
+insignificant detail. A thousand previous observations are compared and
+resumed in one general and comprehensive formula, and the typical has
+been evolved from the actual. What generations of Greek sculptors did in
+their slow perfectioning of certain fixed types he has done almost at
+once. We have no longer a man sowing, but "The Sower" (Pl. 2),
+justifying the title he instinctively gave it by its air of permanence,
+of inevitability, of universality. All the significance which there is
+or ever has been for mankind in that primaeval action of sowing the seed
+is crystallized into its necessary expression. The thing is done once
+for all, and need never--can never be done again. Has any one else
+had this power since Michelangelo created his "Adam"?
+
+[Illustration: Plate 5.--Millet. "The Potato Planters."
+In the Quincy A. Shaw Collection.]
+
+If even Millet never again attained quite the august impressiveness of
+this picture it is because no other action of rustic man has so wide or
+so deep a meaning for us as this of sowing. All the meaning there is in
+an action he could make us feel with entire certainty, and always he
+proceeds by this method of elimination, concentration, simplification,
+insistence on the essential and the essential only. One of the most
+perfect of all his pictures--more perfect than "The Sower" on account of
+qualities of mere painting, of color, and of the rendering of landscape,
+of which I shall speak later--is "The Gleaners" (Pl. 3). Here one figure
+is not enough to express the continuousness of the movement; the utmost
+simplification will not make you feel, as powerfully as he wishes you to
+feel it, the crawling progress, the bending together of back and
+thighs, the groping of worn fingers in the stubble. The line must be
+reinforced and reduplicated, and a second figure, almost a facsimile of
+the first, is added. Even this is not enough. He adds a third figure,
+not gathering the ear, but about to do so, standing, but stooped forward
+and bounded by one great, almost uninterrupted curve from the peak of
+the cap over her eyes to the heel which half slips out of the sabot, and
+the thing is done. The whole day's work is resumed in that one moment.
+The task has endured for hours and will endure till sunset, with only an
+occasional break while the back is half-straightened--there is not time
+to straighten it wholly. It is the triumph of significant composition,
+as "The Sower" is the triumph of significant draughtsmanship.
+
+Or, when an action is more complicated and difficult of suggestion, as
+is that, for instance, of digging, he takes it at the beginning and at
+the end, as in "The Spaders" (Pl. 4), and makes you understand
+everything between. One man is doubled over his spade, his whole weight
+brought to bear on the pressing foot which drives the blade into the
+ground. The other, with arms outstretched, gives the twisting motion
+which lets the loosened earth fall where it is to lie. Each of these
+positions is so thoroughly understood and so definitely expressed that
+all the other positions of the action are implied in them. You feel the
+recurrent rhythm of the movement and could almost count the falling of
+the clods.
+
+So far did Millet push the elimination of non-essentials that his heads
+have often scarcely any features, his hands, one might say, are without
+fingers, and his draperies are so simplified as to suggest the witty
+remark that his peasants are too poor to afford any folds in their
+garments. The setting of the great, bony planes of jaw and cheek and
+temple, the bulk and solidity of the skull, and the direction of the
+face--these were, often enough, all he wanted of a head. Look at the
+hand of the woman in "The Potato Planters" (Pl. 5), or at those of the
+man in the same picture, and see how little detail there is in them, yet
+how surely the master's sovereign draughtsmanship has made you feel
+their actual structure and function! And how inevitably the garments,
+with their few and simple folds, mould and accent the figures beneath
+them, "becoming, as it were, a part of the body and expressing, even
+more than the nude, the larger and simpler forms of nature"! How
+explicitly the action of the bodies is registered, how perfectly the
+amount of effort apparent is proportioned to the end to be attained! One
+can feel, to an ounce, it seems, the strain upon the muscles implied by
+that hoe-full of earth. Or look at the easier attitude of "The
+Grafter" (Pl. 6), engaged upon his gentler task, and at the monumental
+silhouette of the wife, standing there, babe in arms, a type of eternal
+motherhood and of the fruitfulness to come.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 6.--Millet. "The Grafter."
+In the collection of William Rockefeller.]
+
+Oftener than anything, perhaps, it was the sense of weight that
+interested Millet. It is the adjustment of her body to the weight of the
+child she carries that gives her statuesque pose to the wife of the
+grafter. It is the drag of the buckets upon the arms that gives her
+whole character to the magnificent "Woman Carrying Water," in the
+Vanderbilt collection. It is the erect carriage, the cautious, rhythmic
+walk, keeping step together, forced upon them by the sense of weight,
+which gives that gravity and solemnity to the bearers of "The New-Born
+Calf" (Pl. 7), which was ridiculed by Millet's critics as more befitting
+the bearers of the bull Apis or the Holy Sacrament. The artist himself
+was explicit in this instance as in that of the "Woman Carrying Water."
+"The expression of two men carrying a load on a litter," he says,
+"naturally depends on the weight which rests upon their arms. Thus, if
+the weight is equal, their expression will be the same, whether they
+bear the Ark of the Covenant or a calf, an ingot of gold or a stone."
+Find that expression, whether in face or figure, render it clearly,
+"with largeness and simplicity," and you have a great, a grave, a
+classic work of art. "We are never so truly Greek," he said, "as when we
+are simply painting our own impressions." Certainly his own way of
+painting his impressions was more Greek than anything else in the whole
+range of modern art.
+
+In the epic grandeur of such pictures as these there is something akin
+to sadness, though assuredly Millet did not mean them to be sad. Did he
+not say of the "Woman Carrying Water": "I have avoided, as I always do,
+with a sort of horror, everything that might verge on the sentimental"?
+He wished her to seem "to do her work simply and cheerfully ... as a
+part of her daily task and the habit of her life." And he was not always
+in the austere and epical mood. He could be idyllic as well, and if he
+could not see "the joyous side" of life or nature he could feel and make
+us feel the charm of tranquillity. Indeed, this remark of his about the
+joyous side of things was made in the dark, early days when life was
+hardest for him. He broadened in his view as he grew older and
+conditions became more tolerable, and he has painted a whole series of
+little pictures of family life and of childhood that, in their smiling
+seriousness, are endlessly delightful. The same science, the same
+thoughtfulness, the same concentration and intellectual grasp that
+defined for us the superb gesture of "The Sower" have gone to the
+depiction of the adorable uncertainty, between walking and falling, of
+those "First Steps" (Pl. 8) from the mother's lap to the outstretched
+arms of the father; and the result, in this case as in the other, is a
+thing perfectly and permanently expressed. Whatever Millet has done is
+done. He has "characterized the type," as it was his dream to do, and
+written "hands off" across his subject for all future adventurers.
+
+Finally, he rises to an almost lyric fervor in that picture of the
+little "Goose Girl" bathing, which is one of the most purely and
+exquisitely beautiful things in art. In this smooth, young body
+quivering with anticipation of the coolness of the water; in these
+rounded, slender limbs with their long, firm, supple lines; in the
+unconscious, half-awkward grace of attitude and in the glory of
+sunlight splashing through the shadow of the willows, there is a whole
+song of joy and youth and the goodness of the world. The picture exists
+in a drawing or pastel, which has been photographed by Braun, as well as
+in the oil-painting, and Millet's habit of returning again and again to
+a favorite subject renders it difficult to be certain which is the
+earlier of the two; but I imagine this drawing to be a study for the
+picture. At first sight the figure in it is more obviously beautiful
+than in the other version, and it is only after a time that one begins
+to understand the changes that the artist was impelled to make. It is
+almost too graceful, too much like an antique nymph. No one could find
+any fault with it, but by an almost imperceptible stiffening of the line
+here and there, a little greater turn of the foot upon the ankle and of
+the hand upon the wrist, the figure in the painting has been given an
+accent of rusticity that makes it more human, more natural, and more
+appealing. She is no longer a possible Galatea or Arethusa, she is only
+a goose girl, and we feel but the more strongly on that account the
+eternal poem of the healthy human form.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 7.--Millet. "The New-Born Calf."
+In the Art Institute, Chicago.]
+
+The especial study of the nineteenth century was landscape, and Millet
+was so far a man of his time that he was a great landscape painter; but
+his treatment of landscape was unlike any other, and, like his own
+treatment of the figure, in its insistence on essentials, its
+elimination of the accidental, its austere and grand simplicity. I have
+heard, somewhere, a story of his saying, in answer to praise of his work
+or inquiry as to his meaning: "I was trying to express the difference
+between the things that lie flat and the things that stand upright."
+That is the real motive of one of his masterpieces--one that in some
+moods seems the greatest of them all--"The Shepherdess" (Pl. 9), that
+is, or used to be, in the Chauchard collection. In this nobly tranquil
+work, in which there is no hint of sadness or revolt, are to be found
+all his usual inevitableness of composition and perfection of
+draughtsmanship--note the effect of repetition in the sheep, "forty
+feeding like one"--but the glory of the picture is in the infinite
+recession of the plain that lies flat, the exact notation of the
+successive positions upon it of the things that stand upright, from the
+trees and the hay wain in the extreme distance, almost lost in sky,
+through the sheep and the sheep-dog and the shepherdess herself,
+knitting so quietly, to the dandelions in the foreground, each with its
+"aureole" of light. Of these simple, geometrical relations, and of the
+enveloping light and air by which they are expressed, he has made a hymn
+of praise.
+
+The background of "The Gleaners," with its baking stubble-field under
+the midday sun, its grain stacks and laborers and distant farmstead, all
+tremulous in the reflected waves of heat, indistinct and almost
+indecipherable yet unmistakable, is nearly as wonderful; and no one has
+ever so rendered the solemnity and the mystery of night as has he in the
+marvellous "Sheepfold" of the Walters collection. But the greatest of
+all his landscapes--one of the greatest landscapes ever painted--is his
+"Spring" (Pl. 10), of the Louvre, a pure landscape this time, containing
+no figure. In the intense green of the sunlit woods against the black
+rain-clouds that are passing away, in the jewel-like brilliancy of the
+blossoming apple-trees, and the wet grass in that clear air after the
+shower; in the glorious rainbow drawn in dancing light across the sky,
+we may see, if anywhere in art, some reflection of the "infinite
+splendors" which Millet tells us he saw in nature.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 8.--Millet. "The First Steps."]
+
+In the face of such results as these it seems absurd to discuss the
+question whether or not Millet was technically a master of his trade, as
+if the methods that produced them could possibly be anything but good
+methods for the purpose; but it is still too much the fashion to say and
+think that the great artist was a poor painter--to speak slightingly of
+his accomplishment in oil-painting and to seem to prefer his drawings
+and pastels to his pictures. We have seen that he was a supremely able
+technician in his pot-boiling days and that the color and handling of
+his early pictures were greatly admired by so brilliant a virtuoso as
+Diaz. But this "flowery manner" would not lend itself to the expression
+of his new aims and he had to invent another. He did so stumblingly at
+first, and the earliest pictures of his grand style have a certain
+harshness and ruggedness of surface and heaviness of color which his
+critics could not forgive any more than the Impressionists, who have
+outdone that ruggedness, can forgive him his frequent use of a warm
+general tone inclining to brownness. His ideal of form and of
+composition he possessed complete from the beginning; his mastery of
+light and color and the handling of materials was slower of acquirement;
+but he did acquire it, and in the end he is as absolute a master of
+painting as of drawing. He did not see nature in blue and violet, as
+Monet has taught us to see it, and little felicities and facilities of
+rendering, and anything approaching cleverness or the parade of
+virtuosity he hated; but he knew just what could be done with thick or
+thin painting, with opaque or transparent pigment, and he could make his
+few and simple colors say anything he chose. In his mature work there is
+a profound knowledge of the means to be employed and a great economy
+in their use, and there is no approach to indiscriminate or meaningless
+loading. "Things are where they are for a purpose," and if the surface
+of a picture is rough in any place it is because just that degree of
+roughness was necessary to attain the desired effect. He could make mere
+paint express light as few artists have been able to do--"The
+Shepherdess" is flooded with it--and he could do this without any
+sacrifice of the sense of substance in the things on which the light
+falls. If some of his canvases are brown it is because brown seemed to
+him the appropriate note to express what he had to say; "The Gleaners"
+glows with almost the richness of a Giorgione, and other pictures are
+honey-toned or cool and silvery or splendidly brilliant. And in whatever
+key he painted, the harmony of his tones and colors is as large, as
+simple, and as perfect as the harmony of his lines and masses.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 9.--Millet. "The Shepherdess."
+In the Chauchard collection, Louvre.]
+
+But if we cannot admit that Millet's drawings are better than his
+paintings, we may be very glad he did them. His great epic of the soil
+must have lacked many episodes, perhaps whole books and cantos, if it
+had been written only in the slower and more elaborate method. The
+comparative slightness and rapidity of execution of his drawings and
+pastels enabled him to register many inventions and observations that we
+must otherwise have missed, and many of these are of the highest value.
+His long training in seizing the essential in anything he saw enabled
+him, often, to put more meaning into a single rapid line than another
+could put into a day's painful labor, and some of his slightest sketches
+are astonishingly and commandingly expressive. Other of his drawings
+were worked out and pondered over almost as lovingly as his completest
+pictures. But so instinctively and inevitably was he a composer that
+everything he touched is a complete whole--his merest sketch or his most
+elaborated design is a unit. He has left no fragments. His paintings,
+his countless drawings, his few etchings and woodcuts are all of a
+piece. About everything there is that air of finality which marks the
+work destined to become permanently a classic.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 10.--Millet. "Spring."
+In the Louvre.]
+
+Here and there, by one or another writer, most or all of what I have
+been trying to say has been said already. It is the more likely to be
+true. And if these true things have been said, many other things have
+been said also which seem to me not so true, or little to the purpose,
+so that the image I have been trying to create must differ, for better
+or for worse, from that which another might have made. At least I may
+have looked at the truth from a slightly different angle and so have
+shown it in a new perspective. And, at any rate, it is well that true
+things should be said again from time to time. It can do no harm that
+one more person should endeavor to give a reason for his admiration of a
+great and true artist and should express his conviction that among the
+world's great masters the final place of Jean Francois Millet is not
+destined to be the lowest.
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS[B]
+
+[B] Read before the joint meeting of The American Academy of Arts and
+Letters and The National Institute of Arts and Letters, December 13, 1912.
+
+
+In these days all of us, even Academicians, are to some extent believers
+in progress. Our golden age is no longer in the past, but in the future.
+We know that our early ancestors were a race of wretched cave-dwellers,
+and we believe that our still earlier ancestors were possessed of tails
+and pointed ears. Having come so far, we are sometimes inclined to
+forget that not every step has been an advance and to entertain an
+illogical confidence that each future step must carry us still further
+forward; having indubitably progressed in many things, we think of
+ourselves as progressing in all. And as the pace of progress in science
+and in material things has become more and more rapid, we have come to
+expect a similar pace in art and letters, to imagine that the art of the
+future must be far finer than the art of the present or than that of the
+past, and that the art of one decade, or even of one year, must
+supersede that of the preceding decade or the preceding year, as the
+1913 model in automobiles supersedes the model of 1912. More than ever
+before "To have done is to hang quite out of fashion," and the only
+title to consideration is to do something quite obviously new or to
+proclaim one's intention of doing something newer. The race grows madder
+and madder. It was scarce two years since we first heard of "Cubism"
+when the "Futurists" were calling the "Cubists" reactionary. Even the
+gasping critics, pounding manfully in the rear, have thrown away all
+impedimenta of traditional standards in the desperate effort to keep up
+with what seems less a march than a stampede.
+
+But while we talk so loudly of progress in the arts we have an uneasy
+feeling that we are not really progressing. If our belief in our own art
+were as full-blooded as was that of the great creative epochs, we should
+scarce be so reverent of the art of the past. It is, perhaps, a sign of
+anaemia that we have become founders of museums and conservers of old
+buildings. If we are so careful of our heritage, it is surely from some
+doubt of our ability to replace it. When art has been vigorously alive
+it has been ruthless in its treatment of what has gone before. No
+cathedral builder thought of reconciling his own work to that of the
+builder who preceded him; he built in his own way, confident of its
+superiority. And when the Renaissance builder came, in his turn, he
+contemptuously dismissed all mediaeval art as "Gothic" and barbarous, and
+was as ready to tear down an old facade as to build a new one. Even the
+most cock-sure of our moderns might hesitate to emulate Michelangelo in
+his calm destruction of three frescoes by Perugino to make room for his
+own "Last Judgment." He, at least, had the full courage of his
+convictions, and his opinion of Perugino is of record.
+
+Not all of us would consider even Michelangelo's arrogance entirely
+justified, but it is not only the Michelangelos who have had this belief
+in themselves. Apparently the confidence of progress has been as great
+in times that now seem to us decadent as in times that we think of as
+truly progressive. The past, or at least the immediate past, has always
+seemed "out of date," and each generation, as it made its entrance on
+the stage, has plumed itself upon its superiority to that which was
+leaving it. The architect of the most debased baroque grafted his
+"improvements" upon the buildings of the high Renaissance with an
+assurance not less than that with which David and his contemporaries
+banished the whole charming art of the eighteenth century. Van Orley and
+Frans Floris were as sure of their advance upon the ancient Flemish
+painting of the Van Eycks and of Memling as Rubens himself must have
+been of his advance upon them.
+
+We can see plainly enough that in at least some of these cases the sense
+of progress was an illusion. There was movement, but it was not always
+forward movement. And if progress was illusory in some instances, may it
+not, possibly, have been so in all? It is at least worth inquiry how far
+the fine arts have ever been in a state of true progress, going forward
+regularly from good to better, each generation building on the work of
+its predecessors and surpassing that work, in the way in which science
+has normally progressed when material conditions were favorable.
+
+If, with a view to answering this question, we examine, however
+cursorily, the history of the five great arts, we shall find a somewhat
+different state of affairs in the case of each. In the end it may be
+possible to formulate something like a general rule that shall accord
+with all the facts. Let us begin with the greatest and simplest of the
+arts, the art of poetry.
+
+In the history of poetry we shall find less evidence of progress than
+anywhere else, for it will be seen that its acknowledged masterpieces
+are almost invariably near the beginning of a series rather than near
+the end. Almost as soon as a clear and flexible language has been formed
+by any people, a great poem has been composed in that language, which
+has remained not only unsurpassed, but unequalled, by any subsequent
+work. Homer is for us, as he was for the Greeks, the greatest of their
+poets; and if the opinion could be taken of all cultivated readers in
+those nations that have inherited the Greek tradition, it is doubtful
+whether he would not be acclaimed the greatest poet of the ages. Dante
+has remained the first of Italian poets, as he was one of the earliest.
+Chaucer, who wrote when our language was transforming itself from
+Anglo-Saxon into English, has still lovers who are willing for his sake
+to master what is to them almost a foreign tongue, and yet other lovers
+who ask for new translations of his works into our modern idiom; while
+Shakespeare, who wrote almost as soon as that transformation had been
+accomplished, is universally reckoned one of the greatest of world
+poets. There have, indeed, been true poets at almost all stages of the
+world's history, but the pre-eminence of such masters as these can
+hardly be questioned, and if we looked to poetry alone for a type of the
+arts, we should almost be forced to conclude that art is the reverse of
+progressive. We should think of it as gushing forth in full splendor
+when the world is ready for it, and as unable ever again to rise to the
+level of its fount.
+
+The art of architecture is later in its beginning than that of poetry,
+for it can exist only when men have learned to build solidly and
+permanently. A nomad may be a poet, but he cannot be an architect; a
+herdsman might have written the Book of Job, but the great builders are
+dwellers in cities. But since men first learned to build they have never
+quite forgotten how to do so. At all times there have been somewhere
+peoples who knew enough of building to mould its utility into forms of
+beauty, and the history of architecture may be read more continuously
+than that of any other art. It is a history of constant change and of
+continuous development, each people and each age forming out of the old
+elements a new style which should express its mind, and each style
+reaching its point of greatest distinctiveness only to begin a further
+transformation into something else; but is it a history of progress?
+Building, indeed, has progressed at one time or another. The Romans,
+with their domes and arches, were more scientific builders than the
+Greeks, with their simple post and lintel, but were they better
+architects? We of to-day, with our steel construction, can scrape the
+sky with erections that would have amazed the boldest of mediaeval
+craftsmen; can we equal his art? If we ask where in the history of
+architecture do its masterpieces appear, the answer must be: "Almost
+anywhere." Wherever men have had the wealth and the energy to build
+greatly, they have builded beautifully, and the distinctions are less
+between style and style or epoch and epoch than between building and
+building: The masterpieces of one time are as the masterpieces of
+another, and no man may say that the nave of Amiens is finer than the
+Parthenon or that the Parthenon is nobler than the nave of Amiens. One
+may say only that each is perfect in its kind, a supreme expression of
+the human spirit.
+
+Of the art of music I must speak with the diffidence becoming to the
+ignorant; but it seems to me to consist of two elements and to contain
+an inspirational art as direct and as simple as that of poetry, and a
+science so difficult that its fullest mastery is of very recent
+achievement. In melodic invention it is so far from progressive that its
+most brilliant masters are often content to elaborate and to decorate a
+theme old enough to have no history--a theme the inventor of which has
+been so entirely forgotten that we think of it as sprung not from the
+mind of one man, but from that of a whole people, and call it a
+folk-song. The song is almost as old as the race, but the symphony has
+had to wait for the invention of many instruments and for a mastery of
+the laws of harmony, and so symphonic music is a modern art. We are
+still adding new instruments to the orchestra and admitting to our
+compositions new combinations of sounds, but have we in a hundred years
+made any essential progress even in this part of the art? Have we
+produced anything, I will not say greater, but anything as great as the
+noblest works of Bach and Beethoven?
+
+Already, and before considering the arts of painting and sculpture, we
+are coming within sight of our general law. This law seems to be that,
+so far as an art is dependent upon any form of exact knowledge, so far
+it partakes of the nature of science and is capable of progress. So far
+as it is expressive of a mind and soul, its greatness is dependent upon
+the greatness of that mind and soul, and it is incapable of progress. It
+may even be the reverse of progressive, because as an art becomes more
+complicated and makes ever greater demands upon technical mastery, it
+becomes more difficult as a medium of expression, while the mind to be
+expressed becomes more sophisticated and less easy of expression in any
+medium. It would take a greater mind than Homer's to express modern
+ideas in modern verse with Homer's serene perfection; it would take,
+perhaps, a greater mind than Bach's to employ all the resources of
+modern music with his glorious ease and directness. And greater minds
+than those of Bach and Homer the world has not often the felicity to
+possess.
+
+The arts of painting and sculpture are imitative arts above all others,
+and therefore more dependent than any others upon exact knowledge, more
+tinged with the quality of science. Let us see how they illustrate our
+supposed law.
+
+Sculpture depends, as does architecture, upon certain laws of proportion
+in space which are analogous to the laws of proportion in time and in
+pitch upon which music is founded. But as sculpture represents the human
+figure, whereas architecture and music represent nothing, sculpture
+requires for its perfection the mastery of an additional science, which
+is the knowledge of the structure and movement of the human body. This
+knowledge may be acquired with some rapidity, especially in times and
+countries where man is often seen unclothed. So, in the history of
+civilizations, sculpture developed early, after poetry, but with
+architecture, and before painting and polyphonic music. It reached the
+greatest perfection of which it is capable in the age of Pericles, and
+from that time progress was impossible to it, and for a thousand years
+its movement was one of decline. After the dark ages sculpture was one
+of the first arts to revive; and again it develops rapidly--though not
+so rapidly as before, conditions of custom and climate being less
+favorable to it--until it reaches, in the first half of the sixteenth
+century, something near its former perfection. Again it can go no
+further; and since then it has changed but has not progressed. In
+Phidias, by which name I would signify the sculptor of the pediments of
+the Parthenon, we have the coincidence of a superlatively great artist
+with the moment of technical and scientific perfection in the art, and a
+similar coincidence crowns the work of Michelangelo with a peculiar
+glory. But, apart from the work of these two men, a the essential value
+of a work of sculpture is by no means always equal to its technical and
+scientific completeness. There are archaic statues that are almost as
+nobly beautiful as any work by Phidias and more beautiful than almost
+any work that has been done since his time. There are bits of Gothic
+sculpture that are more valuable expressions of human feeling than
+anything produced by the contemporaries of Buonarroti. Even in times of
+decadence a great artist has created finer things than could be
+accomplished by a mediocre talent of the great epochs, and the world
+could ill spare the Victory of Samothrace or the portrait busts of
+Houdon.
+
+As sculpture is one of the simplest of the arts, painting is one of the
+most complicated. The harmonies it constructs are composed of almost
+innumerable elements of lines and forms and colors and degrees of
+light and dark, and the science it professes is no less than that of the
+visible aspect of the whole of nature--a science so vast that it never
+has been and perhaps never can be mastered in its totality. Anything
+approaching a complete art of painting can exist only in an advanced
+stage of civilization. An entirely complete art of painting never has
+existed and probably never will exist. The history of painting, after
+its early stages, is a history of loss here balancing gain there, of a
+new means of expression acquired at the cost of an old one.
+
+We know comparatively little of the painting of antiquity, but we have
+no reason to suppose that that art, however admirable, ever attained to
+ripeness, and we know that the painting of the Orient has stopped short
+at a comparatively early stage of development. For our purpose the art
+to be studied is the painting of modern times in Europe from its origin
+in the Middle Ages. Even in the beginning, or before the beginning,
+while painting is a decadent reminiscence of the past rather than a
+prophecy of the new birth, there are decorative splendors in the
+Byzantine mosaics hardly to be recaptured. Then comes primitive
+painting, an art of the line and of pure color with little modulation
+and no attempt at the rendering of solid form. It gradually attains to
+some sense of relief by the use of degrees of light and less light; but
+the instant it admits the true shadow the old brightness and purity of
+color have become impossible. The line remains dominant for a time and
+is carried to the pitch of refinement and beauty, but the love for solid
+form gradually overcomes it, and in the art of the high Renaissance it
+takes a second place. Then light-and-shade begins to be studied for its
+own sake; color, no longer pure and bright, but deep and resonant, comes
+in again; the line vanishes altogether, and even form becomes
+secondary. The last step is taken by Rembrandt, and even color is
+subordinated to light-and-shade, which exists alone in a world of
+brownness. At every step there has been progress, but there has also
+been regress. Perhaps the greatest balance of gain against loss and the
+nearest approach to a complete art of painting were with the great
+Venetians. The transformation is still going on, and in our own day we
+have conquered some corners of the science of visible aspects which were
+unexplored by our ancestors. But the balance has turned against us; our
+loss has been greater than our gain; and our art, even in its scientific
+aspect, is inferior to that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
+
+And just because there never has been a complete art of painting,
+entirely rounded and perfected, it is the clearer to us that the final
+value of a work in that art never has depended on its approach to such
+completion. There is no one supreme master of painting but a long
+succession of masters of different yet equal glory. If the masterpieces
+of architecture are everywhere because there has often been a complete
+art of architecture, the masterpieces of painting are everywhere for the
+opposite reason. And if we do not always value a master the more as his
+art is more nearly complete, neither do we always value him especially
+who has placed new scientific conquests at the disposal of art. Palma
+Vecchio painted by the side of Titian, but he is only a minor master;
+Botticelli remained of the generation before Leonardo, but he is one of
+the immortal great. Paolo Ucello, by his study of perspective, made a
+distinct advance in pictorial science, but his interest for us is purely
+historic; Fra Angelico made no advance whatever, but he practised
+consummately the current art as he found it, and his work is eternally
+delightful. At every stage of its development the art of painting has
+been a sufficient medium for the expression of a great man's mind; and
+wherever and whenever a great man has practised it, the result has been
+a great and permanently valuable work of art.
+
+For this seems, finally, to be the law of all the arts--the one
+essential prerequisite to the production of a great work of art is a
+great man. You cannot have the art without the man, and when you have
+the man you have the art. His time and his surroundings will color him;
+his art will not be at one time or place precisely what it might be at
+another; but at bottom the art is the man and at all times and in all
+countries is just as great as the man.
+
+Let us clear our minds, then, of the illusion that there is in any
+important sense such a thing as progress in the fine arts. We may with
+a clear conscience judge every new work for what it appears in itself to
+be, asking of it that it be noble and beautiful and reasonable, not that
+it be novel or progressive. If it be great art it will always be novel
+enough, for there will be a great mind behind it, and no two great minds
+are alike. And if it be novel without being great, how shall we be the
+better off? There are enough forms of mediocre or evil art in the world
+already. Being no longer intimidated by the fetich of progress, when a
+thing calling itself a work of art seems to us hideous and degraded,
+indecent and insane, we shall have the courage to say so and shall not
+care to investigate it further. Detestable things have been produced in
+the past, and they are none the less detestable because we are able to
+see how they came to be produced. Detestable things are produced now,
+and they will be no more admirable if we learn to understand the minds
+that create them. Even should such things prove to be not the mere
+freaks of a diseased intellect that they seem but a necessary outgrowth
+of the conditions of the age and a true prophecy of "the art of the
+future," they are not necessarily the better for that. It is only that
+the future will be very unlucky in its art.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+RAPHAEL
+
+
+There used to be on the cover of the "Portfolio Monographs" little
+medallions of Raphael and Rembrandt, placed there, as the editor, Mr.
+Hamerton, has somewhere explained, as portraits of the two most widely
+influential artists that ever lived. In the eighteenth century, one
+imagines, Rembrandt's presence by the side of Raphael would have been
+thought little less than a scandal. To-day it is Raphael's place that
+would be contested, and he would be superseded, likely enough, by
+Velazquez.
+
+There is no more striking instance of the vicissitudes of critical
+opinion than the sudden fall of Raphael from his conceded rank as "the
+prince of painters." Up to the middle of the nineteenth century his
+right to that title was so uncontested that it alone was a sufficient
+identification of him--only one man could possibly be meant. That he
+should ever need defending or re-explaining to a generation grown cold
+to him would have seemed incredible. Then came the rediscovery of an
+earlier art that seemed more frank and simple than his; still later the
+discovery of Rembrandt and Velazquez--the romanticist and the
+naturalist--and Raphael, as a living influence, almost ceased to exist.
+It was but a few years ago that the author of a volume of essays on art
+was gravely praised by a reviewer for the purely accidental circumstance
+that that volume contained no essay on Raphael; and a little later the
+writer of a book on the pictures in Rome "had to confess unutterable
+boredom" in the presence of the Stanze of the Vatican.
+
+It is not probable that any critic who greatly valued his reputation, or
+who had any serious reputation to value, would take quite this tone;
+but, leaving out of consideration the impressionistic and ultra-modern
+criticism which ignores Raphael altogether, it is instructive to note
+the way in which a critic so steeped in Italian art as Mr. Berenson
+approaches the fallen prince. The artist who used to be considered the
+greatest of draughtsmen he will hardly admit to be a draughtsman at all,
+ranking him far below Pollaiuolo and positively speaking of him as "a
+poor creature, most docile and patient." As a colorist and a manipulator
+of paint, he places him with Sebastiano del Piombo--that is, among the
+mediocrities. Almost the only serious merit, from his point of view,
+which he will allow him is a mastery in the rendering of space, shared
+in nearly equal measure by Perugino, as, to some extent, by nearly all
+the painters of the Umbrian school. For, while he admits that Raphael
+was the greatest master of composition that Europe has produced, he
+evidently thinks of composition, as do so many other moderns, as a
+matter of relatively little importance.
+
+It is not Raphael's popularity that is in question; that is, perhaps, as
+great as ever it was. His works, in one form or another of reproduction,
+from the finest carbon print to the cheapest lithograph, are still to be
+found, in the humblest homes as in the most splendid, in nearly every
+quarter of the globe. That popularity was always based on what Berenson
+calls the "illustrative" qualities of Raphael's work, on the beauty of
+his women, the majesty of his men; on his ability to tell a story as we
+like it told and to picture a world that we wish might be real. One may
+not be prepared to consider these illustrative qualities so negligible
+as do many modern critics, or to echo Mr. Berenson's phrase about "that
+which in art ... is so unimportant as what ... we call beauty." One
+might point out that the greatest artists, from Phidias to Rembrandt,
+have occupied themselves with illustration, and that to formulate the
+ideals of a race and an epoch is no mean task. But, for the moment, we
+may neglect all that, our present inquiry being why an artist, once
+counted the greatest of all, is no longer considered very significant by
+those who measure by purely artistic standards rather than by that of
+illustrative success and consequent popularity.
+
+We may also leave out of our present consideration Raphael's achievement
+in the suggestion of space. It is a very real quality and a high one. It
+has doubtless always been an important element in the enjoyability of
+Raphael's art, as it is almost the only enjoyable element, for many of
+us, in the art of Perugino. But it is an element that has only very
+recently been clearly perceived to exist. If it was enjoyed by the
+artists and critics, from Raphael's day almost to our own, they were
+unconscious of the fact, and the probability is that we enjoy it more
+than they did. It will not account for the estimation in which they held
+Raphael, and still less will it account for the relative lack of
+interest in him to-day.
+
+In truth the reason why many modern critics and painters almost dislike
+Raphael is the very reason for which he was so greatly revered. Coming
+in the nick of time, at the close of an epoch of investigation, himself
+a man of wide culture and quick intellect but of no special originality
+or emotional power, he learned from all his predecessors what they had
+to teach and, choosing from the elements of their art those which were
+suited to his purpose, formed a perfectly balanced and noble style which
+was immediately accepted as the only style suitable to the expression of
+lofty ideas in monumental form. He became the lawgiver, the founder of
+classicism, the formulator of the academic ideal. Not to admire him was
+to confess oneself a barbarian, and even those who did not really care
+for his art hardly dared to say so. As long as the academic ideal
+retained any validity his supremacy endured, and it was only with the
+definitive turning of modern art into the paths of romanticism and
+naturalism that revolt became possible.
+
+But when the world became tired of Raphaelism it inevitably became
+unjust to Raphael. It forgot that it was not he who had made his art the
+test of that of others--who had erected what, with him, was a
+spontaneous and original creation into a rigid system of laws. It
+confounded him with his followers and imitators, and, being bored by
+them, began to find the master himself a bore.
+
+For, eclectic as he was by nature, and founder as he was of the academic
+regime, the "grand style" of Raphael was yet a new and personal
+contribution to art. He drew from many sources, but the principle of
+combination was his own. His originality was in that mastery of
+composition which no one has ever denied him, but which is very
+differently rated as a quality of art by different temperaments. Almost
+everything specifically Raphaelesque in his work is the offspring of
+that power of design in which he is still the unapproached master.
+Modern criticism is right in denying that he was a draughtsman, if by
+draughtsman is meant one deeply preoccupied with form and structure for
+its own sake. His distinction was to invest the human figure with such
+forms as should best fit it to play its part in a scheme of monumental
+composition. The "style" of his draperies, so much and so justly
+admired, is composition of draperies. He was not a colorist as Titian
+was a colorist, or a painter as Velazquez was a painter--he was just so
+much of a colorist and a painter as is compatible with being the
+greatest of decorative designers. Everything in his finest works is
+entirely subordinated to the beauty and expressiveness of composition,
+and nothing is allowed to have too great an individual interest for its
+predestined part in the final result. Probably he could not have drawn
+like Michelangelo or painted like Hals--certainly, when he once
+understood himself, he would not have desired to do so.
+
+Even in his early work he showed his gifts as a composer, and some of
+the small pictures of his Florentine period are quite perfect in
+design. Nothing could be better composed within their restricted field
+than the "Madonna del Cardellino" or the "Belle Jardiniere." Nearly at
+the end of the period he made his greatest failure, the "Entombment" of
+the Borghese Gallery. It was his most ambitious effort up to this time
+and he wanted to put everything that he had learned into it, to draw
+like Michelangelo and to express emotion like Mantegna. He made a host
+of studies for it, tried it this way and that, lost all spontaneity and
+all grasp of the ensemble. What he finally produced is a thing of
+fragments, falling far below his models in the qualities he was
+attempting to rival and redeemed by little or nothing of the quality
+proper to himself. But, apparently, it answered its purpose. It freed
+him from preoccupation with the work of others. When his great
+opportunity came to him, in the commission to decorate the Camera della
+Segnatura, his painfully acquired knowledge was sufficiently at his
+command to give him no further trouble. He could concentrate himself on
+the essential part of his problem, the creation of an entirely
+appropriate, dignified, and beautiful decorative design. It was the work
+for which he was born, and he succeeded so immediately and so admirably
+in it that neither he nor any one else has ever been able to fill such
+spaces so perfectly again.
+
+There are fourteen important compositions in the room. The decoration of
+the ceiling had already been begun by Sodoma, and Sodoma's decorative
+framework Raphael allowed to remain; partly, perhaps, from courtesy,
+more probably because its general disposition was admirable and not to
+be improved on. If Sodoma had begun any of the larger paintings which
+were to fill his frames they were removed to make way for the new work.
+There has always been a great deal of discussion as to whether Raphael
+himself invented the admirable scheme of subjects by which the room was
+made to illustrate the Renaissance ideal of culture with its division
+into the four great fields of learning: divinity, philosophy (including
+science), poetry, and law. In reality, the question is of little
+importance. There seems to be at least one bit of internal evidence, to
+be mentioned presently, that even here the artist did not have a
+perfectly free hand, as we know he did not later. Whoever thought of the
+subjects, it was Raphael who discovered how to treat them in such a way
+as to make of this room the most perfectly planned piece of decoration
+in the world. Sodoma had left, on the vaulting, four circular medallions
+and four rectangular spaces which were to be filled with figure
+compositions. In the circles, each directly above one of the great wall
+spaces, Raphael placed figures personifying Theology, Philosophy,
+Poetry and Justice; in the rectangles he illustrated these subjects with
+the stories of "The Fall of Man," "Apollo and Marsyas," and "The
+Judgment of Solomon," and with that figure, leaning over a celestial
+globe, which must be meant for Science. All of these panels are on
+curved surfaces, and Raphael's decorative instinct led him, on this
+account and to preserve the supremacy of the great wall spaces below, to
+suppress all distance, placing his figures against a background of
+simulated gold mosaic and arranging them, virtually, upon one plane.
+There is, therefore, no possible question of "space composition" here.
+These panels depend for their effect entirely upon composition in two
+dimensions--upon the perfect balancing of filled and empty spaces, the
+invention of interesting shapes, and the arrangement of beautiful lines.
+It is the pattern that counts, and the pattern is perfect.
+
+The "Poetry" (Pl. 11) is the most beautiful of the medallions, but they
+are all much alike: a draped female figure in the middle, seated to give
+it scale, large enough to fill the height of the circle amply but
+without crowding, and winged _putti_, bearing inscribed tablets, on
+either side. There are other ways of filling a circle acceptably, as
+Botticelli had shown and as Raphael was to show again in more than one
+_tondo_, but for their situation, marking the principal axes of the
+room, there is no way so adequate as this. As Mr. Blashfield has said,
+speaking from experience: "When a modern painter has a medallion to fill
+and has tried one arrangement after another, he inevitably realizes that
+it is Raphael who has found the best ordering that could be found; and
+the modern painter builds upon his lines, laid down so distinctly that
+the greater the practice of the artist the more complete becomes his
+realization of Raphael's comprehension of essentials in composition."
+Not only so, but the modern painter finds as inevitably that, accepting
+this ordering as the best, even then he cannot add another figure to
+these four. He may, perhaps, draw it better in detail or give more
+character to the head, but he cannot capture that felicity of spacing,
+that absoluteness of balance, that variety and vivacity combined with
+monumental repose. The more his nature and training have made him a
+designer the more certainly he feels, before that single medallion of
+Poetry, that he is in the presence of the inimitable master of design.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 11.--Raphael. "Poetry."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+If the composition of the rectangles is less inevitable it is only
+because the variety of ways in which such simple rectangles may be
+filled is almost infinite. Composition more masterly than that of the
+"Judgment of Solomon" (Pl. 12), for instance, you will find nowhere; so
+much is told in a restricted space, yet with no confusion, the space is
+so admirably filled and its shape so marked by the very lines that
+enrich and relieve it. It is as if the design had determined the space
+rather than the space the design. If you had a tracing of the figures in
+the midst of an immensity of white paper you could not bound them by any
+other line than that of the actual frame. One of the most remarkable
+things about it is the way in which the angles, which artists usually
+avoid and disguise, are here sharply accented. A great part of the
+dignity and importance given to the king is due to the fact that his
+head fills one of these angles, and the opposite one contains the hand
+of the executioner and the foot by which the living child is held aloft,
+and to this point the longest lines of the picture lead. The dead
+child and the indifferent mother fill the lower corners. In the middle,
+herself only half seen and occupying little space, is the true mother,
+and it seems that her explosive energy, as she rushes to the rescue of
+her child, has forced all these other figures back to the confines of
+the picture. Compare this restless yet subtly balanced composition, full
+of oblique lines and violent movement, with the gracious, placid
+formality of the "Adam and Eve," and you will have some notion of the
+meaning of this gift of design.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 12.--Raphael. "The Judgment of Solomon."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+But it is the frescoes on the four walls of this room which are
+Raphael's greatest triumphs--the most perfect pieces of monumental
+decoration in the world. On the two longer walls, nearly unbroken
+lunettes of something over a semicircle, he painted the two great
+compositions of Theology and Philosophy known as the "Disputa" and the
+"School of Athens." The "Disputa" (Pl. 13), the earlier of the two, has
+the more connection with the art of the past. The use of gilded relief
+in the upper part recalls the methods of Pintoricchio, and the hint of
+the whole arrangement was doubtless taken from those semidomes which
+existed in many churches. But what an original idea it was to transform
+the flat wall of a room into the apse of a cathedral, and what a
+solemnity it imparts to the discussion that is going on! The upper part
+is formal in the extreme, as it need be for the treatment of such a
+theme, but even here there is variety as well as stateliness in the
+attitudes and the spacing. In the lower part the variety becomes almost
+infinite, yet there is never a jar--not a line or a fold of drapery that
+mars the supreme order of the whole. Besides the uncounted cherubs which
+float among the rays of glory or support the cloudy thrones of the
+saints and prophets, there are between seventy and eighty figures in
+the picture; yet the hosts of heaven and the church on earth seem
+gathered about the altar with its sacred wafer--the tiny circle which is
+the focus of the great composition and the inevitable goal of all
+regards, as it is the central mystery of Catholic dogma.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 13.--Raphael. The "Disputa."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+Opposite, in the "School of Athens" (Pl. 14), the treatment is different
+but equally successful. The hieratic majesty of the "Disputa" was here
+unnecessary, but a tranquil and spacious dignity was to be attained, and
+it is attained through the use of vertical and horizontal lines--the
+lines of stability and repose, while the bounding curve is echoed again
+and again in the diminishing arches of the imagined vaulting. The
+figures, fewer in number than in the "Disputa" and confined to the lower
+half of the composition, are ranged in two long lines across the
+picture; but the nearer line is broken in the centre and the two
+figures on the steps, serving as connecting-links between the two ranks,
+give to the whole something of that semicircular grouping so noticeable
+in the companion picture. The bas-reliefs upon the architecture and the
+great statues of Apollo and Minerva above them draw the eye upward at
+the sides, and this movement is intensified by the arrangement of the
+lateral groups of figures. By these means the counter curve to the arch
+above, the one fixed necessity, apparently, of the lunette, is
+established. It is more evident in the perspective curve of the painted
+dome. Cover this line with a bit of paper, or substitute for it a
+straight lintel like that seen beyond, and you will be surprised to find
+how much of the beauty of the picture has disappeared. The grouping of
+the figures themselves, the way they are played about into clumps or
+separated to give greater importance, by isolation, to a particular
+head, is even more beyond praise than in the "Disputa." The whole design
+has but one fault, and that is an afterthought. In the cartoon the
+disproportioned bulk of Heraclitus, thrust into the foreground and
+writing in an impossible attitude on a desk in impossible perspective,
+is not to be found. It is such a blot upon the picture that one cannot
+believe that Raphael added it of his own motion; rather it must have
+been placed there at the dictation of some meddling cardinal or learned
+humanist who, knowing nothing of art, could not see why any vacant space
+should not be filled with any figure whose presence seemed to him
+historically desirable. One is tempted to suspect even, so clumsy is the
+figure and so out of scale with its neighbors, that the master refused
+to disfigure his work himself and left the task to one of his
+apprentices. If it had been done by one of them, say Giulio Romano,
+after the picture was entirely completed and at the time of the
+"Incendio del' Borgo," it could not be more out of keeping.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 14.--Raphael. "The School of Athens."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+Each of these walls has a doorway at one end, and the way in which these
+openings are dissimulated and utilized is most ingenious, particularly
+in the "Disputa," where the bits of parapet which play an important part
+at either side of the composition, one pierced, the other solid, were
+suggested solely by the presence of this door. In the end walls the
+openings, large windows much higher than the doors, become of such
+importance that the whole nature of the problem is changed. It is the
+pierced lunette that is to be dealt with, and Raphael has dealt with it
+in two entirely different ways. One wall is symmetrical, the window in
+the middle, and on that wall he painted the "Parnassus" (Pl. 15), Apollo
+and the Muses in the centre with groups of poets a little lower on
+either side and other groups filling the spaces to right and left of the
+window head. At first sight the design seems less symmetrical and formal
+than the others, with a lyrical freedom befitting the subject, but in
+reality it is no less perfect in its ponderation. The group of trees
+above Apollo and the reclining figures either side of him accent the
+centrality of his position. From this point the line of heads rises in
+either direction to the figures of Homer and of the Muse whose back is
+turned to the spectator, and the perpendicularity of these two figures
+carries upward into the arch the vertical lines of the window. From this
+point the lateral masses of foliage take up the drooping curve and unite
+it to the arch, and this curve is strongly reinforced by the building up
+toward either side of the foreground groups and by the disposition of
+the arms of Sappho and of the poets immediately behind her, while, to
+disguise its formality, it is contradicted by the long line of Sappho's
+body, which echoes that of the bearded poet immediately to the right of
+the window and gives a sweep to the left to the whole lower part of the
+composition. It is the immediate and absolute solution of the problem,
+and so small a thing as the scarf of the back-turned Muse plays its
+necessary part in it, balancing, as it does, the arm of the Muse who
+stands highest on the left and establishing one of a number of
+subsidiary garlands that play through and bind together the wonderful
+design.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 15.--Raphael. "Parnassus."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+The window in the opposite wall is to one side of the middle, and here
+Raphael meets the new problem with a new solution. He places a separate
+picture in each of the unequal rectangles, carries a simulated cornice
+across at the level of the window head, and paints, in the segmental
+lunette thus left, the so-called "Jurisprudence" (Pl. 16), which
+seems to many decorators the most perfect piece of decorative design
+that even Raphael ever created--the most perfect piece of design,
+therefore, in the world. Its subtlety of spacing, its exquisiteness of
+line, its monumental simplicity, rippled through with a melody of
+falling curves from end to end, are beyond description--the reader must
+study them for himself in the illustration. One thing he might miss were
+not his attention called to it--the ingenious way in which the whole
+composition is adjusted to a diagonal axis that the asymmetry of the
+wall may be minimized. Draw an imaginary straight line from the boss in
+the soffit of the arch through the middle of the Janus-head of Prudence.
+It will accurately bisect the central group, composed of this figure and
+her two attendant genii, will pass through her elevated left knee, the
+centre of a system of curves, and the other end of it will strike the
+top of the post or mullion that divides the window opening into two
+parts.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 16.--Raphael. "Jurisprudence."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+This single room, the Camera della Segnatura, marks the brief blossoming
+time of Raphael's art, an art consummate in science yet full of a
+freshness and spontaneity--the dew still upon it--as wonderful as its
+learning. The master himself could not duplicate it. He tried for
+Venetian warmth of color in the "Mass of Bolsena" (Pl. 17) and
+experimented with tricks of illumination in the "Deliverance of Peter"
+(Pl. 18), and in these two compositions, struck out new and admirable
+ways of filling pierced lunettes. The balancing, in the one, of the
+solitary figure of the pope against the compact group of seven
+figures--a group that has to be carried up above the curved screen in
+order to counteract the importance given to Julius by his isolation and
+by the greater mass of his supporting group below--is a triumph of
+arrangement; and here, again, it is notable that the bleeding wafer, the
+necessary centre of interest, is situated on a straight line drawn
+diagonally from the keystone of the arch to the centre of the window
+head, and almost exactly half-way between these two points, while the
+great curve of the screen leads to it from either side. In the
+symmetrically pierced lunette opposite, the distribution of the space
+into three distinct but united pictures, the central one seen through
+the grating of the prison, is a highly ingenious and, on the whole, an
+acceptable variant on previous inventions. But these two are the last of
+the Vatican frescoes that show Raphael's infallible instinct as a
+composer. He grows tired, exaggerates his mannerisms, gives a greater
+and greater share of the work to his pupils. The later Stanze are either
+pompous or confused, or both, until we reach the higgledy-piggledy of
+the "Burning of the Borgo" or that inextricable tangle, suggestive of
+nothing so much as of a dish of macaroni, the "Battle of Constantine," a
+picture painted after the master's death, but for which he probably left
+something in the way of sketches.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 17.--Raphael. "The Mass of Bolsena."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+Yet even in what seems this decadence of his talent Raphael only needed
+a new problem to revive his admirable powers in their full splendor. In
+1514 he painted the "Sibyls" (Pl. 19) of Santa Maria della Pace, in a
+frieze-shaped panel cut by a semicircular arch, and the new shape given
+him to fill inspired a composition as perfect in itself and as
+indisputably the only right one for the place as anything he ever did.
+Among his latest works were the pendentives of the Farnesina, with the
+story of Cupid and Psyche--works painted and even drawn by his pupils,
+coarse in types and heavy in color but altogether astonishing in freedom
+and variety of design. The earlier painters covered their vaulting
+with ornamental patterns in which spaces were reserved for independent
+pictures, like the rectangles of the Stanza della Segnatura. It was a
+bold innovation when Michelangelo discarded this system and placed in
+the pendentives of the Sistine his colossal figures of the Prophets and
+the Sibyls, each on its architectural throne. It was reserved for
+Raphael to take a step that no earlier painter could have dreamed of and
+to fill these triangular spaces with free groups relieved against a
+clear sky which is the continuous background of the whole series. One
+may easily think the earlier system more architecturally fitting, but
+the skill with which these groups are composed, their perfect
+naturalness, their exhaustless variety, the perfection with which they
+fill these awkward shapes, as it were inevitably and without effort, is
+nothing short of amazing. It is decoration of a festal and informal
+order--the decoration of a kind of summer house, fitted for pleasure,
+rather than of a stately chamber--but it is decoration the most
+consummate, the fitting last word of the greatest master of decorative
+design that the world has seen.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 18.--Raphael. "The Deliverance of Peter."
+In the Vatican.]
+
+It is this master designer that is the real Raphael, and, but for the
+element of design always present in the least of his works, the charming
+illustrator, the mere "painter of Madonnas," might be allowed to sink
+comfortably into artistic oblivion without cause for protest. But there
+is another Raphael we could spare less easily, Raphael the
+portrait-painter. The great decorators have nearly always been great
+portrait-painters as well, although--perhaps because--there is little
+resemblance between the manner of feeling and working necessary for
+success in the two arts. The decorator, constantly occupied with
+relations of line and space which have little to do with imitation,
+finds in the submissive attention to external fact necessary to success
+in portraiture a source of refreshment and of that renewed contact with
+nature which is constantly necessary to art if it is not to become too
+arid an abstraction. Certainly it was so with Raphael, and the master of
+design has left us a series of portraits comparable only to those of
+that other great designer whose fate was to leave little but portraits
+behind him, Hans Holbein. Allowing for the necessary variation of type
+and costume in their models and for the difference between an Italian
+and a northern education, their methods are singularly alike. Raphael
+has greater elegance and feeling for style, Holbein a richer color sense
+and, above all, a finer craftsmanship, an unapproachable material
+perfection. They have the same quiet, intense observation, the same
+impeccable accuracy, the same preoccupation with the person before them
+and with nothing else--an individuality to be presented with all it
+contains, neither more nor less--to be rendered entirely, and without
+flattery as without caricature. There have been portrait-painters who
+were greater painters, in the more limited sense of the word, than these
+two, and there has been at least one painter whose imaginative sympathy
+gave an inner life to his portraits absent from theirs, but in the
+essential qualities of portraiture, as distinguished from all other
+forms of art, perhaps no one else has quite equalled them. One can give
+no greater praise to the "Castiglione" or the "Donna Velata" than to say
+that they are fit to hang beside the "Georg Gyze" or the "Christina of
+Milan"; and at least one portrait by Raphael, the "Tommaso Inghirami,"
+in the collection of Mrs. Gardner (Pl. 20)--the original of which the
+picture in the Pitti Palace is a replica--has a beauty of surface and
+of workmanship almost worthy of Holbein himself.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 19.--Raphael. "The Sibyls."
+Santa Maria della Pace, Rome.]
+
+[Illustration: Plate 20.--Raphael. "Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami."
+In the collection of Mrs. Gardner.]
+
+Raphael's portraits alone, had he done nothing else, would justify a
+great reputation, but they form so relatively small a part of his work
+that they may almost be neglected in examining his claims to the rank
+that used to be assigned him among the world's greatest artists. It is,
+after all, his unique mastery of composition that is his chief title to
+fame, and his glory must always be in proportion to the estimation in
+which that quality is held. It was because composition was to him a
+comparatively unimportant part of painting that Velazquez thought little
+of Raphael. It is because, for them, composition, as a distinct element
+of art, has almost ceased to exist that so many modern painters and
+critics decry Raphael altogether. The decorators have always known that
+design is the essence of their art, and therefore they have always
+appreciated the greatest of designers. That is why Paul Baudry, in the
+third quarter of the nineteenth century, idolized Raphael and based his
+own art upon that of the great Umbrian. To-day, in our own country,
+mural decoration is again becoming a living art, and the desire for the
+appropriate decoration of important buildings with monumental works of
+painting is more wide-spread, perhaps, than it has been anywhere at any
+time since the Italian Renaissance. So surely as the interest in
+decorative painting and the knowledge of its true principles become more
+widely spread, so surely will the name of Raphael begin to shine again
+with something of its ancient splendor.
+
+But design is something more than the essential quality of mural
+decoration--it is the common basis of all the arts, the essential thing
+in art itself. Each of the arts has its qualities proper to it alone,
+and it may be right to estimate the painter, the sculptor, the
+architect, or the musician according to his eminence in those qualities
+which are distinctive of his particular art and which separate it most
+sharply from the other arts. In that sense we are right to call Frans
+Hals a greater painter than Raphael. But if we estimate a man's artistry
+by the same standard, whatever the form of art in which it expresses
+itself, rating him by his power of co-ordinating and composing notes or
+forms or colors into a harmonious and beautiful unity, then must we
+place Raphael pretty near where he used to be placed, admitting but a
+choice few of the very greatest to any equality with him. If we no
+longer call him "the prince of painters" we must call him one of the
+greatest artists among those who have practised the art of painting.
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+TWO WAYS OF PAINTING
+
+
+Among the modern paintings in the Metropolitan Museum is a brilliant and
+altogether remarkable little picture by John Sargent, entitled "The
+Hermit" (Pl. 21). Mr. Sargent is a portrait-painter by vocation, and the
+public knows him best as a penetrating and sometimes cruel reader of
+human character. He is a mural painter by avocation and capable, on
+occasion, of a monumental formality. In this picture, as in the
+wonderful collection of watercolors in the Brooklyn Institute of Arts
+and Sciences, one fancies one sees the essential John Sargent, working
+for himself alone without regard to external demands, and doing what he
+really cares most to do. In such work he is a modern of the moderns
+and, in the broadest sense of the word, a thorough Impressionist. Not
+that he shows himself a disciple of Monet or occupies himself with the
+broken touch or the division of tones--his method is as direct as that
+of Sorolla and his impressionism is of the same kind--a bending of all
+his energies to the vivid realization of the effect of the scene
+rendered as one might perceive it in the first flash of vision if one
+came upon it unexpectedly. This picture is better than Sorolla--it is
+better than almost any one. It is perhaps the most astonishing
+realization of the modern ideal, the most accomplished transcript of the
+actual appearance of nature, that has yet been produced. It is because
+of its great merit, because of its extraordinary success in what it
+attempts, that it leads one to the serious consideration of the nature
+of the attempt and of the gain and loss involved in the choice that
+modern art has made.
+
+The picture is exactly square--the choice of this form is, of itself,
+typically modern in its unexpectedness--and represents a bit of rough
+wood interior under intense sunlight. The light is studied for its
+brilliancy rather than for its warmth, and if the picture has a fault,
+granted the point of view of the painter, it is in a certain coldness of
+color; but such conditions of glaring and almost colorless light do
+exist in nature. One sees a few straight trunks of some kind of pine or
+larch, a network of branches and needles, a tumble of moss-spotted and
+lichened rocks, a confusion of floating lights and shadows, and that is
+all. The conviction of truth is instantaneous--it is an actual bit of
+nature, just as the painter found it. One is there on that ragged
+hillside, half dazzled by the moving spots of light, as if set down
+there suddenly, with no time to adjust one's vision. Gradually one's
+eyes clear and one is aware, first of a haggard human head with tangled
+beard and unkempt hair, then of an emaciated body. There is a man in the
+wood! And then--did they betray themselves by some slight
+movement?--there are a couple of slender antelopes who were but now
+invisible and who melt into their surroundings again at the slightest
+inattention. It is like a pictorial demonstration of protective coloring
+in men and animals.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 21.--Sargent. "The Hermit."
+In the Metropolitan Museum of Art.]
+
+Now, almost any one can see how superbly all this is rendered. Any one
+can marvel at and admire the free and instantaneous handling, the web of
+slashing and apparently meaningless brush strokes which, at a given
+distance, take their places by a kind of magic and _are_ the things they
+represent. But it takes a painter to know how justly it is observed. In
+these days no painter, whatever may be his deepest convictions, can
+escape the occasional desire to be modern; and most of us have
+attempted, at one time or another, the actual study of the human figure
+in the open air. We have taken our model into a walled garden or a deep
+wood or the rocky ravine of a brook and have set ourselves seriously to
+find out what a naked man or woman really looks like in the setting of
+outdoor nature. And we have found just what Sargent has painted. The
+human figure, as a figure, has ceased to exist. Line and structure and
+all that we have most cared for have disappeared. Even the color of
+flesh has ceased to count, and the most radiant blond skin of the
+fairest woman has become an insignificant pinkish spot no more important
+than a stone and not half so important as a flower. Humanity is absorbed
+into the landscape.
+
+Obviously, there are two courses open to the painter. If he is a modern
+by feeling and by training, full of curiosity and of the scientific
+temper, caring more for the investigation of the aspects of nature and
+the rendering of natural light and atmosphere than for the telling of a
+story or the construction of a decoration, he will, if he is able
+enough, treat his matter much as Sargent has treated it. The figure will
+become, for him, only an incident in the landscape. It will be important
+only as a thing of another texture and another color, valuable for the
+different way in which it receives the light and reflects the sky, just
+as rocks and foliage and water and bare earth are valuable. For to the
+true Impressionist light and atmosphere are the only realities, and
+objects exist only to provide surfaces for the play of light and
+atmosphere. He will abandon all attempt at rendering the material and
+physical significance of the human form and will still less concern
+himself with its spiritual significance. He will gain a great vividness
+of illusion, and he may console himself for what he loses with the
+reflection that he has expressed the true relation of man to the
+universe--that he has expressed either man's insignificance or man's
+oneness with nature, according as his temper is pessimistic or
+optimistic.
+
+If, on the other hand, the painter is one to whom the figure as a figure
+means much; one to whom line and bulk and modelling are the principal
+means of expression, and who cares for the structure and stress of bone
+and muscle; if the glow and softness of flesh appeal strongly to him;
+above all, if he has the human point of view and thinks of his figures
+as people engaged in certain actions, having certain characters,
+experiencing certain states of mind and body; then he will give up the
+struggle with the truths of aspect that seem so vital to the painter of
+the other type and, by a frank use of conventions, will seek to
+increase the importance of his figure at the expense of its
+surroundings. He will give it firmer lines and clearer edges, will
+strengthen its light and shade, will dwell upon its structure or its
+movement and expression. He will so compose his landscape as to
+subordinate it to his figure and will make its lines echo and accentuate
+that figure's action or repose. When he has accomplished his task he
+will have painted not man insignificant before nature but man dominating
+nature.
+
+For an example of this way of representing man's relation to the world
+about him, let us take Titian's "Saint Jerome" (Pl. 22)--a picture
+somewhat similar to Sargent's in subject and in the relative size of the
+figure and its surroundings. Titian has here given more importance to
+the landscape than was common in his day. He also has meant, as Sargent
+has, to make a great deal of the wilderness to which his saint has
+retired, and to make his saint a lonely human being in a savage place.
+But the saint and his emotion is, after all, what interests Titian most,
+and the wildness of nature is valuable to him mainly for its sympathy
+with this emotion. He wants to give a single powerful feeling and to
+give it with the utmost dramatic force--to give it theatrically even,
+one might admit of this particular picture; for it is by no means so
+favorable an example of Titian's method, or of the older methods of art
+in general, as is Sargent's "Hermit" of the modern way of seeing and
+painting. To attain this end he simplifies and arranges everything. He
+lowers the pitch of his coloring to a sombre glow and concentrates the
+little light upon his kneeling figure. He spends all his knowledge on so
+drawing and modelling that figure as to make you feel to the utmost its
+bulk and reality and the strain upon its muscles and tendons, and he
+so places everything else on his canvas as to intensify its action and
+expression. The gaze of the saint is fixed upon a crucifix high on the
+right of the picture, and the book behind him, the lines of the rocks,
+the masses of the foliage, even the general formation of the ground, are
+so disposed as to echo and reinforce the great diagonal. There is a
+splendid energy of invention in the drawing of the tree stems, but the
+effect is clear and simple with nothing of Sargent's dazzle and
+confusion. As for the lion, he is a mere necessary mark of
+identification, and Titian has taken no interest in him.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 22.--Titian. "St. Jerome in the Desert."
+In the Brera Gallery, Milan.]
+
+Now, it is evident that there is not nearly so much literal truth to the
+appearance of nature in this picture as in Sargent's. It is not only
+that it would never have occurred to Titian to try to paint the
+glittering spottiness of sunlight splashing through leafage, or to
+attempt to raise his key of light to something like that of nature, at
+the cost of fulness of color. It is not merely that he translates and
+simplifies and neglects certain truths that the world had not yet
+learned to see. He deliberately and intentionally falsifies. He knew as
+well as we do that a natural landscape would not arrange itself in such
+lines and masses for the purpose of throwing out the figure and of
+enhancing its emotion. But to him natural facts were but so much
+material, to be treated as he pleased for the carrying out of his
+purpose. He was a colorist and a chiaroscurist; and he had a great deal
+more interest in light and in landscape than most of the painters of his
+time. If he had been pre-eminently a draughtsman, like Michelangelo, he
+would have reduced his light and shade to the amount strictly necessary
+to give that powerful modelling of the figure which is the draughtsman's
+means of expression, would have greatly increased the relative size and
+importance of the figure, and would have reduced the landscape to a
+barely intelligible symbol. Had he been a linealist, like Botticelli, he
+would have eliminated modelling almost altogether, would have
+concentrated his attention upon the edges of things, and would have
+reduced his picture to a flat pattern in which the beauty and
+expressiveness of the lines should be almost the only attraction.
+
+For all art is an exchange of gain against loss--you cannot have
+Sargent's truth of impression and Titian's truth of emotion in the same
+picture, nor Michelangelo's beauty of structure with Botticelli's beauty
+of line. To be a successful artist is to know what you want and to get
+it at any necessary sacrifice, though the greatest artists maintain a
+noble balance and sacrifice no more than is necessary. And if a painter
+of to-day is like-minded with these older masters he will have to
+express himself much in their manner. He will have to make, with his
+eyes open, the sacrifices which they made, more or less unconsciously,
+and to deny a whole range of truths with which his fellows are occupied
+that he may express clearly and forcibly the few truths which he has
+chosen.
+
+All truths are good, and all ways of painting are legitimate that are
+necessary to the expression of any truth. I am not here concerned to
+show that one way is better than another or one set of truths more
+important than another set of truths. For the present I am desirous only
+of showing why there is more than one way--of explaining the necessity
+of different methods for the expression of different individualities and
+different ways of envisaging nature and art. But a little while ago it
+was the modern or impressionistic manner that needed explanation. It
+was new, it was revolutionary, and it was misunderstood and disliked. A
+generation of critics has been busy in explaining it, a generation of
+artists has been busy in practising it, and now the balance has turned
+the other way. The pressure of conformity is upon the other side, and it
+is the older methods that need justification and explanation. The
+prejudices of the workers and the writers have gradually and naturally
+become the prejudices of at least a part of the public, and it has
+become necessary to show that the small minority of artists who still
+follow the old roads do so not from ignorance or stupidity or a stolid
+conservatism, still less from mere wilful caprice, but from necessity,
+because those roads are the only ones that can lead them where they wish
+to go. No more magnificent demonstration of the qualities possible to
+the purely modern methods of painting has been made than this brilliant
+little picture of Sargent's. All the more is it a demonstration of the
+qualities impossible to these methods. If such qualities have any
+permanent value and interest for the modern world it is a gain for art
+that some painters should try to keep alive the methods that render
+possible their attainment.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE AMERICAN SCHOOL
+
+
+In the catalogues of our museums you may find entries like this: "John
+Smith, American school; The Empty Jug" or what-not. In such entries
+little more than a bare statement of nationality is intended. John Smith
+is an American, by birth or adoption; that is all that the statement is
+meant to convey. But the question occurs: Have we an American school in
+a more specific sense than this? Have we a body of painters with certain
+traits in common and certain differences from the painters of other
+countries? Has our production in painting sufficient homogeneity and
+sufficient national and local accent to entitle it to the name of
+American school in the sense in which there is, undoubtedly, a French
+school and an English school?
+
+Under the conditions of to-day there are no longer anywhere such
+distinctive local schools as existed in the Renaissance. In Italy, in
+those days, there were not only such great schools as the Venetian, the
+Florentine, and the Umbrian, differing widely in their point of view,
+their manner of seeing, and their technical traditions--each little town
+had a school with something characteristic that separated its painters
+from those of other schools in the surrounding towns. To-day every one
+knows and is influenced by the work of every one else, and it is only
+broad national characteristics that still subsist. Modern pictures are
+singularly alike, but, on the whole, it is still possible to tell an
+English picture from a French one, and a German or Italian picture from
+either. We may still speak of a Dutch school or a Spanish school with
+some reasonableness. Is it similarly and equally reasonable to speak of
+an American school? Does a room full of American pictures have a
+different look from a room full of pictures by artists of any other
+nationality? Does one feel that the pictures in such a room have a
+something in common that makes them kin and a something different that
+distinguishes them from the pictures of all other countries? I think the
+answer must be in the affirmative.
+
+We have already passed the stage of mere apprenticeship, and it can no
+longer be said that our American painters are mere reflections of their
+European masters. Twenty or even ten years ago there may have been some
+truth in the accusation. To-day many of our younger painters have had no
+foreign training at all, or have had such as has left no specific mark of a
+particular master; and from the work of most of our older painters it would
+be difficult to guess who their masters were without reference to a
+catalogue. They have, through long work in America and under American
+conditions, developed styles of their own bearing no discoverable
+resemblance to the styles of their first instructors. To take specific
+examples, who would imagine from the mural paintings of Blashfield or the
+decorations by Mowbray in the University Club of New York that either had
+been a pupil of Bonnat? Or who, looking at the exquisite landscapes or
+delicate figure pieces of Weir, would find anything to recall the name of
+Gerome? Some of the pupils of Carolus Duran are almost the only painters we
+have who acquired in their school-days a distinctive method of work which
+still marks their production, and even they are hardly distinguishable
+to-day from others; for the method of Duran, as modified and exemplified by
+John Sargent, has become the method of all the world, and a pupil of Carolus
+simply paints in the modern manner, like the rest. Those American painters
+who have adopted the impressionist point of view, again, have modified its
+technic to suit their own purposes and are at least as different from the
+Impressionists of France as are the Impressionists of Scandinavia. We have
+painters who are undeniably influenced by Whistler, but so have other
+countries--the school of Whistler is international--and, after all, Whistler
+was an American. In short, the resemblances between American painting and
+the painting of other countries are to-day no greater than the resemblances
+between the painting of any two of those countries. And I think the
+differences between American painting and that of other countries are quite
+as great as, if not greater than, the differences between the paintings of
+any two of those countries.
+
+Another accusation that used to be heard against our painters has been
+out-lived. We used to be told, with some truth, that we had learned to
+paint but had nothing to say with our painting, that we produced
+admirable studies but no pictures. The accusation never was true of our
+landscape-painting. Whatever may be the final estimation of the works of
+Inness and Wyant, there can be no doubt that they produced
+pictures--things conceived and worked out to give one definite and
+complete impression; things in which what was presented and what was
+eliminated were equally determined by a definite purpose; things in
+which accident and the immediate dominance of nature had little or no
+part. As for Winslow Homer, whether in landscape or figure painting, his
+work was unfailingly pictorial, whatever else it might be. He was a
+great and original designer, and every canvas of his was completely and
+definitely composed--a quality which at once removes from the category
+of mere sketches and studies even his slighter and more rapid
+productions. And our landscape-painters of to-day are equally painters
+of pictures. Some of them might be thought, by a modern taste, too
+conventionally painters of pictures--too much occupied with composition
+and tone and other pictorial qualities at the expense of freshness of
+observation--while our briskest and most original observers have, many
+of them, a power of design and a manner of casting even their freshest
+observations into pictorial form that is as admirable as it is
+remarkable.
+
+No one could enter one of our exhibitions without feeling the definitely
+pictorial quality of American landscape-painting, but these exhibitions
+do less justice to the achievement of our figure-painters. The principal
+reason for this is that many of our most serious figure-painters have
+been so much occupied with mural decoration that their work seldom
+appears in the exhibitions at all, while the work that they have done is
+so scattered over our vast country that we rather forget its existence
+and, assuredly, have little realization of its amount. It is one of the
+defects of our exhibition system that work of this kind, while it is, of
+course, on permanent exhibition in the place for which it is painted, is
+hardly ever "exhibited," in the ordinary sense, in the centres where it
+is produced. The regular visitor to the Paris salons might know almost
+all that has been done in France in the way of mural painting. The
+public of our American exhibitions knows only vaguely and by hearsay
+what our mural painters have done and are doing. It is true that such
+work is infinitely better seen in place, but it is a pity it cannot be
+seen, even imperfectly, by the people who attend our exhibitions--people
+who can rarely have the necessary knowledge to read such collections of
+sketches, studies, and photographs as are shown at the exhibitions of
+the Architectural League, where, alone, our mural painters can show
+anything. If it were seen it would surely alter the estimation in which
+American figure-painting is held. Such work as was done by the late John
+La Farge, such work as is being done by Blashfield and Mowbray and
+Simmons and a dozen others, if not, in the most limited sense of the
+word, pictorial, is even further removed from the mere sketch or
+study--the mere bit of good painting--than is the finest easel picture.
+
+But it is not only in mural decoration that serious figure-painting is
+being done in this country. I do not see how any one can deny the name
+of pictures to the genre paintings of Mr. Tarbell and Mr. Paxton unless
+he is prepared to deny pictorial quality to the whole Dutch school of
+the seventeenth century; and the example of these men is influencing a
+number of others toward the production of thoroughly thought-out and
+executed genre pictures. We have long had such serious figure-painters
+as Thayer and Brush, Dewing and Weir. The late Louis Loeb was attempting
+figure subjects of a very elaborate sort. To-day every exhibition shows
+an increasing number of worthy efforts at figure-painting in either the
+naturalistic or the ideal vein. We have pictures with subjects
+intelligently chosen and intelligibly treated, pictures with a pattern
+and a clear arrangement of line and mass, pictures soundly drawn and
+harmoniously colored as well as admirably painted.
+
+The painters of America are no longer followers of foreign masters or
+students learning technic and indifferent to anything else. They are a
+school producing work differing in character from that of other schools
+and at least equal in quality to that of any school existing to-day.
+
+If so much may be taken as proved, the question remains for
+consideration: What are the characteristics of the American school of
+painting? Its most striking characteristic is one that may be considered
+a fault or a virtue according to the point of view and the
+prepossessions of the observer. It is a characteristic that has
+certainly been a cause of the relatively small success of American work
+at recent international exhibitions. The American school is, among the
+schools of to-day, singularly old-fashioned. This characteristic has,
+undoubtedly, puzzled and repelled the foreigner. It is a time when the
+madness for novelty seems to be carrying everything before it, when
+anything may be accepted so long as it is or seems new, when the effort
+of all artists is to get rid of conventions and to shake off the
+"shackles of tradition." Here is a new people in the blessed state of
+having no traditions to shake off and from whom, therefore, some peppery
+wildness might be expected for the tickling of jaded palates. Behold,
+they are sturdily setting themselves to recover for art the things the
+others have thrown away! They are trying to revive the old fashion of
+thoughtful composition, the old fashion of good drawing, the old fashion
+of lovely color, and the old fashion of sound and beautiful workmanship.
+
+This conservatism of American painting, however, is not of the kind that
+still marks so much of the painting of England. Excepting exceptions,
+English painting is somewhat stolidly staying where it was. America's
+conservatism is ardent, determined, living. It is not standing still;
+it is going somewhere as rapidly as possible--it might, perhaps, be more
+truly called not conservatism but reaction. We have, of course, our
+ultramodernists, but their audacities are mild compared to those of the
+French or German models they imitate. We have, even more of course, the
+followers of the easiest way--the practitioners of current and accepted
+methods who are alike everywhere. But our most original and most
+distinguished painters, those who give the tone to our exhibitions and
+the national accent to our school, are almost all engaged in trying to
+get back one or another of the qualities that marked the great art of
+the past. They have gone back of the art of the day and are retying the
+knots that should bind together the art of all ages.
+
+This tendency shows itself strongly even in those whose work seems, at
+first sight, most purely naturalistic or impressionistic. Among those
+of our painters who have adopted and retained the impressionist technic,
+with its hatching of broken colors, the two most notable are Mr. Hassam
+and Mr. Weir. But Mr. Hassam, at his best, is a designer with a sense of
+balance and of classic grace almost equal to that of Corot, and he often
+uses the impressionist method to express otherwise the delicate shimmer
+of thin foliage that Corot loved. Nay, so little is he a pure
+naturalist, he cannot resist letting the white sides of naked nymphs
+gleam among his tree trunks--he cannot refrain from the artist's
+immemorial dream of Arcady. As for Mr. Weir, surely nothing could be
+more unlike the instantaneousness of true impressionism than his
+long-brooded-over, subtle-toned, infinitely sensitive art.
+
+There is little dreaminess in the work of Mr. Tarbell and the growing
+number of his followers. Theirs is almost a pure naturalism, a "making
+it like." Yet, notably in the work of Mr. Tarbell himself, and to some
+extent in that of the others, there is an elegance of arrangement, a
+thoroughness in the notation of gradations of light, a beauty and a
+charm that were learned of no modern. Their art is an effort to bring
+back the artistic quality of the most artistic naturalism ever
+practised, that of Vermeer of Delft.
+
+Others of our artists are going still further back in the history of art
+for a part of their inspiration. Mr. Brush has always been a linealist
+and a student of form, but his earlier canvases, admirable as they were,
+were those of a docile pupil of Gerome applying the thoroughness of
+Gerome's method to a new range of subjects and painting the American
+Indian as Gerome had painted the modern Egyptian. In recent years each
+new picture of his has shown more clearly the influence of the early
+Italians--each has been more nearly a symphony of pure line.
+
+Even in purely technical matters our painters have been experimenting
+backward, trying to recover lost technical beauties. The last pictures
+of Louis Loeb were underpainted throughout in monochrome, the final
+colors being applied in glazes and rubbings, and to-day a number of
+others, landscape and figure painters, are attempting to restore and
+master this, the pure Venetian method, while still others, among them
+Emil Carlsen, are reviving the use of tempera.
+
+But it is in our mural painting even more than elsewhere that the
+conservative or reactionary tendency of American painting is most
+clearly marked. John La Farge was always himself, but when the general
+movement in mural painting began in this country with the Chicago
+World's Fair and the subsequent decoration of the Library of Congress,
+the rest of us were much under the influence of Puvis de Chavannes. Even
+then the design was not his, but was founded on earlier examples of
+decorative composition, but his pale tones were everywhere. Little by
+little the study of the past has taught us better. American mural
+painting has grown steadily more monumental in design, and at the same
+time it has grown richer and fuller in color. To-day, while it is not
+less but more personal and original than it was, it has more kinship
+with the noble achievements of Raphael and Veronese than has any other
+modern work extant.
+
+And this brings us to the second characteristic of the American school
+of painting: it is rapidly becoming a school of color. We have still
+plenty of painters who work in the blackish or chalky or muddy and
+opaque tones of modern art, but I think we have more men who produce
+rich and powerful color and more men who produce subtle and delicate
+color than any other modern school. The experiments in reviving old
+technical methods have been undertaken for the sake of purity and
+luminosity of color and have largely succeeded. The pictures of Mr.
+Tarbell are far more colored than those of the European painter whose
+work is, in some ways, most analogous to his, M. Joseph Bail. Mr.
+Hassam's color is always sparkling and brilliant, Mr. Dewing's delicate
+and charming, Mr. Weir's subtle and harmonious and sometimes very full.
+Even Mr. Brush's linear arrangements are clothed in sombre but often
+richly harmonious tones, and the decorative use of powerful color is the
+main reliance of such painters as Hugo Ballin. But the note of color
+runs through the school and one hardly needs to name individual men.
+Whether our landscapists glaze and scumble with the tonalists, or use
+some modification of the impressionist hatching, it is for the sake of
+color; and even our most forthright and dashing wielders of the big
+brush often achieve a surprising power of resonant coloring.
+
+Power, fulness, and beauty of coloring are hardly modern qualities. Much
+as impressionism has been praised for restoring color to a colorless
+art, its result has been, too often, to substitute whitishness for
+blackishness. Color has characterized no modern painting since that of
+Delacroix and Millet as it characterizes much of the best American
+painting. The love for and the success in color of our school is, after
+all, a part of its conservatism.
+
+It may seem an odd way of praising a modern school to call it the least
+modern of any. It _would_ be an odd way of praising that school if its
+lack of modernness were a mere matter of lagging behind or of standing
+still and marking time. But if the "march of progress" has been
+down-hill--if the path that is trod leads into a swamp or over a
+precipice--then there may be most hopefulness for those who can 'bout
+face and march the other way. I have, elsewhere in this volume, given at
+some length some of my reasons for thinking that modern art has been
+following a false route and is in danger of perishing in the bog or
+falling over the cliff. If it is so we may congratulate ourselves that
+those of our painters who are still following the rest of the world have
+not so nearly reached the end of the road, and that those who are more
+independent have discovered in time what that end is and have turned
+back.
+
+It is because it is least that of to-day that I believe our art may be
+that of to-morrow--it is because it is, of all art now going, that which
+has most connection with the past that I hope the art of America may
+prove to be the art of the future.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS[C]
+
+[C] Address delivered before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on
+February 22, 1908. Now revised and enlarged.
+
+
+Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin, Ireland, on the first day of
+March, 1848, but was brought to America at the age of six months. His
+childhood and youth were passed in the city of New York, as was a great
+part of his working life; and though his origin was foreign, lifelong
+associations had stamped him indelibly an American. The greater part of
+his work was done in America; almost all of it was done for America; and
+I do not think it is fancy that sees in his art the expression of a
+distinctively American spirit. Yet from his mixed French and Irish
+blood he may well have derived that mingling of the Latin sense of form
+with a Celtic depth of sentiment which was so markedly characteristic of
+his genius.
+
+His father, Bernard Paul Ernest Saint-Gaudens, was a shoemaker from the
+little town of Aspet in Haute-Garonne, only a few miles from the town of
+Saint-Gaudens, from which the family must have drawn its origin and its
+name. His mother was Mary McGuinness, a native of Dublin. Augustus
+Saint-Gaudens was one of several children born to this couple and not
+the only artist among them, for his younger brother Louis also attained
+some reputation as a sculptor, though his entire lack of ambition
+prevented his achieving all that was expected of him by those who knew
+his delicate talent. The boy Augustus attended the public schools of New
+York and received there all the formal education he ever had; but at
+thirteen it was necessary for him to face the problem of earning his
+living. His artistic proclivities were probably already well marked, and
+to give them some scope, while assuring him a regular trade at which
+money could be earned, he was apprenticed in the good old way to a cameo
+cutter named Louis Avet, said to be the first man to cut stone cameos in
+the United States. Thus it came about that the greatest of American
+sculptors had much such a practical apprenticeship as a Florentine of
+the fifteenth century might have had. He himself always spoke of it as
+"one of the most fortunate things that ever happened to him" and
+attributed much of his success to the habit of faithful labor acquired
+at this time. Probably, also, the habit of thinking in terms of relief,
+fostered by years of work at this ancient art, was not without influence
+in the moulding of his talent.
+
+His relations with Avet lasted from 1861 to 1864, when his master
+quarrelled with him and abruptly dismissed him from his shop. The boy
+was already a determined person; he believed that he had suffered an
+injustice, and, though Avet went to his parents and tried to induce them
+to send him back, he refused to return. A new master was found for him
+in the person of a shell-cameo cutter named Jules LeBrethon, and with
+him Saint-Gaudens remained three years. During his six years'
+apprenticeship under his two masters the youth showed already that
+energy and power of will that made him what he was. He meant to be
+something more than an artisan, and he spent his evenings in the
+classes, first of the Cooper Union, afterward of the National Academy of
+Design, in the hard study of drawing, the true foundation of all the
+fine arts. It was one of the elements of his superiority in his
+profession that he could draw as few sculptors can, and he always felt
+that he owed an especial debt to the Cooper Union, which he was glad to
+repay when he modelled the statue of its venerable founder. Of the other
+institution by whose freely given instruction he had profited, the
+National Academy of Design, he became one of the most honored members.
+By 1867, when he was nineteen years old, he had saved a little money and
+was master of a trade that could be relied on to bring in more, and he
+determined to go to Paris and begin the serious study of sculpture. He
+worked, for a time, at the Petite Ecole, and entered the studio of
+Jouffroy in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1868, remaining until 1870.
+During this time, and afterward, he was self-supporting, working half
+his time at cameo cutting until his efforts at sculpture on a larger
+scale began to bring in an income.
+
+When the Franco-Prussian War broke out Paris ceased to be a place for
+the carrying on of the serious study of art, and Saint-Gaudens went to
+Rome, where his associates were the French prizemen of the day, of whom
+Mercie was one. He remained there until 1874, except for a visit to New
+York in the winter of 1872-3 for the purpose of modelling a bust of
+Senator Evarts, and one or two other busts, which were put into marble
+upon his return to Rome. In those Roman days he executed his first
+statue, a "Hiawatha," one of his few studies of the nude, and a
+"Silence," a not very characteristic draped figure which yet fills with
+some impressiveness her niche at the head of the grand stairway of the
+Masonic Temple on Twenty-fourth Street.
+
+From 1875 to 1877 he had a studio in New York, where he seems to have
+executed some of his earliest portrait reliefs. During these years he
+came into contact with La Farge, for whom he turned painter and aided
+in the execution of the decorations of Trinity Church in Boston. It was
+at this time, also, that he received his first commissions for important
+public work, those for the Farragut statue in Madison Square, the
+Randall at Sailors' Snug Harbor, and the angels for Saint Thomas's
+Church. He had married Augusta F. Homer in 1877, and in that year,
+taking his bride and his commissions with him, he returned to Paris,
+feeling, as many another young Paris-bred artist has felt, that there
+only could such important works be properly carried out. The "Farragut"
+was completed and exhibited in the plaster at the Salon of 1880, and
+from that time his success was assured. For the rest of his life he was
+constantly busy, receiving almost more commissions for work of
+importance than it was possible for him to carry out. He returned to New
+York in 1880, and in 1881 he opened the studio in Thirty-sixth Street,
+where he remained for sixteen years and where so many of his greatest
+works were executed. From that studio came many of his exquisite
+portraits in relief, his caryatids and angelic figures, such as those
+for the Morgan tomb, so unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1882 (a fate
+since shared by the earlier angels of Saint Thomas's), the great statues
+of Lincoln and Chapin, the "Shaw Memorial," and the "Adams Memorial";
+and in it was done all the preliminary work of the great equestrian
+monument to General Sherman.
+
+It is in these years of his prime that he will ever be most fondly
+remembered by those--and they are many--who had the privilege of his
+friendship. Admittedly our foremost sculptor, and one of the founders of
+the Society of American Artists, he became at once a person of
+importance in the world of art; and as his brilliant career developed
+he established intimate relationships with an ever-widening circle of
+men in every walk of life, while no one who ever knew him well can have
+felt anything but an abiding affection for him. That long, white studio
+became a familiar meeting-place for all who were interested in any form
+of art; and the Sunday afternoon concerts that were held there for many
+years will be looked back to with regret as long as any of their
+auditors remain alive.
+
+This studio was given up when Saint-Gaudens went abroad for the third
+time, in 1897, to execute the Sherman group, and he never resumed his
+residence in New York. In 1885 he had purchased a property at Cornish,
+N.H., just across the Connecticut River from Windsor, Vt., and when he
+returned to this country in 1900, covered with fresh honors but an ill
+man, he made what had been a summer home his permanent abode. He named
+it Aspet, after his father's birthplace, and there he erected two
+studios and finished his Sherman statue. In these studios were executed
+the second "Lincoln," the Parnell statue for Dublin, and much other
+work. The larger studio was burned in 1904, but was rebuilt and the lost
+work re-begun and carried to a conclusion. What can never be quite
+replaced were two portraits of himself. A study, of the head only, in
+the collection of the National Academy of Design and a sketch by Will H.
+Low, painted in Paris in 1877, are now the only existing portraits of
+him done from life in his best years. The Metropolitan Museum possesses
+a portrait of him in his last years, by Miss Ellen Emmet, and a replica,
+painted since his death, of my own earlier portrait.
+
+From the illness he brought back from Paris in 1900 Saint-Gaudens never
+recovered. At times he showed something of his old vigor and was able
+not only to do fine work but to indulge more in out-of-door sports than
+he had ever done in his youth, while a growing love for nature and for
+literature made his life fuller, in some respects, than in the days when
+his own art more entirely absorbed him. But year by year his strength
+grew less and his intervals of freedom from pain grew shorter, and he
+was more and more forced to rely upon the corps of able and devoted
+assistants which he gathered about him. He developed to an extraordinary
+extent the faculty of communicating his ideas and desires to others and
+of producing through their hands work essentially his own and of a
+quality entirely beyond their ability; but it was at the cost of a
+strain upon brain and nerve almost infinitely greater than would have
+been involved in work done with his own hand. In the summer of 1906 he
+broke down utterly, the work of his studio was interrupted, and he
+ceased to see even his most intimate friends. He rallied somewhat from
+this attack, and began again his heroic struggle against fate, directing
+the work of assistants while himself so weak that he had to be carried
+from the house to the studio. The end came on the evening of August 3,
+1907. He died as he had lived, a member of no church, but a man of pure
+and lofty character. As he had wished, his body was cremated, and his
+ashes were temporarily deposited in the cemetery at Windsor, Vt., across
+the river from his home. An informal funeral service was held in his
+private studio on August 7, attended by friends and neighbors and by a
+few old friends from a distance; but the gathering could include but a
+few of the many who felt his death as a personal loss.
+
+The merits of Saint-Gaudens's work were fully recognized in his
+lifetime. He was an officer of the Legion of Honor, a Corresponding
+Member of the Institute of France, a member of half a dozen academies,
+and the bearer of honorary degrees from the universities of Harvard,
+Yale, and Princeton. But of all the honors he received there were two,
+one of a public, the other of a private nature, which he himself valued
+most highly: the one as showing the estimation in which his art was held
+by his fellow artists, the other as an evidence of the personal
+affection felt for him by his friends. At the Pan-American Exposition in
+1901, upon the unanimous recommendation of the Jury of Fine Arts,
+composed of painters, sculptors, and architects, he was awarded a
+special diploma and medal of honor, "apart from and above all other
+awards," an entirely exceptional honor, which marked him as the first of
+American artists, as previously received honors had marked him one of
+the greatest sculptors of his time. On June 23, 1905, the artistic and
+literary colony which had gradually grown up about his home in Cornish
+celebrated the twentieth anniversary of his coming there by a fete and
+open-air masque held in the groves of Aspet. The beauty of this
+spectacle has become almost legendary. The altar with its columned
+canopy, which served for a background to the play, still stands, or
+recently stood, though much dilapidated by weather, as it was
+immortalized by the sculptor himself in a commemorative plaquette (Pl.
+23) which is among the most charming of his minor works. He planned if
+he had lived to perpetuate it in enduring marble, and this task has now
+been taken up by his wife, who means to dedicate the monument as a
+fitting memorial to a great artist and a noble man in the place he loved
+as his chosen home.
+
+Some part of the vivid and lovable personality of Augustus
+Saint-Gaudens must have been visible, almost at a glance, to any one who
+ever came in contact with him--to any one, even, who ever saw his
+portrait. In his spare but strong-knit figure, his firm but supple
+hands, his manner of carrying himself, his every gesture, one felt the
+abounding vitality, the almost furious energy of the man. That
+extraordinary head, with its heavy brow beetling above the small but
+piercing eyes, its red beard and crisp, wiry hair, its projecting jaw
+and great, strongly modelled nose, was alive with power--with power of
+intellect no less than of will. His lack of early education gave him a
+certain diffidence and a distrust of his own gifts of expression. He was
+apt to overrate the mere verbal facility of others and to underestimate
+himself in the comparison--indeed, a certain humility was strongly
+marked in him, even as regards his art, though he was self-confident
+also. When he was unconstrained his great powers of observation, his
+shrewdness of judgment, his bubbling humor, and a picturesque vivacity
+of phrase not uncommon among artists made him one of the most entrancing
+of talkers.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 23.--Saint-Gaudens. "Plaquette Commemorating Cornish Masque."]
+
+Underneath his humor and his gayety, however, there lay a deep-seated
+Celtic melancholy, and beside his energy was an infinite patience at the
+service of an exacting artistic conscience. The endless painstaking of
+his work and the time he took over it were almost proverbial. He was
+twelve years engaged upon the "Shaw Memorial" and eleven upon the
+"Sherman," and, though he did much other work while these were in
+progress, yet it was his constant revision, his ever-renewed striving
+for perfection that kept them so long achieving. The "Diana" of the
+Madison Square Garden was taken down from her tower because he and the
+architect, Stanford White, thought her too large, and was entirely
+remodelled on a smaller scale. And with this patience went a gentleness,
+a sweetness, a delicate sensitiveness, and an abounding humanity and
+sympathy. He could be almost ruthless in the assertion of his will when
+the interests of his art or of justice seemed to demand it, yet there
+was a tender-heartedness in him which made it distressing to him to
+inflict pain on any one. The conflict of these elements in his nature
+sometimes made his actions seem inconsistent and indecipherable even to
+those who knew him. He would be long-suffering, compromising,
+disinclined to strike; but when he was at last roused the blow would be
+as staggering as it was unexpected. It was as if he struck the harder to
+have done with it and to spare himself the pain of striking again.
+
+It was his whole-hearted devotion to his art which caused his rare acts
+of self-assertion, and it was this same devotion, no less than his
+natural kindliness, that made him ever helpful to younger artists who
+showed any promise of future worth. Even in his last days of unspeakable
+suffering he would summon what was left of his old strength to give a
+word of criticism and advice, above all, a word of commendation, to any
+one who needed the one or had earned the other. The essential goodness
+of the man was most felt by those who stood nearest him, and most of
+all, perhaps, by his actual coworkers. He could command, as few have
+been able to do, the love and devotion of his assistants. To all who
+knew him the man himself seemed finer, rarer, sweeter than his work, and
+the gap he has left in their lives will be even more impossible to fill
+than his place in American art.
+
+But the personality of an artist, though he be a great one, is for the
+memory of his private friends. It is only as it colors his art that it
+is of public interest. It is his art itself, his gift to the world, that
+the world cares for; it is of the kind and quality of that art, the
+nature and the degree of its greatness, that the world wishes to hear.
+Because the man was my friend I have wished to give some glimpse of the
+manner of man he was; because the artist was the greatest our country
+has produced I am to try to give some idea of his art, of the elements
+of its strength, and of the limitations which are as necessary as its
+qualities.
+
+The time of Saint-Gaudens's study in Paris was a time of great
+importance in the development of modern sculpture, and, although
+Jouffroy was not himself a sculptor of the highest rank, his studio was
+a centre for what was then the new movement in the sculpture of France.
+The essential thing in this movement was the abandoning of the formal
+imitation of second-rate antiques and the substitution of the sculpture
+of the Italian Renaissance as a source of inspiration and of the direct
+study of nature as a means of self-expression. There had always been
+individual sculptors of power and originality in France, but the
+movement of the French school of sculpture, as a whole, away from the
+pseudo classicism which had long dominated it was really inaugurated by
+Paul Dubois only a few years before Saint-Gaudens's arrival in Paris.
+Many of the men destined to a brilliant part in the history of modern
+sculpture were trained in the _atelier_ of Jouffroy. Falguiere and
+Saint-Marceau had but just left that studio when the young American
+entered it, and Mercie was his fellow student there. Dalou and Rodin
+have since made these men seem old-fashioned and academic, but they
+were then, and for many years afterward, the heads of the new school;
+and of this new school, so different from anything he had known in
+America, Saint-Gaudens inevitably became a part. His own pronounced
+individuality, and perhaps his comparative isolation during the years of
+his greatest productivity, gave his art a character of its own, unlike
+any other, but to the French school of sculpture of the third quarter of
+the nineteenth century he essentially belonged.
+
+Of course, his style was not formed in a moment. His "Hiawatha" seems,
+to-day, much such a piece of neo-classicism as was being produced by
+other men in the Rome of that time, and the "Silence," though somewhat
+more modern in accent, is an academic work such as might have been
+expected from a docile pupil of his master. The relief of angels for the
+reredos of Saint Thomas's Church is the earliest important work which
+shows his personal manner. It was undertaken in collaboration with John
+La Farge, and perhaps the influence of La Farge, and of that eminently
+picturesque genius Stanford White, mingled with that of the younger
+French school in forming its decorative and almost pictorial character.
+It was a kind of improvisation, done at prodigious speed and without
+study from nature--a sketch rather than a completed work of art, but a
+sketch to be slowly developed into the reliefs of the Farragut pedestal,
+the angels of the Morgan tomb, the caryatids of the Vanderbilt
+mantelpiece, and, at length, into such a masterpiece as the
+"Amor-Caritas." In each of these developments the work becomes less
+picturesque and more formal, the taste is purified, the exuberance of
+decorative feeling is more restrained. The final term is reached in the
+caryatids for the Albright Gallery at Buffalo--works of his last days,
+when his hands were no longer able to shape the clay, yet essentially
+his though he never touched them; works of an almost austere nobility of
+style, the most grandly monumental figures he ever produced.
+
+The commonest criticism on Saint-Gaudens's art has been that it is not,
+primarily, sculptural in its inspiration; and, in a sense, the criticism
+is justified. One need not, perhaps, greatly care whether it is true or
+not. It is, after all, only a matter of definition, and if we were
+forbidden to call his work sculpture at all and required to find another
+name for it, the important fact that it is art--art of the finest, the
+most exquisite, at times the most powerful--would in no wise be altered.
+Ghiberti went beyond the traditions of sculpture in relief, introduced
+perspective into his compositions, modelled trees and rocks and clouds
+and cast them in bronze, made pictures, if you like, instead of reliefs.
+Does any one care? Is it not enough that they are beautiful pictures?
+The gates of the Baptistry of Florence are still worthy, as the greatest
+sculptor since the Greeks thought them, to be the gates of paradise. A
+work of art remains a work of art, call it what you please, and a thing
+of beauty will be a joy forever, whether or not you can pigeonhole it in
+some ready-made category. After all, the critical pigeonholes are made
+for the things, not the things for the pigeonholes. The work is there,
+and if it does not fit your preconceived definition the fault is as
+likely to be in the definition as in the work itself.
+
+And the first and most essential thing to note about the art of Augustus
+Saint-Gaudens is that it is always art of the purest--free in an
+extraordinary degree from the besetting sins of naturalism and the
+scientific temper on the one hand and of the display of cleverness and
+technical brilliancy on the other. Never more than in our own day have
+these been the great temptations of an able artist: that he should in
+the absorption of study forget the end in the means and produce
+demonstrations of anatomy or of the laws of light rather than statues or
+pictures; or that he should, in the joy of exercising great talents,
+seem to say, "See how well I can do it!" and invent difficulties for the
+sake of triumphantly resolving them, becoming a virtuoso rather than a
+creator. Of the meaner temptation of mere sensationalism--the desire to
+attract attention by ugliness and eccentricity lest one should be unable
+to secure it by truth and beauty--one need not speak. It is the
+temptation of vulgar souls. But great and true artists have yielded,
+occasionally or habitually, to these other two; Saint-Gaudens never
+does. I know no work of his to which raw nature has been admitted, in
+which a piece of study has been allowed to remain as such without the
+moulding touch of art to subdue it to its place; and I know only one
+which has any spice of bravura--the Logan statue--and the bravura is
+there because the subject seemed to demand it, not because the artist
+wished it. The dash and glitter are those of "Black Jack Logan," not of
+Saint-Gaudens. The sculptor strove to render them as he strove to render
+higher qualities at other times, but they remain antipathetic to his
+nature, and the statue is one of the least satisfactory of his works. He
+is essentially the artist--the artificer of beauty--ever bent on the
+making of a lovely and significant thing; and the study of nature and
+the resources of his craft are but tools and are never allowed to become
+anything more.
+
+If, then, the accusation that Saint-Gaudens's art is not sculptural
+means that he was a designer rather than a modeller, that he cared for
+composition more than for representation, that the ensemble interested
+him more than the details, I would cheerfully admit that the accusation
+is well founded. Such marvels of rendering as Rodin could give us,
+before he lost himself in the effort to deserve that reputation as a
+profound thinker which has been thrust upon him, were not for
+Saint-Gaudens. The modelling of the _morceau_ was not particularly his
+affair. The discrimination of hard and soft, of bone and muscle and
+integument, the expression of tension where a fleshy tissue is tightly
+drawn over the framework beneath, or of weight where it falls away from
+it--these were not the things that most compelled his interest or in
+which he was most successful. For the human figure as a figure, for the
+inherent beauty of its marvellous mechanism, he did not greatly care.
+The problems of bulk and mass and weight and movement which have
+occupied sculptors from the beginning were not especially his problems.
+It may have been due to the nature of the commissions he received that,
+after the "Hiawatha" of his student days, he modelled no nude except the
+"Diana" of the tower--a purely decorative figure, designed for distant
+effect, in which structural modelling would have been out of place
+because invisible. But it was not accident that in such draped figures
+as the "Amor-Caritas" (Pl. 24) or the caryatids of the Vanderbilt
+mantelpiece there is little effort to make the figure visible beneath
+the draperies. In the hands of a master of the figure--of one of those
+artists to whom the expressiveness and the beauty of the human structure
+is all in all--drapery is a means of rendering the masses and the
+movement of the figure more apparent than they would be in the nude. In
+such works as these it is a thing beautiful in itself, for its own
+ripple and flow and ordered intricacy. The figure is there beneath
+the drapery, but the drapery is expressive of the mood of the artist and
+of the sentiment of the work rather than especially explanatory of the
+figure.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 24.--Saint-Gaudens. "Amor Caritas."]
+
+First of all, by nature and by training, Saint-Gaudens was a designer,
+and exquisiteness of design was the quality he most consciously strove
+for--the quality on which he expended his unresting, unending,
+persevering toil. From the start one feels that design is his principal
+preoccupation, that he is thinking mainly of the pattern of the whole,
+its decorative effect and play of line, its beauty of masses and spaces,
+its fitness for its place and its surroundings; in a word, its
+composition. In the beginning, as a workman in the shop of the cameo
+cutter, he was concerned with a kind of art in which perfection of
+composition is almost the sole claim to serious consideration. Then he
+produces a multiplicity of small reliefs, dainty, exquisite, infallibly
+charming in their arrangement--things which are so dependent on design
+for their very existence that they seem scarcely modelled at all. He
+goes on to decorative figures in the round, to heroic statues, to
+monumental groups, but always it is design that he thinks of first and
+last--design, now, in three dimensions rather than in two--design
+properly sculptural rather than pictorial, in so much as it deals with
+bosses and concaves, with solid matter in space--but still design. This
+power of design rises to higher uses as time goes on, is bent to the
+interpretation of lofty themes and the expression of deep emotions, but
+it is in its nature the same power that produced the delicate, ethereal
+beauty of the reliefs. The infinite fastidiousness of a master designer,
+constantly reworking and readjusting his design, that every part shall
+be perfect and that no fold or spray of leafage shall be out of its
+proper place, never satisfied that his composition is beyond improvement
+while an experiment remains untried--this is what cost him years of
+labor. His first important statue, the "Farragut," is a masterpiece of
+restrained and elegant yet original and forceful design--a design, too,
+that includes the pedestal and the bench below, and of which the figures
+in bas-relief are almost as important a part as the statue itself. In
+later and maturer work, with a more clarified taste and a deeper
+feeling, he can reach such unsurpassable expressiveness of composition
+as is shown in the "Shaw Memorial" or the great equestrian statue of
+Sherman.
+
+Saint-Gaudens's mastery of low relief was primarily a matter of this
+power of design, but it was conditioned also upon two other qualities:
+knowledge of drawing and extreme sensitiveness to delicate modulation of
+surface. And by drawing I mean not merely knowledge of form and
+proportion and the exact rendering of these, in which sense a statue may
+be said to be well drawn if its measurements are correct--I mean that
+much more subtle and difficult art, the rendering in two dimensions only
+of the appearance of objects of three dimensions. Sculpture in the round
+is the simplest and, in a sense, the easiest of the arts. It deals with
+actual form--a piece of sculpture does not merely look like the form of
+an object, it _is_ the form of an object. Leaving out of the count, for
+the moment, the refinements and the illusions which may be added to
+it--which must be added to it to make it art--it is the reproduction in
+another material of the actual forms of things. Something which shall
+answer for it, to the uninitiate, may be produced by merely casting
+natural objects; and there is a great deal that is called sculpture
+which scarcely aims at anything more than the production, by a more
+difficult method, of something like a plaster cast from nature. It is
+the very simplicity of the art that makes its difficulty, for to avoid
+the look of casting and achieve the feeling of art requires the most
+delicate handling and the most powerful inspiration, and there is need
+in the art of sculpture for the rarest qualities of the greatest minds.
+The art of drawing is entirely different. It is all illusion, it deals
+only in appearances. Its aim is to depict on a flat surface the aspect
+of objects supposed to stand behind it and to be seen through it, and
+its means are two branches of the science of optics. It is based on the
+study of perspective and on the study of the way light falls upon
+objects and reveals their shapes and the direction of their surfaces by
+the varying degrees of their illumination. Of this art a sculptor in the
+round need not necessarily know anything, and, in fact, many of them,
+unfortunately, know altogether too little of it. The maker of a statue
+need not think about foreshortenings: if he gives the correct form the
+foreshortening will take care of itself. Sometimes it does so in a
+disastrous manner! Theoretically he need not worry over light and shade,
+although of course he does, in practice, think about it and rely upon
+it, more or less. If he gives the true forms they will necessarily have
+the true light and shade. But low relief, standing between sculpture and
+drawing, is really more closely related to drawing than to sculpture--is
+really a kind of drawing--and this is why so few sculptors succeed in
+it.
+
+It is a kind of drawing but an exceedingly difficult kind--the most
+delicate and difficult of any of the arts that deal with form alone. As
+to the contour, it stands on the same ground with drawing in any other
+material. The linear part of it requires exactly the same degree and
+the same kind of talent as linear design with a pen or with a burin. But
+for all that stands within the contour, for the suggestion of interior
+forms and the illusion of solidity, it depends on means of the utmost
+subtlety. It exists, as all drawing does, by light and shade, but the
+shadows are not produced by the mere darkening of the surface--they are
+produced by projections and recessions, by the inclination of the planes
+away from or toward the light. The lower the relief the more subtle and
+tender must be the variation of the surface which produces them, and
+therefore success in relief is one of the best attainable measures of a
+sculptor's fineness of touch and perfection of craftsmanship. But as the
+light and shade is produced by actual forms which are yet quite unlike
+the true forms of nature, it follows that the artist in relief can never
+imitate either the shape or the depth of the shadow he sees in nature.
+His art becomes one of suggestions and equivalents--an art which can
+give neither the literal truth of form nor the literal truth of
+aspect--an art at the farthest remove from direct representation. And
+success in it becomes, therefore, one of the best tests of a sculptor's
+artistry--of his ability to produce essential beauty by the treatment of
+his material, rather than to imitate successfully external fact.
+
+As the degree of relief varies, also, from the lowest possible to that
+highest relief which, nearly approaches sculpture in the round, the
+problems involved constantly vary. At each stage there is a new
+compromise to be made, a new adjustment to find, between fact and
+illusion, between the real form and the desired appearance. And there
+may be a number of different degrees of relief in the same work, even in
+different parts of the same figure, so that the art of relief becomes
+one of the most complicated and difficult of arts. It has not, indeed,
+the added complication of color, but neither has it the resources of
+color, success in which will more or less compensate for failure
+elsewhere. There is no permissible failure in bas-relief, any more than
+in sculpture in the round, and its difficulties are far greater. Nothing
+but truest feeling, completest knowledge, consummate skill will serve.
+
+This explanation may give some measure of what I mean when I say that I
+believe Augustus Saint-Gaudens the most complete master of relief since
+the fifteenth century.
+
+He has produced a series of works which run through the whole range of
+the art, from lowest relief to highest; from things of which the relief
+is so infinitesimal that they seem as if dreamed into existence rather
+than wrought in bronze or marble to things which are virtually engaged
+statues; from things which you fear a chance touch might brush away,
+like a pastel of Whistler's, to things as solid and enduring in
+appearance as in actual material. And in all these things there is the
+same inevitable mastery of design and of drawing, the same infinite
+resource and the same technical perfection. The "Butler Children" (Pl.
+25), the "Schiff Children," the "Sarah Redwood Lee" (Pl. 26), to name
+but a few of his masterpieces of this kind, are in their perfection of
+spacing, their grace of line, their exquisite and ethereal illusiveness
+of surface, comparable only to the loveliest works of the Florentine
+Renaissance; while the assured mastery of the most complicated problems
+of relief evinced in the "Shaw Memorial"--a mastery which shows, in the
+result, no trace of the strenuous and long-continued effort that it
+cost--is unsurpassed--I had almost said unequalled--in any work of any
+epoch.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 25.--Saint-Gaudens. "The Butler Children."]
+
+Illustration can give but a faint idea of the special beauties of this
+or that particular work in this long series. It can show no more than
+the composition and the draughtsmanship. The refinement of workmanship,
+the sensitiveness and subtlety of modelling, can be appreciated only
+before the works themselves. And this sensitiveness and delicacy of
+workmanship, this mastery of the problems of relief, with its reliance
+on illusion and its necessary abstention from realization, is applied to
+sculpture in the round, and becomes with Saint-Gaudens, as it did with
+the sculptors of the Florentine Renaissance, the means of escape from
+the matter of fact. The concrete art of sculpture becomes an art of
+mystery and of suggestion--an art having affinities with that of
+painting. Hollows are filled up, shadows are obliterated, lines are
+softened or accentuated, as the effect may require, details are
+eliminated or made prominent as they are less or more essential and
+significant, as they hinder or aid the expressiveness of the whole. It
+is by such methods that beauty is achieved, that the most unpromising
+material is subdued to the purposes of art, that even our hideous modern
+costume may be made to yield a decorative effect. Pure sculpture, as the
+ancients understood it, the art of form _per se_, demands the nude
+figure, or a costume which reveals it rather than hides it. The costume
+of to-day reveals as little of the figure as possible, and, unlike
+mediaeval armor, it has no beauty of its own. A painter may make it
+interesting by dwelling on color or tone or texture, or may so lose it
+in shadow that it ceases to count at all except as a space of darkness.
+A sculptor can do none of these things, and if he is to make it serve
+the ends of beauty he has need of all the resourcefulness and all the
+skill of the master of low relief. It was fortunate that the artist
+whose greatest task was to commemorate the heroes of the Civil War
+should have had the temperament and the training of such a master, and I
+know of no other sculptor than Saint-Gaudens who has so magnificently
+succeeded in the rendering of modern clothing--no other who could have
+made the uniform of Farragut or the frock coat of Lincoln as interesting
+as the armor of Colleone or the toga of Augustus.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 26.--Saint-Gaudens. "Sarah Redwood Lee."]
+
+But if the genius of Saint-Gaudens was primarily a decorative genius--if
+it was, even, in his earlier work, a trifle picturesque, so that, as he
+said himself, he had "to fight against picturesqueness," his work was
+never pictorial. He never indulged in perspective or composed his
+reliefs on more than one plane; never took such liberties with the
+traditions of sculpture as did Ghiberti, or painted pictures in bronze
+or marble as more than one modern has done. His very feeling for
+decoration kept him from pictorial realism, and his fight against
+picturesqueness was nobly won. His design becomes ever cleaner and more
+classic; by years of work and of experience he becomes stronger and
+stronger in the more purely sculptural qualities--attains a grasp of
+form and structure only second to his mastery of composition. He is
+always a consummate artist--in his finest works he is a great sculptor
+in the strictest sense of the word.
+
+I have dwelt somewhat at length upon technical matters because technical
+power is the first necessity for an artist; because technical mastery is
+that for which he consciously endeavors; because the technical language
+of his art is the necessary vehicle of expression for his thoughts and
+emotions, and determines, even, the nature of the thoughts and emotions
+he shall express. But while the technical accomplishment of an artist
+is the most necessary part of his art, without which his imagination
+would be mute, it is not the highest or the most significant part of it.
+I have tried to show that Saint-Gaudens was a highly accomplished
+artist, the equal of any of his contemporaries, the superior of most.
+What made him something much more than this--something infinitely more
+important for us--was the vigor and loftiness of his imagination.
+Without his imaginative power he would have been an artist of great
+distinction, of whom any country might be proud; with it he became a
+great creator, able to embody in enduring bronze the highest ideals and
+the deepest feelings of a nation and of a time.
+
+It is a penetrating and sympathetic imagination that gave him his
+unerring grasp of character, that enabled him to seize upon the
+significant elements of a personality, to divine the attitude and the
+gesture that should reveal it, to eliminate the unessential, to present
+to us the man. This is the imagination of the portrait-painter, and
+Saint-Gaudens has shown it again and again, in many of his reliefs and
+memorial tablets, above all in his portrait statues. He showed it
+conclusively in so early a work as the "Farragut" (Pl. 27), a work that
+remains one of the modern masterpieces of portrait statuary. The man
+stands there forever, feet apart, upon his swaying deck, his glass in
+one strong hand, cool, courageous, ready, full of determination but
+absolutely without bluster or braggadocio, a sailor, a gentleman, and a
+hero. He showed it again, and with ampler maturity, in that august
+figure of "Lincoln" (Pl. 28), grandly dignified, austerely simple,
+sorrowfully human, risen from the chair of state that marks his office,
+but about to speak as a man to men, his bent head and worn face
+filled with a sense of power, but even more with the sadness of
+responsibility--filled, above all, with a yearning, tender passion of
+sympathy and love. In imaginative presentation of character, in nobility
+of feeling and breadth of treatment, no less than in perfection of
+workmanship, these are among the world's few worthy monuments to its
+great men.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 27.--Saint-Gaudens. "Farragut."]
+
+And they are monuments to Americans by an American. Saint-Gaudens had
+lived through the time of the Civil War, had felt, as a boy, the stir of
+its great happenings in his blood, and its epic emotions had become a
+part of his consciousness, deep-seated at the roots of his nature. The
+feelings of the American people were his feelings, and his
+representations of these and of other heroes of that great struggle are
+among the most national as they are among the most vital things that our
+country has produced in art.
+
+But if Saint-Gaudens's imagination was thus capable of raising the
+portrait to the dignity of the type, it was no less capable of endowing
+the imagined type with all the individuality of the portrait. In the
+"Deacon Chapin" (Pl. 29), of Springfield, we have a purely ideal
+production, the finest embodiment of New England Puritanism in our art,
+for no portrait of the real Chapin existed. This swift-striding,
+stern-looking old man, who clasps his Bible as Moses clasped the tables
+of the law and grips his peaceful walking-stick as though it were a
+sword, is a Puritan of the Puritans; but he is an individual also--a
+rough-hewn piece of humanity with plenty of the old Adam about him--an
+individual so clearly seen and so vigorously characterized that one can
+hardly believe the statue an invention or realize that no such old
+Puritan deacon ever existed in the flesh. Something of this imaginative
+quality there is in almost everything Saint-Gaudens touched, even in
+his purely decorative figures. His angels and caryatides are not
+classical goddesses but modern women, lovely, but with a personal and
+particular loveliness, not insisted upon but delicately suggested. And
+it is not the personality of the model who chanced to pose for them but
+an invented personality, the expression of the nobility, the sweetness,
+and the pure-mindedness of their creator. And in such a figure as that
+of the "Adams Memorial" (Pl. 30), in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington,
+his imaginative power reaches to a degree of impressiveness almost
+unequalled in modern art. One knows of nothing since the tombs of the
+Medici that fills one with the same hushed awe as this shrouded, hooded,
+deeply brooding figure, rigid with contemplation, still with an eternal
+stillness, her soul rapt from her body on some distant quest. Is she
+Nirvana? Is she The Peace of God? She has been given many names--her
+maker would give her none. Her meaning is mystery; she is the
+everlasting enigma.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 28.--Saint-Gaudens. "Lincoln."]
+
+Not the greatest artist could twice sound so deep a note as this. The
+figure remains unique in the work of the sculptor as it is unique in the
+art of the century. Yet, perhaps, Saint-Gaudens's greatest works are two
+in which all the varied elements of his genius find simultaneous
+expression; into which his mastery of composition, his breadth and
+solidity of structure, his technical skill, his insight into character,
+and his power of imagination enter in nearly equal measure: the "Shaw
+Memorial" and the great equestrian group of the "Sherman Monument."
+
+The "Shaw Memorial" (Pl. 31) is a relief, but a relief of many planes.
+The marching troops are in three files, one behind the other, the
+varying distances from the spectator marked by differences of the degree
+of projection. Nearer than all of them is the equestrian figure of Shaw
+himself, the horse and rider modelled nearly but not quite in the round.
+The whole scale of relief was altered in the course of the work, after
+it had once been nearly completed, and the mastery of the infinitely
+complicated problem of relief in many degrees is supreme. But all the
+more because the scheme was so full and so varied, the artist has
+carefully avoided the pictorial in his treatment. There is no
+perspective, the figures being all on the same scale, and there is no
+background, no setting of houses or landscape. Everywhere, between and
+above the figures, is the flat surface which is the immemorial tradition
+of sculpture in relief; and the fact that it _is_ a surface,
+representing nothing, is made more clear by the inscription written upon
+it--an inscription placed there, consciously or unconsciously, that it
+might have that very effect. The composition is magnificent, whether for
+its intrinsic beauty of arrangement--its balancing of lines and
+spaces--or for its perfect expressiveness. The rhythmic step of marching
+men is perfectly rendered, and the guns fill the middle of the panel in
+an admirable pattern, without confusion or monotony. The heads are
+superb in characterization, strikingly varied and individual, yet each a
+strongly marked racial type, unmistakably African in all its forms.
+
+[Illustration: Plate 29.--Saint-Gaudens. "Deacon Chapin."]
+
+These are merits, and merits of a very high order, enough of themselves
+to place the work in the front rank of modern sculpture, but they are,
+after all, its minor merits. What makes it the great thing it is is the
+imaginative power displayed in it--the depth of emotion expressed, and
+expressed with perfect simplicity and directness and an entire
+absence of parade. The negro troops are marching steadily, soberly,
+with high seriousness of purpose, and their white leader rides beside
+them, drawn sword in hand, but with no military swagger, courageous, yet
+with a hint of melancholy, ready not only to lay down his life but to
+face, if need be, an ignominious death for the cause he believes to be
+just. And above them, laden with poppy and with laurels, floats the
+Death Angel pointing out the way.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, Curtis & Cameron.
+Plate 30.--Saint-Gaudens. "Adams Memorial."]
+
+It is a work which artists may study again and again with growing
+admiration and increasing profit, yet it is one that has found its way
+straight to the popular heart. It is not always--it is not often--that
+the artists and the public are thus at one. When they are it is safe to
+assume that the work they equally admire is truly great--that it belongs
+to the highest order of noble works of art.
+
+The Sherman group (Pl. 32), though it has been more criticised than the
+"Shaw Memorial," seems to me, if possible, an even finer work. The main
+objection to it has been that it is not sufficiently "monumental," and,
+indeed, it has not the massiveness nor the repose of such a work as
+Donatello's "Gattamelata," the greatest of all equestrian statues. It
+could not well have these qualities in the same degree, its motive being
+what it is, but they are, perhaps, not ill exchanged for the character
+and the nationalism so marked in horse and rider and for the
+irresistible onward rush of movement never more adequately expressed. In
+all other respects the group seems to me almost beyond criticism. The
+composition--composition, now, in the round and to be considered from
+many points of view--builds up superbly; the flow of line in wing and
+limb and drapery is perfect; the purely sculptural problems of
+anatomical rendering, equine and human, are thoroughly resolved; the
+modelling, as such, is almost as fine as the design.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De. W.C. Ward.
+Plate 31.--Saint-Gaudens. "Shaw Memorial."]
+
+To the boyish Saint-Gaudens Sherman had seemed the typical American
+hero. To the matured artist he had sat for an admirable bust. The
+sculptor had thus an unusual knowledge of his subject, a perfect
+sympathy with his theme; and he has produced a work of epic sweep and
+significance. Tall and erect, the general sits his horse, his military
+cloak bellying out behind him, his trousers strapped down over his
+shoes, his hat in his right hand, dropping at arm's length behind his
+knee, his bare head like that of an old eagle, looking straight forward.
+The horse is as long and thin as his rider, with a tremendous stride;
+and his big head, closely reined in, twitches viciously at the bridle.
+Before the horse and rider, upon the ground, yet as if new-lighted there
+from an aerial existence, half walks, half flies, a splendid winged
+figure, one arm outstretched, the other brandishing the palm--Victory
+leading them on. She has a certain fierce wildness of aspect, but her
+rapt gaze and half-open mouth indicate the seer of visions--peace is
+ahead, and an end of war. On the bosom of her gown is broidered the
+eagle of the United States, for she is an American Victory, as this is
+an American man on an American horse; and the broken pine bough beneath
+the horse's feet localizes the victorious march--it is the march through
+Georgia to the sea.
+
+Long ago I expressed my conviction that the "Sherman Monument" is third
+in rank of the great equestrian statues of the world. To-day I am not
+sure that that conviction remains unaltered. Donatello's "Gattamelata"
+is unapproached and unapproachable in its quiet dignity; Verrocchio's
+"Colleone" is unsurpassed in picturesque attractiveness. Both are
+consecrated by the admiration of centuries. To-day I am not sure that
+this work of an American sculptor is not, in its own way, equal to
+either of them.
+
+There are those who are troubled by the introduction of the symbolical
+figures in such works as the "Shaw Memorial" and the Sherman statue;
+and, indeed, it was a bold enterprise to place them where they are,
+mingling thus in the same work the real and the ideal, the actual and
+the allegorical. But the boldness seems to me abundantly justified by
+success. In either case the entire work is pitched to the key of these
+figures; the treatment of the whole is so elevated by style and so
+infused with imagination that there is no shock of unlikeness or
+difficulty of transition. And these figures are not merely necessary to
+the composition, an essential part of its beauty--they are even more
+essential to the expression of the artist's thought. Without that
+hovering Angel of Death, the negro troops upon the "Shaw Memorial" might
+be going anywhere, to battle or to review. We should have a passing
+regiment, nothing more. Without the striding Victory before him, the
+impetuous movement of Sherman's horse would have no especial
+significance. And these figures are no mere conventional allegories;
+they are true creations. To their creator the unseen was as real as the
+seen--nay, it was more so. That Shaw was riding to his death at the
+command of duty was, the only thing that made Shaw memorable. That
+Sherman was marching to a victory the fruits of which should be peace
+was the essential thing about Sherman. Death and Duty--Victory and
+Peace--in each case the compound ideal found its expression in a figure
+entirely original and astonishingly living: a _person_ as truly as Shaw
+or Sherman themselves. He could not have left them out. It were
+better to give up the work entirely than to do it otherwise than as he
+saw it.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
+Plate 32.--Saint-Gaudens. "Sherman."]
+
+I have described and discussed but a few of the many works of this great
+artist, choosing those which seem to me the most significant and the
+most important, and in doing so I have keenly felt the inadequacy of
+words to express the qualities of an art which exists by forms.
+Fortunately, the works themselves are, for the most part, readily
+accessible. In the originals, in casts, or in photographs, they may be
+studied by every one. Nothing is more difficult than to estimate justly
+the greatness of an object that is too near to us--it is only as it
+recedes into the distance that the mountain visibly overtops its
+neighboring hills. It is difficult to understand that this man so lately
+familiar to us, moving among us as one of ourselves, is of the company
+of the immortals. Yet I believe, as we make this study of his works, as
+we yield ourselves to the graciousness of his charm or are exalted by
+the sweep of his imagination, we shall come to feel an assured
+conviction that Augustus Saint-Gaudens was not merely the most
+accomplished artist of America, not merely one of the foremost sculptors
+of his time--we shall feel that he is one of those great, creative
+minds, transcending time and place, not of America or of to-day, but of
+the world and forever.
+
+Where, among such minds, he will take his rank we need not ask. It is
+enough that he is among them. Such an artist is assuredly a benefactor
+of his country, and it is eminently fitting that his gift to us should
+be acknowledged by such tribute as we can pay him. By his works in other
+lands and by his world-wide fame he sheds a glory upon the name of
+America, helping to convince the world that here also are those who
+occupy themselves with the things of the spirit, that here also are
+other capabilities than those of industrial energy and material success.
+In his many minor works he has endowed us with an inexhaustible heritage
+of beauty--beauty which is "about the best thing God invents." He is the
+educator of our taste and of more than our taste--of our sentiment and
+our emotions. In his great monuments he has not only given us fitting
+presentments of our national heroes; he has expressed, and in expressing
+elevated, our loftiest ideals; he has expressed, and in expressing
+deepened, our profoundest feelings. He has become the voice of all that
+is best in the American people, and his works are incentives to
+patriotism and lessons in devotion to duty.
+
+But the great and true artist is more than a benefactor of his country,
+he is a benefactor of the human race. The body of Saint-Gaudens is
+ashes, but his mind, his spirit, his character have taken on enduring
+forms and are become a part of the inheritance of mankind. And if, in
+the lapse of ages, his very name should be forgotten--as are the names
+of many great artists who have gone before him--yet his work will
+remain; and while any fragment of it is decipherable the world will be
+the richer in that he lived.
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: In the Table of Illustrations and in the caption for
+plate 17, Bolensa was corrected to Bolsena.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Artist and Public, by Kenyon Cox
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