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authornfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>2025-03-07 14:22:11 -0800
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43792 ***
+
+THE HISTORY OF MODERN PAINTING
+
+
+[Illustration: ANTON GRAFF PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST]
+
+
+ THE HISTORY OF
+ MODERN PAINTING
+
+
+ BY RICHARD MUTHER
+ PROFESSOR OF ART HISTORY
+ AT THE UNIVERSITY
+ OF BRESLAU
+
+
+ IN FOUR
+ VOLUMES
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+ VOLUME
+ ONE
+
+
+
+
+ REVISED EDITION
+ CONTINUED BY THE AUTHOR
+ TO THE END OF THE XIX CENTURY
+
+ LONDON: PUBLISHED BY J. M. DENT & CO.
+ NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. MCMVII
+
+
+ _Printed by_
+ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED
+ _Edinburgh_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ PAGE
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+ Old and new histories of art.--Seeming "restlessness" of the
+ nineteenth century.--To recognise "style" in modern art, and to
+ prove the logic of its evolution, the principles of judgment in the
+ old art-histories are also to be employed for the new.--The
+ question is, what new element the age brought into the history of
+ art, not what it borrowed eclectically from earlier ages 1
+
+BOOK I
+
+ THE LEGACY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ COMMENCEMENT OF MODERN ART IN ENGLAND
+
+ The commencement of modern art in England.--Two divisions of modern
+ art since the sixteenth century.--Classic and naturalistic
+ schools.--English succeed the Dutch in the seventeenth
+ century.--William Hogarth: his purpose and his inartistic
+ methods.--Sir Joshua Reynolds.--Thomas Gainsborough.--Comparison
+ between them.--Reynolds, an historical painter; Gainsborough, a
+ painter of landscape.--Pictures of Richard Wilson show the end of
+ classical landscape.--Those of Gainsborough, the beginning of
+ "paysage intime" 9
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ THE HISTORICAL POSITION OF ART ON THE CONTINENT
+
+ English influence upon the art of the Continent from the middle of
+ the eighteenth century.--Sturm-und-Drang period in
+ literature.--Rousseau.--Goethe's "Werther."--Schiller's
+ "Robbers."--Spain: Francis Goya, his pictures and
+ etchings.--France: Antoine Watteau frees himself from "baroque"
+ influences, and directs the tendency of French art towards the Low
+ Countries.--Pastel: Maurice Latour, Rosalba Carriera,
+ Liotard.--Society painters: Lancrat, Pater.--The decorative
+ painters: François Lemoine, François Boucher, Fragonard.--"Society"
+ turns virtuous.--Jean Greuze.--Middle-class society and its
+ depicter, Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin.--Germany: Lessing frees the
+ drama from the classical yoke of Boileau, and, following the
+ English, produces in "Minna" the first domestic tragedy.--Daniel
+ Chodowiecki as the portrayer of the German middle class.--Tischbein
+ goes back to the national past.--Posing disappears in portrait
+ painting.--Antoine Pesne.--Anton Graff.--Christian Lebrecht
+ Vogel.--Johann Edlinger.--The revival of landscape.--Rousseau's
+ influence.--English garden-style succeeds the French
+ style.--Disappearance of "nature choisie" in painting.--Hubert
+ Robert.--Joseph Vernet.--Salomon Gessner.--Ludwig Hess.--Philip
+ Hackert.--Johann Alexander Thiele.--Antonio Canale.--Bernardo
+ Canaletto.--Francesco Guardi.--Don Petro Rodriguez de Miranda.--Don
+ Mariano Ramon Sanchez.--The animal painters: François Casanova,
+ Jean Louis de Marne, Jean Baptiste Oudry, Johann Elias
+ Riedinger.--An event in the history of art: in place of the
+ prevailing Cinquecento and the "sublime style of painting" degraded
+ at the close of the seventeenth century, a simple and sincere art
+ succeeds throughout the whole of Europe.--Return to what Dürer and
+ the Little Masters of the sixteenth century and the Dutch of the
+ seventeenth century originated 41
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ THE CLASSICAL REACTION IN GERMANY
+
+ The influence of the antique at the end of the eighteenth century
+ shows no advance, but an unnatural retrograde movement, and notes
+ in Germany the beginning of the same decadence which had happened
+ in Italy with the Bolognese, in France with Poussin, and in Holland
+ with Gérard de Lairesse.--The teachings of Winckelmann, Anton
+ Rafael Mengs, Angelica Kauffmann.--The younger generation carries
+ out the classical programme in the value it sets upon technical
+ traditions.--Asmus Jacob Carstens.--Buonaventura Genelli 80
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+ THE CLASSICAL REACTION IN FRANCE
+
+ In France also the classical tendency in art was no new thing, but
+ a revival of the antique which was restored to life by the
+ foundation of the French Academy in Rome in 1663.--Influence of
+ archæological studies.--Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun.--The Revolution
+ heightens the enthusiasm for the antique, and once more gives
+ Classicism an appearance of brilliant animation.--Jacques Louis
+ David.--His portraits and his pictures in relation to contemporary
+ history.--David as an archæologist.--Jean Baptiste
+ Regnault.--François André Vincent.--Guérin 98
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+ THE ESCAPE INTO THE PAST
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ THE NAZARENES
+
+ Influence of literature.--Wackenroder.--Tieck.--The
+ Schlegels.--Instead of the antique, the Italian Quattrocento
+ appears as the model for the schools.--Frederick Overbeck.--Philip
+ Veit.--Joseph Führich.--Edward Steinle--Julius Schnorr von
+ Carolsfeld.--Their pictures and their drawings 117
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ THE ART OF MUNICH UNDER KING LUDWIG I
+
+ Peter Cornelius.--Wilhelm Kaulbach.--Their importance and their
+ limitations 141
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ THE DÜSSELDORFERS
+
+ On the Rhine, a school of painting instead of a school of
+ drawing.--Wilhelm Schadow, Carl Friedrich Lessing, Theodor
+ Hildebrandt, Carl Sohn, Heinrich Mücke, Christian Koehler, H.
+ Plüddemann, Eduard Bendemann, Theodor Mintrop, Friedrich Ittenbach,
+ Ernest Deger.--Why their pictures, despite technical merits, have
+ become antiquated 157
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+ THE LEGACY OF GERMAN ROMANTICISM
+
+ Alfred Rethel and Moritz Schwind oppose the Roman with the German
+ tradition.--Their pictures and drawings 167
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ THE FORERUNNERS OF ROMANTICISM IN FRANCE
+
+ Last years of the David school wearisome and without character,
+ except in portrait painting.--François Gérard, the "King of
+ Painters and Painter of Kings"; his portraits of the Empire and
+ Restoration periods.--Commencement of the revolt: Pierre Paul
+ Prudhon; his pictures and the story of his life; Constance
+ Mayer.--Revival of colouring.--Antoine Jean Gros and his pictures
+ of contemporary life; discrepancy between his teaching and his
+ practice 189
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+ THE GENERATION OF 1830
+
+ The revolt of the Romanticists against Classicism in literature and
+ art.--Théodore Géricault and his early works.--"The Raft of the
+ Medusa."--Eugène Delacroix: protest against the conventional, and
+ renewed importance of colour.--Delacroix's pictures; influence of
+ the East upon him.--His life and struggles.--The Classical
+ reaction.--J. A. D. Ingres and the opposition to Romanticism.--His
+ classical pictures.--Excellence of his portraits and drawings 219
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+ JUSTE-MILIEU
+
+ Moderation the watchword of Louis Philippe's reign, in politics,
+ literature, and art.--Jean Gigoux, a follower of Delacroix and an
+ inexorable realist.--Eugène Isabey.--Middle position occupied by
+ Ary Scheffer between the Classical and the Romantic schools;
+ decline of his popularity.--Hippolyte Flandrin, as a religious
+ painter a French counterpart to the Nazarenes.--Paul Chenavard,
+ compared to Cornelius.--Théodore Chassériau; his short and
+ brilliant career.--Léon Benouville.--Léon Cogniet and his
+ pictures.--Transition from the Romantic school to the historical
+ painters.--The great writers of history: renewed activity in this
+ field: historical tragedies and romances.--Art takes a similar
+ course: popularity and facility of historical painting.--Eugène
+ Devéria; Camille Roqueplan.--Nicolaus Robert Fleury; Louis
+ Boulanger.--Paul Delaroche; his popularity and its causes; his
+ defects as a painter.--Delaroche's pictures.--Thomas Couture 255
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ THE POST-ROMANTIC GENERATION
+
+ France under the Second Empire; the society of the period not
+ represented in French art.--Continuation of the old traditions
+ without essential change.--Alexandre Cabanel.--William
+ Bouguereau.--Jules Lefébure.--Henner.--Paul Baudry: his pictures;
+ decoration of the Grand Opera House.--Élie Delaunay: his pictures,
+ decorative painting, and portraits.--The "Genre féroce";
+ predilection for the horrible in art.--Numerous painters of this
+ school.--Laurens.--Rochegrosse and his pictures.--Henri Regnault 278
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+ THE HISTORICAL SCHOOL OF PAINTING IN BELGIUM
+
+ Belgium to 1830.--David and his school.--Navez, Matthias van
+ Bree.--Gustav Wappers, Nicaise de Keyzer, Henri Decaisne, Gallait,
+ Bièfve.--Ernest Slingeneyer, Guffens and Swerts.--The Exhibition of
+ Belgian pictures in Germany 301
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+ THE REVOLUTION OF THE GERMAN COLOURISTS
+
+ Anselm Feuerbach, Victor Müller.--The Berlin school: Rudolf
+ Henneberg, Gustav Richter, Knille, Schrader, and others.--The
+ Munich school: Piloty, Hans Makart, Gabriel Max.--The historical
+ painters and the end of the illustrative painting of history 317
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+ THE VICTORY OVER PSEUDO-IDEALISM
+
+ The Historical Picture of Manners as opposed to Historical
+ Painting, an advance in the direction of intimacy of feeling.--The
+ Antique Picture of Manners: Charles Gleyre, Louis Hamon, Gérôme,
+ Gustave Boulanger.--The Picture of Costume from the sixteenth and
+ seventeenth centuries.--France: Charles Comte, Alexander Hesse,
+ Camille Roqueplan.--Belgium: Alexander Markelbach, Florent
+ Willems.--Germany: L. v. Hagn, Gustav Spangenberg, Carl
+ Becker.--The importance of Hendrik Leys, Ernest Meissonier, and
+ Adolf Menzel as mediators between the past and ordinary life,
+ between the heroic art of the first half of the nineteenth century
+ and the intimate art of the second half 363
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY 391
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+PLATES IN COLOUR
+
+
+ PAGE
+ ANTON GRAFF: Portrait of Himself _Frontispiece_
+ REYNOLDS: Mrs. Siddons 20
+ GAINSBOROUGH: The Sisters 38
+ GREUZE: The Milkmaid 58
+ CHARDIN: The House of Cards 64
+ WATTEAU: Fête Champêtre 74
+ ANGELICA KAUFFMANN: Portrait of a Lady as a Vestal 86
+ ELIZABETH VIGÉE-LEBRUN: Portrait of the Painter with her
+ Daughter 100
+ CORNELIUS: "Let there be Light" 144
+ SCHWIND: The Wedding Journey 182
+ REGNAULT: General Prim 300
+ MEISSONIER: A Cavalier 378
+
+
+IN BLACK AND WHITE
+
+ BAUDRY, PAUL.
+ Portrait of Baudry 286
+ Charlotte Corday 287
+ Truth 288
+ The Pearl and the Wave 289
+ Cybele 290
+ Leda 291
+ Edmond About 292
+
+ BENDEMANN, EDUARD.
+ The Lament of the Jews 165
+
+ BIÈFVE, EDOUARD.
+ Portrait of Bièfve 314
+ The League of the Nobles of the Netherlands 315
+
+ BOUGUEREAU, WILLIAM ADOLPHE.
+ Brotherly Love 281
+
+ CABANEL, ALEXANDRE.
+ Portrait of Cabanel 279
+ The Shulamite 280
+
+ CARSTENS, ASMUS JACOB.
+ Portrait of Himself 88
+ Scylla and Charybdis 90
+ Argo Leaving the Triton's Mere 91
+ Children of the Night 92
+ Priam and Achilles 93
+
+ CHARDIN, JEAN SIMÉON.
+ Portrait of Himself 63
+ Grace before Meat 65
+
+ CHASSÉRIAU, THÉODORE.
+ Apollo and Daphne 259
+
+ CHODOWIECKI, DANIEL.
+ Portrait of Chodowiecki 66
+ The Family Picture 67
+ All Sorts and Conditions of Women 68, 69
+ The Morning Compliment 70
+ The Artist's Nursery 71
+
+ COGNIET, LÉON.
+ Tintoretto Painting his Dead Daughter 261
+ The Massacre of the Innocents 263
+
+ CORNELIUS, PETER.
+ Portrait of Cornelius 143
+ From the Frescoes in the Friedhofshalle, Berlin 145
+ Marguerite in Prison 146
+ The Apocalyptic Host 147
+ The Fall of Troy 149
+
+ COUTURE, THOMAS.
+ Portrait of Couture 271
+ The Love of Gold 273
+ The Romans of the Decadence 275
+ The Troubadour 277
+
+ DAVID, JACQUES LOUIS.
+ Portrait of David 102
+ Madame Récamier 103
+ The Oath of the Horatii 105
+ The Rape of the Sabines 107
+ Helen and Paris 109
+ Belisarius asking Alms 111
+ The Death of Marat 113
+
+ DELACROIX, EUGÈNE.
+ Portrait of Delacroix 226
+ Dante's Bark 227
+ Hamlet and the Grave-diggers 230
+ Tasso in the Mad-house 231
+ Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople 233
+ Jesus on Lake Gennesaret 235
+ Horses Fighting in a Stable 237
+ Medea 238
+ The Expulsion of Heliodorus 239
+
+ DELAROCHE, PAUL.
+ Portrait of Delaroche 264
+ The Assassination of the Duke of Guise 265
+ The Princes in the Tower 267
+ Strafford on his Way to Execution 269
+
+ DELAUNAY, ÉLIE.
+ Diana 293
+ Boys Singing 294
+ Madame Toulmouche 295
+
+ FEUERBACH, ANSELM.
+ Portrait of Himself 318
+ Hafiz at the Well 319
+ Pieta 321
+ Iphigenia 322
+ Portrait of a Roman Lady 323
+ Mother's Joy 325
+ Medea 327
+ Dante Walking with High--born Ladies of Ravenna 329
+
+ FÜHRICH, JOSEPH.
+ Portrait of Führich 126
+ From the "Legend of St. Gwendolin" 127
+ Ruth and Boaz 128
+ The Departure of the Prodigal Son 129
+ Jacob and Rachel 130
+
+ GAINSBOROUGH, THOMAS.
+ Portrait of Gainsborough 34
+ Mrs. Siddons 35
+ Wood Scene, Village of Cornard, Suffolk 36
+ The Market Cart 37
+ The Duchess of Devonshire 38
+ The Watering Place 39
+
+ GALLAIT, LOUIS.
+ Portrait of Gallait 312
+ Egmont's Last Moments 313
+
+ GENELLI, BONAVENTURA.
+ The Embassy to Achilles 94
+ Thetis lamenting the Fate of Hector 95
+ Odysseus and the Sirens 96
+ Portrait of Genelli 97
+
+ GÉRARD, FRANÇOIS.
+ Portrait of Gérard 190
+ Mlle. Brongniart 191
+ Madame Visconti 192
+ Cupid and Psyche 193
+ Madame Récamier 194
+
+ GÉRICAULT, THÉODORE.
+ Portrait of Géricault 221
+ The Wounded Cuirassier 222
+ Chasseur 223
+ The Raft of the Medusa 224
+ The Start 225
+
+ GÉRÔME, LÉON.
+ The Cock-fight 367
+
+ GESSNER, SALOMON.
+ Landscape 75
+ Landscape 76
+
+ GOYA, FRANCISCO.
+ Portrait of Himself 42
+ The Majas on the Balcony 43
+ The Maja Clothed 44
+ The Maja Nude 45
+ De Que Mal Morira (from "Los Capriccios") 46
+ Soplones (from "Los Capriccios") 47
+ Se Repulen (from "Los Capriccios") 48
+ Que Pico de Oro (from "Los Capriccios") 49
+ Volaverunt (from "Los Capriccios") 50
+ Quien lo Creyera (from "Los Capriccios") 51
+ Linda Maestra (from "Los Capriccios") 52
+ Devota Profesion (from "Los Capriccios") 53
+ Otres Leyes por el Pueblo 54
+
+ GREUZE, JEAN BAPTISTE.
+ Portrait of Greuze 58
+ Head of a Girl 59
+ Girl carrying a Lamb 60
+ Girl looking up 61
+ Girl with an Apple 62
+
+ GROS, ANTOINE JEAN (BARON).
+ Saul 215
+ Portrait of Gros 216
+ The Battle of Eylau 217
+
+ GUARDI, FRANCESCO.
+ Venice 77
+
+ HAMON, LOUIS.
+ My Sister's not at Home 365
+
+ HENNEBERG, RUDOLF.
+ The Race for Fortune 330
+
+ HENNER, JEAN JACQUES.
+ Susanna and the Elders 284
+ The Sleeper 285
+
+ HILDEBRANDT, THEODOR.
+ The Sons of Edward 161
+
+ HOGARTH, WILLIAM.
+ Portrait of Himself 12
+ The Harlot's Progress (Plate VI.) 13
+ The Rake's Progress (Plate II.) 14
+ The Rake's Progress (Plate VII.) 15
+ The Rake's Progress (Plate VIII.) 16
+ Marriage à la Mode (Plate V.) 17
+ The Enraged Musician 18
+ Gin Lane 19
+
+ INGRES, JEAN AUGUSTE DOMINIQUE.
+ Portrait of Ingres 242
+ The Maid of Orleans at Rheims 243
+ Portrait of Himself as a Youth 244
+ Bertin the Elder 245
+ Study for the Odalisque in the Louvre 247
+ The Source 248
+ Oedipus and the Sphinx 249
+ Paganini 251
+ Mlle. de Montgolfier 252
+ The Forestier Family 253
+
+ KAUFFMANN, ANGELICA.
+ Portrait of Herself 86
+
+ KAULBACH, WILHELM.
+ Portrait of Kaulbach 151
+ The Deluge 152
+ Prince Arthur and Hubert 153
+ Marguerite 156
+
+ DE KEYZER.
+ Portrait of de Keyzer 308
+ The Battle of Woeringen 309
+
+ LAURENS, JEAN PAUL.
+ The Interdict 298
+
+ LEFÉBURE, JULES.
+ Truth 283
+
+ LESSING, CARL FRIEDRICH.
+ The Sorrowing Royal Pair 164
+ The Hussite Sermon 335
+
+ LEYS, HENDRIK.
+ Portrait of Leys 369
+ A Family Festival 370
+ The Armourer 371
+ Mother and Child 372
+
+ LUMINAIS, EVARISTE.
+ Les Énervés de Jumièges 297
+
+ MAKART, HANS.
+ Portrait of Makart 341
+ The Espousals of Catterina Cornaro 343
+ The Feast of Bacchus 345
+
+ MAX, GABRIEL.
+ Portrait of Max 347
+ A Nun in the Cloister Garden 349
+ The Lion's Bride 351
+ Light 353
+ The Spirit's Greeting 355
+ Adagio 356
+ A Winter's Tale 357
+ Madonna 359
+
+ MAYER, CONSTANCE.
+ Portrait of Mayer 201
+ The Dream of Happiness 202
+ The Tomb of Prudhon and Constance Mayer at
+ Père-Lachaise 203
+
+ MEISSONIER, ERNEST.
+ The Man at the Window 373
+ A Man reading 374
+ Reading the Manuscript 375
+ Polcinello 376
+ A Reading at Diderot's 377
+ A Halt 378
+
+ MENGS, ANTON RAFAEL.
+ Portrait of Himself 84
+ Mount Parnassus 85
+
+ MENZEL, ADOLF.
+ Portrait of Menzel, 1837 379
+ Frederick the Great and his Tutor 380
+ The Round Table at Sans-Souci 381
+ Frederick the Great on a Journey 383
+ Illustration to Kugler's History of Frederick the
+ Great 384
+ Portrait of Frederick the Great 385
+ Reifspiel 387
+ When will Genius Awake? 388
+
+ OVERBECK, FREDERICK.
+ Portrait of Overbeck 118
+ The Annunciation 119
+ The Naming of St. John 120
+ Christ Healing the Sick 121
+ Christ's Entry into Jerusalem 122
+ The Resurrection 123
+ The Seven Lean Years 124
+ Portrait of Himself and Cornelius 140
+
+ PESNE, ANTOINE.
+ Portrait of Himself and Daughters 72
+
+ PILOTY, CARL.
+ Portrait of Piloty 336
+ Girdonists on the Road to the Guillotine 337
+ Under the Arena 339
+
+ PRUDHON, PIERRE PAUL.
+ Portrait of Himself 195
+ Joseph and Potiphar's Wife 196
+ Study directs the Flight of Genius 197
+ Le Coup de Patte du Chat 198
+ Cupid and Psyche 199
+ The Unfortunate Family 204
+ The Rape of Psyche 205
+ Le Midi 206
+ La Nuit 207
+ L'enjouir 208
+ Marguerite 209
+ Les Petits Dévideurs 210
+ The Vintage 211
+ The Virgin 212
+ Christ Crucified 213
+ Madame Copia 214
+
+ REGNAULT, HENRI.
+ Salome 299
+ The Moorish Headsman 300
+
+ RETHEL, ALFRED.
+ The Emperor Otto at the Tomb of Charlemagne 169
+ The Destruction of the Pagan Idols 170
+ Hannibal's Passage over the Alps 171
+ Death at the Masked Ball 172
+ Death the Friend of Man 173
+
+ REYNOLDS, SIR JOSHUA.
+ Portrait of Himself 20
+ Dr. Johnson 21
+ Garrick as Abel Drugger 22
+ Heads of Angels 23
+ Samuel Richardson 24
+ Miss Reynolds 25
+ Edmund Burke 26
+ Mrs. Abington 27
+ Edmund Malone 28
+ Oliver Goldsmith 29
+ Lady Cockburn and her Daughters 30
+ Bishop Percy 31
+ The Girl with the Mousetrap 32
+ Dr. Burney 33
+
+ RICHTER, GUSTAV.
+ Portrait of Himself 331
+ A Gipsy 332
+
+ SCHEFFER, ARY.
+ Portrait of Scheffer 257
+ Marguerite at the Well 258
+
+ SCHNORR VON CAROLSFIELD, JULIUS.
+ Portrait of Schnorr 125
+ Adam and Eve after the Fall 125
+
+ SCHRADER, JULIUS.
+ Cromwell at Whitehall 333
+
+ SCHWIND, MORITZ.
+ Portrait of Schwind 175
+ From the Wartburg Frescoes 176
+ From the Wartburg Frescoes 177
+ Wieland the Smith 178
+ From the Story of the Seven Ravens 179
+ A Hermit leading Horses to a Pool 181
+ Nymphs and Stag 184
+ Rübezahl 185
+ The Fairies' Song 187
+
+ SLINGNEYER, ERNEST.
+ The Avenger 311
+
+ SOHN, CARL.
+ The two Leonoras 163
+ The Rape of Hylas 166
+
+ STEINBRUCK, EDUARD.
+ Elves 162
+
+ STEINLE, EDUARD.
+ The Raising of Jarius' Daughter 131
+ "I have trodden the Winepress alone" 132
+ Portrait of Steinle 133
+ Book Illustration 134
+ The Violin Player 135
+
+ SYLVESTRE, JOSEPH NOËL.
+ Locusta Testing in Nero's Presence the
+ Poison prepared for Britannicus 296
+
+ VEIT, PHILIP.
+ Portrait of Veit 136
+ The Arts introduced into Germany by Christianity 137
+ The two Marys at the Sepulchre 139
+
+ WAPPERS, GUSTAV.
+ Portrait of Wappers 303
+ The Sacrifice of Burgomaster van der Werff
+ at the Siege of Leyden 305
+ The Death of Columbus 307
+
+ WATTEAU, ANTOINE.
+ Portrait of Watteau 56
+ La Partie Carrée 57
+ The Music Party 73
+ The Return from the Chase 74
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+The historian who wishes to relate the history of painting in the
+nineteenth century is confronted with quite other demands than await him
+who undertakes the art of an earlier period. The greatest difficulty
+with which the latter has to cope is the deficiency of sources. He
+manifestly gropes in the dark with regard to the works of the masters as
+well as to the circumstances of their lives. After he has searched
+archives and libraries in order to collect his biographical material,
+the real critical problem awaits him. Even amongst the admittedly
+authentic works, those which are undated confront those whose chronology
+is certain. To these must be added those nameless ones, as to whose
+history there is a doubt; to these again, those whose origin is to be
+ascertained. It needs a quick eye to separate the schools and groups,
+and finally to recognise the notes which are peculiar to the master.
+
+With none of these difficulties is the historian of modern art
+confronted. The painters of the nineteenth century have very seldom
+forgotten to attach a name and date to their works, and the
+circumstances of their lives are related with an accuracy that was,
+earlier, rarely the lot of the foremost men in history. It is all the
+more difficult, face to face with such a chaos of pictures, to discover
+the spiritual bond which connects them all, to construct a building out
+of the immense supply of accumulated bricks, the piled-up mass of rough
+material. The evolution of modern painting is more complicated and
+varied than that of the art of an earlier period, just as modern life
+itself is more complicated and varied than that of any previous age.
+
+How quietly, slowly, and surely was the evolution of that older period
+carried out. One simple proportion was maintained between art and the
+universal life of culture. Customs, views of life and art, were so
+intimately bound up together, that the knowledge of the age in general
+naturally comprises that of art. Standing before some old altar-piece of
+the school of Cologne, it is as though one were watching in some broad
+high dome; everything is quiet all round, and the august figures in the
+picture lead their calm, grave existence in illustrious grandeur. The
+message of Christianity, "My kingdom is not of this world," meets in
+art, too, with a clear expression. Humility and devotion are joined
+together, making for a refinement in the feeling of life that is
+unsurpassed in its hieratic tenderness and gracious innocence. In the
+fifteenth century, the age of discoveries, a new spirit entered the
+world. Commerce and navigation discovered new worlds, painting
+discovered life. The human spirit grew freer and more joyous; it was no
+longer satisfied with yearning for the other world alone, it felt itself
+at home also in this world, in the glory of the earth. Pictures, too,
+were inspired with some of those joyous perceptions with which the
+citizens of the fifteenth century issued from their narrow walls out
+under God's free heaven, something of that Easter Day mood in _Faust_.
+People still went on painting Madonnas and saints, subjects of a
+religion which had spread from the far East over the whole West; but
+with the severe simplicity of the heavenly, there was universal
+awakening of all the charm and roguery and energy of the earthly. It is
+the first virginal contact of the spirit with nature. On men's works
+there rests the first morning-dew of spiritual life; they remind one of
+woodlands in spring: Botticelli, Van Eyck, Schongauer.
+
+After the Italians had become vigorous realists in the fifteenth
+century, they rose in the sixteenth, the century of inspired humanism,
+to majesty. The time of hard grappling with the overwhelming fulness of
+actuality is over. Those great masterpieces ensue in which the
+unlaboured effort shines forth in the most felicitous achievement:
+Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian. At the same time the German manner is
+most directly opposed to the Romance. They disdain to ingratiate
+themselves into men's minds by outward grace of form, but win the heart
+by their deep religious feeling and intimate sensibility. They are
+German to the core, racial even to the stiffness of the German
+character, but full of feeling and truth to life. Dürer in his woodcuts
+and copper engravings is "_inwendig voller figur_"; in them he offers
+the "concentrated, homely treasure of his heart." Holbein is great by
+the incomparably real art of his portraits. The century of that joyous
+revival of Paganism, the Olympian vivacity of the Renaissance, is
+followed by the age to which the Jesuits gave life and character. For
+those stately churches in the Jesuit style, with their _fortissimo_
+effect, their huge, sculptured ornaments and their gleaming, gold
+decorations, the classic quietness of the old masters ceases to be
+appropriate. It is a question of a more stirring and impressive
+treatment of sacred subjects, wherein the whole passion of renewed
+Catholicism should be brought to expression. Spain, the country of the
+Inquisition, set the classic stamp on this enhanced religious feeling.
+Here all that monarchical and sacerdotal impulse which founded and
+aggrandised the Spanish nation, founded too its true representative in
+painting. Painters endowed their church pictures with a passionate
+fervour and a flush of extravagant sensuousness of the national,
+Spanish, local colour, such as are found united in the art of no other
+age or country. Necessarily, moreover, such a feudal system as that of
+Spain, with its grandees and princes of the Church, involved also an art
+of portrait painting which ranks with the highest that has issued in
+this kind from any country whatever: Murillo, Velasquez. In Flanders,
+the second stronghold of the Jesuits, we have the titan Rubens. A
+joyously fleshly Fleming, he seizes nature by the throat and drags her
+there where he stands erect, as though he were lord of the world.
+Freedom had found its way into victorious and Protestant Holland. Here
+there flourished an art neither courtly nor fostered by the Church. It
+stood in the closest connection with the burgesses, showed clear signs
+of the struggle through which country and people had won independence.
+In the first place, painting celebrated as its worthiest subject the
+free burgher, the tighter in the heroic struggle for freedom. At no time
+was portrait-painting practised to such an extent, and the sitters not
+aristocratic courtiers, but proud burgesses of a free community; the men
+grave, strong, self-reliant; the women faithful, pure, and modest. The
+workmanship is correspondent: simple, solid, domestic; and soon there
+followed the glorification of that which they prized the more after
+their struggles had been accomplished: the quiet, comfortable delight of
+hearth and home.
+
+During the War of Independence the Dutch had learnt to love their
+fatherland, and they were the first, as artists, fully to grasp the
+poetry of landscape. Art now no longer shines only upon the eyes of Mary
+and the Hosts of Heaven: it settles upon arid country hills, streams
+upon the sea waves, is at home in peasants' houses and the dark woods,
+wanders through the streets and alleys, makes a temple of every market.
+The religious sentiments, however, which stirred Protestant Holland had
+to find appropriate expression; the living essence of biblical subjects
+was to be released from a narrow, ecclesiastical sphere, and approached
+anew with all the deep, German inwardness. These tendencies were all
+united in Rembrandt--perhaps of all masters, since the Christian era,
+the mightiest proclaimer of the great Pan; to him the cosmic powers of
+light and air signified the divinity that Michael Angelo had painted
+under a beautiful human form.
+
+Finally, in the eighteenth century, comes _rococo_, with its rustling
+_frou-frou_ and its delicate charm. The whole life of that noble
+society, which exchanged court costume for silken pastoral garments,
+formality and rank for charm and grace, was a lively play, an
+extravagant game. The king played with his crown, the priest with his
+religion, the philosopher with his wisdom, the poet with the art of
+rhyme. They did not hear as yet the hoarse threatening voice of the
+disinherited, "_Car tel est notre plaisir_." What this age possessed of
+beauty and charm, its peculiar grace and wanton vivacity, its reckless,
+inassailable frivolity, was proper also to its art. Light and gracious
+as the whole life of that harmless, merry generation, it glided through
+the age untroubled, led by Cupidons, and kissed by the wandering winds.
+It is only to-day that we understand once more the charming masters of
+that elegant century.
+
+The painters of every epoch looked at nature with their own eyes, and
+also with the eyes of their age and of their country. So the art of
+every period appears as "the mirror and abstract chronicle" of its age.
+With irresistible majesty, and conscious of its inspiration, it lays
+hold of the external world, and gives back to it its own picture
+infinitely exalted. It is the enlightened expression of the age, as
+upright, as fresh, as fanatic, or as unnatural as its generation.
+Therein lies the strength of the painters of _rococo_, that they painted
+the artificiality of the time with such unsurpassable naturalness. It is
+just these infinitely various manners of paying court to
+nature--unceasingly throughout the course of centuries, now violently,
+now softly and tenderly, at times, too, not without passing
+infidelity,--it is just these which determine the beauty and value, the
+mystery and essence of art, and are in the history of art all that tends
+to its variety and unsurpassable charm.
+
+The nineteenth century not only shows a new age, but probably begins a
+new section of universal history. It is probable that in contrast with
+this epoch of stirring movement, during which the readjustment of all
+political and social relations, the new discoveries in the instruments
+of commerce, trade, and industry have given an entirely new aspect to
+the world, the next thousand years will sum up all the previous
+centuries as the "old world." New men require a new art. One would be
+inclined to surmise from this that the art of the nineteenth century
+presented itself as something essentially personal, with a sharply
+distinctive style. Instead of this it offers at first view, in contrast
+with those old ages of uniform production, a condition like that of
+Babylon. The nineteenth century has no style--the phrase that has been
+so often quoted as to have become a commonplace. In architecture the
+forms of all the past ages live again. The day before yesterday we built
+Greek, yesterday Gothic; here _Baroque_, there Japanese: but amidst all
+these products of imitative styles there rise up stations and
+market-places which, with the robust elegance of their iron colonnades,
+herald the greatness of fresh conquests. In the province of painting
+there are similar extremes. In no other age have minds so diverse
+flourished side by side as Carstens and Goya, Cornelius and Corot,
+Ingres and Millet, Wiertz and Courbet, Rossetti and Manet. And the
+existing histories excite a belief that the nineteenth century is a
+chaos into which it is possible only for some later age to bring order.
+
+Perhaps, however, it is already quite possible, if one only resolves
+uncompromisingly to apply to the new age those principles which have
+been tested in the treatment of the _old_ histories of art, if one
+endeavours to study those artists who are in part still our
+contemporaries as objectively as though they were masters long dead.
+That is to say: one is wont, in a review of an older period in art, not
+to inquire what it had caught from an earlier age, but rather what it
+had introduced that was new. It was not because they imitated in their
+turn that the old masters became great; not because they looked
+backwards, but rather because they went forwards, that they made the
+history of art. We are not grateful, for instance, to the Dutchmen of
+the middle of the sixteenth century--Frans Floris and his
+contemporaries--that they forsook Dutch naturalism, and bootlessly
+exerted themselves in the way of Michael Angelo and Raphael. We can see
+no remarkable merit in the fact that the Bolognese at the beginning of
+the seventeenth century gathered their honey from the flowers of the
+Cinquecento. And we are even less inclined to see in the contemporaries
+of Adrian van der Werff, who endeavoured to refine the rugged, primeval
+Dutch art by the study of the Italians, more than clumsy imitators.
+
+Just as much will the interest of the historian of the art of the
+nineteenth century be bestowed in the first degree upon the works which
+have really created something independent and transcending all the
+earlier ages. He will not give especial prominence to those domains
+which had their flowering-time in other days than our own, but he will
+ask: Where is that distinctive element which appertains to the
+nineteenth century only? What are the new forms which it has found, the
+new sentiments to which it has given expression? Not those whose
+activity lay in clothing--however cleverly--the artistic necessities of
+the age in the store of already transmitted forms, but the pathfinders,
+who went forwards and created anew, require our attention. Even if,
+after the old masters, they can only be granted a place in the third or
+fourth class, they must nevertheless always take precedence of those
+others, because they exhibited themselves as they were, instead of
+making themselves large by standing on the shoulders of the dead. Many
+of those who were once valued highly, who, thriving on the inheritance
+of the past, accomplished what was apparently of importance, measured by
+this standard will arouse little interest, because their artistic
+speech, depending on a foundation of the established canonical works of
+old, is not their own but borrowed. In others, on the contrary, who,
+apart from the dominating tendency, had the courage rather to be
+insignificant, and yet remain themselves, observing with their own eyes
+nature which surrounded them, or naïvely abandoning themselves to the
+disposition of their artistic fantasy, in them will be seen the
+essential vehicles of the modern spirit. And then it will be apparent
+that the art of the nineteenth century as well as that of every earlier
+period had its peculiar garment, even if for official occasions it
+preferred to unpack from its wardrobe the state costumes of earlier
+ages. It is only because this distinction between the eclectic and the
+personal, the derived and the independent, has not yet been carried out
+with sufficient strictness, that it has hitherto, in my opinion, been
+found so difficult to discover the distinctive _style_ of modern art,
+and to make clear the logic and sequence of its evolution.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+THE LEGACY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+COMMENCEMENT OF MODERN ART IN ENGLAND
+
+
+If the question arises, why modern art has been compelled to find
+expression for itself in a form different from that of the art of the
+earlier centuries, we must first call attention to the change that has
+taken place in the fundamental conditions of society. Formerly, the
+chief supporters of art were the two leading powers of Church and King.
+The most noted works of Raphael and Michael Angelo, of Velasquez and
+Murillo, of Rubens and Van Dyck, were executed either for the churches
+or for the reigning princes of their country. The patron of modern art
+is the citizen. The old culture of the clerics and aristocrats has been
+superseded by that of the middle classes, and the beginnings of modern
+art must therefore be sought in the country in which this class first
+developed its distinctive character--in England.
+
+England, as early as the eighteenth century, was already a land of
+citizens. At a time when there was to be found on the Continent acute
+mockery of what was old and outworn, conjoined with the most
+enthusiastic and joyous faith in the future, the great and wealthy
+England had established herself in the van of the new age. Here Voltaire
+saw with astonishment for the first time, when he arrived in London as
+an exile at the age of thirty-two, the free, open life of a great
+people; here he learnt to know a country where there is "much difference
+of rank, but none that is not based on merit; where one could think
+freely without being restrained by slavish terror." Here was the idea of
+a modern free state already accomplished at a time when, upon the
+Continent, the thunderclouds of the impending storm hardly cast their
+first shadow. Here the notion of a united family life had first
+developed, upon the foundation of a civil order and security. Here,
+therefore, were first broken down those barriers around the territory of
+literature and art within which the spirit of the Renaissance had raised
+its wonderful flowers, and the road was begun along which the nineteenth
+century should advance.
+
+Simultaneously with the growth of the middle classes there arose the
+need for a domestic, practical literature. Books were required which
+people could read by their fireside, in the seclusion of the family
+circle, in country districts. For that, the stiff and antiquated poetry
+of courtiers and academicians, which had hitherto been poured out upon
+the world from France, was hardly suitable.
+
+To the cold Classicism represented by Pope, there succeeded in English
+literature--far earlier than was the case elsewhere--the delineation of
+what was immediately contemporary. At the same time that Mdlle. de
+Scudéry--when it was a question of describing the court of the Great
+King, the society of Louis XIV--felt herself bound to translate her
+theme into the antique and write a _Cyrus_, the English novel had taken
+its motives from actual life. Defoe's _Robinson Crusoe_ is the first
+book in which man and nature are depicted without the introduction of
+antique types or fairies; the first novel in which the details of real
+life are displayed, and what had been hitherto neglected is granted an
+exact delineation. At a time when people in other countries were
+occupied with representations of the antique, the English novelists had
+embarked on the intimacy of the family circle. After Richardson, who
+laboriously yet with animation described everyday life, followed
+Fielding, with his sharp observation, homely and humorous; then
+Goldsmith, with his serene outlook of untroubled equanimity, his
+unsurpassed miniatures; Smollett, with his crude and satirical character
+sketching; and the audacious and witty Laurence Sterne, whom Nietzsche
+has called the most "gallant" of all authors. At the same time tragedy,
+too, descended from the court and the nobility into the sphere of
+domestic life; showing that here too were significant fortunes and
+conflicts, which stories strike a truer human note than those of kings
+and heroes.
+
+Painting moved along the same road; and whilst in other countries, with
+the beginning of the century, the high, aristocratic art, which was the
+offspring of the Renaissance, gradually waned, the plebeian paintings of
+Hogarth laid the foundations of that art which prevailed in the
+_bourgeois_ nineteenth century. English art had this advantage in
+playing a pioneering part, that it had no old traditions to stand in its
+way; it had no great past. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
+England had been content to offer hospitality to Holbein and Van Dyck,
+and to collect the works of foreign masters in her galleries. Her art
+sprang into existence suddenly and unexpectedly at the beginning of the
+eighteenth century, and thence developed exclusively on native lines.
+Since the English could not lean either upon an old or a foreign model,
+nor enter into a round of subjects that had already been brought to
+perfection, they turned from the outset quite naturally into the road
+which was only to be trodden later by the other nations still in the
+bondage of tradition. They took up, to a certain extent, the thread
+which the Dutch, who appeared in the seventeenth century as the most
+modern people in art, had let drop: the progressive ideas of Holland had
+come over to England with the "glorious revolution," with William of
+Orange and Queen Anne; whilst in Holland itself the French invasion of
+1672 had caused a reaction to the courtly idea, against which the
+English took up an attitude of conscious and rigid protest. This
+opposition is clearly expressed by the English æsthetic writers.
+
+The most important name to be mentioned is that of Shaftesbury. Beneath
+the favour of the court in France, he says, art has suffered. We
+Englishmen live in an age in which freedom has arisen. Such a people
+does not require, in order that art may prosper, an ambitious king to
+breed, by means of his pensions, a race of flattering Court painters.
+Our civil liberty affords us a sufficient foundation, and our liberty
+leads us to _absolute verity_ in art.
+
+Thus did Shaftesbury enunciate his leading æsthetic doctrine; it was his
+constant message, and it was constantly repeated with great emphasis:
+"All beauty is truth." "The search after truth leads you to nature."
+"Truth is the mightiest thing in the world, since it exercises sovereign
+rights over the creations of the imagination."
+
+But what must art be in order to produce truth? "The strictest imitation
+of nature." By this word Shaftesbury does not understand what we
+understand by the word "nature"; not, in the first instance, so much the
+nature surrounding us, in its outward manifestations, but, above all, an
+intimate human reality. Let the painter represent the reality of human
+_inwardness_. Still life, the animal world, landscape,--all that,
+Shaftesbury explains, is most valuable. But another and a higher life
+exists in man than in the beasts and the woods, and there is the true
+object of art. In no case should the artist proceed from external
+vision; for then he will obtain fashionable attitudes, theatrical
+unreality, or, in the most favourable instance, a formal, decorative
+embellishment. Of what value is that in comparison with a single real
+presentation of character? How insignificant would every external form
+seem in contrast to each single feature of this intimate manner! Here is
+the second characteristic of English painting. It proceeds neither, like
+that of the sixteenth century, from formulas, nor, like the Dutch, from
+the picturesque, but, like to the English novel of character, from an
+intellectual impulse; it strives not after beauty of form and physical,
+sensuous grace, but, in the first place, after intellectual expression.
+
+And from this there follows immediately a third trait. If art is to make
+the inwardness of man its subject, the artist cannot remain an
+indifferent portrayer. He will make great distinctions, will bring into
+prominence what is meritorious or censurable in every character--he will
+become a moralist. Only so can he conform to that last and highest
+function which Shaftesbury assigns to the painter.
+
+The liberty which the English nation had fought for in the "glorious
+Revolution" brought forth, in the course of years, while Shaftesbury was
+writing, a fruitful crop of dissoluteness and licence. The mortification
+of the flesh of the Puritans was followed by so violent a recrudescence
+of sensuality that it was as though the whole menagerie of the passions
+had been unchained. London swarmed with criminals; drunkenness was an
+epidemic. The moral idea awoke amongst the cultivated classes. Might it
+not be possible, with the help of education, for that to be overcome?
+And so Shaftesbury's view of art comprised a third, and very dangerous,
+element; namely, that to fulfil the most serious mission of that culture
+which had ensued from the free and natural conditions in England--even
+in the realm of æsthetics--the painter, like the poet, must appear as
+the moral teacher of his age. Imagine an artist who fulfils these
+conditions and you have, as a result, _Hogarth_, with all his qualities
+and defects.
+
+[Illustration: HOGARTH. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.]
+
+What marks the greatness of Hogarth is his freedom from foreign and
+ancient influences. The eighteenth century came in as an academic age in
+art. Turning away from life, it spent itself in allegory and the
+imitation of typical figures that had been inherited from the
+Renaissance and petrified into academic work. Gods, in whom no one any
+longer believed, hovered, at least in paint, over a race which was
+without enthusiasm. Then came Hogarth, and his quick vision discovered
+the new way. He looked out upon the life surrounding him, with its
+manifold idiosyncrasies, and felt himself with pride to be the son of a
+new age, in which rigid, conventional forms were everywhere penetrated
+by the modern ideas of free thought, the rights of man, conformity to
+nature in morals and manners. This world which confronted him he
+depicted truly as it was, in all its beauty and its ugliness. With him
+was the origin of modern art. Before his paintings and engravings pale
+idealism disappeared. It was he who resolved and set out to bring into
+the world a new and independent observation of life. He was a painter
+who, with as little aid from foreign influences as from those of the
+past, went his own way and kept to it, and devoted his art, unblemished
+by the pallor of a borrowed ideal of beauty, soberly and exclusively to
+the realities of surrounding life.
+
+"It seemed to me unlikely," writes he, "that by copying old compositions
+I could acquire facility for those new designs which were my first and
+greatest ambitions." Works of old Italian masters, artistic
+contemplations, which went back to Raphael and the Caracci, were
+ignored and ridiculed by him. His rude strength of painting, directed to
+the living truth, was a protest against all that idealism which was the
+heritage of the Renaissance, and had grown quite bombastic under the
+hands of its imitators. Nature, he writes, is simple, plain, and true in
+all her works; and with this principle he has founded a strong English
+school on the solid foundation of truth to nature.
+
+[Illustration: HOGARTH. THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS, PLATE VI.]
+
+An Englishman by birth, character, and disposition, he depicted his
+fellow-countrymen; he made his sketches in the midst of the hubbub of
+the street. His world is London, the world-city, "old merry England,"
+which, in contrast with the Puritanism of to-day, still lived through
+its golden age of riot. In such a world--a world existing to this day,
+only more decently berouged--moved Hogarth; in the company of
+wine-bibbers, in gambling hells, in rooms of poets, in cellars of
+highwaymen, in the death-chambers of fallen maidens. "The Harlot's
+Progress," which he produced in a series of pictures, brought him his
+first success. He then published further series of similar careers over
+crooked courses--"The Rake's Progress," "Marriage à la Mode." He painted
+the rabble of London, their society and their morals; those who went in
+cotton and rags and those in satin and silk. In his writings he censures
+the old painters plainly because in their historical style they had
+quite passed over the middle classes. And he went with great knowledge
+to these new subjects. In the National Gallery, which possesses the
+originals of "Marriage à la Mode," one is astounded at the technical
+qualities of Hogarth's painting. Whoever has been misled by the engraved
+reproductions, and looks for bad, distorted drawing, may here learn to
+know him as a painter in the fullest sense of the word. There is no sign
+left of the defective caricature which disfigures the engravings; there
+is a severe, unadorned manifestation of realism, of an art that has from
+the outset rooted itself in modern life. Under the manners and graces of
+the age Hogarth stands a "self-made" man, a healthy Anglo-Saxon
+personality, full of sturdy independence and impeccable common sense. He
+attracts by a sharpness of observation, a penetration into
+idiosyncrasies of character, a grip upon the most trivial changes in
+men's emotions and play of features, the like of which is to be found in
+hardly one of his predecessors.
+
+[Illustration: HOGARTH. THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, PLATE II.]
+
+Against these qualities it must be understood that an equal number of
+defects is to be set off. The inartistic part of him was that he
+followed the æsthetic theories of the age, and looked upon art as merely
+a means to ends alien to itself. With him painting was an instrument to
+disseminate the inventions of his poetic-satiric humour; it was a form
+of speech to him. He is not unjustly called on that account a comedian
+of the pencil, the Molière of painting. We look at other pictures, but
+his we read. The commentaries on them are in some respects the rendering
+back of the pictures into their proper element. Lessing called the drama
+his pulpit; with Hogarth his art was a pulpit. He wanted, like Hamlet,
+to "hold the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn
+her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and
+pressure." Pictures beneath his hands became moral sermons.
+
+In the six pictures in "The Harlot's Progress," with which he started in
+1733, and which to-day, since the originals have perished, can be
+considered only in the copper engravings after them, all these
+attributes are recognisable. Mary Hackabout comes innocent from the
+country to the town with the intention of seeking a situation as a
+servant-girl. She speedily falls a victim to temptation, becomes the
+mistress of a Jewish banker, whom she soon loses by her infidelity,
+descends to be a thief, and comes to the work-house. Released from
+there, she becomes the companion of a highwayman, until she ends her
+pitiful life in a disorderly house, leaving behind her a poor crippled
+boy, who, at his mother's funeral, is playing with a top. The conclusion
+of the paintings shows how the other women bid farewell to the corpse,
+and buoy themselves up for their coming pleasures by drinking from the
+spirit bottle, which stands on the coffin, while the priest, who is come
+to give the blessing, announces his visit for the evening.
+
+The second series, which is to be seen to-day in the Soane Museum,
+describes in eight tableaux the somewhat similar life of a young man,
+the "Rake." As an Oxford student he has promised marriage to a pretty
+but poor girl, when suddenly the death of a wealthy uncle throws him
+into the vortex of London life. He wishes to buy himself freedom from
+his sweetheart, but she disdainfully refuses the money and supports
+herself and her child honestly with the labour of her hands. The
+seducer, winning fame in the world of women and sport, rapidly paces the
+road to ruin; yet he repairs his finances once again by a marriage with
+a rich and one-eyed old lady. Once more on his feet, he flings himself
+into games of chance, and comes to the sponging-house, whither his
+better half follows him. It is the last straw when a play which he has
+offered to a manager is refused, and he can no longer buy himself a pint
+of ale; there remains only the final fall into the misery of frenzy, and
+in the last picture we find him amongst the lunatics bound in chains as
+a madman. Only his student love, Sarah Young, of Oxford, whom he had
+treated so scurvily, cannot forget him, and, with tears, seeks him out
+again in the madhouse.
+
+[Illustration: HOGARTH. THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, PLATE VII.]
+
+The third and most famous series was completed many years after the
+"Rake"--in 1745. Hogarth has admittedly taken particular pains with the
+six oil paintings of "Marriage à la Mode," which have been placed in the
+National Gallery; and these painted novels reveal in strength and beauty
+of execution the high-water mark of his work as a painter. The whole is
+quieter, simpler, less overloaded with ingenious accessories. The
+impoverished lord has married his son, who is already worn out with
+excesses, to the strong and healthy daughter of a city alderman. A girl
+is born; then they go their separate ways. The husband surprises the
+wife with a lover, and is stabbed by him; the unfaithful wife, moved by
+this, begs her dying husband for forgiveness. As a young widow, deprived
+of her woman's honour, she goes back to the _bourgeois_, Philistine
+ennui of her father's house, and when she learns of her lover's
+condemnation she escapes from the burden of her misery by means of
+poison. The father is sufficiently provident to take the wedding ring
+off her finger before the body is cold, lest it should be stolen from
+the corpse. In the last sequence Hogarth passed over completely to the
+moral sermon and the study of crime. The series "Industry and Idleness,"
+in 1747, was comprised in twelve sheets, which he produced only in rough
+engravings, as he wished exclusively to influence the masses. Two
+apprentices enter a cloth-weaving business at the same time, of whom one
+rises, through his zeal for the interests of the business, to a marriage
+with his master's beautiful daughter, to the rank of alderman, and
+finally to be Lord Mayor of London. The idle apprentice grows, on the
+down grade, from a gambler into a vagabond. He is transported, comes
+back again, and ends on the scaffold. The two comrades meet for the last
+time when the honest man announces his death-warrant to the knave.
+
+[Illustration: HOGARTH. THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, PLATE VIII.]
+
+Garrick, as we can see from his epitaph on Hogarth, has not unjustly
+characterised his art, in these words--
+
+ "Farewell, great painter of mankind!
+ Who reached the noblest point of art,
+ Whose pictured morals charm the mind,
+ And through the eye correct the heart."
+
+[Illustration: HOGARTH. MARRIAGE À LA MODE, PLATE V.]
+
+Hogarth painted stirring and humorous scenes, full of effective
+morality, with which he sought to cheer, terrify, and improve humanity.
+His five-act tragedies end always with the triumph of Virtue and the
+punishment of Vice. As one of his contemporaries said, he exercised the
+art of "hanging in colours." The twelve plates of the parallel
+biographies of "Industry and Idleness" he employed as an illustrated
+weekly sermon for the benefit of the working classes, and he was able to
+observe with satisfaction that they had an actual influence on the
+conduct of the people, as instanced in the diminution of gin shops. Yet
+for all that, in the elevation of public morality, the highest aim of
+art is not, as Garrick asserted, fulfilled. Who has ever seen such a
+painter? Would he be a painter? It is exactly by this moralising with
+the brush that Hogarth stands in such abrupt opposition to his
+predecessors, the Dutch. They were painters, nothing but painters, and
+in their painting reckoned on eyes which could appreciate their
+pictorial subtilty. Man was for them a patch of colour; the real delight
+of their eyes was the rich light that came mellowed through the shadows,
+and played upon the ruffed garments and the clumsy forms. With Hogarth,
+in the place of the idea of colour, the anecdote is brought in. He saw
+the world not so much with the eyes of the painter, as with those of the
+physician, the criminologist, the pastor. The familiar element, that
+serene and comfortable observation of an everyday occurrence upon which
+Dutch art was based, has altogether disappeared in his pictures. He did
+not paint because something pictorial urged him, but saw in men the
+actors of the parts which he had in his mind. This departure from the
+purely picturesque is in part explained by the predominance of
+literature in England at that time. In a country where the tragedy of
+familiar life as well as the domestic novel had arisen there was
+imminent peril that a young school of painting working without
+traditions should branch off also on to those lines. Hogarth desired to
+give painting a new manner; he seized upon what was epic or dramatic,
+and painted the pictorial counter parts to Smollett's and Richardson's
+novels. In the age of enlightenment the painter makes way for the
+writer. With this idea he himself wrote: "I have endeavoured to treat my
+subjects as a dramatic writer; my picture is my stage, my men and women
+my players, who, by means of certain actions and gestures, are to
+exhibit a dumb show."
+
+[Illustration: HOGARTH. THE ENRAGED MUSICIAN.]
+
+Moreover, to explain the growth of this sort of literary hybrid, one is
+forced to consider the changed conditions under which painting was
+introduced into England at large. Art, which hitherto had shone forth
+her enchantment upon the few, was conducted from the first in free
+England along the broad road of popularity, and given over to a public
+which had to be educated to art by degrees; and this admission of the
+mass of the people to the enjoyment of art, in a proportion hitherto
+unheard of, must inevitably have a retrogressive effect upon painting
+itself. Instead of the earlier amateur of really distinguished culture,
+there stood "the People."
+
+But just as in the Middle Ages works of art were seen to be a sort of
+picture-writing for the people--_picturis eruditur populus_, said
+Gregory the Great,--so now the new patrons could hardly require other
+than those works of art in which a story was pictorially told. These
+could be understood even by the man whose understanding was otherwise
+wholly closed to matters of art; and hence it came about that almost all
+the _genre_ painters--for very nearly a century--followed with more or
+less intelligence in the footsteps of Hogarth. To treat him, as is
+frequently done, because of this popularisation of art, because of this
+transformation of the picture into the picture story, as a pattern
+instance of tastelessness, would lead to very dangerous consequences,
+and should be the less employed because Hogarth's pictures are, at
+least, comparatively well painted, whereas many of his successors could
+escape the deluge only in the Noah's Ark of their talent for narration.
+What Hogarth could do when he put off the schoolmaster, he has shown
+moreover in his portraits. There he is an entirely great painter. His
+pictures have none of that Van Dyck elegance, which had become the mode
+in England before him; they are robust, crude, Anglo-Saxon, strongly and
+broadly painted withal, sketches, in the best sense of the word. His
+"Shrimp Girl," in the National Gallery, for instance, is a masterpiece
+to which the nineteenth century can hardly produce a rival.
+
+In the history of painting it is notorious that the latter half of the
+last century belongs especially to portraiture, and here the English
+occupy the first rank. Neither Hogarth nor Reynolds nor Gainsborough was
+a genius like Titian, Velasquez, or even Frans Hals. Their art is not to
+be compared with that of the greatest of all portrait painters, but they
+surpassed all the painters of the eighteenth century; they were not only
+the greatest in England since Van Dyck, but the first portrait painters
+in Europe at the time.
+
+[Illustration: HOGARTH. GIN LANE.]
+
+Reynolds and Gainsborough lived almost at the same period. The former,
+born in 1723, died in 1792; the latter, born in 1727, died in 1788. They
+had as models men and women of the same society. They went the same
+road, side by side. Many celebrities strayed from one studio to the
+other, and were painted by Reynolds as well as by Gainsborough. These
+are just the pictures which show us so distinctly how widely the two,
+who were usually mentioned in the same breath, differed from each other
+in spite of having grown up on the same soil. Even their outward man
+displays this dissimilarity.
+
+Reynolds appears in his "Portrait of Himself" in the Uffizzi Gallery at
+Florence, in the red mantle of the President of the Academy, the
+official cap on his head, while the hand resting on the table holds a
+copy of his _Discourses_; close by is a bust of Michael Angelo. The
+complexion is that of a man who sits much within doors. A pair of
+spectacles with large, round glasses leads one to conclude that he
+injured his eyesight early with much reading. Gainsborough, with his
+refined Roman nose, the haughty, curved sensuous lips, and the
+expression of his face which speaks at once of innocence and refinement,
+gives an impression far more than Reynolds of the child of nature and
+the gentleman. His cheeks are fresh and rather ruddy; a depth of soul
+lies within the large blue eyes, that are somewhat melancholy, yet have
+such a free outlook upon life.
+
+[Illustration: REYNOLDS. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.]
+
+_Joshua Reynolds'_ father was a clergyman, a most learned man, who kept
+a Latin school. He gave the boy, it is recorded, that most uncommon
+Christian name, for the remarkable reason that he hoped thereby to draw
+the attention of a great personage, who bore the same name, towards his
+young namesake. His son was to become a physician. But books on other
+subjects which he read at his desk at school made a greater impression
+on the boy. In the well known _Treatise on Painting_, by Richardson, he
+discovered his vocation. From the perusal of this book he developed a
+taste for things artistic, studied the works on perspective of Pater
+Pozzo, read everything he could find on art, and copied as a preliminary
+all that fell into his hands in the way of woodcuts and copper
+engravings. One of the earliest drawings which remain from his childhood
+represents the interior of a library. At the age of nineteen he came to
+London to a well-known master, Hudson, the favourite painter with the
+gentry of the day, who required £120 with a pupil. He was already
+convinced that only in London could he find the means to attain fame,
+and even as early as 1744 he took a fine establishment and kept open
+house in order to attract attention. He was soon in a position to
+complete his artistic education by means of residence in Italy. In 1746
+he had painted the portrait of a Captain Keppel, who shortly afterwards
+was appointed Commodore of the Mediterranean squadron, and invited the
+young painter to go for a cruise in his ship. They sailed in 1749, and
+Reynolds was able to spend three years in Italy.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ REYNOLDS. MRS SIDDONS.]
+
+His first impression was one of bitter disappointment. Where was that
+rich colouring in the Italian classics which he had been led to expect
+from English mezzotints? Everything struck him as lifeless, pale,
+insipid. Whereupon he affected the opinion that there was no more to
+be seen in Rome. Raphael, in particular, appeared to him to be a
+mediocre painter, whom only a remarkable chance had brought to such a
+pitch of fame. Surrounded by the great masterpieces of the Cinquecento,
+he employed himself in drawing caricatures, and made a sort of travesty
+of the _School of Athens_, in which he drew caricatures of the English
+colony in Rome at that time, in the attitudes of figures in the pictures
+of Raphael. But he very speedily changed his opinion, and began to
+follow the paths of the great dead. He went indefatigably through the
+galleries of Rome, from Rubens to Titian, from Correggio to Guido and
+Raphael. He studied so hard in the Vatican, that he took a chill in the
+cold rooms, which left him all his life a little deaf. That sojourn at
+Rome was to Reynolds what, a hundred years later, his visit to Spain was
+to Lenbach.
+
+He had already at Hudson's acquired great facility as a copyist, and of
+Guercino, in particular, he had made numerous copies. During this
+Italian tour, however, he became the greatest connoisseur of old masters
+that the eighteenth century possessed.
+
+It is related that the Chevalier Van Loo, when he was in England in
+1763, vaunted himself one day, in Reynolds' presence, upon his unfailing
+discrimination in telling a copy from an original. Whereupon Reynolds
+showed him one of his own studies of a head, after Rembrandt. The
+Chevalier judged it to be, indisputably, a masterpiece by the great
+Dutchman.
+
+[Illustration: REYNOLDS. DR. JOHNSON]
+
+He left Rome in April 1752, and made a further visit to Naples, to the
+cities of Tuscany, and to Venice. The careless notes of travel that he
+made on this journey show the clear insight which he had attained into
+the Italian schools. They all deal with questions of technique, on
+effects of light and shadow, on the mystery of _chiaroscuro_. For
+Titian, in particular, he had an extravagant devotion,--he would ruin
+himself, he said, if he might only possess one of the great works of
+Titian.
+
+When he returned to England in 1752, at the age of thirty, his talent
+was fully developed, and the connoisseurs were unanimous in hailing him
+as a new Van Dyck. With the portrait of Miss Gunning, afterwards the
+Duchess of Hamilton, he appeared in 1753 as a power in English art. As
+early as 1755, when Hogarth was compelled to give up portrait painting
+for lack of patrons, one hundred and twenty-five persons sat for
+Reynolds, and after that about one hundred and fifty people were painted
+by him annually; and this brought him in a yearly income of about
+£16,000.
+
+[Illustration: REYNOLDS. GARRICK AS ABEL DRUGGER.]
+
+At first he took up his quarters in St. Martin's Lane, which was then
+the most fashionable place of residence for artists; but in 1760 he
+bought a house, No. 47 Leicester Square, the most select quarter of
+London, and furnished it with the most palatial splendour. The studio,
+which he built for himself, was as large as a ballroom, and furnished
+with a quite modern luxury. The large corridor that led to it had a
+gallery of pictures by old masters. It was the age of the great literary
+and dramatic revival in England. Garrick stood at the zenith of his
+popularity, Burke had already made himself a name, Johnson had produced
+his _Dictionary_, Richardson had reached the summit of his fame,
+Smollett had written _Peregrine Pickle_, Gray had attracted notice by
+his verse. All these and others who set the vogue in literature and the
+drama, the principal figures in politics, the leaders of fashion,
+lounged in that luxurious studio and gossiped with Reynolds of the
+theatre, both before and behind the scenes, of the doings in Parliament
+and the scandal of the Court, of literature and of art. At the time when
+Goldsmith was putting the finishing touches to his _Travels_ he was a
+guest of the house. Gibbon, the historian, and Sterne, whose
+_Sentimental Journey_ was just then the talk of the town, spent their
+vacant hours with him; and Burke as well, while he discussed with him
+his treatise on the _Sublime and the Beautiful_. All these claimed a
+niche in Reynolds' portrait gallery, where all the talents were met
+together. The whole English nobility also flocked to him. For forty
+years onwards from 1752 it was considered the proper thing to be painted
+by him. His pictures were multiplied immediately at the hands of the
+engravers. In the complete catalogue of Reynolds' works, Hamilton
+counts, so far back as 1820, no fewer than 675 plates, engraved after
+Reynolds by more than a hundred artists, and amongst these the
+mezzotints of Samuel Cousins are by far the finest. Only an incredible
+industry, enabling him for a long succession of years to paint almost
+without intermission with a facility and regularity like that of Rubens,
+rendered it possible for Reynolds to complete, exclusive of portraits,
+quite a number of religious and mythological pictures, of which he
+himself was especially proud. He painted with great speed and dexterity,
+rose very early, breakfasted at nine o'clock, was in his studio
+punctually at ten; and there till eleven he worked on pictures which had
+been commenced. On the stroke of eleven the first sitter arrived, who
+was succeeded by another an hour later. Thus he painted till four
+o'clock, when he made his toilette, and thenceforward belonged to
+society, for in spite of his scholarly temperament one can by no means
+consider Reynolds as a solitary eccentric. Although he remained a
+bachelor after Angelica Kauffmann had declined his hand, his house was a
+central gathering-point for noble London. He gave balls to which the
+whole of "Society" was invited, and drove in a magnificent carriage,
+with coachmen in blue and silver liveries. The Literary Club was founded
+at his instigation, where with Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, Gibbon, and
+Garrick he shared in conversation both profound and brilliant. He was
+made a baronet, and when the Royal Academy was founded in 1768, became
+its first president. The dinners of the Academy, which he organised at
+the distribution of prizes, play a part in the history of English
+cookery. Reynolds had promised that on each of these reunions he would
+speak on some question of art. In this manner originated, during his
+twenty-three years of office, those fifteen discourses upon painting
+which show the highest result of his literary energy. They were not his
+maiden essays. As far back as 1758 Johnson had invited him to publish an
+article upon Art in a journal which he had founded, _The Idler_. In 1781
+he made a journey through Holland and Flanders, upon which, anticipating
+Fromentin, he wrote an exceedingly fine book. In his _Discourses_ so
+high a degree of literary talent was displayed that they were at one
+time said to be the work of Johnson or Burke.
+
+[Illustration: REYNOLDS. HEADS OF ANGELS.]
+
+[Illustration: REYNOLDS. SAMUEL RICHARDSON.]
+
+They are æsthetic treatises and essays in the history of art, of an
+enduring value. Originating from a vast insight, and expressed in a
+precise style, they treat of the laws of classic art, the variation in
+styles, the causes of the finest bloom in art. Certainly eclecticism is
+preached too. The modern artist, it is declared, can only stand on the
+shoulders of his forebears. The great Italians must be his models, and
+of these the greatest is Michael Angelo. His last essay closes with
+these words: "I reflect, not without vanity, that these discourses bear
+testimony of my admiration of that truly divine man, and I should desire
+that the last words which I should pronounce in this Academy, and from
+this place, might be the name of Michael Angelo."
+
+When he died, his friend Edmund Burke wrote in the funeral oration which
+he dedicated to him: "Sir Joshua Reynolds was, on many accounts, one of
+the most memorable men of his time. He was the first Englishman who
+added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his
+country. In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the
+richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the greatest masters
+of the renowned ages.... In full affluence of foreign and domestic fame,
+admired by the expert in art and by the learned in science, courted by
+the great, caressed by sovereign powers and celebrated by distinguished
+poets, ... the loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere,
+general, and unmixed sorrow." He was buried with great pomp in St.
+Paul's Cathedral. The pictures left unfinished at his death fetched at
+auction £37,000; the whole fortune which he left is estimated at
+£80,000.
+
+The biography of _Thomas Gainsborough_ reads quite differently.
+
+The traveller who rides from London to Birmingham passes through some of
+the fairest scenery in the island. He finds himself in the heart of
+fresh and tender English nature. Small rivulets flow through the gently
+undulating country. Wide meadows clothe the soft hollows in the valleys
+with abundant green. In grassy enclosures deer and roes are feeding;
+they push forwards inquisitively as the train passes. Fragrant linden
+trees rise dreamily in the suave, park-like landscape, through which the
+Stour winds along like a riband of silver. On the bank of this
+enchanting stream Thomas Gainsborough, the son of a simple clothier, was
+born. Reynolds' vocation had been brought about through the perusal of a
+book. In the scenery and the woods that were in the neighbourhood of his
+home, Gainsborough, who was so alive to all the beauty of nature,
+received the decisive impression of his life. Here he roamed as a boy,
+while he neglected his school lessons. "Tom will be hung some day,"
+reflected his schoolmaster; "Tom will be a genius," thought his parents.
+He sketched the parks and castles of the neighbourhood. In his later
+life he used to say that there was no picturesque old tree trunk, no
+meadow or woodland glade or stream within a four-mile radius of Sudbury,
+that he did not retain a recollection of from his childish years. Like
+Constable, when he was an old man, he still thought with gratitude of
+his home, of all that beauty upon which he had looked, and which had
+made him a painter. Here, in the green woods and fresh pastures of his
+birthplace, he trained himself. At the age of ten he was a painter.
+
+[Illustration: REYNOLDS. MISS REYNOLDS.]
+
+A sojourn of four years in London seems to have added little to his
+ability. Elegant in his manners, lively in his conversation, a born
+gentleman, he might have become completely the man of fashion. But he
+was far too diffident, with his naïve simplicity, to force himself
+amongst the stars of the world of art in London, far too distinguished
+and retiring to join in the race after the favour of the public, and so
+at the age of eighteen he returned to his native place with the
+unencouraging prospect of playing the part of a simple painter in the
+provinces. First and last, the woods remained his chief delight. One
+morning, as he was painting there, he looked up from his easel and saw a
+young and beautiful girl in a light summer dress, peeping coquettishly
+from behind the trunk of a tree. She blushed, he spoke to her shyly.
+Soon afterwards Margaret Burr became his wife, and the whole history of
+his life with her remains a charming idyll, like the spring morning on
+which he made her acquaintance. Married at the age of nineteen, he
+installed himself at Ipswich, his wife's native place, and there he
+spent fifteen years in great happiness, firm in the conviction that he
+would end his days there. There he painted his first portraits, which,
+from 1761, were forwarded by a carrier's cart to London for exhibition
+in the Royal Academy. From Ipswich he went to Bath, the fashionable
+watering-place, where he painted the visitors who came in the summer for
+the cure. Finally, in the end his portraits met with approval in London.
+That gave him courage in 1764 to proceed thither himself; and there he
+took very modest rooms. On his arrival he was as yet very little known;
+he came from the provinces, which he had till then never left, at a time
+when Reynolds stood at the pinnacle of his fame, and had visited Italy
+and Spain. Yet he gradually won a reputation. Franklin was one of the
+first to sit to him. Soon he became the favourite painter of the king
+and the royal family. George III was painted eight times by him, Pitt
+seven times, Garrick five. Lord Chancellor Camden, Sir William
+Blackstone, Johnson, Laurence Sterne, Richardson, Burke, Sheridan, Mrs.
+Graham, Lady Montagu, Mrs. Siddons, Lady Vernon, Lady Maynard, and the
+names of many other celebrities and beauties are bound up with his. His
+life-work, excluding sketches, consists of no more than three hundred
+pictures, of which two hundred and twenty are portraits--a very small
+number in comparison with the four thousand paintings of Joshua
+Reynolds. Thomas Gainsborough painted irregularly. Even when he was in
+his studio he might be seen standing for hours gazing out of his window
+dreamily at the grass. In other features of his life too he was equally
+different from Reynolds: unaccountably, he was one moment a brilliant,
+animated companion, the next plunged in melancholy. He dreamed much,
+while Reynolds painted and wrote. In the evenings he usually sat at home
+with his dear little wife, completed no treatises or discourses on his
+art, but made sketches or sometimes music. Reynolds was a
+scholar-painter, Gainsborough a painter-musician. It was said of him
+that he painted portraits for money and landscapes for amusement, but
+that he made music because he needs must. He collected musical
+instruments as Reynolds did a library. Even in his pictures he gives his
+people, for preference, violins in their hands. To the Musical Club
+which he had founded in Ipswich he remained faithful all his life, and
+in that neighbourhood, or in Richmond or Hampstead, he spent the summer
+every year. Here amidst that green nature it was also his wish to be
+buried. His funeral was a very quiet one. In the peaceful graveyard at
+Kew, Thomas Gainsborough sleeps tranquilly under the shady willows, far
+from the noise and tumult of the great city. Sir Joshua said at his
+grave: "Should England ever become so fruitful in talent that we can
+venture to speak of an English school, then will Gainsborough's name be
+handed down to posterity as one of the first." Yes, one might say
+to-day, as the first of all.
+
+[Illustration: REYNOLDS. EDMUND BURKE.]
+
+[Illustration: REYNOLDS. MRS. ABINGTON.]
+
+Joshua Reynolds is certainly a great painter, and deserves the high
+veneration in which his compatriots hold him. It is not without a
+certain awe that, in the Diploma Gallery of the Royal Academy, one can
+look upon the armchair that he used during his sittings, upon which all
+who were famous in eighteenth-century England have sat. Reynolds is one
+of the greatest English portrait painters, and, resembling most the
+classical masters, showed in the highest degree the qualities we admire
+in them. His colouring is of an amazing softness, depth, and strength;
+his _chiaroscuro_ is warm and vaporous. There are portraits by him
+which, in the subtlety of their tone, resemble the best of Rembrandt's;
+others, whose noble colouring approaches the _chef-d'oeuvres_ of Van
+Dyck. Master of the whole mechanism of the human body, he possessed in
+the highest degree the rare art of setting persons surely and
+unconstrainedly on their feet. His portraits are pictures; one needs no
+whit to be acquainted with the persons they represent; they satisfy as
+works of art in themselves, and as psychological studies by a man who
+had the capacity of sounding the depths of the human heart. The complete
+catalogue of all those who sat for Sir Joshua during the space of half a
+century forms an uninterrupted commentary on the contemporary history of
+England.
+
+[Illustration: REYNOLDS. EDMUND MALONE.]
+
+There we see the skilful portrait of Sterne, with his look of witty
+mockery; the marvellous Bohemian, Oliver Goldsmith, who even then had
+the manuscript of his _Vicar of Wakefield_ in his pocket; Johnson, who,
+in one, sits at his writing-table, on which stands an ink-pot and a
+volume of his _English Dictionary_, and in another is peering into a
+book with his short-sighted eyes screwed up tightly, and his whole
+posture awkward and unwieldy. Garrick, who went from one studio to the
+other, appears also more than once in Reynolds' portrait gallery.
+Amongst his portraits of military dignitaries, that of General Lord
+Heathfield, the famous defender of Gibraltar, whom he painted in full
+uniform, is one of the most noticeable. Strong as a rock he stands
+there, with the key of the fortress in his hand. What a contrast between
+these figures and those of the contemporary French portraits! There,
+those friendly and smiling ministers, those gallant and dainty
+ecclesiastics, those scented, graceful marquises, who move with such
+elegant ease about the parquet floor, and from whose faces a uniform
+refinement has erased all the roughness of individuality; here,
+expressive, thoughtful heads, characters hardened in the school of life,
+many of the faces coarse and bloated, the glance telling of cold
+resolution, the attitude full of self-reliant dignity and gnarled,
+plebeian pride. The same _bourgeois_ element predominates in the
+pictures of the ladies. Van Dyck's noble, eminently intellectual figures
+always wore the glamour of the Renaissance. In the background an
+artistically arranged curtain, a column, or the view of the quiet
+avenues of some broad park. From Reynolds we get strong active women in
+their everyday clothes, and with thoughtful countenances: good mothers,
+surrounded by their children, whom they kiss and enfold in a tender
+embrace. The idea of half-symbolical representation has vanished, and in
+its place is introduced the idea of home and the family. The pictures of
+children by this childless old bachelor were an artistic revelation to
+the existing generation, and are the delight of the world of to-day. In
+other portraits of ladies, that noticeable characteristic of the English
+nation, their predilection for domestic animals and for sport, finds an
+expression. The beautiful Duchess of Devonshire he painted as she gently
+restrained with her finger her little daughter's caresses, which would
+fain have disordered her _coiffure_; a whole gallery of noble ladies he
+represented feeding their poultry or petting their lap-dogs; Lady
+Spencer in her riding-habit, her whip in her hand, her horse reined in,
+her cheeks flushed from her gallop. Nelly O'Brien looks an actress, a
+woman who turned men's heads, and she does it still to-day in Reynolds'
+picture. There lurks something enigmatic, perplexing in the smile of
+this sphinx--only Monna Lisa had such a smile, but Nelly's eyes are
+deeper, more desirous. One feels that in the three centuries since Monna
+Lisa love has taken on a new and subtler _nuance_. The portrait of Mrs.
+Siddons is the most famous of the pictures of actresses which Reynolds
+painted, and Mrs. Siddons, of all the women of that time, is the one
+whose portrait occupied the painters most. She was the daughter of Roger
+Kemble, the actor, and sister of that pretty actress, Mrs. Twiss, whose
+portrait by Reynolds (in 1784) we also have, and of the famous John
+Philip Kemble, who figures so often in the portrait gallery of Lawrence,
+as Hamlet, Cato, Coriolanus, Richard III, etc. Born to the boards, as it
+were, she had, when still a child, joined her parents on their Thespian
+pilgrimages, and had had many engagements in the provinces, at
+Birmingham, Manchester, and Bath, before she was recruited by the
+playwright Sheridan for the Drury Lane company in London. She made her
+_début_ there on 10th October 1782, and was hailed forthwith as the
+greatest actress of her time. Lady Macbeth was her great part; in that
+she was painted both by Romney and Lawrence. Reynolds painted her as the
+Tragic Muse. A diadem encircles her hair, she sits upon a throne, the
+throne rests upon clouds. Behind her stand two allegorical beings, Crime
+and Remorse, two quite unfortunate figures. But the principal figure is
+truly great, in its noble, regal attitude, and quite unconstrained in
+its dramatic pose. Reynolds had the composition in his mind many weeks
+before Mrs. Siddons sat for him in the autumn of 1783. "Take your seat
+upon the throne for which you were born, and suggest to me the idea of
+the Tragic Muse." With these words he conducted her to the pedestal. "I
+made a few steps," the actress relates, "and then took at once the
+attitude in which the Tragic Muse has remained." When the picture was
+finished, says Sir Joshua, gallant as ever: "I cannot lose this
+opportunity of sending my name to posterity on the hem of your garment."
+And he, who hardly ever signed his pictures, wrote in large characters
+his name and the date on the gold-embroidered border of the dress. The
+original picture has been in the possession of the Grosvenor family
+since 1822; a second copy is in the gallery at Dulwich.
+
+[Illustration: REYNOLDS. OLIVER GOLDSMITH.]
+
+Reynolds loved to depict his sitters in mythological or historical
+settings. Thus he painted Mrs. Hartley, her son as a nymph and the
+youthful Bacchus, the three Misses Montgomery as the Three Graces
+crowning a term of Hymen, a little girl sitting on the grass as the "Age
+of Innocence," Lady Spencer as a gipsy telling her brother's fortune,
+Mrs. Sheridan as St. Cecilia. The five "Heads of Angels," as they are
+called, in the National Gallery, are five different studies of the
+lovely child-head of little Isabella Gordon. Garrick, in one of his
+pictures, is set between the allegorical figures of Tragedy and Comedy.
+Reynolds himself was frankly proud of these portraits in the mood of
+history. He was, as he said, in general only a portrait painter because
+the world required it; that which he aspired after was the great manner
+of historical painting. Nevertheless, pictures, such as the "Little
+Hercules with the Serpent," "Cupid unfastening the Girdle of Venus,"
+"The Death of Dido," "The Forbearance of Scipio," "The Childhood of the
+Prophet Samuel," or "The Adoration of the Shepherds," do not cause us to
+deplore too bitterly that he rarely found time for such mythological and
+historical pictures. His _putti_ are derived from Correggio; in the
+arrangement of drapery he resembles Guido; in his "Venus" he is a
+coarser Titian. Reynolds' own manner in these pictures is merely the
+eclectic accumulation of the peculiarities of the old masters--he
+brought no new element into historical painting.
+
+[Illustration: REYNOLDS. LADY COCKBURN AND HER DAUGHTERS.]
+
+And herein lies his principal weakness. Hogarth declared: "There is only
+one school, that of nature." Reynolds: "There is only one doorway to the
+school of nature, and of that the old masters hold the key." The great
+men of old were for him the object of constant and conscious thought. He
+has endeavoured in his writings to propound a sort of general foundation
+of painting, has adopted the principles of the best painters in every
+land, was indefatigable in exploring the secrets of the old
+masterpieces, and has therefore won the praise of having set the English
+school, which had hitherto possessed no perfected tradition of painting,
+technically on firm feet. He was the founder of a scientific technique
+of painting derived from the ancients,--the Lenbach of the eighteenth
+century. Upon the mixture of colours, the gradations of light and shade,
+technically and æsthetically, no artist has pondered more than he, who
+knew the great Netherlanders, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Rembrandt, as well
+as, or better than, his particular favourites, the Italians. He made
+experiments all his life long to discover the stone of the wise
+Venetians; but he met with the same experience as Lenbach. And these
+experiments in the direction of the colour effects of the old masters
+were the bane of his pictures' durability. It was well said by Walpole:
+"If Sir Joshua is content with his own blemished pictures, then he is
+happier than their possessors, or posterity. According to my view, he
+ought to be paid in annual instalments, and only so long as his works
+last." And Haydon opined that "Reynolds sought by tricks to obtain
+results which the old masters attained by the simplest means." He
+endeavoured by means of asphaltum to give his pictures the artistic
+tones of the galleries, with the result that, to-day, the majority have
+lost every sign of freshness.
+
+[Illustration: REYNOLDS. BISHOP PERCY]
+
+With regard to the pose also, and similar conceptions, one can never
+quite get away from the thought of Van Dyck and other old masters.
+Reynolds' chief endeavour, not only as regards colouring, but also in
+other respects, was to resemble the ancients, and this has brought into
+his pictures something imitative and laboured. He dearly loved the
+Romans and Venetians; we believe to-day that he loved almost too dearly
+the Bolognese. And just that fine, artistic education which he received
+in Italy and Holland, and the scientific method in which he practised
+his art, did harm to Reynolds, and brought into his pictures too much
+reminiscence, too many alien touches. He has in most cases understood
+it--how to bring into uniformity the numerous borrowings of his palette,
+all that he had taken from Leonardo, Correggio, Velasquez, and
+Rembrandt. Yet he has never quite forgotten the old masters and looked
+only at his model, for the sake of the very daintiest lady or the
+freshest English boy. For his children he thought of Correggio's
+"Cherubim," for his schoolboys of Murillo, for the portrait of Mrs.
+Hartley of Leonardo da Vinci, for that of Mrs. Sheridan of Raphael.
+There lacked in him that spontaneity which denotes the great master. By
+his erudition in art, Sir Joshua elevated himself on the shoulders of
+all who had preceded him. He obtained thereby the piquant effects in his
+portraits, but it was at the price of the penalty that from many of his
+works it is rather a rancid odour of oil and varnish which exhales than
+the breath of life.
+
+[Illustration: REYNOLDS. THE GIRL WITH THE MOUSETRAP.]
+
+Gainsborough can certainly not be compared with Reynolds in the mass of
+his work. He was master neither of his powers of industry nor of his
+smooth and brilliant methods of painting that were always sure of their
+effect. In many of his pictures he gives the impression of a self-taught
+man, who sought to help himself to the best of his power. Just as little
+has he the psychological acuteness of Reynolds. A portrait painter puts
+no more into a head than he has in his own; thus the acute thinker,
+Reynolds, was able to put a great deal into his heads, whilst
+Gainsborough, the dreamer, was often enough quite helpless when he
+confronted a conspicuously manly character. In his whole temperament a
+painter of landscape, before his model too he sat as before a landscape,
+with eyes that perceived but did not analyse. What, with Reynolds, was
+sought out and understood, was felt by Gainsborough; and therefore the
+former is always good and correct, while Gainsborough is unequal and
+often faulty, but in his best pictures has a charm to which those of the
+President of the Academy never attained. Gainsborough, too, at his death
+murmured the name of an old master. "We are all going to Heaven, and Van
+Dyck is of the company." But what distinguishes him from Reynolds, and
+gives him a character of greater originality, is just his naïve
+independence of the ancients, which resulted partly from the different
+nature of his education in art. Reynolds had lived for two years in Rome
+and explored all the principal cities of Italy, had visited Flanders and
+Holland, learnt to wonder at Rembrandt, and developed an enthusiasm for
+_chiaroscuro_. Gainsborough in his rural seclusion had been able neither
+by travel on the Continent to study the great masters of the past, nor
+to assimilate the traditions of the studio. He contented himself with
+the beauties which he saw in his native country, studied them in their
+touching simplicity, without troubling himself about academic rules. He
+lived in London until his death, without once leaving England; and that
+gives to his pictures a distinct _nuance_. The one studied pictures and
+books, the other only the "book of nature." His portraits never aim at
+any external effect, nor are they raised into the historical; they seek
+to give no other impression than that of a quite subjective truth to
+nature, both in arrangement and in colouring. Nothing intruded between
+his model and himself, no "sombre old master" obscured his canvas. His
+execution is more personal, his colour fresher and more transparent. The
+very personages seem with him to be more elegant, more gracious, more
+modern than with Reynolds, in whose work, through their kinship to the
+Renaissance, they received a suggestion of style, classical and ancient.
+
+In his pictures the Englishman is clearly revealed, an Englishman of
+that delicacy and noble refinement which is present to a unique degree
+in the works of English painters of the present day.
+
+[Illustration: REYNOLDS. DR. BURNEY.]
+
+The passage from Hogarth to Gainsborough marks a chapter in the history
+of English culture. Hogarth is the embodiment of John Bull; you can hear
+him growl, like some savage bull-dog. That brutal, indecorous robustness
+of England's aggressive youth becomes, in Gainsborough's hands,
+agreeable, refined, gentle, and seductive. Reynolds, with his robustness
+as of the old masters, might be best compared with Tintoretto;
+Gainsborough, in his quite modern and fantastic elegance, is a more
+tender, subtle, and mysterious spirit, poet and magician at once, like
+Watteau. There one listened to the full, swelling chords of the organ;
+here to the soft, dulcet, silvery notes of the violin. Reynolds loved
+warm, brown and red tones; Gainsborough essayed for the first time, in a
+series of his happiest creations, that scale of colour, coldly green and
+blue, in which to-day the majority of English pictures are still
+painted. Everything with him is soft and clear; the tone of those blue
+or light yellow silks, which he loved especially, is that of the most
+transparent enamel; the background fades away into dreamy vapour, the
+figures are surrounded with an atmosphere of seduction. What a
+masterpiece he has created in the "Blue Boy," his most popular and most
+individual picture. One can describe every piece of the clothing, but
+it is impossible to reproduce the harmony of the painting, the rich,
+pure blue of the costume, which stands out against a lustrous, brown
+background of landscape. How the stately youth stands, noble from head
+to foot, in the brown and green autumn landscape, with its canopy of
+sky! Master Bootall was by far the most elegant portrait painted in
+England since Van Dyck, and withal of a nervosity quite new. See that
+youthful pride in the gaze, that mobile sensibility in the pose!
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH.]
+
+Have men grown different, then, or does the painter see further? One
+finds in Van Dyck no such expressively _nervous_ physiognomy. The
+suggestion of melancholy, the deep reverie, the noble, aristocratic
+haughtiness,--Gainsborough was the first to discover that, and give it
+its full expression. And the same man who painted the noble elegance of
+this youthful _grand seigneur_ depicted also peasant children coming
+fresh from the green fields and woodlands of their village homes. In Sir
+Joshua's children there was often something borrowed from Correggio; the
+children of Gainsborough breathe a rustic charm, an untamed savagery;
+they are the very offshoots of nature, who disport themselves as freely
+as the wild things in the woods. But his women in particular are
+creatures altogether adorable. While Reynolds, the historical painter,
+liked to promote his into heroines, those of Gainsborough, with their
+pure, transparent skins, their sweet glances (in which there lies so
+admirable a mixture of languishing fragility, innocence, and coquetry),
+are the true Englishwomen of the eighteenth century. His "Mrs. Siddons"
+is not in theatrical costume, but in a simple walking-dress; no Tragic
+Muse, but the passionate, loving woman who once, a romantic, impulsive
+miss, escaped from a convent at the risk of her life, to join a handsome
+young actor of her father's troupe who had entirely fascinated her. What
+a charming grace in the pose, what fine taste in the arrangement, what
+wonderful purity of colouring! With the exception of Watteau, I know of
+no older master who could have painted such moist, dreamy, sensuous,
+tender eyes. The marvellous "Mrs. Graham," in the National Gallery of
+Scotland, is, from the purely pictorial standpoint, perhaps the greatest
+of all his works. Yet how beautiful is the double portrait of that young
+married couple, the Halletts, who, tenderly holding hands, pass along a
+deserted path in some secluded garden; or that pale, languishing "Mrs.
+Parsons," with her enchanting smile, and that mysterious language of the
+eyes. Gainsborough was no keen observer, but he was a susceptible,
+sensitive spirit who intercepted the soul itself, the play of the
+nerves, the slightest suggestion of spiritual commotion. There moves
+through the majority of his portraits a pathetic tenderness, a breath of
+dreamy melancholy, that the persons themselves hardly possessed, but
+which he transfused into them out of himself. Melancholy is the veil
+through which he saw things, as Reynolds saw them through the medium of
+erudition. Reynolds was all will and intelligence, Gainsborough all soul
+and temperament; and nothing can show the difference between them better
+than the fact that Reynolds, who had formed his style on early models,
+when he had no sitters painted historical pictures; whilst Gainsborough
+in like circumstances painted landscapes. Herein he was a pioneer,
+whilst Reynolds was an issue of the past.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ GAINSBOROUGH. MRS. SIDDONS.]
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ GAINSBOROUGH. WOOD SCENE, VILLAGE OF CORNARD, SUFFOLK.]
+
+In the domain of landscape painting, too, the new germs of naturalism,
+which had ventured above ground on all sides in the fifteenth century,
+had been again stunted in the Great Renaissance. The theory had been
+promulgated in the sixteenth century--in accordance with the idealistic
+methods of the age--that it behoved the painter to improve upon nature
+just as much as upon the human body. With the lofty style of the great
+figure painters, and their artfully pondered composition, there
+corresponded a school of landscape which was likewise conceived of, in
+the first degree, as an honourable, architectural framing for a
+mythological episode. England too possessed, in _Richard Wilson_, a
+believer in this doctrine, which became so widely promulgated in the
+seventeenth century through the influence of Claude Lorraine. The home
+of his soul was Italy. He scraped together a small sum of money by
+portrait painting, borrowed the rest, and felt himself in his element
+for the first time when he had reached Venice. Here, at the instance of
+Zucarrelli, he became a painter of landscapes, and was aided in his
+endeavours by Joseph Vernet in Rome. He was on the way to become a
+painter in great request, and in many of his pictures he shows a most
+delicate notion of well-balanced and gracious composition in the manner
+of Claude. But his success was of no long duration. Wilson, like so many
+other of his contemporaries, had the fixed idea that the Creator had
+only made nature to serve as a framework for the "Grief of Niobe" and as
+a vehicle for classical architecture. The interpolated stage scenery of
+trees and the classic temples of this English Claude, contain nothing
+which had not been already painted better by the Frenchman. When the
+king, in order to assist him, asked him on one occasion to represent Kew
+Gardens in a picture, he composed an entirely imaginary landscape and
+illuminated it with the sun of Tivoli. The king sent him back the
+picture, mordant epigrams appeared in the journals, and Reynolds scoffed
+at him in his Discourses. After that Wilson spent his days in the
+alehouse, until he got delirium, and died half starved at the age of
+seventy.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ GAINSBOROUGH. THE MARKET CART.]
+
+The patriotic English were too much bound up with their own soil to
+acquire a taste for the exotic, ideal scenery of Wilson. There existed
+in them that patriotism, that feeling for home, which had turned the
+Dutch of the seventeenth century into landscape painters. In this
+province also they were destined to step in, as the inheritors of the
+Dutch, to bring the germ of intimate landscape to its full fruition.
+Lovely and luxuriant valleys with their soft grass, sweet woodlands with
+their vari-coloured foliage, golden, swaying cornfields and picturesque
+little cottages, with that indescribable softness of atmosphere, must of
+themselves direct the eye of the writer and the painter to all these
+beauties. It was an Englishman who in the eighteenth century wrote the
+most memorable book upon the charms of nature. James Thomson, in his
+_Seasons_, is the first great nature painter amongst the poets. Taine
+finds the whole of Rousseau anticipated in him. "Thirty years before
+Rousseau, Thomson had forestalled all the sentiments of Rousseau, almost
+in the same style." He has not only, like Rousseau, a profound feeling
+for the great wild aspects of nature, for the forms of clouds, effects
+of light and contrasts of colour, but he delights also in the smell of
+the dairy, in small birds, in the woodland shadows, and the light on the
+meadows,--in all things sequestered and idyllic.
+
+ "Nature! great parent! whose unceasing hand
+ Rolls round the Seasons of the changeful year,
+ How mighty, how majestic are thy works!
+ With what a pleasing dread they swell the soul
+ That sees astonished and astonished sings."
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ GAINSBOROUGH. THE DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE.]
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ GAINSBOROUGH. THE SISTERS.]
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ GAINSBOROUGH. THE WATERING PLACE.]
+
+It was a remarkable chance which ordained that Thomas Gainsborough, the
+first man who as a painter depicted the gracious charms of the country
+of his birth, the comeliness of its expanses of deep green lush meadows,
+the strength of the lofty, wide-spreading trees, as seen with the eyes
+of a lover, should be born in the spring of the same year in which
+Thomson's _Spring_ appeared. That he knew and admired Thomson is proved
+by his dedication to him of that delightful "Musidora" in the National
+Gallery, a lovely woman bathing her feet in some shady forest pool. It
+is said that he only sent half a dozen landscapes to the Academy during
+the eighteen years that he exhibited there. On the other hand, they hung
+in his house in Pall Mall in long rows on the walls of his studio. After
+his death his widow held a sale, at which fifty-six landscapes were
+sold. Gainsborough must be accounted one of the moderns, so naïve and
+intimate is the impression which his pictures produce. He, who passed
+his whole youth in the idyllic loveliness of the woods, was fitted to be
+the delineator of that mellow English nature. He understood the murmur
+of the brooks and the sighing of the winds. Like his own life, so
+regular and peaceful, gently swaying as though to the friendly
+elements, are the trees in his pictures, with their peaceful
+tranquillity; no storm disturbs the calm of a Gainsborough picture. His
+was a contented, harmonious spirit, like Corot's. His landscapes know no
+tempestuous grandeur; they are a playground for children, a place for
+shepherds to rest. "The calm of mid day, the haze of twilight, the dew
+and the pearls of morning," said Constable, "are what we find in the
+pictures of this good, kindly, happy man.... As we look at them the
+tears spring to our eyes, and we know not whence they come. The solitary
+shepherd with his flock, the peasant returning from the wood with his
+bundle of faggots, whispering woods and open dales, sweet little peasant
+children with their pitchers in springtime,--that is what he loved to
+paint and what he painted, with as much sought-out refinement as with
+tender truth to nature." His landscapes are like windows opening on the
+country, not compositions, but pieces taken straight out of that
+fruitful English nature. Every year he used to return to his green
+pastures, and paint very early, when the sun rose. Before him rose a
+cluster of trees, all round the farm the flocks were grazing, thousands
+of busy bees flew buzzing from flower to flower; goats, with their kids,
+were feeding in the meadows, wild doves cooed, and the birds in the wood
+sang their praises to the Creator. Thus do the landscapes of
+Gainsborough affect us. They are soft and tender as some sweet melody in
+their discreet intimacy, without colorist effects, as wonderfully
+harmonious as nature herself. A thatched cot, that peeps timidly from
+between the great trees, a silvery dale shut in by weeping willows, a
+bridge leading to some lush, green meadow,--those are Gainsborough's
+materials. The famous "Cottage Door" is now at Grosvenor House. A young
+peasant woman, with her youngest child in her arms, is standing by the
+door of a country cottage, before which her other children are playing,
+some half naked; deep contentment is all around, huge old oaks spread
+their sheltering branches over the roof on both sides; golden rays of
+sunshine dance across the meadow. Only Frederick Walker has, in later
+days, painted such peasant women and such children, at once so tender
+and so natural. Of the four pictures in the National Gallery, "The Wood
+Scene," "The Watering Place," "Market Carts," and "Peasant Children,"
+"The Watering Place" is the most celebrated. In the foreground a quiet
+pasture with cows, close by the herdsman, a Suffolk labourer; in the
+background a noble old Norman castle, perhaps Hedingham Castle, near
+Sudbury. It is through pictures like these that England has become the
+native-land of intimate landscape--_paysage intime_.
+
+As figure painters, as well as landscape painters, the English in the
+eighteenth century laid a course of their own, and it was not long
+before the other nations followed them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE HISTORICAL POSITION OF ART ON THE CONTINENT
+
+
+Goethe compared the history of knowledge with a great fugue: the parts
+of the nations first come to light, little by little; and this analogy,
+already once made by Hettner, holds true in a very high degree of the
+history of art during the eighteenth century. The three great nations of
+culture--the German, the English, and the French--take up their parts in
+turn, and through all there sounds one common, equal, dominant note.
+England was in the vanguard of that great period of struggle known as
+the age of enlightenment. Since the middle of the eighteenth century
+English influences had begun to fertilise the Continent. The truth and
+naturalness of English ideas were introduced as models, and England
+became in her whole culture the schoolmistress of the Continent. In
+every region war was declared against the pedantry brought over from the
+past, while new conditions were aimed at. Obviously it was not so easy
+for other nations to take their stand on the basis of modern society.
+England had accomplished her revolution in the seventeenth century;
+France was only preparing herself for hers. For all other nations, too,
+the eighteenth century was a transition period, in which the old and the
+new civilisation of culture were parting--an age of prodigious
+controversy, full of _Sturm und Drang_. Men did homage to every kind of
+extravagance, and went into ecstasies over virtue. The sarcasm of
+scoffers went hand in hand with the deepest sentimental feeling for
+nature; superstition flourished by the side of enlightenment and
+learning; in the _salons_ of the aristocracy courtly abbés file past
+with the greatest thinkers, glowing with a holy zeal for the rights of
+man. And, in the midst of all this contradiction, there exists that
+simple, virtuous middle class which is preparing to make the ascent
+which will lead it to power.
+
+One may imagine oneself in a salon of the _ancien régime_, in which wit
+is lord, and laughter and merriment reign. Into that salon enters
+abruptly a rough plebeian, with none of the fine tact of that company,
+yet a great, aristocratic spirit, a man who despised such a society and
+would make the world anew. Such is one's impression of the effect
+produced at the time by the appearance of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
+Voltaire was the first on the Continent to break through social
+barriers, but none the less he coined his heart for gold in society.
+Rousseau signifies a great advance: he gave up his place, laid aside
+rapier, silk stockings, and perruque, and clothed himself after the
+manner of a common man in order to earn his bread as a copier of music.
+He is, as Weigandt has called him, the first man of the _bourgeois_
+century, the first pioneer of the new age. Against the traditions
+bequeathed by the past, which in the course of time had become
+over-refined and corrupt, he set up the natural conditions demanded by
+reason. His fight against inequalities of rank is, as it were, a
+foretaste of the revolution. "What hellish monsters are these
+prejudices. I know no dishonourable inferiority other than that of
+character or education. A man who is trained to an honourable mind is
+the equal of the world; there is no rank in which he would not be in his
+place. It is better to look down upon nobility than upon virtue, and the
+wife of a charcoal-burner is worthy of more respect than the mistress of
+a prince." Those were words in which the coming revolution was presaged.
+
+[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF GOYA. BY HIMSELF.
+
+ _From: "Los Capriccios."_]
+
+The _Nouvelle Heloise_ appeared in 1761. Thirteen years later followed
+Goethe's _Werther_, that history of a young Titan whose zeal for liberty
+felt all the partition walls of Society to be prison walls, and who rose
+against everything that was ceremonial, against all the subordinations
+of the social hierarchy, against all trivial and rigid rules of prudent
+everyday life. Werther abhorred rules in every sphere. "One can say much
+in favour of rules, about as much as one can say in praise of
+_bourgeois_ society." He scoffed at the Philistines, who daily went
+along the same measured way. He saw in "Society," having hitherto moved
+in the simple world of the _bourgeois_, "the most sacred and the most
+pitiful emotions wholly without clothing." And this Society outraged
+him, and sent him with contumely from its midst. "Working folk carried
+him to the grave, and no minister of religion followed him."
+
+Soon afterwards young Schiller came upon the scene with his first works,
+which were a declaration of war against all the foundations of human
+society, those manifestoes of revolution which, were they new writings
+to-day, no Court Theatre would dare to produce. The fierce, rampant
+lion, with the inscription "In Tyrannos," which was displayed on the
+title-page of the second edition of the _Robbers_, was an intimate
+symbol of the deep revolutionary spirit that inspired the whole age. "I
+grew disgusted with this ink-stained age, when I read in my _Plutarch_
+of great men. Fie, fie upon the flaccid, castrated century, that has no
+other use than to chew over again the deeds of the past. Let me imagine
+an army of fellows like you, and I see a republic arising in Germany, in
+comparison with which those of Rome and Sparta would be convents of
+nuns." In a loud voice _Ficsco_ proclaims itself on the very title-page
+to be a "republican" tragedy. _Intrigue and Love_ even aims full at the
+rottenness and corruption of the actual time. It can be traced--and
+Brandes has done it in his _Haupströmungen_--how in the literature of
+the age, the life of sensibility and idealism prevailing in the previous
+century gradually dwindles, and in its stead quite modern progressive
+views--religious, political, and social--surge up in an ever-increasing
+wave. The authors were the bold inciters to the battle. They were all
+leaders in the battle for liberty against fossilised tradition,--some in
+the field of poetry only, others in the whole sphere of intellectual
+life. These are they who gave the signal for the war-cry of the
+Revolution--Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; who rent asunder the old
+society, inaugurated the age of citizenship, and were at the same time
+the first to lose, as quite modern spirits, their faith in another
+world.
+
+[Illustration: GOYA. THE MAJAS ON THE BALCONY.]
+
+A wonderful chance ordained that, in the province of art, the most
+powerful figure of that storm and tumult, the one artist of the age of
+the race of Prometheus, to which belonged the young Goethe and the young
+Schiller, should be born in the most mediæval country in Europe, on
+Spanish soil. Against an art that was more catholic than catholicism,
+courtly and mystical, there came by far the greatest reaction in Goya.
+From Roelas, Collantes, and Murillo to him there is hardly any
+transition.
+
+_Francisco Goya_ preached Nihilism in the home of belief. He denied
+everything, believed nothing, doubted of everything, even of that peace
+and liberty which he hoped to be at hand. That old Spanish art of
+religion and dogma was changed under his hands to an art of negation and
+sarcasm. His attitude is not that of an insolent and impetuous youth,
+who puts out his tongue at the Academy and strikes with audacious hand
+at the academicians' high powdered perruques; it is the attitude of the
+modern spirit, which begins by doubting all things which have been
+honoured hitherto. His Church pictures are devoid of religious feeling,
+and his etchings replete with sneers at everything which was previously
+esteemed as authority. He scoffs at the clerical classes and the
+religious orders, laughs at the priestly raiment which covered the
+passions of humanity. Spanish art, which began in a blind piety, becomes
+in Goya revolutionary, free, modern.
+
+[Illustration: (_Laurent, photo._)
+
+ GOYA. THE MAJA CLOTHED.]
+
+Goya is, in his whole nature, a modern man, a restless, feverish soul;
+nervous as a _décadent_; temperament to his finger-tips. His style in
+portraiture, his art of composition, his whole method,--all speak to our
+artists to-day in a language easily understood, and on many of them the
+influence of Goya is unmistakable. He is one of the most fascinating
+figures of the beginning of the century. As audacious as he was clever,
+as versatile as he was fantastic, a keen observer as well as a strong
+creative spirit, he fascinates and astonishes in his pictures, just as
+in his wonderful etchings, by a remarkable mixture of the bizarre and
+the original. His pictures, whether they be violent or eccentric, tender
+or hard, gloomy or joyous, nearly always move and palpitate with life
+itself, and they will always keep their attraction. There is no one of
+Goya's pictures, not even the flimsiest sketch, at which one can look
+coldly.
+
+He was born in a village in the province of Aragon, the son of a small
+landed proprietor, in 1746. At the age of fourteen, having already
+painted frescoes in the church of his native-place, he went to Saragossa
+as an apprentice; and there he showed himself to be vivacious and
+passionate, and soon became the champion among his comrades in all their
+pastimes and brawls. Restless, and always thinking of adventure, he
+refused every regular kind of education, disarranged everything in his
+master's studio, worked when he could, drew his sword when he had a mind
+to, nourished in his head dark thoughts on liberty, came and went and
+loved, dallied with his knife, snapped his fingers at the Inquisition,
+which was after him, and fled from Madrid,--such was he at twenty, and
+such he remained all his life.
+
+[Illustration: (_Laurent, photo._)
+
+ GOYA. THE MAJA NUDE.]
+
+Italy, whither he fled on account of a duel, did not alter him. There
+were new love quarrels. He fought, stabbed a rival, was wounded himself,
+amused himself extremely, studied little, observed, admired, but neither
+painted nor copied anything. It was thanks to this indolence that the
+great past did not take him prisoner. He did not know much, but for what
+he knew he could thank himself. He loved the old painters, but
+platonically; their works did not lead him astray. In this lies the
+explanation of his qualities and his faults: that marvellous mixture of
+seductive grace and visible weakness, of subtlety and brutality, of
+refinement and ignorance. He merits equally sympathy and blame, is as
+genial as he is unequal. But one would not wish him to be otherwise: if
+there had been more order and proportion in his works his good qualities
+would have been lost. He would have suffered in spontaneity, vivacity,
+originality, and quietly taken his anchorage in the sleepy haven of
+mediocrity. As he is, he is wholly the child of his country: from head
+to foot a Spaniard of the eighteenth century, a son of that downfallen
+Spain that was dying from loss of blood. For hundreds of years a black
+cloud, extinguishing all joy, had hung over Spanish life, a cloud out of
+which, only here and there in dismal lightning flashes, there emerged
+obscure figures of sombre despots, sick ascetics, and silent martyrs.
+All mundane inclinations were suppressed, all sensuous desires
+prohibited. Men spent their nights with their eyes fixed upon the gory
+histories and passionate exhortations of the Old Testament, hearing in
+imagination the menacing, thunderous voice of a dreadful God, until at
+last in their own hearts the fanatical inspiration of the prophetic seer
+awoke anew, and their feverish forms were torn asunder by ecstatic
+visions and religious hallucinations. When Goya began his career the
+sinister country of the Inquisition had grown frivolous. A breath of
+revolution was passing over men's minds. An intoxicating odour of
+mundane voluptuousness penetrated everywhere, even into the convents
+themselves; the figures of the French Rococo Olympus had brought
+confusion into the Christian paradise. Spain no longer believed; it
+laughed at the Inquisition, trembled no more when it was threatened with
+the pains of Hell. It had grown frivolous, wanton, epicurean, full of
+grace and laughter. The rosy-red and blue shepherds of the Trianon had
+made an entry into the sombre Court of Aranjuez. Literature, taste, and
+art were infected by French influences, Parisian sparks of wit,
+lightning _esprit_, and Parisian immorality; and the same rumbling
+earthquake which wrecked the throne of France was soon to shatter that
+of Spain. In Goya's works there is a refulgence of all this. But, like
+every great artist, he is not only the expression of his epoch, but also
+its leader; he almost anticipates the age which shall succeed it. Like a
+figure of Janus, on the border-line between two centuries, standing in a
+manner between two worlds, he was the last of the old masters and the
+first of the moderns--even in that special sense in which we employ the
+word to-day.
+
+[Illustration: GOYA. DE QUE MAL MORIRA.
+
+ _From "Los Capriccios."_]
+
+Through a commission to design cartoons for the Spanish manufactories of
+tapestry, he was brought into contact with the Court. Member of the
+Academy of San Fernando in 1780, Pintor del Rey, with an income of
+12,500 francs in 1786, he became soon afterwards the Director of the
+Madrid Academy--the drollest Director of an Academy that man can
+imagine! Goya, the peasant youth, with his bull neck and matador-like
+strength, lived at the Spanish Court in the midst of the enervated
+scions of a dissolute aristocracy, who, with their sickly and anæmic
+features, indolent and impotent, skulked through life, young men
+prematurely old. Naturally he was the idol of the women, hated by the
+courtiers on account of his caustic wit, a terror to all husbands
+because of his perpetual intrigues, and at the same time feared as the
+best swordsman in Madrid, who drew his rapier with the indifference with
+which we light a cigarette.
+
+It is only as the outcome of such a personality that his works are to be
+understood.
+
+[Illustration: GOYA. SOPLONES.
+
+ _From "Los Capriccios."_]
+
+Goya was far too great a sceptic to put a religious sentiment into
+matters in which he no longer believed; his talent was far too modern
+for the religious abstraction to be able to seize him. His "Christ on
+the Cross," therefore, in the Museo del Prado, is simply tedious, a bad
+academical study. His frescoes in San Antonio de la Florida, at Madrid,
+exhibit a pretty, decorative motive--considerable movement, grace, and
+spirit. But amongst them are angels who sit there most irreverently,
+and, with a laugh of challenge, throw out their legs _à la_ Tiepolo. The
+chief picture represents St. Antony of Padua raising a man from the
+dead. But all that interested him in it were the lookers-on. On a
+balustrade all around he has brought in the lovely, dainty faces of
+numerous ladies of the court, his _bonnes amies_, who lean their elbows
+on the balcony and coquette with the people down below. Their plump,
+round, white hands play meaningly with their fans; a thick cluster of
+ringlets waves over their bared shoulders; their sensual eyes languish
+with a seductive fire; a faint smile plays round their voluptuous lips.
+Several seem only just to have left their beds, and their vari-coloured,
+gleaming silks are crumpled. One is just arranging her coiffure, which
+has come undone and falls over her rosy bosom; another, with a
+languishing unconsciousness and a careless attitude, is opening her
+sleeve, whose soft, deep folds expose a snow-white arm. There is much
+_chic_ in this Church picture. One very immodest angel is supposed to be
+the portrait of the Duchess of Alba, who was famed for her numerous
+intrigues.
+
+[Illustration: GOYA. SE REPULEN.
+
+ _From "Los Capriccios."_]
+
+In his portraits, too, he is unequal. He became the fashionable painter
+at the court. The politicians, poets, scholars, great ladies, actresses,
+all the famous folk of his epoch, sat to him. He daubed more than two
+hundred portraits; but they were good only when the subject amused him.
+His portraits of the Royal Family have something vicious and plebeian.
+He is too little in earnest, too little of an official, to paint court
+pictures. One might imagine that he with difficulty restrained himself
+from laughing at the pompous futility which stood before him. It
+irritated him to be obliged to paint these great lords and ladies in
+poses so ceremonial, instead of making them, like the angels of San
+Antonio, throw up their legs and skip over parapets. The Queen, Marie
+Louise, is frankly grotesque; and the family of Charles IV look like the
+family of a shopkeeper who have won the big prize in a lottery, and been
+photographed in their Sunday clothes. But, ah! when something gives him
+pleasure! In the Exhibition of Portraits at Paris, in 1885, there was
+the portrait of a young man, dressed in gray, which excelled
+Gainsborough for grace. With what a noble nonchalance this young elegant
+stands there, reminding one, in attitude and costume, of the
+_incroyables_ of Charles Vernet. With what equanimity does he look out
+on life, in his satisfaction at the good fit of his clothes. The
+wonderful harmony of the grey tones was rendered with all Gainsborough's
+delicacy. The same man who in those pictures of ceremony let himself go
+in a manner so brusque and frenzied, here revelled, a very Proteus in
+his chameleon-like qualities, in soft and mellow and seductive tones.
+One might say that he has thought here of Prudhon and Greuze, and joined
+their study to the cult of Velasquez.
+
+[Illustration: GOYA. QUE PICO DE ORO!
+
+ _From "Los Capriccios."_]
+
+Still more charming was he in his pictures of young girls, when he was
+himself fascinated by the attractions of his subjects. The infantile
+Donna Maria Josefa (at the Prado) and the twelve-year-old Queen Isabella
+of Sicily (at Seville) are admirable pictures. In them the candour and
+grace of budding youth, the whole poetry of young maidenhood, have won
+life and expression from the enamoured tenderness of an artist hand.
+Seduced by beauty, he renounced all irony, thought only of those big,
+wide-opened eyes of velvet, those rosy young lips; of that warm
+carnation and the elegant slimness of that soft young neck that rose in
+delicate contour from the shoulders. Or again, that marvellous double
+portrait of La Maja in the Academy of San Fernando: a young girl painted
+once clothed and once nude, both pictures in exactly the same pose, and
+both flooded with the same extraordinary sensuous charm. This is not the
+uncertain, sarcastic painter of those State pictures. It is an attentive
+observer, who depicts with sensitive devotion the harmonious lines of
+the irradiating, young, human body so worthy of celebration. The
+transparent stuff that covers the body of "La Maja clothed" reveals all
+that it hides; in the other picture the unveiled nudity sings the high
+pæan of the flesh. The drawing is sure, the modelling of a marvellous
+tenderness. The heaving bosom, the slender limbs, the tantalising
+eyes--every part of that nervous body, with its ivory whiteness,
+stretched out on the milk-white couch made for love, breathes of
+pleasure and voluptuousness.
+
+In pictures of this kind Goya is wholly one of us. Grown independent of
+every traditional rule, he abandoned himself entirely to his own
+impressions, and produced enduring works, vibrating with life, because
+he was himself fascinated with nature. He showed here an idea of
+modernity that almost makes him seem a contemporary of our own--that
+zeal for the pictorial, for colour and light, which attracts us so much
+to-day. Very characteristic also of the changed aspect of the age are
+his designs for the famous tapestry in Santa Barbara, with which he made
+his début at Madrid. They are very crude in decoration. Two or three
+neat young girls, with big, black, moist eyes, here and there pleasing
+details--a couple of men carrying a wounded companion--are unable to
+gloss over the heaviness of the composition and colour. But it was of
+great consequence that Goya should have had courage for so bold a step
+as to make use of character scenes in decorative painting at a time when
+everywhere else, without exception, _fêtes champêtres_ predominated.
+
+[Illustration: GOYA. VOLAVERUNT.
+
+ _From "Los Capriccios."_]
+
+In his oil paintings he went much further in this direction. In that
+impetuous manner peculiar to him he endeavoured to get a firm grip on
+the pictorial side of Spanish life, at home and in the streets, wherever
+he found it. The most fearful subjects--such as the two great slaughter
+scenes in the French invasion, painted with such breadth and
+fierceness--alternate with incidents of the liveliest character.
+Everything is jotted down, under the immediate influence of what has
+been observed, by rapid methods, and on this account produces an effect
+of sketches taken with complete directness from nature. In those
+careless pictures, swept with large strokes of the brush, there rises
+before us the mad drama of public holiday in the streets and in the
+circus: processions, bull-fights, brigands, the victims of the plague,
+assassinations, scenes of gallantry, national types--all observed with
+the acuteness of a Menzel. The Majas on the balcony in the Montpensier
+Gallery, the "Breakfast on the Grass," the "Flower Girl," the "Reaper,"
+the "Return from Market," the "Cart attacked by Brigands," are the most
+piquant, vividly coloured of these pictures. The "Romeria de San
+Isidoro" is full of such a sparkling, stirring life as the most modern
+of the impressionists alone have learned again to paint. A few dashes of
+colour, a few well-placed, bold strokes of the brush, and at once one
+sees the procession move, the groups passing each other by just as, in
+the marvellous sketches of the funeral of Sardina, in the Academy of
+San Fernando, one can see the young couples revolve madly in the dance,
+and the lances of the bull-fighters redden the sand of the arena.
+
+The superabundance of such phantasy could not, of course, be achieved by
+the tardy brush. He required a quicker medium, that would permit him to
+express everything. Therefore he executed his numerous etchings, by
+which he was rendered famous, before people had learnt to appreciate him
+as a painter: the "Capriccios," the "Malheurs de la Guerre," the
+"Bull-fights," the "Captives"--those marvellous and fantastic pages in
+which he expressed everything that his feverish, satirical soul had
+accumulated for contempt, and hatred, and anger, and scorn. The etcher's
+needle was the poisoned dagger with which he attacked all that he wished
+to attack: tyranny, superstition, intrigue, adultery, honour that is
+sold and beauty that lets itself be bought, the arrogance of the great
+and the degrading servility of the little. He made an awful and jovial
+hecatomb of all the vices and the scandals of the age. Whomsoever he
+pilloried was laid bare in all respects; physically and morally, no
+single trait of him was forgotten. And he did it so wittily that he
+compelled even the offended person to laugh. Neither Charles IV himself,
+nor the Court, nor the Inquisition, which bled most beneath his thrusts,
+dared to complain.
+
+[Illustration: GOYA. QUIEN LO CREYERA!
+
+ _From "Los Capriccios."_]
+
+In his "Capriccios" Goya stands revealed as a figure without even a
+forerunner in the history of art. Satirical representations of popular
+superstitions, bitter, mordant attacks on the aristocracy, the
+government, and all social conditions, unprecedented assaults on the
+crown, on religion and its doctrines, inexorable satires upon the
+Inquisition and the monastic orders, make up this most remarkable book.
+It had hardly appeared in 1796 before the Inquisition seized it. Goya
+parried this stroke, however, by dedicating the plates to the king.
+
+A painter and a colorist, in this book he displays his genius as an
+etcher. The outlines are drawn with light and genial strokes only; then
+comes the _aquatinta_, the colouring which overspreads the background,
+and gives localisation, depth, and light. A few scratches of the needle,
+a black spot, a light produced by a spot of white ingeniously left
+blank--that sufficed to give life and character to his figures.
+
+[Illustration: GOYA. LINDA MAESTRA!
+
+ _From "Los Capriccios."_]
+
+The "Misères de la Guerre" are intrinsically more serious. All the
+scenes of terror that occurred in Spain as a sequel to the French
+invasion and the glory of Napoleon here utter their cry of lamentation.
+A few plates amongst them are worthy of comparison with the finest of
+Rembrandt's,--the sole classic for whom Goya cherished a veneration. All
+the undertakings which followed these--the "Bull-fights," the
+"Proverbs," the "Captives," the fantastic landscapes--tell of a long
+study of the great Dutch master. Especially celebrated were the
+seventeen new plates which he added to the "Malheurs de la Guerre" in
+1814, at the time of the restoration of Ferdinand VII. They are the
+political and philosophical testament of the old liberal, the keen
+free-thinker, the last and utmost fight for all that he loved against
+all that he hated. With sacred wrath and biting irony he waged war
+against the intrigues and hypocrisy of the obscurantists who throttle
+progress and suppress freedom of thought. With passionate wrath he
+rushed upon kings, priests, and dignitaries. It seems incredible that
+the plate entitled "Nada"--a dead man, who comes out of his grave and
+writes with his corpse-fingers the word "Nada" (nothing)--that this
+plate can be the work of a Spaniard of the eighteenth century.
+Everywhere there is the same hatred of tyranny, of social injustice, of
+human stupidity, the same incredulous effort after a dimly conceived
+ideal of truth and liberty.
+
+It is neither the amiable fairyland of Callot nor the _bourgeois_
+pessimism of Hogarth. Goya is more inexorable and acute; his phantasy,
+borne on larger wings, takes a higher flight. He sees direful figures in
+his dreams, his laugh is bitter, his anger rancorous. He is a
+revolutionist, an agitator, a sceptic, a nihilist. His _chronique
+scandaleuse_ grows into the epos of the age. One understands why such a
+man should no longer feel secure in Spain, and, towards the close of his
+life, go into exile in France.
+
+There, too, in the home of the revolution, art, ever since the beginning
+of the century, had freed herself more from the tradition of the
+Renaissance, and betaken herself to the new way, which the Dutch, and
+soon afterwards the English, had laid down in the seventeenth century.
+
+[Illustration: GOYA. DEVOTA PROFESION.
+
+ _From "Los Capriccios."_]
+
+All that had been produced in Paris, up to the close of the seventeenth
+century, had had its birthplace in the Italy of Leo X. The light of the
+Italian Renaissance had suffused France ever since the appearance of
+Rosso and Primaticcio. Rome had been the cradle of Simon Vouet and
+Nicolas Poussin. France endeavoured, in rich decoration and masterly
+swing of lines, to overtop the Italians, whose formulæ were studied
+partly in Rome and partly in the Palace of Fontainebleau, that Rome _in
+petto_. Those religious pictures of Lebrun, arranged in panels, appeared
+with their theatrically elegant attitudes and their flowing drapery,
+with their slim, oscillating limbs and their florid gestures. All
+Olympus, all the saints and the heroes, were set to work to do honour to
+the great king. Was it necessary to glorify his acts, then it was done
+by portraying him as Cyrus or Alexander. The people of the seventeenth
+century did not exist for painters. Lebrun and Mignard, as inheritors of
+Roman culture, hovered over life without seeing it. Their ideals were a
+hundred and fifty years old, ingenious variations on the
+sixteenth-century pattern.
+
+Then came the death of the _Grand Monarque_, and with him the tradition
+of the Renaissance went also to its grave. The old age was outworn, and
+the new began to supersede it. The world was weary of the majestic, the
+stiff, and the pompous, whose glamour had blinded it for sixty years.
+The sun-king was dead, and the sun of the Italian Renaissance had set.
+French society breathed once more. The ostentation of the court had
+become an onerous ceremony, the monarchical principle an unendurable
+constraint. The nightmare that had oppressed it, the ennui that had come
+from Versailles, disappeared. Air and light and mirth penetrated the
+salons. People shook off the heavy yoke of majesty from their shoulders,
+abandoned their heroic, ostentatious palaces, and bought themselves
+_petites maisons_ in the _Bois_. They had suffered, they wished to be
+glad; they had been bored, they wished to be amused. Enough of
+pater-nosters and stately etiquette! they wished to live. Away with the
+antique temples and goddesses of Poussin! away with those devoted
+martyrs who mortified themselves and killed the flesh! Away with the
+semblance of the heroic, with pomp and glamour, with the service of God
+and the service of lords! Here's to the service of the ladies. Here's to
+the thatched roofs of farmhouses; the woods in whose thickets one can
+lose one's way and exchange a kiss; rosy flesh and little turned-up
+noses; everything which gave a thrill of voluptuousness after the
+unapproachable, icy-cold nobility of the past. Long live Love!
+
+[Illustration: "_L'Art._"
+
+ GOYA. OTRES LEYES POR EL PUEBLO.]
+
+So thought France when Louis XIV was dead, and the man was already grown
+up in the Low Countries who was chosen to give a shape to these dreams,
+to abolish the ascendency of gods and kings and heroes, and to show the
+upper classes their own image reflected in the mirror of art.
+
+_Antoine Watteau_, who guided the stream of French art into this new
+channel--of the Netherlands--was by birth and training a Fleming. His
+birthplace, Valenciennes, although French territory since the Peace of
+Nymeguen, resembled in its whole character a Flemish town. In the church
+here he first saw any of Rubens' pictures. Here, through Gérin, he
+became instructed in Flemish traditions. Rubens and Teniers are the two
+masters from whom his own art sprang. During the years when the war of
+the Spanish Succession had changed the French frontier provinces into a
+huge military camp, he painted soldiers and camp scenes, such as the
+"March" in the collection of Edmund Rothschild, where a party of
+recruits are straggling along a high plain in a fierce storm. Later came
+pictures of country life in the manner of Teniers, like the "Retour de
+Guinguette," engraved by Chedel, a landscape in which on the right a
+party of rustics are carousing at a table in front of a farmyard, while
+on the other side half-drunken men and women are going home. Louis XIV
+had made before the pictures of Teniers his well-known _mot_: "_Otez moi
+ces magots_." Now, through Watteau, the _magot_ makes its entrance into
+French art. Thus in his chief picture in this manner, "La Vraie Gaieté,"
+the figures are unmistakably after Teniers. The men are short and
+sturdy, entirely Flemish. Only the costumes have changed with the mode.
+But the women are not in the least Flemish. The clean caps and tidy
+kerchiefs, the freshly ironed aprons, and neat little feet that trip so
+lightly and quickly along the street that no dirt seems to soil them,
+give these peasant girls a certain desirability in which it is not hard
+to discover the transition to French grace. The elegant motions and fine
+heads point to that Watteau who was to become soon afterwards the
+unsurpassable delineator of feminine coquetry.
+
+Gillot and Rubens led him into the new road. The Teniers-like character
+of his figures disappeared, they became gracious and noble. In place of
+the _magot_ came elegant French society. Gillot was the first in Paris
+to break with the pompous Louis XIV style, and to begin the
+representation of the cheerful life of comedians, to replace the
+dwellers in Olympus by characters of the French and Italian stage.
+Rubens had been the first in his "Garden of Love," of the Dresden and
+Madrid Galleries, to invite to the embarkation for the Island of
+Cythera. Watteau acquired something from everyone he studied, and yet
+resembles none. After having hitherto sought his personages on the
+highways and in camps, he was now to become the painter of _fêtes
+galantes_, the painter of "Society." For in his shepherds and
+shepherdesses there lives the elegance of France. The gods of the
+Renaissance, in whom no one any longer believed, glided into the
+costumes of Harlequin and Pierrette. In lieu of the great and the
+pathetic there came the small, the gay, the graceful, the dainty. The
+architectural symmetry of composition disappeared, and the stiff
+stage-scenery character of landscape vanished. The grave formality of
+geometrical construction is changed into freedom and joyousness, just as
+the rhetorical, exact, measured periods of Boileau were relaxed, under
+the hands of Voltaire, into sentences unconstrained, buoyant, and crisp.
+Watteau's art betokened the triumph of naturalism over the mannerism
+into which the French art of the seventeenth century, based on the
+Italian Renaissance, had dwindled. As it is said in an old poem--
+
+ "Parée à la Françoise, un jour Dame Nature
+ Eut le desir coquet de voir sa portraiture.
+ Que fit la bonne mère? Elle enfanta Watteau."
+
+Watteau became for French art what, a hundred years before, Rubens had
+been for Flemish--the deliverer. He delivered them from the oppressive
+yoke of the Italian tradition. In his world, where there were no longer
+any naked goddesses, but where the corset was opened only just wide
+enough to reveal a rosy bosom, there was nothing more left of the past.
+It is no longer antique beauty, no longer the plastic cold of the "Venus
+di Milo," no longer the marble perfection of Raphael's "Galatea." Into
+those tender, feminine hands, into those lace sleeves, out of which
+snow-white arms come languishingly forth, into those slender waists, and
+teasing, dimpled chins, something of coquetry, of sensibility, something
+subtle and spiritual, has entered, that seems to transcend physical
+beauty. His young men are tall and supple, his women entirely
+indescribable, with their air of quiet roguishness and their exquisite
+coiffures. Quite modern is that distinguished sense for costume which
+made him a leader of fashion. Mysterious landscapes, that exhale peace
+and happiness all around! Rightly has Edmond de Goncourt called him a
+lyric poet, the great poet of the eighteenth century.
+
+[Illustration: ANTOINE WATTEAU.]
+
+[Illustration: WATTEAU. LA PARTIE CARRÉE.]
+
+In this way the development proceeded. The pompous representation which
+portrait painting had practised hitherto was gone. People would no
+longer be masters of the ceremonies, but human beings. New forms of
+technique were discovered, such as pastel painting. No other material
+was capable of rendering the peculiar fragrance of this fugitive flower
+nature, the graceful appearance of this _rococo_ style, of these ladies
+with the touch of powder in their hair, and their moist, dreamy eyes, as
+Maurice Latour, Rosalba Carriera, and later the Swiss, Liotard, painted
+them. Of those who endeavoured, on the model of Watteau's style, to
+depict the life of the fashionable world, none approached the delicacy
+of that national genius. _Lancret_ and _Pater_ followed him, but more
+roughly, more soberly, more drily. Lancret in his whole conception,
+compared with Watteau, is a homely, often a somewhat cumbrous
+journeyman; Pater, an artist of greater elegance, has the fickleness of
+the virtuoso. Both in conviction and in art they lacked that poetic,
+glorifying breath which pervades Watteau's creations. In Watteau one
+_believes_ that these gracious beings, these tall and nervous cavaliers,
+these amiable coquettes and comely women, actually represent originals
+in noble society; whereas in the works of his disciples it often happens
+that the paid model, selected from a lower circle of society, appears to
+us to be not congruous with the elegance of her wardrobe. These dancers,
+huntsmen, and noble maidens are not wholly what they should represent.
+But how delicious they are, these French gossips, so long as one is
+mindful _not_ to think of Watteau! What grace is theirs too! What innate
+tact! With what a pleasant adroitness do they understand how to rivet
+our attention, and to keep far, far away from the tedium in which their
+classical ancestors, with their natural heaviness, waded! Instinctively
+and without effort they rejected the rhythmically balanced composition
+and correct nobility of form of the classics, and found a characteristic
+expression for unconstrained gestures, pleasing movements, and refined
+elegance.
+
+[Illustration: GREUZE. "_L'Art._"]
+
+Even the decorative painters abandoned more and more the much-worn paths
+of the Italians. _François Lemoine_ gave them, by Rubens' aid, the
+transition to a manner peculiarly French, elegant, sensuous, charming.
+His pupil, _François Boucher_, followed him. Like the sons of the
+seventeenth century, he made exhaustive use of mythological subjects and
+was often a superficial artist, and in his later works he became
+entirely a mannerist; but he was not so at the beginning. It was a great
+advance for France when Boucher gave his pupils the advice to abstain
+from imitation of the great Italian masters, and not to grow "as cold as
+ice." And what a great naturalist he is in his numerous drawings and
+etchings, and in those marvellous groups of chubby children who are
+playing and tumbling about on clouds, or playing musical instruments
+shooting arrows, or sporting with flowers! "It is not every one who has
+the stuff to make a Boucher" even his great antagonist David has said of
+him.
+
+In _Fragonard_, again, there was summed up all the joy of life and the
+frivolity, the lustrous, luxurious talent, the charming amiability and
+nimble sureness, of French art in the eighteenth century. Fragonard has
+painted everything. His great decorations are careless inspirations,
+sparkling with spirit and life. With him pastoral scenes alternate with
+episodes of everyday life--children, guitar players, women reading.
+Fragonard is a piquant, ingenious painter. Perhaps hardly any other
+painter has so much kissing in his pictures. His etching, "L'armoire,"
+of 1778, is well known. In that he already stood on the sure ground of
+popular life. The old rustic, who is armed with a formidable cudgel, is
+beating open, with the assistance of his wife, the doors of a great
+clothes cupboard, in which a handsome young fellow has hidden himself;
+close by is a pretty farm girl, weeping in confusion into her apron; in
+the background the curious and amazed little sisters are looking on.
+
+[Illustration: GREUZE. THE MILKMAID.]
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ GREUZE. HEAD OF A GIRL.]
+
+_J. F. de Troy_ had, at the same time, abandoned himself to a more
+frolicsome manner, had played upon painting in pictures such as "The
+Proposal of Marriage" and "The Garter" with something of that frivolity
+which later came into fashion through Baudouin. That, however, was only
+for a very short time. Life was beginning to be in earnest--that is
+rather the impression one receives much earlier, from turning over the
+engravings of those years. Amongst the elders of the actual _rococo_
+age, contentment and gaiety still rule. As the heirs of an old
+civilisation, the aristocracy understood, with a refined and unique
+understanding, how to turn life into a feast. Silk trains rustle over
+the parquet, silk shoes trip, eyes gleam, diamonds flash, white bosoms
+heave. Tall cavaliers advance to their sprightly partners, gossip and
+smiles fly around, Knights of Malta and abbés hang over the chairs and
+pay their court. Yes, this autumn of the old French culture was of a
+marvellous beauty for the fortunate, and those fortunate ones knew, as
+no other generation has ever done, how to enjoy life with serenity, in a
+fairy glamour of rooms gleaming with Venetian chandeliers, where rosy
+Cupidons laughed down bewitchingly from their light, gold moulded
+panels. Under Louis XVI the French salon acquired another aspect. Its
+walls, its whole architecture, were more sombre. The Cupidons still
+sported on the ceiling, but they were forgotten, like ghosts of the
+past; their shafts were already impotent. The vivacious, dancing couples
+have disappeared. Festivity has been banished from the big rooms: here
+and there is seen an earnest conversational party; gentlemen playing
+cards or ladies reading philosophical books. Social and political
+interests have sprung up with which people of education prefer to occupy
+themselves. Numerous works on commerce and constitutional methods have
+appeared during the last fifty years. In place of scandal there crop up
+arguments, for and against the Parliament, for and against the Jesuits.
+Enlightenment had won its victory. Henceforth development is no longer
+compatible with sensuous delight. It is still the same society as
+before, but without pleasure. One almost breathes the air of 1789.
+Gaming is only a struggle against ennui; the foreheads of women are
+furrowed with reading. Society has grown serious and sombre, as it were,
+with a presentiment of what is to come, as though destiny might thus be
+set aside. The writings of Diderot afford the clearest instance of this
+changed spirit of the age, and art too must become virtuous, and work
+for the amelioration of the world. Thus Diderot upheld the sentimental
+and emotional subject against the _fêtes galantes_ of the _rococo_
+painter. Boucher derived his inspiration from the slough of
+prostitution; only a moral upheaval could tend to a high style. With
+Boucher the idea of honour, of innocence, has become something strange;
+the new age requires virtue, _bonnes moeurs_. But where are the virtues
+to be found? Naturally, there alone, where Rousseau had discovered them.
+Rousseau taught that man by nature was good, that he was noble,
+conscious of his moral obligations, self-sacrificing and uncorrupted
+when he came from the hands of his Maker, and that it was civilisation
+which first corrupted him. It followed that the most civilised are the
+most corrupt, and virtues are to be met with, if anywhere, amongst the
+lower orders, who are the least affected by culture. Not beneath an
+embroidered waistcoat, only beneath a woollen smock, can a noble heart
+beat. The happy ignorance of the young Savoyard, eating his cheese or
+his oranges in a church porch, lies nearer to the original perfection of
+mankind than the most subtle erudition of the most ingenious of the
+encyclopædists. Amongst nature's noblemen one must seek for the secret
+of virtue, which has been lost by the aristocracy in the stream of
+civilisation. Thus beneath the ægis of Rousseau's philosophy the Third
+Estate makes its entry into French salons. From the man of the people
+society wanted to learn how to become once more simple, unassuming, and
+virtuous; and it was a gruesome irony of fate that this "man of the
+people" should reveal himself later, when the guillotine stood in the
+Place de la Concorde, as by no means so lamblike, modest, and
+self-sacrificing as that noble society had imagined him.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ GREUZE. GIRL CARRYING A LAMB.]
+
+_Greuze_ represented this phase of French art when the riotous carnival
+of _rococo_ had come to an end, and the Ash Wednesday of rule and
+fasting and penitence had ensued. It was considered that the aim of art
+must be to instruct and elevate, not merely to amuse; it should set an
+example to raise and inspire the good, to serve as a warning for the
+bad. "_Rendre la vertu aimable, le vice odieux, le ridicule saillant,
+voilà le projet de tout honnête homme qui prend la plume, le pinceau ou
+le ciseau._" In these words Diderot formulated his programme. It was his
+wish that the corrupt man, when he went to an exhibition, should feel
+pricks of conscience at the pictures and read in them his own
+condemnation. "_Si ses pas le conduisent au Salon, qu'il craigne
+d'arrêter ses regards sur la toile._" Educational effects, "moral
+stories told in pictures," that is the keynote of Diderot's demands upon
+the painter, and of the accomplishment of Greuze in answer to this
+claim. He is the French Hogarth, whether he paints in sombre colours the
+misery that the drunkard brings upon his family, and the horrors of
+poverty, or depicts in brighter tones the love of children for their
+parents and the works of charity; and with him too, as with the
+Englishman, his title was chosen with a didactic after-thought to
+heighten the effect of his picture. Thus such scenes as these occurred:
+"The Father's Curse," "The Consolation of Age," "The Son's Correction,"
+"The Ungrateful Son," "The Beloved Mother," "The Spoilt Child," "The
+Lame Man tended by his Relations," and "The Results of Good Education."
+He had this, too, in common with Hogarth: he liked to develop his moral
+stories in long series, which invariably ended with the triumph of
+virtue and the punishment of vice. The didactic story of _Bazile et
+Thibaut_ attempted to relate in twenty-six chapters the influence of a
+good education on the formation of a whole life; and, just as in
+Hogarth's story of the two apprentices, here too, at the conclusion, the
+well-educated Thibaut pronounces sentence of death over his old friend
+Bazile, the badly educated, and now condemned murderer. The fact that in
+other things the two moral apostles differ greatly from each other is
+accounted for by the difference in the national characteristics of those
+to whom they variously appealed.
+
+Hogarth _scourged_ the vices of the Third Estate in order to raise them
+to morality. Rape, bloodshed, debauchery, disorderliness, gluttony, and
+drunkenness--that was the channel through which in England at that day
+the furious flood of the uncontrolled spirit of the populace poured
+itself, foaming and raging with fearful natural force. Hogarth swung
+over these human animals the stout cudgel of morality in the manner of a
+sturdy policeman and Puritan _bourgeois_. With such people a delicate
+forbearance would have been misplaced. At the foot of every prison-scene
+he inscribed the name of the vice that he had pilloried there, and
+subjoined the predicted damnation from Holy Writ. He reveals it in its
+hideousness, he steeps it in its filth, traces it to its retribution, so
+that even the most vitiated conscience must recognise it and the most
+hardened abhor it.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ GREUZE. GIRL LOOKING UP.]
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ GREUZE. GIRL WITH AN APPLE.]
+
+Greuze employs the Third Estate as a _mirror of virtue_, sets forth its
+noble qualities as an edification to an aristocracy that has grown
+vicious. Less primitive and, for that very reason, less original than
+Hogarth, he never forgets that he lives in the most refined social
+period in history. He does not strangle his culprits to provide
+terrifying examples, but nearly always leaves a corner open for
+repentance. He knew that he dared not exact too much from the nerves of
+his noble public; he merely wished to stir them to a soft vibration. He
+did not paint for drunken English people, but for those perfumed
+marquises who, later on, bowed with so courtly an elegance before the
+guillotine; for those sensitive ladies in whom virtue now excited the
+same sensual delight that vice had done before. They welcomed in him the
+high priest of a sort of orgie of virtue, to whose festivals they had
+grown reconciled. The century which in its first half had danced as
+light-heartedly as any other the can-can of life, becomes, in its second
+half, sad of soul, enthusiastic over the reward of justice, the
+punishment of transgressors, over honour and the naïveté of innocence.
+Time after time do his contemporaries praise precisely that sense of
+virtue in the art of Greuze. So that in France, as in England, the
+burden of interest was laid no longer upon the art, but upon an
+accessory circumstance. For since, in the hands of Greuze, the picture
+had been turned into an argument, in France, as in England, art ceased
+to be an end--it became only a means. He made painting a didactic poem,
+the more melodramatic the better, and was driven thereby on the same
+sandbank upon which Hogarth, and all _genre_ painters who _would be_
+more than painters, have made shipwreck. In order to bring out his story
+with the utmost possible distinctness, he was too frequently compelled
+unduly to accentuate his point. The effect became affected, the pathos
+theatrical. His picture of the "Father's Curse" in the Louvre, with the
+infuriated old man, the son hurrying wildly away, and the weeping
+sisters, resembles the last act of a melodrama. "The Country Wedding,"
+where the father-in-law has given the young bridegroom the purse with
+the dowry, and now pathetically observes, "Take it, and be happy," might
+just as well have been entitled "The Father's Last Blessing." In the
+picture in which a noble dame takes her daughter to the bedside of two
+poor persons who are ill, to accustom her in early life to works of
+charity, the personages in the picture, arranged exactly as if upon a
+stage, must have been themselves uncommonly moved by the touching and
+praiseworthy action. Greuze was the father of _genre_ painting in
+France--that barbaric, story-telling art which replaced _tableaux
+vivants_ based upon the literary idea by the Dutchmen's picturesque and
+well-observed selections from nature. Beyond that, however, it must not
+be forgotten that he, like Hogarth, psychologically opposed to the
+earlier art, showed practical progress in many of his works. There were
+few in French art before him who depicted the emotions of the soul with
+such refinement as Greuze in his "Reading of the Bible." In proportion
+to the understanding and character of the individual is the impression
+of the listener reflected on his countenance. That was something new in
+comparison with the laughing gods of Boucher. And that Greuze was also
+capable of the most highly _pictorial_ magic when he could once bring
+himself to lay aside the moral teacher is proved by his rosy, inspired
+heads of young girls. He never grew weary of painting these pretty
+children in every situation and attitude at that seductive age which
+hides the charming feet beneath the first long gown. Blonde or brunette,
+with a blue ribbon in the hair, a little cluster of flowers in the
+bodice, they gaze out upon life with their big, brown child eyes, full
+of curiosity and misgiving. A light gauze covers the soft lines of the
+neck, the shoulders are as yet hardly rounded, the pouting lips are
+fresh as the morning dew, and only the two rosy, budding breasts, that
+fight lustily against their imprisonment, and seem, like Sterne's
+starling, to cry, "I cannot get out," betray that the woman is already
+awake in the child. Greuze's name will always be associated with these
+girl types, just as that of Leonardo is with the dreamy, smiling
+sphinx-like head of Mona Lisa. In them he has given an unsurpassable
+expression to the ideal of innocence at the end of the eighteenth
+century, and provided in them a new thrill of beauty for his
+contemporaries. And a _blasé_ society which had indulged in every
+licence bathed itself with passionate delight in the unknown mystery of
+this surging flood. Yes, after the stimulating champagne of _rococo_,
+people had even come to delight in simple black bread. And so, out of
+_bourgeoisie_ itself, a school of painting was developed as fresh and
+healthy as this.
+
+[Illustration: _"Gaz. des Beaux Arts."_
+
+ CHARDIN. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.]
+
+_Chardin_, the carpenter's son, is at the head of this domestic art in
+the eighteenth century. After Greuze, the painter of refined taste, he
+seems, a comfortable, healthy, _bourgeois_ master in whom the Dutchman
+of the best period once more appears upon earth.
+
+After the king had, up to the close of the seventeenth century, been the
+centre round which everything turned, the solitary personality which
+dared to appear independent, and upon which the rest of the world formed
+itself; after the circles round the court had next freed themselves, and
+gained the right to enjoy life and art for themselves, there still
+remained a third step to surmount. "Society" abdicates in favour of a
+free and healthy _bourgeoisie_.
+
+A surgeon's sign was the first work which brought the young man, who had
+received no systematic education, into notice. The surgeon is in his
+shop attending to a man who has been wounded in a duel, grouped around
+are curious bystanders, while the commissary of police investigates the
+case with a grave countenance. It is the first picture of the Parisian
+life of the people. And Chardin, with his middle-class origin, remained
+the advocate of middle-class domestic life. He is the Watteau of the
+Third Estate. Greuze owes his success, in the first place, to the
+ingenious manner in which he made himself the spokesman of the moral
+tendency of his age. It interested contemporary society to be told that
+it is beautiful to see married folk live together in happiness; that
+young mothers do a good action in nursing their children, when it is
+possible, themselves; that man should repent of his sins; and that he
+who honours his father and mother lives long in the land. Nowadays we
+thank him for these wise counsels, but say, at the same time, that we
+could have done without them. We no longer see the necessity of
+illustrating the ten commandments, and notice now all the more the
+mannerisms, the rhetorical strokes of advocacy which the painter must
+employ in order to plead successfully. Chardin's effect is as fresh
+to-day as it was a hundred years ago, because he was a sheer artist, who
+did not seek to tell a story, but only to represent,--a realist of the
+finest stamp, belonging in his exquisite sense of colour values to the
+illustrious family of the Terburgs. His pictures have no "purpose." The
+washerwoman, the woman scraping carrots, the housewife at her manifold
+tasks--that is Chardin's world; the atmosphere in which these figures
+move, the shimmering light that floats in the half-dark kitchen, the
+wealth of sun-rays that play upon the white tablecloths and
+brown-panelled walls--those are his fields of study. Chardin lived in an
+old studio, high up near the roof, a quiet, dark room that was usually
+full of vegetables which he used for his "still life." There was
+something picturesque about the dusty walls where the moist green of
+vegetables mingled so harmoniously with the time-worn, sombre brown of
+the wainscoting, and the white table-cloth was flooded with the silvery
+green which poured in from a little skylight. In this peaceful and
+harmoniously toned chamber were laid those small domestic scenes, which
+he so loved to paint, and which were called by the French, in contrast
+to the _Fétes Galantes_, "_Amusements de la Vie Privée_." The clock
+ticks, the lamp burns, water is boiling on the homely tiled stove. There
+is an effect in every one of his pictures, as though he had lived them
+himself, as if they were reminiscences of something dear to him and
+familiar. In contrast to Greuze he shunned all critical moments, and
+depicted only the quiet life of custom, everyday life as it befell in a
+constant, regular routine. There are no hasty movements with him, no
+catastrophes nor complications; he has a preference for "still life" in
+the world of men, just as in nature. He is _par excellence_ the painter
+of _Intimität_ (intimate life); which is not the same as _a genre_
+painter. Painters who in the manner of _genre_ have depicted domestic
+scenes in rooms are to be found in every school; but how few have known
+how to depict the poetry of the family life with such truth, with such
+an absence of affectation and insipidity! With Chardin art and life
+are interfused.
+
+[Illustration: J. B. S. CHARDIN THE HOUSE OF CARDS]
+
+[Illustration: CHARDIN. GRACE BEFORE MEAT.]
+
+No Dutchman, however, had penetrated into the nursery. Chardin, in
+surprising the child-world at their games, in their joys and sorrows,
+has opened out to art a new province. And with what affectionate
+devotion has he not absorbed himself in the spirit of the little people!
+I know of no one before him who has painted the unconscious spiritual
+life of the child with such discreet tenderness: the little hands that
+grasp at something, the lips that a mother would like to kiss, the
+dreamy wide-open young eyes. In this Chardin is a master. It is not only
+obvious expressions of joy and sorrow, but those refined shades, so
+difficult to seize, of observation, thoughtfulness, consideration, calm
+reflection, quaintness, obstinacy or sulking, which he analyses in the
+eyes of the child. There is the little girl playing with her doll, and
+lavishing on her all the love and care of a tender mother. There is an
+elderly, half-grown-up little lady teaching her younger brother the
+mysteries of the alphabet. Then come the games and the tasks. They build
+card-houses, blow bubbles, or are wholly engrossed in their
+drawing-books and home-lessons. How attentive the little girl is whose
+mother has just given her her first embroidery materials. How charmingly
+embarrassed is the small boy whom she hears his lesson. And what trouble
+she takes in the morning, that her darling shall be clean and tidy when
+he goes to school. In one picture the cap on the little girl's head is
+crooked, and her mother is putting it straight, whilst the child with a
+pretty pride is peeping curiously in the glass. Again, there is the boy
+just saying good-bye. He is neat and well combed; his playthings, too,
+have been nicely tidied up, and his books are under his arm. His mother
+takes his three-cornered hat off again in order to brush it properly.
+When school is over, you see them sitting at dinner. The table is laid
+with a snow-white cloth, and the cook is just bringing in a steaming
+dish. It is touching to see how prettily the small boy clasps his hands
+and says his grace. And when they are again off to afternoon school the
+mother sits alone. She looks charming in her simple house-dress, with
+the loose sleeves, her clean white apron and kerchief, her striped
+petticoat and coquettish cap. Soon she takes her embroidery on her lap
+and stoops forward to take a ball of wool out of her basket. Next she
+sits before the fire in a cosy corner against a folding screen. A
+half-opened book rests in her hand, a tea-cup stands close by, a homely
+atmosphere of the living room hovers round her. Then, like a true
+housewife, she takes up her house-keeping book, or goes into the kitchen
+to help the cook, while she scrapes carrots or scrubs the cooking
+utensils or brings in the meat from the larder. It is all rendered with
+such truth and simplicity that one acquires an affection for Chardin,
+who with his art got to the root of family life and bestowed upon it the
+subtlest gifts of observation and generous comprehension, while none the
+less his domesticity never became commonplace.
+
+[Illustration: DANIEL CHODOWIECKI.]
+
+His contemporary, _Étienne Jeurat_, painted scenes at country fairs, and
+_Jean Baptiste le Prince_ pictures of guardrooms and similar subjects.
+In Holland _Cornelis Troost_ went on parallel lines with him. He
+depicted the life of his age and of his nation--comic scenes, banquets,
+weddings, and the like--in pastels or water colours, and that without
+seeking inspiration from any of the Dutch classics, but with a vivid,
+intelligent comprehension. Even Italian art ended in two "_genre_
+painters," the Venetians Rotari and Pietro Longhi, who have bequeathed
+to us such charming little pictures of the life of that
+age--fortune-tellers, dancing-masters, tailors, apothecaries, little
+boys and girls at play or at their tasks.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ CHODOWIECKI. THE FAMILY PICTURE.]
+
+Germany presented no such great manifestation as Chardin, although there
+too the tendency was the same. There too, after the devastation of the
+Thirty Years' War, a moral, active _bourgeoisie_ had at last sprung up
+that was prepared to take up the line which had been already laid down
+by the English. Lessing was the first in this magnificent struggle for
+evolution. He wrote, in his _Miss Sarah Sampson_, the first German
+tragedy without the support of great mythical or historical heroes, and
+without the stiff ponderousness of the Alexandrine. He declared, like
+Moore, that helmets and diadems do not make tragic heroes; he even in
+his _Minna_ set vividly before the eyes of his contemporaries something
+in the immediate present, the Seven Years' War. And just as Lessing
+liberated the German drama from the jurisdiction of Boileau, so art
+began to mutiny against the classicism which had come in through the
+medium of France, and which had been inherited from the age when it was
+the pride of German courts to be small copies of Versailles.
+
+"How exceedingly abhorrent to me are our berouged puppet painters,"
+cries the young Goethe, in his essay on German style and art, "I could
+not sufficiently protest; they have caught the eyes of the women with
+theatrical poses, false complexions, and gaudy costumes; the wood
+engravings of manly old Albrecht Dürer, at whom tyros scoff, are more
+welcome to me.... Only where intimacy and simplicity exist is all
+artistic vigour to be found, and woe to the artist who leaves his hut to
+squander himself in academic halls of state."
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ CHODOWIECKI. ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF WOMEN.]
+
+_Daniel Chodowiecki_, with all his commonplaceness, is a genuine
+expression of this phase of German art. He in Germany, Hogarth in
+England, and Chardin in France, are products of the same tendency of the
+age. After Lessing had produced in _Minna_ the first domestic German
+tragedy, Chodowiecki, following the road of Hogarth and Chardin, was
+able to become the painter of the German middle class. He is not a
+master of such penetrating strength as they were, but he is no less an
+artist of notable merit. He is certainly no genius--in fact almost a
+handicraftsman, sober and philistine, but, like Hogarth, a self-made man
+who in his whole artistic and personal outlook was rooted in the soil of
+his city and of his age. Berlin society of that day was the basis of his
+art, the daily life of house and street his domain. He began by
+illustrating poems and depicting scenes out of the _Seven Years' War_
+and the _History of Charles the Great_, and went on from that to the
+pleasant, homely life of the small _bourgeoisie_. Himself of the middle
+classes, he chiefly worked for them, and with his sensitive and
+dexterous graving tool he kept the liveliest and most exhaustive
+chronicle of the German _bourgeoisie_ of that age. At times almost too
+reasonable and prosaic, a genuine Nicolai, he has in other plates an
+enchanting freshness, and--which should not be forgotten--is more of an
+artist than Hogarth, since he is neither moralist nor satirist. His
+object, without any moral after-thought, was the true and kindly
+observation of life as displayed in the world around him. He took the
+wholly naïve delight of the genuine artist in turning everything he saw
+into a picture. These chronicles of his have some, it may be but a
+particle, of the spirit of Dürer. Simultaneously, the young _Tischbein_
+delved into the past of the nation, the age of Conradin and the
+Hohenstaufen, with the intention of finding there the simplicity which
+the academic pictures had come to lack; and, later on, he painted in
+Hamburg extremely realistic historical pictures of his own period, such
+as that which is to be found in the Oldenburg Gallery: "Entry of General
+Benigsen into Hamburg, 1814." He did good work too as a portrait
+painter. In his best picture, "Goethe amongst the Ruins of Rome," the
+head of the poet is energetic and full of strength, the colouring of an
+excellent clear grey.
+
+In portrait painting in general, the revolution is reflected with
+especial clearness. The artificial manner that had been copied from the
+seventeenth century, the age of long perukes, gives way, slowly but
+surely, to an ever-growing naturalness, simplicity, and originality. At
+that time, while the spirit of Louis XIV still hovered over everything,
+the passion of the individual to be king in his own sphere had
+penetrated into the family. The honest citizen, therefore, would not let
+himself be painted as such, but only as a prince,--he, himself, in gala
+dress, with a pompous air, as stately as though he were giving an
+audience to the spectator, his wife in silk and gold and lace; she has a
+great mantle of state worn loose over her shoulders and hips, and looks
+down with an assumption of grandeur on her grandchild, who is half
+respectful and half inclined to make fun. The frame is as rich as the
+costume, and probably bears a crown. We are with difficulty persuaded
+that these are pictures of simple citizens, that the man, apart from the
+hours during which he sat to the painter, is an industrious tradesman,
+and the wife, glancing out so haughtily, most probably darned his
+stockings. Their portraits seem to form part of an ancestral gallery.
+
+This age of princely state was followed by that of fraternity. In place
+of berouged and postured portraits with allegorical accessories, there
+appeared simple, unpretentious likenesses of human beings in their
+work-a-day clothes; in place of stiff attitudes, _genre_ motives with
+the easy naturalness of everyday life.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ CHODOWIECKI. THE MORNING COMPLIMENT.]
+
+In Berlin, ever since 1709, _Antoine Pesne_ had been for half a century
+the centre of artistic life, and in his works the revolution may be
+traced. Something familiar and intimate takes the place of that stately
+pomp. The princes, hitherto, had liked to be represented in mediæval
+armour or antique equipment; Pesne painted them in the costume of the
+time. And in his portraits of his friends and his family circle he has
+been still more unconstrained. There is the charming picture of 1718, in
+the New Palace at Potsdam, which shows the painter himself with his wife
+and his two children; the portrait of Schmidt the engraver, in the
+Berlin Museum; and the beautiful picture of 1754 in the collection of
+Colonel Von Berke, at Schemnitz, which depicts him again at the age of
+seventy-one with his two daughters. Pesne is revealed in these
+characteristic portraits, as well as in his character pictures in the
+Dresden Gallery ("The Girl with the Pigeons," 1728, "The Cook with the
+Turkey-hen," 1712), as a thoroughly sane and strong realist, of a kind
+which became almost extinct in Berlin a hundred years later.
+
+In the next generation, in the _Sturm-und-Drang_ period, _Anton Graff_,
+the Swiss, took the lead with his simple, domestic, honest, real
+portraits. It was a happy disposition of fate that Graff's activity
+just corresponded with the great period of the awakening of intellectual
+life in Germany, that Lessing and Schiller, Bodmer and Gessner, Wieland
+and Herder, Bürger and Gellert, Christian Gottfried Körner and Lippert,
+Moses Mendelssohn and Sulzer, and a long succession of other poets and
+scholars of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century,
+found in him a portrait painter whose quick and agile hand left us their
+features in the truest and most authentic manner. What and how robust
+his art is, how clear and plastic the execution of the heads, how adroit
+and infallible the technique!
+
+Besides Graff, there worked in Dresden _Christian Leberecht Vogel_,
+likewise a most independent, picturesque, and sensitive artist, who, if
+only for his pictures of children, deserves a place of honour in the
+history of art in the eighteenth century. In the portrait of his two
+boys, in the Dresden Gallery, the naïveté of child-life is observed with
+such tenderness and rendered with such vigour as only Reynolds
+understood. The boys are sitting close together on the ground. One, in a
+brown frock, is holding a book on his knees, which the other, in a red
+frock, with a whip in his hand, is looking at. The thoughtful expression
+of the little ones is quite charming; the execution broad and strong,
+the colour treatment delightful and tender.
+
+In Munich lived the excellent _Johann Edlinger_, the most industrious of
+these sturdy masters, who were so modest and yet so capable.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ CHODOWIECKI. THE ARTIST'S NURSERY.]
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux Arts._
+
+ ANTOINE PESNE. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF AND DAUGHTERS.]
+
+In the domain of landscape the Continent produced no one who could be
+compared with Gainsborough; but here, too, the English influence made
+itself felt. It can be traced how the same feeling for nature which had
+given birth to Thomson's _Seasons_ and Gainsborough's landscapes,
+afterwards found expression in France and Germany, and dissipated the
+prevailing taste in gardens. The seventeenth century--with the exception
+of the Dutch--had set nature in order with the garden shears. As Lebrun
+in his historical compositions endeavoured to outdo the Italians, so
+Lenôtre's garden style exemplified the perfection and exaggeration of
+the gardens of the Italian Renaissance, which themselves again were laid
+out on the plan of the old Roman gardens from existing descriptions. A
+garden reminded one more of state apartments, which one could only walk
+through with measured steps, quietly and respectfully, than of nature,
+where one is, and dares to be, human. Corresponding to this formally
+planned, correctly measured style of garden there was a school of
+landscape which improved nature on "artistic" principles, and, by the
+arrangement of bits of nature, produced a world peculiarly full of
+style. Landscapes were nicely laid-out parks, which, like the figure
+pictures, made for an abstract beauty of mass and lines, and which, by
+means of accessories, such as classical ruins, would turn one's thought
+to the ancient world. Nature must not, as Batteux taught, be the
+instructor of the artist, but the artist must select the parts and build
+up his picture. Out of many leaves he takes only the most perfectly
+developed, puts only such perfect leaves on one tree, and so obtains a
+perfect tree. Let the essential of his production be _nature choisie_, a
+selection of objects that "are capable of producing agreeable
+impressions"; his aim "_le beau vrai qui est représenté comme s'il
+existait réellement et avec toutes les perfections qu'il peut
+recevoir_." The eighteenth century went back from this "noble,"
+improved nature, step by step to the divine beauty of unimproved nature;
+just as those masters untouched by the Romans, Dürer and Altdorfer,
+Titian and Rubens, Brouwer and Velasquez, had painted her. The great
+Watteau, too, was here for the most part in advance of his age, in that,
+instead of the stiffly designed stage scenery of Poussin, he gave
+Elysian landscapes,--abodes of love, that now glisten in the sunshine of
+the young morning, now are suffused with golden light and the misty
+shadows of the evening twilight. The rose in her young bud is odorous,
+the nightingale sings, the doves coo, the light boughs whisper to the
+soft west wind, bright silver rivulets ripple, the wind sighs through
+the tall branches. Watteau knew nature and loved her, and rendered her
+in her transparent beauty with the intoxicated eyes of a lover. The
+spirit of nature, not of humanity, dominates in his pictures. It is only
+because nature is so lovely that man is so happy.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._ _Photo, Mansell._
+
+ WATTEAU. THE MUSIC PARTY.]
+
+But still more modern is the effect, when instead of painting Elysian
+landscapes with happy inhabitants, he drew mere bits of rural nature,
+poor solitary regions in the neighbourhood of big towns, where
+bricklayers are working on the scaffolding of some house, or peasants
+are riding with their horses over some stony byway. Out of a number of
+spirited drawings, this side of his perception in landscape is
+especially notable in the picture in the New Palace at Potsdam, in the
+left background of which a small stream flows past a farmhouse, whilst
+in front a peasant is laboriously dragging a two-wheeled cart over the
+rough ground.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._ _Photo, Mansell._
+
+ WATTEAU. THE RETURN FROM THE CHASE.]
+
+It is interesting to observe, at that time, after Watteau and his
+English predecessors, the widespread growth of this new feeling for
+nature. Thomson was followed by Rousseau, who, on his lonely wanderings,
+looked with moved eyes at "the gold of the corn crop, the purple of the
+heather, the majesty of the trees, and the wonderful variety of flowers
+and grasses." He delighted in the blossoming of spring, the copses and
+rivulets, the song of birds, shady woods, and the landscapes of autumn,
+where the reapers and vine-dressers were working. He is the author of
+that lively feeling for nature that henceforth was aroused through the
+whole of Europe. A breath of pure mountain air, a wholesome draught of
+fresh water from Lake Leman, were brought suddenly into the sultry
+atmosphere of salons, and filled people's hearts with a new and charming
+sensation when Rousseau's works appeared. It was over with all efforts
+of "stylists" as soon as Rousseau declared that everything was good just
+as it came out of the lap of the universal mother, nature.
+
+[Illustration: WATTEAU. FÊTE CHAMPÈTRE.]
+
+Goethe, the pupil of Rousseau, presages, in his whole conception of
+nature, something of the manifestation of the school of Fontainebleau.
+He had something of Daubigny when, as Werther, he lies on the bank of
+the stream and looks down thoughtfully at the worms and small
+insects. He makes one think of Dupré or Corot when he says: "As nature
+declines upon autumn, within me and around me it grows autumn"; or, "I
+could not now draw so much as a stroke, and I have never been a greater
+painter than at the present moment"; or, "Never have I been happier, nor
+has my perception of nature, down to the pebble or the grass beneath me,
+been fuller and more intimate. Yet,--I know not how I can express
+myself, everything swims and oscillates before my soul, so that I can
+seize no outline. A great, shadowy whole waves before my soul, my
+perception grows indistinct before it, even as my eyes do."
+
+[Illustration: GESSNER. LANDSCAPE (ETCHING).]
+
+Thus were the French gardens delivered by the English. Just as figure
+painting renounced lofty, architectural, formal composition, so those
+bisected and upholstered gardens were supplanted by irregular and, as it
+were, accidental bits of nature. People took no more trouble, in
+Rousseau's phrase, "to dishonour nature by seeking to beautify her," but
+laid out gardens in harmony with Goethe's remark in _Werther_: "A
+feeling heart, not a scientific art of gardening, suggested the plan."
+Close to Versailles, near the box-tree patterns of Lenôtre, lay the
+Petit Trianon, with its pond, its brook, and its dairy, where the
+unfortunate Marie Antoinette used to dream. And if painting still
+loitered on its preliminary return to nature, that only implied that the
+great artists--they only came in 1830!--were not yet born. Great artists
+can only raise themselves on the shoulders of their predecessors, whose
+value lies in their utility. The French landscapes of the eighteenth
+century, seen in the light of historical development, are of no
+importance; but, nevertheless, they gave a considerable stimulus in
+that they sought to animate the style of Poussin with a closer
+perception of nature. Hubert Robert is certainly strongly decorative,
+but he has a light touch; one cannot take him at his word, but he is
+intelligent, and has sometimes grey and green tones that are soft and
+beautiful. Joseph Vernet painted coast scenery, views of harbours,
+storms at sea, likewise with decorative, superficial effects of light;
+he let flashes of lightning streak black clouds, sun-rays dance over
+lightly ruffled waves, silver moonshine play mysteriously upon the
+water, and caused conflagrations to break out and red flames to shoot up
+to heaven. He is somewhat inane and motley in his colouring. But he had
+ceased to see in the parts of nature nothing but materials for the
+construction of nicely fitting scenery. He no longer attempted to speak
+to the reason by means of lines, but to touch the soul through humour,
+and he employed in his scenery not only buildings and ruins, gods and
+ancient shepherds, but also modern groups of every kind.
+
+In Switzerland, the charming etchings and water-colours of _Solomon
+Gessner_ must be especially mentioned. Ludwig Richter, indeed, pointed
+them out as the eighteenth century works which, after the engravings of
+Chodowiecki, he loved the best. Gessner venerated Claude, and had an
+enthusiasm for Poussin, but his pictures have no traces of the lofty
+style of the heroic school of landscape. He sketched his native meadows,
+trees, and brooks; he loved all that was small and secluded and cosy,
+arbours and hedges, quiet little gardens and idyllic nooks. He
+approached everything with a very childlike and faithful observation of
+nature. A second Swiss, Ludwig Hess, dedicated a similar subtile sense
+of nature and loving zeal as much to his native Switzerland as to the
+Roman Campagna.
+
+[Illustration: GESSNER. LANDSCAPE (ETCHING).]
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ GUARDI. VENICE.]
+
+The German _Philip Hackert_ has been prejudiced rather than profited by
+the monument which Goethe erected to him. As Goethe's enthusiasm was not
+in due proportion with Hackert's importance, he ceased later to attract
+attention, though this he did not merit, as he was always a vigorous and
+healthy landscape painter. He did not see nature with the tender
+sensibility of the Swiss. He looked at a landscape somewhat insipidly,
+as Chodowiecki at his models. But his drawing is sober, the atmosphere
+of his pictures clear and fresh; he cannot be tedious in his
+composition. In Dresden there lived Johann Alexander Thiele, who roamed
+through Thüringen and Mecklenburg as a landscape painter. Even in Italy
+landscapes were the most independent performances which the eighteenth
+century had brought forth there. There worked in Rome the Netherlander,
+Vanvitelli, who depicted in graceful water-colours Roman and Neapolitan
+street life; and Giovanni Paolo Pannini, the _peintre des fêtes
+publiques_, in whose pictures groups of richly coloured figures moved
+through splendid palaces. Venice was the home of the Canaletti. In
+_Antonio Canale's_ town pictures of Venice, Rome, and London there is at
+once so subtle an atmospheric movement, the water is so clear, the air
+so transparent, that even if they represent mere streets and buildings,
+they yet leave an impression of landscape achieved in a broad, pictorial
+method. _Bernardo Canaletto_ produces an effect by the fine, cool, damp
+light of his northern studies even simpler and more intimate, while by
+his discovery that sunshine does not--as it was hitherto believed--gild
+but silver the object it falls on, he became one of the fathers of
+realistic landscape. The most ingenious, however, of the school of
+Canale, not to say one of the cleverest landscape painters of the
+century, was _Francesco Guardi_. Antonio Canale was a great artist, and
+shows it never better than in his distinguished etchings, but as a
+painter he interests the collector more than the connoisseur. There his
+qualities are too often petrified into an excessive formality; he shows
+something too much of the _camera obscura_. Guardi is ingenious and
+startling. Where you have accuracy in Canale, in him you find spirit.
+Canale shows us the real Venice, Guardi shows it as we have dreamed it
+to be. He has not Canale's knowledge of perspective and architecture,
+but he fascinates us. He is a musician and a poet whose palette resounds
+with the purest harmonies. In his pictures the whole seductive legend of
+the fallen Queen of the Adriatic abides. Garlanded gondolas glide
+peaceful and fairy-like, majestic as vessels in some distant wonderland,
+over the clear, green water of the canals, beneath the high, marble
+palaces, which mirror their columns and balconies, their arches and
+their loggias in the stream. Foreign ambassadors pass in great state
+through the Piazza di San Marco; all that proud, Venetian nobility
+greets them; and thick throngs of people in their Sunday attire move to
+and fro beneath the Hall of the Procuration. Gay bands of musicians row
+along the Piazzetta and the Riva. A moist breeze sweeps over the water;
+the sunshine, now subdued and mellow, now dancing coquettishly, plays
+upon the water or on the houses. Francesco Guardi, the magician of
+Venice, is an animated, exquisite, always ingenious _improvisatore_,
+strong as few others are in the direct transference of his personal
+impression to canvas. Every stroke of his brush takes effect,--in each
+one of his pictures one sees the nervous exaltation of the hand; and
+that gives him a power of attraction which, compared with Canale, is
+like that of the clay model, in which the hand of the sculptor is still
+perceptible, compared with the cold, marble statue.
+
+Even Spain, which, except for the colossal figure of Velasquez, had so
+far produced no painters of landscape--even Spain, after the middle of
+the century, turned into this road. _Don Pedro Rodriguez de Miranda_
+painted his broad, clear, and vigorously observed highland studies; _Don
+Mariano Ramon Sanchez_ his small views of towns and harbours.
+
+And, as in England, hand in hand with that came paintings of animals.
+
+In France, _François Canova_ was working, the painter of huge battle
+scenes and small pictures of animals; _Jean Louis de Marne_, who was
+famous for his cattle, market scenes, village pictures, and the like;
+and the great _Jean Baptiste Oudry_, who painted with breadth and
+freedom animals alive and dead, wild and tame, still-life of every kind.
+In Augsburg lived _Johann Elias Riedinger_, whose field of activity
+embraced the entire animal world, dogs and horses, stags and roes, wild
+boars, chamois, bears, lions, tigers, elephants, and the
+hippopotamus--which he depicted with fine observation, both in their
+proud solitude and at strife with men.
+
+If we cast one more glance back to the road which art had travelled
+since the commencement of the century, we can have no doubt as to the
+end which was proportionately aimed at in all countries. Until quite
+recently a courtly, aristocratic art had shed its light upon the whole
+of Europe. In the seventeenth century the Dutch alone had maintained
+their isolation. They who entered fresh into art, and had to break with
+no tradition, gave at that time the first expression to the new spirit,
+in that they resolutely recalled art from its courtly surroundings to
+the humbler dwellings of the middle classes. They _painted_ what Dürer
+and the "little masters" had only graved upon wood blocks and copper
+plates. Still, they wished to paint these things less for their own
+sakes than because so intimate a light was shed upon them. Through
+elements of light they contrived to cast over everyday moments a sort of
+fairy inspiration. Watteau and his successors made a further advance in
+the conquest of the visible world, in that they desired to paint their
+age, for its own sake, in all its grace; and by the middle of the
+century we find this new, intimate, familiar art, independent of ancient
+tradition, triumphing all along the line. "Sublime" painting is more and
+more forsaken. Art becomes more and more indigenous to her world and
+age. Aristocratic Watteau is succeeded by Hogarth, Greuze, Chardin, and
+Chodowiecki, who treat the Third Estate no longer in the Dutch
+_chiaroscuro_, but in all its heavy reality as a valid object of art.
+Instead of that lofty, majestic, vainglorious painting of mere
+representations, which was the outcome of Cinquecento, and which at the
+expiration of the seventeenth century had sunk, through abstraction,
+into something uniform, trivial, and tedious, there appeared on all
+sides an art which was simple and sincere, which plunged into the life
+of every day, observed man in his relations with nature, with his
+fellows, with his faithful animals, and with his household goods--an art
+which created the variety of its representations out of its own
+experience. So with landscape, the most modern branch of art; it reached
+in the schools of all nations a greater significance--at least, in
+extent--than it had ever possessed in the history of art. And this
+development proceeded without its being established that any one country
+had direct influence on any other. The ideas hung in the atmosphere;
+they were the ideas of the century. It is as though the departing age
+would hold a mirror before us--a magic mirror--which foretells the
+future; as though it would point out that nineteenth century art,
+advancing further along this road, should be domestic-human, and that it
+should find in landscape its most appropriate expression.
+
+It was not given to painting to proceed straight forward in this course,
+for through favour, partly of the changed current of literature, partly
+of the revolution, the flame of reactionary classicism shot up brightly
+once more before it expired.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE CLASSICAL REACTION IN GERMANY
+
+
+A hundred years ago there lived a man of the name of Asmus Carstens; and
+he was the pioneer and founder of the new German art. That has become
+since Fernow a standing maxim in manuals of the history of art.
+Dilettantism, however, is not an element, but an end. It is on this
+account, therefore, that later times will see in Carstens, not a
+pioneer, but only one of the close followers of that tendency of which
+the founders were the brothers Caracci, and the offshoots Lebrun,
+Lairesse, and Van der Werff. It is, at all events, historically clear
+that Hogarth and Gainsborough, Watteau, Greuze, Chardin, and Goya were
+the men to whom the future belonged. Their art survived the overthrow of
+the Classicalism represented by Mengs and Carstens, which, through
+external circumstances, once more got the upper hand for a short time,
+and it became the foundation on which, after the disappearance of this
+tendency inherited from the past, the moderns built further. The former
+represented progress, because they moved forwards; Carstens and David,
+reaction, because they looked backwards--backwards to an age which had
+long ago been buried.
+
+There is always danger to a living art in the contact with any great art
+of the past. Only those who are themselves highly gifted may hope to
+emulate the great ones of the earlier centuries; lesser geniuses perish
+in the attempt. Painters like Leonardo and Raphael, like Titian and
+Poussin, taking the Greeks as their masters, produced immortal works,
+and Goethe and Schiller proved to us that the Hellenic spirit is still
+alive and active in our midst. But would anyone dare to mention Mengs
+and Carstens in the same breath with these giants?
+
+The close of the eighteenth century was a period of antiquarian revival.
+The ruins of Pæstum had been brought to light, Greek vases and Roman
+monuments had become known to the public by the works of Hamilton and
+Piranesi. In 1762 Stuart and Revett published their splendid work on the
+_Antiquities of Athens_. To a German, however, was to fall the honour of
+becoming the hero of the archæological period. The _History of Ancient
+Art_, by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, appeared in 1764, and this writer
+devoted his literary energies to the hymning of the glories of the
+re-discovered treasures of antiquity. In the realm of pictorial art he
+may also be looked upon as the chosen of fate. Already, nine years
+before the appearance of his _History of_ _Art_, he had given, at the
+age of thirty-eight, his first writing to the world, _Thoughts upon the
+Imitation of Greek Works_, in which the reformation motive is epitomised
+in this sentence: "The sole means for us to become--ay, if possible,
+inimitably great--is the imitation of the ancients."
+
+From Winckelmann the stone kept on rolling. "In Greek sculpture the
+painter can attain to the most sublime conception of beauty, and learn
+what he must lend to nature in order to give dignity and propriety to
+his imitation," writes Solomon Gessner in 1759. In 1762 Hagedorn of
+Dresden deplored, in his _Treatise on Painting_, that "Terburg and Metsu
+never showed us fair Andromache amongst her industrious women, instead
+of Dutch sempstresses." In 1766 Lessing wrote his _Laocoön_, and, like
+Winckelmann, saw in the sculpture of the Greeks the ideal to be
+imitated. From this point forward he despised landscape and _genre_
+painting, and especially everything which illustrates intimate emotions
+and actions, and would confine the composition of pictures to an
+arrangement of two or three "ideal figures which please by physical
+beauty." Soon afterwards, with almost astonishing partiality, Goethe
+intervened in a notable manner on behalf of Classicism with the most
+flagrant contradiction of the ideas of his youth. "Nature alone," he had
+said in _Werther_, "makes the great artist"; and in his essay upon
+_German Method and Art_ he aimed this sentence at Winckelmann and his
+followers: "You yourselves, admirable beings, to whom it was given to
+enjoy the highest beauty, you are hurtful to genius; it will be raised
+up and borne along on no strange wings, were they even the wings of the
+dawn." In the same essay occurs the beautiful passage: "If art is
+produced out of an inward, single, independent conception, untroubled
+by, unconscious indeed, of, all that is extraneous, then whether she be
+born of rough wildness or of cultivated sensibility, she is complete and
+living." Soon afterwards he wrote again these great words: "Rembrandt
+appears to me in his biblical subjects as a true saint who saw God
+present everywhere, at every step, in the chamber and in the fields, and
+did not need the surrounding pomp of temples and sacrifices to feel
+drawn towards Him,"--an observation made at a time when the academic and
+erudite writer on art was still for years to perceive in the biblical
+pictures of the great Dutchman only a crude conception of form. In
+another passage, upon the frescoes of Mantegna, in the Church of the
+Anchorite, at Padua, there occur the following sentences, showing the
+deepest historical perception: "How sharp and sure a modernity stands
+out in these pictures! From this modernity, which is quite real, and not
+merely seeming, with factitious effects, speaking only to the
+imaginative faculty, but solid, detailed, and conscientiously
+circumscribed, and which at the same time has something austere and
+industrious and painstaking--from this issued subsequent painters such
+as Titian; and now the liveliness of their genius, the energy of their
+nature, enlightened by the spirit of their predecessors, built up
+through their strength, was able to soar ever higher and higher, to rise
+from earth and create divine but real figures." But, alas! later on he
+did not draw the conclusion which followed quite logically from these
+observations for the judgment of contemporary German art. He came back
+from Italy as a disciple and follower of Winckelmann's writings on art.
+"Art has once for all, like the works of Homer, been written in Greek,
+and he deceives himself who believes that it is German."
+
+Something pagan entered into his soul, a breath from the calm of
+Olympus. He derided his earlier Gothic inclinations, contemptuous of all
+that was opposed to Greek notions of form, mild and indulgent to all
+that bore at least the outward semblance of the antique. He preferred a
+cold ideal manner to what was natural, and held Greek art the absolutely
+valid model. From it should be derived a fixed canon, a table of
+accepted laws, to be the standard for the artist of our own days, and of
+every age. The _Prize Essays_, which he published with Heinrich Meyer in
+the _Propyläen_, and later in the _Jena Literary Journal_, required the
+treatment of subjects exclusively from the Hellenic legendary cycles,
+"whereby the artist should become accustomed to come out from his own
+age and surroundings"; the composition of pictures was to correspond
+strictly with the style of the antique frieze.
+
+Amongst his contemporaries voices were not wanting to point out how
+fatal this programme was. Notably, Wilhelm Heinse, in 1776, wrote this
+golden sentence: "Art can only direct itself to the people with whom it
+lives. Every one works for the people amongst whom fate has thrown him,
+and seeks to plumb its heart. Every country has its own distinctive art,
+just as it has its own climate, its scenery, its own taste, and its own
+drink."
+
+Similarly, Klopstock opposed Winckelmann's theories in these lines--
+
+ "Nachahmen soll ich nicht und dennoch nennet,
+ Dein ewig Lob nur immer Griechenland.
+ Wem Genius in seinem Busen brennet,
+ Der ahm' den Griechen nach!--der Griech' erfand."
+
+Again, in the _German Republic of Letters_, in the chapter "On High
+Treason": "It is high treason for any one to maintain that the Greeks
+cannot be surpassed." In a letter to Goethe, in the year 1800, Schiller
+wrote: "The antique was a manifestation of its age which can never
+return, and to force the individual production of an individual age
+after the pattern of one quite heterogeneous, is to kill that art which
+can only have a dynamic origin and effect." Madame de Staël, in her book
+on _Germany_, says: "If nowadays the fine arts should be confined to the
+simplicity of the ancients, we should not then be able to attain to the
+original strength which distinguished them, while we should lose that
+intimate, composite feeling for life which is especially found in us.
+Simplicity in art would easily turn with the moderns into coldness and
+affectation, whereas with the ancients it was full of life." In 1797
+Counsellor Hirth published in Schiller's _Horæ_ his well-known treatise
+on _Beauty in Art_, which, in opposition to the inanimate type of beauty
+of Winckelmann, upheld the characteristic as the first principle in art.
+Most remarkable, however, is the breadth of historical outlook which was
+peculiar to Herder, and the stern actuality with which in his _Plastik_,
+and in the _Vierten_ _Kritischen Wäldchen_, he turned against "those
+pitiful critics, those wretched and narrow rules of art, that
+bitter-sweet prattle of universal beauty, through which the younger
+generation is being ruined, which is nauseating to the master, and
+which, nevertheless, the rabble of connoisseurs takes in its mouth as
+words of wisdom.... Shadows and sunrise, lightning and thunder, the
+brook and the flame the sculptor cannot model; but is that therefore to
+be a reason why it should not be done by the painter? What other law has
+painting, what other power and function, than to depict the great scheme
+of nature with all her manifestations, in their great and beautiful
+aspect? And with what magic it does this! They are not clever who
+despise landscape painting, the fragments of nature of the great harmony
+of creation, who depreciate it or entirely forbid it to the sincere
+artist. Is a painter not to be a painter? Is he to turn statues with his
+brush, and fiddle with his colours, just as it may please their antique
+taste? To represent the scheme of creation seems vulgar to them; just as
+though heaven and earth were not better than an old statue.... Doubtless
+Greek sculpture stands in the sea of time like a lighthouse, but it
+should be only a friend and not a commander. Painting is a scheme of
+magic, as vast as the world and as history, and certainly not every
+figure in it can or ought to be a statue. In a picture no single figure
+is everything; and if they are all equally beautiful, no one then is
+beautiful any longer. They become a dull monotony of long-limbed Greek
+figures with straight noses, who all stand there and parade and take as
+little part in the action as possible. Now, when this misrepresentation
+of beauty cries scorn at the same time upon the whole conception, upon
+history, upon character, upon action, and this openly attacks that as a
+lie, there comes a discord, something insupportable, into painting,
+which certainly the antique pedant is unaware of, but which is felt all
+the more by the true friend of the antique. And finally, our own actual
+age, the most fruitful subjects of history, the liveliest characters,
+all feeling of a simple truth and precision, will be _antiquarianised_
+away. Posterity will stand and gape at such fantasies in practice and
+theory, and will not know what we were, in what age we lived, nor what
+brought us to this wretched folly, to the wish to live in another age,
+in another nation and climate, and thereby to abandon, or vitiate
+deplorably, the whole order of nature and history."
+
+These sentences, however, stood in isolation, or else they came too
+late. Immediately after it had been heralded by the literary movement,
+after the archæologists had verbally announced its aim, formulated its
+principles and laws, German art turned into the new paths. "It happened
+for the first time in the history of art," wrote Goethe, "that important
+talents took pleasure in disciplining themselves by the past, and so
+founding a new epoch in art."
+
+ "Des Deutschen Künstler's Vaterland,
+ Ist Griechenland, ist Griechenland"
+
+was sung in the academies. And this violent grasping after the ideal of
+a foreign race brought a bitter revenge, since not one of the artists
+who now appeared had the genius to create anything new out of the old.
+
+[Illustration: _Photo Union, Munich._
+
+ MENGS. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.]
+
+The disciples of Winckelmann had not been, like Goethe and Schiller,
+vigorous naturalists until the spirit of ancient times had looked upon
+them, and they were consequently still less able to resist her glance.
+They entered upon the new road not with that generative impulse of the
+creative mind, whose superabundance did not know what course it should
+take, what stream it should find. They adopted the forms, as they had
+been provided by the greater ages, without any doubt as to their
+absolute excellence, or the least attempt at any happy innovation. And
+if they "have better understood" the Greeks than their predecessors in
+Italy and France were able to do, then one is never less like an
+original nature than when one imitates them faithfully. Winckelmann's
+road to inimitability led not only to a more hollow and lifeless
+Classicism than there ever had been, to a more cheerless and unpleasant
+art than any which the school of Bologna had produced. It tended, above
+all, since the thinking people had thought out the classic idea--which
+the other nations had not--to the sacrifice of all pictorial technique,
+of the whole knowledge which the age had up till then possessed. There
+is a legend in the history of the Church, that at the time of the
+donation of Constantine a voice was heard from Heaven: "This day has
+poison entered into the body of the Church." To the German art of our
+century this poison was the writings of Winckelmann.
+
+First of all it was _Anton Rafael Mengs_, whose originally strong and
+great talent was distorted by the counsels of the learned. As in the
+works of the Caracci, those only are to-day of any interest which reveal
+themselves least as eclectics and most as children of the seventeenth
+century, so with Mengs--he is only enjoyable now where he did not try to
+be antique, but sympathised without too much reflection on the
+traditions of his age. He is particularly so in his fine pastel
+portraits in the Dresden Gallery, which are wholly influenced by the
+taste for _rococo_, and are its last expiring manifestation. They are a
+testimony that it was not without some justice that the Apelles of
+Dresden was called by his contemporaries the most remarkable German
+painter of the eighteenth century. Rosalba Carriera and Liotard seem
+weak and insipid beside him; Reynolds only at his best had that
+characteristic clearness, that plastic energy of modelling, and that
+life-like colouring. There is nothing insipid or affected, nothing of
+that simpering affability that his successors brought into vogue. And
+when we remember that they proceeded from a youth of sixteen, the
+strength and simplicity of intuition seem incredible. In his later
+portraits, too, painted in oil, the better ones are directly classic;
+very noble in their clear, subtile, grey tone, strikingly alive, and,
+withal, of an extraordinary independence which shows no leaning upon any
+other master whatever. Mengs belongs to those portrait painters who look
+into the souls of their sitters, and he ranks, in works like his
+portrait of himself, in the Munich Gallery, amongst the best portrait
+painters of the eighteenth century.
+
+[Illustration: MENGS. MOUNT PARNASSUS.]
+
+In his huge ecclesiastical paintings he is the son of that period which
+had just commenced to be touched by the pallor of thought, and groped
+eclectically now in this direction and now in that. "First of all must
+the weeds be rooted up," wrote Zanotti in his _Directions to a Young Man
+upon Painting_. "And then we must go back again to Cimabue and Giotto,
+and again, a few years later, to Buonarotti and Sanzio, and their noble
+successors whose footsteps are no longer sought or followed by any one.
+But when such a happy resurrection will take place, God knows!" The old
+Ismael Mengs believed that that was his concern; he chose Antonio da
+Allegri and Rafael Sanzio as sponsors for his son. Anton Rafael should
+become the eclectic reformer of art, and as he was probably the first
+painter who, by the express permission of the Elector of Saxony, was
+allowed to visit the hitherto inaccessible Dresden Gallery, this wish
+was easy of accomplishment.
+
+[Illustration: ANGELICA KAUFFMANN. _Cassell & Co._]
+
+He was quick in freeing himself from the immediate tradition of the age,
+and in harmony with the teaching of the Caracci, in returning to the
+so-called "higher" models of painting. When one runs across such of his
+pictures in some gallery--notably his altar pieces--they strike one as
+the works of some good master of the seventeenth century whose name one
+cannot, for the moment, recollect. His famous "Holy Night," in which he
+wished to enter into rivalry with Correggio, has something of a Maratti
+about it, only the heads are more vacant and insipid.
+
+It is that unfortunate "Parnassus" in the Villa Albani which first marks
+the collapse of this great talent. When, upon the advice of his friend
+Winckelmann, he turned from the study of Raphael and Correggio to that
+of the antique, Mengs forfeited not only the remnant of all that was
+essentially natural, but even all the picturesque qualities which had
+hitherto distinguished him. After painting had so long taken sculpture
+in tow, now sculpture seemed anxious to be revenged on it, and there was
+a manifestation of those prettily painted figures in plaster which for
+some score years afterwards paraded in every German picture.
+
+For Winckelmann's mistake, as Herder had already pointed out with great
+justice, consisted not only in this, that he set up for imitation a
+departed ideal for the consciousness of his contemporaries, but notably
+in that he obtruded principles upon modern painting which might be valid
+in ancient sculpture. Since the antique ideal was solely a plastic one,
+and neither the Greek Prussian nor, later, Meister Ephraim was clear as
+to the difference between sculpture and painting, they practically
+recommended the painter to work after plastic models.
+
+The fact that Lessing, in discussing the limits of painting in his
+_Laocoön_, took a work of sculpture as his starting-point, proves that
+to him the laws and conditions of both arts were valued as the same.
+They denounced the confusion of the art of painting with poetry, and
+instead advocated the confounding of painting with sculpture, which was
+no less hazardous.
+
+[Illustration: ANGELICA KAUFFMANN. PORTRAIT OF A LADY AS A VESTAL.]
+
+In this manner there came an alien element into Mengs' hitherto quite
+pictorial apprehension; a vain and exclusively reproductive ideality
+deprived his figures of the last remnant of truth to nature which he had
+formerly understood how to give them. It is difficult to believe that
+Winckelmann's paroxysm of friendship should have burst out, upon the
+completion of the "Parnassus," into this pæan: "During the whole of the
+new age a more beautiful work has not appeared in painting; even Raphael
+would have bowed his head." The whole is nothing more than a
+_mélange_ of plagiarism and _banal_ reminiscences, without soul or
+perception, without freshness or individuality; a mere plastic
+warehouse, and not even a painted antique group, but a daubed
+compilation of solitary statues, colder and more lifeless than any
+Baltoni ever painted. There was an audacious, strong aim, genial
+strength and an overwhelming flow of fantasy in the contemporary works
+of the great _décorateur_ Tiepolo; here there is a mere work of
+intellect which with philological aid builds up the composition entirely
+of borrowed materials. The only thing which even still points in this
+work to the good old times is a more solid study of form and colour than
+all that which originated in Germany during the next fifty years. The
+figures are painted with a strength and bloom which are still quite
+worthy of the _rococo_.
+
+The "good _Angelica_" is the second representative of this phase of
+transition. She, too, at the persuasion of her friend Winckelmann,
+clothed herself as an ancient Vestal, but her true woman's nature left
+in her classical raiment still a neat fashion of _rococo_. Through her
+intercourse with Winckelmann she became somewhat of a "blue-stocking,"
+and studied the historians of antiquity in order to find there subjects
+like Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, Agrippina with the urn of
+Germanicus, Phryne, and the like. Still more there were the tender
+legends of the ancients, out of whose store she satisfied her patrons:
+Adonis at the chase, Psyche, Ariadne abandoned by Theseus or found by
+Bacchus, the death of Alcestis, Hero and Leander. In these she is soft
+to the point of sentimentality, and pleasant to the point of nausea.
+Goethe says of her with justice: "The forms and traits of the figures
+have little variety, the expression of the passions no force, the heroes
+look like gentle boys, or girls in disguise." But he also says of her:
+"The lightness, grace in form, colour, conception, and treatment is the
+one ruling quality of the numerous works of our fair artist. No living
+painter has surpassed her either in grace of representation or in the
+taste and capacity with which she handles her brush." And this decision,
+too, can still be endorsed. Angelica knew how to impart to those clear
+lines and forms demanded by Winckelmann a grace now coquettish, now
+sentimental, but always extremely lovable. She has struck soft
+and--notably in her portraits of women--very tender colour chords.
+
+She and Mengs were the last who still possessed considerable technical
+knowledge. Almost everything which has survived of the tradition of
+craftsmanship in Germany in the nineteenth century is traceable to
+Mengs' influence, and that fact so offended his successors that they no
+longer counted him as one of them, but put him contemptuously aside as a
+"mannerist painter by recipe." "Such technical knowledge," wrote Goethe,
+"hinders that complete abstraction and elevation over the real, which is
+asked of identical representations in sculpture, which merely furnish
+forms in their highest purity and beauty." "Colouring, light and
+shadows, do not give such value to a painting as noble contour alone,"
+wrote Winckelmann, and these sentences became the starting-point of the
+next generation. Winckelmann's error when he recommended the imitation
+of Greek sculpture to the modern painter consisted still further in
+this, that he confused "noble simplicity and quiet grandeur" with lack
+of colour and coldness. Herder had written well: "In distinction to the
+compact harmony of form in sculpture, painting has her harmonious unity
+in colour and light. I do not know why many theorists should have spoken
+so contemptuously of what is called _chiaroscuro_, the grouping of light
+and shade; it is the instrument of genius with every scholar and master,
+the eye with which he sees, the flashing, spiritual sea with which he
+sprinkles everything, and on which, indeed, every outline also depends.
+This divine, spiritual sea of light, this fairyland of adjusted light
+and shade, is the business of painting: why should we fight against
+nature, and not allow every art to do what it alone can do and do best?"
+
+[Illustration: _Photographic Union, Munich._
+
+ CARSTENS. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.]
+
+His words died away. The philosophic tendency of the century, which
+sought to penetrate into the "soul" of things, and to recreate things
+from the throne of the universe of the abstract, tried its hand also
+upon painting. By abstracting from the manifestation of colour, and
+touching upon form and line, it came to believe that in these plastic
+elements it had discovered the Essential of which it was in search.
+
+Once on the road to execute statues in paint, the question ensued, Ought
+we to paint our statues? And as that age, following in Winckelmann's
+track, understood no word of the significance which the specific,
+picturesque principles had for the Greeks, it was only logical that they
+should endeavour to reconcile the idea of immaculate whiteness with that
+of classical beauty, to see pure beauty in absence of colour, and in
+consequence to accentuate the question, Ought we to paint our
+_pictures_? To painters the most suspicious element in a painting became
+the paint! There is nothing more urgent for them to do than to deprive
+themselves ascetically of all coloristic means of expression. Painting
+is shown to be an essential form of corruption--"The brush is become
+the ruin of our art," wrote Cornelius--and there commences the era of a
+cartoon style hitherto unprecedented, which is to be carried on by the
+most highly endowed in the most earnest fashion. While during the
+_rococo_ the sense of colour had reached, through a piquant arrangement
+of the most tender and variegated tones, its highest point of
+refinement, there followed now as a reaction an absolute lack of colour.
+The ideal is seen in an abstract beauty of line, colour as a secondary
+matter and a vain show. It was of as much value as a vari-coloured
+dress, which nature could put on or off, without being less nature
+thereby. Amongst painters there was talk of nothing but outlines. This
+line style, whose world is not the wall or the canvas, but white paper,
+can do with a proportionately meagre study of nature. Why, therefore,
+when the ideal was so easy of attainment, drudge in the academy, where,
+moreover, since the introduction of Mengs' Classicism, universal
+desolation of the spirit and doctrinaire pedantry reigned? As Mengs had
+broken with the taste of the _rococo_, so the younger generation broke
+with its technique, whilst they left the academy in open
+dissatisfaction, and threw off in contempt the whole paraphernalia of
+technical traditions.
+
+_Carstens_ plays the momentous rôle in German art as the first who trod
+this path. He has more individuality than Mengs; _antiquarianising_ with
+him is not exclusively an external derivation and a cold imitation: he
+lives in the antique; the world of the Greek poets is his spiritual
+home, and their profound thoughts find in him a subtle interpreter. But
+he has, at the same time, the melancholy fame of being the first of the
+frivolous to renounce the national inheritance, the knowledge bequeathed
+by the _rococo_ age, and so definitely to cut the chain which should
+otherwise have connected German art of the nineteenth century with that
+of the eighteenth.
+
+Through the _Investigations of Beauty in Painting_, by Daniel Webb,
+which was founded on Winckelmann's _Thoughts on Imitation_, the seed of
+Hellenism was already sown in the youth's soul. He heard talk of the
+dwarf intelligences of the age; how the studios of inferior artists were
+full of gaping visitors, whilst the halls of the Vatican stood deserted.
+"Learn the taste for beauty in the antique," the cooper's apprentice
+learns from Webb's works. "Let us meditate upon the style of the
+painter's art in the 'Laocoön,' with regard to the fighter. Notice the
+sublimity in the divine character of Apollo. Let us stand hushed before
+the exquisite beauty of the Venus di Medici. These are the extreme
+incentives of the art of drawing.... The Belvedere Apollo and the
+daughter of Niobe offer us an ideal of nobility and beauty. Raphael's
+drawing never reached to such a height of perfection as we find in the
+statues of the Greeks.... Whither do you carry me, gods and demigods and
+heroes who live in marble? I follow your call, and, Imagination! thy
+eternal laws. I go into the Villa Medici and breathe there the purest
+air. I stretch myself on a flowery plot, the shadow of the orange trees
+covers me;--there, unmolested, I gaze at a group full of the highest
+feminine beauty. Niobe, my beloved, beautiful mother of beautiful
+children, thou fairest among women, how I love thee!" So dreamed Asmus
+Jacob in the wine-cellar at Eckernförde, or in his solitary chamber by
+the dim light of his lamp, as he had been seized with giddiness before
+all the great and marvellous revelations of art which this book had
+afforded him. In his enraptured fantasy he painted the hour nearer and
+nearer when he should attain to a sight of the works which were
+described. Could he have looked into the future, what a picture would
+have come before his eyes! Would he have recognised himself in the
+broken-down man, with the pale countenance, the grief-marked expression,
+and the decrepit figure, who in Rome gazed spellbound at the Colossus of
+Monte Cavallo?
+
+[Illustration: CARSTENS. SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.]
+
+Our Holsteiner was two-and-twenty years old when he discarded the
+cooper's apron and entered the Copenhagen Academy, being then too old
+for any regular training. His head was so full of "inventions" that "it
+could not enter his mind to begin from the beginning." "Drawing from the
+life did not satisfy me; the fellow, too, who sat as my model, although
+he was for the rest well built, seemed to me, in contrast with the
+antique from which I had attained a higher ideal of beauty, so petty and
+imperfect that I thought I could easily learn to draw a better figure if
+I only confined myself to that. I resolved not to visit the academy, in
+spite of the other artists impressing upon me the importance and
+utility of academic study." He stayed daily, instead, for hours together
+before the casts in the antique room, and "a holy feeling of adoration,
+almost compelling me to tears, pervaded me. There I never drew at all
+after an antique. When I attempted it, it was as though all my emotion
+was chilled by it. I thought that I should learn more if I gazed at them
+with great studiousness."
+
+[Illustration: CARSTENS. ARGO LEAVING THE TRITON'S MERE.]
+
+Thus he reached, as Fernow says, the method whereby he "did not tread
+the ordinary way of imitation, gradually progressing to a special
+invention, but began at once with invention." There he was the true
+child of his age. At a period whose creative power found its highest
+expression in philosophy and poetry, the painter strove for the
+reputation only of being the _poet_ of his pictures. And Carstens
+encountered the old tragedians and philosophic writers with a fine,
+poetic understanding. "The Greek Heroes with Cheiron," "Helen at the
+Skæan Gate," "Ajax," "Phoenix and Odysseus in the Tent of Achilles,"
+"Priam and Achilles," "The Fates," "Night with her Children," "Sleep and
+Death," "The passage of Megapenthes," "Homer before the People," "The
+Golden Age"--all these prints have really something of the noble
+simplicity and quiet harmony of Greek art.
+
+[Illustration: CARSTENS. CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT.]
+
+It can be understood, then, that such subjects should be in the highest
+degree interesting to an archæologist. When Carstens, in April 1795, was
+organising the famous exhibition of his collected works in Rome, Fernow
+published in Wieland's _Deutscher Merkur_ a discourse in which he
+celebrated him as the creator of a new epoch. From the very first,
+however, an equally resolute opposition was excited in artistic circles.
+The painter Müller, nicknamed "The Devil's Miller," who at that time
+wandered about Rome as a cicerone, proves that Winckelmann's principles,
+even at the threshold of the century, by no means met with universal
+acceptance. The _Writing of Herr Müller, Painter in Rome, upon the
+Exhibition of Herr Professor Carstens_, with the motto _Amicus Plato,
+Amicus Socrates, magis amica veritas_, was published in 1797 in
+Schiller's _Horæ_. Carstens imitated; he worked rather by reminiscence
+and understanding than by fantasy. Isolated figures do not bring their
+individuality to an expression. Then he pointed out the models,
+discussed the lack of colour, and proved numerous sins of the
+draughtsman against nature in detail. The artist must ever seek to find
+characteristic expression; composition comes in the second degree.
+Technique, even if the previous age has been an epoch of fabrication,
+must always stand in the foreground; it is not only from the artist, but
+from the connoisseur, that knowledge is demanded, and in consequence of
+this exhibition Carstens is recommended to forbear from his fantastical
+geniality, observe nature, and achieve a picture exactly, since it is
+only from nature that the ideal springs, and consequently nothing can
+be great and beautiful in the representation which is not right and
+true. In almost similar words, later on, Koch, in his _Thoughts on
+Painting_, and with him the majority of artists, has censured Carstens.
+And posterity cannot but allow them to be in the right as against the
+archæologists.
+
+[Illustration: CARSTENS. PRIAM AND ACHILLES.]
+
+Admirable in Carstens is the zeal with which he defended his ideal, the
+sacred fire which burned within him and sustained him, even during those
+years when his sickly frame was weakened by consumption. Art was, as he
+wrote, his element, his religion, his beatitude, his existence. And it
+is already something great to wear oneself out alone for the sake of an
+ideal. Carstens was a sublime dreamer. It will not be forgotten of him
+that, in an age when abundant mediocrity and manufacture were
+all-prevailing, he once more pointed, unfaltering in his noble and pure
+intention, to the sublimity of artistic creation. The history of art,
+however, has not to deal with hearts, but to judge logically by results;
+and it would not be doing justice to the old masters, nor to those
+earnest _rococo_ painters who sat at their easels with less noble
+intentions, but with so much greater knowledge of their craft, if one
+were to proclaim Carstens, in consideration of the self-sacrifice and
+renunciation which he showed in the fight for his ideal, as a martyr and
+a genius, a pioneer of German art. He was not a genius, as he thought
+himself, and announced so proudly to Heinitz, the Minister; for that he
+possessed too little originality. It is not imagination, but
+reminiscence, which created his works. The outlines of his plates are
+done with fine sentiment, but sentiment taken from the Greeks, and he
+required no genius to recognise in his recollection and his hand a
+transcript of Greek forms. What pleases us in Carstens is in substance
+not Carstens, but an echo of what we like in the Greek statues and
+vases, in Michael Angelo and other old masters.
+
+[Illustration: GENELLI. THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES.]
+
+He was not a martyr, because in his struggles he met with assistance and
+encouragement such as were granted to no old master, and if, in spite of
+that, he never rose above the cares of life, that is only a proof of the
+limitations and partiality of his art. He had lost all decorative
+facility; still more was the inheritance of oil painting first naturally
+mislaid by him, and by draughtsmanship alone not even Dürer nor
+Rembrandt could have lived.
+
+This deficiency in technique must even debar him from claiming any
+higher signification than that of a clever dilettante. He is not an
+artist who does not in the midst of his exaltation think to put himself
+in possession of the means which can turn the lispings of genius into a
+fully intelligible language. Carstens' plates seduce by a certain wavy
+treatment of the lines, but no one of them can sustain critical
+appreciation. It is inconsistent to work in the beautiful and not to
+become free of ugliness, to move in the great, in the sublime, and at
+the same time to fall from one defect of form to another, from coarse
+uncouthness into the most elementary sins against drawing and
+proportion. Carstens was a draughtsman who could not draw, and, with
+this limitation of his genius, by no manner of means a founder of German
+art. One cannot call him a mannerist, because with him art and
+individuality corresponded; but, nevertheless, like Mengs and Lairesse,
+he gave art at second-hand, and only differs from them in that with him
+commences that complete abandonment of the idea of colour which after
+him disfigured German art. For the future it was quite indifferent that
+Thorwaldsen took suggestions from Carstens, and Genelli trod in his
+footprints as a draughtsman.
+
+[Illustration: GENELLI. THETIS LAMENTING THE FATE OF HECTOR.]
+
+_Bonaventura Genelli_, if one takes for once the standpoint of the
+painters of his time, who desired to be the "poets" of their works, is
+certainly a not unremarkable poet. In him, who was born in the year of
+Carstens' death, the spirit of the little Holsteiner was raised to life,
+and the figure which he assumed in this new incarnation actually made an
+impression like a picture out of beauty-illuminated days of Hellas. The
+muscular, thick-set figure of a youthful Hercules, with a broad chest
+and sturdy neck, a head of short brown curly hair, full lips fringed by
+the compact beard of a Sophocles, the short Greek nose, grave eyes
+glancing out from beneath the strong brows--such was Genelli, a Hellene
+left stranded in Germany, the last Centaur, as Heyse has depicted him in
+his novel--"an antediluvian, mythological enigma on four sound legs
+sprung upon our godless world." Thus he sat, as he himself writes, in
+Rome, "in his dirty chamber, bare except for a chair or two, rickety or
+quite broken down, and on the wall a pair of hawks nailed up, whose
+pinions served as models for his winged figures." Thus he sat later in
+his little house in the _Sendlingergasse_ at Munich, and lived in his
+world of imagination. Perhaps, had he been the child of a more fortunate
+period in art, he might have become a strong and memorable painter; as a
+successor of Carstens he has left behind him a legacy of two suites of
+copper prints--the two tragedies of the "Profligate" and the "Witch." He
+existed, moreover, only in contour; he never rose above harmoniously
+outlined silhouette. It was only to this point that his talent would
+sustain him. The more he wished to produce shadow, water-colour, or even
+oil, the more tedious and pale and vague did he become. And even in his
+drawing he shares with Carstens the desolate generalisation of form, the
+eternal euphony which so soon becomes wearisome and monotonous. To
+beauty of line everything is offered up. The blank characterlessness of
+the faces is even more noticeable with him than with Carstens, who had,
+after all, in his youth drawn excellent portraits in crayons, and on
+this account was able to give even to his Greeks more individual traits
+and a certain variety of expression. With Genelli the heads are treated
+as no more than parts of the body, and as they gave no opportunity for
+flowing lines, they have not even the same graciousness as the limbs.
+His women fared worst, for whilst he could be his own model for his men,
+he created the _ewig Weibliche_ out of his inner consciousness. In men
+and women the eyes, in particular, are merely animal.
+
+[Illustration: GENELLI. ODYSSEUS AND THE SIRENS.]
+
+Carstens' influence on German art has been then entirely a negative one.
+It was not on such a foundation that a German art could arise. He
+prepared no ground for his successors on which they could build further;
+but through his abandonment of the whole capital which, since Stephen
+Lochner, had been handed down at compound interest from one generation
+of painters to another, he rather cut away the ground from under their
+feet. "For very easily can art go astray, but it is a difficult and
+lengthy process for her to recover herself."
+
+The art which was born in that humble studio in Rome to the sickly,
+neurotic man, the "famous draughtsman," needed later, in order to become
+technically healthy again, an impulse replete with life from abroad.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ BONAVENTURA GENELLI.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE CLASSICAL REACTION IN FRANCE
+
+
+In France also modern art began with a stream of antiquarianism which
+flowed from the same archæological source. De Brosses published a
+history of the Roman Republic, and wrote on Herculaneum. Leroy produced
+his _Ruines des plus anciens monuments de la Grèce_ in 1758. Shortly
+afterwards the _Recueils d'Antiquité_ of Caylus and Hamilton were
+published. The former undertook his great journeys, and presented the
+Academy of Inscriptions with a succession of archæological treatises. He
+is perhaps the first since Batteux and Coypel who again makes of the
+modern painter a positive demand for a quiet beauty of lines after the
+"_manière simple et noble du bel antique_." The architects begin to take
+counsel of Vitruvius, and to work after some model borrowed from the
+antique. Soufflot rebuilt the Pantheon, and produced the Temple of
+Pæstum.
+
+Even in 1763 Grimm could write: "For some years past we have been making
+keen inquiry for antique ornaments and forms. The predilection for them
+has become so universal that now everything is to be done _à la
+Grecque_. The interior and exterior decorations of houses, furniture,
+dress material, and goldsmiths' work all bear alike the stamp of the
+Greeks. The fashion passes from architecture to millinery: our ladies
+have their hair dressed _à la Grecque_, our fine gentlemen would think
+themselves dishonoured if they did not hold in their hands _une boîte à
+la Grecque_." Even Diderot's preference for the ethical and emotional,
+as Greuze had painted it--and as Diderot himself had dramatised
+it--veered round at the commencement of the sixties into an enthusiasm
+for the antique. After 1761 he carried on in the salons a war of
+extermination against poor old Boucher, and lectured him in a menacing
+voice upon the "great and severe taste of antiquity." He twitted him
+with possessing neither reality nor taste, and produced in proof the
+fact that, in the whole catalogue of Boucher's figures, not four could
+be found which could be employed in relief, or even as statues. The new
+taste demanded pure and simple lines, the beauty of sculpture; it went
+back to the antique. When a French translation of Winckelmann appeared
+in 1765 he spoke out, on the occasion of a review of the book, clearly
+and plainly: "_Il me semble qu'il faudrait étudier l'antique pour
+apprendre à voir la nature_." In the same vein Watelet pronounced on
+Boucher: "_Jamais artiste n'a plus ouvertement témoigné son mépris pour
+la vraie beauté telle qu'elle a été sentie et exprimée par les
+statuaires_ _de l'ancienne Grèce_." Thus the change in the artistic
+outlook was heralded long before the curtain went up upon the events of
+1789.
+
+_Madame Vigée-Lebrun_, the French Angelica Kauffmann, possessed of a
+tender, soft, sympathetic talent, is perhaps the truest representative
+of this gracious, entirely French transition style, over which like a
+breath, but only like a breath, hovers the antique. She has in her
+portraits, in an especially refined manner, fixed that age when noble
+ladies desired to forget the Marquise and Duchess, to exhibit only the
+wife and mother, and believed that by unconstraint of attitude in their
+simple white robe, the scarf thrown modestly over the shoulders, they
+had effected a return to antique simplicity. Boucher, moved to the
+depths of his consciousness by Diderot, resolved to paint a picture
+taken from ancient history. Greuze painted "Severus and Caracalla,"
+Fragonard "Choereas and Callirhöe." Hubert Robert grew more and more
+archæological, and played in his landscapes with ancient remains and
+classical ruins. Vien became enthusiastic over antique gems, and thought
+he must draw the conclusion, from the noble calm of these figures, that
+the amiable coquetry and capricious garments of _rococo_ were without
+nobility. His plan was "to study the antique--Raphael, the Caracci,
+Domenichino, Michael Angelo, and, in one word, all those masters whose
+works convey the character of truth and grandeur."
+
+But what gave far other significance to the French classicism of the
+ensuing period was that great event in the world's history, of which
+France became the theatre at the close of the eighteenth century. In the
+secluded gardens of Versailles, where the goat-footed Pan embraced the
+tall, white nymphs by an artificial water-fall, the noble lords and
+ladies, clad as Pierrots and Columbines, overheard in the midst of their
+whispered flirtations the menacing earthquake which was announced in
+thunder from Paris. Soon they beheld the earth crack and burst asunder,
+as that time came when the air was filled with the smoke of powder, when
+the first notes of the Marseillaise rang out, and in the Place de la
+Concorde, where to-day the loveliest fountains in the world are playing,
+blood ran from a dozen guillotines. That "_après nous le deluge_" of the
+Marquise de Pompadour had become a dire, prophetic truth, and in that
+flood of blood and horrors the artistic ideal of the eighteenth century
+was also washed away. The Revolution gave the death-blow to _rococo_. At
+one stroke it overthrew the most pleasant of all French periods, the
+truest presentiment of French grace and _esprit_, the noble and amiable
+art of Louis XV, which the melancholy, life-emitting Watteau, Boucher,
+and Fragonard cause to hover before us as in the clouds of a dream.
+Classicism, however, attained through it a new and stronger basis, a
+certain connection with modern life, since it was transposed by it from
+the Museum of Antiquity into the middle of the Place de la Concorde
+beneath the guillotine.
+
+What the age of the Revolution demanded of art was at all events not a
+"noble style," as Vien had required of it, but rather in the first place
+a Spartan virtue. Various philosophical writers had drawn a parallel
+between the organisation of the old and the modern state; they had
+exerted themselves to show that the old Republics were models of an
+almost absolute perfection, which the modern should, in so far as it was
+possible, imitate. They had contrasted the moral conditions of Sparta
+and the Roman Republic with the moral constitution of contemporary,
+monarchical France. They had quoted on every opportunity the acts of
+virtue, renunciation, courage, and patriotic sacrifice of the great men
+of antiquity; they had used these deeds as a means of proving their
+thesis, and their ideas aroused deep echoes in men's hearts.
+
+[Illustration: ELISABETH VIGÉE-LEBRUN. PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER WITH
+ HER DAUGHTER.]
+
+The sentiment of Rome had entered into the people as a thing of flesh
+and blood even before the catastrophe had ensued. "We were more
+prepared," wrote Nodier, "for the particular tone of the language of the
+Revolution than people would have believed, and it cost us little pains
+to pass from the studies of our _gymnases_ to the strife of the forum.
+In the schools we had prize compositions set of this kind: Who stands
+higher, the elder Brutus who judged his children, or the younger Brutus
+who judged his father? And so Livy and Tacitus have done more to
+overthrow the monarchical system than Voltaire and Rousseau." It was
+evident then that France, so soon as she had freed herself from her
+kings, so soon as she had spoken the word "Republic," must take the
+_Roman_ Republic as her pattern. People lived in an atmosphere of
+antiquity; the great citizens of Rome and Athens were ranged with the
+French National Convention; Scævola, Scipio, Cato, Cincinnatus, were the
+idols of the populace. The speakers in the council cited the ancients in
+preference; Madame Vigée-Lebrun gave _soupers à la Grecque_. "Everything
+was ordered according to the _Voyage d'Anacharsis_--garments, viands,
+amusements, and the table, all were Athenian. Madame Lebrun herself was
+Aspasia; M. l'Abbé Barthélémy, in a Greek dress with a laurel wreath on
+his head, recited a poem; M. de Cabierès played the golden lyre as
+Memnon, and young boys waited at table as slaves. The table itself was
+set entirely with Greek utensils, and all the viands were actually those
+of ancient Greece." Children were given Greek and Roman names. People
+called themselves "Romans." "_Mais, je l'aimais, Romains!_" cried Coulon
+at the death of Mirabeau. Paris is Rome. In the theatre the bust of
+Brutus is set opposite that of Voltaire, and the actor says: "_O buste
+réveré de Brutus, d'un grand homme, transporté dans Paris tu n'as point
+quitté Rome_." And as with the bust of Brutus in the theatre, that of
+Mucius Scævola appears in the cafés, which Parisian journalists, still
+full of remembrances of ancient history studied in the gymnasium, liken
+to the Lyceum and the Porch. In every case ancient Rome is set up as the
+exemplar. The Parisian collection of engravings on copper possesses a
+reproduction of the guillotine, with the inscription: _A similar machine
+was used for the execution of the Roman, Titus Manlius_. A valet
+committed suicide, and quoted the illustrious example of Seneca. Had it
+been possible, people would have gladly thrown themselves back eighteen
+hundred years into the past, with all its grandeur, its simplicity, and
+its ruthlessness. Political and social forms did not suffice; even the
+implements and costume of the ancients were again brought into honour.
+Furniture put on antiquarian shapes; the walls were decorated _à la
+Grecque_. The lively frivolity of _rococo_, with its freaks and fancies,
+was no longer adapted to the boudoir of the age of revolution, now
+transformed into the political council-room. Twists and curves were no
+longer permitted: everything had to be straightforward, logical,
+ungenerous, inexorable. Men went clad wretchedly, with red Phrygian caps
+and no breeches. Women and girls cast aside their ordinary attire and
+put on straight, falling drapery, discarded their heeled shoes and bound
+sandals round their feet, shook the powder from their locks and tied
+their hair in a Greek knot. "Dressed in white raiment without adornment,
+but decked in the virtue of simplicity," they appeared in the cabinet of
+the president, in order to surrender their jewels for the salvation of
+their country, like those Roman matrons in the time of Camillus.
+
+And, in co-operation with the building up of this new world, painting
+also advanced. It was only when it assisted to arouse civic virtue, it
+was said at a sitting of the jury at the Salon of 1793, that painting
+could possess a right to exist in the new state, and as the handmaid of
+this patriotism might fulfil an even higher mission than it had done in
+ancient Greece and Rome. "The Greeks and Romans were indeed only slaves,
+but we French are by nature free, philosophers in character, virtuous in
+our every perception, and artists through our taste." In proportion as
+the French Republic transcended the old free states, so too must French
+art take the lead of the antique. "All that stimulated art in Greece,
+the gymnastic exercises, the public games, the national festivals, is
+also accessible to the French, who possess above all that which the
+Greeks lacked, the feeling for true liberty. To depict the history of a
+free people is indeed quite another mission for the true genius than to
+embody scenes out of mythology."
+
+Through this fresh _nuance_, which classicism thus acquired, the ground
+was cut from under the feet of those who devoted themselves to the study
+of the antique as conceived by Diderot. The new moral age would have no
+traffic with those artists in whom the last smile of the eighteenth
+century was personified. Their pictures, full of grace and caprice, fell
+into the same disrepute into which everything of yesterday had come, and
+it was only with a bitter smile that they followed the course of events.
+The younger Moreau, that animated master of _rococo_, became
+academically cold and tedious when he designed his book on the French
+costume of the Revolution. The good Fragonard, who was only fifty-nine
+in 1789, and lived till 1806, saw himself hooted in spite of his
+"Choereas." He, the true representative of frivolous tenderness, of fair
+and roseate hues, had lost every right to exist in the new world, and
+ended his life by a sad death when, after the Reign of Terror, there was
+no longer a place for _fêtes galantes_. A delightful portrait of
+himself, which he painted in the first period of the Revolution, shows
+us an old man, clothed entirely in black, softly melancholy, standing in
+a formal, dusky-brown salon. On the table on which his arm rests lies a
+guitar, at his feet a portfolio of engravings; but he neither plays the
+guitar nor looks at the prints. In the shadows of the falling evening
+he reminds himself forlornly of past days, and his bald forehead, where
+so many rose-coloured dreams have passed, is overcast with gloomy
+shadows.
+
+Greuze, too, outlived himself. It was no use for him to pretend more and
+more to the utmost virtue, and to paint an "Ariadne at Naxos." He died
+in misery and oblivion in 1805. The demands which this new classicism
+made were able to be satisfied by no one any longer, not even by Vien.
+However loudly he might proclaim himself a student of the Greeks, he,
+nevertheless, remained a very timid and lukewarm revolutionary. An old
+man, cold and peaceful and stolid, moderate in everything, he had
+neither the energy nor the audacity of the reformer. He had been the
+Court painter of Louis XVI, a most monarchically disposed and loyal man,
+and was a suspect on this ground alone to those who were in power in
+1789. His pictures, too, describe no more than the end of a world.
+Greuze, Fragonard, and Vien, in spite of their assumed seriousness,
+survived only as gallant phantoms in the new age, by the side of those
+men of more rugged countenance who inaugurated the nineteenth century.
+
+[Illustration: JACQUES LOUIS DAVID. _L'Art._]
+
+_Jacques Louis David_ first satisfied the new requirements, and in so
+doing lent to French classicism, if only for a few years, a certain
+touch of far greater vivacity. He it was who carried through, in all its
+consequence, that reformation in taste which Vien had sought in
+externals, in costume, furniture and decoration; who inspired the gems
+painted by Vien with republican pathos, and became in this way the great
+herald of that age which read Plutarch and made Paris into a modern
+Sparta. David, _Prix de Rome_ after three successive failures, still
+came from that "corrupt epoch" against which Republican prudery was so
+excited. At the age of twenty-six he had already painted Soffits, in the
+manner of his kinsman "Boucher, to say it with respect." But the journey
+to Rome converted Saul into Paul. In 1775 Vien, on his appointment as
+director of the Roman Academy, had taken him to Italy as his best pupil,
+and hardly dreamt at that time that this young man would strike out on
+such an entirely new path from his Roman studies. He did not wait for
+the Revolution to be converted; when the hour struck he was ready. Thus
+his first pictures were in a manner the prelude to the Revolution. In
+them he had already quite consciously entered upon the road along which
+he was to go later. His "Oath of the Horatii" and his "Brutus," both
+painted in Rome in 1784, proclaimed his programme. The little, rosy
+loves, the doves of Venus, and all the charming frivolity and gallantry
+of _rococo_, received their final dismissal, and rough men walked in
+their stead. He broke his staff over all that he had previously
+venerated, and declared loudly that he had sinned when in his youth he
+had believed in the flowery palette of _rococo_, and completed in tender
+tones those ceiling frescoes which Fragonard had commenced in the house
+of Mdlle. Guimard. Capricious frivolities had to make way for a manlier
+art, matter "that was worthy to rivet the gaze of a free nation upon
+itself." Already, long before the taking of the Bastille, the painting
+of young David was valued by the rising generation as the artistic
+embodiment of their political ideas, imbibed while they were still at
+school. When the "Horatii" was completed it was not only old Pompeo
+Battoni who exclaimed, when he saw the picture in David's Roman studio,
+"_Tu ed io soli siamo pittori, pel rimanente si puo gettarlo nel
+fiume._" In Paris his success was universal; all the critics were
+unanimous in praise; David was the man after the heart of the age, for
+his picture was the first which spoke clearly and perceptibly of the
+pathos of the revolution which stood at the threshold. People saw in it
+an "example of patriotism which knew no obstacles," since not even love
+for their sister, who was betrothed to the enemy, prevailed upon the
+Horatii to refrain from combat with the Curiati. His next picture,
+"Brutus" as he received the lictors, when they bring him the bodies of
+his sons who have been implicated in a monarchical conspiracy, was
+greeted as allegorical of the incorruptible justice of republicanism.
+The populace saw in it the "glorification of the chastisement of all
+traitors to liberty," and acclaimed David because he "had founded the
+sinewy style which should characterise the heroic deeds of the
+revolutionaries, children of liberty, equality, and fraternity." And one
+understands--when one also adds the influence of Napoleon--this reaction
+of military simplicity against the effeminacy of _rococo_.
+
+[Illustration: DAVID. MADAME RÉCAMIER.]
+
+David, at the outbreak of the Revolution, no longer a young man, but
+forty years old, was the terrible painter of the age, its despotic
+dictator. As a deputy in the Convention he not only ruled over painting,
+but also imposed his taste upon sculpture, ivory work, goldsmiths' work,
+and decoration. He designed the new costumes for the deputies and
+ministers. As organiser of public fêtes, he brought to life again the
+whole of republican Rome. He was one of those rare artists who are the
+men of their hour. To a new plebeian race, to whose feverishly excited
+patriotism the soft, luxurious, aristocratically reprehensible art of
+_rococo_ must seem as a mockery of all the rights of men, he showed, for
+the first time, the man, the hero who died for an idea or for his
+country; and he gave this man huge and elastic muscles, like those of a
+gladiator who struggles in the arena. He was a second Hercules,
+cleansing the Augæan stables; with his own strong shoulders he thrust
+back the petulant band of painters who had tarried too long in the
+island of Cythera. He applied art to the heroism of the day, gave it the
+martial attitude of patriotism, inspired it with the spirit of
+Robespierre, St. Just, and Danton. The more obtrusively his heroes
+paraded their patriotism, the more people saw in them a picture of the
+French nation, as true as a transposition could hope to be. This
+strained rhetorical pathos dwelt in the mind of the age. Talma moved the
+people to enthusiasm when he played the "Horatii" of Corneille in the
+classic cothurnus. When David painted, the state declamations of the
+orators still rang in his ears. Robespierre is said to have spoken from
+the tribune slowly, rhythmically, artistically: a Bossuet in his
+rostrum, a Boileau in his chair, while the volcano quivered beneath his
+very feet: his philippics were carefully divided into three sections,
+like academic discourses: his patriotism resolved itself into tirades
+with correctly composed periods. In David's pictures we have an exact
+correspondence with all this: the rigid classicality of his composition,
+figures grouped as though on parade; his cold pathos, the counterpart to
+that of the orators' fine sentiments set forth in fine phrases.
+
+The great distinction between the beginning of modern art in Germany and
+in France is that in France the new style was not only called forth by
+the influence of a scientific programme from outside, but stood in
+conjunction with a great transformation in culture, and that it was
+compelled at first to concern itself not only with imitation and
+philological retrospect, but with the free expression of the
+characteristically modern spirit. German art had no new pronouncement to
+make through the medium of the antique; it followed, on the other hand,
+the programme of an artistically barren scholar who forgot that
+archæology is not art, recommended imitation as the path to perfection,
+and perpetually reminded the artists who followed him how widely they
+deviated from the correct lines of the model. "Afterwards they rebuke
+it, and say it is not antique and consequently not good art," as
+Albrecht Dürer had complained of such people. In the earnest sentiment,
+the exalted Roman spirit, the declaiming over rugged, masculine virtues,
+freedom and patriotism, that found expression in David's first pictures,
+there lived something of the Catonian spirit of the Terror; and that
+still gives them historical value. His enthusiasm was not, first and
+foremost, for antique art, but for the ideas of country, duty, freedom,
+progress. The words antiquity and democracy were of like meaning to him.
+
+[Illustration: DAVID. THE OATH OF THE HORATII.]
+
+And how thoroughly this man was permeated with the spirit of his age is
+shown still more when he discarded the cothurnus, boldly attacked the
+present, and gave himself up entirely to the delineation of what came
+under his direct observation in his own life and experience. There he
+became not only a rhetorician, a revolutionary agitator, but a really
+great painter. Lepelletier on his death-bed, the assassinated Marat,
+and the dead Barre, are works of a mighty _naturalist_. Lepelletier, one
+of the many deputies who had voted for the death of Louis XVI, was
+treacherously assassinated in Paris, on 20th January 1793, by a valet of
+the king's. The body was publicly exhibited; David painted it, and on
+29th March presented the picture to the Convention. As the portrait of
+the "first Martyr of Liberty," it was hung in the Convention chamber. On
+13th July 1793 Marat, the man-of-terror, fell a victim to the knife of
+Charlotte Corday. David was presiding at the Jacobin Club when the news
+was brought him, and he embraced the citizen who had arrested the girl.
+Deputations of the people appeared in the Convention to express their
+grief for the heavy loss. Suddenly a voice was heard to cry: "_Où es tu,
+David? Tu as transmis à la posterité l'image de Lepelletier mourant pour
+la patrie, il te reste encore un tableau à faire._" Silence succeeded in
+the Assembly. Then David started up: "_Je le ferai._" On 11th October he
+informed the Convention that his "Marat" was finished. "The people asked
+for their murdered man back again, longed to look once more on the
+features of their truest friend. They cried to me: 'David, take up your
+brush, avenge Marat, so that the enemy may blanch when they perceive the
+distorted countenance of the man who became the victim of his love for
+freedom.' I heard the voice of the people, and obeyed." Thus David spoke
+in the Assembly when he presented the Republic with the picture of the
+murdered man--one of the most thrilling representations of that awful
+age. The body is lying in the bath. Only the naked upper part of the
+body, and the head, with a dirty cloth tied round it, and fallen back
+upon the right shoulder, are visible; one hand, resting back on the side
+of the bath, still holds a paper in a convulsive grip; the other hangs
+down limp and dead to the ground. Over this head, with the half-closed
+eyelids, and the mouth distorted from the death-throes, Caravaggio would
+have rejoiced, there is such keen naturalism in every stroke of the
+brush. Like Géricault, in later times, David was then a regular visitor
+at the Morgue, attended at executions, and took an interest in the
+convulsive muscular movements of the guillotined. And the colour, too,
+like the drawing, is of a naturalistic strength to which he never again
+attained. The light falls slantingly on the corpse from above and throws
+the head, shoulder, and one arm into strong relief, while all the rest
+is left in obscurity. In this awful _still-life_ of uncompromising
+reality and tragical grandeur he has created a work in the midst of an
+age of storm which will survive all storms and all changes of taste.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ DAVID. THE RAPE OF THE SABINES.]
+
+[Illustration: DAVID. HELEN AND PARIS.]
+
+His portraits have no less strikingly survived the fiery ordeal of time.
+In them, too, he is neither rhetorical nor cold, but full of fire and
+the freshness of youth. Face to face with his model, he forgot the
+Greeks and Romans, saw life alone, was rejuvenated in the youth-giving
+fount of nature, and painted--almost alone of the painters of his
+generation--the truth. Here his effect, when otherwise he was lacking in
+all naïveté, is actually naïve and intimate. The best painters have
+never treated flesh better. He had an aversion to palette tones, and
+sought after nature with unexampled attention. The fine pearl-grey of
+his colouring is as delicate as it is distinguished; in his portraits,
+especially, the relief-tones of blue and light rose seem almost to
+anticipate the delicate, toned-down tints of modern Impressionism.
+Himself an ardent Revolutionist, he was, as it were, created to be the
+portrayer of those men of an austerity like Cato's, and those women with
+their free, masculine, proud gaze; that valiant generation that felt
+within itself a desire to begin civilisation again and found religion
+anew. The portrait of Lavoisier and his wife reminds one in its
+refinement of Madame Vigée-Lebrun. The chemist is sitting by a table
+covered with instruments; his wife, in an elegant light gown, bends
+attentively over him. The picture dates from 1788, and it still looks
+like some good work of the age of Louis XVI. Again, how intimate is the
+effect of the marvellous portrait of Michael Gérard and his family. The
+good man, in his shirt-sleeves, seems to feel really at home; a small
+boy is leaning against his knee, a girl is playing on the clavicorde.
+There is not the slightest suggestion of pose or a conventional type of
+beauty in this stout old gentleman sitting so comfortably in his
+_bourgeois négligé_, and with honest eyes gazing out so inquisitively
+round him. In a few other pictures the spiritual life of women is
+portrayed with remarkable tenderness. One of the earliest is the
+exceptionally fine portrait of his mother-in-law, Madame Pécoult, in
+1783; then, in 1790, the portrait of the Marquise d'Orvilliers, with
+that expression of dreamy languor which plays round the eyes of the
+beautiful woman. The Louvre possesses, in the portrait of Madame
+Récamier, perhaps the most charming and attractive woman's portrait that
+David ever painted. The beautiful Juliette lies stretched on a divan of
+antique pattern. She wears a white dress, her soft rosy feet are bare.
+The arrangement of the room coquettes primly with that simplicity which
+was paraded at the time. Apart from the divan, there is only a huge
+bronze candelabra to be seen. Then there is Barere's portrait. He stands
+on the tribune, and delivers the speech which is to cost Louis XVI his
+life. The face is small and insignificant, the gaze cold and harsh, and
+on the mouth there is a shadow of bitter hate and narrow fanaticism. But
+the triumph of these portraits of men is that of Bonaparte. David was
+one of the first of the men of the Revolution to come beneath the spell
+of the Little Corporal. One day, while he was working in his studio at
+the Louvre, a pupil rushed in breathlessly: "General Bonaparte is
+outside the door!" Napoleon entered in a dark-blue coat "that made his
+lean yellow face look leaner and yellower than ever." David dismissed
+his pupils, and drew, in a sitting of barely two hours, the stern head
+of the Corsican. Thus he passed into the service of Napoleon.
+
+This man, who viewed himself only as the coping-stone of the
+Republic--after the example of Augustus when he transformed the Roman
+Republic into the Empire--was unwilling to show any opposition to the
+republican tastes. The first painter of the Republic was appointed to be
+the Imperial Court painter. What he had been under Robespierre he was
+under Napoleon: the dictator of his age, who maintained a supremacy over
+the whole of art similar to that which Lebrun held beneath Louis XIV.
+The "Marat" was the great work of his revolutionary, the "Coronation" of
+his monarchical period,--that colossal picture which, completed between
+1806 and 1807, has handed down to posterity a true representation of the
+ceremonial pageants that took place in Notre Dame on 2nd December 1804.
+The moment selected is when Napoleon places the crown, which is carried
+on a velvet cushion by the Duc de Berg, upon the head of the Empress,
+who kneels before him in a white robe and a crimson mantle. The picture
+contains portraits of all the personages present at the ceremony,
+amongst them being David himself, as he stands on a platform and
+sketches at a small table. The whole composition of this picture and the
+grouping of the figures is full of stately gravity. Real energy and
+patience must have been required to paint this immense picture, though
+it shows not the least sign of fatigue. With the exception of Menzel's
+"Coronation of William I," I know of no historical picture of the
+century of as high an artistic value, with the like noble sublimity of
+colour, with so tender, quivering a light. There are certain portions of
+the "Coronation" in which the white robes, the deep-red velvet of the
+mantles, and gold embroideries affect us like a symphony in colours.
+When the picture was completed Napoleon visited David's studio,
+accompanied by the Empress, his ministers, and his staff. The Court drew
+up, and the Emperor moved up and down in front of the picture, hat in
+hand, for more than half an hour, examining it in all its details.
+Finally, with one of those dramatic effects of which he was so fond, he
+lightly raised his hat: "_C'est bien, très bien; David, je vous salue_."
+
+[Illustration: DAVID. BELISARIUS ASKING ALMS.]
+
+David had now still better opportunities than at an earlier period of
+proving his great capacity as a portrait painter. His portraits of the
+Emperor, of the Pope, of Cardinal Caprara, and of Murat symbolise the
+brutal greatness of an age which worshipped strength. Even at the close
+of his life, when the Restoration had exiled him from France, there
+resulted in Brussels graceful and tenderly observed portraits, such as
+that of the daughter of Joseph Bonaparte, which will perpetuate his
+name. One, in the Praet Collection at Brussels--three women of
+indescribable ugliness--marks the pinnacle of his pictorial strength and
+keen naturalism. They are the "Three Fates" of 1810, and he has painted
+them with the true artist's delight, and with a massiveness like that of
+Frans Hals.
+
+When these works were brought together at the Paris Exhibition of 1889,
+universal astonishment prevailed when it was discovered what a great
+painter this Louis David was. He appeared in these pictures as an artist
+who stood completely within his age, who shared its passions and was
+permeated by its greatness; he even appeared as a _charmeur_ who handled
+the phenomena of colour and light as few others have done. It is true,
+David showed himself in this favourable light at the exhibition only
+because the entirely archæological side of his talent was not
+represented. For at the bottom of his heart he too was an archæologist.
+Many of his works, such as "The Death of Socrates," "Brutus," "The Oath
+in the Tennis Court," and "The Rape of the Sabines," are specimens of a
+barren theory.
+
+Against all the caprice of the eighteenth century, with its charming,
+alluring grace, he opposed a strict, inexorable system, as he believed
+he saw it in the antique. Simplicity, however, beneath his hands became
+dryness, nobility formal. He saw in painting a sort of abstract geometry
+for which there existed hard-and-fast forms. There was something
+mathematical in his effort after dry correctness and erudite accuracy.
+The infinite variety of life with its eternal changes was hidden from
+his sight. The beautiful, he taught with Winckelmann, does not exist in
+a single individual; it is only possible to create a type of it by
+comparison and through composition. The human being of art ought always
+to be a copy of that perfect being, primitive man, whom the Roman
+sculptors had still before their eyes, but who had deteriorated in the
+course of ages. Thus in France, too, the sensuous art of painting was
+converted into an abstract science of æsthetics. The classic ideal
+weighed upon French art and prescribed for all alike the same "heroic
+style," the same elevation, the same marble coldness and monotony of
+colour. _Jean-Baptiste Regnault_, and _François André Vincent_, whose
+studios were most frequented after David's, worshipped the same gods.
+After David's departure, _Guérin_, in particular, endeavoured to
+bequeath to the students those genuinely academic rules which his pupil,
+Delacroix, has summed up in these words: "In order to make an ideal head
+of a negro, our teachers make him resemble as far as possible the
+profile of Antinous, and then say, 'We have done our utmost; if he is,
+nevertheless, not beautiful, we must altogether abstain from this freak
+of nature, with his squat nose and thick lips, so unendurable to the
+eyes.'" When he had to paint his "Insurrection in Cairo," therefore,
+Egyptians as well as Arabs must first be supplied with heads of Antinous
+and transformed from modern soldiers into ancient warriors, Romans of
+the time of Romulus, before they could enter into the kingdom of art.
+Everything was sacrificed to line,--an inflexible, inexorable, correct,
+and icy line, the conventional, ideal line,--not the true line which
+follows from observation of the infinite variety of nature.
+
+Nevertheless, even in works constructed as these were by rule and line,
+we cannot fail to be impressed by the technical ability displayed by the
+artist.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ DAVID. THE DEATH OF MARAT.]
+
+France, who in her outward relations has generally had a feverish
+longing for change, has been in literary and artistic respects, as a
+rule, exceedingly conservative, has upheld authority, supported an
+academy, and prized limitations and proportion above everything. They
+had upset the monarchy, murdered the hated aristocrats, built up the
+republic, done away with Christianity before they ever thought of
+touching the three unities of the drama. Voltaire, who had a reverence
+for nothing in heaven or earth, respected the received treatment of the
+Alexandrine verse. And David, the great painter of the Revolution, who
+cast the pictures of Boucher out of the Louvre, and whose pupils used to
+shoot bread-crumbs at Watteau's masterpiece, the "Voyage à Cythère," yet
+conveyed with him into the new age, as an inheritance from _rococo_, its
+prodigious knowledge. The good old traditions of the technique of French
+painting were little shaken by him and his school. The Academy described
+by Quatremère as the "eternal nursery garden of incurable prejudices,"
+was indeed overthrown, but David became immediately the head of a new
+one. This age of absorption in politics developed an art to correspond,
+more disciplined than ever, girt round by an iron cuirass; and this art,
+notwithstanding multifarious phases, at no time lost its touch,
+technically, with the acquisitions of former epochs, but evolved itself
+in its various directions from one centre, distracted from its path by
+nothing brought into it from outside. Géricault, Delacroix, Courbet, and
+Manet, widely as they differ from one another, are links in one chain of
+evolution. Art comes from knowledge. This maxim, which David held in
+honour, has remained to the present day a dominant force in French art,
+and by virtue of this knowledge, which David received from the old
+masters and guarded as a sacred trust, France became in the nineteenth
+century the chief school of technique for all other nations. From the
+French the other nations learned their grammar and syntax; through them
+they acquired a wider horizon and a deeper insight into the great
+mystery of nature.
+
+[Decoration]
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+THE ESCAPE INTO THE PAST
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE NAZARENES
+
+
+Herein lies the great difference between France and Germany. Although
+following along new lines, the art of France did not thereby suffer as
+regards the quality of its execution; in spite of all Classicism it
+remained the disciplined art of the schools. These favourable
+preliminaries were lacking in Germany. It was not allotted to German
+painting to grow up in naïve contentment with the technical inheritance
+of its forefathers, but, on the contrary, at the entrance of its new
+career it broke so completely with its predecessor--the art of the
+eighteenth century--that it could no longer adopt even its technical
+traditions. It arose out of the negation of earlier art, an absolute
+negation such as the world had never seen before. It began with a
+self-made man who had never acquired the charter of craftsmanship, who
+never learnt to paint. In France, revolutionary pictures inspired with
+intense pathos, and frankly naturalistic portraits of masterly
+technique; with Carstens, outlines showing refined feeling, but faulty
+very generally in execution, sketches drawn roughly with the pencil,
+crayon, or red chalk.
+
+It had taken many generations of painters, whose lives had been spent in
+careful devotion to the work, to collect the technical capital which
+Carstens so carelessly flung to the winds.
+
+The next step along this way was taken by the Nazarenes.
+
+Just as it was inevitable that cold and lifeless Classicism should
+follow the brightness and animation of _rococo_, so it was necessary,
+according to the law of extremes which alternate in every evolution of
+culture, that, next to the antique, should come its exact opposite, the
+Gothic or Middle Ages. The antique was so monotonous that people longed
+for variety of colour again; it was so cold and statuesque that they
+longed for something soulful, so Greek and pagan and severe that they
+hankered again after something Christian, would believe again like
+children.
+
+Even in the young days of the old pagan, Goethe, religion formed the
+favourite topic of the _beaux esprits_, and in the same year, 1797, that
+Carstens died, this cult of the emotional life found, for the first
+time, expression in literature. In every library one finds a dainty,
+finely printed book in small octavo, without the author's name, with the
+title _Herzensergiessungen eines Kunstliebenden Klosterbruders_, and
+with a sort of head of Raphael as a frontispiece, in which, with his
+prominent eyes, full lips, and long neck, he looks like some
+intellectual, Christ-inspired, consumptive enthusiast. It is the pale,
+gentle face of Wackenroder.
+
+[Illustration: FREDERICK OVERBECK.]
+
+First Winckelmann, then Wackenroder. In the very personalities of these
+two the whole opposition between Classicism and the Nazarenes is
+reflected. A student barely twenty years old, a mild, modest,
+contemplative soul, who had attached himself from early youth with
+womanly devotion to his more energetic friend Tieck, and written letters
+to him that read like a young girl's effusions to her sweetheart, he
+entered the Erlanger University with his friend at the Easter of 1793.
+They saw Nuremberg. More than once they made pilgrimages to the old
+fashioned town, the treasury of German art; and the spirit of the past
+powerfully inspired them. Whilst for Lessing and Winckelmann "Gothic"
+art only meant barbarian art, the wonders of Nuremberg were now observed
+with fresh eyes. In a sort of intoxication of art the friends wandered
+through churches, stood by the graves of Albrecht Dürer and Peter
+Vischer, and a vanished world rose before them. The spires and turrets
+behind falling walls and ramparts, the old, stately, patrician houses,
+which jutted out their oriel windows, as it were with curiosity, into
+the crooked streets, were peopled to their imagination with picturesque
+figures in bonnet and hose from that great time when Nuremberg was "the
+living, swarming school of native art," when "an exuberant, artistic
+spirit" governed within its walls, when Master Hans Sachs and Adam Kraft
+and Peter Vischer and Albrecht Dürer and Willibald Pirkheymer were
+alive. Shortly after that they came to Dresden, and devoted themselves
+in the gallery there to an enthusiastic cult of the Madonna. The
+_Herzensergiessungen eines Kunstliebenden Klosterbruders_, which
+appeared a year before Wackenroder's death in his twenty-sixth year, was
+the result of these wanderings and studies. In this tender production of
+a visionary youth the spirit of Romantic art found expression.
+
+Winckelmann was an archæologist; Wackenroder, an enthusiast of the
+Middle Ages; on the one side knowledge only, on the other all feeling;
+for the one, paganism, for the other, Christ. For it is from the first a
+leading principle of the "_Klosterbruder_," that "the finest stream of
+life only issues from the streams of art and religion when they flow in
+company." He valued the older painters "because they had made painting
+the true handmaid of religion"; art was to him an object of devotion.
+Picture galleries, he says, ought to be temples; he would liken the
+enjoyment of works of art to prayer; let it be a holy feast day to him
+if he go with a serious and composed mind to their observance; indeed,
+reverence for art and reverence for God were so closely interwoven that
+he was fain to kneel down before art, and offer it the homage of an
+"eternal and boundless love." This devotion to art, of which he himself
+was full, he found nowhere in his times. The age of enlightenment was to
+him an undevout and inartistic age. Only in his wanderings through the
+uneven streets of Nuremberg did the deepest yearning of his soul seem
+satisfied. He applied himself to mediæval, and especially to German art.
+His standpoint is the same which the young Goethe had adopted when he
+intervened with Herder for "German style and art," and dedicated his
+pamphlet on German architecture to the shade of Erwin von Steinbach. He
+is reluctant that one should condemn the Middle Ages because they did
+not build such temples as the Greeks, any more than that one should
+condemn the Indians because they spoke their language and not our own.
+"It is not only beneath Italian skies, under majestic domes and
+Corinthian columns, that true art thrives, it lives too under pointed
+arches, intricately decorated buildings, and Gothic spires."
+
+[Illustration: OVERBECK. THE ANNUNCIATION.]
+
+It was all said so simply and heartily that soon the whole world began
+to be "Wackenroderite." The ingenious and enthusiastic youth was
+succeeded by theoretic reasoners. Tieck, who published his _Phantasies
+upon Art_ in 1799, after Wackenroder's death, and amplified it with his
+own explanations, was no longer a genuine but a counterfeit
+"_Klosterbruder_." He first played with Catholicism, and uttered the
+momentous sentence: "The best of the later masters up to the most recent
+times have had no other aim than to imitate some one of the primitive or
+typical artists, or even several together; nor have they easily become
+great by any other method than by having successfully imitated
+somebody." His _Sternbald_ is still more haunted by the spirit of
+monastic devotion.
+
+[Illustration: OVERBECK. THE NAMING OF ST. JOHN.]
+
+[Illustration: OVERBECK. CHRIST HEALING THE SICK.]
+
+The particular starting-point was in this case too, as it had been
+before for Winckelmann, the Dresden Gallery, where, at the turn of the
+century, Augustus William and Frederick Schlegel, the two
+"_Gotter-buben_," held their cultured rendezvous. "The Schlegels had
+taken possession of the gallery," wrote Dora Stock, "and with Schelling
+and Gries spent almost every morning there. It was a joy to see them
+writing and teaching there. Sometimes they talked to me about art. I
+felt myself often quite paltry, I was so far from any wisdom. Fichte,
+too, they initiated into their secrets. You would have laughed if you
+could have seen them drag him about and assail him with their
+convictions." The journal _Europa_, founded by Frederick Schlegel in
+1803, became the rallying-point of the new movement, and his articles
+published therein contained the germs of all the efforts and errors of
+the young school. In his discourse on Raphael he compares the
+pre-Raphaelite period with that succeeding it, and considers the
+proposition that "indubitably the corruption of art was originally
+brought about by the newer school which was marked by Raphael, Titian,
+Correggio, Giulio Romano, and Michael Angelo" so unquestionable that he
+does not find it in the least necessary to prove it. He casually puts
+forward as an _obiter dictum_ dropped in amongst a series of quite
+opposed notions the idea that every art ought to have a national
+foundation, and that any imitation of a foreign form of art is
+deleterious. The result follows that it is to be deplored "that an evil
+genius has alienated artists from the circle of ideas and the subjects
+of the old painters. Culture can only attach itself to what has been
+constituted. How natural it would be, then, if painters were to go on in
+the old way, and cast themselves anew into the ideas and disposition of
+the old painters." The artist should follow the painters prior to
+Raphael, "especially the oldest," should strive to "copy carefully
+their truth and simplicity long enough for it to become second nature to
+his eye"; or he may "select the style of the old German school as a
+pattern."
+
+[Illustration: OVERBECK. CHRIST'S ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM.]
+
+[Illustration: OVERBECK. THE RESURRECTION.]
+
+The latter counsel originated from the discovery in 1804 of the Cologne
+Cathedral picture, referred to by Schlegel in his _Europa_. Through the
+secularisation of the monasteries, attention was again directed to the
+old ecclesiastical pictures which people had hitherto passed by
+unnoticed. From the monasteries, churches, guild halls, and castles
+which the French had plundered, countless masses of paintings of every
+sort were extricated. A great deal perished; nearly all, however, that
+had hitherto been kept as heirlooms, and for the most part almost
+inaccessible, now became movable, attainable property. The brothers
+Boisserée began their celebrated collection, which is to be seen to-day
+in the Munich _Pinakothek_. While hitherto one had, at the most, known
+of Dürer, now one touched upon an age which lay behind the Reformation,
+an age in which Catholicism was flourishing, in which "not great artists
+but nameless monks represented art," and it was soon all fire and ardour
+over the sweetness, naïveté, and faith of these pictures. Fernow had
+still pronounced generally against the capacity of the "Catholic
+religion, with its Jewish-Christian mythology and martyrology," to
+satisfy the demands of a pure taste in art. Carstens had written down
+for himself the sentence from Webb's work: "The art of the ancients was
+rich in august and captivating figures: their gods had grace, majesty,
+and beauty. How much meaner is the lot of the moderns! Their art is
+subservient to the priests. Their characters are taken from the lowest
+spheres of life--men of humble descent and uncouth manners. Even their
+Divine Master is in painting nowhere to be seen according to a great
+idea; His long, smooth hair, His Jewish beard and sickly appearance
+would deprive the most exalted beings of any semblance of dignity.
+Meekness and humility, His characteristic traits, are virtues edifying
+in the extreme but in no way picturesque. This lack of dignity in the
+subject renders it intelligible why we look so coldly at these works in
+the churches and galleries. The genius of painting expends its strength
+in vain on Crucifixions, Holy Families, Last Suppers, and the like." Not
+five years had elapsed after Carstens' death when, according to an
+impression of Dorothea Veit, "Christianity was once more the order of
+the day." William Schlegel's poem, _The Church's Alliance with the
+Arts_, from which, later, Overbeck borrowed the thought for his
+picture, can be looked upon, as Goethe already wrote, as the true
+profession of faith of the young school. Where previously Augustus
+William had described in his sonnets the Io, Leda, and Cleopatra of the
+Dresden Gallery, it was now the Madonna who received the homage of the
+gallant poet. By Frederick, Christianity was recommended to the artist
+as a formal model and a source of æsthetic enjoyment,--as it was, at the
+same time, by Chateaubriand as _prédilection d'artiste_.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ OVERBECK. THE SEVEN LEAN YEARS.]
+
+Even more profound did the tendency become during the War of
+Independence, which at the same time gave the death blow to Classicism.
+Distress taught how to pray. In those years of humiliation the young
+generation abandoned the classic ideal for ever, and Schenkendorf cried
+imperiously: "We would see no more pagan pictures on any German walls."
+French "frivolity" was contrasted with German seriousness, German
+Christianity with the free-thought of the French; there was a return
+from the cold philosophy of enlightenment to the vigorous feeling of
+mediæval faith.
+
+Frederick Schlegel, the author of _Lucinde_, who had written as lately
+as 1799:--
+
+ "Mein einzig Religion ist die,
+ Dass ich liebe ein schönes Knie,
+ Volle Brust und schlanke Hüften,
+ Dazu Blumen mit süssen Düften,"
+
+was converted to Catholicism. Schelling wrote his _Philosophy of
+Revelation_; Görres, the editor of the _Rothen Blut_, ended as the
+author of the _Christian Mystic_.
+
+Here set in the period of the Nazarenes. What Schlegel had said was to
+become true, that the German artist has either no character at all or he
+must have the character of the mediæval masters, true-hearted and
+thoughtful, innocent withal, and somewhat maladroit. In architecture the
+Hellenic school is succeeded by the Gothic, painting passes from the
+reverence of the Greek statues to that of old Italian pictures.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ JULIUS SCHNORR VON CAROLSFELD.]
+
+Rome remained for the Nazarenes, too, the centre of influence, only they
+no longer made pilgrimages, like the Classicists, to ancient but to
+Christian Rome. _Overbeck_ of Lübeck came in 1810 with Pforr of
+Frankfort and Vogel of Zürich; the Düsseldorfer, Cornelius, followed in
+1811, _Schadow_ and _Veit_ of Berlin in 1815, _Schnorr von Carolsfeld_
+of Leipzig in 1818, the Viennese _Führich_ and _Steinle_ in 1827 and
+1828. In all of them there lived the perception that in such a serious
+age men should be of high moral endeavour, and art the expression of the
+religious capacity of their lives.
+
+[Illustration: _Wigand, Leipzig._
+
+ SCHNORR. ADAM AND EVE AFTER THE FALL.]
+
+There still stands to-day, on a secluded hillock of the Monte Pincio a
+small church, whose façade is adorned with the statues of St. Isidore,
+the patron of husbandmen, and of St. Patrick, apostle of Ireland. A
+court with weather-beaten cloisters and an old well separates the church
+from the monastery which lies behind it, where the cells of the monks,
+Irish and Italian Franciscans, are placed. Above, on the terrace of the
+house, one has a charming view of Rome and the Campagna, of Monte Cavo
+and the heights of Tusculum. Below stretch the gardens of the Capucin
+Convent, and farther back the grounds and avenues of the Villa Ludovisi.
+On the first floor is a large hall, the walls of which have been
+decorated by the hand of some old monk with frescoes, and which,
+formerly a refectory, is used to-day as a theological lecture-room. This
+was the room where Overbeck and his friends in the first period after
+their arrival stood for one another as models. Lethière, the director of
+the French Academy, had obtained permission for them to install
+themselves in the deserted rooms of the monastery of San Isidoro, which
+had been spared by Napoleon, for which they paid the small sum of three
+scudi monthly.
+
+[Illustration: JOSEPH FÜHRICH. _Graphische Kunst._]
+
+"We led a truly monastic life," relates Overbeck; "held ourselves aloof
+from all, and lived only for art. In the morning we marketed together;
+at midday we took it in turns to cook our dinner, which was composed of
+nothing but a soup and a pudding, or some tasty vegetable, and was
+seasoned only by earnest conversation on art." Overbeck, as a good
+housekeeper, kept accounts; the principal items of the daily outlay
+occurred for polenta and risotto, oranges and lemons; every now and then
+oil, too, was noted down. The afternoons were dedicated to the study of
+the creations of art in Rome. With "beating hearts and holy awe" they
+passed over the threshold of the _Stanze_. In the chapel of San Lorenzo
+they became "familiar with the seraphic Fiesole, whose frescoes
+transcend everything in purity of conception." They shunned the paganism
+of St. Peter's, and marvelled with all the more intimate devotion at the
+old Christian monuments. The churches of San Lorenzo and San Clemente,
+the cloisters of St. John Lateran and St. Paul's-without-the-Walls, made
+an ineffaceable impression upon the young men. At the twilight hour they
+wandered up on to Monte Cavo. "And of evenings we drew studies of
+drapery--glorious folds!--from Pforr's big Venetian mantle, in which we
+took turns to pose for one another." Their whole hearts, however, first
+swelled when they undertook a journey to Tuscany. In Orvieto, Luca
+Signorelli awaited them, whose frescoes especially impressed Cornelius
+mightily. At Sienna they found teachers who were still more sympathetic
+to them, Duccio and Simone Martino, those masters of a tender, intimate
+spirit and a charming sweetness of expression. In the Campo Santo at
+Pisa they turned their attention to Fiesole's pupil, Gozzoli. Those
+became their great teachers in art. "Just as ardent Christians wander to
+the grave of the princes of the apostles in order to confirm their faith
+and quicken their zeal, so should zealous young artists derive strength
+and illumination from the silent and yet so eloquent speech of the
+sublime geniuses of art. An artist of real worth will find in the
+masterpieces of painting at Rome everything necessary for him in order
+to reach the right path. But, to be sure, a well-made plait of hair does
+not certainly constitute one a Raphael, because Raphael, too, arranged
+his hair with feeling. Study alone leads to nothing. If since Raphael's
+age, as one can almost declare, there has been no painter, that is the
+fault of nothing else than of the fact that art has been vanquished by
+workmanship. One learnt at the academies to paint excellent drapery, to
+draw a correct figure, learnt perspective, architecture--in short,
+everything, and yet no painter was produced. There is one want in all
+recent painting--heart, soul, sentiment. Let the young painter then
+watch, before everything, over his sentiments: let him allow neither an
+impure word on his lips nor an impure thought in his mind. But how can
+he guard himself from that? By religion, by study of the Bible, the one
+and only study which made Raphael. This view now certainly contradicts
+the accustomed principles that everything must be systematically learnt;
+mere learning produces certainly an instructed but also a cold artist.
+On that ground it is not good either to study anatomy from dead bodies,
+because one dwarfs thereby certain fine sensibilities, or to work from
+female models, for the same reason. Let the painter be inspired by his
+subject as those of old were, and the result will be the same. Like
+those old painters, let every artist remind himself that the truest use
+of art is that which leads it heavenwards, its one function that of
+having a moral effect upon men." "How pure and holy," cries Cornelius to
+Xeller, as late as 1858, "was the end at which we aimed! Unknown,
+without encouragement, without aid, except that of our loving Father in
+heaven."
+
+[Illustration: FÜHRICH. FROM THE "LEGEND OF ST. GWENDOLIN."]
+
+It is obvious that between the ascetics of the monastery and the
+Classicists direct friction must ensue. To them the "ever repeated and
+pale reflexions of Greek sculpture" said nothing, while the Classicists
+scoffed at the religionists, for whom the sarcastic brawler, Reinhart,
+invented the nickname of "Nazarenes," which has since become a
+watchword. The opposition was historically immortalised when Bunsen, the
+Prussian envoy, invited the whole colony to the christening of his
+little daughter, and Niebuhr touched glasses with Thorwaldsen "to the
+health of old Jupiter." Only Cornelius joined in; the others started and
+looked upon the young Düsseldorfer as a heretic.
+
+This positive Christian standpoint, which allowed art to be esteemed
+only as a religious service, pictures only as a means of ecclesiastical
+edification, irritated also the old man of Weimar at the first start.
+The effort of the Nazarenes to make piety the foundation of true
+artistic activity was to him a continual subject of contempt. Religion
+no more bestows talent for the arts than it gives taste. He spoke with
+irony of the "valiant artists and ingenious friends of art who had
+resort to the honourable, naïve, yet somewhat coarse taste" of the
+fourteenth and fifteenth-century masters. He constantly employed of them
+the expression "star-gazing." He had already mockingly remarked of
+Wackenroder's _Herzensergiessungen_ what an unwarrantable conclusion it
+was, that because a few monks were artists, all artists should therefore
+be monks. He called the life of the Nazarenes "a sort of masquerade
+which stood in opposition to the actual day," and wrote in the pages of
+_Art and Antiquity_ that manifesto, the _New German Religious-Patriotic
+Art_, or _History of the New Pietistic False Art since the Eighties_,
+which so deeply wounded the young enthusiasts. "The doctrine was that
+the artist needed piety above everything to equal the work of the best.
+What an attractive doctrine! How eagerly we should accept it! For in
+order to become religious one need learn nothing." The whole movement
+reached nothing beyond a slavish imitation of Giotto and his immediate
+followers. Of course, it was inconsistent of Goethe to reproach
+contemporary art for imitating that of the Middle Ages, and to praise
+the latter only when it imitated the antique. Speaking as a man of
+Mengs' school, and merely proposing Hellenic art as a canon instead of
+early Italian, he had, after all, no right to be angry if Frederick
+Schlegel opposed classical models with mediæval. Otherwise, however,
+even to-day little can be added to Goethe's animadversions.
+
+[Illustration: FÜHRICH. RUTH AND BOAZ.]
+
+As with Carstens, so with the Nazarenes, we are warned by the idealistic
+tendency which inspired the young enthusiasts. There are but few
+painters with whom life and art have been in such complete agreement as
+with the gentle, mild, and modest Overbeck, the "Apostle John," as he
+got to be called, that young man, that serene soul who looked upon art
+simply as a harp of David for the praise of the Lord, to whom the "hope
+that through his works one soul had been strengthened in faith and piety
+was of far more value than any fame," and who ended at last in a sort of
+religious mania. With the Nazarenes, too, as with the Classicists, it
+was pure exaltation which drove them to free themselves from the
+trammels of the school, in order to get back from dead fabrications to
+creations of art, which, proceeding out of the living spirit, once more
+had a soul. Even the much-despised conversion of the Protestants among
+them to the Catholic Church arose out of the deep conviction that they
+also, as well as their art, must be united in religion.
+
+[Illustration: FÜHRICH. THE DEPARTURE OF THE PRODIGAL SON.]
+
+In a certain sense they even show an advance in art. They found between
+themselves and the great painters of the eighteenth century a gulf that
+could no longer be spanned. After Carstens had thrown overboard every
+colouristic acquisition, it was indeed something that the Nazarenes no
+longer saw the highest aim of painting in black and white design, but
+turned, though with timidity and hesitation, to the study of the Italian
+Quattrocento with its joyous delight in colour, and so became the first
+real painters after the cartoon period. Only that was as yet simply an
+advance for the nineteenth century, and not especially for the history
+of art. This was as little enriched with new forms and discoveries by
+the Nazarenes as by the Classicists. The former, too, were imitators,
+and only changed masters when they fled from the antique to the Middle
+Ages, and copied the old Italians in lieu of the Greeks. The Classicists
+had imitated with a certain cold erudition; the Nazarenes out of the
+depths of their emotion. As the former used Greeks, so did they use the
+fourteenth-century painters, as patterns of calligraphy from which they
+made their copies, cut their stencils after the Italian form, and, like
+Mengs, were able to reproduce in their works only a very weak reflection
+of those departed spirits. As eclectics they would stand on the same
+rung with the academics of Bologna, except that the ideal of the latter
+school was a combination from Leonardo, Raphael, Michael Angelo,
+Correggio, and Titian, and that it possessed an incomparably greater
+facility in technique.
+
+[Illustration: FÜHRICH. JACOB AND RACHEL.]
+
+The Nazarenes abandoned on principle the employment of the model, from
+fear lest it might entice them away from the ideal representation of the
+character to be depicted. They sought in a dilettante manner to supply
+the control over the material which alone makes the artist, by
+enthusiasm for the material. Only Cornelius dared to draw from the
+female form. Overbeck refused to do so, from modesty. The Virgin Mary
+was to him the highest ideal of womanhood, the paler, the more virtuous,
+the more akin to the Lamb of God; and he would have deemed it a
+sacrilege to have depicted her as purely womanly. They therefore only
+occasionally sat to one another for studies of drapery, and, for the
+rest, "in order not to be naturalistic," painted their pictures from
+imagination in the seclusion of their cells. As the Catholicism of
+Schlegel was an anæmic system, so the painters, too, deprived their
+figures of blood and being in order to leave them only the abstract
+beauty of line. They are beings who are exalted above everything, even
+above correctness of drawing, and who must expire of a lack of blood in
+their veins. The command, "Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God,
+and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you,"
+was carried out by the Nazarenes only too well.
+
+[Illustration: STEINLE. THE RAISING OF JAIRUS' DAUGHTER.]
+
+They have created only two works which will survive, and which possess
+an historical significance as pre-eminent, works of the whole movement
+in common--the frescoes of the Casa Bartholdi and of the Villa Massini.
+
+When the intelligence of the Battle of Waterloo had penetrated even into
+the silent cells of the monks, they believed that art too should
+participate in this universal elevation, and become a factor again in
+the development of the German nation. It must not be used, wrote
+Cornelius in his famous letter to Görres, as a mere plaything, or to
+tickle the senses, not merely for the delectation and pomp of high and
+rich Maecenases, but for the ennoblement and glorification of public
+life. The means of this artistic elevation, and at the same time a new
+means of popular culture, was to be the introduction of fresco painting.
+
+[Illustration: STEINLE. "I HAVE TRODDEN THE WINEPRESS ALONE: AND OF
+ THE PEOPLE THERE WAS NONE WITH ME."]
+
+And thus the Brothers of San Isidoro re-discovered what had, as a matter
+of fact, always been quietly practiced by the "rustics painters," but
+since Mengs' time had no longer been employed by the "art painters," and
+had been forgotten for half a century. The Prussian consul at Rome,
+Bartholdy, gave them the commission. An old mason, who had last arranged
+wall-plastering under Mengs, was recruited as technical adviser; Carl
+Eggers, of Neustrelitz, zealously made chemical researches; and it is
+said to have been Veit who, at Cornelius' request ("Now, Philip, you
+make the first attempt!"), was the first to paint the portrait of a head
+in fresco, whilst his companions looked on with amazement and delight.
+Then the others set to work, "and painted away at it in the name of
+God." "Yes, believe me, my friend, it is a desperate matter to paint
+over a whole room in a manner which one has never before practised
+oneself nor seen practised by others. Every day we tell each other that
+we are fine bunglers, and give each other a regular dressing down. You
+can have no conception how strange it feels at first when one is
+confronted by damp plaster and lime. And nevertheless we construct
+daily fresh castles in the air for painting churches, monasteries, and
+palaces in Germany."
+
+The frescoes represent, in six mural paintings and two lunettes, the
+history of Joseph in Egypt, from his sale to his recognition by his
+brethren. The two latter are the work of Cornelius and Overbeck, the
+others of Veit and Schadow. The work was prolonged through many years,
+interrupted by manifold difficulties, and when one stands to-day before
+the transferred pictures in the Berlin National Gallery one cannot
+refrain from admiring them.
+
+[Illustration: EDWARD STEINLE.]
+
+There lives within them an unpretentiousness and sincerity of sentiment,
+and, in spite of all deficiencies and lack of independence, somewhat of
+that lofty inspiration which raises the pictures of really earnest
+artists, even if they are faulty, far above any fabricated productions.
+An association of young men, which, unconcerned about success and
+material profit, contended only for ideal products, found here for the
+first time an opportunity to display what it wanted. In the
+interpretation of Pharaoh's dream and in the recognition by the
+brethren, Cornelius, in formal language, full of character, and without
+any phrases and posture, displayed all that he had derived from the
+great Italians in nobility of grouping and fine arrangement of lines.
+Overbeck reaches the same height in his allegory of the seven lean kine.
+But it is not only as youthful works of artists, who, if they belonged
+to a period of decadence, yet were, withal, the greatest representatives
+of a period of German art, that these pictures are worthy of high
+esteem; they are essentially the best that these masters have created.
+Cornelius, notably, shows a study, a care for execution, indeed even a
+harmony of colouring, that stands in surprising opposition to his later
+negligence. From the conception that the artistic performance is
+determined in the invention, and the design, but that the pictorial
+execution is an indifferent, mechanical accessory which could be
+supplied even by other people, he was at that time still free.
+
+[Illustration: STEINLE. BOOK ILLUSTRATION.]
+
+When the pictures had been unveiled in 1819 a festival of German artists
+was held in Rome. Rückert, Bunsen, the Humboldts, the Herzes were there;
+Cornelius, Veit, and Overbeck had arranged the transparencies. "The
+centre of all," writes the Danish romantic Atterbom, was the Crown
+Prince Ludwig of Bavaria, "the idol of every German artist, whose ruling
+passion is for the fine arts and fair ladies. Everything was in old
+German masques, the ladies in wide ruffs. The Crown Prince was in the
+utmost good humour, and treated the artists as his equals. A toast was
+drunk to German unity. The scene struck me like a beautiful dream out of
+the Middle Ages." German unity at a Roman fancy ball! The German nation
+a beautiful dream out of the Middle Ages! The Crown Prince Ludwig, when
+he took Cornelius and Schnorr out of the Roman circle, at least created
+a fatherland for German art, and later on the others also found at home
+a suitable sphere of activity.
+
+Philip Veit, who went to Frankfort in 1830 as Director of the Staedel
+Institute, was the first to settle down, and for all his energy could
+only for a very short time make that city into a seat of the Christian
+tendency in art. Of his pictures there, the fresco painted for the
+Staedel Institute, "The Introduction of Christianity into Germany by St.
+Boniface," is by far the most important. The apostle has hewn down the
+oak of Thor, and from where it once stood there flows forth the new
+spring of Christianity. The old Germans shrink back timorously, but the
+youths listen to the preacher, and follow his direction to the figure of
+religion which approaches with the palm of peace. In the background a
+church rises, and in the distance, by a limpid river, a flourishing
+town, in contrast to the sombre, primeval forest to which the Germans
+who reject religion are flying.
+
+"The two Marys at the Sepulchre," in the Berlin National Gallery, and
+the "Assumption," in the Frankfort Cathedral, date from a later period.
+It was of no avail to him that he mingled with his Nazarenism a certain
+air of the world, which found expression in a less ascetic language of
+form and a somewhat stronger sense of colour. In 1841 he had already a
+feeling that the restless, struggling age had passed him by. He
+abandoned his post and went to meet oblivion as Director of the Gallery
+at Mayence.
+
+[Illustration: _Munich, Albert._
+
+ STEINLE. THE VIOLIN PLAYER.]
+
+Overbeck, the only one who could not tear himself from Rome, remained,
+till his death in 1869, the "Young German Raphael," as his father had
+called him in a letter from Lübeck in 1811: a devout, religious poet,
+pure of soul and of fine culture, as one-coloured and one-sided as he
+was mild and tender. At the outset he knew, at least, how to extract
+from the old masters a certain naïve piety without positive character,
+whereas later he lost himself more and more in the arid formalism of
+dead dogmas. What was in his power to give he has given in pictures such
+as the "Entry of Christ into Jerusalem" and the "Weeping over the Body
+of Christ"--both in the Marienkirche at Lübeck, in the "Miracle of
+Roses," in Santa Maria Degli Angeli at Assisi, in the "Christ on the
+Mount of Olives" in the Hospital at Hamburg, and the "Betrothal of Mary"
+in the Berlin National Gallery--pictures which expressed nothing that
+would not have been expressed better at the end of the fifteenth
+century. His "Holy Family with St. John and the Lamb," of 1825, in the
+Munich Pinakothek, is in composition and type a complete imitation of
+the Florentine Raphael; his "Lamentation of Christ" in the Lübeck
+Marienkirche is reminiscent of Perugino; his "Burial" would never have
+existed but for Raphael's picture in the Borghese Gallery. His sentiment
+coincided exactly in devotion and godliness with that of Fra Angelico or
+of the old masters of Cologne, and when he devoted himself to
+programme-painting he lost all intelligibility. In the "Triumph of
+Religion in the Arts," which he completed in 1846 for the Staedel
+Institute, and in which he wished to embody the favourite ideas of
+Romanticism, that art and religion must flow together in one stream, he
+has copied the upper part from the "Disputa," the lower part from the
+"School of Athens," and worked up both into a tedious and scholastically
+elaborated whole. It is only through a series of unpretentious sketches
+which he prepared for engravings, lithographs, and woodcuts that his
+name has still a certain lustre. Plates such as the "Rest in the
+Flight," the "Preaching of St. John," or the series "Forty Illustrations
+to the Gospel," the "Passion," the "Seven Sacraments," may be
+contemplated even to-day, since in them at least no tastelessness of
+colour stands in the way. These plates, too, like his pictures, are less
+observed than felt--felt, however, with an innocence and cheerfulness of
+heart often quite childlike.
+
+[Illustration: PHILIP VEIT.]
+
+It shows above all much self-understanding that all these masters in
+their later years restricted themselves exclusively to design, which
+better expressed their character. In compositions and sketches of this
+kind, which were only _drawn_, and were thus untrammelled by the
+fruitless struggle with the difficulties of the technique of painting
+and a complete lack of the notion of colour, they moved more freely and
+lightly. In their frescoes and oil-paintings, partly through
+insufficient technique, partly through their all too servile imitation
+of foreign ideals, they went astray. As draughtsmen, they had more
+courage to be themselves, and while in the completer paintings many a
+fine trait, many an intimate reflection of the soul was lost, or through
+the obduracy of the material did not attain a right expression, here
+their spiritual and emotional qualities can be better valued.
+
+Joseph Führich, one of the most staunchly convinced champions of these
+reactionary tendencies, has become, entirely owing to his extensive
+activity as a draughtsman, somewhat more familiar to our modern
+knowledge than most of his contemporaries. He had begun as a
+draughtsman. As a student of the Prague Academy he was an enthusiast for
+Schlegel, Novalis, and Tieck; and even before his journey to Rome he had
+etched fifteen plates for Tieck's _Genoveva_. It was Dürer who exercised
+the deciding influence upon his further development. He had been led to
+him through Wackenroder, and had copied his "Marienleben" in 1821. "Here
+I saw," he says in his Autobiography, "a form before me which stood in
+trenchant opposition to that of the Classicists, who are anxious to palm
+off as beauty their smoothness and pomposity borrowed from the
+misunderstood antique, and their affected delicacy as grace. In contrast
+with that absence of character which prevailing academic art mistakes
+for beauty I saw here a keen and mighty characterisation which dominated
+the figures through and through, making them, as it were, into old
+acquaintances." The strong and godly German middle age took then in
+Führich's heart the same place which the Italian Quattrocento had filled
+in Overbeck's range of thought. And this old-German tendency was only
+temporarily interrupted by his sojourn in Rome. After he came to Rome in
+1826 he became a Nazarene, and was accustomed there to look back at the
+tendencies of his youth as an error; and both at Prague, where he
+returned in 1829, after collaborating at the frescoes in the Villa
+Massini, and at Vienna, where from 1841 he held the post of professor in
+the Academy, he found rich opportunity for putting into practice his
+ecclesiastical and orthodox views of art.
+
+[Illustration: VEIT. THE ARTS INTRODUCED INTO GERMANY BY CHRISTIANITY.]
+
+His frescoes in the Johannis-und-Altleschenfelder Church in Vienna are,
+perhaps, more harmonious in colour, but no more independent in form,
+than the works of the others. In his old age he returned once more to
+the impressions of his youth, and so found himself again.
+
+As a boy, in his little native village of Kratzau, in Bohemia, he had
+tended the cows in summer time and had acquired a certain sincere
+knowledge of nature and shepherd-life. He had to thank Dürer for his
+preference for the idyllic and patriarchal family scenes in Sacred
+History, and these tendencies found pleasing expression in pictures like
+"Jacob and Rachel," or "The Passage of Mary across the Mountains." No
+matter that the figures in "Jacob and Rachel" are taken out of the early
+pictures of Pinturicchio and Raphael, they are still interwoven, with
+their background of landscape, into an idyll of great naïveté and charm.
+More especially, however, did the qualities which he owed to Dürer
+acquire value--a sturdy characterisation, a naïve art in telling the
+story, and a great wealth of fresh traits, straight from nature--in the
+serial compositions of his old age. There is no sentimental vagueness,
+nothing academical. Führich had a keen eye for what was intimate,
+familiar; a tender sense of the individualities of landscape in woodland
+and meadow, of the charm of everyday life as well as of the animal
+world; and though an idealist, he knew how to assimilate ingeniously
+what he had observed with a certain realistic fulness. The old story of
+Boaz and Ruth grew beneath his hands into a delicious idyll of country
+life. From the story of the Prodigal Son he has extracted with
+sensitiveness the purely human kernel, and as late as the winter of
+1870-71, at the age of seventy-one, he illustrated the legend of St.
+Gwendolen, in which he depicted with tender reverence the escape of a
+human soul, withdrawn from the world and resigned to God's will, into
+Nature and her peace.
+
+Edward Steinle, who went from Rome to Vienna in 1833, and settled in
+Frankfort in 1838, is called, not very appropriately, by his biographer,
+Constantine Wuzbach, "a Madonna painter of our time." His name deserves
+to come down to posterity rather for what he created outside the
+essential characteristics of his art. In his frescoes in the minster at
+Aachen, in the choir of the cathedrals of Strasburg and Cologne, he
+stood firm on the standpoint of the Nazarenes; which is as much as to
+say they contained nothing novel in the history of art. In his fairy
+pictures, however, imagination broke through the narrow confines of
+dogma, and entwined itself in creative enjoyment round the vague figures
+of fable. His "Loreley," in the Schack Gallery, as she looks down, a
+Medusa-like destroyer, from the tall cliff; his watchman who looks
+dreamily into space over the houses of the old town; his violin player
+on his tower who plays, forgetful of the world,--these have something
+musical, poetical, that freshness of sentiment and unsought naïveté
+which as an inheritance of his Viennese home was also peculiar in such a
+high degree to Schwind.
+
+The Romantic aspiration is revealed in Steinle, even, in a certain
+"yearning after colour." There lives in his works a refined feeling for
+colour that, especially in his water-colours, rarely forsakes him.
+Take, for instance, the fresh, tinted pen-drawings, engraved by
+Schaffer, in which he displayed with the naïveté of Memlinc the life of
+St. Euphrosyne; the five aquarelles of Grimm's "Snow-White and
+Rose-Red"; or his illustrations to Brentano's poems, such as the
+_Chronicle of the Wandering Student_, and the _Fairy Tale of the Rhine
+and Radlauf the Miller_, in which he developed a delight in the world
+and an idea of landscape that in the ascetic Nazarene excite
+astonishment.
+
+[Illustration: VEIT. THE TWO MARYS AT THE SEPULCHRE.]
+
+Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld went, after the completion of the Ariosto
+Room of the Villa Massini, first to Vienna, then in 1827 to Munich, in
+order to paint the _Nibelungen_ in the halls of the royal residence of
+that time, and in the imperial halls of the state palace the history of
+Charlemagne, Frederick Barbarossa, and Rudolf of Hapsburg. He also,
+however, created his best work at the close of his life in Dresden,--the
+forcible woodcuts of his _Picture Bible_, which narrated the world's
+sacred history in strong and vigorous strokes.
+
+Strangest to the present-day taste have become the drawings of
+Cornelius. His plates to Goethe's _Faust_ have, indeed, a certain
+austere strength of conception, which he learnt from Dürer; but also
+faults of drawing, exaggerations, crudities, and errors in perspective,
+which he did not find in Dürer.
+
+In his second work, the Nibelungen cycle, an intentional old-German
+angularity, with an unintentional modern clumsiness, has effected a
+_mésalliance_ even less attractive.
+
+[Illustration: OVERBECK. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF AND CORNELIUS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE ART OF MUNICH UNDER KING LUDWIG I
+
+
+More than seventeen hundred years ago there reigned a Roman emperor who
+loved art passionately. He looked upon it from an intellectual altitude
+which few have reached, and he valued it as the monumental consummation
+of Græco-Roman culture. Standing upon a plane of intellectual elevation,
+himself gifted with artistic intuition, he knew of no higher enjoyment
+for a ruler than the cultivation of the architectural and other forms of
+art. It was he who opened up to the energy of artists a field such as
+has never been offered to them before or since. He spent upon his works
+sums incalculable, so that his people grew restless under their
+emperor's mania for building. His villa at Tivoli, which attained to the
+extent of a town, was in itself a copy of everything that he most loved
+and admired in the world. It united nearly all the renowned buildings of
+Athens in one masterly reproduction. And then with architecture came the
+other arts. The most magnificent collections of sculpture were formed,
+for none had better opportunities of acquiring the antique masterpieces
+of the Greek towns. Numberless frescoes, scenes from those cities and
+regions which had most impressed him on his travels, adorned the walls.
+
+And yet subsequent generations have viewed with unconcern this halcyon
+period in the history of art. Though his contemporaries fancied that the
+splendour of the Greek sun was still radiating over them, it was but a
+borrowed lustre, which never went beyond the reproduction or copying of
+classic examples. Whatever Greek temples the emperor might build and
+decorate, he failed to summon into being a Phidias or a Polygnotes to
+revive for him the forms of the antique. The names of the artists who
+worked for him are forgotten. They had no originality; they copied the
+types of the Grecian and Egyptian periods, and their art was but a
+repetition of old ideals, without character of age or place. The fifteen
+colossal columns of his Olympieion that are still standing impress one
+as foreign to Athens, and would seem more in place at Baalbeck or
+Palmyra than in this city of the Muses. Epictetus would have smiled at
+the emperor diverting himself with an album of the wonders of the world,
+as a piece of sentimentality. The age of Hadrian produced thousands of
+buildings, statues, and pictures, but no original works.
+
+Will a different judgment be pronounced in the lapse of time upon the
+artistic creations of King Ludwig I? Ludwig also--his biography reads
+like that of Hadrian--was an enthusiastic admirer of art. After the
+Peace of Vienna, when the political aspirations of Germany had been
+frustrated, he alone among the numerous German princes of the old
+alliance fostered homeless art, and thus fulfilled a noble mission. The
+king's splendid enthusiasm for the ideal significance of art, which he
+hoped would lead the German people, then seeking to work out its
+individuality, from out of its Philistine narrow-mindedness to nobler
+and greater things--this enthusiasm will redound to his enduring honour.
+Schiller's idea of educating humanity by æsthetic means had in him grown
+into a living and powerful sentiment.
+
+All that it was possible to accomplish in the cause of art, on the basis
+of existing development, his endeavours have fully realised. In the
+course of twenty-three years he spent more than £3,000,000 from his
+privy purse, and made Munich what it is, the principal art centre of
+Germany; changed it from a Boeotia into an Athens; founded its art
+collections, and erected the buildings which give the town its
+character. Then he offered those new walls to the painter Cornelius, and
+commanded him to cover them. "You are my field-marshal, do you provide
+generals of division." In 1814 Cornelius had written to Bartholdy: "The
+most powerful and unfailing means to restore German art and bring it
+into harmony with this great period and the spirit of the nation would
+be a revival of fresco-painting as it existed in Italy from the days of
+the great Giotto to those of the divine Raphael." And through this royal
+command the dream was realised beyond all expectation. No such lively
+artistic animation had been witnessed since the great periods of Italian
+art; an animation which does not cut the worst figure in German history
+in those sad times of political stagnation and reaction. But that there
+was a living soul of art in those days posterity will no more
+acknowledge than it does in the case of the age of Hadrian.
+
+ "Wie bei Bartholdy als Kind, so in Massimis Villa als Jüngling
+ Teutshes Fresco wir sehn, aber in München als Mann,"
+
+sang King Ludwig. Now, after two generations, it can be seen that
+fresco-painting at Munich from 1820 to 1840 produced less original
+conceptions of the German art of the nineteenth than weak reflections of
+the Italian art of the sixteenth century.
+
+Various favourable circumstances combined at that time to cause
+Cornelius to be specially looked upon by his contemporaries as an
+incomparable master. Since Tiepoli, German monumental art had remained
+dormant. The frescoes at Munich were the first attempts made to revive
+it. And it seemed as though with Cornelius, German art had at once risen
+to the dizzy heights to which Italian art had been led by Michael
+Angelo. The lookers-on believed in Buonarotti's resurrection. As in the
+Sistine "Last Judgment," the movement of his heroic figures appeared
+plastic and pathetic, and his types, not excepting the women, gave that
+impression of the terrible, which none but Signorelli and Michael Angelo
+had attained before him. His advent, it was said, might almost make one
+believe in a kind of metempsychosis; as though the spirit of the great
+Florentine master, that giant of the Renaissance, had been restored to
+humanity. At that very period the Italian art of the Cinquecento enjoyed
+the exclusive favour of the German scholars. It alone was worthy of
+imitation; in it the æsthetic philosophers sought for rules and laws to
+govern the development of art. And as they thought that all the
+qualities of this artistic method were to be found in the works of
+Cornelius, it was only logical to arrive at the conclusion which the
+Crown Prince Ludwig summed up in the following words: "There has been no
+painter like Cornelius since the Cinquecento."
+
+[Illustration: PETER CORNELIUS.]
+
+At the same time the intellectual character of his work harmonised with
+the wishes of a period in which the leaders of German thought tried to
+forget the dreary dulness of life by plunging into the most profound
+speculations. "What does it matter," writes Hallman, "if we lack all
+joyous, independent national feeling? What though we do not even try to
+resuscitate this feeling with wars and battles? We strive after
+something higher! The world is beginning to respect German intellect and
+learning. We believe that in this we are in advance of other nations,
+and we seek a mode of expression, we want to give a form to that lofty
+thought through our art, in order that we may bequeath to posterity an
+image of our fortunate condition.... Therefore it is a remarkable sign
+of the times that painting strives to make the weighty output of
+intellectual thought a common treasure of all who are neither able nor
+disposed to follow speculation to its dizzy heights, nor erudition to
+its lowest depths; that painters try to transform the results of those
+investigations into fresh and ever lively conceptions--the element of
+art."
+
+To accomplish this none was better fitted than Cornelius. What a weight
+of thought and learning his works display!
+
+In the Pinakothek, Cornelius' main idea was to paint the life and work
+of Nature as illuminated by the figures of the Greek gods. For the
+series of paintings in the Hall of the Gods, Hesiod's _Theogony_ offered
+a basis upon which to demonstrate the idea of the triumph of the
+creative mind in heaven and upon earth. In the second room, human
+passion, power, and tyranny were illustrated in scenes of Greek heroic
+life from the _Iliad_. The frescoes in the Ludwigskirche were to follow
+the Christian apocalypse as a concatenation, and to depict it in
+symbolic treatment from the Creation to the Last Judgment. The frescoes
+for the Campo Santo at Berlin were meant to represent "the universal and
+most exalted fortunes of humanity, the manifestation of divine grace
+towards the sins of mankind, the redemption from sin, perdition, and
+death, the triumph of life and eternity." Each of these paintings is a
+treatise. Each fresco bears a definite relation to the other; deep
+philosophic speculations weave their threads from one to the other. Or
+else the painter revels in a suite of compositions which trace a network
+of intellectual combinations from one picture to the other. As he
+himself expressed it, he delivered his diploma lecture through his
+paintings.
+
+And this painted erudition harmonised with the requirements of those
+times of dominating intellectual tendencies. The scholars saw in
+Cornelius the poet, the doctor-in-philosophy; held that the principal
+value of the work of art lay in its intellectual contents, and felt that
+their loftiest mission was to express these contents still more
+correctly than the painter himself. The idea, they said, was the alpha
+and omega of the painter's art, and must be accepted at its full value,
+even when represented in the most shadowy external form.
+
+These opinions have now vanished entirely. A more extended intercourse
+with the old masters and with the art of other countries has gradually
+cured the Germans too of that mental hypertrophy from which they
+suffered in their view of art--a complaint whose characteristic symptom
+was the entire lack of sensuousness, of that sensibility to beauty of
+form and external charm which always has been and always must be the
+predominating mood of a society in which art is to flourish. They have
+gradually reached the point at which one interests one's self in a
+picture for the sake of the painting of it, looks first at the picture,
+and only then asks what the painter's idea may have been, or what the
+spectator is to gather from it. No poem will find favour which offers
+acceptable thoughts in badly worded, halting, unmelodious verse; nor do
+the loftiest thoughts in themselves suffice to make a work of art.
+Profundity of thought is a thing that has little to do with pure art;
+and the subject alone, however world-stirring the ideas in it may be,
+never makes a thing artistic. We have learnt to find the most intense
+enjoyment in the mere contemplation of Titian's "Earthly and Heavenly
+Love," although we may not yet know what this picture is really meant to
+convey. And we know none the less that what renders Raphael's "School of
+Athens" immortal is not its catalogue of ideas, which has been drawn up
+by an anonymous pedant, but the master's artistic power, the intensity
+with which he expresses what was barely showing bud in the material, the
+self-reliant strength and sureness with which the form and colour have
+succeeded in outlining and creating every figure and every movement in
+the picture.
+
+[Illustration: PETER CORNELIUS. 'LET THERE BE LIGHT'.]
+
+[Illustration: CORNELIUS. FROM THE FRESCOES IN THE FRIEDHOFSHALLE,
+ BERLIN.]
+
+No less has the comparative study of art gradually refined people's
+sensibility to originality. We are no longer compelled to place an
+artist on the same level with a master of ancient art because of the
+outer resemblance of their work. We have progressed so far as to respect
+in art none but original genius, and to look upon imitation as a
+_testimonium paupertatis_ though Praxiteles or Michael Angelo be the
+model. In this we find the explanation of the low esteem in which some
+of the old masters are now held. The contemporaries of Mabuse and Marten
+Heemskerk thought that in these painters they had found again the great
+primeval, Titanic nature of Michael Angelo, his vast motives and
+majestic forms. To-day we say of them, and with justice, that they
+produced nothing better than caricatures of Michael Angelo, that they
+expressed themselves in shallow phrases, that their religious pictures
+are cold and inflated, and that their mythological presentations with
+naked figures impress us as bombastic and repellent. Houbraken, in his
+biography of Gérard de Lairesse, wrote: "A whole book could be filled
+with the description of his innumerable pictures and panels, ceilings
+and frescoes." To-day we dismiss this unattractive mannerist in a few
+lines. What his contemporaries described as his Michaelangelesque and
+majestic fierceness appears to us, looking back, as a mere pale
+imitation.
+
+[Illustration: CORNELIUS. MARGUERITE IN PRISON.]
+
+Measure Cornelius by the same rule, and the result is no less
+melancholy. Merciless history paused for a moment to consider whether it
+ever saw his equal, and then passed on to the order of the day, as it
+did with his predecessors. To us he is no longer the original genius
+that he was to his contemporaries, but an imitator. The retrospective
+history of art marks a new epoch with him, Heinrich Hess, and Schnorr:
+the advance from the paths of the early Italians, trodden by the
+Nazarenes, to this link with the golden age of the Cinquecento. The
+works of Cornelius are mighty shadows cast into our days by the gigantic
+figures of Michael Angelo. But only shadows! There is no blood in them.
+A direct line leads from Michael Angelo to Millet; but I doubt whether
+the master would delight in Cornelius, who has only used him as a
+_gradus ad Parnassum_. The works of Cornelius are the products of a
+civilised yet artistically poor period. The idealism of Michael Angelo
+had raised itself upon the naturalistic shoulders of Donatello and
+Ghirlandaio; this new Cornelian idealism sprang into being full-grown
+from reminiscences, and was therefore from the outset without backbone.
+It is the fruit of a decadence, not the mature product of a full-blown
+art, which has taken centuries to grow and ripen. In Michael Angelo the
+aspirations of Italian art, from Giotto onward, attained their zenith.
+Cornelius, standing solitary in an inartistic period that had lost every
+tradition and all technical method, believed in the possibility of
+rising to the same level by making the forms borrowed from Michael
+Angelo convey scraps of modern knowledge. In doing this he could not but
+confirm the experience, thus described by Goethe in his _Theory of
+Colour_: "Even the most perfect models are delusive, by causing us to
+pass over necessary decrees of culture, and thus generally carrying us
+beyond the goal into a domain of boundless error."
+
+[Illustration: CORNELIUS. THE APOCALYPTIC HOST.]
+
+At the same time that Heinrich Hess was carrying on his calligraphic
+exercises after Raphael and Andrea del Sarto in the Basilika at Munich,
+Cornelius was making his schoolboy sketches after Michael Angelo. What
+is great in his master is empty _pose_ in him; what is _furia_ in the
+former is a laboured imitation in the latter. While the terrific
+Florentine Master found within himself the expression of his superhuman
+figures, his learned follower copies attitudes, gestures,
+groups--familiar to anyone who has been to Italy and passed a few hours
+in the Sistine Chapel. One seems to hear the old Florentine's great
+voice toned down through the telephone, and irritating us with false
+pathos at moments when pathos is quite superfluous. All the faces are
+distorted with grimaces, heads of hair are puffed up as though with
+serpents, garments fly about; people shout instead of speaking, open
+their mouths wide as though they were giving the word of command to an
+army, stretch out their arms as though they would embrace the world. A
+mother bearing a child in her arms squeezes it to death. A cook
+roasting a leg of mutton bastes it with a Herculean gesture, and a
+butler emptying a leather bottle has the air of a river-god meditating a
+flood. In order that his human beings may look vigorous and heroic, he
+makes them walk in seven-league boots, dislocate their limbs, expand the
+gigantic measurement of the body far beyond the human. Every head shows
+a different colouring: one red as sealing-wax, another rose-pink, a
+third _caput mortuum_. Added to this, the academic drapery arrangements,
+those florid garments with their rolling, writhing folds, for which
+there is no real justification, and which have no use but that of
+ornament. "Ah," says Goethe, in one of his letters, "how true it is that
+nothing is remarkable but what is natural: nothing grand but what is
+natural: nothing beautiful, nothing, etc., etc., but what is natural."
+Michael Angelo is not at all easy to understand; and Cornelius' study of
+him resulted in the very same mannerism into which the Dutchmen had
+fallen three hundred years earlier,--the only difference being that he
+surpassed them in erudition. But although this quality would no doubt
+have greatly helped him had he written books, we cannot take it into
+account in discussing his artistic merits, any more than we can judge
+Gérard de Lairesse by his literary achievements. Nay, more, as he had
+elected to confine himself to painting, his erudition became a curse to
+him, bringing him to disregard beauty of form in a manner as yet unknown
+in the history of art. Not only was he filled with ardour for the
+loftier thoughts, without allowing any other forms for their
+presentation but those which were mere reminiscences of former art
+periods--he did not even give himself leisure thoroughly to assimilate
+the forms borrowed from Michael Angelo, and to animate them with fresh
+life. Hence the fact that, as an artist, he remains greatly below the
+level of the Dutch copyists, in whose work there is at least no faulty
+drawing and tasteless colouring to be found. He asked for walls, not as
+panels to paint on, but as tablets on which to inscribe his thoughts;
+felt exclusively as a poet, a man of learning, brooding ideas. Engrossed
+in developing these ideas, he valued form and colour no more than an
+author would the embellishing of his manuscript with flowing letters and
+an artistic arrangement of inks. It is only by this means that we can
+explain the unjustifiable carelessness with which he surrendered his
+cartoons to his pupils, and allowed them a free hand in the carrying
+them out, or account for the evanescent colouring in the Glyptothek and
+in the Ludwigskirche,--a colouring which was even at that time far below
+the general level, and which could only be excused in the case of a
+self-trained and quite untutored school.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ CORNELIUS. THE FALL OF TROY.]
+
+A man of this kind, who had nothing to teach that was worth the
+learning, and who excelled only in intellectual qualities which could
+not be imparted to others, must needs prove the most dangerous
+academy-principal Germany has had since she first boasted an academy. So
+much the more as his pupils readily submitted to the personal
+fascination of this earnest little man with his black clothes, his
+pompous appearance, his flashing eagle eye, which made one believe
+that, Dante-like, he had looked upon heaven and hell. "As there are men
+born to command an army, so Cornelius was born to be the head of a
+school of painting," said King Ludwig. We can scarcely help smiling at
+Schwind's account of the trembling awe with which, upon his arrival from
+Vienna, he presented himself to the master. The red-haired stripling, in
+his outgrown clothes, timidly strolling round the rooms of the
+Glyptothek suddenly sees Cornelius himself, high on a scaffolding, in
+all his glory, in an effulgence such as surrounds the head of Phoebus
+Apollo. Accustomed to seeing young artists stoop before him, now
+stammering, now paling, now blushing, the demi-god descends to the level
+of the unknown mortal. "He is quite a little man, in a blue shirt, with
+a red belt. He looks very stern and distinguished, and his black,
+gleaming eyes impress you. He descended from his throne, changed his
+blue smock for an elegant frockcoat, drank a glass of water with an easy
+manner, and made my flesh thrill with a short explanation of what had
+been painted and what was still to be done, tucked a few writing books
+under his arm, and went upon his business to the academy."
+
+[Illustration: WILHELM KAULBACH.]
+
+The reformation of the academy, instigated by him at Munich,
+demonstrated the one-sidedness of his point of view. He turned it into a
+school for fresco-painting. "A professorship in _genre_ and landscape
+painting appears to me superfluous," he wrote to the king in 1825; "true
+art knows no subdivision." But as he himself had only partially mastered
+fresco painting, he did not even succeed in establishing a school of
+fresco painters. It was only one of designers of cartoons.
+
+"Read the great poets: Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe; do not forget to
+include the Bible. The brush has become the ruin of our art. It has led
+from Nature to Mannerism." By means of this teaching Cornelius infused
+all his own defects into his academy, which for that reason was doomed
+from the outset to an early decease. A war of extermination, often
+leading to the most burlesque scenes, was declared by the Cornelians
+against the Langerians, who were despised because they had retained a
+few of the technical acquirements of the peruke period. When Cornelius's
+attention was drawn to the fact that in one of his cartoons he had given
+a Greek hero six fingers he answered with indifference: "Ay, and if he
+had had seven, how would it affect the general idea?"
+
+[Illustration: KAULBACH. THE DELUGE.]
+
+It was only natural, therefore, that his pupils should feel above using
+a model. It is said that at the time when they were turning Munich into
+an Athens, and the painters were covering the city walls with frescoes,
+Munich possessed but one model, and the poor fellow died of starvation.
+And then, how they hated colours! They were so difficult to manage! Who,
+pray, wanted to learn fresco painting by hard labour, and swallow the
+chalk-dust? It was much easier to copy their lord and master, whose name
+was on their lips, but not a spark of whose genius was in their heads,
+with every sort of mannerism. "When nature once produces a new birth she
+does so with a lavish hand. Talents, talents enough for centuries!" In
+these words Cornelius himself did honour to his pupils--to Carl
+Herrmann, Strähuber, Hermann Anschütz, Hiltensperger, and Lindenschmit
+the elder, the mention of whose names evokes a painful memory of the
+arcades in the palace garden at Munich.
+
+What survives of Cornelius is only the man, the individual. Posterity
+will doubtless always honour him for the unflinching energy with which
+he upheld his ideal from youth to failing age; for his courage in
+propounding and defending what seemed right to _him_; for refraining
+from putting on velvet gloves with the multitude, but frankly showing
+them his nails. This high-mindedness of Cornelius, and his lofty
+conception of the aims of art, must always command our respect. All his
+works are the product of a serene, great, and noble soul. His is a
+physiognomy with a proud, vigorous profile, which expresses an
+intellectual tendency, and can never be forgotten. He was a man--as a
+painter, a curse to German art, but a self-conscious, aristocratic mind.
+As he himself said: "Art has its high-priests and also its
+hedge-priests"; and when at the end of his life he made his profession:
+"Never, under any circumstance of my life, have I lost my pious
+reverence for the divinity of art; never have I sinned against it," we
+none of us refuse to accept his word.
+
+[Illustration: KAULBACH. PRINCE ARTHUR AND HUBERT.]
+
+This unfailing earnestness which suffuses Cornelius's work raises him
+high above _Wilhelm Kaulbach_, and secures for him lasting fame, when
+that of Kaulbach shall have been buried with the last of the "cultured"
+patrons for whom he worked, and by whom he was placed on a pedestal.
+Look at both of them from a purely artistic point of view, comparing
+them with the old masters, and both of them sink equally into
+insignificance. But if we come to accept the problem of art criticism as
+a matter of psychology rather than of æsthetics, if we search for the
+relations between the work of art and the soul of its author, we cannot
+but look upon Kaulbach as by far the inferior. Cornelius endeavoured to
+raise the masses to his level, paid for his idealism with unpopularity,
+and was never understood. Kaulbach, the humble servant of the public,
+changed the Spartan iron of the art of Cornelius for the base coin of
+the art unions; to tickle the multitude, he clothed voluptuous
+sensuality in the stately garment of the earnest Muse, and was hailed
+with jubilation throughout his life. But the valise with which alone,
+according to the fairy-tale, one can enter upon the journey to
+immortality, was still lighter in his case. Idealistic painting, as
+professed by Cornelius, had skimmed all the cream from religious and
+mythological subjects; so Kaulbach tried to give something more actual
+in its stead. He found this in the philosophy of history, in the images
+of epochs in the history of the world which were then so much in vogue,
+and handed his public, eager for knowledge, a printed programme upon
+which he had catalogued the gigantic thoughts and even weightier
+references which the picture was said to contain. As the masses were
+awed by the severity of the Cornelian conception of forms, he softened
+it down with superficial calligraphic elegance: what was sturdy and
+angular in the former was by him changed into a coquettish effeminacy.
+This he effected by daubing his pictures, which were in no way colour
+conceptions, with insipid combinations of colour, and replaced with
+oleographs Cornelius's illuminated monumental woodcuts. By these
+concessions to the picturesque he drove the axe into the tree which the
+designers of cartoons had planted. The part he plays is that of a man of
+compromise between Cornelius and Piloty; his frescoes are too sugary;
+his oil-paintings too faulty. It was he who buried the era of cartoons,
+although the obsequies were conducted with all pomp.
+
+A spiritual battle, an aerial battle, the "Battle of the Huns," is the
+first of his works. Beneath, a real historical event; above, the same
+reproduced in the spiritual world. The battle is over; the field is
+hidden beneath the corpses of the slain; but the spirits continue the
+combat in mid-air, and strive to turn the occasion to account for a
+display of nudity. Next came the "Destruction of Jerusalem," crammed
+with ingenious references, and elucidated with long, printed
+commentaries. This programme-painting played its trump card on the
+staircase of the Berlin Museum, where a space of 240 feet by 28 feet is
+occupied by "the intellectual manifestations of the historical
+_Weltgeist_"; "the total evolution of culture with every people of every
+period in its principal historical phases"; those incidents "which, in
+the evolution of universal history, mark the important knots with which
+the closely entwined threads of the national dramas of the universe are
+bound together." The "Battle of the Huns," the "Destruction of
+Jerusalem," were included in the series; and to them were added the
+"Tower of Babel," the "Rise of Greece," the "Crusades," and the
+"Reformation." The whole of Hegel's philosophy was reproduced on the
+walls. But as the pictures are not new through any novelty or greatness
+of their conception, we need certainly not enter into the "astounding
+profundity" of their philosophy. The eye is struck with mere
+compositions, built up according to certain formulas, and _tableaux
+vivants_, put together with more or less cleverness, theatrical in
+effect and crude in colour.
+
+Of his other large pictures, the "Naval Battle at Salamis" caused a
+special stir through its sinking harem. In his "Nero" he contrasted the
+orgies of the Romans of the decadence with the enthusiasm for death of
+the early Christians. Again, in his great cartoon in charcoal of "Peter
+Arbue," he inflated to monumental dimensions a drawing suitable for a
+comic paper.
+
+Kaulbach is not an artist to be taken seriously. Woltmann, who made the
+same observation twenty years ago, tried at least to vindicate the
+illustrator, and expressed his regret that a man who had the stuff in
+him of a German Hogarth should unfortunately have been caught in the
+toils of the Cornelian school. But this comparison does little justice
+to Hogarth. There is nothing in the illustrations of Kaulbach which many
+other artists could not have improved upon. In his "Reynard the Fox" he
+adapted, for the benefit of the German public, Grandville's _Scènes de
+la Vie privée et publique des Animaux_, published in 1842. His
+illustrations for _éditions de luxe_ ("The Women of Goethe," etc.)
+marked the first steps of the road which ended in Thuman. And Thuman
+stands higher than Kaulbach. The faint, unaccented drawing, the oval
+"beauty" of heads, declamatory and expressionless, the academic touch
+are common to both of them. But only with Kaulbach do we find the
+penetrating perfume of the demi-monde, the voluptuous, satirical
+laughter which is not even stilled before Goethe, the pandering
+sensuality which cannot touch the purest and tenderest figures in German
+poetry without using them as a pretext to fling nudities to the public
+like bones to a dog. In his "Dance of Death" suite, Kaulbach turned into
+frivolity what Rethel had before expressed solemnly and earnestly. Like
+the two augurs, who could not meet without laughing, so at last the
+satirical designer began to laugh at his own monumental pictures. After
+completing in his series of mural paintings at the Berlin Museum his
+"Apotheosis of the Evolution of Human Culture," he explained in his
+friezes that the whole was, after all, nothing but a dustbin and a
+lumber-room. When he was commissioned to depict a suite of paintings for
+the upper walls of the new Pinakothek at Munich, the artistic life of
+that town, as glorified by King Ludwig--a suite which the weather has
+since been kind enough to render almost invisible--he fulfilled his task
+by mocking at what he should have glorified.
+
+ "All die Meister Kunstbahnbrecher, wie die Herren selbst sich nennen,
+ Wahrlich Widderköpfe sind sie, Mauern damit einzurennen.
+ Mit dem Loche in der Mauer ist's noch lange nicht geschehen,
+ Da muss erst der Held erscheinen, siegreich dadurch einzugehen.
+ Gegen jenes Ungeheuer ziehen sie zu Feld mit Phrasen,
+ Wie die sieben Schwaben einstmals ritterlich bekämpft den Hasen.
+ Voran zieht der edle Ritter Schnorr, der Künste Don Quixote,
+ Seine Rosinante setzt er, statt des Pegasus in Trotte;
+ Heiliger Hess, sein Sancho Pansa, Du nicht liebst das offene Streiten,
+ Und du lässt dich sachte, sachte, 'rab von Deinem Esel gleiten.
+ Was ist denn so grosses Neues in der Neuen Kunst geschehen?
+ Nichts, als was sie nicht der aften, längst vergangnen abgesehen.
+ Wände ich auch Lorbeerkränze all um diese Alltagsfratzen,
+ Würden sie sie doch nur zieren zu bedecken hohle Glatzen."
+
+This is the commentary written by Kaulbach himself; and Théophile
+Gautier called the suite _un carnaval au soleil_. "The king in his youth
+spent millions in order to elevate art," says Schwind; "and now in his
+old age he pays another thousand pounds in order to be laughed at for
+it." Heine's loud, scornful laughter resounds over the grave of romantic
+literature; and so the "monumental period of German art" ends in
+self-derision.
+
+Moreover, as the mural paintings of the new Pinakothek, like the
+frescoes in the Arcades and most of the other monumental products of the
+period, are falling into ruin, and only show traces of their past beauty
+in a few faint spots of colour not yet entirely effaced, it is quite
+clear that it was an inherent fallacy of Cornelius to expect a
+_renovation_ of national German art from fresco painting. The Venetians
+of the sixteenth century well knew why they did not take up fresco
+painting. Monumental painting, as aimed at by Cornelius, must remain an
+imported plant that cannot possibly thrive in a northern climate; and
+oil-painting, since the Van Eycks the medium and basis of art-culture
+among the Teutonic races, took its revenge upon his one-sidedness and
+his Michaelangelesque disdain, in the fact that at Munich it had to be
+learnt again right from the beginning.
+
+[Illustration: KAULBACH. MARGUERITE.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE DÜSSELDORFERS
+
+
+On the Rhine there existed a school of painting instead of a school of
+drawing, a fact which at that time placed Düsseldorf next in importance
+to Munich. Wilhelm Schadow, its first director, was lacking in any
+personal distinction as an artist, but he had received from his great
+father a tendency towards perfection of technique, which brought him and
+his school into direct opposition with the purely philosophical painters
+of the severe Cornelian tradition, and which has even in our days been
+able to exercise an authoritative influence. In Rome he was the only one
+of the Nazarenes amenable to the French influence, while the others
+nervously held aloof from the members of the French Academy. And this
+formal bent of his talent later gave him the qualifications of a sound
+teacher. Immediately upon his arrival at Düsseldorf, in November 1826,
+he was escorted by a stately throng of students: Carl Friedrich Lessing,
+Julius Hübner, Theodor Hildebrandt, Carl Sohn, H. Mücke, and Christian
+Koehler, who were afterwards joined by Eduard Bendemann, Ernest Deger,
+and others. These became the mainstay of the celebrated Old Düsseldorf
+School, which was soon supported by the jubilant enthusiasm of its
+contemporaries. At the Berlin exhibitions the new school of painting
+passed from one triumph to the other. Young men fresh from school
+suddenly made names that were honoured throughout Germany, by reason of
+the remarkable manner in which their works succeeded in expressing the
+sentimental romanticism of the time.
+
+The Wars of Liberty of 1813, which had caused a gust of joyous
+enthusiasm to penetrate even into the peaceful seclusion of the
+Nazarenes, were not, like the wars of 1870, the outcome of careful
+calculation, but the result of a sudden burst of ardour, and the
+disillusion had now followed upon the enthusiasm. In 1810, with the
+French bayonets gleaming outside the windows, and the French kettledrums
+drowning the sound of his voice, Fichte delivered at the Berlin
+University his famous speeches which sounded the réveillé for Germany.
+At the same time Kleist wrote his _Hermannschlacht_: Napoleon was to be
+treated as Hermann had treated Varus. "_Was blasen die Trompeten,
+Husaren heraus_," pealed through the air; the song of "_Got, der Eisen
+wachsen liess_" rose heavenwards in brazen accords. And not long after,
+the same lions who had beaten the Corsican at Leipzig, and had with
+Arndt conceived the idea of a great, united fatherland, had once more
+become the same easy-going people, drinking their beer and smoking their
+pipes in their little duodecimo principalities as of old. Those dreary
+times, which saw no prospect of relief in their own days, must needs
+nourish a devotion to the past. That haughty antiquity, which had been
+possessed of the ideal to which the present had not been able to attain,
+became the object of a fanatical adoration. Men lost themselves in the
+old storehouses of faded German reminiscences, and fled for inspiration
+to the times of a consolidated German Empire. This return to the ruins
+of the past was a protest against the grey, colourless present. The
+patriotic frenzy of the poets of freedom changed into enthusiasm for the
+vanished glories of mediæval Germany. They remembered with longing and
+yearning the days when the robber-knights ruled town and country from
+their strongholds. Schenkendorff sang hymns inspired by the old
+cathedrals, rummaged with holy horror among the skeletons of knights and
+heroes in the chapel, and wrote a poem in memory of the thousandth
+anniversary of the death of Charlemagne; Arndt, the bard of the wars of
+freedom, violently attacked the "industrialism" of the time, declaiming
+against steam and machinery; Zacharias Werner composed his poem, "_Das
+Feldgeschrei sei: alte Zeit wird neu_."
+
+This revival of romanticism opened up a wide field to science and
+poetry. The apotheosis of the old imperial times was made manifest amid
+fairy-like glamour. Poetry grasped the pilgrim's staff, or rode with
+beauteous dames on milk-white palfreys through forest and glade.
+Enchanted genii, elves, fairies, and goblins were encountered on the
+road. Nowhere is there so sweet a scent of blossoms, so innocent a sound
+of children's merriment, as in Tieck's delightful and dainty
+fairy-tales, or in the works of Clemens Brentano, those precious stories
+of Father Rhine, of the water-nymphs and the crystal castles at the
+bottom of the green current, pictures full of charming wilfulness,
+dreamily winsome, like summer evenings on the Rhine. Uhland sang, as
+once had sung the knightly poets with the golden harps--
+
+ "Von Gottesminne, von kühner Helden Muth,
+ Von lindem liebesinne, von süsser Maiengluth."
+
+To this day we seem to peep between the weather-beaten castles, standing
+on their grey rocks along the Rhine Valley, into the realm of romance as
+into an enigma propounded by mountain and dale. Rhine and romance!
+
+No spot in Germany was better fitted to become the cradle of a romantic
+art than Düsseldorf, the peaceful town on the legend-haunted banks of
+the green river. In the fifteenth century, in addition to the school of
+Florence, where flowed a rich current of political and human life, where
+great buildings, monuments, and frescoes kept architects and sculptors
+and painters uniformly busied, there existed in the remote Umbrian
+valleys, in the land of miracles and visions, that school of painting in
+oils which saw its only eternal ideal in the deep eyes and soft aspect
+of the Madonna, and made the visionary aspirations of the soul,
+emotions, and sentiment the exclusive subject of their pictures. In the
+same manner, in the nineteenth century, we find in contrast with the
+Munich school, with its numerous architectural products, its massive
+statuary, and the epic-dramatic fresco painting of Cornelius--"wedding
+the German to the Greek, and Faust to Helen"--that lyrico-sentimental
+Düsseldorf school of painting which embraced Madonnas and prophets,
+knights and robbers, gipsies and monks, water-nymphs and nuns with the
+same languishing tenderness. In matter and technique it completes the
+art of Cornelius and the Nazarenes; that of the Munich master by its
+encouragement of oil-painting; that of the Nazarenes by the stress which
+it lays upon the more worldly side of mediæval life, upon chivalry, and
+in a less degree upon that other pillar of mediævalism the Church. The
+Nazarenes are archæological and ascetic; the Düsseldorf school is
+insipid in a modern way, feeble, colourless, and sentimental.
+
+Count Raczynski and Friedrich von Uechtritz have given us interesting
+descriptions of life at Düsseldorf at that time, and their story reads
+like a chapter of Tacitus' _Germania_. "_Grand dieu! Bons et affectueux
+allemands!_" exclaimed a Parisian critic of the Count's book in sad
+emotion, and held up this virtuous German life, as an example worthy of
+imitation, to his compatriots, the decadents of fashionable artistic
+Paris, fallen into modern luxury. Undisturbed by the hum of a big city,
+and without any communication with its surroundings, the Düsseldorf
+colony of artists lived its life of seclusion. The painters saw none but
+painters. They herded together in the studios, and the sole recreation
+in the intervals of their work was a visit to another studio. The whole
+of the day was devoted to painting; when the picture was complete it
+went to the art union; and the hours of tediousness were overcome with
+the assistance of a little intrigue. Hildebrandt possessed the nucleus
+of a collection of beetles. Lessing, the hunter, collected pipes and
+antlers, and only felt himself at home in the little room which he
+occupied with Sohn when it assumed the appearance of a gamekeeper's
+cottage. Convinced that politics were the ruin of character, they
+allowed no questions of the day to interfere with the calmness of their
+artistic life. Few of them ever read a newspaper. In the year of
+revolution, 1830, their sole interest in the events around them was
+concentrated in the fear that a war might disturb their idyllic life.
+The end of the day's work saw them in summer-time bent on a pilgrimage
+to the Stockkämpchen, to refresh themselves with a cup of buttermilk, to
+play at bowls, or to enjoy a race among the cabbage patches of the
+garden. In winter they made a point of meeting at seven o'clock every
+Saturday night at the inn for a literary reading. Each taking his part
+they recited the dramas of Tieck, of Calderon, and Lopez; or Uechtritz
+read extracts from German history, the Crusades, the period of the
+emperors, the riots of the Hussites. Every Sunday night there met at
+Schadow's a very distinguished intellectual circle, consisting of Judge
+Immermann (the reformer of the stage at Düsseldorf), Felix Mendelssohn
+the composer, Kortum, author of the _Jobsiade_, and Assessor von
+Uechtritz, with their ladies. But the great gala-days were the
+theatrical performances which took place twice a week. Under the
+leadership of Immermann the theatre had become the place whence the
+young painters gathered their liveliest suggestions. Some of them went
+even so far as to take part in amateur performances, conducted by
+Immermann, and given in Schadow's house, under the auspices of the whole
+of the distinguished society. And thus the pictures of this school were
+not conceived under the influence of life, but of the theatre. The
+Düsseldorf artists were youths whose productions were not rooted in
+life, but in reading and culture; youths who always moved in good
+society, and who had passed through the great ordeals of life, but only
+on "the boards representing the universe."
+
+_Theodor Hildebrandt_ became the Shakespeare of Düsseldorf. The
+translation of the works of the English poet by Schlegel had been
+published some time earlier, and Immermann, in Düsseldorf, had been the
+first to offer Shakespeare a home on the German stage. The performances
+of his tragedies were regarded as red-letter days. During the three
+years of Immermann's leadership (1834-37), _Hamlet_, _Macbeth_, _King
+John_, _King Lear_, _The Merchant of Venice_, _Romeo and Juliet_,
+_Othello_, and _Julius Cæsar_ were performed on fifteen occasions in
+all.[1] To give the titles of these plays is at once to characterise the
+subject-matter of Hildebrandt's paintings. He very often had a hand in
+the staging of the plays, and is said to have shown a remarkable
+histrionic talent in the performances at Schadow's. He rarely went to
+other poets for his inspiration, as in his "Pictures from Faust" and his
+"Beware of the Water Nymph," where he honoured Goethe, and in his
+"Brigands," where he may have been inspired by one of the many
+variations on _Rinaldo Rinaldini_ that flooded the market at the time,
+or perhaps also by Byron, whose influence was very marked on the
+Düsseldorf school.
+
+Goethe's _Frauengestalten_, more especially the Leonoras, were
+reproduced in oils by old father _Sohn_. _Eduard Steinbruck_ painted
+Genevièves, Red Riding Hoods, Elves, and Undines, after Tieck and
+Fouqué; _H. Stilke's_ "Pictures from the Crusades" introduced Walter
+Scott to the German public. Uhland's first ballads had brought into
+fashion the damsels who from the ramparts of their castles wave a sad
+farewell to the lonely shepherds; the ancestral tombs, in which the last
+knight of his race takes his everlasting rest; the lists, where
+melancholy heroes stab themselves. His _Love-song of the Shepherd to the
+Shepherdess_--
+
+ "Und halt ich dich in den Armen
+ Auf freien Bergeshöhn,
+ Wir sehn in die weiten Lande
+ Und werden doch nicht gesehn,"
+
+gave Bendemann the motive for his picture of the same name. Young
+Lessing had to thank Uhland for the subject of his first success, "The
+Sorrowing Royal Pair," which at one bound made his name one of the most
+honoured in German art.
+
+ "Wohl sah ich die Eltern beide
+ Ohne der Kronen Licht
+ Im schwarzen Trauerkleide,
+ Die Jungfrau sah ich nicht."
+
+After Bürger he painted a Leonora--of course in so-called mediæval
+costume, in order "to avoid the unpicturesque attire in fashion during
+the Seven Years' War"; and at the same time as Hildebrandt, "A Mourning
+Brigand," who, in the full light of the evening sun, sits brooding on a
+rock over the depravity of the world. That all of them were frantically
+enthusiastic for the Hohenstaufens is due to the publication of Von
+Rainer's History in 1823, which took a greater hold of the public than
+did Schiller's _History of the Thirty Years' War_, and inspired numerous
+dramas.
+
+[Illustration: HILDEBRANDT. THE SONS OF EDWARD.]
+
+[Illustration: STEINBRUCK. ELVES.]
+
+Even the idyllic and touching scenes from the Old Testament and the
+Hebrew elegies are easily traced back to theatrical inspirations. With
+the exception of the frescoes of the Casa Bartholdy, the subjects of
+which were selected with an eye to the religious belief of their
+purchaser, the Nazarenes found all the subject-matter they wanted in the
+New Testament. The Passion of Our Lord was unable to inspire the
+Düsseldorf school. As compared to the few Christian paintings by W.
+Schadow, and the dreamy Madonnas of Deger, Ittenbach, and little
+Perugino Mintrop, we find a far greater number of scenes from the Old
+Testament, which at the time gave birth to numerous dramas. Hübner,
+always inclined to idyllic and melancholy scenes, painted Ruth and Boaz,
+his first great picture, which established his reputation. After
+Klingemann had utilised the whole life of Moses by turning it into a
+theatrically effective sequence, Christian Koehler scored a success with
+his "Moses hidden in the Bulrushes" and his "Finding of Moses," and
+then, incited by Raupach's "Semiramis," abandoned his biblical heroines
+for Oriental ones. Theodor Hildebrandt took Tieck's "Judith" as an
+inspiration for his picture of this Jewish heroine. Kehren's "Joseph
+reveals Himself to his Brethren" was begun after the opera _Joseph in
+Egypt_ had been performed at Düsseldorf. Bendemann, in 1832, played his
+trump card with his "Lament of the Jews," now in the Cologne Museum,
+after Byron had made his propaganda, suggested by the sad lives of the
+children of Israel, and Friedrich von Uechtritz had caused his drama,
+_The Babylonians in Jerusalem_, to be performed, ending as it does with
+the sending of the Jews into captivity in Babylon--
+
+ "Wein' über die die weinen fern in Babel,
+ Ihr Tempel brach, ihr Land ward, ach! zur Fabel!
+ Wein'! es erstart der heil 'gen Harfe Ton,
+ Im Haus Jehovas haust der Spötter Hohn."
+
+And his oil-paintings of a later date, "Jeremiah on the Ruins of
+Jerusalem" (1834), now in the German Emperor's collection, and the
+"Sending of the Jews into Captivity in Babylon" (1872), in the Berlin
+National Gallery, were variations on the same theme.
+
+The productions of the Düsseldorf school were thus in perfect harmony
+with the programme issued by Püttmann in his book. Pictorial
+representations may be taken from two ranges, History or Poetry; the
+painter may choose an historical fact as a subject for representation,
+or reproduce in visible form the rhythmically shaped fancy of a
+stranger. History shows him figures full of expression, and even a less
+powerful artist will find it possible to make a true copy of them. If
+the painter works from poems his representations are sure to meet with
+approval, as they render the beautiful and the attractive in visible
+shape. "But the greatest success lies in store for those works which
+depict in harmony with the mood of the times historical or poetical
+performances which express human suffering in its various stages, from
+homely and everyday griefs to the silent sorrow of irretrievable
+catastrophe."
+
+[Illustration: SOHN. THE TWO LEONORAS.]
+
+Thus the scale of sorrow from sad melancholy to painful suffering became
+the speciality of the Düsseldorf school. At the foot of the scale we
+find the pictures which "represent the common, yet keen sorrow of
+parents at the death or the sad future of their children." Lessing's
+"Royal Pair" mourn the death of their daughter; Hagar grieves because
+she is forced to abandon her son Ishmael in the desert; Genoveva,
+because the roe is so long in coming to the rescue. The mortal grief of
+love is represented by Lessing's "Leonora"; grief of love at separation
+by Sohn's and Hildebrandt's pictures of "Romeo and Juliet." Even the
+murderers of the "Sons of Edward" mourn at their crime when they see the
+children--
+
+ "Girdling one another
+ Within their innocent alabaster arms:
+ Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,
+ Which in their summer beauty kissed each other."
+
+Job grieves at the downfall of his house; Hübner's "Ruth," because her
+weeping mother-in-law entreats her to depart; Stilke's "Pilgrim in the
+Desert," because his horse has died of thirst; Plüddeman's "Columbus,"
+because he knows himself to be unworthy of the grace of God which
+enabled him to discover America; Kiederich's "Charles V", because he has
+retired too early to his monastery, and is plagued by the ticking of
+his watch. The Hohenstaufens, of course, appealed more to the pity of
+the public: the misfortunes of the beautiful Enzin, of Manfred and
+Conrad, gave birth to a sentiment of profoundest sadness. Even brigands
+mourn at the depravity of the world. The age had come to despise its own
+Philistine situation so deeply that it looked up to the brigands, the
+adversaries of civil order, as to representatives of justice. All
+depravity, it was said, originated with the public functionaries, and to
+the noble brigands was allotted the task of revolutionising existing
+things. Their ally in this was to be the poacher. At a time when a
+revision of the game-laws was the sole timid wish the people ventured to
+lay before its princes, it was only logical that the poacher should be
+looked upon as the victim of injustice, as the rescuer of the small man
+from the claws of feudal despotism. The numerous pictures that glorify
+him, as he falls weltering in his blood beneath the guns of the
+gamekeepers, make pendants to Raupach's "Smugglers," and to the rest of
+the highly esteemed literature which turned the life of the poacher into
+sentimental dramas or novels.
+
+[Illustration: LESSING. THE SORROWING ROYAL PAIR.]
+
+Fortunately we, in our days, find great difficulty in entering into the
+spirit which gave birth to these productions. A world lies between it
+and the present, just as between the Germany of to-day and the Germany
+of 1830. Men of the younger generation, who were still at school when
+Bismarck spoke his word of blood and iron, can hardly understand how
+this modern, realistic Germany can have been, two generations ago, a
+sentimental Germany. Now the significance of the Düsseldorf school in
+the history of civilisation lies in the fact that they are the real
+representatives of that age of sentimentality. A generation that melted
+away in tearful dreamings must needs enthusiastically recognise its own
+flesh and blood in those knights and damsels, squires and pages, monks
+and nuns, who, infinitely amorous or infinitely religious, were all
+infinitely sentimental; and things that now only evoke a smile or a
+shrug must needs have moved them to tears. Look where you will, you meet
+the same world. It hung on the walls, it displayed itself in engravings,
+lithographs, and coloured prints; if one lay down for a siesta, one
+found a lovelorn knight and damsel or a praying nun stitched on the
+cushion; if one put one's foot on a carpet, one trod upon noble
+hunting-dames on horseback, falcon on wrist; one carried them in one's
+pockets on cigar-cases and handkerchiefs; the traveller and the cheap
+tripper took them abroad on their knapsacks.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ BENDEMANN. THE LAMENT OF THE JEWS.]
+
+Technically, the pictures of this school were not without their merits.
+"The greatness of Michael Angelo" may not have been Bendemann's, and
+Sohn's carnations are far removed from "the melting colouring of
+Titian." But as opposed to the one-sidedness to which fresco painting at
+Munich was given up, the encouragement of oil-painting at Düsseldorf
+must be looked upon as praiseworthy. These painters were the first in
+Germany to try again to learn how to paint in oils. The extreme artistic
+clumsiness that had reigned under Cornelius was followed by a period in
+which, under Schadow, earnest studies and serious work were devoted to
+an effort again to master a technical medium. Their friendly emulation
+led to surprising progress, which assured to the Düsseldorf school a
+technical superiority over all the other German schools of the period.
+
+[Illustration: SOHN. THE RAPE OF HYLAS.]
+
+If, nevertheless, their pictures have not maintained their position as
+vital works of art, it is due to the fact that they were produced under
+the pressure of that mechanical idealism which makes all their
+productions so utterly unattractive to us. The ideal "line of beauty"
+has turned the figures into bloodless shadows and washed-out theatrical
+forms. As philosophy was to Cornelius, so to the Düsseldorfers was
+poetry their Noah's Ark. The interest aroused by the poet was their
+ally; the breath of the wind that set their boat afloat; the general
+poetical tendency made up for the deficiency in artistic interest. Had
+it not been for the support of the poets, their sugary, insipid figures
+would have from the beginning been unable to hold their own. For after
+having been retouched by "Idealism," nothing vital remained in those
+romantic kings, fantastic knights, Jews, and stage princesses; nothing
+particular and characteristic in their generalisation, nothing generally
+human. With them a king is always an heroic prince in black harness, a
+woolly beard, and a scarlet cloak. A queen is represented as proud and
+dark, or tender and fair-haired. In the much-beloved "couples" from
+poems, characterisation goes no further than general contrasts: the
+_brunette_ in red attire with white sleeves; the tender _blonde_ with
+the complementary garment of pale violet; the one with luxurious
+_embonpoint_, the other languidly slender--men brown, women white,
+youths rosy. Knights wear silvery helmets with or without plumes; now
+with open, now with shut visor; sometimes they sit on poetic palfreys,
+now of slender, now of sturdy build. The only impressions they are
+subject to may be interpreted with the assistance of the plaster bust:
+honour, fidelity, love. And as sentiment and heroism are national
+virtues of the Germans, they are bound to show sentimental expression
+whilst killing their adversaries. Even the brigands are generalised lay
+figures. The Düsseldorf ideal of beauty aimed at a certain tender,
+vaguely graceful swing of outline that anxiously avoided all manly and
+strong, energetic and characteristic expression, all that could remind
+one of nature. They rejected Leonardo da Vinci's advice, to tug at the
+nipple of Mother Nature, but looked upon her merely as their aunt; and
+for this, despised Nature took her revenge by making their figures
+shapeless and phantom-like. And as their "dread of painted stupidities"
+did not once bring them to make bold mistakes, we can neither praise nor
+censure their pictures, cannot enjoy them or take offence at them, but
+look at them _sine ira et studio_, with a lukewarm feeling of utter
+indifference.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+ [1] As is still the case in most of the German theatres, the
+ programme changed every night. Two or three consecutive performances
+ of one play remain a rarity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE LEGACY OF GERMAN ROMANTICISM
+
+
+It was reserved for two younger men to reach the aim that hovered in the
+far distance before Cornelius and the Düsseldorfians. And, by one of
+fortune's remarkable freaks, the greatest German monumental painter of
+the nineteenth century came from the Düsseldorf, the greatest
+Romanticist from the Munich school.
+
+_Alfred Rethel_ was twenty-four years old when he received the
+commission to paint the frescoes in the _Kaisersaal_ at Aachen, and had
+previously worked in the Düsseldorf Academy, and then with Veit at
+Frankfort. But the pictures are suggestive neither of his Düsseldorfian
+nor of his Nazarene training. The deeds of Charlemagne, the ancestor of
+the German Imperial dynasties, are nobly, and, at the same time,
+vigorously embodied in them. Rethel had studied the harsh strength of
+his Albrecht Dürer, but only as a kindred spirit studies his kin.
+Neither Cornelius nor Schnorr has depicted the old German heroic might
+and the vanished imperial grandeur, the great past, the iron Middle
+Ages, with such notable traits. How plain in his heroic greatness stands
+the mighty conqueror of the Saxons by the overthrown pagan idols; how
+simply and majestically does he march into conquered Pavia. What an
+inexorable and irresistible warrior he seems, as he rages amongst the
+Moors who flock round the cars of their idols; and with what grave
+phantom dignity does he gaze in death upon the young Emperor Otto, who
+has forced his way into his vault, and kneels trembling before the
+lifeless frame of his great forefather. There is no vestige of pose,
+nothing superfluous; everywhere simplicity, compression, lucidity. Only
+what is necessary is inscribed here, in the lapidary style. No
+meaningless phrase interrupts his narrative; the inner meaning is never
+sacrificed to any external beauty of line; his forms like his thoughts
+are severe and precise. He draws with a sure hand in crisp lines, like a
+writer who aims at the utmost brevity and so lays especial emphasis on
+his sentences and words. The self-revelation in these pictures is
+admirable--the illuminating clearness with which they tell what they
+have to say without the aid of any commentator, the directness with
+which they present in an artistic aspect the substance to be given. And
+with this substance the painting corresponds.
+
+It is to be deplored that Rethel himself could carry out in colour only
+four of his designs, and that the completion of the rest was entrusted
+to the painter Kehren, who spoilt by his effort after charm of colour
+the collective impression of the series. The pictures painted by Rethel
+himself are, in the simplicity of their colouring, in remarkable
+accordance with the powerful style of his drawing. Rethel's _painting_
+has something stern and grey, bare and sombre. He belongs to the
+stylists whose implement is rather charcoal than the brush; but he had,
+although no colourist, a free command of colour, and never committed any
+fault of taste, but with a remarkably sure instinct used colour in the
+mass, simply, but yet with significant effect. He might have been the
+man to create a monumental German art. A tragic destiny! Heinrich von
+Kleist, the greatest German poet of the post-classical age, who was
+chosen for so high a vocation, the creation of a new dramatic style,
+shot himself; and the giant, Alfred Rethel, was to end in madness.
+Barely forty years old was he when he walked by the warder's side in the
+courtyard at Düsseldorf, picking up flint-stones, a poor, simple madman.
+Only two series of designs ensure, apart from the frescoes at Aix, the
+immortality of his name: "Hannibal's Passage over the Alps," and the
+"Dance of Death." As a draughtsman, just as a painter of frescoes, he is
+the same Titan, sounds the same stern, manly note.
+
+Here the heroic hosts of the Carthaginians stand anxious, yet resolved,
+at the foot of the grim Alpine pass; steep, beetling cliffs, precipice,
+ice and snow, tower before them. Now the climb begins, and the struggle
+with the fierce, barbaric folk of the mountains, who swing themselves on
+leaping-pole like wild animals over the gaping crevices in the ice.
+Yonder are men, horses, an elephant, hurled into the abyss; some have
+spitted themselves on jagged branches of trees in their fall, others
+twine themselves together in horrible coils; at last the most advanced
+have reached the heights, and the heroic figure of the commander points
+out proudly to them, as they breathe once more, the plains of Italy.
+
+Over his second work there broods the shadow of that mental darkness
+which was to surround him. When, in the year 1848, the political storm
+burst over the soil of Europe, Rethel's fantasy reaped a rich harvest.
+He drew his "Dance of Death," represented Death the Leveller, who drives
+poor fools behind the barricades. The ghostly and spectral, that horror
+of death that breaks in upon us in the midst of life, had been the
+propensity of German art since Dürer and Holbein. Like them, Rethel
+loved the world of the diabolical, and similarly chose for his
+embodiment of it the sturdy, simple contours of the old German wood
+engravings. Death as the hero of revolution makes a commencement. There
+he rides as the town-executioner, a cigar between his lips, his scythe
+in his hand. He sits shambling in the saddle, his smock and tall boots
+dangle on his bony figure. Dressed like a charlatan, he excites the
+people before the tavern against the rulers, that he may earn his
+harvest at the barricade. He himself stands firm and proud, like a
+general on the field of battle, the flag in his hand, and the bullets of
+the soldiers whistling harmlessly through his bony ribs. But the
+artisans who follow him are not invulnerable as he is; the grape-shot
+sweeps them down off the barricade. The contest is over; triumphant,
+with a wreath of bay round his skull, mocking venom in his glance, Death
+rides with his banner unfurled across the barricade, where the dying
+writhe in their gaunt death-struggle, and children bewail their fallen
+fathers. The plate, "Death as the Assassin," takes up the story of the
+outbreak of cholera at a masked ball in Paris. In terrified haste the
+dancers and musicians leave the hall. Only one mummy-like spectre, the
+Cholera himself, a shape of horror, keeps his ground, as though turned
+to stone, and holds the triumphant scourge like a sceptre in his bony
+hand. Death, in a domino, with two bones for a fiddle, plays a call to
+the dance; and beneath the awful sounds of his tune the people,
+stretched on the ground, in sick convulsions, grinning with distorted
+features, behind their jesters' masks, twist and turn.
+
+[Illustration: RETHEL. THE EMPEROR OTTO AT THE TOMB OF CHARLEMAGNE.]
+
+There is something of Th. A. Hofmann's wild fantasy of the ague-fit in
+this picture,--something morbid, satanic, that suggests Félicien Rops;
+yet, at the same time, something so pithy and virile, and in form so
+compressed, well-balanced, and correct, that it brings the old Germans,
+too, to our recollection. And the reconciliation with which the series
+ends is pathetic. In the high steeple, lit by the rays of the setting
+sun, the grey old bellringer, his worn hands clasped in prayer, has
+fallen quietly asleep in his armchair. A calm peace rests upon his good,
+old, devout countenance. The thin hands, with their marks and furrows,
+tell a long tale of hard work, sorrow, and longing for rest. And the
+weary veteran has made a pilgrimage for the health of his poor soul, as
+prove the pilgrim's hat and staff by the wall; and now Death has really
+come, the well-known presence indeed, but this time with no grin of
+mockery, rather in profound pity. In his ingenious manner of giving an
+expression of mockery, cold indifference, or compassion to the head of
+the skeleton, Rethel stands on a level with Holbein. To the old ringer,
+Death, who before had grinned so diabolically, is a gentle and trusted
+friend. Quietly and pensively he performs the task that the old man has
+done so often when he attended the departure of some pilgrim of earth
+with the solemn notes of his bell. Rethel himself had still to drag
+through many years in an obscure night of the spirit before for him,
+too, Death, as the friend, rang the knell.
+
+[Illustration: RETHEL. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PAGAN IDOLS.]
+
+And now for him who was the most admirable of them all, Lady Adventure's
+true knight.
+
+"Master _Schwind_, you are a genius and a Romanticist." This stereotyped
+compliment was paid by King Ludwig to the painter on each occasion that,
+without buying anything of him, he visited his studio. And with equal
+regularity Schwind, when he had sat down again at his easel, after the
+royal visit, to smoke his pipe, is said to have muttered something
+extremely disloyal. In this trait the whole Schwind is already
+revealed,--free from all ambition, every inch an artist.
+
+W. H. Riehl has described a series of such episodes, which one must know
+in order to understand Schwind, that highly gifted child of nature, who
+separates himself from the group of philosophical, "meditative" artists
+of his age, both as an individual and as an audacious, original genius
+of effervescent wit.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ RETHEL. HANNIBAL'S PASSAGE OVER THE ALPS.]
+
+When an æsthetic once hailed him as "the creator of an original, German
+kind of ideal, romantic art," Schwind repeated very slowly, weighing
+each word: "'An original, German kind of ideal, romantic art.' My dear
+sir, to me there are only two kinds of pictures, the sold and the
+unsold; and to me the sold are always the best. Those are my entire
+æsthetics." Or a noble amateur comes to him with the request that he
+would take him just for a few days into his school, and instruct him
+especially in his masterly art of drawing in pencil. Whereupon Schwind:
+"It does not require a day for that, my dear Baron; I can tell you in
+three minutes how I do it, I can give you all the desired information at
+once. Here lies my paper,--kindly remark it, I buy it of Bullinger, 6
+Residenz Strasse; these are my pencils, A. W. Faber's, I get them from
+Andreas Kaut, 10 Kaufinger Strasse; from the same firm I have this
+indiarubber too, but I very seldom use it, so that I use this penknife
+all the more, to sharpen the pencils; it's from Tresch, 10 Dienersgasse,
+and very good value. Now, I have all these things lying together on the
+table, and a few thoughts in my head as well; then I sit down here and
+begin to draw. And now you know all that I can tell you." Again he asks
+"to be decorated with an order," because he "is ashamed to mix in such a
+naked condition with his bestarred confrères," and after the bestowal
+of the desired decoration he says: "I wore it only once, at the last New
+Year's levée, but I vowed at the same time that six horses should not
+drag me there again. Before, there was at any rate a beautiful queen
+there, and then the court ladies laughed at one; but amongst men only,
+the stupidity of it is not to be endured." When he grumbles over
+commissions which have been given to others, and adds good-temperedly,
+"Indeed, I'm an envious fellow"; when he paints the most delicate
+pictures and then growls, "What am I to do with the things, if nobody
+buys them?" when he indulges in outbursts of wrath, and a minute later
+has forgotten again the abusive words which the others spitefully bring
+up against him years afterwards,--then here, too, his happy humour
+forces its way everywhere, that divine naïveté which forms the soul of
+his and of all true art.
+
+[Illustration: RETHEL. DEATH AT THE MASKED BALL.]
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ RETHEL. DEATH THE FRIEND OF MAN.]
+
+Schwind remains a personality by himself--the last of the Romanticists,
+and one of the most amiable manifestations in German art. He was free
+from the malady of that sham Romanticism which sought the salvation of
+art in the resurrection of the Middle Ages, misunderstood, and grasped
+sentimentally, and as it were by stencil. He was spiritually permeated
+by that which had given Romanticism the capacity to exist: the sense of
+that forgotten and imperishable world of beauty which it has again
+discovered. The others sought for the "blue flower," Schwind found it;
+resuscitated in all its faëry beauty that "fair night of enchantment
+which holds the mind captive." He incorporated the romantic idea in
+painting as Weber did in music, and his works, like the _Freischütz_,
+will live for ever. Many a man listened to him holding forth upon
+water-nymphs, gnomes, and tricksy kobolds, as of beings of whose
+existence he appeared to have no doubt whatever. On one occasion, while
+out walking near Eisenach in the Annathal, a friend laughingly observed
+to him that the landscape really looked as if gnomes had made the
+pathway and had had their dwellings there. "Don't you believe it was so?
+_I_ believe it," answered Schwind in all seriousness. He _lived_ in the
+world of legend and fairy-tale. If ever a fairy stood beside the cradle
+of a mortal man, assuredly there was one standing by Schwind's; and all
+his life long he believed in her and raved about her. Born in the land
+where Neidhart of Neuenthal had sung and the Parson of the Kahlenberg
+had dwelt, to his eyes Germany was overshadowed with ancient Teutonic
+oaks: for him, elves hovered about watersprings and streams, their white
+robes trailing behind them through the dewy grass; a race of gnomes held
+their habitation on the mountain heights, and water-nymphs bathed in
+every pool. In him part of the Middle Ages came back to life, not in
+livid, corpse-like pallor, but fanned by the revivifying breath of the
+present day.
+
+For that is what is noteworthy about Schwind; he is a Romanticist, yet
+at the same time a genuine, modern child of Vienna. There are three
+things in each of which Vienna stands supreme: hers are the fairest
+women, the sweetest songs, and the most beautiful waltzes. The
+atmosphere of Vienna sends forth a soft and sensual breath which
+encircles us as though with women's arms; songs and dances slumber in
+the air, waiting only for a call to be awakened. Vienna is a place for
+enjoyment rather than for work, for pensive dreaming rather than for
+sober wakefulness of mind. Moritz Schwind was a child of this city of
+beautiful women, songs, and dances, as may be observed in the feminine
+nature of his art, in its melody and rhythm: in music, indeed, it had
+its source. In song-singing, bell-ringing Vienna it was difficult for
+him to guess in what direction his talents lay; but all his life long he
+kept an open eye for the charms of beautiful womanhood. No artist of
+that time has created lovelier forms of women, beings with so great a
+charm of maidenly freshness and modest grace. Instead of the goddesses,
+heroines, and nun-like female saints, whose appearance dated from the
+Italy of the Cinquecento, Schwind depicted modern feminine charm. The
+group of ladies in "Ritter Kurt" is, even to the movement of their
+gloved fingers, graceful in the modern sense. He was a painter of
+love--a breath of Walter von der Vogelweide's ideal perfection of
+womanhood pervades his pictures.
+
+ "Durchsüsset und geblümet sind die reinen Frauen,
+ Es ward nie nichts so Wonnigliches anzuschauen,
+ In Lüften, auf Erden, noch in allen grünen Auen."
+
+Schwind, too, painted frescoes, and in them he is very unequal. All his
+life long he complained of the lack of important commissions; it was
+fortunate for him that he did not get more of them. Such a painter as he
+can execute no orders but his own,--just as good poems do not come to
+order. A long list of wall paintings--the Tieck room and the
+figure-frieze in the Habsburg Hall of the new palace at Munich, the
+frescoes in the Kunsthall and in the Hall of Assembly of the Upper House
+at Karlsruhe, those in the Castle of Hohenschwangau, even the theatre
+pieces in the loggia and in the foyer of the Vienna Opera House--could
+be easily struck out of Schwind's work, without detriment to his
+reputation. Only when the subject permitted him to strike a simple note
+of fairy music was he charming even in his wall-paintings, and therefore
+those which depict scenes from the life of St. Elizabeth in the
+Wartburg are rightly the most celebrated. Like Rethel in the field of
+the heroic, so Schwind in that of romantic legend reached the goal which
+the former kept before his eyes, for the revivifying of the time when
+there was an enthusiasm for fresco painting. His paintings are poor in
+colour, motley, magic-lantern views in the style of the heraldically
+treated figures seen in the frescoes and stained glass of the Romanesque
+and early Gothic Middle Ages, and yet in every line as delightful as the
+man himself. Nowhere do we find glaring contrasts, nowhere any violent
+agitation in the expression of the faces. It is by the avoidance of all
+landscape accessories, and by a hardly noticeable change in the simple
+plant-ornamentation in the background, that the events represented are
+made to lose touch with actual reality. In the first picture,
+bright-hued birds flit here and there among the rose-branches forming
+the decorative work; in that which treats of St. Elizabeth's expulsion,
+the Wartburg rises in the background, while little singing angels are
+perched upon the boughs of the bare winter-stripped trees that overlook
+the miserable cell in which St. Elizabeth dies. A touch of the
+true-heartedness of the ancient Teuton, a breath of peacefulness,
+permeates Schwind's Wartburg pictures like the waft of an angel's wings.
+
+[Illustration: MORITZ SCHWIND. _Graphische Künste._]
+
+Schwind, like Rethel, is numbered among the few artists of that period
+who were able to preserve their absolute simplicity against the great
+painters of Italy. "I went into the Sistine Chapel," he says of his
+journey to Rome, "gazed upon Michael Angelo's work, and sauntered back
+home to work at my 'Ritter Kurt.' I take the greatest possible pleasure
+in my present picture, although the subject is absolutely crazy. I love
+to paint trees and rocks and old walls, and I have put plenty of them
+into it, besides a fellow on horseback and in full armour. What does it
+matter? _One must work according to one's natural capacity. Even at the
+time when I was studying at Munich I came to the conclusion that that of
+which the mind of itself takes hold, and that which takes hold of it, is
+the one only right thing for every man who has a vocation. Art consists
+of this unconscious taking hold and being taken hold of. Deus in nobis._
+And therefore the young artist will do well to be careful in visiting
+the museums. You go to the galleries where the works of the great
+masters are to be seen. There you see, all at once and all together in
+confusion, works of every school and of every era. It is extremely
+likely that you are overwhelmed by the mass, and beauties of every kind,
+belonging to tendencies and epochs altogether diverse, shake the ground
+under your budding vocation, and like fifty various climates influencing
+a single plant, arrest a growth which is possible only in one, and that
+a favourable one. _The imitation of the Italians in especial can as a
+rule have only the effect of estranging us from our own individuality_,
+a fact which was once again fully borne in upon me when I saw Overbeck's
+new altar-piece in the Cathedral of Cologne. It may sound severe and
+uncalled-for from me, but _every man who has forgotten his mother-tongue
+is tottering on his feet. The imitation of foreigners is the dangerous
+blind alley into which our art has betaken itself_. When I exhibited
+'Ritter Kurt' people said, 'It is Old German,' and forthwith it stood
+condemned, as if that were a disgrace, and as if one should not rather
+have saluted the fact with joy, as the right thing for us Germans. The
+art of painting which I follow is the German, and glass-painting must be
+taken as its foundation."
+
+[Illustration: SCHWIND. FROM THE WARTBURG FRESCOES.]
+
+In Schwind one might imagine an old German master of the race of
+Albrecht Altdorfer come to life again. In the small, simple pictures of
+landscape and fairy-tale, which Count Schack has collected in his
+private gallery for the quiet and devout enjoyment of thousands, he has
+given us his best work as a painter.
+
+Yet even _his_ pictures have the failings of his time. Compared with
+Dürer, he seems like a gifted amateur; there are manifold empty, dead
+spaces to be observed among his figures; their action is at times
+misconceived and puppet-like; and his sense of colour was always
+limited. One may be permitted to look forward to some master, at the
+head of a coming epoch in art, who shall combine with Schwind's German
+fairy imagination the sensuous, dashing colour-elf that possessed
+Boecklin. There might a school of art arise, to follow for the future
+the path which Franz Stuck has struck out. As to technique, Schwind was
+a child of the cartoon era; as regards tenderness of feeling, he is a
+modern. It is difficult to persuade a non-German of Schwind's greatness,
+in presence of the _pictures_; but when they are reduced to
+black-and-white they appeal to every one. The heliogravure enables one
+to imagine what the original does not show; it incites the soul to
+further poetic creation, it announces what Schwind would be were he
+alive to-day. An elfland kingdom of enchantment, full of genuine poetry
+and beauty, opens out before us; a fairy garden, where the "blue flower"
+pours forth the whole of its sense-benumbing perfume. Count von
+Gleichen; the boy's miraculous horn; the mountain spirit Rübezahl,
+wandering along through the wild mountain forest; the hermits; the
+elves' dance; the erlking; the knight and the water nymph,--they are
+flooded with all the enchantment of Romanticism, they possess deep
+feeling without mawkishness, the old-German note of fairy legend and
+Hans Memlinc's childlike simplicity, yet at the same time the life of
+the present day, full of feeling and rich in delicate shades. How strong
+and brave are the men; how tender, noble, and charming the women! What a
+modest, maidenly art it is! just as its master was an innocent,
+harmless, and joyous being.
+
+[Illustration: SCHWIND. FROM THE WARTBURG FRESCOES.]
+
+His works, in comparison with those of his contemporaries, who were
+devising systems by means of which art should be brought back to the
+classical, bear the stamp of naïve creations in which no hypocrisy, no
+decorative nothingness finds expression. As against the erudite
+treatises of the Cornelius school, they preached for the first time the
+doctrine, that in works of art what is important is not the quantity of
+learning displayed therein, but the quality of the feeling exhibited.
+With all their inequalities, all their incorrectness, all their weak
+points, they are inspired, sung, dreamed, and not put together in cold
+blood according to recipes: in them is the pulsation of a human heart, a
+tender human heart full of delicate feeling. This it is which
+constitutes his magical attraction to-day, which makes him the firm bond
+of connection between the moderns. He was no imitator, no soulless
+calligraphist performing laborious school exercises after the manner of
+the old masters; he spoke the language of his time.
+
+He was one of the first who at that time laid aside the prejudice
+against modern costume, and in his "Symphony" turned to artistic
+account, in one fantastic whole, even Franz Lachner's frockcoat and
+Fräulein Hetzenecker's modern society toilette. "If you may paint a man
+hidden in an iron stove--what is called a knight in armour--you may
+still more permissibly paint a man in a frockcoat. In general, one can
+paint what one will, provided always that one wills what one can." And
+it was only by means of this present-day temper that Romanticism could
+find so full-toned an expression in his works. Only because he was truly
+a citizen of the present day and felt its blood beating in his veins,
+could he feel the congenial elements of the past. To him the old-time
+legends were no antiquarian, erudite, pedantic lumber; they were a part
+of himself, and he interpreted them in more childlike simplicity of
+manner and with more delicate feeling than any artist of former times,
+because he observed them with the eye of the present age, with an eye
+made keen with longing. Just as in his "Wedding Journey" he raised all
+reality into the poetry of purest romance, so is his Romanticism
+saturated with a sense of reality charged with memories of home. Out of
+his fairy-tale pictures is breathed a charming fragrance of the
+long-vanished days of earth's first springtide, and yet for that very
+reason a breath of the most modern Décadence. He is distinguished from
+Marées and Burne-Jones, from Puvis de Chavannes and Gustave Moreau, by a
+very unmodern attribute--he is bursting with health. He is still naïvely
+childlike, free from that elegiac melancholy, that temper of weary
+resignation, which the end of the nineteenth century first brought into
+the world.
+
+[Illustration: SCHWIND. WIELAND THE SMITH.]
+
+[Illustration: _Neft, Helio._
+
+ SCHWIND. FROM THE STORY OF THE SEVEN RAVENS.]
+
+Yet Schwind was one of the first to feel and give expression to that
+modern sense of longing desire which turns back from a nervous,
+colourless age, from the prosiness of everyday life, towards a vanished
+Saturnian era, when man still lived at peace and undisturbed in happy
+union with nature. For even this proclaims him our contemporary, that
+the temper of his pictures develops itself from the landscape. A
+landscape painter through and through--almost in Boecklin's sense,
+who transformed the temper of Nature into the contemplation of living
+beings--he spoke of the rest and peace of German forests, of that hour
+of summer's night when no wind blows, no leaflet moves, when to the
+solitary wanderer in the woods the mists rising from the meadows are
+transformed into white veils of the elves, and the gold-rimmed waves of
+the sea into the yellow hair of mermaids frolicking in the moonlight to
+the magic notes of their golden harps. He felt and loved his landscapes
+rather than studied them, yet they are saturated with an entirely modern
+sentiment for Nature. No German, at that time, had caught and understood
+the interweaving of the forest boughs with such intimate familiarity.
+The fresh sunshine of the morning breaks through the light green of the
+young beeches, and leaps from bough to bough, transforming the
+glittering dewdrops into diamonds, and the beetle, creeping comfortably
+over the soft moss, into gold and precious stones. "_Da gehet leise nach
+seiner Weise der liebe Herrgott durch den Wald_" ("The dear God holy, He
+passeth slowly, as His wont is, through the wood"). With a few boldly
+drawn lines and light colours we are transported into the midst of the
+forest world, and all around us opening buds and verdurous green, sweet
+scents, and the murmur of leaves. "When one has set one's love and joy
+on a beautiful tree so fully," he said to Ludwig Richter, "one depicts
+all one's love and joy with it, and then the tree looks quite different
+from an ass's fine daub of what he thinks it should be."
+
+[Illustration: _Albert, Helio._
+
+ SCHWIND. A HERMIT LEADING HORSES TO A POOL.]
+
+Only so intimate a connection with Nature could enable Schwind to
+imagine landscapes, which in their virginal old-world mood form at once
+the echo of the figures and of their actions. These green meadows and
+flower-besprent hills, these gloomy wooded slopes, these smooth valleys
+through which glittering waters glide murmuring along, are fit and
+suitable dwelling-places for the delicate fabulous beings of the
+flower-entwined old fairy legends. Schwind _lived_ with Nature. He gave
+the name of Tanneck (Fir-tree Corner) to the little country house which
+he built for himself on the Starnberger See, and the fresh scent of
+pinewood, the rustling sound of German forests, pour forth from his
+pictures. Like young Siegfried, he understood the language of birds, and
+went eavesdropping to hear what the pine trees whispered to one another.
+
+[Illustration: SCHWIND. THE WEDDING JOURNEY.]
+
+Still freer, more spontaneous, and lighter than in his oil paintings was
+his touch in his water-colours, in which the colour is only breathed
+over the forms like a delicate vapour; and quite especially in his
+illustrations--so far as the word may be employed with respect to him,
+for he never illustrated, he gave shape to his own thoughts, and that
+only which moved his innermost being he brought fully formed before
+one's eye. The _Bilderbogen_ and the _Fliegende Blätter_ of Munich
+obtained from him witty and humorous inventions, such as "The Almond
+Tree," "Puss in Boots," "The Peasant and the Donkey," "Herr Winter," and
+"The Acrobat Games." His fairest legacy consists of three cyclic works:
+"Cinderella," "The Seven Ravens," and "The Beautiful Melusina"; wherein
+he glorified with praise the beauty and fidelity of women, and their
+capacity for self-sacrifice. "Cinderella," which appeared in 1855, at
+the Munich Exhibition, is a fairy-tale, than which poet has seldom,
+indeed, narrated a chaster, tenderer, or more fragrant. In 1858 followed
+the touching story of the good sister who releases her brothers by dint
+of unspeakable suffering and endurance, to-day the priceless pearl among
+the gems of the Weimar collection. For twenty years, as he said, the
+work had been in his thoughts. So far back as in 1844 he wrote to
+Genelli: "I believe that it will give something which may please people
+who have a sense for love and faithfulness, and for a touch of the power
+of enchantment." When an acquaintance of his gazed upon it with dismay,
+and ingenuously asked for whom the thing was intended, and whither it
+was to go, Schwind turned his penetrating, flashing little eyes upon
+him, and then said: "Do you know, I painted that for myself; it is the
+dream of my life; no one shall buy it; some day I shall give it to a
+friend." It is an imperishable work, full of grace, modesty, and charm.
+
+Schwind takes the story up at the fateful moment when the lonely maiden,
+who is determined to release her enchanted brothers by assiduous
+spinning and constant silence, is discovered by a hunting party. There,
+amid the enchantment of the forest solitude, she sits in the hollow of a
+tree and spins away at the seven shirts, to free her seven brothers.
+Thus the king's son catches sight of her. The fire of love kindles in
+his eyes. In one long kiss the maiden gives herself to him. The wedding
+takes place, and like another St. Elizabeth she is seen standing, soon
+afterwards, distributing alms to starving beggars. Yet, meanwhile, she
+has fallen under suspicion owing to her continuous silence; even her
+husband becomes distrustful, because in the quiet of night he has
+observed that she is not resting by his side, but is quietly up and
+spinning. And the catastrophe comes when the silent queen gives birth to
+twins, who, to the horror of all around, fly off in the form of ravens.
+Tranquil and affectionate, the young mother awaits her fate. Then follow
+the sentence of the Vehm-tribunal, the pathetic parting from her
+husband, the preparation for death. There is only one hour more to pass
+by before the seven years are over and the spellbound brothers set free.
+The good fairy appears in the air, hour-glass in hand, and brings solace
+to the hard-pressed heroine. The beggars, too, whose benefactress she
+had been, bring help, and hold the gate of the dungeon in force. So the
+time runs out, the spell is broken, and the brothers hasten, on
+milk-white horses, to save their sister from the stake. In Schwind's
+marvellous drawings the story passes quickly on, stroke by stroke,
+deeply moving and soul-stirring in its dramatic force.
+
+The "Beautiful Melusina" was the kiss of the water-nymph, with which
+Romanticism led her faithful knight to his death, only to disappear
+together with him out of German art. "The winter has dealt me a sore
+blow; I shall never be able to do anything more." Carl Maria von Weber
+and Uhland had already gone before; Schwind was lying on his sick-bed
+when the German victories created a German fatherland. He learned,
+however, all the long series of glorious tidings that came from the
+field of war, saw the tumultuous joy and the dazzling sea of fire which
+surged through Munich in January 1871, and heard the joyful news that
+Germany was at last united. Then he had a glass of champagne poured out
+for him, and drank it to the new empire and the future of the nation.
+
+In the middle of a wood of lofty beeches in Bernrieder Park, on the
+Starnberger See, there stands a small rotunda, within is a prattling
+fountain, right round the walls runs a frieze, depicting the legend of
+the "Beautiful Melusina." It is Schwind's monument. With him German
+Romanticism perished; reality itself had now become so marvellous. When,
+in 1850, Hübner had to paint a figure of Germania for a page in King
+Ludwig's album, he depicted a queenly woman, prone on the ground, with
+her face in the dust, amidst a desolate landscape and under a cloudy
+sky. The crown has fallen from her head and a skull lies by her side,
+while on the frame are inscribed these words from the Book of
+Lamentations: "Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the
+destruction of the daughter of my people; the crown of our head is
+fallen." When Schwind died, Germany had re-arisen. In the very year of
+his death, Lenbach painted his first Bismarck pictures: in Bismarck was
+embodied that power by means of which the dream of a nation was
+fulfilled.
+
+[Illustration: SCHWIND. NYMPHS AND STAG.]
+
+Thus Schwind's works are not only the sign of a completed period in
+German history, but also at the same time both the climax and the
+conclusion of an art-epoch. Schwind had lived through the entire
+revolution which German painting had at that time undergone. At his
+death the sound of the hunting horns of Romanticism had died away. He
+had lived long enough to have the opportunity of criticising neatly, as
+follows, the dry, unpoetical school of historical painting then making
+its appearance, as if introduced by gaudily costumed models, a school
+which made its first hit with Lessing's "Ezzelino": "I will explain the
+picture to you. Ezzelino is seated in his dungeon, and two monks are
+attempting to convert him. One of them recognises that all pains are
+thrown away upon the old sinner, and takes himself off, regretfully
+desisting from all further endeavour; the other still has hopes, and
+continues his exhortations. But Ezzelino only keeps his angry gaze fixed
+before him, muttering, 'Leave me alone! Don't you see that I am--posing
+as a model!'" He had had occasion to write to his friend Bauernfeld: "I
+have seen so many schools of so-called painting in my time that it is an
+absolute horror to me"; he had asked Piloty: "What calamity are you
+preparing for us now?" and had thought it his duty to address to one of
+the younger painters the question: "Are we then an academy of the Fine
+or of the Ugly Arts?" "A man like me, with his ideas, walks like a ghost
+amid the battle of the virtuosi, in which the whole life of art has gone
+astray," he used sadly to say. His last wonderful works stand alone in
+a time which was dazzled by the flash of arms characterising the
+Franco-Belgian school of art. It was not till much later that Hans Thoma
+took up the threads which connect the work of Schwind with the present
+epoch. When he died he was a solitary, isolated man taking leave of a
+generation in which he had no part. The period of historical painting
+which followed him produced no single work distinguished by Schwind's
+sense of fragrant legendary poetry. The charming forest fairy who had
+appeared to him showed herself to no other; like the betrayed Melusina,
+she had returned to rest again, solitary, in her fountain home. Fantasy,
+tender soul that she is, had taken wings, whither none can tell. "That
+is why nobody has a single idea," as Schwind said in his drastic way.
+The Muse of Schwind, the last Romanticist, was a chaste, pensive,
+soulful maiden; while that of Piloty, the first colourist, was a noisy,
+bloodthirsty Megæra. Yet one can have no doubt as to the necessity of
+this evolutionary change.
+
+[Illustration: _Albert, Helio._
+
+ SCHWIND. RUBEZAHL.]
+
+Schwind himself is among the masters "who have been, and are, and shall
+be." He was different from all that was arising around him; he embodied
+the spirit of the future, and exercises over the art of the present day
+so great an influence that where two or three painters are gathered
+together in the name of the beautiful, he has his place in the midst of
+them, and is present, invisible, at every exhibition. But he exercises
+this influence only spiritually. Young artists study him as if he were a
+primitive master. Enraptured, they find in him all those qualities for
+which there is to-day so ardent a longing--innocent purity and touching
+simplicity, a mystic, romantic submersion in waves of old-time feeling
+and a charming youthful fervour. They do not study him in order to
+_paint_ like him.
+
+"Our heads are full of poetry, but we cannot give it expression," are
+the words with which Cornelius himself characterised this period.
+Germany had original geniuses indeed, but no fully matured school to
+compare with the French; as yet the Germans did not know how to paint.
+Up to this time the course of painting in Germany had been a bold but
+imprudent flight through the air; in its Kaulbach-like cloud-heights it
+had melted away to a shadow, only to fall again, somewhat roughly, to
+the ground. It died of an incurable disease--idealism. The painters of
+that time, one and all, had never become real artists; strictly
+speaking, they had always remained amateurs. He alone is a great artist
+in whom the will and the performance, the substance and the form, are in
+complete accordance. Painters who never knew exactly what is meant by
+painting, artists whose most noticeable characteristic was that they had
+no art-capacity, were only possible in the first half of the nineteenth
+century in Germany, where for that very reason they were admired and
+praised.
+
+What now began was a necessary making good what had been so long
+neglected. For craftsmanship is the necessary presupposition of all art,
+which can no longer suffer any one to be called a master who has not
+learnt his business. In the atmosphere of incense which surrounded
+Cornelius in Munich, the dogma that salvation was to be found in German
+art alone, and that the German nation was the chosen people of art, had
+reached a height of self-adoration which came near to megalomania. In
+the proud enthusiasm of those times, great in their aims as in their
+errors, the Germans had as false an opinion as possible of the art of
+foreign countries.
+
+In the very years when the first railways were ousting the old
+mail-coaches the mutual interchange of endeavour and ability between the
+various nations was slower and scantier than ever before. How German
+artists had wandered abroad in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in
+that great age when Dürer crossed the Alps on Pirkheymer's pony, and
+when Holbein obtained from Erasmus letters of introduction for England!
+With what joy Dürer, in his letters and in his journal, gives an account
+of the recognition accorded him in artistic circles in Italy and the
+Dutch cities! Nearly all the German painters had, in the course of their
+long wanderings, made acquaintance with either the Netherlands or Italy.
+They knew exactly what was going on in the world around them. Dürer and
+Raphael used to send drawings to each other, "so as to know each other's
+handwriting." It was only in the first half of the nineteenth century
+that the Germans, once proud in the consciousness of possessing the
+finest comprehension of, and the greatest receptivity for, foreign
+intellectual wares, lived apart in timid isolation. Into the suburban
+still-life of the German schools of art not a sound made its way of what
+was taking place elsewhere. Only thus was it possible for the Germans to
+imagine that among all modern nations they alone had a vocation for Art.
+No one had the least idea that in England, the land of machines and
+beefsteaks, there were men who painted; and people went so far as to
+proclaim piety, morality, thoroughness, accurate draughtsmanship, and
+diligent execution the monopoly of German art; and superficiality,
+frivolity, and "empty straining after effect" the ineradicable national
+failing of that of France.
+
+[Illustration: SCHWIND. THE FAIRIES' SONG.]
+
+With some such ideas in their heads the majority of the German painters,
+in the autumn of 1843, found themselves confronted by Gallait's
+"Abdication of Charles V" and Bièfve's "Agreement of the Dutch
+Nobility"; two Belgian pictures which at that time were going the round
+of the exhibitions in all the larger towns of Germany. And it was not
+long before the belief in the old gods, which had for thirty years held
+sway in the city of King Ludwig, was completely undermined by the
+younger generation. "Even for the great gods, day comes to an end. Night
+of annihilation, descend with the dusk!" Diogenes expelled from his
+philosophic tub could not have felt more uncomfortable than the German
+painters in presence of the Belgian pictures. As till then the
+incapacity to paint had been belauded as one of the strongest possible
+proofs of the higher artistic nature and of genuine greatness, so now it
+was perceived that nevertheless, on the banks of the Scheldt and of the
+Seine, a much greater school of painting was in full bloom, and
+producing splendid fruit.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE FORERUNNERS OF ROMANTICISM IN FRANCE
+
+
+In France the first decade of the century gave no premonition of the
+powerful development which was shortly to take place in French art. A
+legion of characterless pupils issuing from David's studio wearied the
+world with their aimless works, and hurled their thunderbolts against
+all rising talent. The austere catalogue of the Salon was a pell-mell of
+Belisarii, Télémaques, Phædras, Electras, Brutuses, Psyches, and
+Endymions. Girodet and Guérin wearied themselves in putting on canvas
+the chief scenes in the classical tragedies at that time so frequently
+performed--Pygmalion and Galatea, the Death of Agamemnon, and the
+like--and painted portraits between times; Girodet's dry and poor,
+Guérin's solemnly vacant. The universal note was that of tedium.
+
+_François Gérard_ alone, the "King of Painters and Painter of Kings,"
+survives, at least in his portraits. Like David he is redeemed only by
+his portrait painting, and his successes in that direction eclipse even
+Mme. Vigée-Lebrun, the amiable, gifted, and graceful painter of Marie
+Antoinette's days. At the outbreak of the Revolution she had left
+France. Everywhere extolled and welcomed with open arms, she painted
+Mme. de Staël in Switzerland, and at Naples Lady Hamilton, the famous
+beauty of the time of the Directory. But when, in 1810, she returned to
+Paris, she had been forgotten. The day on which Marie Antoinette picked
+up her brush for her, as Charles V had done for Titian, was to remain
+the happiest in her life. She belonged to the Ancien Régime, and
+although her death did not take place till 1842, at the age of
+eighty-seven, her work was already over in 1792. In her old age she
+busied herself in writing memoirs of the splendour of her youthful days,
+from the famous mythological dinner in the Rue de Cléry, where her
+husband appeared in the character of Pindar and recited his translation
+of Anacreon's odes, to the triumphs which accompanied her journey round
+Europe.
+
+Gérard took the place which she had left vacant at her departure, and
+filled it well, especially in his youth. When, in the Exhibition of
+Portrait Painting held at Paris in 1885, there appeared the likeness of
+Mlle. Brongniart, from the collection of Baron Pichon, painted by Gérard
+in 1795, at the age of twenty-five, there was general astonishment at
+the familiar and intimate grasp of character it displayed. The portrait
+of this young girl standing in her white dress, so tranquil and without
+pose, has in the firmness of its draughtsmanship the austere charm and
+dignity of a Bronzino. And later none could give to the aristocracy of
+Europe a nobler or more natural bearing than did Gérard, who became
+their tried and trusted depicter: yet in his last days he descended into
+theatrical exaggeration. Endowed as he was with all the captivating
+qualities of a cultured man of the world, he had from the beginning
+avoided as the plague the revolutionary politics in which David was for
+some time engaged, and when at the instance of the elder master he was
+appointed a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal, he alleged illness in
+order to be absent from its sessions. He was a man of the salons, the
+born painter of the great world, his house the centre of a distinguished
+circle of society. Not a celebrity, not an emperor or king, but wished
+to be painted by Gérard. And just as he had been the chosen portrait
+painter of the Bonaparte family, so after the Restoration he was still
+the official favourite of the Court. Josephine took the fashionable
+painter under her high protection, Napoleon's marshals defiled before
+him, and the aristocracy which returned with Louis XVIII vied with one
+another for his favour.
+
+[Illustration: FRANÇOIS GÉRARD. _L'Art._]
+
+Gérard's three hundred portraits are a continuous catalogue of all those
+who in the first quarter of the century played any part in France upon
+the political, military, or literary stage. A man of supple talent and
+fine tastes, he completely satisfied the desires of a society which,
+after the storm of the Revolution, opened its salons again and
+re-established its former hierarchy of rank. The portrait with rich
+background of upholstery, and the depicting of public ceremonies, were
+reintroduced by him into the field of art. The people whom he painted
+are no longer "citizens," as with David, but princes, generals,
+princesses; and their surroundings allow of no doubt as to whether they
+are to be addressed as Sir, as Your Serene Highness, or as Your
+Excellency. No one knew how to flatter in so tactful a manner,
+particularly in portraits of ladies. It was to him, therefore, that Mme.
+Récamier had recourse when she was dissatisfied with David's likeness of
+her. Gérard's, which she destined for Prince Augustus of Prussia, one of
+her admirers, gave the "fair Juliette" the fullest satisfaction. In the
+former she was represented reposing on a couch, austere and without
+charm, like a tragic muse. Here she sits in a pleasant, lazy attitude
+upon a chair, in a transparent robe which fully displays her form; about
+her lips plays a half-melancholy, half-coquettish smile, and she, the
+great actress who had turned so many men's heads, gazes with gentle
+child-eyes as innocently upon the world as though she believed the story
+about babies and the stork.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ GÉRARD. MLLE. BRONGNIART.]
+
+The background, too, that colonnade "leading nowhither," is
+characteristic of the change in the manner of regarding things. The
+older schools of painting had, in the case of portraits, managed the
+treatment of the background in two different ways. The old Dutch and
+Germans--Jan van Eyck and Holbein--aimed at showing a man, not only
+portrayed with the subtlest fidelity to truth, but also in the
+surroundings in which he was usually or by preference to be found. The
+Italians renounced all representation of such scenes, and gave only a
+quiet, neutral tone to the background. Gorgeous decorative scenery was
+introduced by the court painter Van Dyck, and since the second half of
+the seventeenth century had continually risen in popular favour.
+Mignard, Lebrun, and Rigaud had brought into fashion, for portraits of
+princely personages, that stately pillared architecture, with broad
+velvet curtains swelling and descending in ample folds, which at that
+time was so remarkably in keeping with the whole cut of the costumes,
+with the enormous full-bodied wigs and the theatrical attitudinising of
+that epoch. For the likenesses of generals and warlike princes the
+favourite background was one which represented, by means of a number of
+small figures, entire battles, marches, sieges, and so forth. Both these
+methods, and, together with them, that of an ideal, lightly indicated
+park landscape, were put an end to by the Revolution, under the
+influence of which all extravagant pomp, not only in life, but even in
+portrait painting, was replaced by an ascetic sobriety. Gérard, the
+Court painter of the Bourbons, who on their return had "learnt nothing
+and forgotten nothing," reintroduced the gorgeous pillar decoration,
+which still remained the authoritative style under Stieler and
+Winterhalter, and has only in the _bourgeois_ era of to-day given way to
+the simple, neutral-toned background of the Italians.
+
+David, by the way, never forgave Mme. Récamier for having preferred his
+pupil to himself. When, in 1805, after the completion of Gérard's
+likeness of her, she approached David on the subject of finishing his,
+he answered drily: "Madame, artists have their caprices as well as
+women; now it is _I_ who will not."
+
+As an historical painter Gérard was an imitator of the mannerist
+Girodet. Paintings such as "Daphnis and Chloe," or the famous "Psyche"
+receiving Cupid's first kiss (1798), made indeed a great sensation among
+the ladies, who for some time afterwards painted their faces white, to
+resemble the gentle Psyche; but from the artistic point of view they do
+not rise above the ordinary level of the Classical school. As an
+historical painter he took much the same course as David; he began as a
+Revolutionist in 1795 with the usual "Belisarius," and ended as a
+Royalist with a "Coronation of Charles X."
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ GÉRARD. MADAME VISCONTI.]
+
+The more stiff and sober the antique style of David became, the sooner a
+counter-current was likely to arise, and the change of taste showed
+itself first in the circumstance that, from 1810 on, a master came more
+and more to the front who, already old, had hitherto lived in obscurity,
+almost despised by his contemporaries. This was the amiable,
+sympathetic, charming, sweet, and great _Prudhon_, the lineal descendant
+of Correggio, a solitary painter, the gracefulness of whose art was at
+first unappreciated, but who, as the orthodox academicians began to be
+more and more tedious, exercised a correspondingly greater influence
+over the younger generation. He is the one refreshing oasis in the
+desert wilderness of the Classical school.
+
+What a difference between him and David! When the elegant grace of
+Watteau fled from the French school, and the new Spartans dreamed of
+founding a Greek art, David was the hero of this buskined theatrical
+school of painting. He painted "The Horatii" and "Brutus," and thought
+to bring ancient Rome back to life by copying the shapes of old Roman
+chairs and old Roman swords. That was the antique style of his first
+period. Later, having made the discovery that, compared with the Greeks,
+the Romans were semi-barbarians, he abandoned the Roman style, and
+thought to make a great stride forwards by copying Greek statues and
+carefully transferring them to his pictures. This "pure Grecian
+character" is represented in his "Rape of the Sabines." Later again, he
+turned to the more ancient Greeks, and the result was the most academic
+of his pictures, his "Leonidas." A mixture of dryness and declamatory
+pathos; diligence without imagination; able draughtsmanship and an
+absolute incapacity of drawing anything whatever without a model;
+careful arrangement without the slightest trace of that gift of the
+inner vision whereby the whole is brought complete and finished before
+the eye,--these exhaust the list of David's qualities. By means of
+casting and copying he thought to come near to that art of the antique
+whose soul he dreamed of embracing, when he held but its skeleton in his
+hands.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ GÉRARD. CUPID AND PSYCHE.]
+
+And meanwhile, away from the broad high-road, and almost unnoticed, was
+living that painter whom David contemptuously called "the Boucher of his
+time." He it was who truly cherished the gods of Greece in his heart,
+under whose brush the dead statues began to breathe and to feel the
+blood flowing in their veins, as in the old days when the Renaissance
+dug them out of the ground. His appearance on the stage indicates the
+first protest against the rigid system pursued by the painter of the
+Horatii and of Brutus. Prudhon also believed in the antique, but he saw
+therein a grace which no Classicist had ever seen; he also contrasted
+the simplicity of the Grecian profile with the capricious, wrinkled
+forms of the _rococo_ style; he too had spent his youth in Italy, but
+had not thought it criminal to study Leonardo and Correggio; he did not
+bind himself either to cold sculpture or to the delicate _morbidezza_ of
+the Lombards as the only means of grace. He remained a Frenchman heart
+and soul, in that he inherited from Watteau's age its womanly softness
+and elegance. In a cold, ascetic age he still believed in tenderness,
+gaiety, and laughter--he who as a man had but little reason to take
+delight in life.
+
+Prudhon was ten years younger than David, and was born at Cluny, the
+tenth child of a poor stone cutter. He grew up in miserable
+circumstances, cherished only by a mother who devoted the whole of her
+love to this her youngest born, and to whom the child, a delicate pliant
+creature, clung with girl-like tenderness. His parents used often to
+send him out with the other poor children of the little town to gather
+faggots for the winter in the wood belonging to the neighbouring
+Benedictine monastery. There the handsome, sprightly boy with the large
+melancholy eyes attracted the notice of the priest, Père Besson, who
+made him a chorister and gave him some instruction. Here, in the old
+abbey of Cluny, surrounded by venerable statues carved in wood, by old
+pictures of saints and artistic miniatures, he recognised his vocation.
+An inner voice told him that he was to be a painter. And now his Latin
+exercise books began to fill with drawings, and he carved little images
+with his penknife out of wood, soap, or whatever came to his hand. He
+squeezed out the juice of flowers, made brushes of horsehair, and began
+to paint. He was inconsolable on finding that he could not hit off the
+colouring of the old church pictures. It was a revelation to him when
+one of the monks said to him one day: "My boy, you will never manage it
+so: these pictures are painted in oils"; and he straightway invented oil
+painting for himself. With the help of the instruction which he now
+received at Dijon from an able painter, Devosge, he made rapid progress.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ GÉRARD. MADAME RÉCAMIER [DETAIL].]
+
+Nevertheless a generation was yet to pass before he was really to become
+a painter. His marriage, on 17th February 1778, with the daughter of the
+notary of Cluny, became the torment of his life. A linen-weaver and
+three of his father-in-law's clerks were present at the wedding. His
+wife was quarrelsome, their income small, and their family rapidly
+increasing. He betook himself to Paris to seek his fortune, with a
+letter of introduction to the engraver Wille. "Take pity on this
+youngster, who has been married for the last three years, and who, were
+he to come under some low fellow's influence, might easily fall into the
+most terrible abyss"; so ran the letter, which a certain Baron
+Joursanvault had given him. He hired himself a room in the house of M.
+Fauconnier, the head of a firm engaged in the lace trade, who lived in
+the Rue du Bac with his wife and a pretty sister. The latter, Marie, was
+eighteen years of age, and, like Werther's Lotte, was always surrounded
+by her brother's children, whom she looked after like a little
+housewife. Prudhon, himself young, sensitive, and handsome, loved and
+was loved, and made her presents of small flattering portraits and
+pretty allegorical drawings, in which Cupid was represented scratching
+the initials M. F. (Marie Fauconnier) on the wall with his arrow. That
+he was married and several times a father she never knew, till one day
+Madame Prudhon arrived with the children. "And you never told me!" was
+her only word of reproach.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ PIERRE PAUL PRUDHON. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.]
+
+Prudhon himself now went to Italy--a journey accompanied by serious
+difficulties. At Dijon he had competed for the Prix de Rome, and had
+been so simple as to make a sketch for one of his rivals. He owed it to
+the latter's honesty that the scholarship nevertheless fell to himself.
+He started on his journey; but when he reached Marseilles, and was ready
+to embark, the vessel was unable to weigh anchor for several weeks,
+owing to stormy weather. And even on the voyage it became necessary to
+disembark again, so that months had elapsed before he arrived in Rome,
+penniless, and having embraced, according to classical custom, the land
+he had come to conquer; for he had fallen out of the carriage on the
+way. Fortunately his dearly bought sojourn in Italy did him no harm. He
+had indeed intended to draw only from the antique and after Raphael; but
+after the lapse of a very few weeks he found his ideal in Leonardo. Him
+he calls "his Master and Hero, the inimitable father and prince of all
+painters, in artistic power far surpassing Raphael!"
+
+In a small sketch-book, half torn up, dating from this time, and still
+in existence, we have already the whole Prudhon. It contains copies of
+ancient statues, made laboriously and without pleasure in the work; then
+comes Correggio's disarmed "Cupid," a delicious little sketch, and with
+the same pencil that drew it he has written down the names of the
+pictures he purposes painting later on: "Love," "Frivolity," "Cupid and
+Psyche." It is as it were the secret confession of his fantasy, a
+preliminary announcement of his future works. Here and there are found
+sketches hastily dashed off of beautiful female forms in the graceful
+attitude which had excited his admiration in the women of the
+"Aldobrandini Wedding." But, above all, the young artist observed all
+that was around him. He lived in unceasing intercourse with the
+beautiful, and his soul was nurtured by the spirit of the works which
+surrounded him. He accumulated pictures, not in his sketch-book, but in
+himself; so much so that, when he was afterwards interrogated as to his
+Italian studies, his only answer was: "I did nothing but study life and
+admire the works of the masters." He avoided association even with
+scholars who had taken the Prix de Rome. The elegant and graceful
+sculptor Canova was the only one with whom he permitted himself any
+intercourse.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ PRUDHON. JOSEPH AND POTIPHAR'S WIFE.]
+
+When his scholarship had run its course, at the end of November 1789, he
+found himself again in Paris, and the struggle against poverty began
+once more. Even while in Italy he had sent all his savings to his wife,
+who had straightway squandered them in drink with her brother, a
+sergeant in a cavalry regiment. At Paris he had to act as parlour-maid
+and nursery-maid. The faces of two more women rise up in his life like
+fleeting stars, and both of them died before his eyes. The first was the
+mysterious stranger who appeared one day in his studio and commissioned
+him to paint her portrait. She was young, scarcely twenty years of age,
+with great blue eyes, but her face was weary and wan as though from long
+sleepless nights. "Your portrait?" asked Prudhon, "with features so
+troubled and sad?" He set to work, silent and indifferent; but with
+every stroke of his brush he felt himself more mystically attracted to
+this young girl, evidently as unhappy and as persecuted by fate as
+himself. She promised to return on the morrow; but neither on that day
+nor on the next did she appear. One afternoon he was wandering dreamily
+along the street, thinking of the unknown fair one, when his eye almost
+mechanically caught sight of the guillotine, and he recognised in the
+unhappy victim at that very moment ending her days the mysterious
+visitor of his studio.
+
+To keep the wolf from the door, Prudhon was obliged for some years to
+draw vignettes on letter-sheets for the Government offices, business
+cards for tradesmen, and even little pictures for _bonbonnières_. For
+this the representatives of high art held him in contempt. Greuze alone
+treated him amicably, and even he held out no hopes for his future. "You
+have a family and you have talent, young man; that is enough in these
+days to bring about one's death by starvation. Look at my cuffs." Then
+the old man would show him his torn shirt-sleeves--for even he could no
+longer find means of getting on in the new order of things. To his
+anxieties about the necessities of life were added dissensions with his
+wife. He became the prey of a continual melancholy; he was never seen to
+smile. Even when a separation had been effected his tormentor persecuted
+him still, until she was relegated to a madhouse. But now a change comes
+over the scene with the entrance of Constance Mayer.
+
+[Illustration: PRUDHON. STUDY DIRECTS THE FLIGHT OF GENIUS.]
+
+This amiable young painter, his pupil, was the star that lighted up his
+old age. She was ugly. With her brown complexion, her broad flat nose,
+and her large mouth, she had at first sight the appearance of a mulatto.
+Yet to this large mouth belonged voluptuous lips ever ready to be
+kissed; above this broad nose there were two eyes shining like black
+diamonds, which by their changeful expression made this irregular,
+_gamin's_ face appear positively beautiful. She was seventeen years his
+junior, and he has painted her as often as Rembrandt painted his Saskia.
+He has immortalised the dainty upturned nose of his little gipsy, as he
+called her, in pictures, sketches, pastels, all of which have the same
+piquant charm, the same elegant grace, the same joyous and merry
+expression. In her he had found his type, as his namesake Rubens did in
+Hélène Fourment. Constance Mayer became the muse of his delicate,
+graceful work. And she too died before his eyes, having cut her throat
+with a razor.
+
+[Illustration: PRUDHON. LE COUP DE PATTE DU CHAT.]
+
+The master and the pupil loved each other. As sentimental as she was
+passionate, as gay as she was piquant, nervous and witty, she possessed
+every quality that was likely to captivate him, as she chattered to him
+in her lively and original way, and flattered his pride as an artist.
+This love seemed to promise him rest and a bright ending for his days.
+He entered into it with the passion of a young man in love for the first
+time. Mlle. Mayer, after her father's death, was dependent on no one.
+Her studio in the Sorbonne was separated from her master's only by a
+blind wall. She was with him the entire day, worked at his side, was his
+housekeeper, and saw to the education of his daughter, to whom she was
+at once a mother and an elder sister; and Prudhon transferred to her all
+the tender love which as a child he had cherished for his mother. In his
+gratitude he wished to share his genius with his friend, and to make her
+famous like himself. It is pathetic to note in Mlle. Mayer's studies
+with what patience and devotion he instructed her, how he strove to
+animate her with his own spirit, and to give her something of his own
+immortality. Even his own work was influenced by the new happiness. To
+the period of his connection with Constance belong his masterpieces,
+"Justice and Vengeance," "The Rape of Psyche," "Venus and Adonis," and
+"The Swinging Zephyr."
+
+[Illustration: PRUDHON. CUPID AND PSYCHE.]
+
+These brought him at last even outward success. In 1808 the Emperor gave
+him the Cross of the Legion of Honour for his picture of "Justice and
+Vengeance," and he became, if not the official, at least the familiar
+painter of the Court. The fine portrait of the Empress Josephine
+belongs to this period. When the new Empress Marie Louise wished to
+learn the art of painting, Prudhon, in 1811, became her drawing master;
+and when on the birth of the King of Rome the city of Paris presented to
+the Emperor the furniture for a room, he was commissioned to provide the
+artistic decoration. Criticism began to bow its head when his name was
+mentioned; and the younger generation of painters soon discovered in
+him, once so contemptuously reviled, the founder of a new religion, the
+want of which had long been felt. He began to make money. Constance
+Mayer seemed to bring him luck: her death affected him all the more
+deeply.
+
+[Illustration: CONSTANCE MAYER.]
+
+By nature nervous and highly strung, jealous and keenly conscious of her
+equivocal position, she could not make up her mind, when the painters
+were ordered to move their studios from the Sorbonne, either to leave
+Prudhon or openly to live with him. On the morning of 26th March 1821
+she left her model, the little Sophie, alone, after giving her a ring.
+Soon afterwards a heavy fall was heard, and she was found lying on the
+ground in a pool of blood. Prudhon lingered on for two years more, two
+long years spent as it were in exile. Solitary, tortured by remorse of
+conscience, and with continual thoughts of suicide, he lived on only for
+his recollections of her, in tender converse with the memorials she had
+left, insensible to the renown which began gradually to gather round his
+name. The completion of the "Unfortunate Family," which Constance had
+left unfinished on her easel, was his last _tête-à-tête_ with her, his
+last farewell. He left his studio only to visit her grave in
+Père-Lachaise, or to wander alone along the outer boulevards. An
+"Ascension of the Virgin" and a "Christ on the Cross" were the last
+works of the once joyous painter of ancient mythology: the Mater
+Dolorosa and the Crucified--symbols of his own torments. Death at length
+took compassion upon him. On the 16th of February 1823 France lost
+Prudhon.
+
+His art was the pure expression of his spiritual life. His life was
+swayed by women, and something feminine breathes through all his
+pictures. In them there speaks a man full of soul, originally of a
+joyous nature, who has gone through experiences which prevented him ever
+being joyous again. He has inherited from the _rococo_ style its graces
+and its little Cupids, but has also already tasted of all the melancholy
+of the new age. With his smiles there is mingled a secret sadness. He
+has learnt that life is not an unending banquet and a perpetual
+pleasure; he has seen how tragic a morrow follows upon the voyage to
+the Isle of Cythera. The bloom has faded from his pale cheeks, his brow
+is furrowed--he has seen the guillotine. He, the last _rococo_ painter
+and the first Romanticist, would have been truly the man to effect the
+transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century by a path more
+natural than that followed by David.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ CONSTANCE MAYER. THE DREAM OF HAPPINESS.]
+
+Even his fugitive sketches, thrown off in the days of his poverty, have
+a quite peculiar charm and a thoroughly individual sentiment. There are
+vignettes of his for letter-sheets, done for the Government offices,
+which in a few pencil touches contain more manly elegance and poetry
+than do David's most pretentious compositions with all their borrowed
+Classicism. Prudhon was the only painter who at that time produced
+anything of conspicuous merit in the art of ornament. Even drawings such
+as "Minerva uniting Law and Liberty," which from their titles would lead
+one to expect nothing more than frozen allegories, are imbued, not with
+David's coldness, but with Correggio's charm. French grace and elegance
+are united, without constraint, to the beauty of line found in ancient
+cameos. He it was who first felt again the living poetry of that old
+mythology, which had become a mere collection of dry names. He is
+commissioned to draw a card of invitation for a ball, and he sends a
+tender hymn on music and dancing. In extravagant profusion he scatters
+forth, no matter where, poetic invention and grace such as David in his
+most strenuous efforts sought for in vain. It was during this time that
+Prudhon became the admirable draughtsman to whom the French school have
+awarded a place among their greatest masters. These drawings and
+illustrations were the necessary preparation for the great works which
+brought him to the front at the beginning of the century.
+
+Even his first picture, painted in 1799--to-day half-destroyed--"Wisdom
+bringing Truth upon the earth, at whose approach Darkness vanishes,"
+must, to judge from early descriptions, have been marked by a seductive
+and delicate grace. And the celebrated work of 1808, "Justice and
+Vengeance pursuing Crime," belongs certainly, so far as colouring is
+concerned, rather to the Romantic than to the Classical era. For during
+the latter, one faculty especially had been lost, and that was the art
+of painting flesh. Prudhon, by deep study of Leonardo and Correggio,
+masters at that time completely out of fashion, won back this capacity
+for the French school. In wild and desolate scenery, above which the
+moon, emerging from behind heavy clouds, shines with a ghostly light
+upon the bare rocks, the murderer is leaving the body of his victim. He
+strides forth with hasty steps, purse and dagger in hand, glancing back
+with a shudder at the naked corpse of a young man which has fallen upon
+a ledge of rock, lying there stiff and with outstretched arms. Above,
+like shapes in the clouds, the avenging goddesses are already sweeping
+downwards upon him. Justice pursues the fugitive with threatening,
+wrathful glance; while Vengeance, lighting the way with her torch,
+stretches out her hand to grasp the guilty one. In that epoch this
+picture stands alone for the imposing characterisation of the persons,
+for its powerful pictorial execution, and the stern and grandiose
+landscape which serves as setting to the awful scene.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ THE TOMB OF PRUDHON AND CONSTANCE MAYER AT PÈRE-LACHAISE.]
+
+In general, Prudhon was not a tragic painter; his preference was for the
+more joyous, light and dreamy, delicately veiled myths of the ancients.
+His misfortunes taught him to flee from reality, and on the wings of Art
+he saved himself, in the realm of legendary love and visionary
+happiness. So we see Psyche borne aloft by Zephyr through the twilight
+to the nuptial abode of Eros. A soft light falls upon her snowy body;
+her head has fallen upon her shoulder, and one arm, bent backwards,
+enframes her face. Silent like a cloud, the group moves onward--a
+sweet-scented apparition from fairyland. Now, enraptured genii visit the
+slumbering Fair One in forest-shadows, under the shimmering moon; now
+she is stealing secretly down to bathe in a tranquil lake, and gazes
+with astonishment upon her own likeness in the gloomy mirror. Here
+Venus, drawing deep breaths of secret bliss, is seated, full of longing
+love, by the side of Adonis. Who else, at that time, could draw nude
+figures of such faultless beauty, so slender and pure, with lines so
+supple and yet so firm, and enveloped in so full and soft a light? Or
+again, he paints Zephyr swinging roguishly by the side of a stream. A
+gentle breeze plays through his locks, and the cool darkness of the wood
+breathes through all things round.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ PRUDHON. THE UNFORTUNATE FAMILY.]
+
+Prudhon's work is never a laborious patchwork of fragments of antique
+forms picked up here and there, never the insipid product of the reason
+working in accordance with recipes long handed down; it is thoroughly
+intuitive. Never keeping too closely to his model, he gave to his
+creations the movement and the divine breath of life. In his hands with
+dreamlike fidelity the Antique rose up again renewed, new in the sense
+of his own completely modern sentiment, and in that of those great
+masters of the Renaissance who had wakened it to life three hundred
+years before. For Prudhon, as is shown by his landscape backgrounds, is
+altogether Jean Jacques Rousseau's contemporary, the child of that epoch
+in which Nature revealed itself anew; and, as is proved by his figures,
+he is a congenial spirit to Antonio da Allegri and Vinci. In fresh
+recollection of Correggio, he loves a soft exuberance of flesh and a
+delicate semi-obscurity; in enthusiastic reverence for Leonardo, those
+heads of women, with deep, sensuously veiled eyes, and that mysterious
+delicate smile playing dreamily round the wanton mouth. Only, the
+enchanting sweetness of the Florentine and the delicious ecstasy of the
+Lombard are toned down by a gentle melancholy which is entirely modern.
+The Psyche borne up to heaven by Zephyr changes in the end, when
+purified and refined, into the soul itself, which, in the form of the
+Madonna, ascends into heaven, transfigured with longing desire; and
+Venus, the goddess of love, is transformed into Love immortal, "Who,
+stretched upon the Cross, yet reacheth out His hand to thee."
+
+[Illustration: PRUDHON. THE RAPE OF PSYCHE.]
+
+This man, with his soft tenderness and fine feeling for the eternal
+feminine, was as though fashioned by Nature to be the painter of women
+of his time. If David was the chief depicter of male faces bearing a
+strong impress of character, delicate, refined, womanly natures found
+their best interpreter in Prudhon. His heads of women charm one by the
+mysterious language of their eyes, by their familiar smile, and by their
+dreamy melancholy. No one knew better how to catch the fleeting
+expression in its most delicate shades, how to grasp the very mood of
+the moment. How piquant is his smiling Antoinette Leroux with her dress
+_à la_ Charlotte Corday, her coquettish extravagant hat, and all the
+amusing "chic" of her toilette! Madame Copia, the wife of the engraver,
+with her delicately veiled eyes, has become in Prudhon's hands the very
+essence of a beautiful soul. A languishing weariness, a remarkable
+mingling of Creole grace and gentle melancholy, breathes over the
+portrait of the Empress Josephine. She is represented seated on a grassy
+bank in a dignified yet negligent attitude, her head slightly bent, her
+gaze wandering afar with a look of uncertain inquiry, as though she had
+some faint presentiment of her coming misfortune; and the dreamy
+twilight-shadows of a mysterious landscape are gathering around her.
+
+[Illustration: PRUDHON. LE MIDI.]
+
+Coming after a period of colour asceticism, Prudhon was the first to
+show a fine feeling for colour. Even during the revolutionary era he
+protested in the name of the graceful against David's formal stiffness.
+He sought to demonstrate that human beings do not in truth differ very
+widely to-day from those in whom Leonardo and Correggio delighted, that
+they are fashioned out of delicate flesh and blood, not out of marble
+and stone. Standing beside David, he appealed to the art of colour. But
+as with André Chénier, a spirit congenial to his, it was long before he
+attained success. His modesty and his rustic character could effect
+nothing against the dictatorial power of David, on whom had been
+showered every dignity that Art could offer. People continued to
+ridicule poor Prudhon, who worked only after his own fantasy, who had
+fashioned for himself in _chiaroscuro_ a poetic language of his own,
+till the question was raised again from another side, and this time by a
+young man who came directly out of David's studio.
+
+_Antoine Jean Gros_ was one of David's pupils, and stood out among his
+fellows as the one most submissively devoted to his master; yet it was
+he who, without wishing it or knowing of it, was preparing the way for
+the overthrow of David's school. He was born 17th March 1771, at Paris,
+where his father was a miniature painter. His vocation was determined
+in the studio of Mme. Vigée-Lebrun, who was a friend of his parents. In
+the Salon of 1785, which contained David's "Andromache beside the Body
+of Hector," he chose his instructor. He was then the handsome youth of
+fifteen represented in his portrait of himself at Versailles, with
+delicate features, full of feeling, on which lies an amiable, gentle
+cast of sentimentality. Two large, dark-brown eyes look out upon the
+world astonished and inquiring, dark hair surrounds the quiet, fresh
+face, and over it is cocked a broad-brimmed felt hat. In this picture we
+see a fine-strung, sensitive nature, a soul which would be plunged by
+bitter experiences into depths of despair, in proportion as success
+would raise it to heights of ecstasy. In 1792 he competed unsuccessfully
+for the Prix de Rome, and this failure was the making of him.
+
+[Illustration: PRUDHON. LA NUIT.]
+
+He went to Italy on his own account, and was an eye-witness of the war
+which Napoleon was there waging. There he beheld scenes in which
+archæology had no part. For when Augereau's foot-soldiers carried the
+bridge of Arcola by assault, they had little thought of imitating an
+antique bas-relief. Gros observed armies on the march, and saw their
+triumphant entry into festally decorated cities. He learnt his lesson on
+the field of battle, and on his return placed on record what he had
+himself gone through. In Italy he caught the poetry of modern life, and
+at the same time was enabled as a painter to supplement David's lectures
+with the teaching of another surpassing master. It was in Genoa that he
+became acquainted with Rubens. As Prudhon's originality consisted in the
+fact that he was the first of that period again to stand dreaming before
+Leonardo and Correggio, so did Gros' lie in this, that he studied
+Rubens at a time when the Antwerp master was also completely out of
+fashion. His instinct as a painter had at the very commencement guided
+him to Rubens' "St. Ignatius," which in his letters he described as a
+"sublime and magnificent work." When he was subsequently appointed a
+member of the Commission charged with the transference of works of art
+to Paris, he had abundant opportunities of admiring critically the works
+of the sixteenth and seventeenth century masters. The two impressions
+thus received had a decisive effect upon his life. Gros became the great
+colourist of the Classical school, the singer of the Napoleonic epos.
+Compared with David's marmoreal Græco-Romans, Gros' figures seem to
+belong to another world; his pictures speak, both in purport and in
+technique, a language which must more than once have astonished his
+master.
+
+[Illustration: PRUDHON. L'ENJOUIR.]
+
+He was fortunate enough to be presented to Josephine Beauharnais, and
+through her to Bonaparte, in the Casa Serbelloni at Milan; and Gros,
+whose earnest desire it was to paint the great commander, was appointed
+a lieutenant on his staff. He had occasion, in the three days' battle of
+Arcola, to admire the Dictator's impetuous heroism; and he made a sketch
+of the General storming the bridge of Arcola at the head of his troops,
+ensign in hand. It pleased Napoleon, who saw in it something of the
+dæmonic power of the future conqueror of the world; and when the picture
+was exhibited in Paris in 1801 it met there also with the most striking
+success. The greater warmth of colour, the broader sweep of the brush,
+and the life-like movement of the figures seemed, in comparison with
+David's monotonous manner, to be far-reaching innovations.
+
+With his "Napoleon on the Bridge of Arcola" Gros had found his peculiar
+talent. What his teacher had accomplished as painter to the Convention,
+Gros carried to a conclusion in that span of time during which Napoleon
+lived in the minds of his people as a hero. He too made an occasional
+excursion into the domain of Greek mythology, but he did not feel at
+home there. His field was that living history which the generals and
+soldiers of France were making. He won for contemporary military life
+its citizenship in art. David, wishing to remain true to "history" and
+to "style," had depicted contemporary events with reluctance. What
+Gérard and Girodet had produced was interesting as a protest on the part
+of reality against classical convention, but on the whole it was
+unsatisfying and wearisome. Gros, the famous painter of the "Plague of
+Jaffa" and of the "Battle of Eylau," was the first to attain to high
+renown in this field.
+
+[Illustration: PRUDHON. MARGUERITE.]
+
+These are two powerful and genuine pictures, two pre-eminent works which
+will endure. Gros stands far above David and all his rivals in his power
+of perception. The elder painter is now out of date, while Gros remains
+ever fresh, because he painted under the impulse given by real events,
+and not under the ban of empty theories. A realist through and through,
+he did not shrink from representing the horrible, which antique art
+preferred to avoid. In an epoch when Rome and Greece were the only
+sources of inspiration he had the courage to paint a hospital, with its
+sick, its dying, and its dead. When in the Egypto-Syrian campaign the
+plague broke out after the storming of Jaffa, Napoleon, accompanied by a
+few of his officers, undertook, on 7th March 1799, to visit the victims
+of the pestilence. This act deserved to be celebrated in a commemorative
+picture. Gros took it in hand, and represented Napoleon, in the
+character of consoler, amid the agonising torments of the dying;
+deviating from historical accuracy only so far as to transfer the scene
+from the wretched wards of the lazaretto to the courtyard of a pillared
+mosque. In the shadows of the airy halls sick and wounded men twist and
+writhe, stare before them in despair, rear themselves up half-naked in
+mortal pain, or turn to gaze upon the Commander-in-Chief, a splendid
+apparition full of youthful power, who is tranquilly feeling the plague
+boils of one of their comrades. Here and there Orientals move in
+picturesque costumes, distributing the food which negro lads are
+bringing in. And beyond, over the battlements of the Moorish arcades,
+one sees the town with its fortifications, its flat roofs and slender
+minarets, over which flutter the victorious banners of the French. On
+one side lies the distant, glittering blue sea, and over all stretches
+the clear, glowing southern sky.
+
+Like a new gospel, like the first gust of wind preceding the storm of
+Romanticism, this picture standing in the Louvre, surrounded by its
+stiff Classical contemporaries, excites a sensation of pleasure.
+
+[Illustration: PRUDHON. LES PETITS DÉVIDEURS.]
+
+Gros' heroes know, as David's do, that they are important, and show it
+perhaps too much, but at least they act. The painter felt what he was
+painting, and an impulse of human love, an heroic and yet human life,
+permeates the picture. Moreover, Gros did not content himself with the
+scanty palette and the miserable cartoon-draughtsmanship of his
+contemporaries. This treatment of the nude, these despairing heads of
+dying men, show none of the stony lifelessness of the Classical school;
+this Moorish courtyard has no resemblance to the tragedy peristyle so
+habitually employed up to that time; this Bonaparte laying his hand upon
+the dying man's sores is no Greek or Roman hero. The sick men whose
+feverish eyes gaze upon him as on the star of hope, the negroes going up
+and down with viands, are no mere supernumeraries; the sea lying in
+sunshine beyond, full of bustling sails, and the harbour gaily decked
+with many-coloured flags, point in their joyous splendour of colouring
+to the dawn of a new era. The young artists were not mistaken when, in
+the Salon of 1804, they fastened a sprig of laurel to the frame of the
+picture. The State bought it for sixteen thousand francs. A banquet at
+which Vien and David presided was given in honour of the painter.
+Girodet read a poem, of which the conclusion ran as follows--
+
+ "Et toi, sage Vien, toi, David, maître illustre,
+ Jouissez de vos succès; dans son sixième lustre,
+ Votre élève, déjà de toutes parts cité,
+ Auprès de vous vivra dans la postérité."
+
+[Illustration: PRUDHON. THE VINTAGE.]
+
+In his "Battle of Eylau," exhibited in 1808, Gros has given us a
+companion picture to the "Plague of Jaffa": in one a visit to a
+hospital, in the other the inspection of a field of battle after the
+fight is over. The dismal grey hue of winter rests upon the white sheet
+of snow stretching desolately away to the horizon, only interrupted here
+and there by hillocks beneath which annihilated regiments sleep their
+last sleep. In the foreground lie dead bodies heaped together, and
+moaning wounded men; and in the midst of this horror of mangled limbs
+and corrupting flesh he, the Conqueror, the Master, the Emperor, comes
+to a halt, pale, his eyes turned towards the cities burning on the
+horizon, in his grey overcoat and small cocked hat, at the head of his
+staff, indifferent, inexorable, merciless as Fate. "_Ah! si les rois
+pouvaient contempler ce spectacle, ils scraient moins avides de
+conquêtes._" The classical posturing which still lingered, a disturbing
+element, in the Plague picture, has been put aside completely. The
+conventional horse from the frieze of the Parthenon, which David alone
+knew, has given way to the accurately observed animal, and the colouring
+too, in its sad harmony, has fully recovered its ancient right of giving
+character to the picture. It was, beyond all controversy, the chief work
+in the Salon of 1808, rich in remarkable pictures; neither Gérard's
+"Battle of Austerlitz," nor Girodet's "Atala," nor David's Coronation
+piece endangered Gros' right to the first place.
+
+[Illustration: PRUDHON. THE VIRGIN.]
+
+"Napoleon before the Pyramids," at the moment when he cries, "Soldiers,
+from the summit of those monuments forty centuries contemplate your
+actions," constitutes, in 1810, the coping-stone of the cycle. Gros
+alone at that time understood the epic grandeur of war. He became, also,
+the portrait painter of the great men from whom its events proceeded.
+His picture of General Masséna, with its meditative, slily tenacious
+expression, is the genuine portrait of a warrior; and how well is
+heroic, simple daring depicted in the likeness of General Lasalle,
+without the commonplace device of a mantle puffed out by the wind! His
+portrait of General Fournier Sarlovèse, at Versailles, has a freshness
+of colouring, the secret of which no one else possessed in those days
+except the two Englishmen, Lawrence and Raeburn. Gros was far in advance
+of his age. A painter of movement rather than of psychological analysis,
+he brought out character by means of general effect, and gave the
+essentials in a masterly way. His portraits, just as much as his
+historical pictures, have a stormy exposition. In David all is
+calculation; in Gros, fire. Almost alone among his contemporaries, he
+had studied Rubens, and like him gave colour the place due to it. At
+times there is in his pictures a natural flesh-colour and an animation
+which make this warm-hearted man, who has not been sufficiently
+appreciated, a genuine forerunner of the moderns. Surrounded as he was
+by orthodox Classicists, he cried in a loud voice what Prudhon had
+already ventured to say more timidly: "Man is not a statue--not made of
+marble, but of flesh and bone."
+
+[Illustration: PRUDHON. CHRIST CRUCIFIED.]
+
+But as with Prudhon, so with Gros. This man, of exaggerated nervousness,
+was lacking in that capacity for persistence which belongs to a strong
+will conscious of its aim; he lacked confidence in himself and in the
+initiative he had taken. So long as the great figure of Napoleon kept
+his head above water he was an artist; but when his hero was taken from
+him he sank. The Empire had made Gros great, its fall killed him. The
+incubus of David's antique manner began once more to press upon him, and
+when David after his banishment (in 1816) committed to him the
+management of his studio in Paris, Gros undertook the office with pious
+eagerness, on nothing more anxiously intent than as a teacher once more
+to impose the fetters of the antique upon that Art which he had set free
+by his own works. "It is not I who am speaking to you," he would say to
+the pupils, "but David, David, always David." The latter had blamed him
+for having taken the trouble to paint the battles of the Empire,
+"worthless occasional pieces," instead of venturing upon those of
+Alexander the Great, and thus producing genuine "historical works."
+"Posterity requires of you good pictures out of ancient history. Who,
+she will cry, was better fitted to paint Themistocles? Quick, my friend!
+turn to your Plutarch." To depict contemporary life, which lies open
+before our eyes, was, he held, merely the business of minor artists,
+unworthy the brush of an "historical painter." And Gros, who reverenced
+his master, was so weak as to listen to his advice: he believed in him
+rather than in his own genius, in the strength of others rather than his
+own. He searched his Plutarch, and painted nothing more without a
+previous side-glance towards Brussels; introduced allegory into his
+"Battle of the Pyramids"; composed in homage to David a "Death of
+Sappho"; and painted the cupola of the Pantheon with stiff frescoes;
+while between times, when he looked Nature in the face, he was now and
+then producing veritable masterpieces.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ PRUDHON. MADAME COPIA.]
+
+His "Flight of Louis XVIII" in the Museum at Versailles, shows him once
+more at his former height. It is "one of the finest of modern works," as
+Delacroix called it in 1848, in an essay contributed to the _Revue des
+Deux Mondes_; at once familiar and serious. Napoleon had left Elba,
+marched on Paris, and had reached Fontainebleau, when, in the night of
+the 19th-20th March 1815, Louis XVIII determined to evacuate the
+Tuileries with all speed. Accompanied by a few faithful followers and by
+the officers of his personal service, he abandons his palace and takes
+leave of the National Guards. There is something pathetic in this
+sexagenarian with his erudite Bourbon profile, immortalised in the large
+five-franc pieces of his reign, with his protruding stomach and small
+thick legs, looking like a dropsical patient going to hospital. His
+bearing is most unkingly. Gros has boldly depicted the scene, even to
+the pathological appearance of the king, just as he saw it, forgetting
+all that he knew of antique art. He had himself seen the staircase, the
+murmuring crowd, the lackeys hurrying by, lantern in hand, at their
+wits' end, and the fat, gouty king, who in his terror has forgotten all
+kingly dignity.
+
+That was an historical picture, and yet as he painted it he reproached
+himself anew for having forsaken the "real art of historical painting."
+At the funeral of Girodet in 1824 the members of the Institute talked of
+their "irreparable loss," and of the necessity of finding a new leader
+for the school who should avert with a strong hand that destruction
+which hot-headed young men threatened to bring upon it. "You, Gros,"
+observed one of them, "should be the man for the place." And Gros
+answered, in absolute despair; "Why, I have not only no authority as
+leader of a school, but, over and above that, I have to accuse myself of
+giving the first bad example of defection from real art." The more he
+thought of David, the more he turned his back upon the world of real
+life. With his large and wearisome picture of "Hercules causing Diomedes
+to be devoured by his own Horses" (1835) he sealed his own fate.
+Conventionality had conquered nature.
+
+[Illustration: GROS. SAUL.]
+
+The painters overwhelmed him with ridicule, and a shrill shout of
+derision rose from all the critics. Already, for some time past, a few
+writers had risen to protest against the Classical school. They spoke
+with fiery eloquence of the rights of humanity, the benefits of liberty,
+the independence of thought, the true principles of the Revolution, and
+found numerous readers. They fought against rigid laws in the
+intellectual as well as the social sphere; they pointed out that there
+were other worlds besides that of antiquity, and that even the latter
+was not peopled exclusively by cold statues; they delighted in
+describing the great and beautiful scenes of Nature, and opened out once
+more a new and broad horizon to art and poetry. The Spring was
+awakening; Gros felt that he had outlived himself. Arming himself
+against the voices of the new era with the fatal heroism of the deaf, he
+became the martyr of Classicism in French art. He was a Classic by
+education, a Romantic by temperament; a man who took his greatest pride
+in giving the lie as a teacher to the work he had accomplished as an
+artist, and this discordance was his ruin.
+
+On the 25th of June 1835, being sixty-four years of age, he took up his
+hat and stick, left his house without a word to any one, and laid
+himself face-downwards in a tributary of the Seine near Meudon. It was a
+shallow place, scarce three feet deep, which a child could easily have
+waded through. It was not till next day, when he had been dead for
+twenty-four hours, that he was discovered by two sailors walking home
+along the bank. One of them struck his foot against a black silk hat. In
+it there was a white cravat marked with the initial G., carefully
+folded, and upon it a short note to his wife. On a torn visiting-card
+could still be read the name, Baron Gros. A little farther on they saw
+the corpse, and as they were afraid to touch a drowned man, they drew
+lots with straws to decide which of them should pull him out. "I feel it
+within me, it is a misfortune for me to be alone. One begins to be
+disgusted with one's self, and then all is over," he had once in his
+youth written to his mother with gloomy foreboding. Such was the end of
+a master every fibre of whose being was in revolt against Classicism,
+and who had so great a love for colour, truth, and life.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ ANTOINE JEAN, BARON GROS.]
+
+More important events were yet to take place before the signal of
+deliverance could be expected. It was the young men who had grown up
+amid the desolate associations of the Restoration who were to lead to
+victory the new movement of which Prudhon and Gros had been the
+forerunners. The dictatorship over art of that Classical school which
+had been taken over from the seventeenth century was limited to a single
+generation--from the birththroes of the Revolution to the fall of the
+Napoleonic Empire. For although many of David's pupils survived until
+the middle of the century, yet they were merely academic big-wigs, who,
+compared with the young men of genius who were storming their positions,
+represent that mediocrity which had indeed attained to external honours,
+but had remained stationary, fast bound to antiquated rules. The future
+belonged to the young, to a youth which from the standpoint of our own
+days seems even younger than youth commonly is, richer, fresher, more
+glowing and fiery--the Generation of 1830, the "_vaillants de dix-huit
+cent trente_," as Théophile Gautier called them in one of his poems.
+
+[Illustration: _Photo, Levi._
+
+ GROS. THE BATTLE OF EYLAU.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE GENERATION OF 1830
+
+
+During the years which elapsed between 1820 and 1848 France produced a
+great and admirable school of art. After the convulsions of the
+Revolution and the wars of the Empire, that generation had arisen,
+daring and eager for action, which de Musset describes in his
+_Confessions d'un Enfan du Siècle_. And these young men, born between
+the thunders of one battle and another, who had grown up in the midst of
+greatness and glory, had to experience, as they ripened into manhood,
+the ignominy of Charles X's reign, the period of clerical reaction. They
+saw monasteries re-erected, laws of mediæval severity made against
+blasphemy and the desecration of churches and saints' days, and the
+doctrine of the divine origin of the monarchy proclaimed anew. "And when
+young men spoke of glory," says de Musset, "the answer was, 'Become
+priests!' And when they spoke of honour, the answer was, 'Become
+priests!' And when they spoke of hope, of love, of strength and life,
+ever the same answer, 'Become priests!'" The only result of this
+pressure was to intensify all the more the impulse towards freedom. The
+political and intellectual reaction could only have the effect of
+impelling the poetic and artistic emotions of young and unquiet spirits
+into opposition, on principle, to all that was established, into a fiery
+contempt for public opinion, into the apotheosis of unrestrained passion
+and unfettered genius. The French Romanticists were anti-Philistines who
+regarded the word "bourgeois" as an insult. For them Art was the one
+supreme consideration; it was to them a light and a flame, and its
+beauty and daring the only things worth living for. For those who put
+forward such demands as these, the "eunuchism of the Classical"--an
+expression of George Sand's--could never suffice. They dreamed of an art
+of painting which should find its expression in blood, purple, light,
+movement, and boldness; they held in sovereign contempt the correct,
+pedantic, colourless tendency of their elders. An inner flame should
+glow through and liberate the forms, absorb the lines and contours, and
+mould the picture into a symphony of colour. What was desired and sought
+for, in poetry and in music, in plastic art and in painting, was colour
+and passion: colour so energetic, that drawing was, as it were, consumed
+by it; passion so vehement, that lyrical poetry and the drama were in
+danger of becoming feverish and convulsive. A movement which reminds one
+of the Renaissance took possession of all minds. It was as though there
+were something intoxicating in the very air that one breathed. On a
+political background of grey upon grey, consisting of the cowls of the
+Jesuits of the Restoration, there arose a flaming, refulgent, blustering
+literature and art, scintillating with sparks and bright hues, full of
+the adoration of passion and of fervid colour. Romanticism is
+Protestantism in literature and art--such is Vitet's definition of the
+movement.
+
+Literature, which, adapting itself to the politics of the government,
+had begun in Chateaubriand with an enthusiastic fervour for Catholicism,
+Monarchy, and Mediævalism, had in the twenties become revolutionary; and
+the description of its battles is one of the most glowing chapters in
+George Brandes' classic work. There was a revolt against the
+pseudo-antique, against the stiff handling of the Alexandrine metre,
+against the yoke of tradition. Then arose that mighty race of Romantic
+poets who proclaimed with Byronic fire the gospel of nature and passion.
+De Musset, the famous child of the century, the idol of the young
+generation, the poet with the burning heart, who rushed through life
+with such eagerness and haste that at the age of forty he broke down
+altogether, worn out like a man of seventy, deliberately wrote bad
+rhymes in his first poems, for the purpose of thoroughly infuriating the
+Classicists. So, too, he wrote his dramas, in which love is glorified as
+a serious and terrible power with which one may not trifle, as the fire
+with which one must not play, as the electric spark that kills. So
+George Sand, the female Titan of Romanticism, published her novels, with
+their subversive tendencies and their sparkling animation of narrative.
+Between these two rises the keen bronze-like profile of Prosper Mérimée,
+who prefers to describe the life of gypsies and robbers, and to depict
+the most violent and desperate characters in history. Finally, Victor
+Hugo, the great chieftain of the Romantic school, the Paganini of
+literature, unrivalled in imposing grandeur, in masterly treatment of
+language, and in petty vanity, found submissive multitudes to listen to
+him when he rose in fierce and fiery insurrection against the rigid laws
+of the bloodless Classical style, and substituted for the actionless and
+ill-contrived declamatory tragedies of his time his own romantic dramas,
+breathing passion and full of diversified movement.
+
+The conflict was deadly. The young generation hailed with applause the
+new Messiah of letters, and grew intoxicated with the harmony of Hugo's
+phrases, which sounded so much fuller and fierier than the measured
+speech of Corneille and Racine. The Théâtre Français, recently benumbed
+as with the quiet of the grave, became all at once a tumultuous
+battlefield. There they sat, when Hugo's _Cromwell_ and _Hernani_ were
+produced on the stage, correct, well dressed, gloved, close shaven, with
+their neat ties and shirt collars, the representatives of the old
+generation, whose blameless conduct had raised them to office and place.
+And in contrast to them, in the pit were crowded together the young men,
+the "Jeune France," as Théophile Gautier described them, one with his
+waving hair like a lion's mane, another with his Rubens hat and Spanish
+mantle, another in his vest of bright red satin. Their common uniform
+was the red waistcoat introduced by Théophile Gautier--not the red
+chosen for their symbol by the men of the Revolution, but the
+scarlet-red which represented the hatred felt by these enthusiastic
+young men for all that was grey and dull, and their preference for all
+that is luminous and magnificently coloured in life. They held that the
+contemplation of a beautiful piece of red cloth was an artistic
+pleasure. A similar change took place at the same time in ladies'
+toilettes. As the Revolution had in ladies' costumes rejected all colour
+in favour of the Grecian white, so now dresses once more assumed vivid,
+and especially deep red hues; deep red ribbons adorned the hat and
+encircled the waist.
+
+[Illustration: THÉODORE GÉRICAULT.]
+
+Deep red--that was the colour of the Romantic school; the flourishing of
+trumpets and the blare of brass its note. Flashes of passion and
+ferocity, rivers of sulphur, showers of fire, glowing deserts, decaying
+corpses in horrible phosphorescence, seas at night-time in which ships
+are sinking, landscapes over which roaring War shakes his brand, and
+where maddened nations fall furiously upon one another--such are the
+subjects, resonant with shout of battle and song of victory, which held
+sway over French Romanticism. At the very time when at Düsseldorf the
+young artists of Germany were painting with the milk of pious feeling
+their lachrymose, susceptible, sentimental pictures, utterly tame and
+respectable; when the Nazarene school were holding their post-mortem on
+the livid corpse of old Italian art, and seeking to galvanise it, and
+with it the Christian piety of the Middle Ages, into life again; at that
+very time there arose in France a young generation boiling over with
+fervour, who had for their rallying cry Nature and Truth, but demanded
+at the same time, and before all else, contrast, pictorial antithesis,
+and passion at once lofty and of tiger-like ferocity. In those very
+years, when in Germany, the cartoon style of Carstens having died away,
+progress was limited to a timid and unsuccessful pursuit of that revelry
+of colour which marked the Quattrocentisti, the French took at once, as
+with the seven-leagued boots of the fairy-tale, the great stride onward
+towards the Flemings.
+
+Through Napoleon, France had grown richer, not only in glory, but in art
+treasures, gathered together from all countries into Paris, as trophies
+of the victorious general. The abundant collections thus accumulated
+brought to bear upon that generation the quickening influence of the
+best that had been done in the art of painting. Nowhere could one study
+either the Venetian colourists or Rubens to greater advantage than in
+the Louvre, and it was by virtue of this unrestrained intercourse with
+the masters who represent the most perfect blossom of colouring that the
+Byronic spirits of 1830 succeeded in giving full expression to the
+glowing full-coloured life of things which hovered before their heated
+imagination. It is unnecessary to say that this was accompanied by a
+great widening of the range of subjects treated. The Romantic school
+showed that there were other heroes in history and poetry besides the
+Greeks and Romans. They painted everything, if only it possessed colour
+and character, flame, passion, and exotic perfume. Romanticism was the
+protest of painting against the plastic in art, the protest of liberty
+against the academic teaching of the Classical school, the revolution of
+movement against stiffness.
+
+[Illustration: GÉRICAULT. THE WOUNDED CUIRASSIER.]
+
+It was in the studio of Guérin, the tame and timid Classicist, that the
+young assailants grew up, "the daubers of 1830," who called the Apollo
+Belvidere a shabby yellow turnip, and who spoke of Racine and Raphael as
+of street arabs. They were tired of copying profiles of Antinous. The
+contemplation of a picture by Girodet was wearisome to them. It was
+_Théodore Géricault_, a hot, hasty passionate nature, of Beethoven-like
+unruliness and of heaven-storming boldness, who spoke the word of
+deliverance.
+
+He was a Norman, sturdily built and serious in manner. Even while he was
+studying in Guérin's studio he had already grasped some of the ideas
+which Gros had in his mind, and, although not his pupil, Géricault may
+be said to have continued his work, or at least would have been able to
+do so had he lived longer. Like him, he had from his youth up
+contemplated, full of wonder, the rolling sea and the thunder-laden
+skies; like him, he had a predilection for fine horses; and, being of a
+somewhat melancholy disposition, he preferred to treat of the darker
+aspects of life. His aspiration was to paint the surging sea, proud
+steeds rushing past at a gallop, suffering and striving humanity, great
+deeds, pathos and frenzy in every form. His first works were splendid
+horsemen, whose every muscle twitches with nervous movement. During his
+short stay in Charles Vernet's studio he had already taken an interest
+in cavalry, and begun the studies of such subjects, which he continued
+to the day of his death. Afterwards, while he was working under Guérin
+and before his visit to Italy in 1817, he often went to the Louvre,
+copied pictures and studied Rubens, to the great annoyance of his
+teacher, who with horror beheld him entering upon so perilous a path.
+
+[Illustration: GÉRICAULT. CHASSEUR.]
+
+Here again he followed in the steps of Gros, whose portrait of General
+Fournier Sarlovése was hung in the Salon of 1812 close by Géricault's
+"Mounted Officer." This picture, a portrait of M. Dieudonné, an officer
+in the Chasseurs d'Afrique, crossing the battlefield sword in hand on a
+rearing horse, was the first work exhibited by Géricault, then
+twenty-one years of age. It was an event. Gros found himself supported,
+if not surpassed, by a beginner who had his own enthusiasm for colour
+and movement, for profiles broadly and boldly delineated. In 1814
+followed the "Wounded Cuirassier," staggering across the field of battle
+and dragging his horse behind him. These were no longer warriors seated
+on classical steeds foaming with rage, but real soldiers in whom there
+was nothing of the Greek statue. Then Géricault went to Italy, but in
+this case also it was not to pursue archæological studies in the
+museums, but to see the race of the _barberi_ during carnival. To this
+time belong those studies of horses, for the possession of which
+collectors vie with one another to-day, sketches made in the open air,
+out in the street or in the stables. "The Horses at the Manger" and
+"Horses fighting" were among the pearls of the collection of French
+drawings in the Paris Exhibition of 1889.
+
+In 1819 he completed his greatest picture, that which most people alone
+call to mind--not quite fairly--when his name is mentioned--"The Raft of
+the Medusa." What a tragedy is there represented! For twelve days the
+unfortunate wretches have been on the deep, starving, in utter despair
+and ready to lift their hands against each other. They were a hundred
+and fifty, now they are but fifteen. One old man holds upon his knees
+the corpse of his son; another tears his hair out, left alone in life
+after seeing all his dear ones perish. In the foreground lie dead bodies
+which the waves have not yet swept away. But far away in the distance a
+sail appears. One points it out to another: yes, it is a sail! A mariner
+and a negro mount upon an empty barrel and wave their handkerchiefs in
+the air. Will they be seen? The anxiety is terrible. And ever higher and
+higher the grey waves roll on.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ GÉRICAULT. THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA.]
+
+[Illustration: GÉRICAULT. THE START.]
+
+How must such a scene have impressed a generation which for long years
+had seen nothing in the Salon but dry mythology and painted statues!
+Géricault was the first to free himself from the tyranny of the
+plaster-of-Paris bust, and once again to put passion and truth to nature
+in the place of cold marble. Just as he commissioned the ship's
+carpenter who had constructed the raft and was one of the saved to make
+him a model of it, so also he moved into a studio close to the hospital,
+for the purpose of studying the sick and dying, of sketching dead bodies
+and single limbs. It must be admitted that one would wish for a yet
+firmer grasp of the subject. In form, Géricault still belongs to the
+school of David. A good deal of Classicism shows itself in the fact that
+he thought it necessary to depict the majority of the figures naked, in
+order to avoid "unpictorial" costumes. There is still something academic
+in the figures, which do not seem to be sufficiently weakened by
+privation, disease, and the struggle with death; but what man can free
+himself at one stroke from the influence of his time and environment?
+Even in the colouring there lingers some touch of the Classical school.
+It offends no one, a fact to be insisted on in comparing him with the
+Nazarenes; but as yet it plays no part in expressing the meaning of the
+picture. From the distance, indeed, whence the rescuing ship is drawing
+near, a bright light shines forth upon a scene otherwise depicted in
+dull brown. Save for this, the intention of the picture is not expressed
+by means of colour, and it even shows some retrogression as compared
+with Géricault's earlier works. He had begun with Rubens, yet these
+studies in colouring did not last. In the "Wounded Cuirassier" of 1814
+dark tones took the place of the former cheerfulness, and so in the
+"Raft of the Medusa" he imagined the tragedy could be represented only
+in sombre hues. He spread over the whole scene a monotonous unpleasant
+brown shade, and in his endeavour to lay all weight upon human emotion
+he went so far as almost to suppress the sea, which nevertheless played
+the chief part in the drama, and whose deep blue would have afforded a
+splendid contrast. Discoveries are not to be made all at once, but only
+when their hour is come.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ EUGÈNE DELACROIX.]
+
+The next step in French art was to be that of reinstating the
+significance of colour in the full rights conquered for it by Titian, so
+that it should no longer be merely a tasteful tinting of the figures,
+but should become truly that which gives its temper to the picture. It
+was not reserved for Géricault to effect this. A trip to London, which
+he made in 1820, in company with his friend Charlet, was the last event
+of his life. There the sportsman awoke in him once more, and he painted
+the "Race for the Derby at Epsom." Soon after his return he was thrown
+from his horse while riding, but lingered on for two years longer,
+suffering from a spinal complaint. With a few more years in which to
+develop he should have been one of the great masters of France, but he
+died when scarcely in his thirty-second year.
+
+Yet he lived long enough to observe, in the Salon of 1822, the début of
+one of his comrades from Guérin's studio. A greater than himself, to
+whom with dying voice he had given a few words of advice, arose as the
+intellectual heir of the young painter so prematurely carried off, and
+carried to its issue the struggle which he had begun. It was on 26th
+April 1799, at midday, that the first genuine painter's eye of the
+century saw the light, at Charenton Saint-Maurice. Géricault had made a
+beginning, but it was the impetuous, powerful genius of _Eugène
+Delacroix_ which entered in and completed his work. What Gros had dimly
+perceived, but had not dared to express, what Géricault had barely had
+time with a courageous hand to point out, a hand too soon stiffened in
+death--the modern poetry of colour, of fever, and of quivering
+emotion--it was reserved for Delacroix to write.
+
+"That child will grow up to be a famous man; his life will be extremely
+laborious, but also extremely agitated, and always exposed to
+opposition." Thus had a madman prophesied of the boy one day when he and
+his nurse were taking a walk near the lunatic asylum at Charenton. And
+he was right.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ DELACROIX. DANTE'S BARK.]
+
+Delacroix was another of the pupils who had grown up in Guérin's studio,
+but he became the latter's antipode. Even in his student years he took
+counsel, not of the antique, but of Rubens and Veronese; and when
+Géricault was painting his "Raft of the Medusa," Delacroix belonged to
+the little band of enthusiastic admirers which gathered round the young
+master. He served as model for the half-submerged man to the left in the
+foreground of that picture. After busying himself at first almost
+entirely with caricatures, and studies of horses, and with Madonnas in
+the Classical style, he exhibited in 1822 his "Dante's Bark," in a
+pictorial sense the first characteristic picture of the century. One is
+inclined even to-day to repeat David's exclamation when he caught sight
+of the work, the first great epoch-making life-utterance of the
+revolutionary Romanticists: "_D'où vient-il? Je ne connais pas cette
+touche-la._" There were thoughts in it which had not been conceived and
+expressed in the same manner since the time of Tintoretto. Dante and
+Virgil, ferried by Phlegyas over Acheron, are passing among the souls of
+the damned, who grasp hold of the boat with the energy of despair. A
+theme taken from a mediæval author; an antique figure, that of Virgil,
+but seen through the prism of modern poetry. While the Florentine, stiff
+with horror, gazes upon the swimming figures which cling to the boat
+with teeth and nails, Virgil, tranquil and serious, turns on them a face
+which the emotions of life can no longer affect.
+
+The work obtained a decisive success. A carpenter in Delacroix's house
+had made for the young painter an inartistic frame of four boards. When
+he went to the exhibition and looked for his picture in the side-rooms
+he could not find it. The frame had fallen to pieces during removal, but
+the picture had been hung in an honourable place in the Louvre, in a
+rich frame ordered for it by Baron Gros. "You must learn drawing, my
+young friend, and then you will become a second Rubens," was the salute
+which this remarkable man, whose theory ever gave the lie to his
+practice, gave the young master. Naturally Delacroix would not now have
+been admitted into the school of David, or would have been placed there
+in the lowest rank--with Rubens and a few other immortals, who drew no
+better than he did. He was absolutely opposed to all the exact, regular,
+well-balanced, colourless traditions which held sway in David's school
+with their pedantic erudition and _bourgeois_ discretion. The principle
+of the Classicists was the Greek type of beauty, and the translation of
+sculpture into painting. In Delacroix's picture there was no longer
+anything of that sort. Géricault had already broken away from the
+academic stencilling of form, and had substituted natural expression,
+life, and emotion for conventional types; Delacroix now set aside the
+sullen colouring of the Classical school, and its painted statues made
+way for the colour-symphonies of the Venetians.
+
+These reforming qualities found in his second work, a few years later, a
+much fuller expression than in the "Dante's Bark." At that time the
+Greeks, that heroic nation, struggling and dying for its religion and
+independence, had excited everywhere the deepest sympathy and
+enthusiasm. Delacroix was the very man to be inspired by such a theme.
+From the agitation caused by the martyrdom of Greece, and from his
+taste for Byron's poetry, resulted in 1824 the celebrated "Massacre of
+Chios," on which he was already employed in 1821, before the completion
+of his "Dante's Bark," and in which his power of expression as well as
+of colour was carried much further than in the earlier picture. In the
+"Dante's Bark" there were still, both in form and colour, reminiscences
+of the great Florentine masters; as, for instance, in the female figure
+in the foreground, which is almost an exact reproduction of Michael
+Angelo's "Night." The event depicted was comparatively quiet and
+tranquil, and the well-balanced composition would have done honour to
+the most rigorous follower of David. The only novelty lay in the
+treatment of colour, and in the substitution of the individual and
+characteristic for the typical and ideal. But undoubtedly it was now
+possible not only to produce in colour more powerful chords, but also in
+expression to strike notes more dramatic, for the academic
+plaster-of-Paris heads of the David school had depicted human emotion
+only in icy immobility. Delacroix had put all these possibilities into
+the new picture. The pyramidal configuration has resolved itself into an
+unconstrained grouping of figures. Here we have for the first time the
+artistic spirit intoxicated with colour, the "Orlando Furioso of
+colourists," the pupil of Rubens, Delacroix. An entire world of deep
+feeling and of painfully passionate poetry, an entire world of tones,
+which the master under whose eyes he painted his "Dante" could not have
+conceived, lies enclosed within the frame of this picture. The figures,
+sitting, kneeling, partly reclining, with their half-starved bodies and
+their gloomy, brooding, hopeless faces; the desperate struggle between
+the conquerors and their victims in the far distance; the contrast
+between this scene of horror and the luminous splendour of the
+atmosphere, and the wealth of colour in the whole, made and still make
+this fine painting one of the most impressive pictures in the Louvre. It
+is a work which flames in glow of colour more than any that had appeared
+in France since the days of Rubens. The English had been his teachers.
+"It is here only that colour and effect are understood and felt,"
+Géricault had previously written from London. Delacroix's work had
+already been sent off to the Salon when Constable's first pictures were
+just arriving there, and the impression which they made upon him was so
+powerful that, at the very last moment, and in the Louvre itself, he
+gave his picture a brighter and more luminous colouring.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ DELACROIX. HAMLET AND THE GRAVE-DIGGERS.]
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ DELACROIX. TASSO IN THE MAD-HOUSE.]
+
+And indeed it was not till now that the Classicists perceived how great
+an opponent had arisen against them. Not only did the aged Gros call the
+"Massacre of Chios" "_le massacre de la peinture_," but all the critics
+talked about barbarism, and prophesied that on this path French painting
+would hasten to its destruction. The prize of the Salon was awarded, not
+to the "Massacre," but to Sigalon's "Locusta," an unimportant work of
+compromise, though very clever and well studied in draughtsmanship. It
+was said that Delacroix's picture was lacking in symmetrical
+arrangement, that he showed too great a contempt for the beautiful, that
+indeed he appeared systematically to prefer the ugly--that is to say, he
+was blamed for the very qualities wherein lay his importance as a
+reformer. Accustomed as they had been for many years to an art in which
+intellect, correctness, and moderation held sway, not one of the critics
+was in a position to perceive all at once the value of this fiery
+spirit. Delécluze, the indefatigable defender of the sacred dogmas of
+the Classical school, characterised "dramatic expression and composition
+marked by action" as the reef whereon the grand style of painting must
+inevitably be wrecked. The modern schools of art, he taught as late as
+1824, exist, flourish, and have their being only by the utilisation of
+what we can learn from the Greeks. Even acknowledging the progress in
+colour which the work showed, it nevertheless belonged, he said, to an
+inferior genus, and all its excellences in colouring could not outweigh
+the ugliness of its form.
+
+Therewith began the battles of the Romantic school, and all the daring
+of Théophile Gautier, Thiers, Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Baudelaire,
+Bürger-Thoré, Gustave Planche, Paul Mantz, and others had to be called
+upon in order to storm the heights held by the batteries of the
+Classical critics. Count Forbin gave proof of no less courage when he
+bought the picture, torn to shreds as it was by hostile criticism, for
+the State, at the price of six thousand francs. This enabled Delacroix
+to visit England. He spent the time from spring to autumn of 1825 in
+London, where he consorted amicably with all the artists of the day. And
+he took an interest not only in English art, but also in literature and
+the drama. His preference for Shakespeare, Byron, and Walter Scott, who
+were already his favourite poets, found new sustenance. An English opera
+made him acquainted with Goethe's _Faust_; and henceforth these poets
+entered into the foreground of his works. A picture of "Tasso" (the poet
+in a cell of the madhouse, through the window of which two grinning
+lunatics look in upon him) in 1826, the "Execution of the Doge Marino
+Faliero" and the "Death of Sardanapalus," both after Byron, in 1827, and
+"Faust in his Study" in 1828, followed the "Massacre"--all of them
+obviously the works of a painter who loved bright, glowing colour, had
+studied Rubens and had recently returned from England. In 1828 was
+published, in seventeen plates, his cycle of illustrations to _Faust_,
+to accompany a translation of the poem into French; and this was
+followed by a number of lithographs on Shakespearian subjects.
+
+And here we may notice a singular exchange of parts. When the word
+"Romantic" was first heard in Germany it had originally much the same
+sense as "Roman." The German Romanticists were moved to enthusiasm by
+Roman Catholicism and Roman church painting. But when Romanticism
+reached France, the word came to mean exactly the opposite: a preference
+for the German and English spirit as compared with the Greek and Latin,
+and an enthusiasm for the great Anglo-Saxon and German poets,
+Shakespeare and Goethe, in whom, contrasting with Racine's correctness,
+were to be found unrestrained genius and glowing passion. This influence
+of poetry over art may easily become dangerous, if painters sponge, so
+to speak, upon the poet, as the Düsseldorf school did, and make use of
+his work only for the purpose of enabling works, in themselves
+valueless, to keep their heads, artistically speaking, above water, by
+means of their extrinsic poetical interest. But Delacroix had no need of
+any such support. He was not the poets' pupil, but their brother. He did
+not study them in order to illustrate their works, but was imbued with
+their spirit and possessed by their souls. He lived with them; he did
+not borrow his subjects from them, but rather made use of them to
+express in his own powerful language the strongest emotions of the human
+heart. Nor did he ever forget that painting must, before all, be
+painting. Endowed as he was with a poet's soul, he conceived things as a
+painter, not laboriously translating passages from the poets, but simply
+thinking in colour. What the musician hears, what the poet imagines, he
+saw. The scenes of which he read appeared at once before his eyes as
+sketches, in great masses of colour. For him, composition, action, and
+colour ever united together into one inseparable whole.
+
+[Illustration: DELACROIX. ENTRY OF THE CRUSADERS INTO CONSTANTINOPLE.]
+
+The journey to Morocco, which he made in the spring of 1832, in company
+with an embassy sent by Louis Philippe to the Emperor Muley Abderrahman,
+is noteworthy for a further progress in his ability as a colourist and a
+new broadening of his range of subjects. When he returned to the port
+of Toulon, on 5th July 1832, he had seen Algiers and Spain, and had
+assimilated an abundance of sunshine and colour. It is in his Oriental
+pictures that his painting first reaches its zenith, just as Victor
+Hugo's mastery over language was at its highest point in his
+_Orientales_. Goethe, in his _West-östliches Divan_, celebrated what is
+quiet and contemplative in the Oriental view of life. Obermann sang of
+the land of legend, of buried treasures, of Aladdin and the wonderful
+lamp; but for Byron (who was practically the first to introduce into
+Europe the perfume and colour of the East), for Hugo, and for Delacroix,
+it was the distant, bright-hued, barbaric land of the rising sun, the
+land of sanguinary warfare and overthrow, the home of light and colour.
+Here it was that the French Romanticists found the world that realised
+their dreams of colour. The East became for them what Rome had been for
+the Classical school. From the feeble and misty sun of Paris, and from
+the grey skies of the Boulevard des Italiens, they turned to Africa.
+
+His enthusiasm for this newly discovered world resounds, full and clear,
+in Delacroix's letters. "Were I to leave the land in which I have found
+them," he wrote, during his stay in Morocco, of the men whom he saw
+about him there, "they would seem to me like trees torn up by the roots.
+I should forget the impressions I have received, and should be able only
+in an incomplete and frigid manner to reproduce the sublime and
+fascinating life which fills the streets here, and attracts one by the
+beauty of its appearance. Think, my friend, what it means to a painter
+to see lying in the sunshine, wandering about the streets and offering
+shoes for sale, men who have the appearance of ancient consuls, of the
+reincarnated spirits of Cato and Brutus, who lack not even that proud,
+discontented look which those lords of the world must have had. They
+possess nothing save a blanket in which they walk, sleep, and are
+buried, and yet they look as dignified as Cicero in his curule chair.
+What truth, what nobility in these figures! There is nothing more
+beautiful in the antique. And all in white, as with Roman senators or at
+the Greek Panathenæa."
+
+His palette was thus further enriched in lucid tints, the contrasts he
+formerly delighted in became less sharp and glaring, the gloomy
+background hitherto preferred was superseded by a bright serenity and a
+golden lustre. The colour-effect of his "Algerian Women" has been not
+unaptly compared to the impression produced by a glance into an open
+jewel casket. In his "Convulsionaries of Tangier" he has depicted with
+wild, demoniac energy the religious frenzy of a Turkish sect. Green,
+blue, red, and violet hues unite to produce an effect as of a sounding
+flourish of trumpets, recalling the music of the janizaries. The "Entry
+of the Crusaders into Constantinople" resembles an old delicately tinted
+carpet, full of powerful, tranquil harmony. Even in his old age he
+wrote: "The aspect of that country will be for ever before my eyes; the
+types of that vigorous race will move in my memory as long as I live; in
+them I truly found the antique beauty again."
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ DELACROIX. JESUS ON LAKE GENNESARET.]
+
+The contemplation of such scenes induced Delacroix to undertake the
+representation of antique subjects, which he had hitherto avoided, not
+because he disliked the antique, but because of the aversion he felt for
+David's treatment of it. During his sojourn in Africa he had come to the
+conclusion that the painting of scenes from ancient history should not
+be based upon the imitation of statues and bas-reliefs, as with David
+and his pupils; but that it should be imbued with the movement and
+passion of modern life, since the ancient Greeks were men of flesh and
+blood like ourselves. Therefore it is that he snatches the marble mask
+from the faces of David's puppets. Flemish blood begins to move in the
+Greek statues, Flemish passion to break through their inflexible rhythm.
+Paintings such as the "Justice of Trajan" of 1840 represent the antique
+in a thoroughly personal and modern paraphrase, just as Shakespeare or
+Byron had seen it. The mad "Medea" is, from the point of view of colour,
+certainly the chief work of this group.
+
+It was of course impossible that a man so highly endowed with emotional
+pathos should pass untouched the tragedy of the life of Christ and the
+sufferings of the Christian martyrs. By the Revolution religious themes
+had been absolutely excluded from representation, and up to this time
+the young innovators of the Restoration period had also felt an
+aversion for them. Their ideas were as little attuned to Catholic as to
+academic tradition. Delacroix was the first to treat once more of
+biblical subjects, so far as they are imbued with dramatic and
+passionate movement. Like Rubens, he regarded the lives of the saints,
+the story of the Gospels, and the tragedy on Golgotha as a poetical
+narrative like any other. His Mary, like that of the Flemish painters,
+is a sorrowing woman, the embodiment of unending grief.
+
+Alongside of these easel pictures he produced, during a period of more
+than twenty-five years, a long list of monumental and decorative works;
+and they too were the most inventive, the boldest, and the most original
+which monumental painting produced during this epoch, not in France
+only, but in Europe. In this sphere also, where, under the pressure of
+old traditions and conventional types, it is so difficult to avoid
+plagiarism, Delacroix maintained his individuality. In 1835, at the
+suggestion of his friend Thiers, he was commissioned to paint the
+interior of the Chamber of Deputies in the Palais Bourbon--the most
+important commission which had fallen to the lot of any French artist
+since Gros painted the cupola of the Pantheon. Not long afterwards he
+decorated with verve and enthusiasm the ceiling of the Louvre, choosing
+for his subject the "Triumph of Apollo." In the Library of the
+Luxembourg he had recourse to the _Divina Commedia_, and treated in a
+masterly manner the theme so familiar and sympathetic to him. In his
+works there is something of the joyous and sportive energy of Rubens'
+allegorical pictures, but not the least trace of imitation. He
+understood decorative painting in the sense of the great old masters,
+Giulio Romano and Veronese, not as wall didactics and lectures on
+archæology; he knew that descriptive prose has nothing whatever to do
+with the walls of a building, but that the sole aim of such paintings is
+to fill the house with their solemn grandeur, to make the whole building
+resound as it were with sacred organ music. Between 1853 and 1861 came
+also the wall paintings in the Church of Saint Sulpice, and one would
+almost think that Delacroix finished them in feverish excitement, to
+show for the last time how enormous a store of passion and power still
+lay in the soul of a sexagenarian. Shortly after their completion, on
+13th August 1863, he died, who was, in the words of Silvestre, "the
+painter of the genuine race, who had the sun in his head and a
+thunderstorm in his heart, who in the course of forty years sounded the
+entire gamut of human emotion, and whose grandiose and awe-inspiring
+brush passed from saints to warriors, from warriors to lovers, from
+lovers to tigers, from tigers to flowers."
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ DELACROIX. HORSES FIGHTING IN A STABLE.]
+
+In these words Delacroix is very aptly characterised. His range of
+subjects included everything: decorative, historical, and religious
+painting, landscape, flowers, animals, sea pieces, classical antiquity
+and the Middle Ages, the scorching heat of the south and the mists of
+the north. He left no branch of the art of painting untouched; nothing
+escaped his lion's claws. But there is one bond uniting all: to all the
+figures for which he won the citizenship of art he gave passion and
+movement. His predominant quality is a passion for the terrible, a kind
+of insatiability for wild and violent action. His over-excited
+imagination heaps pain, horror, and pathos one upon another. The critics
+called him "the tattooed savage who paints with a drunken broom." There
+is nothing pretty or lovable about his art; it is a wild art. He
+depicted passion wherever he found it, in the shape of wild animals,
+stormy seas, or battling warriors; and he sought it in every sphere, in
+nature no less than in poetry and the Bible. Hardly any painter--not
+even Rubens--has depicted with equal power the passions and movements of
+animals: lions in which he is own brother to Barye; fighting horses, in
+which he stands side by side with Géricault. No other artist painted
+waves more grand, wind-beaten, foaming, dashing, towering on high.
+Looking at them, one divines all the horrors concealed beneath the roar
+of the blue surface, horrors which were as yet so insufficiently
+suggested in Géricault's "Raft of the Medusa." In his historical
+pictures there reigns now terror and despair, as in the "Massacre of
+Chios"; now gloomy horror, as in the "Medea"; now feverish movement, as
+in the "Death of the Bishop of Liège." He passes from Dante to
+Shakespeare, from Goethe to Byron, but only to borrow from them their
+most moving dramatic situations--Hamlet at Yorick's grave, his fight
+with Laertes, Macbeth and the Witches, Lady Macbeth, Gretchen,
+Angelica, the Prisoner of Chillon, the Giaour, and the Pasha. All time
+is his domain, all countries are open to him; he hurries through the
+broad fields of imagination, a lordly reaper of all harvests.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ DELACROIX. MEDEA.]
+
+And at the same time, in all his great human tragedies, he compels the
+elements to obey him as if they were his slaves. The passions of men set
+heaven and earth in motion. The agonising cries of victims find in his
+paintings an echo in the sullen shadows and the leaden, heavy clouds of
+the sky. The gloomy shores which Dante's boat is approaching are as
+desolate as the spirits who wander through the night. But where
+splendour and glory reign, as in the "Entry of the Crusaders into
+Constantinople," the air, too, glistens and shines as though saturated
+with dust of gold. In his pictures a human soul which was great and full
+of meaning, and which possessed such combustibility that it took fire of
+itself, expressed itself recklessly, with the volcanic strength of an
+elemental power.
+
+This proud self-reliance explains also how it was that this painter of
+unruly genius was, as a man, very far from being a revolutionist. For
+Delacroix the outer world had no existence; that world alone existed
+which was within him. After his picture of "The Barricades" in 1831 he
+avoided all political allusions, painted, read, and led a tranquil,
+measured, uniform life. In society polite and reserved, of aristocratic
+coldness, gentlemanly in appearance, and well-bred; in his speech curt,
+mordant, emphatic, and occasionally witty, he could nevertheless show
+himself, when he chose, an amiable, original talker, full of piquant
+ideas. Moreover, he was a great writer and critic, whose essays in the
+_Revue des Deux Mondes_ have the perfect classic stamp. Nevertheless, he
+was always displeased when any one put him forward as the chief of
+official Romanticism, and saluted him as the Victor Hugo of painting.
+Surrounded as he was by young assailants of tradition who would allow no
+merit to anything old, he found pleasure in acknowledging his admiration
+for Racine, whom he knew by heart, and whom, when need was, he defended
+against the younger generation. He was too diplomatic to stir up against
+himself unnecessarily the hatred of those whom the long-haired Samsons
+of Romanticism called Philistines.
+
+So far as in him lay, his quiet and methodical life should suffer no
+interruption. Worshipper though he was of light and colour, he was
+almost always shut up in his gloomy studio, and it was only when he
+found himself brush in hand that the reserved man became the passionate,
+vibrating painter. Then the memories with which his study of the poets
+had stored his mind grew in his fantasy into grand pictures glowing with
+life. By these visions he was excited, set on fire, and filled with
+enthusiasm. His studio was open but to few, for the intrusion of
+visitors chilled his inspiration, and he found it difficult to recover
+the proper frame of mind. Not till evening did he take his first meal,
+for he thought he could work with greater intensity when hungry. During
+a period of forty years he lived in his various studios, quiet and
+solitary, inventing, drawing, and painting without intermission, his
+door always bolted, so that when it suited him he could give out that he
+was ill of a fever. Every morning before work he drew an arm, a hand, or
+a piece of drapery after Rubens. He had formed the habit of taking
+Rubens to himself when other people were drinking their coffee.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ DELACROIX. THE EXPULSION OF HELIODORUS.]
+
+Indeed, when one speaks of Delacroix, the name of Rubens rises almost
+involuntarily to one's lips; and yet there is a profound difference
+between him and the great Flemish master. Rubens has the same passion,
+the same ever-active fancy; yet all his pictures rest in triumphant
+repose, while every one of Delacroix's seems to resound as with a cry of
+battle. Looking at Rubens' works you feel that he was a happy, healthy
+man; but by the time you have seen half a score of Delacroix's it is
+borne in upon you that the life of the artist was one of strife and
+suffering. Rubens was the very essence of strength, Delacroix was a sick
+man; the former full of fleshly joyous sensuality, the latter consumed
+by a feverish internal fire.
+
+His portrait of himself in the Louvre, with its pale forehead, its large
+dark-rimmed eyes, its lean, hollow face, its parchment-like skin
+stretched tightly over the bones, explains his pictures better than any
+critical appreciation. Delacroix was one of the _âmes maladives_, the
+spirits sick unto death, to whom Baudelaire addresses himself in his
+_Fleurs du Mal_. Delicate from his youth up, thoroughly nervous by
+nature, he prolonged his sickly existence throughout his life by sheer
+energy of will. Even in his childhood he passed through serious
+illnesses, and later on he suffered in turn from his stomach, throat,
+chest, and kidneys. Like Goethe in his old age, he felt well only when
+the temperature was high. He was short in stature. A leonine head, with
+a lion's mane, surmounted a body that seemed almost stunted. With his
+eyes flashing like carbuncles, and his disordered prickly moustache, his
+was the fascinating ugliness of genius.
+
+It was only by the strictest dieting in his quiet retreat at Champrosay
+that he prolonged his life for the last few years. In his youth he
+hovered like a butterfly from flower to flower; when grown old and
+hypochondriacal he withdrew into solitary retirement, work was the only
+medicine for diseased conditions of all kinds, to which he found himself
+daily more and more a victim. Only thus could this sickly man, doomed
+from his very birth, come to produce no less than two thousand
+pictures--a number all the more astonishing as Delacroix, even when his
+health permitted him to work at his easel, by no means possessed Rubens'
+sovereign facility of production. The fever of work alternated, in his
+case, with the extremest exhaustion. There was something morbid,
+nervous, over-excited in all he did. "Even work," he writes, "is merely
+a temporary narcotic, a distraction; and every distraction, as Pascal
+has said in other words, is only a method which man has invented to
+conceal from himself the abyss of his suffering and misery. In sleepless
+nights, in illness, and in certain moments of solitude, when the end of
+all things discloses itself in its utter nakedness, a man endowed with
+imagination must possess a certain amount of courage, not to meet the
+phantom half-way, not to rush to embrace the skeleton."
+
+The feverish disposition which he brought with him into the world was
+heightened by the acrimonious feuds in which, as a painter, he was
+forced to engage, and which left great bitterness behind them in his
+mind. His life and his art were in accord, in as much as both were
+battles. It is not easy to live when one is always ill; not easy to meet
+with recognition when one proclaims the exact opposite of that which for
+a generation past all the world has held to be true. And Delacroix took
+not a single step to meet his opponents half-way. He did not trouble
+himself for a single moment to please the public; and therefore the
+public did not come to him. Controversies such as that which took place
+over the "Massacre of Chios" continued decade after decade, and the
+exhibition of each of his pictures was the signal for a battle. "No work
+of his," writes Thoré, "but called forth deafening howls, curses, and
+furious controversy. Insults were heaped upon the artist, coarser and
+more opprobrious than one would be justified in applying to a sharper."
+At Charenton, where he was born, is the Bedlam of France. Hence the
+epithet continually hurled at him by the critics, who called him the
+runaway from Charenton.
+
+Until the year 1847 his pictures could without difficulty be excluded
+from the Salon. He irritated people by his violence, by the abruptness
+of his compositions, by his arrangement of figures with a view to pathos
+at the expense of plastic elegance; he displeased by the incompleteness
+of his works, which were regarded as sketches, not finished paintings.
+When Louis Philippe ordered a picture from his brush, it was on the
+express condition that it should be as little a Delacroix as possible.
+There was general ill-humour among the academicians when, at Thiers'
+suggestion, he was commissioned to decorate the Palais Bourbon. And
+Delacroix, ambitious and sensitive as he was, was deeply hurt by every
+mortification of this kind, and affected by every gust of criticism as
+by a change of wind. Continually denounced in the newspapers, attacked,
+wounded, delivered over to the wild beasts, as he called it, he never
+had a moment of rest--he who, with his irritable temperament and fragile
+health, needed rest more than any man. It was not until almost all his
+works were brought together in the Universal Exhibition of 1885 that it
+became evident how great an artist this Delacroix was, whom his country
+for forty years had not understood, and to whom the Institute had closed
+its doors to the last. Yet he was no sooner dead than all with one voice
+proclaimed him a genius; his smallest drawing is to-day worth its weight
+in gold, while during his lifetime he seldom got more than two thousand
+francs for his largest paintings. His sketches, great works in small
+frames, have for the most part found their way to America. The sale of
+the pictures he left behind him produced three hundred and sixty
+thousand francs.
+
+Delacroix, therefore, was victorious, but not as Rubens was; and his
+ceiling of the Louvre, with the "Triumph of Apollo," one of his most
+remarkable works, strikes one almost as an allegory of his own life.
+What especially attracted and inspired the artist in this painting were
+the spasms and convulsions of the misshapen monsters which the god
+expels from the earth--the serpent twisting itself in movements of pain
+and fury, raising its head on high, hissing rage, and vomiting venom and
+blood. The god himself, who in the midst of a sea of light ascends into
+heaven in a golden chariot drawn by radiant steeds, shows in his sturdy
+limbs and attitude ready for defence, and in his wrathful face, no trace
+of the proud majesty and joyous splendour which Greece connected with
+the name of Apollo. He is a mortal who has fought and conquered, not a
+god who triumphs in tranquil power. He is Delacroix, not Rubens; a
+Titan, not an Olympian god.
+
+The artistic power in Delacroix could in no wise submit to the
+confinement imposed by the French spirit of his time. It was not
+possible for a single man, though endowed with the most splendid
+courage, to overthrow in a moment all the traditions of French art. Any
+one who knows the French must feel that David's Latin style could not so
+suddenly disappear out of their art, that it was not possible at a blow
+to banish all that had hitherto held sway and to replace it by its
+opposite. Ever since Poussin they had sought in Roman antiquity the
+formulæ of their art. The predilection which the Parisians have even
+to-day for the representation of Racine's and Corneille's tragedies, the
+admiration which even the most extreme Naturalists bestow upon Poussin
+and Lesueur, prove abundantly how deep Classicism is rooted in the flesh
+and blood of the French people. Brandes has remarked, very acutely,
+that, strictly speaking, even Romanticism was on French soil in many
+respects a Classical phenomenon, a product of French Classical rhetoric.
+"They never saw the dances of the elves, never heard the delicate
+harmony of their roundelays." In Victor Hugo, the great opponent of
+Corneille, Corneille himself was re-embodied. He too is a draughtsman,
+constructs his poems like architectural works, chisels the form,
+polishes the verse, and confines his colouring within powerfully
+conceived Michelangelesque outlines.
+
+[Illustration: J. A. D. INGRES. _L'Art._]
+
+Once the first eager impulse of the Romantic school had subsided, these
+old Classical tendencies showed themselves anew and with all the greater
+vehemence. Even Hugo's dramas, with their predilection for all that is
+exuberant and monstrous, with their overflowing lyricism and sonorous
+pathos, became in the long run wearisome. He, who had hitherto been the
+idol of the young generation, was now called the Pater Bombasticus of
+the literature of the world.
+
+Classicism found its poet and its muse. An unknown but very worthy young
+man, not endowed with wealth of imagination, but imbued with the most
+honourable intentions, came to Paris from the provincial town where he
+had grown to manhood, with a manuscript in his pocket. And François
+Ronsard's _Lucrèce_, a tragedy from the antique, in its style sober and
+severe, reminding one of Racine, was represented amid thunders of
+applause, shortly after Hugo had been hissed off the stage. Enthusiastic
+admirers saw in it a glorious return to the great tragic drama of
+France, an emanation from the spirit of Corneille, and praised its
+clear, measured, and at once "classic and familiar" language. Together
+with its poet, the Classical reaction found its actress. In 1838 a young
+untrained child made her début at the Théâtre Français--a Jewish girl
+who had sung in the streets to the accompaniment of her harp. Rachel
+appeared upon the boards, and restored its former power of attraction to
+the old Classical repertoire, to the very tragedies which the Romantic
+school had banished from the theatre amid mockery and derision. _The
+Cid_, _Mérope_, _Chimène_, and _Phèdre_ recovered their place upon the
+stage.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ INGRES. THE MAID OF ORLEANS AT RHEIMS.]
+
+Painting took the same course. In opposition to the young painters who
+had burst into the arena with their gay-coloured uniforms, their gilded
+helmets and waving banners, _Ingres_ came forth in the great tournament
+of Romanticism in the character of the Black Knight. An old gentleman, a
+man who in all his being belonged to the generation that was passing
+away, who was fifty years of age at the time of the Revolution of July,
+stations himself suddenly as the angel of the flaming sword, or, in the
+phrase of his opponents, as the gendarme of Classicism, at the gates of
+the Academy, barring them against every suspicious-looking person. And
+the young men, eccentric, eager for action as they were, who had
+recently fought with so much fury, had to retreat before him. Golden
+sunshine and glow of colour were once more tabooed, and their
+representative heroes, Veronese, Rubens, and Delacroix, regarded as
+flickering Will o' the Wisps, whom every aspiring beginner should avoid
+as serpents and firebrands. One day when Ingres was taking his pupils
+through the Louvre he said, on entering the Rubens gallery: "_Saluez,
+messieurs, mais ne regardez pas._" The acrimony of the strife was so
+great that it extended even to the personal relations of the rival
+chiefs, and Ingres was attacked by convulsive spasms whenever he heard
+the name of the painter of the "Massacre of Chios." When in 1855 he had
+had a separate room prepared for his own pictures in the Universal
+Exhibition of that year, and observed Delacroix in the distance, just
+before the opening ceremony, he asked the attendant: "Has not somebody
+been here?--there is a smell of brimstone." "Now the wolf is in the
+sheepfold" was his observation when Delacroix was elected to the
+Institute. He regarded him as the "hangman," as the Robespierre of
+painting. "I used to love that young man, but he has sold himself to the
+evil one" (Rubens), said he, in righteous indignation, to his pupils.
+
+[Illustration: INGRES. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF AS A YOUTH.]
+
+"This famous thing, the Beautiful," Delacroix had once written, "must
+be--every one says so--the final aim of art. But if it be the only aim,
+what then are we to make of men like Rubens, Rembrandt, and, in general,
+all the artistic natures of the North, who preferred other qualities
+belonging to their art? Is the sense of the beautiful that impression
+which is made upon us by a picture by Velasquez, an etching by
+Rembrandt, or a scene out of Shakespeare? Or again, is the beautiful
+revealed to us by the contemplation of the straight noses and correctly
+disposed draperies of Girodet, Gérard, and others of David's pupils? A
+satyr is beautiful, a faun is beautiful. The antique bust of Socrates is
+full of character, notwithstanding its flattened nose, swollen lips, and
+small eyes. In Paul Veronese's 'Marriage at Cana' I see men of various
+features and of every temperament, and I find them to be living beings,
+full of passion. Are they beautiful? Perhaps. But in any case there is
+no recipe by means of which one can attain to what is called the ideally
+beautiful. Style depends absolutely and solely upon the free and
+original expression of each master's peculiar qualities. Wherever a
+painter sets himself to follow a conventional mode of expression he will
+become affected and will lose his own peculiar impress; but where, on
+the contrary, he frankly abandons himself to the impulse of his own
+originality, he will ever, whether his name be Raphael, Michael Angelo,
+Rubens, or Rembrandt, be sure master of his soul and of his art."
+
+As compared with the principles thus laid down, Ingres represents the
+revulsion towards that formalism which had borne sway over the greater
+part of the history of French art. "Painting is nothing more than
+drawing," said Poussin. "Had God intended to place colour at the same
+height as form," wrote Charles Blanc, "He would not have failed to
+furnish His masterpiece, Man, with all the hues of the humming-bird."
+Once more, instead of the glowing colour of the Romantic school,
+absorbing the form into itself, the firm stroke of the outline was set
+forth; instead of its pathos, breathing forth passionate emotion, men
+returned to study the chill tranquillity of stone. Once more dramatic
+composition and mastery over movement were held in abhorrence, as
+incompatible with that pursuit of plastic beauty which was the highest
+goal of art. The only point in question was, how to avoid the
+one-sidedness of Classicism. David, as a child of the Revolution, had
+naturally been limited to Ancient Rome; but now that the legitimate
+monarchy had been re-established there was no reason why one should not
+revere, not only pagan, but also Christian Rome, and in Raphael and
+Michael Angelo the maturest blossom of the latter. Thus the Classical
+school was enriched by Ingres with features of greater vivacity. He
+entered into a direct relationship with the great Italian masters, while
+David had none save with the rigid Roman antique. By him the Classical
+severity of David was relaxed, the refractory sharpness of the outlines
+relieved by a treatment of form which had the effect of making every
+figure appear to be worked in metal.
+
+[Illustration: INGRES. BERTIN THE ELDER.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Jules Bapst, the owner of the picture._)]
+
+Ingres was born in 1781, under the _Ancien Régime_. As a young man he
+lived through the triumphs of the Empire and the Classical school, and
+it was only natural that he should become David's pupil. In 1796 he
+entered his studio, and studied there with such assiduity that he never
+noticed what was taking place in that of Gros. When he went to Italy he
+studied there the masters whom his own teacher had arrogantly despised.
+He learned from the Cinquecento how to draw and model more accurately,
+more firmly, and at the same time with a more intimate grasp of the
+subject than was usual in the school of David. This innovation made him
+a progressive Classicist, and gave him, during the early years of the
+Restoration, almost the appearance of an assailant and revolutionary.
+Himself the incarnation of the academic spirit, he had to resign himself
+to see his first works rejected by the Salon, a fact which did not deter
+him from continuing to work obstinately at his easel. "_Je compte sur ma
+vieillesse; elle me vengea._" And this revenge was granted him in the
+fullest measure.
+
+When one has seen the outward appearance of a man, one knows his
+character, his spirit, and his genius. Ingres' portrait of himself
+contains the analysis of his art. He was quite a small man, of a swarthy
+complexion, with features sharp and as if cast in bronze. His thick
+black hair stood up stubbornly on end, so that he had to grease it
+carefully every day. Under hair of this kind there is almost always an
+obstinate brain. The jaws projected, as is the case with men endowed
+with a strong will. The eyes were large and piercing, with that bold
+eagle-glance which fills parents with fond hopes, but does not touch the
+hearts of young women. When he appeared to be excited, it was only the
+excitement of work expressing itself in him. This little man, in his
+large cloak, seemed to say when he stood at his easel, pencil in hand:
+"I shall be a great painter, for I am determined to be one." He kept his
+word. Strength of will, hard work, study, obstinacy, patience--these are
+the elements of which Ingres' talent is compounded. "_Vouloir, c'est
+pouvoir_," was his motto. One would think Buffon had had him in mind in
+that passage in which he defines genius as patience. The
+trinity-in-unity of his qualities consisted of correctness, balance,
+exactness; qualities which go to make rather a great architect or
+mathematician than an interesting painter.
+
+Ingres' range of subjects was unusually wide. Pictures on themes taken
+from antiquity ("Oedipus and the Sphinx" and "Virgil reading the
+Æneid"); costume pictures ("Henry IV and his Children" and the "Entry of
+Charles V into Paris"); religious paintings (Madonnas, "Christ giving
+the Keys to St. Peter," and "St. Symphorian"); nude female figures (the
+"Odalisque," the "Liberation of Angelica," and "The Source"); allegories
+("The Apotheosis of Homer" and "The Apotheosis of Napoleon"); pictures
+of public functions ("Bonaparte as First Consul" and "Napoleon on the
+Throne"); and even a painting taken from the life ("Pius VII in the
+Sistine Chapel"), are included in the list. Yet, notwithstanding his
+astonishing diversity of themes, there is hardly an artist more
+one-sided in his principles. Ingres thought exclusively of purely
+plastic art: beauty of form and harmony of line alone attracted him; he
+was insensible to the charm of colour. His standpoint was the Institute
+of Rome; the Italian Cinquecento the exclusive object of his worship. He
+carried this study as far as plagiarism, and as director of the Roman
+Academy made free with the intellectual property of the Cinquecento
+masters, as if they had lived only on his account.
+
+When Delacroix was painting the "Expulsion of Heliodorus" in Saint
+Sulpice, he put forth the whole strength of his creative genius to
+avoid all reminiscence of Raphael's fresco. Ingres' power of invention
+consisted in discovering, with a weird certainty, whether the subject of
+which he wished to treat had already been painted by an Italian or other
+Classical master. The picture "Jupiter and Thetis," of 1811, is put
+together after a design on a Greek vase, and represents in its studied
+archaism the Æginetan period of his art. The "Vow of Louis XIII," of
+1824, was his confession of faith as regards the Cinquecento. The motive
+was taken from the Madonna di Foligno, the curtains from the Madonna di
+San Sisto, the floating angels from the Madonna del Baldacchino, and the
+candlesticks as well as the little angels with the inscribed tablet are
+from the same source. It is all beautiful, of course, for it is all
+Raphael; only, it would have been more rational if Ingres had lived in
+the time of Raphael instead of in the nineteenth century. One would take
+the picture to have been painted under Raphael's eyes, and it bears to
+his works the same relation as Raphael's earlier pictures do to
+Perugino's. The "Christ giving the Keys to St. Peter" is also put
+together out of elements derived from the school of Urbino. In his "St.
+Symphorian," which was belauded as the _ne plus ultra_ of style, he
+turned by way of variety to the imitation of Michael Angelo: the action
+is violent, the muscles swollen. The "Apotheosis of Homer" is an
+admirable lecture in archæology, a sitting of the great academy of
+genius, in which the poses are so fine and the heads so full of marble
+idealism that in comparison with it Raphael's "School of Athens" has the
+effect of the wildest naturalism.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ INGRES. STUDY FOR THE ODALISQUE IN THE LOUVRE.]
+
+Thus Father Ingres stands forth as a cold, stiff, academic painter, as a
+doctrinaire who has not progressed much further than the much-reviled
+David. He represents, as Th. Rousseau said, only to a moderate degree
+the good old art which we have lost. In the words of Diaz: "Let him be
+shut up with me in a tower, without engravings, and I wager that his
+canvas will remain untouched, whilst I shall succeed in producing a
+picture." He possessed an arid ability which leaves one cold in presence
+of even his most important works. How lifeless is the effect produced by
+his paintings of nude single figures, his "Odalisque" and his "Freeing
+of Andromeda," which brought him especial fame! Ingres could not paint
+flesh, and in this respect he is indicative of an enormous retrogression
+as compared with Prudhon. The striving after sculpturesque beauty, and,
+in connection therewith, the repression of all individuality, became in
+him almost a religion.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ INGRES. THE SOURCE.]
+
+One finds it difficult to-day to account for the fame which once
+belonged to his picture of "The Source," the nude figure of a standing
+girl pouring water out of an urn that rests on her left shoulder and is
+steadied by her right arm raised over her head. The picture undoubtedly
+exhibits qualities of draughtsmanship which in recent days Ingres alone
+possessed in so high a degree. But when, in pursuit of his Classical
+conception, he had eliminated every touch of nature, he proceeded to
+destroy the rest of the impression by the cold violet tones which are
+not only condemned by colourists, but which even Raphael would have
+considered false and ugly. Here, as in all his female figures, he
+attains to a certain grace, but it is an animal, expressionless grace.
+Skilful as he was in delineating the muscles of the human body, he was
+yet absolutely incapable of painting heads expressive of feeling or
+emotion. He depicted the form in itself, the abstract, typical, absolute
+form. He was dominated only by a love for the _beauté suprême_, so that
+when he was in presence of nature he could not refrain from purifying
+and generalising. Everywhere we see beautiful lines, bodies modelled
+with admirable skill, but we never enter into any closer relationship
+with his figures. They do not live our life or breathe our atmosphere;
+they have not our thoughts: they are foreign to all that is human. Jean
+Auguste Dominique Ingres, Member of the Institute, Senator, etc., the
+stylist held in honour as a superior being, the high-priest of pure form
+and outline, will in all times command the esteem, and in some respects
+the admiration, of the student of the history of art; the enthusiasm,
+never.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet_.
+
+ INGRES. OEDIPUS AND THE SPHINX.]
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ INGRES. PAGANINI.]
+
+And yet, notwithstanding all this, I am an enthusiastic admirer of
+Ingres. Indeed, it has happened to me, in the collection of engravings
+at the Louvre, to catch myself saying: "Ingres! great, beloved Master! I
+have much to ask your pardon; for you were one of the greatest and most
+refined spirits to whom the century has given birth." For I doubt
+whether any one down to the present time has rightly understood the
+mysterious figure of Ingres, the man who in his youth was enraptured by
+"_l'esprit, la grâce, l'originalité de Vataux et la délicieuse couleur
+de ses tableaux_," and who, at a later time, not because of failing
+powers but deliberately and of set purpose, adopted a calmer system of
+colour tones; of this Classicist _par excellence_, who is counted among
+the greatest artists, in the familiar and graceful style, in the history
+of art.
+
+Ingres is one of the rare masters whom even their opponents are forced
+to admire. In the stern, sculpturesque modelling of his naked figures he
+displays remarkable power. His painting, also, has a curiously intimate
+appeal, due to its cool, metallic harmonies of colour--light blue, rose,
+and pale yellow in particular.
+
+But above all Ingres commands attention by his portraits. From his first
+residence at Rome, that is, from the beginning of the century, he
+painted portraits which imprint themselves on the memory like medals
+struck in metallic sharpness in the style of Mantegna. Here too he is
+unequal, at times cold and commonplace, but usually quite admirable. In
+these paintings, cast as it were in bronze, there is something that
+comes from the fresh original source of all art; they have that vein of
+realism by which the vigorous idealism of Raphael is distinguished from
+the conventional idealism of a professor of historical painting. Here
+one finds real treasures, creations of remarkable vital power, and in
+admirable taste. They show that Ingres, apparently so systematic, had a
+profound love for living nature, and they ensure the immortality of his
+name. His historical pictures are works which compel our esteem, but his
+portraits are splendid creations which can truly stand comparison with
+the great old masters.
+
+So far back as 1806 there appeared in the Salon his likeness of Napoleon
+I, with his bloodless, corpse-like face, enchased with such art that
+Delécluze called it a Gothic medal. The Emperor is seated like a wax
+figure upon the throne, surrounded by the attributes of majesty--stiff,
+motionless as a Byzantine idol. It was followed in 1807 by the portrait
+of Mme. Devauçay, which even to-day impresses the beholder most
+pleasingly, notwithstanding the pedantic style in which it is painted.
+One feels in it fire and youthfulness, the enthusiasm and ardour of a
+new convert, who has for the first time discovered in nature beauties
+other than those he had learnt to see in the Academy. Moreover, he
+possessed a very distinguished and personal taste in drawing. The face
+is of exquisite grace, the eyes tenderly seductive and delicately
+veiled. Ingres is already announced as he was afterwards to be.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ INGRES. MLLE. DE MONTGOLFIER.]
+
+In Holbein's portraits the whole German community of his time has been
+handed down to us; in Van Dyck's, the aristocracy of England under
+Charles I. So also Ingres has depicted for us, with all its failings and
+all its virtues, the middle-class hierarchy of Louis Philippe's reign,
+which felt itself to be the first estate, the summit of the nation, felt
+sure of the morrow, was proud of itself, of its intelligence and energy,
+which pursued with correctness its moral course of life, revered order
+and hated all excess--including that of the colourist. The same spirit
+animated this splendid _bourgeois_ of art. His "Bertin the Elder" is
+justly his most celebrated, enduring work; not the mere painted
+petrifaction of a newspaper potentate, but one of those portraits which
+bring a whole epoch home to the mind. It tells of the triumph of the
+_bourgeoisie_ under the Monarchy of July more fully and clearly than
+does Louis Blanc's _Histoire de Dix Ans_. In the best of humours, with
+the four-square solidity of a knowledge of his own worth, which is full
+of character, this modern newspaper demi-god sits on his chair as on a
+throne, the throne of the _Journal des Débats_, like a _bourgeois_
+Jupiter Tonans, with his hands on his knees.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ INGRES. THE FORESTIER FAMILY.]
+
+But however highly one must estimate the importance of such a work,
+Ingres is nevertheless at his highest, not in his painted likenesses,
+but in his portrait drawings. In the former the hard colouring is still,
+at times, offensive. Almost always the flesh looks like wood, the dress
+like metal, blue robes like steel. His drawings, from which this defect
+is absent, are to be admired without criticism. Ingres lived in his
+youth, at Rome, as a drawer of portraits. For eight _scudi_ he did the
+bust, for twelve the whole figure, raging inwardly the while at being
+kept from "great art" by such journey-work. There is a story told of
+him, that when one day an Englishman knocked at his door and asked,
+"Does the draughtsman who makes the small portraits live here?" he shut
+the door in his face, with the words: "No; he who lives here is a
+painter." To-day these small masterpieces of which he was ashamed sell
+for their weight in gold. In the Paris Exhibition of 1889 there was Mme.
+Chauvin with her Chinese eyes; Mme. Besnard on the terrace of the Pincio
+with her broad hat and her elegant sunshade; Mrs. Henting with her
+innocent smile of an "_honnête femme_"; Mrs. Cavendish, an affected
+young blonde, with her overladen travelling dress and her crazy
+coiffure. Strange, that a man like Ingres should rave so about new
+fashions and pretty toilettes!
+
+In these pieces an artistic eye which was now inexorable, now tender and
+full of fancy, has looked on nature, and, in flowing pencil-strokes, has
+caught with spirit and with the certain touch of direct feeling the real
+fulness of life in what he saw. These drawings, especially the portrait
+of Paganini and "The Forestier Family," show that Father Ingres
+possessed not only a highly cultivated intelligence and an iron strength
+of will, not only the genius of industry, but also a heart, a genuine,
+warm, and fine-feeling heart; that he was in his innermost being by no
+means the cold academician, the stiff doctrinaire he appears in his
+large pictures, and which he became by his opposition to the Romantic
+school. Here we have an enchanter such as the Primitives were and the
+Impressionists are, like Massys and Manet, like Dürer and Degas, like
+all who have looked Nature in the face. And while these drawings, at
+once occasional and austere, place him as a draughtsman on a level with
+the greatest masters in the history of art, they also show him, the
+reactionary, to be at the same time a man of progress, the connecting
+link between the great art of the first half and the familiar art which
+rules over the second half of the nineteenth century.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+JUSTE-MILIEU
+
+
+As is usually the case, the heroes were succeeded by a generation less
+heroic and more practical. In this, art was in keeping with the
+deliberate and tranquil course of the state itself, which had fallen
+back again into the old groove, and with the homely, Philistine
+character assumed in the course of years by the citizen monarchy of the
+tricolour. The _bourgeoisie_ which had effected the Revolution of 1830
+was soon appalled at its own temerity. Even in literature it inclined
+towards a temperate and lukewarm mediocrity. It was astonished to find
+itself admiring Casimir Delavigne. It found in Auber and Scribe its
+ideal of music and comedy, as in Guizot, Duchâtel, Thiers, and Odilon
+Barrot its ideal of politics. The intellectual exaltation which had gone
+before and followed after the Revolution of July had calmed down, and
+that which was to rise out of the Revolution of February was as yet
+latent. The same elder generation which had looked upon Napoleon
+Bonaparte's stony Cæsarian eye, when, like a god of war, unapproachable
+in his power he rode by at the head of his staff, now saw the Roi
+Citoyen, the long-exiled ex-school-master, homely and fond of law and
+order, as every day at the same hour he passed alone on foot and in
+plain clothes through the streets of Paris, the famous umbrella in his
+hand, rewarding each "Vive le Roi!" with a friendly smile and a grateful
+hand-shake. The umbrella became the symbol of this deedless monarchy,
+and the word "Juste-milieu," which Louis Philippe had once employed to
+indicate the course to be followed, became the nickname of all that was
+weak and without energy, lustreless and undignified, in the age. The
+golden mean was triumphant in politics, literature, and painting.
+
+The artists who gave this period its peculiar stamp constitute, as
+compared with the heaven-assaulting generation of 1830, only, as it
+were, a collateral female branch of that elder male line of good
+painting. To reconcile opposite tendencies, to avoid harshness, in
+short, to bring about an artistic compromise between Ingres and
+Delacroix, was the end towards which their efforts were chiefly
+directed.
+
+_Jean Gigoux_, a remarkable artist, has the merit of having given the
+most effective support which Delacroix received in his battle against
+the _beauté suprême_ of the Classical school. When, in the Universal
+Exhibition of 1889 at Paris, his picture of "The Last Moments of
+Leonardo da Vinci," painted in 1835, emerged from the seclusion of a
+provincial museum, its healthy fidelity to nature was the cause of
+general astonishment. The personages indeed wear costly costumes, and
+are surrounded by wealth and magnificence, but they themselves are
+common, ugly human beings. Here there is no trace of idealism, not even
+in the sense of Géricault, who, notwithstanding his love of truth,
+remained faithful to the heroic type. The faces are, with religious
+devotion, painted exactly after nature by a man who evidently loved the
+youthful works of Guercino and had zealously studied Dürer. At the same
+time was exhibited the portrait of the Polish "General Dwernicki,"
+painted in 1833, whom also Gigoux depicts as a man, not as a hero. War
+has made him not lean but fat, and in Gigoux's picture his red nose and
+prominent stomach are reproduced with cruel fidelity to nature. It is a
+declaration of war against every kind of idealism. Even in his religious
+paintings in Saint Germain l'Auxerrois he held fast to this principle,
+and this circumstance gives him a place to himself, apart from all the
+productions of his contemporaries. In a period which, with the solitary
+exception of Delacroix, was still absolutely devoted to the doctrine
+_Exagérer la beauté_, his works are of a healthy, soul-refreshing
+ugliness.
+
+A portion of Delacroix's charm in colour descended to _Eugène Isabey_.
+He is certainly not a great artist, but a delightful, sympathetic
+individuality, a painter who affords one pleasure even at this day. Amid
+the group of Classicists of his time he has the effect of a beautiful
+patch of colour, of a palette on which shades of tender blue, mauve,
+lilac, brilliant green, silver-grey, red faded by sunshine, and
+opalescent mother-of-pearl combine in subtle harmony. His pretty,
+picturesquely costumed ladies are grouped together in luminous gardens,
+sheltered by delicate half-shadows, or ascend and descend the castle
+stairs, letting their long trains sweep behind them, and toying
+gracefully with fan or sunshade; while gallant cavaliers do them homage,
+and with bent head whisper sweet nothings in their ears. The slender
+greyhound plays a special part in these aristocratic comedies; its
+straight lines give a counterpoise to the soft flowing costumes of his
+figures. Isabey is altogether in his element when he has to portray a
+ceremony requiring rich attire. Then he binds together, as it were, a
+bouquet sparkling with colour, shot with the hues of ample damask folds
+and heavy gold-embroidered silk. Now his colouring is _chic_,
+capricious, and coquettish, now it is that of the most delicate faded
+Gobelin tapestry. If he has to paint a sea-view, he rumples the waves
+about like a ball-dress and pranks the ships up in bridal attire. His
+very storms have a festal appearance, like the anger of a beautiful
+woman. One must not look for life in his pictures; they are to the truth
+much what Gounod's _Faust_ is to Goethe's. Watteau is his spiritual
+ancestor; but he is not so full of life and wit as the painter of the
+gallant world of the eighteenth century. He does not depict his
+contemporaries, but the life of a vanished age; yet he has the same
+predilection for scenes of high life, and a studied, mannered
+gracefulness which is often charming and always pleasant to the eye. He
+shares with Delacroix the latter's broad style, freedom from constraint,
+and delight in colour. But where Delacroix is rough and violent, Isabey
+is caressing and insinuating: they are not brothers, but distant
+cousins. And, like Delacroix, he had no imitators; he went on his bright
+and delightful path in solitude, and remained without companions in the
+little gilded house, lit up with fantastic lanterns, which he assigned
+to be the coquettish home of charming beings of both sexes.
+
+[Illustration: ARY SCHEFFER. _L'Art._]
+
+A curious position, half-way between the Romantic and the Classical
+schools, was occupied by _Ary Scheffer_, who was, a generation ago, the
+favourite of the greater part of the aristocracy of Europe, but is now
+known, to the German public at least, only because he is said to have
+painted "with snuff and green soap"--a phrase of Heine's, which,
+however, gives a very false impression of him. A German-Dutchman by
+birth, a Classicist by training, Scheffer in his youth came also in
+contact with the leading spirits of the Romantic school; and these
+various influences, of race, education, and intercourse, are clearly
+reflected in the faces of his figures. His forms are thoroughly classic
+and generalised; only the expression of the face is ideal, while the eye
+is romantic, and, Scheffer's German blood making itself
+felt--sentimental. It was precisely this mid-way position which his
+contemporaries found so much to their liking. They called his painting a
+great art full of style, uniting the sentiment of ideal beauty with a
+captivating power of expression. But history cares but little for these
+men of compromise, and regards this indecision as the chief defect of
+his genius. Scheffer's draughtsmanship is dry and hard, his colouring
+without tenderness or charm. These failings are ill-assorted with the
+attitudes and physiognomy of his figures, which have always an
+affectation of weakness, exhaustion, and moral suffering. He is a
+sentimental Classicist, and his subjects the antithesis of the
+Græco-Roman ideal to which he does homage in his technique. His "Suliote
+Women" was already, in sentiment, form, and colour, only a subdued and
+weakened reminiscence of the "Massacre of Chios." At a later time he
+entirely forsook historical subjects (such as "Gaston de Foix" and
+others), and attached himself with enthusiasm to the Gospels and to the
+works of the poets, especially of one poet. When he had recourse to the
+Bible as a source of inspiration, he selected tender episodes, the
+sadness of which he transmuted into tearfulness. So also, when he
+represented scenes from _Faust_ or _Wilhelm Meister_, he gave to
+Goethe's animated and impassioned characters something melancholy,
+suffering, and contemplative. Heine said of his "Gretchen": "You are no
+doubt Wolfgang Goethe's Gretchen, but you have read all Friedrich
+Schiller." Even before her fall, before she is in love, Marguerite is
+pensive and sad like a fallen angel. Mignon, Francesca da Rimini, and
+St. Monica were also favourite figures for his delicate and
+contemplative spirit. He alone in French art inclines a little, in his
+tearful sentimentality, to the Romantic school of Düsseldorf.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ ARY SCHEFFER. MARGUERITE AT THE WELL.]
+
+_Hippolyte Flandrin_ was the French counterpart of the German Nazarenes.
+He is an example of how Ingres' teaching resulted in stiff
+conventionality. Ingres was a dangerous master to follow. His pupils
+formed round him a small, faithful, and submissive band, swore like
+those of Cornelius by the master's doctrines, and for that very reason
+never attained to any distinctive character of their own. None of them
+possessed Ingres' many-sided talent. His empire, like that of Alexander
+the Great, was divided among his successors, each of whom governed his
+own little realm with greater or less ability. Hippolyte Flandrin
+devoted himself to religious painting, which in his hands for the first
+time regained a greater importance in French art; but he followed much
+more slavishly than Ingres in the paths of the Italian masters of the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This painter, worthy of respect,
+full of conviction, learned and of sterling worth, but colourless and
+cold, who decorated the churches of St. Vincent de Paul and St. Germain
+des Prés, has enriched the history of art by no new gift. An
+indefatigable worker, but endowed with little intellectual power, he
+went no further than to follow out strictly the rules which Ingres
+taught his pupils and had himself acquired from the old masters. After
+Flandrin, as winner of the Prix de Rome in 1831, had become intimately
+acquainted with the art treasures of Italy, he seldom met with any
+difficulty. His cartoons are flowingly and correctly executed with a
+firm hand, like the fair copy of a school essay. Of draughtsmanship he
+knew all that is to be learned; he remembered much, arranged his
+reminiscences, and thought little for himself. He was a miniature copy
+of his master, at once more poorly endowed and more fanatical, a purely
+mathematical genius; his art is a cold geometrical knowledge, the
+adaptation of anatomical studies to conventional forms, an arrangement
+of groups and draperies in strict accordance with celebrated exemplars.
+Had not the primitive Italian masters, the painters of the ancient
+Christian catacombs, the saintly Fra Angelico, and the mosaic artists of
+Ravenna done their work long before him, Flandrin's paintings would
+never have seen the light, any more than those of the Nazarene school.
+In both cases one can assign almost every face and figure to its
+original in the pictures of the Italian masters. Only a certain blond,
+tender, slightly melancholy, modern face of a Christian maiden is
+Flandrin's peculiar property. He transferred these same ascetic and pure
+principles to portrait painting, and thereby acquired for himself a
+large practice as the painter of the _femme honnête_. These women
+conversed with him and blushed in his presence; in his pictures we find
+grace and delicacy, eyes sparkling or meek, tenderness and mocking
+laughter, all translated into a nun-like, unapproachable appearance,
+which under the Second Empire gained the greater approbation among
+ladies, since it was seldom found in real life.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ CHASSERIAU. APOLLO AND DAPHNE.]
+
+Alongside of this Overbeck, endowed with greater artistic powers than
+his German congener, there stands as the French Cornelius _Paul
+Chenavard_, a man who revolved in his fertile brain philosophical
+conceptions deeper almost than those of the German master. He dreamed of
+broad, symbolical, decorative pieces, embracing all time and all space,
+wherein all the cosmogonies of the universe should be united. Like
+Cornelius, he wished to be a Michael Angelo, but he succeeded no better
+than the German. He spent fifteen years in the churches and museums of
+Italy, pencil in hand, accumulating a vast collection of studies, from
+which his great painted history of the world was to be built up. But
+when he went back to Paris his materials from the old masters had grown
+upon him to such an extent that he never recovered his individuality.
+For four years he worked with feverish diligence, and completed eighteen
+cartoons, each six metres in height and four in breadth, intended for
+the walls of the Pantheon. So far as colour is concerned, they have
+attained no greater success than the Campo Santo frescoes of Cornelius.
+Chenavard could draw much better than the German, but was not much
+better as a painter; the works of both have a literary rather than an
+artistic value.
+
+Brief and brilliant was the career of _Théodore Chassériau_, who shot
+across the heavens of art like a gleaming meteor, first as a devotee of
+form, in Ingres' sense of the word, and afterwards, like Delacroix, as
+an enthusiastic lover of sunshine and the clear light of Africa. Born in
+1819 at St. Domingo, he followed his teacher Ingres in 1834 to the Villa
+Medici; but even in his first picture, the "Susanna" of 1839, now in the
+Louvre, he proved himself by no means an orthodox pupil. "He has not the
+least understanding for the ideas or the changes which have entered into
+art in our time, and knows absolutely nothing of the poets of recent
+days. He will live on as a reminiscence and a reproduction of certain
+ages in the art of the past, without having created anything to hand
+down to the future. My wishes and my ideas do not in the least
+correspond with his." In these words Chassériau has himself pointed out
+what it was that distinguished him from Ingres. Unfortunately he
+produced but little. Personally a very elegant, _blasé_ gentleman, he
+plunged on his return from Italy into the whirlpool of Parisian life. He
+was remarkably ugly; but his black, piercing eyes made him the idol of
+the ladies, and he hurried through life with such haste that he broke
+down altogether at the age of thirty-six. Beyond various decorative
+paintings for the church of Saint Méry and for the Salle des Comptes in
+the Palais d'Orsay, only a few Eastern pictures, and, best and most
+characteristic, a couple of lithographs, remain to represent his work.
+In these delicate mythological compositions a chord is struck which
+found no echo until, a generation later, it was heard again in the work
+of the French New Idealists and the English Pre-Raphaelites: there
+speaks in them a Romantic Hellenism, a something dreamily mystic, which
+makes him a remarkable link between Delacroix and the most refined
+spirit in the modern school, Gustave Moreau. It was purely an act of
+gratitude in Moreau when he affixed the dedication "To Théodore
+Chassériau" to his fine picture of "The Young Man and Death."
+
+_Léon Benouville_ will be remembered only for his picture of the "Death
+of St. Francis," in the Louvre, a good piece of work in the manner of
+the Quattrocento. _Léon Cogniet_ deserves to be mentioned because in the
+fifties he brought together in his studio so many foreign pupils,
+especially Germans. He enjoyed above all others the reputation of being
+able to initiate beginners both quickly and with certainty into the
+peculiar mysteries of craftsmanship. All that a master can teach, and
+that can be learned from his example, was to be obtained from this kind
+and fatherly instructor. Even after he had long given up painting, his
+grateful pupils used to meet together yearly at a banquet given in the
+patriarch's honour. As an artist he belongs to the list of the great men
+who have paid for overpraise in their lifetime by oblivion after their
+death. His "Massacre of the Innocents" of 1824--a woman who, mad with
+terror, thinks to hide herself and her child from the assassins of
+Bethlehem under an open stairway--could give pleasure only in a time
+which hailed with enthusiasm Ary Scheffer's heads resembling plaster
+busts full of expression. Occasionally, too, he painted landscapes--the
+chimerical, vague creations of a man who had lived but little in the
+open air. His finest picture, "Tintoretto Painting his Dead Daughter by
+Lamplight," of 1843, the engravings of which once enraptured France and
+Germany, has to-day a somewhat insipid effect, and shows whither his
+genius was leading him--in technique a coarser Schalcken, in sentiment a
+weaker Delaroche.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+ COGNIET. TINTORETTO PAINTING HIS DEAD DAUGHTER.]
+
+Delaroche was the Titian of Louis Philippe's age, the spoiled child of
+the Juste-milieu, one of the most insignificant and at the same time one
+of the most famous painters of the century; and in this double capacity
+is an interesting proof that in art the "Vox populi" is seldom the "Vox
+Dei." What a difference between him and the great spirits of the
+Romantic school! They were enthusiastic poets; their predilection for
+Mediævalism was concerned only with its æsthetic charm, with the
+twilight shadows of its picturesque churches, the sounding presage of
+its bells, the motley processions of that world gleaming bright with
+uninterrupted colour. And what further allured their imaginative powers
+was the unruly character of certain epochs, the destructive war of wild
+factions, and the blazing, consuming power of passion. The historical
+motive, as such, was with them only a pretext for launching forth into
+flashing orgies of colour, according to the example, which they followed
+merely in externals, of the Venetian and Flemish masters. They knew, as
+genuine painters, that only in the pigment on their palette slumbers
+that power of exciting emotion by means of which the art of painting
+touches the chords of men's souls. Enthusiasts of colour and of passion,
+they raved about the poets merely because the latter more readily
+enabled them, by means of the fierce vehemence of the awakened powers of
+nature, to invest with form the feverish, agitated, and terrible dreams
+of their fantasy. So it was that Delacroix told of conflagration, of
+battle and warfare, of murder and pillage, of the bitterness and pains
+of love. At the same time, no doubt, he studied the vari-coloured
+costumes of past ages--his drawings show as much--but he made use of
+them simply as a storehouse of bright hues, as a lexicon by means of
+which he might embody his visions of colour. To manufacture historical
+vignettes and play the part of a teacher of history would have been in
+his eyes a thing to be held in contempt as the work of subservient
+illustrators. Yet perhaps it was by taking this very course that far
+greater successes were to be attained, so far as the verdict of the
+multitude is considered.
+
+The decade following upon 1820 was a season of brilliant blossom for the
+art of writing history in France. By his _History of the English
+Revolution_, in 1826, Guizot won for himself a place in the foremost
+rank of French authors. He began in 1829 his famous lectures at the
+Sorbonne, and commenced in 1832 the publication of his _Sources of
+French History_. Even before him, Augustin Thierry had written in 1825
+his _History of the Conquest of England by the Normans_, followed by
+_Stories from the Merovingian Times_, and was now engaged in the
+preparation of his great work, the _History of the Origin and Progress
+of the Third Estate_. Not unworthy to be compared with these writers,
+and soon to stand beside them, were two young men working in
+collaboration--Mignet and Thiers--who came to the front in 1823-24 with
+their _History of the Revolution_. At the impulse thus given, historical
+societies and unions had arisen in every province of France, and were
+developing an ever-increasing activity.
+
+What learning had begun, poetry carried further. A number of writers,
+young and old, began to consider what poetic use might be made of the
+materials which these investigations had brought to light, and few years
+had passed before the number of historical romances and dramas was
+hardly to be computed. Vitet, the elder Dumas, and de Vigny put
+historical tragedy in the place of classical, and the modern novel of
+George Sand, Balzac, and Beyle was ousted by the historical romance.
+During the same years was completed the process by which grand opera
+forsook fantastic for historical subjects, such as Auber's _Muette de
+Portici_ and Rossini's _Guillaume Tell_.
+
+[Illustration: COGNIET. THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS.]
+
+Art also sought to turn to account the new materials furnished by
+historical science, and æsthetic minds hastened to enumerate the
+advantages which were to be expected of it. On the one hand--and this
+was nothing new--the artist, whose curse it was to be born in an
+inactive and colourless age, would find here all that he sought, for
+history offered him the contemplation of a magnificent life, full of
+movement. On the other hand--and this was the chief point--painting
+might also fulfil an important mission on behalf of culture, if by
+virtue of its more easily understood method it could supplement the
+science of history, and by recalling the great memories of the past keep
+alive that patriotism which in unfavourable conjunctures is so
+frequently found wanting. Guizot recommended French history, "the
+history of chivalry," to painters, as the first and most important
+source of inspiration. "We want historians in the art of painting,"
+wrote Vitet; and his cry was not unheard.
+
+While the Romanticists had seen in the old costumes nothing more than
+elements out of which a dashing colour-symphony could be obtained,
+troubling themselves little about the meaning or the narrative import of
+their pictures, their successors went over, bag and baggage, into the
+camp of the historians. In the place of pure painting, there arose an
+art laden with scientific documents, which busied itself in
+reconstructing former times with antiquarian exactness. While the former
+had produced nought but genuinely artistic colour-improvisations, so now
+a didactic aim, together with historical accuracy, became the main
+consideration. The painter was commissioned as a chronicler, an official
+of the state, to console citizens for the lamentable present by an
+appeal to the glorious past. He became a professor of history, a
+theatrical costumier who rummaged records, chose masks, cut out dresses,
+arranged scenic backgrounds, for no other purpose than to depict
+correctly and legibly on the canvas an historical event. And Mme. Tout
+le Monde found in these pictures exactly what she required. On the one
+hand, the didactic aim of historical painting, with its long
+explanations in the catalogues, answered precisely to the needs of the
+educated middle classes. Under the picture there was always a pretty
+card on which was printed this or that quotation from some historical
+writer. One read the description, and then satisfied one's self that
+the corresponding picture was really there and that it was in keeping
+with the description. One recalled to mind the lessons in history one
+had learned at school, and was pleased to be reminded in so pleasant a
+fashion that before the nineteenth century people did not wear trousers
+and frock-coats, but knitted hose and mantles. On the other hand, there
+still survived enough of the Romantic unruliness to allow one to be
+shocked in a decorous and moderate manner, and with the help of the
+catalogue a picture might be permitted to make one's flesh creep in an
+agreeable way.
+
+For the average painter of mediocre ability historical exercises of this
+sort must also have been very alluring, inasmuch as they made no demand
+upon specially artistic qualities--upon any peculiar aptitude of the
+fancy, eye, or palette. The historian must indeed possess the power of
+combination, but much more that of sober investigation; too much
+imagination or too great a sense of humour would be dangerous to him. So
+also the historical painter required neither fancy, sentiment, nor power
+of perception; a certain capacity for compiling facts was all that was
+necessary. It was enough to ferret out of some popular book on history
+the story of a murder, and to possess a work upon costumes. By such
+means, men of a certain ability could easily manage, with the help of
+the studio technique founded by the Romantic school, to put together the
+most imposing show-pieces. And even the critics allowed themselves
+frequently to be so far misled as to give to those models who were
+decked out in the finest costumes, and labelled with the names of the
+most celebrated personages, precedence over their more modest
+companions. Consequently it happened that in the time of the citizen
+monarchy a great number of painters entirely devoid of talent, whose
+only merit was that they attached to this or that chapter of universal
+history pictures showing some laboured animation, became in the
+twinkling of an eye leaders of the schools.
+
+[Illustration: PAUL DELAROCHE. _L'Art._
+
+ "Paul Delaroche à la funèbre mine
+ S'entour avec plaisir de cadavres et d'os
+ Jane Grey, Mazarin, héros et héroine
+ Chez lui tout meurt ... excepté ces tableaux."]
+
+_Eugène Devéria_ was the first and most important painter deliberately
+to enter upon this course. When his picture of the "Birth of Henry IV"
+was exhibited in the Salon of 1827 his appearance was welcomed as that
+of a new Veronese, and his work joyfully saluted as the first historical
+picture in which the local colour of the epoch represented was
+accurately observed. Henceforth Devéria dressed always in the style of
+Rubens, and his house became the headquarters of the Romantic school. He
+was perhaps the only member of this group in whom some breath of
+Delacroix's spirit survived, but unfortunately he never found again
+either the Venetian tone or the male accent of his youth, and though he
+painted many more pictures he never contributed a second notable work to
+art.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ DELAROCHE. THE ASSASSINATION OF THE DUKE OF GUISE.]
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ DELAROCHE. THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER.]
+
+Shortly afterwards _Camille Roqueplan_ began to alter his manner. Up to
+that time he had been exclusively a painter who, like Watteau and
+Terborg, listened with a voluptuous shudder to the piquant rustle of
+silk, velvet, and satin dresses; now he devoted himself to depicting
+with perspicuity various scenes from history, renounced his airy and
+radiant fantasies, and became, in his "Scene from the Massacre of St.
+Bartholomew," nothing but a tedious schoolmaster.
+
+_Nicolaus Robert Fleury_, the painter of "Charles V in the Monastery of
+St. Just," of the "Massacre of St. Bartholomew," of the "Religious
+Conference at Poissy," and of other historical anecdotes, carefully
+conceived and laboriously executed, devoted himself, like Lessing, to
+the propagation of noble ideas. His pictures were manifestoes against
+religious fanaticism, and philanthropic discussions concerning the
+trials and persecutions of the freethinkers. In order to give them the
+stamp of historical verisimilitude, he buried himself with the zeal of
+an archivist in the study of the period to be represented; often
+directly transferred into his pictures figures from Diepenbeeck or
+Theodor van Thulden; and having the faculty of seizing in old paintings
+those tones of colour which belong rather to the epoch than the master,
+he succeeded in giving his works a certain documentary and archaic
+character for which, on his first appearance, he obtained ample credit.
+
+_Louis Boulanger_, after his "Mazeppa" of 1827, was a famous painter.
+But the highest success was that attained by Paul Delaroche, inasmuch as
+he understood better than any other, not only how to cater for the
+cultured public by the didactic nature and historical accuracy of his
+pictures, but also how to touch the heart by means of a lachrymose
+sentimentality.
+
+_Paul Delaroche_ belongs, by the date of his birth, to the eighteenth
+century. Being one of Gros' pupils, he had never borne the yoke of the
+Classical school in its fullest weight, and therefore had never had
+occasion to revolt against it. When the Romanticists came to the front,
+he had gone or rather been dragged along with them, for to his
+circumspect nature Romanticism was an abomination, and his cool and
+deliberative spirit felt itself much more at home in the society of the
+Classicists. The works of the historians opened to him a welcome outlet
+by which to avoid a rupture with either party, and Delaroche found his
+vocation. He assumed the rôle of a peacemaker between the quarrelling
+brothers, placed himself as mediator between Montagues and Capulets, and
+thus became--like Casimir Delavigne in literature--the head of that
+"School of Common Sense" on whose banner glittered in golden letters
+Louis Philippe's motto of the Juste-milieu. Ingres was cold, reserved,
+and colourless; Delaroche aspired to an agreeable, sparkling, highly
+seasoned, bituminous art of painting. Delacroix was genial and sketchy;
+Delaroche inscribed carefulness and exactness on his banner. The former
+had given offence by his boldness; Delaroche won the conservatives over
+to himself by his well-bred bearing and moderate attitude. People
+thought Delacroix too wild and poetical; Delaroche took care to give
+them only a touch of the eagerness of Romanticism, and set himself to
+reduce the passionate vehemence of Delacroix to rational, Philistine
+limits, and to soften down his native unruliness into sentimental
+pathos. This position which he assumed as a mediator made him the man of
+his age. The life of Delacroix was a long struggle. But for the
+commissions entrusted to him by the state he might have died of
+starvation, for his sales to dealers and lovers of art brought him
+scarcely five hundred francs a year. His studio held many pictures,
+leaning mournfully against each other in corners. Delaroche, on the
+other hand, was overwhelmed with praise and commissions. The
+representatives of eclecticism in philosophy and of the Juste-milieu in
+politics found themselves compelled to praise an artist who was neither
+revolutionary nor reactionist, neither Romantic nor Classical, who had
+bound himself over neither to draughtsmanship nor to colouring, but
+united both elements in vulgar moderation.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ DELAROCHE. STRAFFORD ON HIS WAY TO EXECUTION.]
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS COUTURE. _L'Art._]
+
+Already in his first notable works, in 1831, "The Princes in the Tower"
+and "Oliver Cromwell," he has fully assumed his lukewarm manner. He
+might have represented the murder of the princes, but fearing that the
+public would not stand it, he preferred merely to suggest the
+approaching death of the weeping and terrified children by placing in
+front of the bed a small dog, which is looking uneasily towards the
+door, where the red light of torches indicates the approach of the
+assassins,--a Düsseldorf picture with improved technique. It is just the
+same with his melodramatic and lachrymose "Cromwell." It would be hardly
+possible to represent one of the greatest figures in universal history
+in a more paltry manner, and to this day it is not quite certain whether
+the picture was intended to be serious or humorous. The great statesman
+in whom was embodied the political and ecclesiastical revolution of
+England must have been extremely busy on the day of Charles I's funeral,
+and have had better things to do than stealthily to open the coffin and
+contemplate, with a mixture of childish curiosity and sentimental pity,
+the corpse of the king whom he had fought and conquered. Eugène
+Delacroix had treated this subject in a sketch, in which Cromwell, at
+the funeral of Charles, gazes in quiet contempt upon the weak monarch
+who had not known how to keep either his crown or his head. As a work of
+art this little water-colour is worth ten times as much as Delaroche's
+great, long-meditated, carefully executed painting. From the very
+beginning he had no sense for the passionate or dramatic. From the first
+day, had the tailor who prepared costumes struck work, his artistic
+greatness would have fallen away to nothing; from the commencement he
+produced nothing but large, clumsily conceived illustrations for
+historical novels. Planché pointed out long ago that all the costumes
+are glaringly new, that all the victims look as if they had got
+themselves up for a masked ball, that this sort of painting is much too
+clean and pretty to give the argument the appearance of probability.
+Théophile Gautier, who had proclaimed the powerful originality of
+Delacroix, fumed with rage against these "saliva-polished
+representations, this art for the half-educated, disguised in false,
+Philistine realism, this art of historical illustration for the familiar
+use of the _bourgeois_." To rank timorous, half-hearted talent higher
+than reckless and awe-inspiring genius--this was in Gautier's eyes the
+sin against the Holy Ghost, and he sprang like a tiger upon the
+popularity of talents such as these. He could, as he himself said, have
+swallowed Delaroche, skin, hair, and all, without remorse; meanwhile,
+the public raised him upon the shield as its declared favourite.
+
+He won the intellectual middle class over to himself with a rush, as he
+industriously went on rummaging in manuals of French and English history
+for royal murders and battle-deaths of kings. With his "Richelieu,"
+"Mazarin," and "Strafford," but especially with his "Execution of Lady
+Jane Grey" and "Murder of the Duke of Guise in the Castle of Blois," he
+made hits such as no other French artist of his time could put to his
+account. Just then, in his youthful work, _The States-General at Blois_,
+Ludovic Vitet had put the murder of the Duke of Guise upon the stage.
+Nothing could be better-timed than to transform this operatic scene into
+colour. The historians of civilisation admired the historical accuracy
+of the courtiers' dress, all the upholstery of the room, the lofty
+mantelpiece, the carved wardrobes, the praying-stool with the
+altar-piece over it, the canopy-bed with its curtains of red silk
+embroidered with lilies and the king's initials in gold. Playgoers
+compared the scene with that which they had witnessed on the stage in
+Vitet's piece, and the comparison was not unfavourable to the painter.
+For Delaroche, in order to be as far as possible in keeping with the
+stage representation, was accustomed to commission Jollivet, the chief
+mechanician of the Opera House, to prepare for him small models of
+rooms, in which he then arranged his lay-figures.
+
+That is the further great difference between Delaroche and Delacroix,
+between the vagrant painter of history and the artist. The latter had
+the gift of the inner vision, and only painted things which had
+intellectually laid hold upon him and had assumed firm shape in his
+imagination. It was while the organ was playing the _Dies iræ_ that he
+saw his "Pietà" in a vision--that mighty work which in power of
+expression almost approaches Rembrandt. "Is not Tasso's life most
+interesting?" he writes. "You weep for him, swaying restlessly from side
+to side on your chair, when you read the story of his life; your eyes
+assume a threatening aspect, and you grind your teeth with rage." Such
+passionate emotion was wholly unknown to Delaroche; he painted deeds of
+murder with the wildness of Mieris. Delacroix everywhere grasps what is
+essential, and gives to every scene its poetical or religious character.
+A couple of lines are for him sufficient means wherewith to produce a
+deep impression. In presence of his pictures one does not think of
+costumes; one sees everywhere passion overflowing with love and anger,
+and is intoxicated with the harmony of sentiment and colour. Delaroche,
+like Thierry, had merely a predilection for the historical anecdote
+which, dramatically pointed, keeps the beholder in suspense, or else,
+simply narrated, amuses him. The colour and spirit of events had no
+power over his imagination; he merely apprehended them with a cool
+understanding, and put them laboriously together in keeping with it.
+Delacroix sought counsel from nature; but in the moment of creation, in
+front of the canvas, he could not bear direct contact with it. "The
+influence of the model," he wrote, "lowers the painter's tone; a stupid
+fellow makes you stupid." Delaroche draped his models as was required,
+made them posture and pull faces, and while he was painting, laboriously
+screwed them up to the pathos demanded by the situation. Such a method
+of procedure must necessarily become theatrical.
+
+Just as in his historical pictures he endeavoured to transform
+Delacroix's passion into operatic scenes, so he perfected his position
+as a man of compromise by imitating the academic style in his
+"Hemicycle." Here it was Ingres' laurels which robbed him of his sleep.
+The fame which this picture has acquired is mainly due to Henriquel
+Dupont's fine engraving. It does not attain to any kind of solemn or
+serious effect. One might imagine one's self in some entirely prosaic
+waiting-room, where all the great men of every age have agreed to meet
+together for no matter what ceremonial purpose; one sees there a
+carefully chosen collection of costumes of all epochs, with well-studied
+but expressionless portraits of the leaders of civilisation. Here also
+Delaroche has not risen above respectable mediocrity, and his
+characteristics remain, as ever, thoroughly middle-class.
+
+[Illustration: COUTURE. THE LOVE OF GOLD.]
+
+His likeness of Napoleon is perhaps that which shows most clearly how
+paltry a soul this painter possessed. It is not Devastation in human
+shape, not the man in whom his officers saw the "God of War" and of whom
+Mme. de Staël said, "There is nothing human left in him." The intellect
+of that Corsican, with his great thoughts striding as in seven-leagued
+boots, thoughts each of which would give any single German writer
+material for the rest of his life, was hidden to the inquisitive glance
+of a painter who had never seen in the whole of human history anything
+more than a series of petty episodes. And one who is not able to paint a
+good portrait is not justified in intruding into other regions of art.
+
+For similar reasons the religious paintings with which he busied himself
+in his last days have likewise enriched art with no new element. They
+are a Philistine remodelling of the Biblical drama, in the same style as
+his historical pictures. In the end he appears himself to have become
+conscious how little laborious compilations of this kind have in common
+with art, and since with the best will in the world he could produce
+nothing better than he had painted in the thirties, he lost all pleasure
+in his vocation and abandoned himself to gloom and pessimism, from which
+death set him free in 1856.
+
+_Thomas Couture_, who after Delaroche was most in vogue as a teacher in
+the fifties, was of greater importance as an artist, and in his "Romans
+of the Decadence" produced a work which, from the point of view of the
+Juste-milieu, is worthy of consideration even to-day. He was a
+remarkable man. His parents, shoemakers at Senlis, seem to have regarded
+the thick-headed, slowly developing boy as a kind of idiot, and are said
+to have treated him with no excessive gentleness. He was sent away from
+school because he could not understand the simplest things, and studied
+without success in the studios of Gros and Delaroche. And yet, after he
+had made his début in the Salon of 1843 with the "Troubadour," a fine
+picture in the style of Devéria, his "Orgie Romaine" of 1847 made him at
+one stroke the most celebrated painter in France. Pupils thronged to him
+from every quarter of the globe, and he left a deep and enduring
+impression upon every one of them. A very short, corpulent,
+broad-shouldered, thick-set, proletarian figure, with thick disorderly
+hair, a blouse, a short pipe, and a gruff manner, he used to stride
+through the lines of his pupils, who regarded him with wonder on account
+of his ability as a teacher and his remarkable powers.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ COUTURE. THE ROMANS OF THE DECADENCE.]
+
+Yet, when a few years had elapsed, no one heard of him again. After his
+"Love of Gold" and a couple of portraits, he felt that he was
+unfruitful, and gave up the battle. "The Falconer," an excellent
+picture, with charming qualities of colour, was the last work to give
+any proof of Couture's technical mastery. He fell out with Napoleon, who
+wished to employ him; made many enemies by his writings, especially
+among the followers of Delacroix, whom he criticised beyond measure; and
+finally, embittered, and abandoning all artistic work, he buried himself
+in his country place at Villers de Bel, near Paris. Thither Americans
+and Englishmen used to come to order pictures of him, and were much
+astonished to hear that the old gardener's assistant, as they took him
+to be, sitting on the grass and mending shoes or old kettles, was
+Couture. The news of his death in 1879 caused general astonishment; it
+was as if one long buried had come to life again. It had meanwhile
+become evident that even his "Romans of the Decadence" was only a work
+of compromise, the whole novelty of which consisted in forcing the
+results attained by the Romantic school in colouring into that bed of
+Procrustes, the formulæ of idealism. The work is undoubtedly very
+noble in colouring, but what would not Delacroix have made of such a
+theme! or Rubens, indeed, whose Flemish "Kermesse" hangs not far from it
+in the Louvre. Couture's figures have only "absolute beauty," nothing
+individual; far less do they exhibit the unnerved sensuality of Romans
+of the decline engaged in their orgies. They are merely posing, and find
+their classical postures wearisome. They are not revelling, they do not
+love; they are only busied in filling up the space so as to produce an
+agreeable effect, and in disposing themselves in picturesque groups.
+Even the faces have been vulgarised by idealism: everything is as noble
+as it is without character. There is something of the hermaphrodite in
+Couture's work. His art was male in its subjects, female in its results.
+His "Decadence" was the work of a decadent, a decadent of Classicism.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ COUTURE. THE TROUBADOUR.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Charles Sedelmeyer, the owner of the picture._)]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE POST-ROMANTIC GENERATION
+
+
+Four years after Couture painted his "Roman Orgy," Napoleon III ascended
+the throne, and the Parisian orgy began. It was a remarkable spectacle
+that the capital offered in those days--a spectacle of fairy-like,
+flashing and sparkling splendour. Even to-day, when Republican Paris
+endeavours as much as possible to obliterate every memory of the Empire,
+Napoleon's spirit lives in the external appearance of the city and
+hovers over every conspicuous point. Augustus might say that he had
+found his capital a city of plaster and lime, and left it one of stone
+and bronze; Napoleon has the right to maintain that he raised palaces
+where there had been barracks.
+
+Notwithstanding all the imprecations uttered against his rule, the most
+thorough-going Republicans reluctantly concede to him the possession of
+one good quality: he knew how to bring prosperity to the shop; "_il
+faisait marcher le commerce_." One hears it said that the beautiful city
+on the Seine is but the shadow of what it then was. "_Le niveau a
+baissé!_" says the Parisian, when he calls to mind the gorgeous days of
+the Empire. The extravagant elegance, the magnificent luxury, which used
+to roll in superb carriages along the Boulevards and the Champs Elysées
+towards the Bois de Boulogne, and exhibited itself in the evening in the
+boxes of the theatres; the lustre which emanated from the Court, and the
+concourse of all the nabobs of the world,--all this must in those days
+have given to Parisian life a sparkling splendour, a something
+stupefying and intoxicating, an alacrity of enjoyment which had no
+parallel elsewhere. To the respectable, pedantic _bourgeoisie_ which
+ruled under Louis Philippe had succeeded a new generation of men of the
+world, which drank to the lees all the refined pleasures that a modern
+great city has to offer. The gentlefolk of the Empire understood the art
+of living better, cultivated and exhausted it after a more inventive
+fashion, than any generation that had gone before. In the Tuileries sat
+the man of the Second of December, the connoisseur and promoter of all
+refined tastes. In his person the age was embodied, that age depicted by
+Zola in _La Curée_, in the passage where he describes the halls,
+illumined as if by enchantment, of the imperial palace. There, all the
+splendour of over-civilisation glitters and gleams, with its bright eyes
+and sparkling jewels, with its breath of intoxicating perfumes floating
+from naked shoulders and arms and half-veiled voluptuous bosoms; while
+the green, sphinx-like eye of Napoleon III rests indifferently on the
+alabaster sea of white shoulders bowing before him, as he reviews all
+that he has possessed and all that he can yet enjoy. Dumas' _Dame aux
+Camélias_, _Diane de Lys_ and _Le Demi-monde_, Barrière's _Filles de
+Marbre_, Augier's _Mariage d'Olympe_, give the impress of the period
+upon literature, and the single phrase "The Lady of the Camelias"
+conjures up a world of forms and of scenery. _La Nouvelle Babylone_ is
+the title of the fine book in which Joseph Pelletan depicted the
+mysterious Paris of those years, the great city which cherished in its
+bosom the lowest and highest extremes of a refined world of pleasure,
+and was at the same time an inexhaustible fountain of arduous work.
+
+One would have imagined that these new conditions of Imperial France
+would have left their impress, in some way or other, upon the art of
+painting also; just as in the works of Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Jan Steen,
+Terborg, Ostade, Pieter de Hooch, and Van der Meer of Delft the entire
+seventeenth century is reflected, clearly and with animation, treated
+with charming familiarity or else with grandiose effect, in its spirit,
+its manner of feeling, its habits and costumes. What a domain painting
+would have had; from the official festivals and the bustle of public
+life down to the complete delineation of the family home! Literature had
+entered into this course a quarter of a century before, and had shown
+the path--a path leading to new worlds. But in French art French society
+is not reflected. Not a single painter has left us a picture of this
+splendid Paris, dancing on a volcano and yet so amiably delightful.
+Classicism and historical painting still held the field, as if turned to
+stone, and show, in essentials, hardly any modification.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ ALEXANDRE CABANEL.]
+
+So far back as in 1833, Charles Lenormant wrote of the school of David:
+"Even the great painter Ingres was not able to rejuvenate a school which
+was breaking up from old age, or to restore their full resonance to the
+slackened and worn-out chords; his only office was to give the old
+synagogue honourable burial. Take away this last scion of the Classical
+school, and the curtain may fall--the farce is ended." He might have
+said the same thing forty years later, for with Cabanel and Bouguereau
+Classicism has limped on, almost unchanged, to our own days. Its art was
+a correct, conventional picture-stencilling, which might just as well
+have flourished a generation earlier. Classicism--which in David was
+hard and Spartan, in Ingres cold and correct--has become pretty in
+Cabanel and Bouguereau, and is completely dissolved in the scent of
+roses and violets. Only a certain perfume of the _demi-monde_ brings the
+persons who appear as Venus, as naiads, as Aurora or Diana, into
+complete accord with the epoch which produced them. For Ingres the
+female body itself was the exclusive canon of beautiful form; now the
+swelling limbs begin to stretch themselves voluptuously forth. Ingres
+still treats the human eye as it was treated in ancient sculpture, as
+something animal, soulless, and dead; now it begins to twinkle
+provocatively. A modern refined taste plays round the classical scheme.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ CABANEL. THE SHULAMITE.]
+
+[Illustration: BOUGUEREAU. BROTHERLY LOVE.]
+
+_Alexandre Cabanel_, the incarnation of the academician, was, under
+Napoleon III, the head of the École des Beaux Arts. He was a fortunate
+man. Born at Montpellier, the city of professors, nourished from his
+earliest youth on academic milk, winner of the Grand Prix de Rome in
+1845, awarded the first medal at the Universal Exhibition of 1855, he
+went on his way, laden with orders and offices, amid the tumultuous
+applause of the public. Among the artists of the nineteenth century none
+attained in so high a degree all those honours which lie open to a
+painter in our days. Yet, as an artist, he remained all his life on the
+plane of the school of Ingres. Even his "Death of Moses," the first
+picture which he sent from Rome to the Salon, was entirely pieced
+together out of Raphael and Michael Angelo. After that he laid himself
+out to provide England and America with those women, more or less fully
+attired, who bore sometimes biblical, sometimes literary names: Delilah,
+the Shulamite woman, Jephthah's daughter, Ruth, Tamar, Flora, Echo,
+Psyche, Hero, Lucretia, Cleopatra, Penelope, Phædra, Desdemona,
+Fiammetta, Francesca da Rimini, Pia dei Tolomei--an endless procession.
+But the only variety in this poetical seraglio lay in the inscriptions
+on the labels; the way in which the figures were represented was always
+the same. His works are pictures blamelessly drawn, moderately well
+painted, which leave one cold and untouched at heart. They possess that
+unusual polish and that dexterity of exposition which, like good manners
+in society, create a favourable impression, but are insufficient in
+themselves to make a man a pleasant companion. Nowhere is there anything
+that takes hold upon the soul, nowhere any touch to prove that the
+artist has felt anything in his painting, or force the beholder to feel
+for himself. The unvarying faces of his figures, with their eternal
+dark-rimmed eyes, resemble not living human beings but painted plaster
+casts. One would take his "Cleopatra," apathetically observing the
+operation of the poison, to be stuffed, like the panther at her feet.
+One seeks in vain for a figure that is sincere or interesting, for a
+face alluring in its truth to nature. His "Venus" of 1862 made him the
+favourite painter of the Tuileries, and the insipid, rosy tints of that
+picture became more and more feeble in the course of years, until his
+works resembled wearisome cartoons, coloured by no matter what process.
+He was Picot's pupil, it is true, but in reality Ingres was his
+grandfather, a grandfather far, far greater than himself, whose
+portraits alone show the entire littleness of Cabanel. All his life long
+Ingres was in his portraits a fresh, animated, and admirable realist.
+Cabanel indeed also painted in his earliest days likenesses of ladies
+which were full of serious grace, uniting a powerful fidelity to nature
+with considerable elegance. But his success was fatal to him. Moreover,
+as a portrait-painter, he became the depicter of society, and society
+ruined him. In order to please his distinguished customers, he devoted
+himself far more than is good for portrait-painting to smooth rosy
+flesh, large glassy eyes, and dainty fine hands, and over-idealised his
+sitters till they lost every appearance of life.
+
+[Illustration: LEFÉBURE. TRUTH.
+
+ (_By permission of Messrs. Goupil, the owners of the copyright._)]
+
+_William Bouguereau_, who industriously learnt all that can be
+assimilated by a man destitute of artistic feeling but possessing a
+cultured taste, reveals even more clearly, in his feeble mawkishness,
+the fatal decline of the old schools of convention. He has been compared
+to Octave Feuillet, who also never extricated himself from the scented
+atmosphere of distinguished society; but the comparison is unjust to
+Feuillet. Bouguereau is in his Madonna-painting a perfumed Ary Scheffer,
+in his Venus-pictures a greater Hamon; and in his perfectly finished and
+faultless stencilling style of beauty he became from year to year more
+and more insupportable. His art is a kind of painting on porcelain on a
+large scale, and he gives to his Madonnas and his nymphs the same smooth
+rosy tints, the same unreal universalised forms, until at last they
+become a _juste-milieu_ between Raphael's "Galatea" and the wax models
+one sees in hairdressers' shops. Only in one sense can his religious
+painting be called modern; it is an elegant lie, like the whole of the
+Second Empire.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ HENNER. SUSANNA AND THE ELDERS.]
+
+Close by Bouguereau's "Venus" in the Luxembourg hangs the well-known
+colossal figure of a beautiful nude woman with unnaturally
+over-developed thighs, which by the shining mirror in its uplifted right
+hand proclaims itself to be "Truth." _Jules Lefébure_, the painter of
+this picture, is also completely a slave to tradition; he came from
+Cogniet's studio, and won the Prix de Rome in 1861. But he at least
+possesses more taste, elegance, and character; his painting of the nude
+is more distinguished, truer, and more powerful. He is in the broader
+sense of the word a worshipper of nature, and was so in his youth
+especially. His "Sleeping Girl" of 1865 and his "Femme couchée" of 1868
+are smooth and honest studies from the nude, of delicate, sure
+draughtsmanship, and have therefore not become antiquated even to-day.
+Unfortunately he did not find this masculine accent again, when at a
+later time he grouped ideal figures together to make pictures of them.
+His "Diana surprised" of 1879 was a very clever composition of
+well-ordered lines, possessing even fine details, especially one or two
+charming heads, but as a whole it is lifeless and uninteresting. Like
+Bouguereau, he lacks power, and, notwithstanding his distinction and his
+capacity for arrangement, he is not painter enough to be truthfully
+entitled a "painter of the nude."
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ HENNER. THE SLEEPER.]
+
+In general, French art, however willingly it took to this sphere during
+the period we are considering, is rich indeed in well-drawn documents,
+but poor in works which, considered as painting, can bear the most
+distant comparison with Fragonard and Boucher. The Revolution had put an
+end to the joyous flesh-painting of French art. At the close of the
+eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century the painter of
+tender and life-like flesh-colour was not the reformer David, but the
+despised Prudhon. The former found his ideal in statues, and turned
+flesh to stone. The latter, a direct descendant of Correggio, gave
+expression to life with a tender mellowness. Ingres was again, like
+David, a very mediocre flesh-painter, and the Romanticists entered this
+sphere but seldom. Delacroix indeed has in his "Massacre" a couple of
+excellent touches, but they are isolated phenomena in his work. After
+1850 the approved system was to give nude female figures the appearance
+of being made of terra-cotta, biscuit, or ivory. The forgotten art of
+painting velvety, soft flesh, and of making it vibrate in light, had to
+be learned over again, and to this meritorious task _Henner_ devoted
+himself--the modern Correggio from Alsace, who stands to Cabanel in the
+same relation as Prudhon to David. Even Henner in his later days has
+become very much a mannerist, and has done some very bad work. To-day he
+prefers a heavy, pasty, buttery style of painting, with faces which look
+as if they had been pickled in oil, and have an unreal expression; his
+contrasts of light and shade, once so delicate, have become raw and
+forced. Yet beside Cabanel he still appears the true poet of female
+flesh-painting, the dreamy graceful depicter of refined sensuality.
+Prudhon's delicate ideal and his language of vibrating tenderness are
+revived in Henner. His "Nymph resting" in the Luxembourg has the same
+soft _morbidezza_, the same delightful mystery, in which Prudhon before
+him had enveloped the sweetness of smiling faces and the beauty of
+female forms. He too chose the Lombards as his guides. After winning the
+Prix de Rome in 1858, he sent to the Salon of 1865 a "Susanna," which
+already shows his ability as a flesh-painter and his relationship to
+Correggio. And a Lombard he has remained all his life. One could with
+difficulty find a more delicate and smooth study of the nude than his
+"Biblis" of 1867.
+
+[Illustration: PAUL BAUDRY.]
+
+Since that time another tendency highly characteristic of Henner has
+shown itself in his work. In his endeavour to render the tint and tender
+softness of flesh as delicately as possible, he sought at the same time
+for light which should intensify the clear tone of the nude body. These
+he found in that time of evening, which one might call Henner's hour,
+when the landscape, overshadowed by the twilight, gradually loses
+colour, and only a small blue space in the sky or a silent forest-lake
+still for a moment preserves the reflection of vanishing daylight. In
+this tranquil harmony of nature after sunset, the white pallor of the
+human body seems to have absorbed all the daylight and to be giving it
+forth again, while the surrounding landscape is already merging into
+colourless shadow. This is Henner's "second manner," and he raised it
+into a system. Every year since then there has appeared in the Salon one
+of those pale nymphs, standing out so mistily against the dark green of
+an evening landscape, or one of those Virgilian eclogues, in which the
+gloaming rests caressingly upon nude white bodies. And by this method of
+painting flesh and of throwing light upon it, Henner has won for himself
+an important place in modern art.
+
+_Paul Baudry_, the powerful decorator of the Grand Opera House at Paris,
+marks the close of this tendency. In his work the endeavours of all
+those talented artists who sought to found a new school of "ideal
+painting" upon the basis of the study of the Italian Classicists came to
+a crowning height; and at the same time Baudry took a further step
+onward, in that he vivified the classical scheme with a yet more marked
+cast of "modernity."
+
+His first picture, on the murder of Marat, was feeble. What David had
+executed smoothly and forcibly in his dead "Marat," Baudry spoiled in
+his "Charlotte Corday." The bath, the night-table with the inkstand on
+it, the map on the wall, and all the fittings of the room, are painted
+with the greatest finish, but the young heroine in her petrified
+idealism has no more life in her than there is in the furniture.
+
+His "Pearl and Wave," which is hung in the Luxembourg close to Cabanel's
+and Bouguereau's "Birth of Venus," gave proof of progress. A deep-blue
+wave, towering on high and crowned with foam, has washed a charming
+woman ashore like a costly pearl. She seems to have just awakened out of
+slumber, and her roguish, moistly gleaming eyes are smiling. Saucily she
+leans forward her fair-haired head under her bended arms, and stretches
+out in easy motion her youthfully slender yet fully proportioned body.
+Bouguereau's and even Cabanel's female beauties are waxen and spoiled by
+retouching, but Baudry's Cypris is a living being, and preserves some of
+the individual charm of the model.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ BAUDRY. CHARLOTTE CORDAY.]
+
+It is this breath of realism which gives their attractiveness to
+Baudry's pictures in the Paris Opera House. He cannot indeed be ranked
+as a truly great master of decorative painting, as the Fragonard of the
+nineteenth century; he was too eclectic. The five years, from 1851 to
+1856, which as winner of the Prix de Rome he spent in the Villa Medici,
+were the happiest of his life. He saw in the Italian galleries neither
+Holbein nor Velasquez, neither Rembrandt nor Botticelli nor Caravaggio.
+He saw nothing and revered nothing save the pure tradition of the
+Cinquecento, which was to him the Alpha and Omega of art. He dreamed of
+great decorative works which should place him on an equality with those
+old masters. It was therefore joyful news to him when, at the suggestion
+of his old comrade Charles Garnier, he was commissioned to adorn the
+Opera House. Baudry was then thirty-five years old, in possession of
+his full powers, and yet he thought it necessary to go back to Italy to
+interrogate the masters of the Renaissance anew. For a full year he
+worked ten hours daily in the Sistine Chapel. As soon as he knew Michael
+Angelo by heart, he betook himself to England to copy Raphael's
+cartoons, and then in 1870 for the third time to Italy, before he felt
+himself capable of covering the five hundred square metres of canvas.
+The task took him four years, and when it was exhibited at the Palais
+des Beaux-Arts in 1874, prior to being placed in its final
+resting-place, there was general astonishment at a single man's power to
+produce so much and such great work.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ BAUDRY. TRUTH.]
+
+To-day his praise cannot be sounded so high. The place to which he
+aspired, by the side of the great masters of the Renaissance, will not
+fall to Baudry's lot; he is hardly to be reckoned even among the great
+French masters of the nineteenth century. To rise even so far he lacked
+the first and most essential gift--originality. He was a model pupil in
+his youth, and a pupil he remained all his life. He always saw nature
+through the medium of art, and never had the courage to take a fresh
+breath and plunge into its fountain of youth. Between him and reality
+there was ever the prism of the old pictures that he loved; brush in
+hand, he devoted himself, turn by turn, and with equal enthusiasm, to
+Michael Angelo, Titian, Correggio, Bronzino, and even Ingres. As soon as
+he returned from Italy for the first time, as holder of the Prix de
+Rome, he exhibited several pictures which were altogether Titian in
+colouring, altogether Raphael in style. Each of them, even the most
+important, calls some other painting to one's mind. His "Fortune and the
+Child" is a variation upon Titian's "Divine and Earthly Love"; his
+"Death of a Vestal Virgin" a reminiscence of the "Death of Peter
+Martyr"; his "Warrior" in the Opera House is the painted double of
+Rude's "Marseillaise." How many gestures, attitudes, and figures could,
+by a close analysis, be shown to be borrowed in turn from Veronese,
+Andrea del Sarto, Correggio, or Raphael! His works are a synthesis of
+the favourite forms of the Cinquecento; they are the testament of the
+Cinquecento masters. He was a Parisian Primaticcio, a posthumous member
+of the old school of Fontainebleau. In him was embodied the last smile
+of the Renaissance, the results of which he assimilated and reduced to
+formulæ. He lacked creative imagination, and his pictures are wanting in
+individual character. The nervous movement and sinewy stretchings of his
+young men's bodies would never have been painted but for Donatello's
+"David." Of his women, the powerful and muscular are descended from
+Michael Angelo's "Eve," the more slender and elegant come down from
+Rosso. His palette, with its blue and white tints, is bright and
+flowery, but it is no less artificial than his composition.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ BAUDRY. THE PEARL AND THE WAVE.
+
+ (_By permission of Mr. W. H. Stewart, the owner of the picture._)]
+
+Nevertheless, it would be unjust to speak of Baudry's work as merely
+faded Classicism, or as Michael Angelo and water. He was not merely a
+pupil of the Italians; he contributed something Parisian of his own,
+something pretty, mannered, refined, graceful, seductive, and smiling,
+and felt himself independent enough to give to his conventional figures
+this sprightly addition of genuinely modern nervosity. The
+birth-certificates of his young men were drawn up in Florence, those of
+his young women in Rome, three hundred and fifty years ago; yet there is
+in the latter something of the _Parisienne_, in the former something of
+the modern dandies who know the fevered life of the Boulevards. In his
+delightful art there is French wit, there is a touch of the piquant, of
+the feminine, of the ambiguous, which almost amounts to indecency. One
+can still recognise the charming model in the figures of his dancers and
+Muses; you can see that Music's or Poetry's waist was laced up in a
+close-fitting corset before she sat for the picture. One may meet these
+women at any moment, trailing their dresses along the sidewalks of the
+Boulevards, or riding negligently in their carriages back from the Bois
+de Boulogne. And still more modern than the wasp-like form of the body
+is the character of the face and the smile on the lips. Thus Baudry has
+given a new shade to the manner in which one can obtain inspiration from
+the old masters. To all that he borrowed he added a personal and
+charming note. He possesses an elegance and grace which are neither
+Correggio's, nor Raphael's, nor Veronese's, but French and Parisian. His
+Muses and Cupids, his "Comedy" and his "Judgment of Paris," are
+documents of the French spirit in the nineteenth century, and--together
+with a few small and fine portraits on a green or blue background _à la_
+Clouet, among which that of his friend About takes the first rank--they
+will always assure him an important place in the history of French art.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ BAUDRY. CYBELE.
+
+ (_By permission of the Marquise Arconati-Visconti, the owner of the
+ picture._) ]
+
+[Illustration: BAUDRY. LEDA.]
+
+Another artist who worked with Baudry at the decoration of the Grand
+Opera House was _Élie Delaunay_, who painted in a hall leading out of
+the foyer three large pictures on the myths of Apollo, Orpheus, and
+Amphion, and was at that time less appreciated than he deserved.
+Delaunay was born in the same year as Baudry, and, like him, was a
+Breton. In their genius also they are very similar. He shared in
+Baudry's admiration of the masters of the Renaissance, but his worship
+was less for the Cinquecento than the fourteenth century. It was in
+Flandrin's studio that he prepared himself for his entry into the École
+des Beaux Arts. His first picture, in 1849, "Christ healing a Leper,"
+was, with respect to its Roman manner of conceiving form and its
+bronze-like firm draughtsmanship, still entirely in the style of Ingres.
+It was not till he went to Italy in 1856, as winner of the Prix de Rome,
+that he turned from the works of the Roman school to those of the early
+Renaissance masters, to whom he was attracted by their rigorous study
+of form and their manly severity. His sketch books were filled with
+drawings after Paolo Uccello, Filippo Lippi, Pollajualo, Ghirlandajo,
+Botticelli, Gozzoli, and Signorelli. It was just at this time that
+French sculpture was making its significant revolt against the antique
+and in favour of Donatello, Verrocchio, and Della Robbia; that the Prix
+de Florence was founded, and that Paul Dubois' "Florentine Singer"
+appeared. Delaunay became as a pupil of the Quattrocento masters one of
+the greatest draughtsmen of the century, a healthy Naturalist in the
+sense in which the Primitives were so, with a concise and firm power of
+design which only Ingres amongst modern French painters shares with him.
+The bodies of his nude male figures are strained in nerve and muscle
+like those of Donatello; they have the essential elegance and powerful
+rhythm of Dubois' statues. Even the two pictures which he sent from
+Italy to the Salon, "The Nymph Hesperia fleeing from the Pursuit of
+Æsacus," and the "Lesson on the Flute" in the Museum at Nantes, were
+works of great taste and sincerity, studied with respectful and patient
+devotion to nature, without striving after sentimental effect and
+without conventional reminiscences. When in 1861 he returned from Rome,
+he completed the frescoes in the church of St. Nicholas in Nantes,
+which, in their strict severity, remind one of Signorelli's Cycle at
+Orvieto. In 1865 appeared in the Salon his "Plague at Rome," which
+afterwards passed into the Luxembourg, and which is not devoid of tragic
+accent. In that collection hangs also his "Diana" of 1872, a proud nude
+figure drawn with firm and manly lines, and full of grave dignity, after
+the manner of Feuerbach. At the same time as his "Diana" he exhibited
+his portrait of a Mlle. Lechat, seated like one of Botticelli's Madonnas
+in front of a trellis of roses--in the style of the old masters, and yet
+modern, naturalistic, and in excellent taste. Thenceforth he took his
+place among the first portrait painters of his time. There is an
+inexorable love of truth, a something bronze-like and stony in his
+pictures, finished as they are with the firm impress of medals.
+Instances of this may be found in his fine portrait of Mme. Toulmouche,
+whom he has represented in a white summer costume, with black gloves,
+seated in the midst of cheerful landscape; and also in several male
+heads drawn with that firmness of modelling which Bronzino in his best
+days alone possessed. After the completion of the Opera paintings he
+finished, in 1876, twelve decorative pictures for the great hall of the
+Council of State in the Palais Royal. His last works, which remained
+unfinished, were designs for the Pantheon--scenes from the life of St.
+Geneviève--in which he followed in the footsteps of the great fresco
+colourists of Upper Italy, Gaudenzio Ferrari and Pordenone. Élie
+Delaunay was no original genius, and as a pupil of the painters of the
+Quattrocento has not enriched the history of art in any way, but he
+stands forth, in a time which cared for nothing but external effect, as
+a very loyal, serious, and honest artist, whose works all bear the stamp
+of a healthy, manly spirit.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ BAUDRY. EDMOND ABOUT.]
+
+Though in the works of these masters the Classicism of Ingres passes
+away, in part enfeebled and in part imbued with modern elements and
+vivified by a more direct study of nature, yet on the whole Paul
+Delaroche dominates this period also. Historical painting takes the
+highest places in the Salon, and shows itself altered only in this
+respect, that, instead of Delaroche's tameness of style, we have
+sensational subjects, arguments which revel in scenes of horror and
+display of corpses. Literature had already entered upon this path. Even
+Mérimée in his last novel, _Lokis_, was clearly the forerunner of that
+tendency in taste which Taine characterised by the words, "_Depuis dix
+ans une nuance de brutalité complète l'élégance_." Flaubert himself, in
+his _Salambo_, was to some extent carried away by the stream. Consider,
+for instance, the descriptions of Gisko crawling, a maimed, shapeless
+stump, out of the ditch into Matho's tent, and of how his head is sawn
+off; of the tortures inflicted by the Carthaginian people upon the
+captured Matho; or of how the mercenaries are starved to death in the
+rocky valley where they were imprisoned. Vying with this tendency of
+literature, painting attained in its chosen themes an over-excitation
+which reached the limits of the possible. While Delaroche had only in a
+very timid manner led the way to the tragedies of history, the younger
+artists hunted up all the most horrible deeds of blood to be found in
+the great Book of Martyrs of the story of man, and elaborated them on
+gigantic canvases. It would be quite impossible to draw up a catalogue
+of all the murders at that time perpetrated by French art. They might be
+arranged under various headings, as biblical, historical, political
+murders; murders in connection with robbery, and murders arising out of
+revenge; with subdivisions corresponding to the means employed, as
+poison, the dagger, the halter, broadsword and rapier, the bowstring,
+strangling, burning, etc. This was the time when, on account of this
+dominance of the "_Genre féroce_," the public used to call the Salon the
+Morgue.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ DELAUNAY. DIANA.]
+
+_Toudouze_ painted the "Fall of Sodom" with a dozen copper-coloured
+Abyssinians, larger than life, rolling on the ground in convulsions,
+while Lot's wife, dying and half-consumed by fire, gnashes her teeth as
+she raises the corpse of her child over her head. In a picture of
+_George Becker's_ were represented the corpses of King Saul's sons,
+delivered over by David to the Gibeonites, hanging alongside of each
+other in a dark forest scene on a cross-shaped framework, like butcher's
+meat from the shambles. Their mother stands beneath the scaffold,
+swinging a knotted club to protect the corpses from an antediluvian
+vulture. In a painting by _Bréhan_, Cyaxares, King of the Medes, gives a
+banquet, and by way of dessert has his guests the Scythian leaders
+massacred by his mercenaries. In one by _Matthieu_, Heliogabalus has hit
+upon a yet happier idea, for at the conclusion of the meal he sets
+half-starved lions and tigers upon his guests. _Aimé Morot_ depicted in
+a large picture "The Wives of the Ambrones" in the battle of Aquæ
+Sextiæ. They are hurling themselves like a horde of furies upon the
+Roman horsemen who are attacking the camp. Half-naked, or entirely so,
+with their hair flowing behind them, they throw themselves upon the
+Romans, catch hold of the swords by the blade, tear their eyes out, and
+are trampled beneath the horses' hoofs. Especially popular were the
+voluptuous and cruel wild beasts from the menagerie of the Cæsars. Nero
+in particular suited the atmosphere of the period; his ghost haunted the
+novel, the stage, sculpture, and painting, and there seemed to be a
+general agreement to immortalise him and the morally monstrous
+personality of Locusta. In a picture by _Sylvestre_ he is represented
+with florid cheeks, glowing with fat, and gloating over the mortal agony
+of a slave lying on the ground, upon whom Locusta has tested the poison
+intended for Britannicus. _Aublet_ varied the same theme by making a
+negro lad the victim, while several corpses of negroes lying in the
+background suggest that the Emperor was not quite satisfied with
+Locusta's first experiments. Round Nero, the more entirely to fill his
+magnificent Golden House, the charming shades of his congenial comrades
+in crime weave their flitting dances. _Pelez_ depicted the strangling of
+the Emperor Commodus by the gladiator to whom the Empress had entrusted
+the task, and painted with tender interest the marks caused by suffusion
+of blood which the athlete's hand had left upon the unhappy prince's
+neck. A very familiar figure is that of Seneca, with distorted features,
+uttering his last words of wisdom while the blood pours from his opened
+veins. After the madness of the Cæsars comes the atrocious history of
+the Merovingian kings. _Luminais_, the painter of Gauls and barbarians,
+represented in his large picture "Les Énervés de Jumièges" the sons of
+King Clovis II, who, after the muscles of their knees have been
+destroyed by fire, are set helplessly adrift in a boat on the Seine.
+Then followed torture scenes from the time of the Inquisition, and
+saints burning at the stake. The conception which this post-Romantic
+generation had of the East was of cruelty and voluptuousness mixed, a
+thing pieced together out of white bodies, purple streams of blood, and
+brown backgrounds. Here, the favourite Sultana contemplates the severed
+head of her rival, which stares at her out of its glassy eyes; there,
+eunuchs are making ready to strangle a woman condemned to death. In
+works such as these the genius, powerful in composition, of Benjamin
+Constant, celebrates its triumphs.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ DELAUNAY. BOYS SINGING.]
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ DELAUNAY. MADAME TOULMOUCHE.]
+
+Yet, notwithstanding all the means of allurement furnished by such
+themes, these paintings almost invariably fail to produce the
+anticipated effect. Not that it is the brutality of the subjects that
+makes them unpleasant. Art in all times has busied itself with the
+horrible. How voluptuously does Dante depict the horrors of Hell! What
+imagination was ever peopled with figures more dreadful than those
+conceived by Shakespeare? Cruelty and death have a poetry of their own:
+why should Art prudishly abstain from depicting them? Only, if the
+result is to be a good picture, the subject must be in strict congruity
+with the talent employed upon it, and in the majority of these works
+this conformity is lacking. The subjects alone had become more savage
+and brutal. In the manner of treatment there is none of the wild effect
+which the Neapolitans of the seventeenth century gave to their scenes of
+martyrdom. Spirits truly wild, like Delacroix and Caravaggio, are not to
+be met with every day. The painters who launched out upon these
+bloodthirsty themes took absolutely no inward "enjoyment in tragical
+subjects," but simply painted them as if after precepts learned at
+school. And as they were also deficient in that knowledge of nature
+which is acquired only by direct study of life, not one of them was in a
+position to give to his historical scenes that naturalistic weight which
+alone gives to such themes a character of convincing probability. True,
+these pictures compel respect on account of their unusual ability. These
+naked bodies, twisting themselves in the most varying postures of pain,
+give proof by their correct draughtsmanship of the most painstaking
+anatomical studies, yet after all they are nothing more than inverted
+Laocoöns. The Classical spirit haunts them still, and a discordant
+effect is produced when subjects so full of wild passion are tranquilly
+depicted according to cold conventional rules. Over all these figures
+and scenes, even the most horrible, lies the veil of a Classical
+embellishment, which deprives them altogether of that directness which
+lays hold on the imagination. The pictures are good studies of costume,
+and make an admirable impression by their resplendent glow of colour;
+they are show-pieces, brilliant stage effects, as happily conceived as
+any of Sardou's. But the recipe for their production is still that of
+the school of Delaroche: avoidance of all extremes, generalised forms,
+careful composition, crude lukewarmness, or the affectation of daring.
+Scarce one of these painters has given to his wild subject an equal
+wildness of treatment; not one has raised himself from the paltry level
+of Delaroche to the artistic height of Delacroix.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ SYLVESTRE. LOCUSTA TESTING IN NERO'S PRESENCE POISON PREPARED FOR
+ BRITANNICUS.]
+
+_Laurens_ alone, surnamed by his comrades "the Benedictine," because his
+predilection was for forgotten themes from ecclesiastical history,
+constitutes in a certain sense an exception to the rule. He too belongs
+to the group of historical painters whose theory is that a picture
+should represent an historical fact with absolute accuracy. But he is
+more masculine than Delaroche. His personages are truer to nature, or,
+if one will, less banal; the general effect is warmer and fuller of
+life; he has a greater power of attracting attention. There is nothing
+great in his work, but there is no cold pedantry: the art of combination
+is more adroit, so that one is less aware of calculation, and may
+sometimes observe a grim earnestness. He really loves the terrible,
+while the others merely made use of it for the manufacture of what are
+nothing more than tableaux. To the Inquisition especially he was
+indebted for notable successes, and at times he was able to depict its
+dark scenes of horror in a very subtle manner. When he heaps up, in
+front of a church, corpses to which the priests have refused burial;
+when he disinters popes in order to place them in the dock before their
+accusers; when he opens coffins to reveal the decomposed features of
+some erstwhile beauty, he sets even blunted nerves on the stretch; and
+as he has therein attained the goal he had proposed to himself, his art
+is not without its justification.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ LUMINAIS. LES ÉNERVÉS DE JUMIÈGES.]
+
+Among the younger generation, _Rochegrosse_, an artist of daring genius,
+appeared for a while to have taken to such themes by free choice, and
+not solely through the traditions of the studio. One seemed to observe
+in his works a truly emotional temperament flaming behind the trammels
+of conventionality, and was almost inclined to rank him among the
+spirits of storm and stress who trace their descent from Delacroix.
+After his first picture, in which "Vitellius" is represented dragged
+through the streets of Rome and ill treated by the populace, he achieved
+success with a scene taken from the destruction of Troy. Here
+"Andromache," raging with impotent anguish, is struggling against a
+number of Greeks who have snatched her child from her arms to throw it
+down from the ramparts. This brutal strife is depicted with the highest
+naturalistic power. Neither the heroine nor the warriors belong to the
+ideal figures of the style of compromise. Andromache is of a fulness of
+form almost approaching corpulence, and the Greeks remind one of Indians
+on the warpath. Mangled corpses complete the picture, and on the bare
+wall to the left, over the stairs, hang dead bodies abandoned to
+corruption and the birds of prey. In his third picture he took for his
+theme the horrors of the barbarous and ferocious Peasants' War in the
+fourteenth century, as Mérimée had described them in his book entitled
+_La Jacquerie_; and his work is all the more effective as there lurks in
+the subject a certain grim modern touch which reminds one of the Social
+Democracy, of the insurrection of the Commune, of something which might
+happen even to-day. The insurgents break into the hall, where the ladies
+of the castle have taken refuge with their children. One alone stands
+erect, the grandmother in her nun-like widow's dress, and stretches her
+arms behind her with a gesture of energy, as if to shield the younger
+ones at her back. The foremost intruder ironically takes off his cap.
+Another lifts up on his pike the fair-haired, bleeding head of the lord
+of the castle; a third has similarly transfixed his reeking heart.
+Others are pressing in from without, breaking the window panes with
+their weapons, which are yet dripping with blood. Beneath frightful
+figures are seen, the most horrible that of a woman standing on the
+window-sill, her hands propped upon her knees, gazing with insane
+laughter upon the mortal terror of the aristocratic ladies.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ LAURENS. THE INTERDICT.]
+
+In his subsequent pictures Rochegrosse did not go so far afield. His
+"Murder of Julius Cæsar" was a work of art in white upon white, full of
+crude imagination, with white walls, white reflections of light, white
+togas, and dark red blotches of blood. His grass-eating "Nebuchadnezzar"
+proved that from the sublime to the ridiculous there is often only a
+step. Between times he painted archæological trifles for ladies of
+literary culture, such as the "Battle of the Sparrows" of 1890; but in
+his great "Fall of Babylon" he has proved once more what he can do. No
+doubt it is not a fine work: it is a mere decorative piece, but an
+astonishingly spirited performance. The scene is the palace of the
+Babylonian kings, the decorative construction of which the recovered
+monuments and the recent scientific investigations had rendered it
+possible to reproduce. Rochegrosse consulted with the zeal of an
+archæologist all the treasures of the Louvre and the British
+Museum,--Assyrian friezes, ornaments, and costumes,--and then set forth
+in these surroundings the famous banquet at which the Prophet Daniel
+explained the words "Mene, Tekel, Peres." The day begins to break; in
+the distance the army of the Medes advancing to attack the palace has
+burst open the gate; Belshazzar leaves the table in terror, and takes to
+his weapons; the naked women, still intoxicated, stretch their limbs, or
+remain lazily indifferent lying on the ground; around is a dazzling
+confusion of mosaics, of polychrome architecture, of fantastic images of
+animals, of glittering tapestries shot with many hues and pleasing to
+the eye; of flowers, vases, fruits, pastry, and nude bodies of women.
+The grey light of morning strives to overcome that of the
+half-extinguished lamps, and rests with leaden weight upon the gigantic
+still-life below.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ REGNAULT. SALOME.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Georges Petit, the owner of the copyright._)]
+
+If some portion of Delacroix's wild genius appears to have descended
+upon Rochegrosse, yet was _Henri Regnault_, as a colourist, the greatest
+of Delacroix's heirs--even allowing for the exaggerated renown which
+came to him in France, from the fact that he was the last to fall in the
+war of 1870. His portrait of "General Prim" of 1869, which, rejected by
+the sitter, came eventually to the Louvre, is somewhat reminiscent of
+Velasquez and Delacroix, but is nevertheless, with those of Géricault,
+amongst the finest equestrian portraits of the century. In his "Salome"
+he has depicted a black-haired girl with twitching feet, resting upon a
+stool after her dance, and contemplating with the cruelty of a tigress
+the platter which she holds ready for the head of John the Baptist,
+while her glowing red mouth with its dazzling teeth smiles like that of
+an innocent child. In her he has embodied with infernal subtlety the
+demon of voluptuous wantonness, and has composed a symphony in yellow
+of seductive and dazzling charm. She is attired in transparent
+gold-inwoven robes, which have a caressing congruity with the
+resplendent texture of the background.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ REGNAULT. THE MOORISH HEADSMAN.]
+
+His "Moorish Headsman" is a symphony in red. In his pale rose-red garb
+the tall Moor stands in majestic dignity, wipes a few drops of blood
+from the blade of his sword, and glances with careless indifference--a
+type of the dreamy cruelty of Oriental fatalism--without anger and
+without pity, without hatred and without satisfaction, upon the severed
+head with its distorted eyes, which, rolling down a couple of steps, has
+stained the white marble with purple patches of blood. "I will cause the
+genuine Moors to rise again, at once rich and great, terrible and
+voluptuous,"--so the voice of Delacroix speaks out of this picture by
+Regnault. His paintings, like those of his master, have the effect of
+splendid Oriental costumes; they are shot with every hue, they lighten
+and glisten, they are inwoven with magnificent arabesques of gold and
+silver, with sparkling embroideries and precious stones. The "Orlando
+Furioso" of art lives once more in these fascinating harmonies, in the
+power, splendour, and lustre of the colouring. Just as Baudry at the
+close of the Classical period produced in his paintings for the Opera
+House the noblest work after the idealist formulæ, so Regnault in his
+"Salome" and his "Prim" has completed the last defiant works of the
+formulæ of Romanticism.
+
+We have thought it advisable to follow this development of the art of
+painting down to its close, just as in treating of the older periods we
+have proceeded, not upon chronological principles, but upon those of
+historical style. Now that the old art has been followed to the grave,
+it will be all the easier, later on, to perceive clearly how the new
+arose slowly out of its invisible depths. And as France since 1830 has
+become the high school of art for other nations, those paths have at the
+same time been indicated along which the art of painting was proceeding
+during these years in other countries.
+
+[Illustration: HENRI REGNAULT GENERAL PRÍM]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE HISTORICAL SCHOOL OF PAINTING IN BELGIUM
+
+
+Belgian art had gone through the same history as French art since David.
+When the French patriarch came to Brussels to pass the remainder of his
+days there in honour, he found the ground already well prepared. The
+Classicists had long since made their way into art, and the old Flemish
+tradition was dying out. Lens and Herreyns are the last colourists in
+the sense of the good old time, but they are associated with the good
+old time only through the qualities of their colouring. As a degenerate
+descendant of Van Dyck, _Lens_ painted with a feeble brush sweet,
+insipid, sugary work for boudoirs and _prie-dieu_ chairs; and had lost
+his feeling for nature to such a degree that he gave the aged the same
+flesh tint as children, and men the full breasts of hermaphrodites.
+_Herreyns_, appointed director of the Antwerp Academy in 1800, was more
+masculine; and although likewise conventional and wanting in
+individuality, he was none the less a painter of breadth and boldness.
+He was most enraptured with a model with a copper-coloured skin and
+knotted muscles, or with pretty and ruddy children, and fat nurses with
+swelling breasts. This bold worker embodied in his own person the art of
+a great epoch, but did nothing to renew it. These painters, indeed, only
+mixed for a new hash the crumbs fallen from the table at which giants
+had once sat. They looked backwards instead of around them, and lighted
+their modest little lamp at the sun of Rubens. France was the only
+country where art followed the great changes of culture in the age.
+Hence Flemish painting had been crossed with French elements long before
+David's arrival. And Paris was for the artists of 1800 what Italy had
+been for those of 1600. They made their pilgrimage in troops to the
+studio of Suvée, who had originally come from Bruges, but had lived
+since 1771 on the Seine. There, and there only, recipes for the
+composition of great figure pictures were to be obtained. And thus art
+completed what the Empire had in a political sense begun. The artistic
+barriers fell as the geographical ones had done before, and the Belgian
+painters went back to Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, and Bruges as men
+annexed by France.
+
+David on his arrival needed only to shake the tree and the fruit fell
+ripe into his lap. He entered Flanders like a conqueror, and left the
+signs of ravage behind him on his triumphal progress. In Brussels a
+court gathered round him as round a banished king, and a gold medal was
+struck in memory of his arrival. He took Flemish art in his powerful
+hands and crushed it. For, needless to say, he saw nothing but barbarism
+in the genius of Rubens, and inoculated Flemish artists with a genuine
+horror of their great prince of painters. He continued to teach in
+Brussels what he had preached in Paris, and became the father-in-law of
+a deadly tiresome Franco-Belgian school, to which belonged a succession
+of correct painters; men such as Duvivier, Ducq, Paelinck, Odevaere, and
+others. For the aboriginal, sturdy, energetic, and carnal Flemish art
+was prescribed the mathematical regularity of the antique canon. The old
+Flemish joyousness of colour passed into a consumptive cacophony. And
+then was repeated in Belgium the tragedy which Classicism had played in
+France. Everything became a pretext for draperies, stiff poses,
+sculptural groupings, and plaster heads. Phædra and Theseus, Hector and
+Andromache, Paris and Helen, were, as in Paris, the most popular
+subjects. And so great a confusion reigned, that a sculptor from whom a
+wolf was ordered included the history of Romulus and Remus gratuitously.
+
+The only one whose works are still partially enjoyable is _Navez_. He
+was, like Ingres in France, the last prop of this art, chiselled, as it
+were, out of stone; and even after the fall of Classicism he remained in
+esteem, because, like Ingres, he knew how to steer a prudent course
+between David, the Italians, and a certain independent study of nature.
+A touch of realism was mingled with his mania for the Greeks; only to a
+limited extent did he correct "ugly" nature; he would have ventured to
+represent Socrates with his negro nose and Thersites with his hump, and,
+again, like Ingres he has left behind him enduring performances as a
+portrait painter. His correct, cold, and discreet talent grew warm at
+the touch of human personality, and his drawings, in particular, prove
+that he had warmth of feeling as an artist. As his biographer tells us,
+he seldom laid down the sketch-book in which he fixed his impressions as
+he talked. Every page was filled with sketches of a group, a figure, or
+a gesture seen in the street and rapidly dashed off, "as realistically
+as even Courbet could desire." And these he transferred, when he painted
+in the "noble style."
+
+As Navez had importance as an artist, so had _Matthias van
+Bree_--Herreyns' successor in the directorate of the Antwerp
+Academy--importance as a teacher. He worked in Belgium, like Gros in
+Paris, only in another way. While Gros as an artist was the forerunner
+of Romanticism, and as a teacher an orthodox Classicist, Van Bree is
+tedious as an artist, but as a teacher he fanned in the young generation
+a glowing love for old Flemish art. No one spoke of Rubens, Van Dyck,
+and the great art of the seventeenth century with so much warmth and
+understanding; and whilst with the charcoal in his hand he composed
+buckram cartoons, he dreamt of a youth who should arise to renew the old
+Flemish tradition.
+
+Before long this young man had grown up. He had seen the artistic
+treasures of Antwerp and Paris. Here Rubens had delighted his eyes, and
+there Paul Veronese. As he admired both in the Louvre, he heard behind
+him the voice of the young Romanticists who, like him, had an enthusiasm
+for colour and movement, and blasphemed the stiff, colourless old David.
+_Gustav Wappers_, also, had paid toll to Classicism, and painted in 1823
+a "Regulus" after the well-known recipe. All the greater was the
+astonishment when, in 1830, he came forward with his "Burgomaster van
+der Werff": "Burgomaster van der Werff of Leyden, at the siege of the
+town in 1576, offers his own body as food to the famished citizens." The
+very subject could not fail to create enthusiasm in the great body of
+the people, excited as they were by ideas of liberty: the brilliant
+method of presentation did this no less. What the old Van Bree looked
+for, the return to the splendour of colour and sensuous fulness of life
+of the old masters, was achieved in this picture. In the same year, when
+Belgium had won her nationality and independence once more, a painter
+also ventured to break away from the French formulæ of Classicism, and
+to treat a national theme in the manner of those painters who in former
+centuries had been the glory of Flanders. Wappers was greeted as a
+national hero; his part it was to bring to an issue with the brush that
+good fight which others had fought with the musket and sabre. His
+picture was a sign of the delivery of Flemish art from the French house
+of bondage. Whilst older men were horrified, as the followers of the
+school of Delaroche were afterwards horrified at the "Stone-breakers" of
+Courbet, the younger generation looked up to Wappers as a Messiah.
+Everything in the Brussels Salon faded before the freshness of the new
+work; a springtide in painting seemed to be at hand, and the wintry
+rigidity of Classicism was warmed by a burst of sunshine, the old gods
+trembled and felt their Olympus quake. Gustav Wappers was held to be the
+leader of a new Renaissance. In him the great era of the seventeenth
+century was to be continued. The iridescence of silken stuffs, the whole
+colour and festal joyousness of the old masters, were found once more.
+As in France there rose the shout, "An Ingres, a Delacroix!" so there
+resounded in Belgium the battle-cry, "A Navez, a Wappers!" The picture
+was bought by King William II of Holland, and in 1832 Wappers was made
+Professor of the Antwerp Academy.
+
+[Illustration: _Bruyllant, Brussels._
+
+ GUSTAV WAPPERS.]
+
+The Exhibition of 1834 confirmed him in his new position as head of a
+school. This was a genuine triumph, which he gained by his "Episode in
+the Belgian Revolution of 1830." A scene out of the blood-stained days
+of the street fights in Brussels--that glorious final chapter of the
+struggle of the Belgian people for freedom from the French yoke--was
+nothing less than an event in which every one had recently taken part.
+At a period when so few realised how closely the great masters of the
+past were bound to their own time and imbibed from it their strength and
+nourishment, this new painter, in defiance of all theories, had drawn
+boldly from life. This picture was regarded as "a hymn of jubilation for
+what was attained and a threnody for the sacrifice it had cost." And the
+neighbourhood of the church, where he had laid the action, stamped it
+almost as the votive picture of the Belgian people for its dead. On the
+right an artisan standing aloft upon a newly thrown up earthwork is
+reading to his attentive comrades the rejected proclamation of the
+Prince of Orange. On the left a reinforcement is coming up. In the
+foreground boys are tearing up the pavement or beating the drum; and
+here and there are enacted various tragical family scenes. Here a young
+wife with a child on her arm clings with all the strength of despair to
+her husband, who resists her and finally tears himself from her grasp
+and hurries to the barricade--the cry of love is drowned amid the clash
+of arms. There, supported on the knee of his grey-headed father, rests a
+handsome young fellow with closing eyes and the death-wound in his
+heart. It seems as though the Horatian _dulce et decorum est_ might be
+said to wander over his features and to glorify them. For patriotism as
+well as for mere sentiment, here are noble scenes enough and to spare.
+Not only all Brussels, but all Belgium, made a pilgrimage to Wappers'
+creation. Every mother beheld her lost son in the youth in the
+foreground whose life has been sacrificed; every artisan's wife sought
+her husband, her brother, or her father amongst the figures of the
+fighting-men on the barricades. All the newspapers were full of praise,
+and a subscription was set on foot to strike a medal in commemoration of
+the picture. If, up to this time, Wappers had been merely praised as the
+renewer of Belgian art, he was now placed alongside of the greatest
+masters. Thiers induced him to exhibit in Paris the much discussed work,
+the fame of which had passed beyond the boundaries of Belgium. The
+"Episode" made a triumphal tour of all the great towns of Europe before
+it found its home in the Musée Moderne; and Wappers' fame abroad
+increased yet more his celebrity in Flanders. Thanks to him, the
+neighbouring nations began to interest themselves in the Belgian school.
+All were united in admiration of "the mighty conception and the
+harmonious scheme of colour." The German _Morgenblatt_ published a study
+of him in 1836. Wappers counted as the leading painter of his country.
+
+[Illustration: _Bruyllant, Brussels._
+
+ WAPPERS. THE SACRIFICE OF BURGOMASTER VAN DER WERFF AT THE SIEGE OF
+ LEYDEN.]
+
+Yet the same year brought him his first rivals. His entry on the stage
+had given strength to a group of young painters belonging to the same
+courageous movement, and the Brussels Salon of 1836 concentrated their
+efforts. _Nicaise de Keyzer_ made his appearance in heavy armour. As
+early as 1834 he had come forward with a great picture, a Crucifixion,
+in which he desired to compete with Rubens, as it seemed, in the
+latter's most special province. Yet the work merely testified to its
+author's excellent memory: the majority of the heads, gestures, and
+draperies had been made use of in old pictures in precisely the same
+fashion. Consciously or not, he had copied fragments direct, and welded
+them together in a new composition. If, in spite of this, the name of de
+Keyzer already flew from mouth to mouth, he owed it to the nimbus of
+romance which irradiated his person. The story went that an Antwerp lady
+on one of her walks had seen a young man drawing in the sand, while his
+flock was at pasture not far off. She stepped up and offered him a
+pencil, and he, a new Cimabue, began forthwith to sketch a picture of
+the Madonna. The drawing was so beautiful (so the tale ran) that the
+lady would have held it a sin to allow the genius to end his days as a
+shepherd. He came to town, received instruction, and learned to paint. A
+little idyll illuminated by the amiability of a lady was quite enough to
+prepare a friendly reception for De Keyzer. And since he, like a
+tractable, modest young man, hearkened attentively to criticism, he
+satisfied all desires when, in 1836, he came forward with his "Battle of
+the Spurs at Courtrai, 1302." In its quiet elegance the work answered to
+the peaceful mood which prevailed once more after the days of revolt and
+political insurrection. He was given special credit for clearness of
+composition and antiquarian exactness. De Keyzer had chosen the moment
+when the Count of Artois was expiring on the knees of a Flemish soldier;
+another Fleming had his arm raised to protect his general from the
+approaching French. For the rest, there is a lull in the fight, though
+the battlefield in the background is indicated with the minuteness of an
+historian: none of those carnages of blood and smoke of which the world
+was grown once more weary, but a correct, well-disciplined battle, a
+skilful composition of fine gestures, helmets, cuirasses, and halberts.
+Even the Count's spur, says Alvin, is drawn after the original, the only
+remaining spur out of seven hundred which lay scattered on the field
+after the day of Courtrai.
+
+In the same year _Henri Decaisne_ completed his "Belges Illustres." The
+famous past was supposed to give its blessing to the great present. The
+artist, who in Paris had painted portraits with success, had been
+esteemed there by Lamartine, and celebrated by Alfred de Musset in a
+brilliant article in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, now gratified a long
+cherished desire of the Belgian national pride when he united the heroes
+of the land in an ideal gathering.
+
+Soon afterwards _Gallait_ and _Bièfve_ trod the stage of Belgian
+painting. In point of size their pictures surpassed all that that age,
+accustomed as it was to vast canvases, had yet witnessed. "The
+Abdication of Charles V" measured twenty feet; it was hung in the Salon
+Carré of the Louvre above Paul Veronese's "Marriage at Cana." An entire
+court of great ladies and gentlemen, clad in velvet and brocade, move in
+the gorgeous hall of state of a king's castle. The solemn moment is
+represented when Charles V, erect and dominating the entire assembly,
+cedes the government of his possessions to Philip: and here is a mine of
+profound criticism of the philosophy of history. This old man, with one
+foot in the grave, whose forceful head still bears, like a Caryatid, the
+heavy burden of empire, embodies the splendour, fame, and might of
+bygone days. Faltering, he steps down from the throne, as though
+hesitating at the last moment whether he should appoint as his successor
+this son whom he both loves and fears; and, lifting to heaven his tired,
+sunken eyes, he commends unto God the future of the realm. Philip, the
+only one in the assembly entirely clothed in black, who receives the
+gift of dominion with an icy coldness, is transformed by the able
+exegesis of the critics into the satanic demon conjuring up the powers
+of hell. The picture even gives a glimpse into the future. For as he
+speaks Charles leans his left hand upon the shoulder of another young
+man, William of Orange. This indicates that soon the nation will wrest
+their independence from the double-tongued Jesuitical policy of Philip.
+To the left of this central group, robed in velvet and silk, stand the
+ladies around Margaret, the sister of the Emperor; she, in the garb of a
+nun, sits in her chair as in a _prie-dieu_. To the right, near the
+throne, are pages and priests, and amidst them Egmont and Horn, standing
+aloof and silent, look upon the scene. "The Abdication" had a grand
+success. It confirmed the hopes which had been set on Gallait ever since
+the completion of his "Tasso," and it was proudly ranked amongst those
+works which did special honour to the young nation. Wappers saw himself
+eclipsed, and Louis Gallait took the lead.
+
+[Illustration: WAPPERS. THE DEATH OF COLUMBUS.]
+
+_Edouard de Bièfve's_ "Treaty of the Nobles" formed the historical
+supplement to this work; after the triumph of the kingdom came the
+triumph of the people. The picture represents the signing of the
+defensive league, against the Inquisition and other breaches of
+privilege, which the nobility of the Netherlands entered into in 1566,
+in the Castle of Cuylenburg, near Brussels; it was hailed by the
+_Berliner Staatszeitung_ as "a landmark in the chronicle of historical
+painting."
+
+This heroic era of Belgian painting was brought to a close in 1848 by
+_Ernest Slingeneyer_, who, as early as 1842, obtained a brilliant
+success with his "Sinking of the French Battleship _Le Vengeur_." His
+"Battle of Lepanto" was the last great historical picture, and the
+entire vocabulary of admiration known to art criticism was showered upon
+it by the Brussels press.
+
+Even a new period of religious painting seemed about to dawn. German
+art, up to that time little regarded in Belgium, had since the fifties
+been discussed with considerable detail in the journals, and such names
+as Overbeck, W. Schadow, Veit, Cornelius, and Kaulbach had speedily
+acquired a favourable reputation. An exhibition of German cartoons
+instituted in Brussels in 1862 served--strangely enough--to sustain this
+high appreciation. The young nation believed that it could not afford to
+lag behind France and Germany, and commissioned two Antwerp painters,
+Guffens and Swerts, who had early made themselves familiar with the
+technique of fresco, to found a Belgian school of monumental painting.
+To this end they entered into a correspondence with the German artists,
+and, after long studies in Italy and Germany, adorned with frescoes the
+Church of Notre Dame in St. Nicolas in East Flanders, St. George's
+Church in Antwerp, the town halls of Courtrai and Ypres, a few churches
+in England, and the Cathedral of Prague; and on these frescoes Herman
+Riegel, in 1883, published a book in two volumes.
+
+[Illustration: _Bruyllant, Brussels._
+
+ DE KEYZER.]
+
+At the present day this religious fresco painting, which handed on the
+doctrine of the German Nazarenes--the doctrine that nothing remained to
+the nineteenth-century artist except to imitate the old Italians as well
+as he could--can no longer command such exhaustive disquisition. And not
+it alone: the whole "Belgian artistic revival of 1830" appears in a
+somewhat dubious light. After the disconsolate wilderness of Classicism
+this period marked an advance. Every Salon brought some new name to
+light. The State had contributed a big budget for art, and extended its
+protecting hand over the "great painting" which was the glory of the
+young nation. What could not be got into the Musée Moderne, founded in
+1845, was divided amongst the churches and provincial museums. The
+number of painters and exhibitions increased very noticeably. Beside the
+great triennial exhibitions in Brussels, Antwerp, and Ghent, there were
+others in the smaller towns, such as Mons and Mechlin. The Belgian
+painters of 1830 appear, no doubt, as great men, when one considers to
+what a depth art had sunk before their advent. Wappers especially
+widened the horizon, by breaking the formula of Classicism and renewing
+the tradition of the brilliant colourists of the seventeenth century. De
+Bièfve, De Keyzer, Slingeneyer, severally contributed to the Belgian
+Renaissance. The old Flemish race knew itself once more in this fond
+quest of beautiful and radiant colouring. The historical painting had
+even a certain actual interest. Standing so near to the glorious
+September days when the country won its independence, the painters
+wished to draw a parallel between the glorious present and the great
+past, and to waken patriotic memories by the apotheosis of popular
+heroes. And yet the Musée Moderne of Brussels is not one of those
+collections in which one willingly lingers. The works in the old museum,
+hard by, have remained fresh and living and in touch with us; those in
+the new gallery seem to be divided from us by centuries. For the
+mischief with pictures which do not remain for ever young is precisely
+this--they grow old so very soon. Posterity speaks the language of cold
+criticism; and those powers must be great which are even favoured with a
+verdict. The luxuriant wreaths of laurel which fall upon the living are
+no guarantee of enduring fame, while in the crowns awarded after death
+every leaf is numbered. In how few of these once lauded works there
+dwells the power to speak in an intelligible language to a generation
+which tests them, not for their patriotism, but for their intrinsic art.
+The Belgian school of 1830 has left behind it the trace of respectable
+industry, but a supreme work is what it has not brought forth.
+
+[Illustration: _Bruyllant, Brussels._
+
+ DE KEYZER. THE BATTLE OF WOERINGEN.]
+
+How hard it is to see anything epoch-making in Wappers' "Van der Werff."
+How theatrically the figures are posturing, how improbable is the
+composition, and what an unwholesome dose of sentimentality is to be
+found in that burgomaster, who is offering himself as a prey to the
+multitude! The heads are those of troubadours. And these jerkins brought
+fresh out of the wardrobe, these neatly ironed white ruffles, all this
+rich velvet and glittering pomp, how little it resembles the torn rags
+of a half-starved people after a nine months' siege! His revolutionary
+picture of 1834 is an unfortunate transposition into a sentimental key
+of the "Freedom on the Barricades" by Delacroix. Here also are
+play-actors rather than men and women of the people. This old man who is
+kissing the banner, the wife who winds her arms about her husband as
+Venus does about Tannhäuser, the pale girl who has fallen in a faint,
+the warrior who, with his eyes turned up to Heaven, is breaking his
+sword--these are figures out of a melodrama, not revolutionaries
+storming the barricades, nor famishing artisans fighting for their very
+existence. And the thin, spick-and-span colouring is in just as striking
+a contrast with the forceful action of the scene. An idyll could not be
+carried out with more prettiness of manner than is this picture which
+represents the rising of a people. The artisans are as white as
+alabaster. A light rouge rests upon the cheeks of the women, as when
+Boucher paints the faltering of virtue. And afterwards Wappers' course
+went further and further down hill. Only in these two early works, in
+which he responded to a political movement by an artistic endeavour,
+does he seem, in a certain sense, individual and powerful. All the
+others are stereotyped productions which, having nothing to do with the
+Belgian national movement, have all the more to do with the Parisian
+_École du bon sens_. Even his "Christ in the Grave," painted in 1833,
+and now in St. Michael's Church at Louvain, with its artificial grace
+and pietistical sentimentality, might have been painted by Ary Scheffer.
+The pathetic scenes from English and French history of the sixteenth and
+seventeenth centuries which followed this merely reflect that painting
+of historical anecdote which was invented by Delaroche. Agnes Sorel and
+Charles VII, Abelard and Eloise, Charles I taking leave of his children,
+Anne Bullen's parting from Elizabeth, Peter the Great presenting to his
+ministers the model of a Dutch ship, Columbus in prison, Boccaccio
+reading the _Decameron_ to Joanna of Naples, the brothers De Witt before
+their execution, André Chénier in the prison of Saint-Lazare, Louis XVII
+at Simon the shoe-maker's, the poet Camoens as a beggar, Charles I going
+to the scaffold--all are subjects treated by others before him in
+France, and neither in their conception nor their technique have they
+anything original. In the last-mentioned picture, exhibited in Antwerp
+in 1870, he attained the limit of sugary affectation: a young girl has
+sunk on her knees, and, with dreamily uplifted eyes, offers to the
+Stuart King who is going to his death--a rose! Wappers is merely a
+reflex of French Romanticism, although he cannot be brought into direct
+comparison with any Parisian master. The passion of Delacroix stirred
+him but little: nothing points to a relationship between him and that
+great spirit. One is rather reminded of Alfred Johannot, whom he
+resembles in his entire gamut of emotion as in his treatment and
+selection of subjects. In both may be found elegance of line, Byronic
+emphasis, histrionic gestures, and the same stage properties borrowed
+from the theatre; never the genuine movement of feeling, only empty and
+distorted grimaces.
+
+Of the others who appeared with him the same may be said. All Belgian
+matadors of the forties and fifties came to grief, and are interesting
+in the history of art only as symptomatic phenomena, as members of that
+school of Delaroche which encompassed the world. They abandoned the
+antique marble, the chlamys, and the leaden forms of the Classicists, to
+set in their place a motley picture of the Middle Ages, made up of
+cuirasses, mail-shirts, fleshings, and velvet and silken doublets. One
+convention followed the other, and pedantic dryness was replaced by
+melancholy sentimentalism. As skilled practitioners they understood the
+sleights of their art, but never rose to individual creation. Amongst
+many painters there was not a single artist.
+
+As regards _De Keyzer_, it seems as if throughout his whole life he had
+wished to remain true to the memory of his benefactress: a simpering
+feminine trait runs with enervating sweetness through all his works,
+even through that "Battle of the Spurs" which founded his reputation.
+According to old writers, the athletic bodies of the Flemings were the
+terror of the French chivalry at Courtrai. De Keyzer has made of them
+mere plaster figures, and the pale, meagre colouring is in keeping with
+the languid conception. In the battles of Woeringen, of Senef, and
+Nieuwpoort, which followed on this picture, and were executed for the
+Belgian and Dutch Government, he succeeded still less in overcoming his
+affectation; and he first found the fitting province for his mild and
+correct talent when in later years he began to render little anecdotes
+of the Emperor Maximilian or Justus Lipsius out of the studio of Rubens
+or Memlinc. For these there was need of little but a certain superficial
+play of colour and an elegant painting of textures.
+
+[Illustration: _Bruyllant, Brussels._
+
+ SLINGENEYER. THE AVENGER.]
+
+_Ernest Slingeneyer_ is stronger and more masculine. Yet what an
+unrefreshing chaos of blue, red, saffron, and citron-yellow is that
+"Sea-fight at Lepanto"! Slingeneyer felt that the _chiaroscuro_ with
+which Wappers saturated his "Episode" was not in keeping with this
+action under open sky. But rightly as he felt this, he had not the
+strength to solve the problem of open-air painting. What a barbaric
+effect these red, brown, and yellow bodies make in their motley
+theatrical pomp! How the composition of the picture savours of
+apotheosis! As for his later work, his thirteen gigantic pictures,
+"_gloires de la Belgique_," in the great hall of the Brussels Academy,
+like De Keyzer's mural paintings above the staircase of the Antwerp
+Museum, they would never have been painted had they not had Delaroche's
+hemicycle as their forerunner.
+
+[Illustration: _Bruyllant, Brussels._
+
+ LOUIS GALLAIT.]
+
+And _Gallait's_ "Abdication of Charles V"--one fails to understand how
+it was possible that so much able disquisition was suggested by this
+picture. How slight a smattering of the erudition of a stage manager is
+necessary for the representation of such a scene: the throne on one
+side; before it the lords and gentlemen in a semicircle, to the left
+front the ladies to make a fine effect for the eye, and in the
+background balconies with curious spectators, to widen out the
+spectacle. It is all pure theatre; an icy ceremony with prettily got up
+supernumeraries. All the heads have the discreditable appearance of
+family portraits painted after death, and then washed over with a faint
+conventional tinge of red. The whole thing is like a huge piece of
+still-life, which an adroit painter has put together out of a mixture of
+heads, gold, jewels, mantles, and perukes. Delaroche seems to have
+contributed the composition, Devéria the sumptuous costumery; and as for
+the colouring, Isabey, with his sunbeams shimmering in gold and silver,
+may not improbably have had something to do with that. What was
+spontaneous in Wappers is replaced in Gallait by cold calculation. Once
+and once only did this correct and frigid painter give evidence of a
+certain dramatic vein; it was when in 1851 he painted "The Brussels
+Guild of Marksmen paying the Last Honours to Egmont and Horn." With a
+brutal audacity the decapitated heads are set to their bodies. Bloodless
+and livid, with clotted and tangled beards, they both really look as if
+they had been studied direct from nature. But the rest of the picture,
+the surrounding of theatrical attractions, parade costumes, and false
+pathos, is all the less in keeping with this study of death. How
+Zurbaran or Caravaggio would have treated the theme! They would have
+veiled the unessential figures in darkness, and irradiated the heads
+only with a trenchant light. What Gallait has made of it is the final
+tableau of an opera of costume. The two sergeants of Alva who are on
+guard, and the men who are showing their reverence, tread the stage like
+bad actors, scrupulously arrayed and making pathetic gestures. Their
+action has been studied from drawing-school copies; no genuine cry of
+passion ever breaks through. Heads, hands, and outlines have all a
+sickly idealism; a studious and sedulously polished manner of painting
+has ruined the intrinsic spirit of the work as a whole. Théophile
+Gautier was right when he wrote of Gallait: "_Tout le talent_ _qu'on
+peut acquérir avec du travail, du goût, du jugememt, et de la volonté,
+M. Gallait le possède._" Gallait's "Last Obsequies," hung in that same
+Salon of 1850 which contained Courbet's "Stone-breakers," and the words
+of recognition accorded to it, were the last obsequies given to the
+parting genius of historical painting. A few years went by, and
+Gallait's fame died away. After 1851 he painted fourteen other great
+historical pictures ("Egmont's Last Moments," "Johanna the Mad by the
+Corpse of her Husband," "Alva at the Window during the Execution of the
+two Counts," etc.), and, occasionally, sentimental _genre_ pictures,
+such as "The Oblivion of Sorrow" in the Berlin National Gallery; in this
+a small boy is playing the fiddle for the consolation of his sister, who
+had sunk upon the high-road exhausted by hunger. He also painted many
+portraits. But nothing gave him a niche in the memory of his
+contemporaries. "The Pest at Tournai," painted in 1882, was a work
+extremely creditable to his old age; it was nevertheless a picture which
+appeared to another generation merely as a phantom; and when, on 20th
+November 1887, the announcement of his death passed through the land, it
+came unexpectedly, like that of a person already believed to have been
+long dead.
+
+[Illustration: _Bruyllant, Brussels._
+
+ GALLAIT. EGMONT'S LAST MOMENTS.]
+
+Finally, _Edouard de Bièfve_, who in 1842 shared Gallait's triumph in
+Germany, and was afterwards named in the same breath with him, is the
+man who marks the complete corruption of this tendency. If the sturdy
+Wappers, the emasculate De Keyzer, and the eclectic Gallait tricked out
+their pathetic heroes with noble heads like that of the Antinous, and
+offered their contemporaries an adroit theatrical art, a parade, and a
+hollow pathos, the incapable Bièfve never got beyond the painting of
+_tableaux vivants_ laboriously presented. Terrible and of Shakespearian
+impressiveness is the scene in which the half-famished Ugolino hurls
+himself upon his son in an appalling ecstasy of frenzy, a curse against
+God and man upon his lips. Upon the canvas, six metres wide, which
+Bièfve in 1836 devoted to this theme, there is represented an old
+gentleman, who, though certainly a little pale, contrives to maintain in
+perfection the punctilious bearing of a cavalier, and in the midst of
+his fasting cure has picturesquely draped round his shoulders an ermine
+mantle, as if he had been asked out to dinner. Before him stands a young
+man, possessing that graceful outline beloved of Paul Delaroche.
+Devéria, Ary Scheffer, and Johannot were better painters of such
+monumental illustrations of the classics. As yet the shivering art of
+Belgium had learnt only to warm itself at the Parisian fireside. Even
+Bièfve's "League of the Nobles of the Netherlands," despite its national
+subject-matter, was no more than a lucky hit, which he owed to his long
+residence in Paris. And how tiresomely is the scene played out! One
+would wish to catch the mutterings of insurrection from these men who
+personify the Belgian people; but Bièfve's picture is restful and
+dignified. Egmont and Horn, the lions of the occasion, are conducting
+themselves like honest citizens who are bored at a party. Seated in his
+chair, the handsome Egmont thinks merely of showing his fine profile to
+the ladies in the gallery, and Horn, who steps towards the table to make
+his signature, does it with the elegance of a lover inscribing verses in
+a young lady's album. Three brothers with clasped hands swear the
+well-known oath to die together.
+
+[Illustration: _Bruyllant, Brussels._
+
+ EDOUARD BIÈFVE.]
+
+It is a little irony in the history of art that in 1842 these two same
+pictures set all Germany in tumult, and diverted the whole stream of
+painting into a new course. But how was it possible that the German
+painters stood before them as if struck by lightning? It must be
+remembered that for a whole generation Germany had seen nothing but
+coloured cartoons, and that the enthusiasm for Franco-Belgian art had
+been so prepared that the least touch was enough to set it in flames.
+
+[Illustration: _Bruyllant, Brussels._
+
+ BIÈFVE. THE LEAGUE OF THE NOBLES OF THE NETHERLANDS.]
+
+Since the wars of liberation Germany had been very reserved in her
+attitude towards the French. Until the year 1842 original works of the
+French and Belgian school had never been hung in any German exhibition.
+But in spite of this, a high, even enthusiastic, appreciation of French
+and Belgian painting was being spread, especially amongst the younger
+generation. Even in engravings and lithographs after French pictures it
+was believed that qualities of colour were discoverable which were
+wanting in German painting. Heine and other authors, who had wandered to
+Paris, "the lofty tower of Freedom," to escape from the depressing
+condition of German affairs, had done what in them lay for the
+dissemination of this cult. The rising generation of the forties had
+been driven by Heine's notices of the Salon into an almost hostile
+attitude towards the dominant art schools of Germany, the schools of
+Düsseldorf and Munich. The stylists on the Isar and the sentimental
+elegiac painters on the Rhine met with the same antipathy from the
+younger generation. The appearance of the two Belgian historical
+pictures, which were really nothing more than offshoots of the great
+French school, gave nourishment of doubled strength to this tendency to
+seek salvation in Paris. The German painters were startled out of
+contentment with their beloved cartoons, and to many a man it seemed as
+if the scales had fallen from his eyes. They perceived what an admirable
+thing it is that a painter should be able to paint. What they could have
+learnt long before from any good old picture, and in their turbulent
+enthusiasm for ideas had not learnt, was made suddenly clear to them by
+these new paintings. They came to the conclusion that it was impossible
+for God Almighty to have poured light and colour over the objective
+world with the intention that painters should transform it into a world
+of shadowless contours. They recognised that the style of cartoon work
+had led away from all painting, and that it was therefore necessary to
+do honour once more to the despised handiwork and technique of art, as
+the fundamental condition of its well-being. However much the æsthetic
+party might warn them not to renounce "the Reformation of painting,
+which had been begun and perfected forty years before," and not "with
+modern technique to sink back into the pre-Cornelian, ornamental model
+painting," the demand for colour, which had been so long neglected,
+asserted its rights more and more loudly. King Ludwig's saying was
+repeated as though it were a new revelation: "The painter must be able
+to paint." Colour was the battle-cry of the day, the battle-cry of
+youth, to whom the world belongs. In place of the ideal of contour came
+the ideal of hue and pigment. Cartoons, in the sense of the old cartoon
+school, no one would draw any longer. To paint pictures, finished
+pictures, was the tendency of the day. And since painting is to be
+learnt from the living only, and such as could paint lived in Germany no
+longer, they packed their trunks, and set out to learn from the
+"go-ahead neighbour." As Rome had been hitherto, so was Paris now, the
+high school of German art. "To Paris!" and "Painting!" were the cries
+throughout all Germany.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE REVOLUTION OF THE GERMAN COLOURISTS
+
+
+From 1842 dates the pilgrimage of the German artists to Paris, Antwerp,
+and Brussels. In Delaroche, Cogniet, and Couture, in Wappers and
+Gallait, they believed they could discover the secrets of art which were
+hidden from German teachers. The history of art can scarcely offer
+another example of such a sudden overthrow of dogmas hitherto dominant
+by dogmas directly opposed to them. During the first half of the century
+the painters of Germany were pious men, humorous, witty, and intelligent
+men; they had a sharply cut profile, and so enchained the multitude by
+their human qualities that nobody remarked how little they understood of
+their craft, or that they were too superior to learn to draw correctly,
+held colour unchaste, and made virtues of all their failings. The next
+generation was condemned to learn painting during the whole of its
+natural life. The former were "problematic natures": beings who united
+with a Titanic force of will an actual achievement which is hardly worth
+mentioning; who regarded the mere handicraft of art as beneath their
+dignity; who, in their revelations to mankind, were resolved to burden
+their spirit as little as possible with any sensuous expression of their
+genius, and, above all, meant not to degrade themselves by the manual
+labour of learning to paint, and thereby wasting their valuable time.
+The latter were not ashamed of painting. By devoting themselves with
+vehemence to the colouring and technique of oil-painting, they
+accomplished the necessary revolution against the abstract idealism of
+the school of Cornelius. In their opulence of ideas the draughtsmen of
+cartoons had made a notch in the history of art by casting the technical
+tradition overboard. To have reinstated this as far as they could, with
+the aid of the French, is the peculiar merit of the generation of 1850.
+"_Règle générale: si vous rencontrez un bon peintre allemamd, vous
+pouvez le complimenter en français._" So runs the motto--not
+complimentary to Germany, but quite unassailable--which Edmond About
+prefixed to his notices on the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855.
+
+_Anselm Feuerbach_ was the first distinguished German artist who made
+the journey to Paris with a proper knowledge of the necessity of this
+step. In Germany he was the greatest representative of that Classicism
+of which the principal master in France was Ingres, and the continuator
+Thomas Couture. And he succeeded in accomplishing that which the German
+Classicists of the beginning of the century strove after in vain. Whilst
+they contented themselves with suggestions and an indeterminate
+symbolisation of poetical ideas after the Greek writers, German
+Classicism achieved in Feuerbach's "Symposium of Plato" a great, noble,
+and faultless work, which will live. He moved upon classic ground more
+naturally and freely and with more of the Hellenic spirit than even the
+French. For the classic genius was begotten in him, and not inoculated
+from without. In the _Vermächtniss_ the son calls his father's book the
+prophetic seal of his own original being. He inherited the classic
+spirit from the enthusiastic scholar, the subtile author of the Vatican
+Apollo, to whom the genius of Greece had so fully and completely
+revealed itself.
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstängl._
+
+ ANSELM FEUERBACH. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.]
+
+A remarkable nature: philologer and dreamer, German and Greek, one who
+rejoiced in beauty and in the life of the senses, and whose proud muse
+strayed through life solitary and with leaden weights upon her
+feet,--such was Anselm Feuerbach, and by that division of his being he
+was ruined. Equipped with a superior education, an appearance of
+singular nobility, and with proud family traditions, he emerged like a
+shining meteor in Düsseldorf, when he began his career at the age of
+sixteen, brilliant, precocious, and already a favourite amongst women.
+This was in 1845. He ran through all the schools in Germany, Belgium,
+and France. In regard to the living, he believed himself to be indebted
+to the French alone, and eagerly claimed the merit of having been the
+first to seek them out. But it was in Italy that he had passed through
+his novitiate as an artist. A glorious hour it must have been when
+Feuerbach, full-blooded and dedicated to the worship of beauty, entered
+Venice in 1855, in company with that cheerful and convivial poet Victor
+Scheffel. In the town of the lagoons, whither he had come on a
+commission from the Court of Karlsruhe to copy the Assumption of Titian,
+Feuerbach made the second determining step of his life. The third he
+made when his stipendium was withdrawn, and, full of youthful
+confidence in his luck and his good star, he undertook his journey to
+Rome.
+
+[Illustration: _Albert, Munich._
+
+ FEUERBACH. HAFIZ AT THE WELL.]
+
+[Illustration: _Albert, Munich._
+
+ FEUERBACH. PIETA.]
+
+He was handsome, small, and refined, and rather pale and spare--of that
+delicacy which in highly bred families is found in the last heirs with
+whom the race dies out--and he had dark locks which clustered wildly
+round his head. The moulding of his features was feminine, and his
+complexion southern; his eyes, shadowed by long lashes, were brown,
+sometimes fiery, sometimes sad and earnest, and his glance was swift. He
+loved to sing Italian songs to the guitar in his fine, deep voice, and
+Boecklin and Reinhold Begas would join in.
+
+The impressions he received in Italy were formative of his life. For he
+learnt to understand the divine simplicity and noble dignity of antique
+art better than Couture was capable of understanding them; and he
+achieved a simple amplitude to which the French Classicism had never
+risen.
+
+From his first works, to which the Düsseldorf egg-shell is still
+sticking, down to the "Symposium of Plato"--what a route it is, and
+through what phases he passes. "Hafiz at the Well," surrounded by
+voluptuous, half-naked girls, painted at Paris in 1852, was his first
+eminent achievement. In subject it is a late fruit from Daumer's study
+of Hafiz: as a work of art it is one of the most genuine products of the
+school of Couture. No other German artist has surrendered himself so
+entirely to the French. With a large brush, never losing sight of the
+complete effect, Feuerbach has painted his canvas, almost for the sake
+of showing that he has assimilated everything that was to be learnt in
+Paris. The same influence preponderates in the "Death of Pietro
+Aretino," done in 1854. But, side by side with the Parisian master, the
+later Venetians have an unmistakable share in this work. The capacity
+to grasp things in a monumental largeness is already announced.
+Evidently Feuerbach has studied Paul Veronese, and realised how high he
+stands above the French painters. At the same time he has examined the
+other Venetians for their technique, and discovered something which has
+appealed to him in Bordone's colouring. But "Dante walking with
+high-born Ladies of Ravenna," finished at Rome in 1857, was the ripest
+fruit of his Venetian impressions. In sunny warmth of colour, fine
+golden tone, and quiet simplicity of pictorial treatment, no modern has
+come so near to Palma and Bordone. And in "Dante's Death," of 1858,
+there predominates a still greater depth and golden glow, a grave and
+devout beauty.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ FEUERBACH. IPHIGENIA.]
+
+In the following works, however, Feuerbach, with a conscious purpose,
+denies himself the quality to which the Dante pictures owe a principal
+part of their powerful effect: the mild glow, the sunny beaming of
+colour. He confines himself to a cool scheme of tone, reduced to grey,
+almost to the point of colourlessness; to a glimmer of leaden blue, a
+moonlight pallor. At the same time he has concentrated the whole life of
+his figures in their inward being, whilst every movement has been taken
+from their limbs. Even the expression of spiritual emotion in the eyes
+and features has been subdued in the extreme. The "Pietà," both the
+"Iphigenias," and the "Symposium of Plato" are the world-renowned
+proofs of the height of classic inspiration which he touched in Italy.
+Measure, nobility, unsought and perfected loftiness characterise the
+"Pietà," that mother of the Saviour who bows herself in silent agony
+over the body of her Divine Son, and those three kneeling women, whose
+silent grief is of such thrilling power, precisely because of its
+emotionlessness. For "Iphigenia" Feuerbach has given of his best. She is
+in both examples--the first of 1862, the second of 1871--a figure
+sublime beyond human measure, grand like the figure of the Greek
+tragedy. But the "Symposium of Plato" will always assert its high value
+as one of the finest pictorial creations of an imagination nourished on
+the great art of the ancients, and filled brimful with the splendour of
+the antique world. There is nothing in it superfluous, nothing
+accidental. The noblest simplicity of speech, a Greek rhythm in all
+gradations, the beautiful lines of bas-relief, decisive colour and
+stringent form--that is the groundwork of Feuerbach's art. And through
+it there speaks a spirit preoccupied with greatness and heroism. Thus he
+created his "Medea" in the Munich Pinakothek, that picture of
+magnificent, sombre melancholy that affects one like a monologue from a
+Sophoclean tragedy. Thus he painted his "Battle of the Amazons," one of
+the few "nude" pictures of the century which possesses the perfectly
+unconcerned and unsexual nudity of the antique. Italy had set him free
+from all the insincere and calculated methods which had deformed French
+art since Delaroche; it had set him free from all theatrical sentiment,
+by which he had accustomed himself to understand everything that was
+forced in costume, pigment, pose and movement, light and scenery. In the
+place of the ordinary treatment from the model, with its set gestures
+and grimaces, he gave an expression of form which was great, simple, and
+plastic. His study seems to have been an incessant exercise of the eye,
+to see and to hold fast to the essential, to the great lines of nature
+as of the human body.
+
+[Illustration: _Albert, Munich._
+
+ FEUERBACH. PORTRAIT OF A ROMAN LADY.]
+
+In the full possession of these powers, which he acquired amid the
+elementary simplicity and heroic majesty of Roman landscape by constant
+intercourse with the great painters of the past, he determined in the
+summer of 1873 to accept an invitation from the Vienna Academy. His
+friends rejoiced. At last this worker, who had been abandoned in a
+foreign land, seemed to have found in his native country a place which
+offered him a new life. He was but little more than forty: yet all was
+so soon to be over. From Rome he came to the restless capital which had
+just lived through the birththroes of a new epoch; from the side of
+Michael Angelo to the side of Makart! The sketches for a series on the
+wars of the Titans, which he began after his arrival, promised the
+greatest things. They display a sureness and majesty which find no
+parallel in the German art of those years. But they were destined never
+to be completed.
+
+Feeling himself, like Antæus, strong only on Roman soil, he lost his
+power in Vienna. Reserved, innately delicate, a mystical, ideal nature
+like that of Faust, and one which only with reluctance permitted to a
+stranger a glimpse of its inner being; in his life, as in his art,
+high-bred and simple, hating both as painter and as man everything
+overstrained or sentimental; in his judgment harsh, severe, and
+uncompromising, lonely and proud, he was but little adapted to make
+friends for himself. The indifference with which his study for the "Fall
+of the Titans" was received in the Vienna Exhibition wounded him
+mortally. Vienna, which is so much disposed to laughter, laughed.
+Criticism was rough and unfavourable. He left Vienna and went to Venice.
+The tragical fate of a party of voyagers, drowned as they were playing
+and singing together on a night journey to the Lido, gave him the motive
+for his last picture, "The Concert," which was found unfinished after
+his death, and came into the possession of the Berlin National Gallery.
+On 4th January 1882 he died, alone in a Venetian hotel.
+
+ "Hier ruht Anselm Feuerbach,
+ Der im Leben manches malte,
+ Fern vom Vaterlande, ach,
+ Das ihn immer schlecht bezahlte."
+
+So runs the epitaph which he made for himself. And posterity might alter
+it into--
+
+ "Hier ruht ein deutscher Maler,
+ Bekannt im deutschen Land;
+ Nennt man die besten Namen,
+ Wird auch der seine genannt."
+
+However, one must not go too far. In familiar conversation Feuerbach
+once said of himself that when the history of art in the nineteenth
+century came to be written, mention would be made of him as of a meteor.
+So isolated, and so much out of connection with the artistic striving of
+his contemporaries, did he believe himself to be, that he held himself
+justified in saying: "Believe me, after fifty years my pictures will
+possess tongues, and tell the world what I was and what I meant." In
+truth, he owes his resurrection less to his pictures than to the
+_Vermächtniss_. A book has opened the eyes of Germany to Feuerbach's
+greatness, and since that time the worship of Feuerbach has gone almost
+into extremes. Throughout his lifetime--like almost every great artist
+who has died before old age--he was handled by the Press without much
+comprehension. The critics blamed his grey tones, the connoisseurs
+complained of his unpatriotic subjects or missed the presence of
+anecdote. His admirers were the refined, quiet people who do not praise
+at the top of their voices. He never met with recognition, and that
+poisoned his life. It is generous of posterity to make up for the want
+of contemporary appreciation. But when he is set up as a pioneer, whose
+work pointed out the art of the future, the judgment becomes one which a
+_later_ posterity will subscribe to only with hesitation.
+
+[Illustration: FEUERBACH. MOTHER'S JOY.]
+
+Feuerbach presents a problem for psychological rather than artistic
+analysis. Whoever has read the _Vermächtniss_ feels the personal element
+in these works, sees in them the confessions of a proud, unsatisfied,
+and suffering soul, and in their author no son of the Renaissance born
+out of due season, but a modern who has been agitated through and
+through by the _décadent_ fever. In his book Feuerbach appears as one of
+the first who felt to his inmost fibre all the intellectual and
+spiritual contradictions which are bred by the nineteenth century, and
+who cherished them even with a sort of tenderness, as contributing to a
+high and more subtilised condition of soul. He was one of the first who,
+in the same way as Bourget and Verlaine, studied moral pathology under
+the microscope, and who, with a tired soul and worn-out feelings, sought
+for the last refinement of simplicity. And this weary resignations seems
+also to speak from his pictures. Not one of the old painters has this
+modern melancholy, this air of dejection which hovers over his works.
+Even the ladies round Dante are filled with that sadness which comes
+over youth on the evenings of sultry summer days, when it is struck by a
+presentiment of the transitoriness of earthly things. It is as if these
+figures would all some day or other vanish into the cloister, or, like
+Iphigenia, sit lonely upon the shore of a sea, whither no ship should
+ever come to release them. And it is certainly not by chance that
+Iphigenia had such a hold upon the artist; he repeatedly set himself to
+render her figure afresh, and, later, Medea steps beside her as the
+impersonation of the still more intense sense of desertion which filled
+the artist's spirit. The woman of Colchis, who sits shivering on the
+shore of the sea, chilled through and through by the consciousness of
+her abandonment; the daughter of Agamemnon, who in spirit is seeking the
+land of the Greeks, with the boundless sea spreading wide and grey
+before her, like her own yearning,--both are images of the lonely
+Feuerbach, who, like Hölderlin, the Werther of Greece, flies to a dreamy
+Hellas as to a happy shore, to find peace for his sick spirit. His
+"Symposium of Plato" has not that exuberant sensuousness, that mixture
+of _esprit_ and voluptuousness, of temperance and intemperance, which
+marks the Athenian life under Pericles; nor has it the Olympian
+blitheness with which Raphael would have executed the subject. A breath
+of monkish asceticism is over every joy, subduing it. These Greeks have
+tasted of the pains which Christianity brought into the world. Or take
+his "Judgment of Paris" in Hamburg. Nude women life-size, Loves,
+southern landscape, gay raiment, golden vessels, brilliant ornament,
+beauty--those are the elements of the picture; and how little have such
+words the power to render the impression! But Feuerbach's three
+goddesses have an uneasiness, as if each one of them knew beforehand
+that she would not receive the apple; Paris is sitting just as
+cheerlessly there. And by borrowing his loves from Boucher, Feuerbach
+has shown the more sharply the opposition between the Hellenic legend
+which he interprets and the funereal mien with which he does it. The
+blitheness of the antique spirit is tempered by the sadness of the
+modern mind. He tells these old myths as never a Greek and never a
+master of the Renaissance would have told them. Olympus is filled with
+mist, with the colouring of the North, with the melancholy of a later
+and more neurotic age, the moods of which are for that very reason more
+rich in _nuances_--an age which is at once graver and more disturbed by
+problems than was the old Hellas. Feuerbach's pictures are octaves in
+the language of Tasso, but of a repining lyrical mood which Tasso would
+not have given them. The brightest sunshine laughed over the Greece of
+the Renaissance; over that of Feuerbach there rests a rainy, overcast
+November mood. Even works of his like the "Children on the Sea-shore"
+and the "Idyll" reveal a pained and suffering conception of nature, that
+tender and subdued spirit that Burne-Jones has; it is as if these
+blossoms of humanity were there to waste away in buds that never come to
+fruition, as if it were no longer possible to breathe into creation the
+true joyousness of youth. Even the five girls, making music out of
+doors, in the picture "In Spring," look like young widows, putting the
+whole tenderness of their souls into elegiac complaints for their lost
+husbands.
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstängl._
+
+ FEUERBACH. MEDEA.]
+
+To this resigned and mournful expression must be added the uncomfortable
+motionlessness of his figures. They do not speak, and do not laugh, and
+do not cry; they know no passions and sorrows which express themselves
+by the straining of the limbs. Everything bears the impress of sublime
+peace, of that same peace by which the works of Gustave Moreau, Puvis de
+Chavannes, and Burne-Jones are to be distinguished from the ecstatic and
+sentimental tirades of the Romanticists. In Feuerbach's works this is
+the stamp of his own nature. The antique beauty becomes shrouded in a
+mysterious veil; and life is illuminated as by a mournful light, which
+rests over bygone worlds. What heart-rending keenness is often in the
+effect of the melancholy tinge of these subdued bluish tones! That
+colour is the genuine expression of the temperament reveals itself
+clearly enough in Feuerbach. When he began his career, his head full of
+ideals and his heart full of hopes, his pictures exulted in a Venetian
+splendour, in full and luxuriant golden harmonies; as "joy after joy
+was shipwrecked in the stream of time" they became leaden, sullen, and
+corpse-like. As Frans Hals in his last days, when his fellow-creatures
+allowed him only the bare necessities of life, accorded to the figures
+in his pictures only so much colour as would give them the appearance of
+living human beings; as Rembrandt's magical golden tone changed in the
+sad days of his bankruptcy into a sullen, monotonous brown, so a deep
+sadness broods over the pictures of Feuerbach,--something that savours
+of memory and remorse, the mournful atmosphere and dark mood of evening
+which the bat loves. Even as a colourist he has the melancholy lassitude
+of the end of the century.
+
+That is what distinguishes him from his contemporaries. The other
+idealists of those years painted their pictures without hesitation and
+with the facility of a professor of calligraphy; they remembered,
+arranged their reminiscences, and rubbed their hands with
+self-complacency when they came near their model. They did not yet feel
+the throb of the nineteenth century, and impersonality was their note.
+Feuerbach, the neurotic brooder, was a personality. After a long
+mortification, the human spirit, the living, suffering, human spirit,
+celebrated its renaissance in his works. Under its influence the jejune
+painting of prettiness practised by others was changed to modern
+pessimism and sorrowful resignation. The more he gave way to these moods
+the more modern he became, the more he was Feuerbach and the further he
+departed from the works of art which were regarded by his contemporaries
+and himself as eternal exemplars. He has been reproached with oddities
+and strange eccentricities. The critics reminded him how far he departed
+from the lines of his models; indignantly they asked him why he, the
+pale, delicate, sick, neurotic, and overstrained man, the uncertain,
+faltering, and tortured spirit, did not paint like the blithe,
+improvising Raphael, like the jubilant and convivial Veronese, like the
+sensuous, exuberant Rubens. And Feuerbach himself becomes perplexed.
+Like Gros in France, he is conscious both of his strength and his
+weakness. He does not stand sovereign above the old painters, like
+Boecklin and those other idealists of the present. He runs through life
+in ever fresh astonishment at the novelty which is revealed to him in
+the works of earlier centuries. The nerves of this latter day vibrate,
+the blood of the nineteenth century throbs in him--yet he has the wish
+to imitate. The history of every one of his works is a fight, a
+desperate struggle, between the individuality of the artist, his own
+inward feeling, and the "absolute Beauty" which hovered beyond him cold
+and unpliable.
+
+In his first drawings he begins boldly; one knows his hand and says:
+"Only Feuerbach can have done that." And then one is able to trace, step
+by step, and from sketch to sketch, what pains he takes that the
+finished picture may be as little of a Feuerbach as possible. The
+personal and individual element in the drawings is lost, what is
+Feuerbachian in the composition, the personal contribution of the
+artist, is effaced, and finally there is produced in the picture the
+marvellous look of having been painted by a genuine old Venetian as a
+ghost. And Feuerbach felt the dissonance. He feels that he fully
+expresses himself no more, and also that he does not reach the level of
+the old masters. He adds borrowed, conventional figure, like the Boucher
+Cupids in the "Judgment of Paris"--figures against which every fibre of
+his being revolts--just to arrive at an outward resemblance to the old
+pictures, an impression of exultation and joyousness and the spirit of
+the Renaissance. And when he stands opposite his work he seems to
+himself like a gravedigger in a harlequin's jacket. He scrutinises
+himself in despair, and one day comes to feel that his power of
+production is exhausted. Splendid and unapproachable, from the walls of
+the galleries, the art of the classic masters stares him in the face;
+and he enters into a dramatic life-and-death struggle with it. He will
+not be Feuerbach, and cannot become a Classic. The curtain falls and the
+tragedy is over. Such destinies have been before in the world, no doubt;
+but in our time they have multiplied, and seem so much the sadder
+because they never come to the average man, but only to great and
+peculiarly gifted natures.
+
+[Illustration: _Albert, Munich._
+
+ FEUERBACH. DANTE WALKING WITH HIGH-BORN LADIES OF RAVENNA.]
+
+These matters--a silent historical sermon--one reads, with the help of
+the _Vermächtniss_, out of Feuerbach's works. There "his pictures
+possess tongues"; there comes out of them a sound like the cry of a
+human heart; the whole tragedy of his career becomes present--what he
+succeeded in doing and what remained unapproachable. Yet later
+generations, which will judge him no longer psychologically, but only as
+an artist, generations with which he no longer stands in touch through
+his ethical greatness, will they also feel this in the presence of his
+finished pictures? To them will he be pioneer or imitator, forerunner or
+continuator? Will he take his place by Boecklin and Watts, or by Couture
+and Ingres? It is perhaps a happy chance that in the history of art one
+sometimes stumbles upon personalities that mock at all chemical
+analysis. Feuerbach, at any rate, is a great figure in the German art of
+these years. His is a high-bred, aristocratic art, free from any
+illustrative undertone, and from loud and motley colour. It is true that
+his figures also pose, but never clumsily or without expression, never
+theatrically. At a time when declamation was universal he did not
+declaim, at least he never did so with a forced pathos; and it is
+principally this which gives him a very high and special place amongst
+the German painters of the transitional period. He is always simple,
+grave, majestic. Everything that he does has style, and that makes him
+so peculiar in an art which is so often petty.
+
+[Illustration: HENNEBERG. THE RACE FOR FORTUNE.
+
+ (_By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., the owners of the
+ copyright._)]
+
+But a different judgment is formed when one compares him with the French
+and the old masters. A meteor Feuerbach was not; for he stood on the
+ground of the Couture school, and raised himself later to yet greater
+simplicity, going back to purer sources, to the Venetians and the
+Romans. He is more austere and manly than Couture, but he is, as he
+stands in his finished pictures, a Roman of the Cinquecento, who has
+been in Venice; not an original genius of the nineteenth century, like
+Boecklin. Boecklin paints the antique figures in their eternal fulness
+and youth; but he is quite modern in sentiment and in his highly
+developed technique. Feuerbach in regard to technique stands now on
+French soil, now on Venetian or Roman; and in his sentiment he is an
+imitator of the Cinquecentists, or, if you will, a phenomenon of
+atavism. His writings and drawings show him concerned with the present,
+his paintings with the past. The modern temperament, artistically
+restrained, breaks out no more, the nerves have no rôle, no human sound
+is forced from his figures. He learnt through the spectacles of the
+great old masters to look away from everything petty in life, but he
+never laid those spectacles down. This modern man, who was so neurotic
+as a writer, sought as a painter, for the sake of the ideal, to have no
+nerves at all. Before many of his pictures one wishes for a fire; they
+make an effect so cold that one shivers. The quality in them which calls
+for boundless admiration is his splendid artistic earnestness. There
+speaks out of them a sacred peace. Yet, when he is set up as a pioneer,
+it must never be forgotten that he is not self-sufficient as, shall we
+say, Millet, but has attained his majesty of conception only in the
+leading-strings of masterpieces of a great period, and precisely in the
+leading-strings of those masterpieces from the numbing influence of
+which modern art was forced to set itself free, before it could come to
+the consciousness of itself.
+
+[Illustration: GUSTAV RICHTER. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.]
+
+Together with Feuerbach--and having, like him, previously received
+enlightenment as to colouring at the Antwerp Academy--_Victor Müller_,
+of Frankfort, had gone to Couture in 1849. He resided until 1858 on the
+banks of the Seine, and was especially influenced by Delacroix, and
+perhaps also a little affected by Courbet. At least his "Wood Nymph"--a
+voluptuous woman lying in a wood--which first made him known in Germany
+in 1863, seems but little removed from the healthy realism and exuberant
+vigour of the master of Ornans. Otherwise, like Delacroix, he has
+occupied himself almost exclusively with Shakespeare. "Hamlet at the
+Grave of Yorick," "Ophelia," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hero and Leander,"
+were pictures of a deep, sonorous glow of colour; the characters in them
+were seized with great intellectual concentration, and the surrounding
+landscape filled with that sombre poetry of nature which in the hands of
+Delacroix so mystically heightens the impression of human tragedies.
+Victor Müller was of a bold, uncompromising talent, full of southern
+glow and wild Romanticism; a powerful, forcible realist, who never
+sought the empty, sentimental, ideal beauty known to his age. In a
+period dominated almost from end to end by a jejune and rounded beauty,
+he gives pleasure by a healthy, refreshing "ugliness." All the heads in
+his pictures were painted after nature with a religious devoutness;
+painted by a man who openly loved the youthful works of Riberas and
+Caravaggio. And just as surprising is the power of expression, the deep
+and earnest sentiment, which he attained in gestures and physiognomy.
+While Makart, in his balcony scene from _Romeo and Juliet_, never got
+away from a hollow, theatrical affectation, Müller's picture glows
+throughout with a sensuous passion that saps the blood. A new Delacroix
+seemed to have been born; an extraordinary talent seemed to be rising
+above the horizon of our art, but Germany had to follow to the grave her
+greatest offshoot of Romanticism before he had spoken a decisive word,
+just as she lost Rethel, the greatest son of the cartoon era, in the
+flower of his age.
+
+Of the others who made the pilgrimage to Paris with Feuerbach and
+Müller, not one has a similar importance as an artist. Their merit was
+that they made themselves comparatively able masters of technique, and
+taught the new gospel when they returned to Germany. To their
+superiority in technique and colour, given them by a sound French
+schooling, they owed their brilliant success in the fifties. They were,
+at the time, the best German painters, and great at a time when ability
+was novel and infrequent. As soon as it became customary and
+commonplace, there remained little to raise them above the average.
+
+[Illustration: RICHTER. A GIPSY.]
+
+That is true of the entire Berlin school of the fifties and sixties. The
+most independent of the many artists who journeyed from the Spree to the
+Seine is, probably, _Rudolf Henneberg_, who died young. His technique he
+owed to Couture, in whose studio he worked from 1851, and his
+subject-matter to the German classical authors. Born a Brunswicker, he
+felt himself specially attracted by his countryman Bürger, and became a
+Northern ballad painter with French technique. Movement, animation,
+wildness, and a certain romantic eeriness, proper to the Northern
+ballad--these are Henneberg's prominent features, as they are Bürger's.
+His pictures have a bold caprice and a peculiarly powerful and sombre
+poetry. The hunting party storm past irresistibly, like a whirlwind, in
+his "Wild Hunt," the illustration to Bürger's ballad, which in 1856 won
+him the gold medal in Paris.
+
+ "Und hinterher bei Knall and Klang
+ Der Tross mit Hund und Ross und Mann."
+
+A Düsseldorfian Romanticism, from the Wolf's Glen, is united to
+Couture's nobleness of colouring in his "Criminal from Lost Honour," of
+1860. And a part--even if only a small one--of the spirit which created
+Dürer's "The Knight, Death, and the Devil" lives in his masterpiece "The
+Race for Fortune," a picture breathed on by the spirit of sombre,
+mediæval Romanticism, which made his name the most honoured in the
+Exhibition of 1868.
+
+[Illustration: SCHRADER. CROMWELL AT WHITEHALL.]
+
+The negation of power, an almost feminine painter of no distinctive
+character, a new edition of Winterhalter, was _Gustav Richter_. His
+popularity is connected with the fisher-boys and odalisques, the
+reproduction of which every sempstress at one time used to wear on her
+brooch, while in printed colours they added splendour to all the bonbon
+and handkerchief boxes. The accomplished workmanship and sparkling
+treatment of material which he acquired in Paris made him in 1860, after
+Eduard Magnus had made his exit, the most famous painter of feminine
+beauty. A pleasure-loving man of the world, elegant in appearance, fame,
+honour, and distinction were showered upon him, and he became the
+shining spoilt darling of society, the central point of an extensive and
+animated convivial intercourse. His works were carried out in a style
+which, at that time, had not been learnt in Berlin, and had an air of
+Court life which was held to be exceedingly fashionable. It was later
+that the banal emptiness and insipid taste of his toilette portraits
+first became obvious, and that their everlastingly sweet and doll-like
+smirk, and their kind and winning eyes, always the same, began to grow
+tiresome. In all his life-size chromolithographs there is a distinction
+of build and appearance, which in the originals was perhaps to have been
+desired, although the originals unquestionably looked like something
+that was more human and individual. In riper years, after the happiness
+of family life had been given him, he executed works which assure his
+name a certain endurance; this he did in some of his family
+portraits,--for instance, in those of his boys and his wife. To this
+last period belongs the ideal portrait of the Baroness Ziegler as Queen
+Louisa, which became such a popular picture in Prussia. But Richter's
+"great" compositions, which once charmed the visitors at exhibitions,
+are now forgotten. In "Jairus's Daughter"--admired in 1856 as a fine
+performance in colouring--what strikes one now that its colouring has
+long been surpassed is the inadequacy and theatricality of its
+characterisation, the outward show, and the banality of this handsome
+young man who performs his miracle with a declamatory pose. The
+"Building of the Pyramids," painted for the Maximilianeum in Munich,
+with its swarming crowd of dark-coloured people, and the royal pair come
+to inspect with an endless train, is a gigantic ethnographical
+picture-sheet, which did not repay the expenditure of twelve long years
+of work.
+
+In Paris _Otto Knille_ learnt to approach huge canvas and wall spaces
+with fearlessness, and by executing the many monumental commissions
+which fell to his share in Prussia, he put this French talent to usury
+in a manner which was as blameless as it was uninteresting. Some good
+paintings by _Julius Schrader_, such as the historical pictures with
+which his fame is associated, have remained fresh for a longer period.
+The "Death of Leonardo da Vinci," as well as the "Surrender of Calais to
+Edward III," "Wallenstein and Seni at their Astrological Studies," "The
+Dying Milton," and "Charles I parting from his Children," are only a
+collection of what the Parisian studios had transmitted to him.
+Delaroche and the illustrative and theatrical painting of history,
+having gone the rounds in Belgium, in the next decade demanded their
+sacrifice in Germany.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ LESSING. THE HUSSITE SERMON.]
+
+Here also similar political and literary conditions were prescribed. A
+backward people, uncontent with itself, pined for deeds and glory.
+Through the presentment of the great dramas of the past the spirit of
+the present was to be quickened, as a relaxed body by massage. Here also
+the knowledge of history levelled the ground for painting, as it did in
+France. While, in the imagination of the Romanticists, different ages
+melted dreamily into each other, and the Hohenstauffen period, because
+of its tender melancholy character, gave the keynote for all German
+history, the scientific writing of history had, since the thirties,
+entered as a power into literature. Schlosser began his
+_Universal-historische Uebersicht der Geschichte der alten Welt_, which
+swelled to nine volumes, and represented with a completeness hitherto
+unapproached the civilisation of antiquity. His history of the
+eighteenth century was a still greater departure, for, after the example
+of Voltaire, he included manners, science, and literature in his account
+of political events. On the uncompromising subjectivity of Schlosser
+followed the scientific objectivity of Ranke, who, a master of the
+criticism of sources, delineated with delicate, silver-point portraits
+the Papacy after the Reformation, the French Court, the policy of the
+princes of the age of the Reformation, Cromwell, and the heroes of the
+rising power of Prussia. Luden, Giesebrecht, Leo, Hurter, Dahlmann,
+Gervinus, and many others began their great labours. German painting,
+like French, sought to take advantage of the results of these scientific
+investigations; and Schnaase was the first who, in the _Kunstblatt_ in
+1834, described historical painting as the pressing demand of the age,
+and the cultivation of the historical sense in such a disconsolate epoch
+as a "truly religious necessity." Soon afterwards Vischer began to
+preach historical painting as a new gospel. History, he says, is the
+revelation of God. His Being is revealed in it as much as in the sacred
+writings of religion. Historical painting is therefore the completion
+and full exemplification of those principles which, five centuries back,
+in Giotto, led to the movement of the new Christian painting. It is
+called forth by the development of all forms of life and knowledge, and
+is the last and highest step which sacred painting is able to reach: it
+is the final completion of sacred painting itself. "Who represents the
+Holy Ghost with more dignity? He who paints Him as a dove upon a sheaf
+of sunbeams, or he who places before me a great and lofty man, a Luther
+or a Huss in the flame of divine enthusiasm?"
+
+Something of the sort had been in the mind of Strauss when he advocated
+the worship of genius as a substitute for religion. The infidel
+idealistic painting and satire had been followed by a religious art
+which evaporated in Nazareanism; pure history in boots and spurs was
+next preached as a religion. "We stand," says Hotho in his history of
+German and Netherlandish painting, "with our knowledge, culture, and
+insight, on a summit from which we overlook the whole past. The Orient,
+Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages, the Reformation, and modern times,
+with their religion, literature, and art, their deeds and their life,
+spread like a universal panorama before us; and it is one that we must
+grasp with a universal feeling for the distinctiveness of every people,
+of every epoch, and of every character. In this fashion to bury one's
+self in the past, to get at the most essential meaning of its life by
+knowledge, to awaken what is dead, and by art to renew what is vanished,
+and thus to elevate the present to the level of the still living,
+kindred Mnemosyne of the past, such is the vivifying work of our time;
+and to that work its best powers must be devoted."
+
+[Illustration: CARL PILOTY.]
+
+The first who worked with these principles in Germany was _Lessing_. He
+was a great landscape painter, and a clever and amiable man, whose house
+in Karlsruhe was for many years a meeting-place for the polite world,
+and every beginner, every young man of talent, visited it to seek
+protection. During the winter of 1832-33 Menzel's _Geschichte der
+Deutschen_ fell into his hands. In it he read the story of Huss and the
+Hussites, and with "The Hussite Sermon" he soon afterwards began the
+sequence of pictures which had as their theme the battle between Church
+and State, the struggle of the Popes with the Emperors, the conflict
+between binding tradition and free personal conviction--a sequence to be
+viewed in connection with the opposition between authority and freedom
+which had actually arisen through Strauss' _Life of Jesus_. "Huss before
+the Council," "Huss on his Way to the Stake," "The Burning of the Papal
+Ban," were found on their appearance exceedingly seasonable by the
+orthodox, Protestant side. For people were determined to see in them, at
+one time, the protests of a Protestant against the Catholic art
+tendencies of the Nazarenes, at another, biting epigrams on the Catholic
+and pietistic bias, ruling in Prussia under Friedrich Wilhelm IV. They
+are of historical interest in so far as Lessing, before the period of
+French influence, anticipated in them the path on which the German
+historical painting--whose centre through Piloty came to be
+Munich--moved in the following years.
+
+[Illustration: PILOTY. GIRONDISTS ON THE ROAD TO THE GUILLOTINE.
+
+ (_By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., owners of the
+ copyright._)]
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ PILOTY. UNDER THE ARENA.]
+
+_Piloty's_ glory is to have planted the banner of colour on the citadel
+of the idealistic cartoon drawers. True, it was only the discarded
+fleshings of Delaroche; but since he possessed, side by side with a
+solid ability, pedagogic capacities of the first rank, and thus brought
+to German art, in his own person, all the qualities which it had wanted
+during half a century, his appearance was none the less most important
+in its consequences. Even to-day, beside Kaulbach's "Jerusalem" and
+Schnorr's "Deluge" in the new Pinakothek, his "Seni" is indicative of
+the beginning of a new period. Before him the most celebrated men of
+the Munich school made a boast of not being able to paint, and looked
+down upon the "colourers" with a contemptuous shrug; so here everything
+was attained which the young generation had admired in Gallait and
+Bièfve. This astounding revelation of colour was in 1855 praised in
+Germany as something unheard of and absolutely perfect. There was no
+more of the petty, motley, bodyless painting which had hitherto been
+dominant. The manner in which the grey of morning falls upon the
+murdered man in the eerie chamber, the way the clothes and the silken
+curtains glimmer, were things which enchanted artists, whilst the lay
+public philosophised with the thoughtful Seni over the greatness of
+heroes and the destiny of the world. At one bound Piloty took rank as
+the first German "painter"; he was the future, and he became the leader
+to whom young Munich looked up with wonder. Before him no one had known
+how to paint a head, a hand, or a boot in such a way. No one could do so
+much, and by virtue of this technical strength he founded such a school
+as Munich had never yet seen. The consequence of his advent was that the
+town could soon boast of many painters who thoroughly understood their
+business. What an academical professor can give his pupils (thorough
+groundwork in drawing and colour), that the young generation received
+from Piloty, who at his death might have said with more right than
+Cornelius: "We have left a better art than we found." He who discovered
+and guided so many men of talent, left behind him when he died a
+well-drilled generation of painters; and far beyond the boundaries of
+Munich they assure him the honourable title of a preceptor of Germany.
+The Munich movement does not offer the example of passionate and
+embittered battles, like those which the Parisian Romanticists
+maintained against the Classicists of the school of David. The guard did
+not die, but surrendered, and retired into an _otium cum dignitate_.
+Without a contest the ground was left to the new generation, which was
+united by no bond of tradition with that which had just been driven from
+the field; it was left to an unphilosophic, unpoetic generation, whose
+only endeavour was to bind together the threads of technical art which
+had been torn by unalterable circumstances.
+
+This revolution was accomplished with almost unnatural swiftness. In the
+lifetime of Cornelius himself the Franco-Belgian dogma of colour reached
+its end and summit in Makart, with whom colour is an elementary power,
+overflowing and levelling everything with the might of absolutism. In
+the same year that Cornelius died "The Pest in Florence" made its tour
+through the world. Already Schwind and Steinle, those two children of
+Vienna, had separated themselves from the thoughtful stringency of form
+and plastic clearness of their German comrades, by a certain coloured
+and lyrically musical element in their work. And now also it was an
+Austrian who again habituated the colour-blind eyes of the Germans to
+the splendour of pigment. Michael Angelo's expression of form, as it had
+been imitated by Cornelius, was opposed by the colour-symphonies of the
+Venetians: drapery and jewels, brocade and velvet, and the voluptuous
+forms of women.
+
+[Illustration: HANS MAKART.]
+
+_Hans Makart_ was a genius most picturesque in his mode of life. Whether
+this life was enacted in his studio, fitted up like a ballroom, in the
+Ring-Strasse, converted into a stage, or upon his canvas, everything was
+transformed for him into decoration gleaming with colour. And through
+this delight in colour the most important impulses were given in the
+most diverse provinces of life. Against the dowdy lack of taste and the
+harsh gaiety of ladies' fashions in that era he set his distinguished
+costume pictures, carried out in iridescent satin tones; and the
+enterprising modistes translated them into fact. The Makart hat, the
+Makart roses, the Makart bouquet--very old-fashioned, no doubt, at the
+present time--were disseminated over the world. Under the influence of
+Makart the whole province of the more artistic trades was regarded from
+a pictorial point of view. Oriental carpets, heavy silken stuffs,
+Japanese vases, weapons and inlaid furniture, became henceforth the
+principal elements of decoration. The fashionable world surrounded
+itself with brilliant colours; papers were supplemented by _portières_
+and Gobelins, ceilings were painted, and gay umbrellas stood in the
+fireplace. The bald, honest city-alderman style gave way, and a bright
+triumph of colour took its place. In the studio of the master were the
+finest blossoms of all epochs of art; richly ornamented German chests of
+the Renaissance stood near Chinese idols and Greek terra-cotta, Smyrna
+carpets and Gobelins, and old Italian and Netherlandish pictures were
+mingled with antique and mediæval weapons. And amid this rich still-life
+of splendid vessels, weapons, sculpture, and costly stuffs and costumes,
+which crowded all the walls and corners, there rose to the surface as
+further pieces of decoration a velvet coat, a pair of riding breeches,
+and a smart pair of Wallenstein boots. Their wearer was a little man
+with a black beard, two piercing dark eyes, and one of those splendid
+broad-browed heads which are universally accepted as the sign of genius.
+
+Makart's pictures are similar studies of still-life out of which human
+figures rise to the surface. One hears the rustle of silk and satin, and
+the crackle of costly robes of brocade; one sees velvet door-hangings
+droop in heavy folds, but the figures which have their being in the
+midst are merely bodies and not souls, flesh and no bones, colour and no
+drawing. Sometimes he draws better and sometimes worse, but never well.
+And therefore he seems unspeakably small by the side of the old
+Venetians, who in such representation combined a highly developed
+knowledge of form with luxuriant brilliancy of colour. But even his
+colour, that flaunting, piquant, bituminous painting derived from
+Delaroche, which once threw all Germany into ecstasies, no longer awakes
+any cordial enthusiasm; and the fault is only partially due to the rapid
+decay, the sadly dilapidated appearance of his pictures. There is not
+much more remaining of them than of that shining festal procession which
+for a forenoon set the streets of Vienna in uproar. Tone and colouring
+have not become finer and more mellow with the years, as in old
+Gobelins, but ever more spotty and dead. And even if they had remained
+fresh, would they yet appeal to the present generation, so much more
+discriminating in their appreciation of colour?
+
+Makart, so much lauded as a painter of flesh, was never really able to
+paint flesh at all. His feminine flesh tints are often bloodlessly
+white, and often tinged by an unpleasant, sugary rose hue. The fresh
+fragrance of life is not to be found in his figures, for they have been
+begotten, not by contact with nature, but by commerce with old pictures.
+He was often reproached with immorality by the prudish critics of
+earlier years; Heaven knows how stagnant and stereotyped this nudity
+seems in the present day, and how tame this sensuousness, even when
+one's thoughts do not happen to have been raised to the great, carnal,
+and divine sensuousness of Rubens. Like Robert Hamerling, allied to him
+by his intoxication in colour, Makart had a great momentary success;
+but, like the former, the brilliancy of his work has swiftly paled, and
+it is now seen how poor and sickly was the theme hidden behind the
+lavish instrumentation. Because a correct and solid anatomy was wanting
+to his creations from their birth upwards, they can live no longer now
+that their blooming flesh is withered. In fact, Makart's painting was a
+weakly and superficial art. He had a sense for nothing but what was
+external. It is said that in Chile there are huge and splendid façades
+on which are written _Museo Nacional_, _Theatro Nacional_, and there is
+nothing behind. And so for Makart the world was a house with a splendid
+façade glowing with colour, but without dwelling-rooms in which the
+sorrow and joy of humanity make their abode. His men do not think and do
+not live; they are only lay figures for splendid garments, or materially
+circumscribed spaces of rosy flesh colour; they make a stuffed,
+brainless, animal effect. All his women heave up their eyes in the same
+meaningless fashion, and have a vapid, doll-like trait about their white
+teeth, laid bare as if for the dentist. It makes no difference whether
+they are meant to be portraits or merely embody a feminine plastic
+lyricism. It was not wise of Makart to paint a portrait. He might drape
+his original after Palma Vecchio, after Rubens or Rembrandt, as
+Semiramis or a Japanese; his intellectual incapacity remained always the
+same; the poetry of the psychical nature evaporated from his art.
+
+[Illustration: MAKART. THE ESPOUSALS OF CATTERINA CORNARO.]
+
+But all that cannot alter the fact that Makart takes a very high place
+amongst his contemporaries, in that epoch dominated by the historical
+painting, and not yet arrived at an original conception of nature.
+Poussin said of Raphael: if you compare him with the moderns he is an
+eagle, but if you place him by the Greeks he is a sparrow. So when one
+thinks of Veronese or Rubens, one finds on Makart the feathers of a
+sparrow, but amongst his contemporaries in Germany he seems like an
+eagle. While all those from whom he derived, those Pilotys, Gallaits,
+and Delaroches, were no more than skilled historians in painting,
+Makart, though much tamer and smaller, has a relationship with Delacroix
+in his sovereign artistry. That joy in the purely pictorial which
+expressed itself in the festal procession in the Ring-Strasse and in the
+furnishing of his studio was, moreover, the ground-principle of his art.
+With the naïveté of the old masters he has boldly set himself above all
+historical truth; with absolute want of respect for books of history he
+has committed anachronisms at which any critic would be irritated.
+Revelling in splendid revelations of colour, all that he concerned
+himself about was that his costumed figures should render a fine harmony
+of hues. So exclusively was his eye organised for colour that every
+picture was first conceived by him on the palette as a luxuriant mass of
+colour, and he invented afterwards the theme which was proper for it. If
+Delaroche transformed painting into the flat, sober, and scientifically
+pedantic illustration of history, Makart gave it again a bright and
+splendid play of colour. The Nazarenes were philosophers and
+theosophers, the Romanticists revelled in lyrical sentiment. Kaulbach
+was a philosophic historical student of the Hegelian school, Piloty a
+prosaic and declamatory professor of history, Makart was the first
+German _painter_ of the century. His personages weary themselves out in
+the enjoyment of their own dazzling outward personality. Free as the
+ancients with their gods and legends, he pours forth his Cupids,
+beautiful women, genii, Bacchantes, and historical figures, and at the
+same time draws into his kingdom of art all nature with its variety of
+plants, flowers, and fruits, all civilisation with its fulness of
+splendid vessels and jewels, of shining stuffs, emblems, weapons, and
+masks. All that he created breathes the naïve, sensuous satisfaction of
+the genuine painter.
+
+"The Pest in Florence" undoubtedly had its origin in Boccaccio's
+description of the great epidemic which visited the town on the Arno;
+but the picture is a free fantasy of sensuous enjoyment and naked flesh,
+a colour symposium in which there really lives an atom of the flaming
+vital energy of Rubens.
+
+Take "The Espousals of Catterina Cornaro," that gay procession of
+representatives from Cyprus and Venice, of dignified men, of procurators
+of St. Mark, of women in foreign garb, of bright colour, who crowd round
+their young mistress, the queen of the feast, rejoicing amid the
+splendid architecture of the piazza. To the anger of the historian, he
+removes the scene from the fifteenth century to the blossoming period of
+the sixteenth, when the creations of Sansovino, Titian, and Veronese
+adorned the Queen of the Adriatic. "The Entry of Charles V into Antwerp"
+derived only its external impulse from Dürer's Diary. The picture with
+the naked girls strewing flowers might almost as well represent the
+triumphal entry of Alexander into Babylon. In the magic land by the Nile
+it is not the history of civilisation and ethnography that attracts him,
+nor the monumental world of the pyramids and the temples of the gods,
+but the sensuous glow of southern nature and the still-life and artistic
+accessories out of which the beautiful serpent Cleopatra is seen to
+rise. Female bodies, animals, and fruits, set in the midst of rich,
+luxuriant landscapes, painted with oil and bitumen, such are the
+elements of which his pictures of the old world of legend--the hunt of
+the Amazons and of Diana--are composed.
+
+With these capacities Makart was scenical painter _par excellence_. His
+Abundantia pictures in the Munich Pinakothek and the ceiling-pieces of
+the Palais Tumba in Vienna are among his best creations. There lives in
+them something of the Olympian blitheness of the ancients, of that easy
+joyousness which since Tiepolo seemed to have been buried in melancholy
+reflection and constrained brooding. They fulfil their purpose, as an
+invitation to the enjoyment of life, precisely because they carry no
+intrinsic thought to burden the sensuous display. Moreover, the unctuous
+and gorgeous colouring, with the animated contrasts of warm brown and
+light blue, mediated by the deep, glowing Makart red, corresponds to the
+mood they have been designed to awaken--one which called forth the joy
+of life, luxuriant, full-blooded, and foaming over. The great, fiery red
+flower, which sprouts out of the ground at the feet of the nymph in
+"Spring," was the last thing touched by Makart's brush, the last flare
+of the marvellous colour-demon by which he was possessed.
+
+[Illustration: MAKART. THE FEAST OF BACCHUS.]
+
+Was _possessed_! For Makart's whole artistic endeavour had something
+unconscious. One might say in a variant reading from Lessing: "If Makart
+had been born without a brain he would nevertheless have been a great
+painter." It is as if one who lies buried in Antwerp had once more felt
+the instinct of production, and let himself down into the great head of
+the little Salzburger; and the head, being a somewhat imperfect medium,
+only stammered out the intentions of the sublime master. There is
+something remarkable in the career of this son of the poor servant, on
+whom fortune showered with full hands all it had to offer a child of the
+nineteenth century, and who in the midst of his splendour in Vienna
+remained always the same harmless child of nature that he had been in
+Munich, when, after receiving his first hundred florins, he drove in a
+cab the two steps from Oberpollinger to the Academy.
+
+One must take him as he is--a product of nature. Makart was a scene
+painter, and that not in his scenical pictures only; but he was an
+inspired scene painter, of an enviable facility, who poured forth in
+play what others fabricate with pains. His merit it is to have announced
+to the Germans afresh, in an overwhelming style, that revelation of
+colour which had been forgotten since the Venetians and Rubens. He has
+not advanced the history of art, as such. What he gave had been given
+better before. But the history of German art in the nineteenth century
+has to honour in him the most perfect representative of the period in
+which colour-blindness was succeeded by exuberance of colour, and the
+cartoon style by the delight in painting.
+
+[Illustration: GABRIEL MAX. _Graphische Kunst._]
+
+Beside Makart, the child of nature, _Gabriel Max's_ seems a calculating,
+tormented, unhealthy talent. In the manner in which Makart did his work
+there lay a certain elementary, logical necessity; in Max there is a
+great deal of speculation and over-refinement. Makart's home was the
+town on the lagoons. Max is by education and temperament a disciple of
+Piloty--that is to say, a painter of disasters; by birth he was a
+Bohemian. And that resulted in his case in a very interesting mixture.
+When he exhibited his first pictures it was as if one heard a refined
+music after the tom-tom of Piloty. In his "Martyr on the Cross," which
+appeared in the spring of 1867 in the Munich Kunstverein, he first
+struck that bitter-sweet, half-torturing, half-ensnaring tone in which
+he afterwards continued to sound. It is dawn; a soft grey light rests,
+beaming mildly, over the lonely Campagna. Here stands a cross on which a
+girl-martyr has ended her struggles. A young Roman coming home from a
+feast is so thrilled by the heavenly peace in the expression of the
+unhappy girl's face that he lays a crown of roses at the foot of the
+cross, and becomes a convert to the faith for which she has suffered.
+The mysterious mortuary sentiment in the subject is strengthened by the
+almost ghostly pallor of the colouring. Everything was harmonised in
+white, except that one dark lock, falling across the pale forehead with
+great boldness, sounded like a shrill dissonance in the soft harmony,
+like a wild scream; it had come there apparently quite by chance, but
+was nevertheless calculated to a hair's breadth. The terribly touching
+vision of the martyr aroused in every visitor to the Kunstverein a
+shudder of delight. It was even a fine variation, and one which invited
+pity, that the victim should not have been a hero, as in conventional
+catastrophes, but a soft and sweet girl, made for love and never for the
+cross. And it was the more absorbing, too, because it was impossible to
+say whether the young Roman was looking up to the beautiful woman with
+the desecrating sensuality of a _décadent_ or with the fervid ecstasy of
+a convert. The same horrified fascination was wakened again and again in
+the presence of the later pictures of the painter. Almost every one
+contained a scene of martyrdom, in which the tormented and sinking
+heroine was a helpless child or a weak and defenceless woman. The
+passion for tragic subjects brought into full swing by the historical
+painters was directed in Max against the purest and tenderest, the most
+chaste and the most lovely. The type was always the same, with its
+Bohemian nose and one eye larger than the other, by which was attained a
+curiously visionary or hysterically enthusiastic expression. And the
+pictorial treatment corresponded to it: there was always a flesh-tint of
+poignant mortal pallor, a white clinging drapery, a black veil, a light
+grey background, all harmonised in one very delicate chord.
+
+Goethe's Gretchen made the beginning. In the Zwinger she lifted up her
+eyes in frightened anguish to the countenance of the Madonna. She sat in
+her cell, her face altered by madness and lit up with a wild laughter,
+and in a reverie passed her hand through Faust's locks. Or as a phantom
+she wandered in the Walpurgis night, in her long, flowing shroud, with a
+blood-red stripe round her throat. This picture, exhibited with electric
+light, was especially effective. Max had brought into the earnest
+corpse-like eyes an expression that was terribly demoniacal, and had
+been attained to the same degree by no earlier illustrator of _Faust_. A
+raven, pecking at the lost ring, was her ghostly escort.
+
+Max showed great invention in hitting upon such things. Bürger's
+_Pfarrertochter von Taubenhain_ gave him the material for his
+"Child-murderess"--a young girl who, by the bank of a lonely pool,
+overgrown with reeds, stabs her child to the heart with a needle, and in
+a sudden rush of maternal love presses a kiss on the stiff little body
+before committing it to the water. Here the sombre, disconsolate
+character of the landscape accorded finely with the action, and the pale
+body of the child made an exceedingly bright, pungent spot of colour on
+the dark-green rushes. "The Lion's Bride" illustrated Chamisso's ballad
+of the jealous lion who killed his mistress before her wedding, because
+he would not give her over to another. Majestically he lies behind her,
+with one paw on the arm of the slain, and the other struck into her
+thigh. The stones of the floor are reddened with her blood. But far more
+frequently than blood Max employed the tints of corruption, the true
+_nature morte_. In its colour-values and subtle shades the dead human
+body, just at the point where corruption begins, was better suited to
+the painter's pallid scale of colour than the light and brutally
+effective red of freshly poured-out blood. Among these paintings of
+mortification must be reckoned "Ahasuerus by the Body of a Child" and
+"The Anatomist"; the latter meditatively regards at the dissecting-table
+the corpse, covered with white linen, of a young girl who has committed
+suicide. In his "Raising of Jairus's Daughter" the effect of
+mortification was most cleverly heightened by a small detail, which made
+an extraordinary impression: this was a fly on the naked arm of the
+girl, put there to remind the spectator of the unconsciousness of the
+body.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ MAX. A NUN IN THE CLOISTER GARDEN.]
+
+The secrets of death are always certain of their effect on the nerves;
+but by means of the broken hearts of women, with annihilated hopes and
+agonised hysterical sufferings, he succeeded again in calling forth a
+bitter-sweet sympathy. "Mary Magdalene" and "The Maid of Orleans" were
+the masterpieces of this group. The underlying idea of the picture
+"Light" is that a blind young Christian girl, at the portal of the Roman
+catacombs, offers lamps to the entering Christians for the illumination
+of their dark way. The blind woman as the giver of light! Even in his
+youth, with cruel irony, he had had sung by a blind quartet the song,
+"_Du hast die schönsten Augen_." A touch of Delaroche is in the other
+young martyr, who, between the bloodthirsty beasts of the Roman circus,
+looks up amazed to the rows of spectators, from the midst of which a
+young Roman has flung her a rose as a last greeting. In the next moment
+she will be lying on the earth torn to shreds by the beasts.
+
+As he succeeded here in giving a presentiment of the horrible, so in
+another group of pictures Max attained a yet more demoniacal charm by
+the ghostly. He had early made himself familiar with Schopenhauer and
+Buddha and the Indian fakirs; the mystical and spiritualistic movement
+had just at that time been set going by the writings of Carl Du Prels.
+Justinus Kerner and the prophetess of Prevorst were the order of the
+day. Max became the painter of hypnotism and spiritualism. "The Spirit's
+Greeting" made a special sensation: the young girl at the piano, in this
+picture, is interrupted in her playing by the touch of a materialised
+ghostly hand, which stretches towards her from a soft cloudy mist. The
+mixture of horror, joy, devotion, and ecstasy in the face of the young
+player was very effective. In order to render effects of the kind he
+made extensive studies from the hypnotised model, and in this way he
+sometimes reached an extraordinary intensity of expression. He took a
+decided position with regard to another question which at the time was
+very acute--vivisection. This he did in the picture of the man of
+science from whom an allegorical female figure, "The Genius of Pity,"
+takes away a little dog doomed to be dissected, showing by a pair of
+scales that the human heart has more weight than the human
+understanding.
+
+All this goes to show that Max is the opposite of artless. He knows how
+to calculate an effect on the nerves with extreme subtlety, and most
+skilfully at times to give his pictures the attraction of the freshly
+printed newspaper. He appeals to compassion rather than imagination. He
+would set the heart beating violently. He triumphs generally by his
+subjects, and his effects are much purer in those few works in which he
+renounces the piquant adjunct of the demoniacal, the tragical, and the
+mystical, and becomes merely a painter. Amongst those works is to be
+reckoned that beautiful "Madonna" on the altar, painted in 1886, and so
+tenderly illustrating the verses of Heine--
+
+ "Und wer eine Wachshand opfert,
+ Dem heilt an der Hand die Wund,
+ Und wer ein Wachsherz opfert,
+ Dem wird das Herz gesund."
+
+And so too does that charming "Spring Tale" of 1873, which breathes only
+of gaiety, happiness, and peace; a young girl sits under the blossoming
+bushes, and listens enraptured to the warbling of a nightingale.
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstängl._
+
+ MAX. THE LION'S BRIDE.]
+
+Those pictures, the "mood" of which grows out of the landscape
+around--"The Nun in the Cloister Garden," "Adagio," "The Spring Tale,"
+and "Autumn Dance"--give Max a very high and peculiar place in the work
+of his period. He appears in them as a tender poet who expresses his
+emotions through a pictorial medium; as an adorer of nature of a soft
+melancholy and subtle delicacy, which are to be found in like manner
+only in the works of the Englishmen Frederick Walker, George Mason, and
+George H. Boughton. Nature sings a hymn to the soul of the painter, and
+through his figures it is breathed forth in low, vibrating cadences. A
+tender landscape of earliest spring gave the ground-tone to his charming
+picture "Adagio." Young trees with trembling stems raise their slender
+crowns into the pale blue sky flecked with clouds. As yet the branches
+are almost naked; only here and there appears the embroidery of fresh
+yellowish green. And in this soft, tender nature which shyly reveals
+itself as with a slight shudder after its long winter sleep, there are
+seated two beings: a boy and his young mother--she looks almost a
+child--dreamily meditating. Their eyes look strangely into vacancy, as
+though their thoughts are wandering. Nature works on them, and a
+melancholy _Warte nur balde_ runs through their souls. A spring
+landscape of blissful gaiety, where nightingales warble, butterflies sip
+at the flowers, and sunbeams play coquettishly round the budding
+rosebushes, is the Setting of the "Spring Tale." Everything laughs and
+rejoices, shines and scents the air in the early sunlight. Pearls of dew
+sparkle on the meadows, gnats hum and leaves murmur. She thinks of him.
+All the joy of a first love-dream sets her heart quivering with a
+delicious tremor. In her heart as in nature it is spring. Yet even as a
+landscape painter Max generally has that tender, suffering trait which
+runs through his creative work elsewhere. Twilight, autumn, pale sky and
+dead leaves have made the deepest impression on his spirit. Thin,
+half-stunted trees, in the leaves of which the evening wind is playing,
+grow upon an undulating, poverty-stricken soil. The landscape spreads
+around with a kind of lyrical melancholy: a region which gives no
+exuberant assurance of being beautiful, but which, in its poverty,
+attunes the mind to melancholy; a region, however, which knows not of
+storms and loneliness, but is the peaceful dwelling of quiet and
+resigned men. These beings belong to no age; their costume is not
+modern, but neither is it taken from any earlier period. They do not act
+and they tell no story; they dream their time away meditatively and
+gravely. Max has divested them of everything fleshly and vulgar, so that
+only a shadow of them remains, a soul that vibrates in exquisite, dying,
+elusive chords. "The Autumn Dance" is such an unearthly picture, and one
+of indefinable magic. Children and women are dancing, yet one feels them
+to be religious dreamers whom a melancholy world-weariness and a
+yearning after the mystical have drawn together to this secret and
+sequestered corner of the earth. The pale, transparent air, the tender
+tints of the dresses, delicate as fading flowers, the flesh tint giving
+the figures something ghostly and ethereal--it all strikes a note at
+once blythe and sentimental, happy and sad. "The Nun in the Cloister
+Garden" is in point of landscape one of his finest productions. In the
+cloister garden, despite the budding spring, there reigns a disconsolate
+dreariness. On the thin grass sits a young nun, who follows dreamily the
+gay fluttering of two butterflies, which flit around at her feet. A
+black dress, harshly and abruptly crossed by a white cape, envelops the
+youthfully delicate form. The dying sapling on which she is leaning
+bends helplessly against the stubborn paling to which it is fastened
+with iron clamps. The weather-stained wall stretches along in a dreary
+monotonous grey. An old sundial relentlessly indicates the slow dragging
+hours. But the deep blue heaven, in which a pair of larks poise
+exulting, looks in across the wall, from which a scrubby growth climbs
+shivering in the breeze.
+
+[Illustration: _Graphische Kunst._
+
+ MAX. LIGHT.]
+
+In such pictures, too, Max has a morbid inclination to a mystical
+delicacy of sentiment. He gives what is real an exquisite subtlety which
+transplants it into the world of dreams, and his tender sense of pain
+perhaps appeals only to spirits of an æsthetic temper. He is the
+antithesis of robust health; and yet there lies in the excess of nervous
+sensibility--in the pathological trait in his art--precisely the quality
+which inspires the characteristic delicacy of his earlier works. Here is
+no pupil of Piloty, but our contemporary. In their anæmic colour his
+pictures have the effect of a song of high, fine-drawn, and tremulous
+violin tones, at once dulcet and painful. With their refinement and
+polish, their subtle taste and intimate emotion, so wonderfully mingled,
+they reach the music of painting. They paint the invisible, they revel
+in dreams. In a period which played only _fortissimo_, and was at pains
+to drum on all the senses at once with a distorting passion, Max was,
+next to Feuerbach, the first who prescribed for his compositions
+_dolce_, _adagio_, and _mezza voce_; who sought for the refined, subdued
+emotions in place of the _emotions fortes_.
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstängl._
+
+ MAX. THE SPIRIT'S GREETING.]
+
+[Illustration: _Gräphische Kunst._
+
+ MAX. ADAGIO.]
+
+These pictures, the more subdued the better, make him the forerunner of
+the most modern artists, and assure his name immortality much more
+certainly than the great figure resting on an historical or literary
+basis. Their delicate black, green, and white simplicity has a nobleness
+of colouring which stands quite alone in the German painting of the
+century, and this, together with their refined musical sentiment, is
+probably to be set rather to the account of his Bohemian blood than of
+his Munich training. And whilst in the heads of his figures elsewhere a
+certain monotonous vacuity disturbs one's pleasure, he appears here as a
+psychic painter of the highest mark; one who analysed with the most
+subtle delicacy all the fleeting _nuances_--so hard to catch--of
+melancholy, silent resignation, yearning, and hopelessness. Only the
+figures of the English new pre-Raphaelites have the same sad-looking,
+dove-like eyes, the same spiritual lips, tremulous as though from
+weeping. There must have been a divine moment in his existence when he
+first filled the loveliest form with the expression of the holiest
+suffering, the sweetest reverie, the deepest devotion, and the most rapt
+ecstasy. And if later, when people could not weary of this expression,
+he took to producing it without real feeling and by purely stereotyped
+means, that is, at any rate, a weakness of temperament which he shares
+with others.
+
+Gabriel Max is an individuality, not of the first rank indeed, but he is
+one; and there are not many painters of the nineteenth century of whom
+that can be said. He has often underlined too heavily, printed too much
+in italics, and done more homage to crude than to fine taste. But he
+has, in advance of his contemporaries, in whose works the good was so
+seldom new, the priceless virtue that he always gave something new, if
+not something good. His art was without ancestry, an entirely personal
+art; something which no one had before Max, and which after him few will
+produce again. A province which had not yet been trodden, the province
+of the enigmatic and ghostly, was opened up by him; he set foot in it
+because he is a philosophic brooder, fascinated by the magic of the
+uncanny. His studio is like a chapel in which a mysterious service for
+the dead is being held, or the chamber of an anatomist, rather than the
+workroom of a painter. The investigation of dead birds occupied him
+after his Prague days just as much as the sounding of the life of the
+human spirit. He lived at the time with his parents in an old, ghostly
+house, and roamed about a great deal in the picture gallery of the
+Strahow foundation; and here in lonely nights and mysterious
+picture-rooms there arose that grave and sombre spirit which runs
+through his work. As a child at the death of his father he had his first
+"vision." His earliest picture, which he finished while at the Prague
+Academy, and sold afterwards to the Art Union there for ninety florins,
+showed that he had begun to move on his later course: "Richard the
+Lion-heart steps to the Corpse of his Father and it bleeds." He was thus
+inwardly ripe when, in 1863, he came to Piloty in Munich, and, equipped
+with the technique of the latter, refined in so delicate a manner on the
+traditional painting of disasters. And if a conscious design on the
+nerves of the multitude frequently entered into his work, it was, as a
+rule, veiled by captivating beauty and excellence of painting. His older
+good pictures fascinate the most jaded eye by their remarkably tender
+sentiment, and the mystical spirituality of his soft and lovely girlish
+heads has been reached by few in his century. He is at the same time a
+colourist of complete individuality, who made pigments the subtilised
+and ductile means of expression for his visionary moods of soul. He has
+brought into the world a numerous stock of works prepared for the
+market; and he has not disdained to paint glorified wonders of the fair,
+like the Christ's head upon the handkerchief of Veronica, whose eyes
+seem to be closed by their lids and are looking out at the same time
+wide open. But much as he sinned, he always remained an artist. A
+curious, interesting, characteristic mind, one of the few who ventured
+even forty years ago to give themselves out as children of their time,
+in the firmament of German, and indeed of European art, he appears as a
+star shining by its own and not by borrowed light, as one whose
+incommensurable magnitude it is that his talent cannot be compared with
+any other. That is what gives him his artistic importance.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+ MAX. A WINTER'S TALE.]
+
+All the less room can be claimed by the many who, likewise following in
+their subject-matter the lines of Piloty, get no further than the
+traditional catastrophe. Not Munich only, but all Germany, lay for more
+than a decade after the middle of the century under the shadow of
+historical painting, which here, as in other countries, came as the
+logical product of an unhappy time, dissatisfied with its own existence
+when Germany was merely a geographical expression, and in the pitiable
+misery of that age of state-confederations, dreamt of a better future at
+singing contests, athletic tournaments, and rifle meetings. The more
+poverty-stricken the time was in real action, the more vehement was the
+desire to read of action in books or to see it on canvas; and in this
+respect historical painting rendered at that time important political
+services, which are to be acknowledged with gratitude; just as the
+historical drama, the historical ballad and the historical novel were,
+all and several, means for the expression of the deep-seated longing of
+a backward people for political labours, for deeds and for fame.
+
+But the artistic yield was not greater than elsewhere.
+
+When the learned in the thirties laid it down in doctrinaire fashion
+that, with the destruction of religious fervour begun by science, the
+old traditionary sacred painting would fall away of itself and the
+painting of profane history take its place, they overlooked from the
+very beginning the fact that, so long as the much discussed worship of
+genius had not actually become a reality the painting of history had to
+fight against insuperable obstacles. What constitutes the prime
+condition of all art--that its contents must be some fact vivid in
+consciousness--should, at any rate, determine its limitations, and ought
+to have confined the historical picture to the nearest universally known
+subjects. And what happened was just the contrary.
+
+When Delaroche had skimmed the cream, his successors were forced to
+search in the great martyr book of history for events which were more
+and more unknown and indifferent. Piloty took from ancient history "The
+Death of Alexander the Great," "The Death of Cæsar," "Nero at the
+Burning of Rome," and "The Triumphal Progress of Germanicus"; and from
+mediæval history, "Galileo in his Prison observing the Periodic Return
+of a Solar Ray," and "Columbus sighting Land"; from the history of the
+Thirty Years' War, "The Foundation of the Catholic League by Duke
+Maximilian of Bavaria," "Seni before the Body of Wallenstein" (the
+morning before the battle at the White Mountain, Seni has come to carry
+away Wallenstein's body), "Wallenstein on the way to Eger," and "The
+News of the Battle at the White Mountain"; from English history, "The
+Death Sentence of Mary Stuart"; and from French history, "The Girondists
+on their Way to the Scaffold."
+
+After these pictures were painted and had had their success the turn
+came, in the years immediately following, for subjects growing steadily
+more and more dreary. And as Goethe held the historical to be "the most
+ungrateful and dangerous field," so it now appeared as though laurels
+were to be gathered there only. From the political dismemberment of the
+present, German artists were glad to seek refuge as far back as possible
+in the past, and they flung themselves on the new province with such
+fiery zeal that, after a few decades, there was a really appalling
+number of historical pictures, illustrating every page of Schlosser's
+great history of the world. _Max Adamo_ painted "The Netherlandish
+Nobles before the Tribunal of Alva," "The Fall of Robespierre in the
+National Convention," "The Prince of Orange's Last Conversation with
+Egmont," "Charles I meeting Cromwell at Childerley," "The Dissolution of
+the Long Parliament," and "Charles I receiving the Visit of his Children
+at Maidenhead"; _Julius Benczur_: "The Departure of Ladislaus Hunyadi,"
+and "The Baptism of Vajk," afterwards King Stephen the Holy of Hungary;
+_Josef Fluggen_: "The Flight of the Landgravine Elizabeth," "Milton
+dictating Paradise Lost," and "The Landgravine Margarethe taking leave
+of her Children"; by _Carl Gustav Hellquist_ there were "The Death of
+the wounded Sten Sture after the Battle of Bogesund in the Mälarsee,"
+"The Embarkment of the Body of Gustavus Adolphus," and the forced
+contribution of "Wisby and Huss going to the Stake." _Ernst Hildebrand_
+had the Electress of Brandenburg secretly taking the sacrament in both
+kinds, and Tullia driving over the corpse of her father; _Frank
+Kirchbach_ displayed "Duke Christopher the Warrior"; _Ludwig von
+Langenmantel_: "The Arrest of the French Chemist Lavoisier under the
+Reign of Terror," and "Savonarola's Sermon against the Luxury of the
+Florentines"; _Emanuel Leutze_: a "Columbus before the Council of
+Salamanca," "Raleigh's Departure," "Cromwell's Visit to Milton," "The
+Battle of Monmouth," and "The Last Festival of Charles I"; _Alexander
+Liezenmayer_: "The Coronation of Charles Durazzo in Stuhlweissenburg,"
+and "The Canonisation of the Landgravine Elizabeth of Thüringen";
+_Wilhelm Lindenschmit_: "Duke Alva at the Countess of Rudolstadt's,"
+"Francis I at Pavia," "The Death of Franz Von Sickingen," "Knox and the
+Scottish Image-breakers," "The Assassination of William of Orange,"
+"Walter Raleigh visited in his Cell by his Family," "Luther before
+Cardinal Cajetan," "Anne Boleyn giving her Child Elizabeth to the care
+of Matthew Parker," and "The Entrance of Alaric into Rome"; _Alexander
+Wagner_: "The Departure of Isabella Zapolya from Siebenbürgen," "The
+Entry into Aschaffenburg of Gustavus Adolphus," "The Wedding of Otto of
+Bavaria," "The Death of Titus Dugowich," "Matthias Corvinus with his
+Hunting Train," and many more of the same description.
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstängl._
+
+ MAX. MADONNA.]
+
+Was it at all possible to make works of art out of such material?
+Perhaps it was. The real artist can do anything. What he touches becomes
+gold, for he has the hand of Midas. But just as certain it is that the
+"historical painting," carried on by a joint-stock company, almost never
+got any further than stage pathos, tailoring, and glittering splendour
+of material. Like many another thing which the nineteenth century
+brought to birth, it was an artistic error, which countless persons paid
+for by the waste of their lives. The older art knew nothing of such a
+reconstruction of the past. If historical subjects were painted, the
+artists were almost throughout contemporaries of the subject that was to
+be treated; seldom did the materials belong to an epoch already past.
+But in both cases the work was done by immediate intuition, since even
+in the treatment of matters long gone by the painters never dreamed of
+painting them in the spirit of past times. They might depict Jews, or
+Greeks, or Romans, but they always represented their own countrymen in
+the surroundings and costume of their own time. The scientific
+nineteenth century made the first demand for historical accuracy. In
+dress and furniture this could be attained with the assistance of a
+cabinet of engravings and a work on costume. Whoever went to work in a
+very scientific spirit could even borrow from a museum the genuine
+costumes of Egmont and Wallenstein. But it was all the harder
+artistically to quicken into life the men themselves who had felt,
+lived, and suffered in the past. The painter could not proceed otherwise
+than by draping a modern, professional model, having consulted
+portraits, drawings, or busts, and having sought the aid of a peruke and
+false beard. An entirely realistic reproduction of this masquerade,
+however, made only too evident the contrast between the splendid old
+garment and the member of the proletariat who was dressed up in it. For,
+granted that men of the present have much in common with those of the
+past, every period has none the less its own type, even its own
+gestures, which no costume can make one forget. And speaking merely of
+general humanity, there is no question that a statesman at all times
+looked different from a professional model. In a very bad suit of
+clothes, but in one which, at any rate, fitted him, and in which he was
+able to behave himself naturally, the poor fellow came to the studio, to
+feel, for a few hours, in satin hose and a velvet doublet, like a
+carnival figure. Who was to give him the easy knightly bearing to play
+his part suitably to the occasion? It was not possible in this way ever
+to attain the naturalness and fulness of life of the old painters. In
+Terborg's "Peace of Westphalia" everything is genuine and true and
+simple; here wig and woollen beard have got the upper hand. And if the
+painter proceeded not as a theatrical tailor, but as an historian of
+civilisation, the result was an archaic dryness. For then he was merely
+thrown back on the great masters of those periods in which the action
+took place, and, while he enlarged and coloured old busts or engraved
+portraits, his art was only second-hand.
+
+And so the only way out of the difficulty was to use the model, but to
+idealise him by generalising and sinking the individual in the
+universally human, noble, and heroic. In this way the remarkable family
+likeness of all these heads becomes comprehensible, and it is still
+further heightened by that preference for a monotonous type of beauty
+which, from the period of Classicism, entered, as it were, into the
+blood of these painters. The human physiognomy, in reality so various,
+had then only one mask for the many characters which life creates. There
+was a fear of "ugliness," as if it were a spot of dirt, and the
+personages portrayed received, one and all, an icy trait of "the
+Beautiful." The various Egmonts, Wallensteins, and Charles the Firsts of
+Gallait and Bièfve, Delaroche, and Piloty have not the blood of human
+beings, they have not the scars which are made by fate, but are all
+alike in their Byronic turn of the head. One knows the so-called
+character-heads--Luther gazing upwards with the look of one strong in
+faith, Columbus discovering America, and Milton in whose head are
+seething all the thoughts which dying men are wont to have in their last
+moments,--one knows them as thoroughly by heart as one knows all the
+opened folios and overturned settles, the picturesquely draped tapestry
+reserved for tragic funereal service, and that little box, covered with
+brass and catching the flashing lights, which constitutes in Belgium,
+France, and Germany the iron casket of all historical pieces. In the
+place of the inward Shakespearian truth of the figures, peculiar to the
+old masters, is the outward truth of costume; and the historical
+"property man," whose highest aim is to "dress" the great moments of
+universal history in the prescribed manner, has stepped into the place
+of the artist. In the works of the old masters the historical figures
+stand out with sincerity as characters of flesh and blood, despite the
+want of "local colour," whilst in the moderns the costumes certainly are
+correct, but the figures are so much the less credible and vital.
+"Beautiful may be the folds of the garment, but more beautiful must be
+that which they contain."
+
+Clothes do not make people, and costumes heighten no passions. Thus
+difficulties were heaped on difficulties, when impassioned situations
+and moments of dramatic intensity were to be painted. Whoever has
+reached that height of artistic power where the artist may with impunity
+put his model out of his head--like Delacroix, grand, volcanic, stormy,
+and excited to a fever heat by his inspiration,--that man will be
+capable of giving the effect of truth to such scenes, and of running
+through the whole gamut of emotion with a crushing power of conviction.
+But the joint-stock historical painter had to get his models to pull
+faces, and then no less laboriously to render with his oils those
+grimaces so laboriously produced. Hence the monotonous and petrified
+histrionic ecstasy of these pictures, the noble indignation put on for
+show, and that distressing gesticulation. As the actor gives emphasis to
+his words far more by gestures than is the case in ordinary life, so
+here also the artificially impassioned air of the heads was
+conventionally interpreted by corresponding motions of the arms. And
+thus the closing tableau was made ready: the dancers lay their hands on
+their hearts with tender and deep feeling; the tenor heroes sing that
+they are prepared to die; the tyrants let their deep basses vibrate, and
+the orchestra rages, to close with a shattering chord at the moment when
+the hero sets his foot upon the chest of the traitor; then come the
+Bengal lights, and then the curtain falls. What a spectacle!--but, alas,
+a spectacle and nothing more. All the emotions are artificial; they are
+opera emotions: the painters are only clever fellows, manufacturers of
+librettos and gay canvas; they show a great deal of knowledge and
+dexterity, but they have only a head and no heart. Stage requisites and
+professional models can never take the place of the free, creative force
+of imagination.
+
+And if German pictures of this sort have an effect almost more insincere
+and theatrical than the French, the reason probably is that
+gesture--that external aid to the expression of feeling--is always more
+natural to the Latin than the Teutonic races, and has therefore, of
+itself, an effect of affectation in every German picture. We know that
+Bismarck, the Teuton incarnate, even in the most excited of
+parliamentary speeches, never made any other movement than to rap
+nervously with his pencil. "The German only becomes impassioned when he
+lies." The most genuine masters of German blood have felt that right
+well, and they have been honest enough to say it out. A pervading trait
+of old German art is simplicity, the avoidance of everything impassioned
+even in the grandest conception, such as Dürer has. If in Leonardo's
+"Last Supper" terror, indignation, curiosity, and sorrow are reflected
+by twelve heads and twenty-four hands in movements of agitation which
+are always new, in Dürer's woodcut all the limbs and senses of the
+disciples are paralysed at the sorrowful revelation of the Saviour; it
+seemed to them desecration to break the solemn, oppressive stillness by
+noisy utterances of opinion and hasty gestures. And the same thing is to
+be remarked in every similar picture of Rembrandt's; here too are only
+quiet and subdued movements, delicate suggestions and silence. The
+effect is great and sublime, the features of the Saviour earnest and
+expressive, but His mien is without any ecstatic emphasis such as a
+painter of Romance blood would have given Him. Only in the nineteenth
+century--partly through imitation of the Italians in Cornelius and
+Kaulbach, and then through imitation of the French in Piloty and his
+disciples--has this impassionedness, so opposed to German nature,
+entered into German art; and it has borrowed from the opera the
+distortions by which it has expressed the agitations of the spirit. No
+one works with impunity against the grain of his temperament.
+Exaggerated and violent movements, "ostentatious gestures of false
+dignity," have replaced the natural expressions of life.
+
+Less pose, parade, and theatricality, more ease, truth, and quietude;
+less insipid, generalised "beauty," more forcible, characteristic
+"ugliness": if art was not to be drowned in a surge of phrases, this was
+the path to be taken; and the transition was accomplished in "the
+historical picture of manners."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE VICTORY OVER PSEUDO-IDEALISM
+
+
+Immediately upon the epoch-making labours of the historians followed the
+first romances that were archæological and dealt with the history of
+civilisation; and hand in hand with these literary productions there was
+developed--by the side of historical painting proper, in France,
+Belgium, and Germany--a tendency to represent the life of the past, not
+in its grand dramatic action, but in its familiar concerns. In the one
+case there was history in its state uniform, in the other history in
+undress. And while the former class of painters saw the past only in a
+condition of unrest and violent movement, the latter began to enter into
+the details of daily life, and to represent it as it flowed by in times
+of peace. Those who had the romantic bias turned to the old artistic
+crafts. As yet that bias consisted only in an enthusiasm for the
+tasteful civilisation of a bygone age, with its polished charm of
+luxurious household appointments and pleasing costume. Rooms were filled
+with Gobelins and rich stuffs, handsome furniture and old pictures. By
+the rapid sale of their productions painters were placed in a position
+to acquire for themselves at the second-hand dealers all the beautiful
+things they painted. They placed their dressed-up models in front of
+their tapestries, and between their cabinets and tables. Stress was laid
+on historical accuracy in the representation of the usages and costumes
+of the past, not on dramatic action, and in this respect the historical
+picture of manners, as opposed to historical painting, marked an advance
+towards intimacy of feeling. The latter still worked from the abstract.
+The painter read a book and looked out for telling passages. He
+idealised models, to lend his picture the character of "great art." It
+was always the illustration of underlying ideas.
+
+In this new kind of picture, on the contrary, the conception of a work
+of art was given, by the perfected representation of any part of the
+visible world, were it only the corner of a studio elaborately and
+artificially arranged. The historical picture of manners no longer
+depicted "the meeting of hostile forces," but either the heroes of
+history or the nameless men of the past in their daily act and deed, and
+so accustomed the public gradually to interest themselves in people who
+did not act with histrionic passion, but conducted themselves quietly
+and soberly like men of the present time. The place of the dramatic was
+taken by those phases of life which are pleasant and smooth. At the same
+time there was no need to be thrown back on conventional idealisation,
+and it was possible to bring people dressed up for the occasion directly
+into the picture, just as they sat there, since the contrast between the
+professional model and the old-fashioned dress made itself less felt on
+this smaller scale of art. Thus was achieved the transition from the
+heroic historical art of the first half of the nineteenth century to
+that familiar and more human art of the second half, which no longer
+fled for help to the past, but sought a simpler ideal in reality.
+
+First of all in France, from the side of the solemnly earnest group of
+Academicians, there stepped forward certain artists who moved in the old
+world quite at their ease, and began to paint simple little pictures
+from the daily life of antiquity, instead of the great ostentatious
+canvases of David and Ingres. In literature their parallels are Ponsard
+and Augier, who in their comedies brought antique life upon the stage,
+the one in _Horace et Lydie_, the other in _La Ciguë_ and _Le Joueur de
+Flûte_.
+
+_Charles Gleyre_ approached nearest to the strict academical style of
+Ingres. Not even by a tour in the East did he allow himself to be led
+away from the Classical manner, and as head of a great and leading
+studio he recognised it as the task of his life to hand on to the
+present generation the traditions of the school of Ingres. Gleyre was a
+man of sound culture, who during a sojourn in Italy which lasted for
+years, had examined Etruscan vases and Greek statues with unintermittent
+zeal, studied the Italian classics, and copied all Raphael. Having come
+back to Paris, he never drew a line without having first assured himself
+how Raphael would have proceeded in the given case. And this striving
+after purity of form has robbed his works ("Nymph Echo," "Hercules at
+the Feet of Omphale," and the like) almost entirely of ease, freshness,
+and naturalness. Gleyre became, like Ary Scheffer, a victim to style. He
+had in him--his "Evening" of 1843 is sufficient to show it--a tender,
+dreamy, and contemplative spirit. The feelings to which he wished to
+give expression were his own, and the more fragrant, romantic, and
+vaporously indistinct they were, the more did they suffer from the stiff
+academical line in which he so mercilessly bound them. Only in his
+"Orpheus torn by the Bacchantes" has he raised himself to a certain
+neo-Greek elegance.
+
+_Louis Hamon_ stands at the end of this path, which led gradually from
+the strictness of form characteristic of the idealism of Ingres to
+incidents thought out in perfectly modern fashion and laid in a
+primitive era only because of the advantages of costume offered by the
+antique. The grace of his pictures is modern; their Classicism is a
+disguise. To robust natures his art can make but little appeal. He has
+deprived nature of her strength and marrow, and painting of its peculiar
+qualities, transforming them into a coloured dream, a tinted mist. In
+Hamon's modelling there is an uncertainty, in his colour a sickly
+weakness and meagre effeminacy, which give to his figures and landscapes
+the appearance of being dissolved in vapour. Everything firm is taken
+from them; the stones look like wadding, the plants like soap, the
+figures like china dolls which would fly into the air at the least gust
+of wind. Nevertheless there are times when his confectionery has a
+sympathetic grace. What distinguishes him is something simple, pure,
+youthful, fresh, and childlike. His colour is lighter and more delicate
+than Gleyre's. None but blended colours such as light blue and light
+yellow mingle in the harmony of white tones. The severe antique style
+has been given a pretty _rococo_ turn: his Greek girls, women, and
+children are like figures of Sèvres porcelain; the scenes in which he
+groups them are pleasing,--sports of fancy brought forward in a Grecian
+garb, of an affected sensuousness and a coquettish grace. His prettiest
+picture was probably "My Sister's not at Home"--Greece seen through a
+gauze transparency in the theatre.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ HAMON. MY SISTER'S NOT AT HOME.
+
+ (_By permission of Messrs. Boussod, Valadon & Co., the owners of the
+ copyright._)]
+
+_Léon Gérôme_ has also a taste for borrowing his subjects from the
+antique; being a pupil of Delaroche, however, he has treated not
+mythological but historical episodes of antiquity. His "Cock-fight,"
+"Phryne before the Areopagus," "The Augurs," "The Gladiators,"
+"Alcibiades at the House of Aspasia," and "The Death of Cæsar," together
+with pictures from Egypt, are his most characteristic works: Ingres and
+Delaroche upon a smaller scale. He shares with the one his learnedly
+pedantic composition, and with the other his taste for anecdote. It may
+be remarked that in these same years Emile Augier was active in
+literature, but that Augier, living in the same epoch of modern life, is
+far more powerful and animated in his Classical pieces. Gérôme's art is
+an intelligent, frigid, calculating art. In execution he does not rise
+above a petty study of form and an academic discipline. His drawing is
+accurate, and he has even succeeded in giving his figures a certain
+natural truth which is in advance of the generalisation of the classic
+ideal; yet from first to last he is wanting in every quality as a
+painter. His pictures of the East are hard landscapes, in which men or
+animals, harder still--unfortunate, eternally petrified beings--stand
+out abruptly. He draws and stipples, he works like an engraver in line,
+and goes over what he has painted again and again with a fine and feeble
+brush. He has an eye for form, but the effect of light upon the body
+escapes him. His pictures therefore give the impression of china, and
+his colour is hard and dead. What distinguishes him is a watchful
+observation, a chilling correctness, enclosing everything in
+characterless outlines. And this marble coldness remained with him later
+when, moving with the development of historical painting, he gradually
+took to working on more tragical subjects. Even the most violent
+subjects are depicted with a dainty grace, and with a smile he serves up
+decapitated heads, prepared with a painting _à la maitre d'hôtel_, upon
+a gold-rimmed porcelain plate as smooth as glass.
+
+Another painter of archæological _genre_ is _Gustave Boulanger_, who
+after extensive studies in Pompeii gave a vogue to those antique
+interiors and scenes of Pompeian street life now associated with the
+name of Alma-Tadema.
+
+Direct descendants of Delaroche and Robert Fleury were those who threw
+themselves enthusiastically into treating the physiognomy of the
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and devoted the most ardent study
+to the weapons, costumes, and furniture of those epochs. They never
+wearied in representing François I and Henri IV in the most varied
+situations of life, nor in searching the biographies of great artists
+and scholars for episodes worth painting. Especially popular subjects
+were those of celebrated painters at their meeting with contemporaries
+of high station: Raphael and Michael Angelo coming across each other in
+the Vatican, Murillo as a boy, the young Ribera found drawing in the
+street by a Cardinal, Bellini in his studio amid all manner of precious
+objects, Charles V and Titian, Michael Angelo tending his servant, and
+others of the same kind. The number of painters who were active in this
+province is as great as the number of anecdotes which are told of
+distinguished men. They spread themselves over various countries, like
+the swarms of insects hatched on a summer's day amid luxuriant
+vegetation, and thereby they render the task of selection more difficult
+to the historian. In France there worked _Alexander Hesse_, _Camille
+Roqueplan_, and _Charles Comte_; in Belgium, _Alexander Markelbach_ and
+_Florent Willems_. Markelbach, a pupil of Wappers, in addition to
+episodes from English history, specially devoted himself to painting the
+shooting festivals of the old Netherlandish city guards, in which
+enterprise the Doelen pieces of Frans Hals did him excellent service in
+the matter of costume. Florent Willems, who, as a restorer, saturated
+himself with the manner of the old masters, was particularly popular on
+account of the smooth finish he gave to his modish ladies, cavaliers,
+soldiers, painters, soubrettes, and patrician matrons of the sixteenth
+and seventeenth centuries. All the richly coloured satin, brocade, and
+velvet costumes of these personages, together with the tapestry, the
+curtains, and the furniture of their dwellings, he had the secret of
+reproducing in such a fashion that he was long esteemed a modern
+Terborg. Amongst the Germans, _L. von Hagn_ was the most delicate of
+these artists, and the graceful comedies of real life which he painted,
+transplanting them into the Italian Renaissance or the French _rococo_
+period, have often great distinction of colouring. _Gustav Spangenberg_,
+after the lucky but isolated success he had made with "The Track of
+Death," devoted himself to the Reformation period; and _Carl Becker_ to
+the Venetian Renaissance, from which he occasionally made an excursion
+into the German. These and many others could be discussed with more
+particularity if their pictures, smooth as coloured prints, and neatly
+finished in their own paltry way, were not so much below the standard of
+galleries. For them also the incident to be represented, with the
+personages concerned in it, was the principal matter, and not pure
+painting. These fetters upon true art were first shaken off by the hands
+of the following painters.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ GÉRÔME. THE COCK-FIGHT.]
+
+Of the generation of the eminent Flemish artists of 1830 _Hendrik Leys_
+is the one whose fame has been most enduring. Born in Antwerp on 18th
+February 1815, at first destined for the priesthood, and then in 1829
+admitted to the studio of Ferdinand de Braekeleers, he had made his
+début in the beginning of the thirties with a pair of historical
+pictures. These indeed revealed little of the power which he evinced
+later, but they furnished some indication of what he was aiming at. Here
+were none of the skirmishes--so popular at the time--in which blood
+flows as from the pipes of a fountain; the combatants fought with
+decorum and moderation, and less from conviction than to justify the
+helmets and cuirasses which had been fetched from the wardrobe. In both
+of them, on the other hand, the background--a mediæval town with
+tortuous alleys, lanterns, and picturesque taverns--was most lovingly
+treated. Here was revealed a thoroughly German delight in minute detail.
+Instead of subordinating the accessories as others did, with the object
+of throwing the principal personages into relief, Leys represented an
+entire corner of the world at once, giving full distinctness to the
+smallest things, down to the implements of daily life, the grasses and
+flowers of the landscape, and the variegated corner-stones of the old
+house-fronts, whose picturesque porches and lattices bulge into the
+crooked lanes. His next picture, "The Massacre of the Löwen
+Magistrates," was a still further departure from precedent, since--quite
+in Callot's manner--it mingled with the principal drama a mass of
+grotesque episodes. The born _genre_ painter was announced by these
+traits; and not less striking was the form of the art, which was a
+thorough departure from the manner of the "painters of the grand style."
+
+The resuscitation of a national art, which had been the life-long aim of
+Gustav Wappers, who was twelve years his senior, was what Leys also set
+up as the goal of his artistic endeavours. But their ways divided.
+Wappers was principally inspired by Rubens, while Leys attached himself
+at first to the Dutch painters. A visit made to Amsterdam in 1839 had
+helped him to an understanding of Rembrandt and Pieter de Hoogh. He
+followed them when, in 1845, he painted his "Wedding in the Seventeenth
+Century"--a rich display of gleaming hangings, golden plate, and
+red-plush furniture, amid which move handsomely dressed people, wedding
+guests, and violin players. The effort to approach Pieter de Hoogh or
+Jan van der Meer is apparent in the management of light; the treatment
+of drapery reminds one of Mieris and Metsu. Another pair of anecdotic
+pictures from the seventeenth century allow one to follow the progress
+by which Leys, under the influence of Dutch models, gradually developed
+that power and mastery of colouring, that completeness of pictorial
+effect, and that soft treatment of subdued light which were justly
+admired in his first works. In particular, certain works founded on the
+legends of painters and monarchs--Rubens, Rembrandt, or Frans Floris
+visited in their studio by some personage of high station--made him the
+lion of the Paris Salon. In 1852 he stood at the summit of his fame; he
+was recognised as one of the first of painters, both in Belgium and in
+other countries, and was everywhere loaded with honours. Then he cast
+his slough and entered on his "second manner."
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ HENDRIK LEYS.]
+
+After he had followed Rembrandt for more than a decade he turned from
+him to cast himself suddenly into the arms of the German masters of the
+sixteenth century, and, according to his own saying, "from that time
+forward to become an artist." During a tour through Germany, in 1852, he
+had become familiar with Dürer and Cranach; in Dresden, Wittenberg, and
+Eisenach there hovered round him the great figures of the Reformation
+period. Half-effaced memories of his countrymen, the brothers Van Eyck
+and Quentin Matsys, became once more fresh, and drove him decisively
+forward on his new course. "The Festival at Otto Venius's" and "Erasmus
+in his Study" were the first steps in this direction, and when soon
+afterwards he came forward with his costume pictures, "Luther as a
+Chorister in Eisenach" and "Luther in his Household at Wittenberg,"
+every one was enraptured with the exquisite truthfulness of his
+portrayal of archaic life. At the World's Exhibition of 1855 he had
+another magnificent success with three pictures executed in old German
+style. These were "The Mass in Honour of the Antwerp Burgomaster Barthel
+de Haze," "The Walk before the Gate," and "New Year's Day in Flanders."
+His return from Paris, where he was the only foreigner except Cornelius
+who had received the great gold medal, took the form of a triumphal
+progress in Antwerp, where he was greeted with illuminations, torchlight
+processions, and laurel wreaths made in gold. He was held to be the most
+eminent master since Quentin Matsys, the Jan van Eyck of the nineteenth
+century. In the Brussels Salon he appeared as a prince of art, before
+whom criticism made obeisance, and for whose pictures special shrines
+were erected. He was striking, not merely as an artist, but as a man:
+his stately figure was known to every one in Antwerp, and was pointed
+out to strangers as one of the sights of the place. In 1867, when he
+again received the medal in Paris, the Antwerp Cercle Artistique had a
+medal struck to commemorate an event of such importance in Belgian art.
+His decease, on 25th August 1869, threw the whole town into mourning;
+the windows in the town hall, where he had painted his last pictures,
+were hung with black, and the announcement of his death pasted up on
+great placards at the street corners. "_Leys is ons_" ran the phrase in
+the speech made by the burgomaster over his open grave. To-day his
+statue stands on the Boulevard Leys, and his house is noted down in
+Baedecker, like those of Matsys and Floris, Rubens and Jordaens.
+
+Leys was thus a favourite child of fortune. Enthusiastic applause
+showered him with fame and laurels. But it is natural that posterity
+should find a good deal to cancel in these titles of honour.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ LEYS. A FAMILY FESTIVAL.]
+
+Through Leys the history of art was not enriched with anything new. His
+delicate art--severe in outline--which goes back directly to the
+peculiar manner of the fifteenth century, is in itself not without
+merit. But how much of it belongs to the nineteenth century? To what
+extent has the painter stood independent and on his own peculiar ground?
+He could draw a Van Eyck which might be taken for an original. He seems
+like an old master gone astray by chance amongst the moderns. His
+knowledge of the sixteenth century is marvellous. In fact, he was a
+visionary who saw the past as clearly as though he had lived in the
+midst of it. The men he paints are his contemporaries. He has drawn them
+from life in the year of grace 1493, and they make no gesture nor
+grimace which might not be four hundred years old. Yet that means that
+he was not an original genius, but merely one who gave an adroit
+reproduction of a formula already in existence. And much as he affected
+to be the contemporary of Lucas Cranach and Quentin Matsys, he had not
+their simplicity: where they painted life he painted the shadow of their
+realism. Surrounded by old pictures, breviaries, and missals, he
+contented himself with copying the still forms of Gothic miniatures
+instead of living nature. He went so deeply into the pictures of the
+Antwerp town hall that he followed the old masters in their very errors
+of perspective; and though even the most childish confusion between
+foreground and background does not disturb one's pleasure in them,
+because they knew no better, it is an affectation in him, with his
+modern knowledge, intentionally to make the same mistakes. Instead of
+being an imitator of nature, he is an imitator of their imitation--a
+_gourmet_ in pictorial archaism.
+
+[Illustration: LEYS. THE ARMOURER.]
+
+Yet it was exactly this uncompromising archaism which was of importance
+for his time, and amongst his contemporaries it gives him significance
+as a reformer. He is the only one amongst them who really represents the
+Flemish race. Wappers was merely a Fleming from Paris, who shook off the
+yoke of the Greeks to bear that of the French. Delaroche lived again in
+Louis Gallait, the pupil of David. Their works had the sentiment of
+French tragedies, and an artificial neatness which completely departed
+from the truth of nature; the figures were combed and washed and brushed
+and polished, the gestures were histrionic, the colours toned in a
+stereotyped fashion to effect a pleasing _ensemble_. Leys endeavoured to
+be true. In his pictures he had no wish to express ideas, but merely to
+bring back a fragment of "the good old time" in all its brightness of
+life and colour. And whilst as a colourist he was bent upon avoiding
+uniformity of tone and giving everything its natural character, as a
+draughtsman, too, he set up, in opposition to the more patrician fluency
+of others, the citizen-like angularity of an art uninfluenced by the
+Cinquecento. As in Cranach, Dürer, and Holbein, one finds in his
+pictures profiles that are vividly true; harsh and often unwieldy heads,
+wrinkled faces, and heavy, massive shoulders resting on stunted bodies.
+The human form, with fat stomach and great horny hands, seems almost
+deformed. Everything which the struggle for existence has made of the
+image of God is expressed in the works of Leys for the first time since
+David. Even his "Massacre of the Löwen Magistrates" showed sharp,
+naturalistic physiognomies in the midst of its confused composition, and
+his "Barthel de Haze," fifteen years after, fully exemplified this
+striving after characteristic and truthful expression. None of his
+contemporaries has shown himself more cool and indifferent to
+conventional and graceful profile and "beauty" in the drawing of heads.
+Hatred of the academic model made Leys bring art back to its sources.
+The hideousness, so often childish, in primitive pictures was dearer to
+him than all Raphael. By this emphasising of the characteristic in
+attitude and the expression of the face he shows himself, although he
+painted historical subjects, the very antipode of the painter of the
+historical school, and, at the same time, one of those who effected the
+transition which led to the modern style. In setting up quaintness and
+far-fetched archaism against the mannerism of the idealists, Leys
+accustomed the eye again to recognise that there was something truer
+than nobility of line and aristocratic pose; and, as he appealed to the
+old masters as accomplices, it was impossible for æsthetic criticism to
+be offended.
+
+[Illustration: LEYS. MOTHER AND CHILD.]
+
+In France the transition from the absolutely beautiful to the
+characteristic, from types to individuals, was brought about from
+various sides. On the one side Romanticism had opposed to the antique
+style that of the Flemish painters. On the other side, within Classicism
+itself, there had been a change from the antique and the Cinquecento to
+the early Italian renaissance. A new world was opened to sculpture by
+the "Florentine Singer" of Paul Dubois. The more artists buried
+themselves in the study of those early pioneers of realism, Donatello,
+Verrochio, della Robbia, and the other masters of the Quatrocento, the
+more they found themselves fascinated by the sparkling animation of
+these creations, and sought to transfer it freely into their own work.
+The fifteenth century, with the energetic force of its figures, its
+close grasp of nature, and its pithy characterisation, which did not
+even shrink from ugliness, induced painters to go back more than they
+had formerly done to the sources of real life and to bring something of
+its directness into their creations. Élie Delaunay began to look on
+nature with an eye less bent on making abstractions and regarding all
+things from the standpoint of style; he began to apprehend more clearly
+her individual peculiarities and to reproduce them more truly than had
+been done by the frigid school which cast everything into the mould of
+Classicism. But _Ernest_ _Meissonier_ went a step further when by his
+_rococo_ pictures he set the Dutch tradition on a level with the Flemish
+and Early Italian as a formative influence.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ MEISSONIER. THE MAN AT THE WINDOW.]
+
+A picture must either be very big or very small if it is to attract
+attention amid the bustle of exhibitions. This was probably the
+consideration which led Meissonier to his peculiar class of subjects,
+and induced him to come forward with minute Netherlandish cabinet-pieces
+at the time when the Romanticists were issuing their huge manifestoes.
+He came of a family of petty tradespeople, and in his youth he is said
+to have taken over his father's business, a trade in colonial produce.
+Every morning at eight o'clock punctual he was at the shop desk, and
+kept the books and copied business letters, and in this way accustomed
+himself to that painstaking and uniform carefulness which was
+characteristic of him to the end of his life. His teacher, Cogniet, was
+without influence on him. Even in his youth, when there went forth the
+battle-cry of "A Guelf, a Ghibelline! A Delacroix, an Ingres!"
+Meissonier sat quietly in the Louvre and copied Jan van Eyck's Madonna
+from Autun. And a Netherlandish "little master" did he remain all his
+days. He first earned his bread as an illustrator, but after 1834 he
+began to exhibit all manner of pieces from the time of Louis XIV and
+Louis XV--the "Bourgeois hollandais rendant Visite au Bourgmestre" of
+1834, the "Chess Players of Holbein's Time," 1835, the "Monk at the
+Sickbed," 1838, the "English Doctor" and the "Man Reading," 1840. The
+Salon of 1841 was for him what that of 1824 had been for Delacroix and
+Ingres, and that of 1831 for Delaroche: the cradle of his fame. "The
+Chess Party" (17 cm. high and 11 cm. broad) was the most celebrated
+picture of the exhibition. The great Netherlandish "little masters" of
+the seventeenth century, till then scarcely known and little
+appreciated, were brought out for comparison. "Has Terborg or Mieris or
+Meissonier done the greater work?" was the question. People marvelled at
+the sharpness of this short-sighted eye which had a perception for the
+smallest details. "Good heavens! look at the way that's been done," said
+the Philistine, taking a magnifying glass; and felt himself a
+connoisseur if the curator at his elbow called out, "Not too near!" Even
+his first pictures had an accuracy and finish which defies description.
+It seemed as if a most admirable Netherlandish painter in miniature
+scale had arisen. The execution of his design in colours was as slow,
+careful, and laborious as were his preparatory studies for costume:
+every touch was altered and altered again; many a picture which was
+almost ready was thrown aside, scraped out, and completely recast. Not
+hot-headed enthusiasts, but "connoisseurs," has Meissonier conquered in
+this fashion. Those readers, philosophers, card-players, drinkers,
+smokers, flute-players and violin-players, engravers, painters and
+amateurs, horsemen and farm-servants, brawlers and bravoes, from the
+seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which he painted year after year,
+were soon the most coveted pictures in every superior private
+collection. In 1884 he was able to celebrate his jubilee as an artist
+with an exhibition of one hundred and fifty pictures of the kind. And as
+they would have gone dirt cheap if they had been bought for their weight
+in gold, the public accustomed itself to buy them for their weight in
+thousand-franc notes.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ MEISSONIER. A MAN READING.]
+
+The present age no longer looks up to these exercises of patience with
+the same vast admiration, but it should not therefore be forgotten what
+Meissonier was for his time.
+
+To begin with, though painted at a time when painting was regarded as an
+auxiliary, and an invaluable one, to history, his pictures tell no
+story. These personages of Meissonier's take part in no comedy; they
+occupy themselves, some in smoking, some in drinking, others in playing
+cards, and others again in doing nothing whatever. Whether they made
+their entry as musketeer or philosophers, as lackeys or gallants, as
+scholars or _bonvivants_, they did not pose and had no ambition to seem
+men of wit and spirit, they plunged into no adventurous deeds and
+related no anecdotes: they were content to be well painted. And so
+amongst all the French painters of the historical picture of manners
+Meissonier was the one who had the secret of giving his works an
+entirely peculiar _cachet_ of striking and realistic truth to nature.
+His figures, marvellously painted, and at the same time animated and
+natural in expression, wear the costume of our ancestors with the utmost
+self-possession, and fit into their modish _rococo_ surroundings as if
+they had been poured into a mould. Meissonier reached the truth of
+nature in the total effect of his pictures by first in reality arranging
+his interiors, and the still-life they contained, as a congruous whole.
+The rooms, window niches, and firesides which he reproduced in his
+pictures were in his own house and his studios, with every detail ready
+to hand. He bought bronzes, trinkets, and ornaments, genuine productions
+of the _rococo_ period, by the hundred thousand, and kept them by him.
+His models were obliged, for weeks and often for months, actually to
+wear the velvet and silken costumes in which he made use of them; then
+he painted them with the greatest fidelity to nature, and without
+troubling himself about anecdotic incident. What he rendered was not a
+story invented and put together piecemeal, but a wholesome piece of
+reality, pictorially conceived. And if this was primarily composed of
+costumes and furniture belonging to the eighteenth century, the
+transition to the natural treatment of modern life was at the same time
+made possible, and was accomplished by Meissonier himself, at a later
+period, in his battle pieces.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ MEISSONIER. READING THE MANUSCRIPT.]
+
+But he had only painted men: the physiognomy of the feminine Sphinx
+remained for him an eternal riddle. A wide field was here offered to his
+followers. Fauvelet, Chavet, and Brillouin stepped into Meissonier's
+shoes, and gave his _rococo_ fine gentlemen their better halves. The
+first two made simple imitations. Brillouin devoted himself to the comic
+_genre_: he arranged his pictures prettily, was a good observer, and
+painted tolerably well. The last of these Meissonierists is Vibert,
+chiefly known in the present day by his cardinals and other scarlet
+dignitaries, whom he represents in water-colours and oils with a certain
+touch of malice. He paints them gouty, gluttonising, or tipsy, in one or
+more cases in every picture--which does not contribute to make his works
+interesting. But originally he had a sympathetic superior talent, and
+will always claim a modest place in the group of the modern "little
+masters." His "Gulliver Bound," and also the Spanish and Turkish scenes
+which occupied him after a tour in the East, are extremely pleasing and
+delicately painted costume pieces, gleaming in sunlight; and in their
+sparkling, capricious workmanship they sometimes almost verge on
+Fortuny.
+
+On the German side of the Rhine _Adolf Menzel_ was the great pioneer of
+truth. The history of German art must do him honour as one who first had
+the genius and courage to break away from conventional forms of
+phrasing, and bring the truth of nature into art: at first, as in the
+case of Meissonier, it was nature in masquerade; but it was nature seen
+and rendered with all the sincerity of a man to whom the art of pose was
+wanting from the very first.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ MEISSONIER. POLCINELLO.]
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ MEISSONIER. A READING AT DIDEROT'S.
+
+ (_By permission of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, owner of the picture,
+ and of M. Georges Petit, owner of the copyright._)]
+
+Even in the thirties, at a time when "The Sorrowing Royal Pair" and the
+"Leonora" by Lessing, "The Soldier and his Child," "The Sick Councillor,"
+and "The Sons of Edward" by Hildebrandt, and "The Lament of the Jews" by
+Bendemann, together with the works of Cornelius, met with the enthusiastic
+applause of the million, Menzel looked into the world with a sharp glance,
+undisturbed by idealism; and what enabled him to do this was his
+unwavering and thoroughly Prussian healthiness, which knew no touch of
+sentimentalism--a certain coldness and hardness, that sensible, reflective
+North German trait, which often expresses itself in these days (when
+German art has become subtle and superior) by a crude naturalism in the
+Berlin painting. In the beginning of the century, however, it set the
+Berlin painting, as art of the healthy human understanding, in salutary
+contrast to the sickliness of Munich and Düsseldorf. Even eighty years ago
+the people of Berlin were too acute and practical to be Romanticists. The
+artists whom Menzel found active and honoured at his arrival were Schadow
+and Rauch, and beside them, as representatives of the _grande peinture_,
+Begas and Wach. But even these, who were most under the influence of the
+sentimental tendency, were justly recognised by the thorough-going
+Romanticists on the Rhine as never having given an unqualified homage to
+their flag. A clear, realistic method was dominant in the art of Berlin.
+And in this respect it was as much a corrective--and one by no means to be
+undervalued--against the inflated sentiment of Munich as against the weak
+and sickly sentimentalism of Düsseldorf, with its knights and monks and
+noble maidens. Even Cornelius, who had been called to Berlin by Frederick
+William IV--that King of the Romanticists on the throne of the eminently
+unromantic Hohenzollerns--found himself helpless against the ruling taste.
+And here only, in the stronghold of sharply accentuated common sense,
+where the old Prussian sobriety set bounds to the twilight kingdom of
+Romanticism, could Adolf Menzel attain to greatness. His Berlinism kept
+him from lingering in empty space. To the taste of to-day, formed from
+Fontainebleau, he will seem too much a creature of the understanding and
+too little a creature of feeling. Boecklin hit him off admirably when, on
+being asked what he thought of Menzel, he answered: "He is a great
+scholar." A comparison between him and Mommsen especially suggests
+itself--a great scholar, a mordant satirist, and a brilliant journalist.
+But this sober scepticism, this cool spirit of investigation, this
+"heartlessness" observing all things with the eye of a judge in a court of
+judicial inquiry, were what cleared the ground for modern art. No one has
+done more than Menzel for those rulers in the kingdom of dreams who from
+pure dreaming have never been able to learn anything. He has helped to set
+them steadily on their feet, and to accustom their sight, vitiated by
+idealism, once more to truth and nature.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ MEISSONIER. A HALT.]
+
+[Illustration: _Mansell._
+
+ MEISSONIER. A CAVALIER.]
+
+Menzel was almost the only one in Germany who could draw and paint in
+the time before the French influence had made itself felt. The struggle
+for existence had forced him to learn. In the year of Bismarck's birth
+there was born in Breslau the man destined to glorify, first the
+greatness of the old kingdom of the Fredericks, and then that of new
+imperial Prussia. Cast out at an early age on the inhospitable
+wilderness of life, he came to Berlin, poor and lonely, and not so much
+for the sake of art as for gain. There he sat in his cheerless attic,
+without a servant; and wrapped up in his plaid, with a coffee-pot on one
+side and a pencil on the other, he looked out over the roofs of the vast
+town, the most brilliant epoch of which he was predestined to depict and
+to conquer by his art. Since it brought in profit sooner than anything
+else, he had made himself familiar with the technique of reproduction;
+and having devoted himself in particular to the newly discovered art of
+lithography, he turned out _ménus_, New Year cards, vignettes for
+occasional poems, etc., and in things of this sort displayed a genuine
+affinity of spirit with Chodowiecki and Gottfried Schadow. From his
+twelfth year onwards he had not only assured his own existence, but even
+supported his family by such work; and in the hours he spent over it he
+laid the groundwork for becoming the master of masters amongst the
+moderns. Menzel is not merely a man who owed to himself everything which
+he afterwards became, who learnt to draw by his own unassisted
+endeavours, who mastered oil-painting without a teacher, and went
+further in it than any one of his generation--a man who found out
+entirely by himself new methods and combinations in water-colours and
+gouache; but if it is asked who was the greatest German illustrator, the
+man who did most in Germany to advance the art of woodcut engraving, the
+one German historical painter of the century who was entirely original,
+who really knew a bygone period so exactly that he could venture on
+painting it, the name of Menzel is invariably uttered.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ ADOLF MENZEL, 1837.]
+
+Even in the twelve simple lithographs which appeared in 1837, "Memorable
+Events from Prussian History in the Brandenburg Era," the "scholar"
+Menzel stands ready as the actual historian of the Prussian kingdom. In
+an age which took its pleasure in a vaporous, sentimental enthusiasm for
+the mediæval splendour of the empire, he was the one who as a youth of
+twenty pointed to the corner-stones of Prussian history in the
+Brandenburg times; he was the only man of his age who refused to blow
+the horn of the mawkish Romanticists, and still less that of the
+impassioned historical painters who came after them. For his were no
+theatrically tricked out scenes of tragedy, no touching situations; they
+had nothing poetical; and just as little were they tedious pictures of
+ceremonies or spectacular pieces. Striking characterisation and
+sparkling vividness were united here to the most painstaking study of
+nature and history, carried down to the peculiarities of costume and
+weapons. History was not arranged in accordance with academic formulæ,
+but delineated as if from life with absorbing truthfulness. Everything
+was expressed simply and sincerely, without exciting passages, and
+without conventional sentiment pumped out of models. Every epoch had its
+historical physiognomy, and costume was reduced to its proper
+subordinate place.
+
+Franz Kugler was the first who understood this sincere and pithy art.
+
+The Life of Napoleon had appeared, at that time, in Paris, with
+illustrations by Horace Vernet, and it had a considerable sale in
+Germany also. This gave a Berlin publisher the idea of a similar German
+work, and Kugler commissioned Menzel to illustrate his biography of
+Frederick the Great. It is almost impossible to pay sufficient honour to
+the influence which this book on Frederick has had on German art. It
+made an epoch in the history of wood engraving. The technique of this
+craft had been completely forgotten in Germany ever since the beginning
+of the century, or used only for the production of rough trade-marks for
+tobacco; Menzel had to invent it afresh and teach an engraving school of
+his own before the four hundred masterly plates of the book were made
+possible.
+
+But it became more revolutionary still for the æsthetic ideas of the
+time. Menzel had not set himself to produce a sequence of pictures,
+displaying events and heroes in the most ideal situations possible, but
+made it his business to sift the entire life of Frederick the Great to
+its minutest particulars. And here began that philological study of
+records which Menzel has carried on with the strenuous labour of an
+archivist down to the present day. Old Fritz had been caught by
+Chodowiecki in the way in which he has since lived in the popular
+imagination: as the old man on horseback, with his bent shoulders and
+his crutch-stick, holding a review, and as the philosopher, the
+statesman, the warrior and hero in the most manifold situations. Menzel,
+in whom the spirit of Chodowiecki lived again, only needed to begin
+where the latter left off. Stepping on the antiquarian material of
+Chodowiecki, he worked his way into the great period on which Frederick
+and Voltaire have set the stamp of their spirit, as Mommsen worked his
+way into Roman history. He read through whole libraries; he copied all
+attainable portraits. With scientific pedantry he did not forget to
+study the buttons and the cut of the trousers in the uniforms, and did
+not rest until he knew the old grenadiers as a corporal knows his men.
+Using these labours as preparation, he proceeded to call up old Fritz
+and his time with the objectivity of an historian, just as they were,
+and not as they had better have been. Sureness of treatment even in the
+finest details, accurate mastery of the surroundings, and everything
+which had made Meissonier's appearance so important for France, was
+attained at one stroke for Germany. But the very simplicity of what was
+offered--both in style and technique--prevented Menzel from being at the
+beginning accepted in his own country as an "historical painter." He was
+blamed for disregarding "beauty," and it was said that a "higher"
+artistic perception was sealed from him. On the other hand, the book
+laid the foundation of Menzel's position in France, and was, moreover,
+the work on which, for a long time, the appreciation of modern German
+art in foreign countries was based.
+
+[Illustration: MENZEL. FREDERICK THE GREAT AND HIS TUTOR.]
+
+[Illustration: MENZEL. THE ROUND TABLE AT SANS-SOUCI.]
+
+Thenceforth Menzel had a kind of monopoly in this subject, and when in
+1840 Frederick William IV had the works of the great king published in
+an _édition de luxe_, Menzel, amongst others, was entrusted with the
+illustration. Every one of the thirty volumes contains portraits of
+Frederick's contemporaries which were engraved by Mandel and others
+after original pictures of the period. Menzel had an apparently
+subordinate task. He was commissioned to make two hundred drawings for
+wood engraving; these, however, do not appear on separate pages, but
+were destined to be incorporated in the text as tail-pieces, vignettes,
+and the like. This was the great work which occupied him during the
+forties; and in these headings and tail-pieces to the works of Frederick
+the Great he showed, for the first time, that he was not merely a
+learned investigator of sources, but was full of brilliant _aperçus_.
+One has to read Frederick the Great before one can do full justice to
+the acuteness and ready resource, the subtlety and pungency of the
+artist's pencil. All æsthetic categories of realistic and idealistic art
+are scattered like dust before these creations, in which the most
+fantastic ideas are embodied with the whole force of the realistic power
+of our days.
+
+When he had done honour to the military comrades of the great ruler in
+his work of wood engraving, "Heroes of War and Peace in the Time of King
+Frederick," and thus made the epoch his own through a decade of busy
+labour, Menzel, draughtsman though he was, turned round and became the
+painter of Frederick the Great. In the history of art there have never
+been two names more intimately connected with each other. Menzel was a
+strenuous worker, who never knew the passion for woman, either because
+he had no time for it, or because he despised women after being despised
+by them as a poor, hard-featured student of art; a man whose great bald
+head appeared at Berlin subscription-balls amid groups of brilliant
+cavaliers and queens of beauty, fashion, and grace, surrounded by the
+rustle of their silks and in the whirlpool of a dancing throng, gleaming
+with colour and sparkling with gold and jewels; and appeared there
+simply because this world interested him as something to be painted. He
+was a recluse who went into society solely to make observations for his
+art, and when there was chary of speech and much feared. He was always a
+busy experimentalist, so that his two hands gradually became equally
+dexterous; at the age of eighty he could still sketch with firm and
+accurate strokes while travelling in a railway carriage.
+
+Though he had hitherto devoted himself to drawing, he had also by his
+own independent study made himself familiar with the technique of oils;
+and he now became such a master of colour as few were at that time. In
+the middle of the century were painted those two masterpieces which now
+hang in the Berlin National Gallery, "The Round Table at Sans-Souci" and
+"The Concert of Frederick the Great." These are historical pictures, the
+authority and importance of which cannot be shaken by even the most
+modern of critics. If what is called the spirit of an age has ever been
+embodied in pictures, it is embodied here, where the master-minds of the
+eighteenth century are assembled at their genial round table. The scene
+is the oval dining-room of the castle. The meal is over, and there
+reigns a genial after-dinner mood, champagne sparkles in the glasses and
+a smart rivalry of wit is in progress. Afternoon has crept on, and a
+cold, subdued daylight floods the room, in which every fragment of the
+architecture, from the inlaid floor to the gilded capitals of the
+pillars and the stucco of the arched ceiling, every piece of furniture
+and every chandelier, bears the wayward grace of the high-_rococo_
+period; all is comprehended with the most intimate knowledge. In the
+second picture a fine candlelight is glimmering over the scene.
+Frederick is just beginning to play the flute, and the musicians of the
+string quartet pause, to strike in again after the solo. The Court is
+grouped to the left: the ladies in gilded easy-chairs, and their
+cavaliers behind them. The tapers of the chandelier and the sconces
+branching from the wall shed over everything their prismatic, broken
+light reflected by the mirrors, and fill the fantastic, capricious,
+graceful, comfortable apartment, here with streaming brightness, there
+with a finely modulated twilight. Only Menzel could have conjured up in
+so convincing a manner the brilliancy of this Court festival of the
+past.
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstängl._
+
+ MENZEL. FREDERICK THE GREAT ON A JOURNEY.]
+
+Here is that exactness which an historical picture must have if it makes
+any claim to intrinsic worth. Whilst the ordinary historical painters
+were content to transmute dressed-up models into types of the
+universally human, and to put historical labels on their frames, Menzel
+succeeded in really penetrating a bygone age in an artistic spirit, and
+in making it live again for the present generation. He did not burrow to
+discover another dim historical personage every year, but confined
+himself to one hero--to the figure of the Prussian hero-king, familiar
+to every child, and still living in the popular imagination; and he
+learnt to master the time of this favourite hero as if he had been old
+Fritz himself. Menzel had never heard him blowing on his flute, and
+never sat at table with him in Sans-Souci, but the painting of these
+scenes comes out true and life-like in the artist's work, because the
+past history of his country had become as vivid to him as his own age.
+His "Battle of Hochkirch" rises to tragical grandeur, precisely because
+everything that is outwardly impassioned is far from him. His "Frederick
+the Great on a Journey," where the king is inspecting territories alter
+the war and ordering the rebuilding of demolished houses, his
+"Frederick's Meeting with Joseph II in Niesse," and all the other
+pictures of the sequence, by their marvellous naturalness and intense
+vividness, and by their freedom from pompous phrasing, stand alone in an
+age dominated by empty sentiment. Menzel, who never laid his sketch-book
+down from the time he was twelve years old, found a subject of pictorial
+interest in everything that he saw around him, until finally he acquired
+the power of moving with natural self-possession in a period that was
+not his own. By the roundabout way through the _rococo_ period he has
+taught us to understand ourselves. In his pictures an apparently
+paradoxical problem has been solved. An intense feeling for modern
+reality waked to new life the past, that same past which no one had
+approached with success by the way of idealism.
+
+[Illustration: MENZEL. ILLUSTRATION TO KUGLER'S HISTORY OF FREDERICK
+ THE GREAT.]
+
+And if we look over the whole development of modern art it strikes us as
+a remarkable fact that the most concrete spirits, the most thorough
+masters of technique, like Meissonier and Menzel, were precisely those
+who ventured to advance into the present. When they had crossed the
+province of the _rococo_ period, avoided by all scholastic art, they had
+arrived again at the epoch when Mengs and David had interrupted the
+natural course of the history of art, one hundred years before. About
+1750 the fateful movement towards the antique had been accomplished; in
+1820 the Middle Ages had the upper hand; in 1830 the Cinquecento was in
+the ascendant with Cornelius and Ingres; in 1840 the seventeenth century
+was awakened through Delacroix and Wappers; and in 1850, after "the
+courses of the centuries were sphered"--to use the phrase of
+Cornelius--Meissonier and Menzel painted things which had not appeared
+worth representing to the painters of 1750, blinded, as they were, by
+the glory of the antique. Not less striking is it that the nearer the
+historical subject came to the present the truer to nature did the
+picture become, and the more did it outwardly change in its features. It
+has shrivelled from the huge scale of David and Cornelius to the
+miniature scale of Meissonier and Menzel, and to some extent it thus
+leaves its further development to be guessed. At no distant time the
+historical picture will be overthrown, and the picture from modern life,
+hitherto but shyly handled and on the smallest scale, will swell to life
+size. History itself, serious history, clings merely to the rock-bed of
+old costume. One generation had used it with an abstract purpose as a
+substratum for philosophical ideas; others had made scenical pieces with
+its aid; a third generation turned it over for piquant traits and
+anecdotes. The last and greatest generation had finally come to handle
+it quite familiarly and humanly and without affected dignity. Their
+works protested against all idealism; and this expressed itself, in
+drawing, by their making use of the true instead of the "beautiful"
+line; in colour, by a fresher tint corresponding with nature rather than
+with the conventional ideal of beauty.
+
+[Illustration: MENZEL. PORTRAIT OF FREDERICK THE GREAT.]
+
+[Illustration: MENZEL. REIFSPIEL.]
+
+Nobility of line was paramount in Gallait and Piloty, movement with
+grand, kingly gestures, lofty dignity, aristocratic bearing,
+knightliness, and a conventional piling up of rich stuffs, alluring to
+the eye. Leys, Menzel, and Meissonier were the first who sacrificed
+beauty to truth, or, more properly, who perceived that a beauty without
+truth is not really beautiful. They came gradually and by an indirect
+way to this knowledge as they studied German and Netherlandish masters
+instead of the Italians, and set up the angular, natural outlines of the
+Germans against the grace of the Latin masters, which had become banal
+through a lengthy course of imitation. And thus a return was made to the
+manner of our true ancestors, which had been forgotten during half a
+century. The place of the Antinous heads of Gallait was taken by
+physiognomies of vigorous characterisation; gesticulating heroes made
+way for peaceful, quiet persons, who did not consider themselves under
+an obligation to acquire artistic citizenship by a parade of attitude,
+but appeared in their picture as they were in reality. Impassioned
+movement yielded quietly to arms hanging downwards and natural postures.
+Even the traditional rules of concave and convex composition were broken
+so that the free play of life might more easily come to its rights. Not
+less did all three show themselves true painters by preferring
+rightness of observation and truth and delicacy of reproduction to
+anecdote and richness of invention, and by feeling the need of painting
+figures in their real surroundings. Instead of the conventional velvet
+and brocade stuffs, and the folios everywhere and nowhere in place, the
+settles and the brass caskets, there was a naturally painted fragment of
+reality, authentically reflecting the whole atmosphere of the period.
+The treatment of nature, hitherto idealistic and arbitrary, became
+synthetic and naturalistic. There was no more abstraction, but direct
+observation of the man and his _milieu_. And if, for the time being,
+this _milieu_ was a _rococo milieu_, artificially reconstructed so that
+it could be realistically transferred to the picture, Menzel and
+Meissonier, even on account of this realism, would have to be reckoned
+as outposts of the modern tendency, and as having very decided points of
+contact with it; and this, even if they had not themselves actually
+become the pioneers of modernity, forcing their way through against the
+literary and historical movement. It is owing to their works in the past
+that the preference of the public turned less and less to compositions
+of fine sentiment, even though grounded on more attentive observation,
+and that artists began to regard reality as the most important element,
+the point of departure for every picture. Thus life itself came to be
+painted, and preparation was made for the coming demand of a new
+generation, who wished no more to see old heroes, but themselves, in the
+mirror of art.
+
+[Illustration: WHEN WILL GENIUS AWAKE? MENZEL.]
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+General:
+
+ Rouquet: L'état des Arts en Angleterre Paris, 1755.
+
+ H. Walpole: Anecdotes of Painting in England. With Illustrations. 5
+ vols. London, Strawberry Hill, 1762-71. New Edition, London, Ward,
+ Lock & Co., 1879.
+
+ James Dalloway: Les Beaux-Arts en Angleterre. Paris, 1807.
+
+ Edward Edwards: Anecdotes of Painters who have resided or been born in
+ England. London, 1808.
+
+ J. D. Fiorillo, Geschichte der Malerei in Grossbritannien, vol. v.
+ Göttingen, 1808.
+
+ W. Carey: Progress of the Fine Arts in England and Ireland during the
+ Reigns of George II, III, IV. London, 1826.
+
+ William Fletcher: History of Painting in England. London, 1838.
+
+ G. Hamilton: Gallery of English Artists. London and Paris, 1839.
+
+ Edward Edwards: The Fine Arts in England. London, 1840.
+
+ W. B. Taylor: The Origin, Progress, and Present Condition of the Fine
+ Arts in Great Britain and Ireland. 2 vols. London, 1841.
+
+ G. Lombardi: Saggio dell' Istoria Pittorica d'Inghilterra. Firenze,
+ 1843.
+
+ J. Dalloway: Anecdotes of Painting in England, with some Account of
+ the Principal Artists. 3 vols. London, 1849.
+
+ John Ruskin: Modern Painters. 5 vols. London, 1851-60.
+
+ G. F. Waagen: Treasures of Art in Great Britain. London, 1854.
+
+ Prosper Mérimée: Les Beaux-Arts en Angleterre, "Revue des Deux
+ Mondes," 1857.
+
+ T. Silvestre: L'Art, Les Artistes, etc., en Angleterre. London, 1857.
+
+ C. de Pesquidoux: L'École Anglaise, 1672-1851. Études biographiques et
+ critiques. Paris, 1858.
+
+ Our Living Painters: their Lives and Works. London, 1859.
+
+ T. Silvestre: Les Artistes Anglais, "L'Artiste," vol. vi, p. 81.
+ Paris, 1859.
+
+ W. Thornbury: British Artists from Hogarth to Turner. 2 vols. London,
+ 1860-61.
+
+ J. Milsand: L'esthétique anglaise. Étude sur M. John Ruskin. Trad.
+ franç. Paris, 1864.
+
+ R. and S. Redgrave: A Century of Painters of the English School. 2
+ vols. London, 1866. New Edition, 1890.
+
+ W. F. Rae: The History of Painting in England, "The Fine Arts
+ Quarterly Review," vol. i, p. 241; vol. ii, p. 64. 1866-67.
+
+ W. C. Monkhouse: Masterpieces of English Art, with Sketches of some
+ Deceased Painters of the English School. London, 1869.
+
+ F. T. Palgrave: Gems of English Art. Plates. London, 1869.
+
+ Sarah Tytler: Modern Painters and their Paintings. London, 1873.
+
+ Frederick William Fairholt: Homes, Works, and Shrines of English
+ Artists. London, Virtue & Co., 1873.
+
+ Frederick Wedmore: The Rise of Naturalism in English Art, "Macmillan's
+ Magazine," March and June 1876.
+
+ John Ruskin: Lectures on Art, delivered before the University of
+ Oxford, 1870. London, Macmillan, 1876.
+
+ English Painters of the Georgian Era: Hogarth to Turner. Biographical
+ Notices of the Artists. With 48 permanent photographs of their most
+ celebrated pictures. London, Low, 1876.
+
+ Frederick Wedmore: Studies on English Art. London, Richard Bentley &
+ Son, 1876.
+
+ English Painters of the Victorian Era: Mulready to Landseer.
+ Illustrated with 48 photographs of their most popular works. With
+ biographical notices. London, Low, 1877.
+
+ James Dafforne: Modern Art. A series of line engravings from the works
+ of distinguished painters of the English and Foreign Schools, selected
+ from galleries and private collections in Great Britain. 60 plates,
+ with descriptive text by J. D. London, 1877.
+
+ Samuel Redgrave: A Dictionary of Artists of the English School. New
+ Edition. London, 1878.
+
+ The Reflection of English Character in English Art, "The Quarterly
+ Review," January 1879.
+
+ Allan Cunningham: The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters.
+ Revised edition, annotated and continued to the Present Time by Mrs.
+ Charles Heaton. 3 vols. London, Bell, 1879.
+
+ Frederick Wedmore: Studies on English Art. Second Series. (Romney,
+ David Cox, G. Cruikshank, W. Hunt, Prout, B. Jones, A. Moore.) London,
+ Bentley, 1880.
+
+ George H. Shepherd: A Short History of the British School of Painting.
+ London, Sampson Low, 1881.
+
+ Living Painters of France and England. Plates. London, 1882.
+
+ E. Chesneau: La peinture anglaise. Paris, 1882.
+
+ J. Faber: La peinture anglaise. "Fédération artistique," 1883. 11-15.
+
+ N. D'Anvers: An Elementary History of Modern Painting. New Edition.
+ London, Sampson Low, 1883.
+
+ Wilfrid Meynell: Some Modern Artists and their Work. (Leighton,
+ Boughton, Tadema, Watts, etc.) With portraits and illustrations.
+ London, Cassell & Co., 1883.
+
+ Modern Artists. Illustrated Biographies of Modern Artists, published
+ under the direction of F. G. Dumas. (Leighton, Millais, Herkomer,
+ Hook, etc.) 2 vols. London and Paris, 1882-84.
+
+ Feuillet de Conches: Histoire de l'école anglaise de peinture jusqu'à
+ Sir Thomas Lawrence et ses émules. Paris, Leroux, 1883.
+
+ H. J. Wilmot-Buxton and S. R. Köhler: English and American Painters.
+ Plates. London, 1883.
+
+ John Ruskin: The Art of England. Lectures given in Oxford. Orpington,
+ Kent, 1883-84.
+
+ Artists at Home. Photographed by J. R. Mayall. With Biographical
+ Notices by F. G. Stephens. London, 1884.
+
+ Lord Ronald Gower; Great Historic Galleries of England. London,
+ Sampson Low.
+
+ J. Comyns Carr: Papers on Art. London, Macmillan & Co., 1885.
+ (Contains studies of Reynolds, Gainsborough, Rossetti, etc.)
+
+ Allan Cunningham: Great English Painters. Selected Biographies from
+ Allan Cunningham's Lives of Eminent British Painters. Edited by
+ William Sharp. London, 1886.
+
+ J. E. Hodgson: Fifty Years of British Art. (Manchester Exhibition,
+ 1887.) Manchester and London, John Heywood, 1887.
+
+ Charles Heaton: A Concise History of Painting. London, Bell & Daldy,
+ 1873. Second Edition, 1888.
+
+ The Pictorial Record of the Royal Jubilee Exhibition at Manchester,
+ 1887. By Walter Tomlinson. With special articles by Thomas W. Harris,
+ Charles Estcourt, and Joseph Nodal. Edited by John H. Nodal. With
+ Illustrations. Manchester, 1888.
+
+ Walter Armstrong: The Nineteenth Century School in Art, "Nineteenth
+ Century," April, 1887.
+
+ Walter Armstrong: Fine Art at the Royal Jubilee Exhibition at
+ Manchester, 1887. 1888.
+
+ William Hoe: English Artists of the Day. A Technical Directory.
+ London, 1888.
+
+ William Tirebuck: Great Minds in Art. (Studies of Wilson, Wilkie,
+ Landseer, and others.) London, 1888.
+
+ Harry Quilter: French and English Art, "Universal Review," 1888 and
+ 1890.
+
+ W. E. Henley: A Century of Artists. A Memorial of the Glasgow
+ International Exhibition, 1888. With Illustrations. Glasgow, 1889.
+
+ Hermann Helferich: Ueber die Kunst in England, "Kunst für Alle," iv,
+ 1888, pp. 161, 177.
+
+ Paul Meyerheim: Die englische Malerie in den letzten 50 Jahren, "Nord
+ und Süd," 1889, p. 17.
+
+ J. A. Crowe, Continental and English Painting, "Nineteenth Century,"
+ April 1890.
+
+ T. de Wyzewa: Les grands peintres de l'Espagne et de l'Angleterre.
+ Histoire sommaire de la peinture japonaise. Illustrations. Paris,
+ 1891.
+
+ T. H. Shepherd: Short History of the British School of Painting.
+ London, 1891.
+
+ Robert de la Sizeranne: La peinture anglaise contemporaine. Paris,
+ 1895.
+
+ G. Temple: The Art of Painting in the Queen's Reign. London, 1898.
+
+ Richard Muther: Die englische Malerei im 19 Jahrhundert. Berlin, 1902.
+
+ _See also_ H. Thomas Buckle: History of Civilisation in England.
+
+ H. Taine: Notes sur l'Angleterre. Paris, 1872.
+
+ H. Taine: Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise.
+
+ Periodicals: "Art Journal," "Portfolio," and "Magazine of Art,"
+ _passim._
+
+Hogarth:
+
+ W. Hogarth: Analyse de la beauté. 2 vols. Paris, 1805.
+
+ John Nichols: Biographical Anecdotes of W. Hogarth. London, 1781.
+ Second Edition, 1785.
+
+ G. C. Lichtenberg: Erklärung der Hogarth'schen Kupferstiche, mit
+ verkleinerten Copien derselben v. Riepenhausen. Göttingen, 1794-1831.
+
+ W. Hogarth: Complete Works, Including the Analysis of Beauty. London,
+ 1837.
+
+ Francis Wey: W. Hogarth. Londres il y a cent ans. Paris, 1859.
+
+ J. Hannay: Complete Works of Hogarth. Plates. London, 1860.
+
+ G. A. Sala: W. Hogarth, Painter, Engraver, and Philosopher.
+ Illustrations. London, 1866.
+
+ C. Justi: W. Hogarth, "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," vii, 1872.
+
+ A. Dobson: Hogarth. London, Low, New and Enlarged Edition, 1903.
+ (Illustrated Biographies of Great Artists.)
+
+ Th. Gautier: Guide de l'amateur, 1882.
+
+ Hogarth's Shrimp Girl, "Portfolio," 1886, p. 105.
+
+ F. Rabbe in the compilation, "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+ _Reproductions:_
+
+ The Original and Genuine Works of W. Hogarth. Atlas fol. London, 1790.
+
+ Graphic Illustrations of Hogarth: from Pictures, Drawings, etc. 2
+ vols. Royal 8vo. London, 1794-99.
+
+ The Works of W. Hogarth: from the original plates, restored by James
+ Heath, R.A. Atlas fol. London, 1822.
+
+ The Works of W. Hogarth: reproduced from the original engravings in
+ permanent photographs. With an Essay on Hogarth by Charles Lamb. 2
+ vols. Royal 8vo. London, 1872.
+
+ J. Ireland and J. Nichols: Hogarth's Works, with Life and Anecdotal
+ Descriptions of his Pictures. 3 vols. London. No date.
+
+Reynolds:
+
+ J. Northcote: The Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. London. 1818.
+
+ Joseph Farrington: Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds, with some
+ Observations on his Talent and Character. London, 1839.
+
+ Edm. Wheatley: A Descriptive Catalogue of all the Prints, etc., from
+ Original Portraits and Pictures by Sir Joshua Reynolds. London, 1825.
+ New Edition, 1850.
+
+ Th. Reynolds: Life of Joshua Reynolds, by his Son. London, 1839.
+
+ Joshua Reynolds: Discourses on the Fine Arts. Edinburgh, 1840.
+
+ Joshua Reynolds: Discourses, illustrated by Explanatory Notes and
+ Plates by J. Burnet. London, 1842.
+
+ Edm. Malone: The Literary Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Seven
+ Editions. London, 1794-1824. New Editions by H. W. Beechey. London,
+ 1846 and 1851.
+
+ W. Cotton: Sir Joshua Reynolds and his Works, edited by John Burnet.
+ London, 1856. New Edition, 1859.
+
+ J. Timbs: Anecdotal Biography. (Hogarth, Reynolds, etc.) 1860.
+
+ Ch. Rob. Leslie and Tom Taylor: Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
+ London, 1865.
+
+ Reynolds and the Portrait Painters of the Last Century: "Blackwood's
+ Magazine," November 1867.
+
+ Sidney Colvin: Joshua Reynolds, "Portfolio," 1873, pp. 66-82.
+
+ J. C. Collins: Sir Joshua Reynolds as a Portrait Painter. An Essay,
+ with 20 Portraits. London, 1874.
+
+ Edw. Hamilton: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Engraved Works of Joshua
+ Reynolds, 1755-1820. London, 1874.
+
+ Frederick Wedmore: Sir Joshua Reynolds, "Temple Bar," July 1876.
+
+ F. S. Pulling; Sir Joshua Reynolds. London, Sampson Low, 1880.
+
+ Th. Gautier; Guide de l'amateur, 1882.
+
+ F. G. Stephens: English Children as painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
+ London, 1884.
+
+ Th. Duret: Sir Joshua Reynolds et Gainsborough aux expositions de la
+ Royal Academy et de la Grosvenor Gallerie, "Gazette des Beaux Arts,"
+ 1884, i 327. (The same reprinted and enlarged. Paris, 1885.)
+
+ Various articles in the "Athenæum," 1883 and 1884.
+
+ Helen Zimmern: Sir Joshua Reynolds, in "Westermanns Monatsheften," May
+ 1884.
+
+ William Martin Conway: The Artistic Development of Reynolds and
+ Gainsborough. London, Seeley & Co., 1886.
+
+ Ernest Chesneau: Joshua Reynolds. With 18 Illustrations. Paris, 1887
+ (in the compilation "Les artistes célèbres").
+
+ Lady Blennerhasset: Joshua Reynolds' Discourses, "Allgemeine Zeitung,"
+ 1889.
+
+ Ed. Leisching: Zur Aesthetik u. Technik der bildenden Künste.
+ Akademische Reden von Sir J. R., Uebersetzt u. mit Einleitung,
+ Anmerkungen, Register u. Textvergleichung versehen von Dr. E. L.
+ Leipzig, 1893.
+
+ C. Phillips: Sir Joshua Reynolds. With 9 Illustrations from Pictures
+ by the Master. London, 1894.
+
+ W. Armstrong: Sir Joshua Reynolds. With 78 Photogravures and 6
+ Lithographic Facsimiles in colour, 1900; Popular edition, with 52
+ Plates. London, 1905.
+
+ Lord Ronald Gower: Sir Joshua Reynolds. His Life and Art (with
+ Illustrations). British Artists' Series, 1902.
+
+ J. Sime: Reynolds. London, 1904.
+
+ F. Benoit: Reynolds. Paris, 1904.
+
+Gainsborough:
+
+ Rob. Pratt: Sketch of the Life and Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough.
+ London, 1788.
+
+ George William Fulcher: Life of Thomas Gainsborough. London, 1856.
+
+ Sidney Colvin: Thomas Gainsborough, "Portfolio," 1872, pp. 169, 178.
+
+ J. Comyns Carr: Thomas Gainsborough, "The English Illustrated
+ Magazine," December 1884.
+
+ George M. Brock-Arnold: Gainsborough. London, Sampson Low, 1889.
+
+ Walter Armstrong in the compilation, "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+ Mrs. Bell: Thomas Gainsborough: a Record of his Life and Works, with
+ Illustrations, etc. London, 1897.
+
+ W. Armstrong: Gainsborough and his Place in English Art. With 62
+ Photogravures and 10 Lithographic Facsimiles in colour. London, 1898.
+ Popular edition (with 48 Plates), 1904.
+
+ Lord Ronald Gower: Thomas Gainsborough (with Illustrations). British
+ Artists' Series, 1903.
+
+ _Reproductions:_
+
+ Studies of Landscapes by Thomas Gainsborough. Engraved from the
+ Originals by L. Francia. London, 1810.
+
+ Studies of Figures by Gainsborough, in exact imitation of the
+ originals, by Richard Lane. London, 1825.
+
+ Selected Works of Thomas Gainsborough. One hundred engravings in
+ mezzotint. Fol. London, 1876.
+
+Wilson:
+
+ The Works of Richard Wilson, R.A., Landscape Painter. A volume of
+ engravings. Fol. No date.
+
+ T. Wright: Some Account of the Life of Richard Wilson. London, 1824.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+General:
+
+ Georg Brandes: Hauptströmungen der Literatur des 19 Jahrhunderts, Bd.
+ i, 2 Aufl. Leipzig, 1887.
+
+ Wilhelm Weigand: Essays. (Voltaire, Rousseau, zur Psychologie des 19
+ Jahrhunderts, etc.) München, 1892.
+
+Goya:
+
+ Théophile Gautier: Cabinet de l'amateur, 1842.
+
+ Laurent Matheron: Biographie de Fr. Goya. Paris, 1858.
+
+ Carderera: "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1860 and 1863.
+
+ P. Lefort: "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1867.
+
+ Charles Yriarte: Goya, sa biographie, etc. Paris, 1867.
+
+ D. F. Zapater y Gomez: Goya, noticias biograficas. Zaragoza, 1868.
+
+ Paul Lefort: "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1875, ii 506; 1876, i 336; ii
+ 500. Reprinted and enlarged under the title of Francisco Goya, Étude
+ biographique et critique, suivie de l'essai d'un catalogue raisonné de
+ son oeuvre gravé et lithographié. Paris, 1877.
+
+ Charles Yriarte: Goya, Aquafortiste, "L'Art," 1877, ii 3, 33, 56, 78.
+
+ P. G. Hamerton: Fr. Goya, "Portfolio." 1879, 67-99.
+
+ Muñoz y Manzano: Francesco de Goya y Lucientes, "Revista
+ contemporanea," September 1883.
+
+ Lucien Solvay: L'Art Espagnol. Paris, 1887. (Bibliothèque
+ internationale de l'Art.)
+
+ Con. de la Viñaza: Goya, su tiempo, su vida, sus obras. Madrid, 1887.
+
+ P. Lafond: Goya. Paris, 1902.
+
+ W. Rothenstein: Goya (with Illustrations). London, 1900.
+
+ Valerian von Loga: Francisco de Goya. Berlin, 1903.
+
+ Richard Muther in der Sammlung der Kunst, 1904, Berlin.
+
+ _More Recent Reproductions:_
+
+ Los Desastres de la Guerra. Colleccion de 80 laminos. Madrid, 1863.
+
+ Los Proverbios. Colleccion de 18 laminos. Madrid, 1864.
+
+ Los Caprichos. Gravures fac-similé de M. Segui y Riera. Notice
+ biographique et étude critique par Ant. de Nait. Barcelone, 1887.
+
+French Art in the Eighteenth Century:
+
+ Edmond et Jules de Goncourt: L'Art du XVIII siècle. Paris, 1850. 3rd
+ Edition, Paris, 1880.
+
+ Edmond et Jules de Goncourt: La femme au XVIII siècle. Paris, 1889.
+
+ Charles Blanc: Les Peintres des Fêtes galantes. (Watteau, Lancret,
+ Pater, Boucher.) Paris, 1854.
+
+ Arsène Houssaye: Histoire de l'Art Français du XVIII siècle.
+ Portraits. Paris, 1860.
+
+ E. B. de la Chavignerie: Les Artistes Français du XVIII siècle oubliés
+ ou dédaignés. Paris, 1865.
+
+ A. v. Wurzbach: Die französischen Maler des 18 Jahrh. Stuttgart, 1879.
+
+ Auguste Nicaise: L'école française au XVIII siècle. Chalons-sur-Marne,
+ 1883.
+
+ Paul Seidel: Friedrich d. Gr. u. die französische Kunst seiner Zeit.
+ Berlin, 1892.
+
+Watteau:
+
+ Figures de différents caractères de paysage et d'études dessinées
+ d'après nature par A. Watteau. 2 vols., 350 pl. Paris. No date.
+
+ D'Argenville: Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres. Paris, 1762.
+
+ Mariette: Abecedario. Published in the archives of French Art by
+ Chennevières. 1852, etc.
+
+ Caylus: La vie d'Antoine Watteau. Read on 3rd February 1748 before the
+ Paris Academy. Cited by Goncourt, L'Art du XVIII siècle, 1850.
+
+ Julienne in the preface to his book of plates, 1755.
+
+ Cellier: Antoine Watteau, son enfance, ses contemporains.
+ Valenciennes, 1867.
+
+ Edmond de Goncourt: A. Watteau. Paris, 1860. By the same author,
+ Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, dessiné et gravé d'A. Watteau.
+ Paris, 1875.
+
+ Theodor Volbehr: Antoine Watteau, ein Beitrag zur Kunstgeschichte des
+ 18 Jahrh. München, 1885.
+
+ Emil Hannover: A. Watteau. Kopenhagen, 1887. Deutsch von Alice
+ Hannover. Berlin, 1889.
+
+ G. Dargenty in "Les artistes célèbres." Paris, 1889.
+
+ Paul Mantz: "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1889, i 5, 177, 455; ii 5, 129,
+ 222. Reprinted 1892.
+
+Boucher:
+
+ P. Mantz: François Boucher, Lemoyne et Natoire (with engravings from
+ their works). Paris, 1880.
+
+ André Michel in "Les artistes célèbres." Paris, 1889.
+
+Lancret:
+
+ G. Dargenty in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+Pater:
+
+ G. Dargenty in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+Fragonard:
+
+ Baron Roger Portalis: Honoré Fragonard, sa vie et ses oeuvres. Paris,
+ 1887.
+
+ Felix Naquet in "Les artistes célèbres." 1893.
+
+ C. Mauclair: Fragonard, Biographie critique illustrée de vingt-quatre
+ reproductions hors texte (Les Grands Artistes, etc.), 1904.
+
+Baudouin:
+
+ Ch. Normand in "Les artistes célèbres." Paris, 1892.
+
+Greuze:
+
+ Edmond et Jules de Goncourt: L'Art du XVIII siècle.
+
+ Charles Blanc: Histoire de peintres des toutes les écoles, ii.
+
+ Jules Renouvier: Histoire de l'Art pendant la Révolution, p. 517.
+
+ Charles Normand in "Les artistes célèbres." Paris, 1892.
+
+Quentin La Tour:
+
+ Clement de Ris: L'oeuvre de Maurice Quentin de Latour, "Gazette des
+ Beaux Arts," 1882, ii 251.
+
+ Champfleury in "Les artistes célèbres." Paris, 1886.
+
+ H. Lapauze. With 87 Plates. Paris, 1885. La Tour et son oeuvre au
+ Musée de Saint-Quentin, 1905.
+
+Liotard:
+
+ F. Guye: Jean Étienne Liotard, 1702-91. Zofingen, 1890.
+
+Chardin:
+
+ Edmond et Jules de Goncourt: L'Art du XVIII siècle.
+
+ G. Dargenty: "L'Art," 1883, ii 3.
+
+ H. de Chennevières: Chardin au Musée du Louvre, "Gazette des Beaux
+ Arts," 1889, i 121.
+
+ Charles Normand in "Les artistes célèbres." Paris, 1892.
+
+ G. Schéfer: Chardin ... Biographie critique illustrée de vingt-quatre
+ reproductions hors texte (Les Grands Artistes, etc.), 1904.
+
+Cornelis Troost:
+
+ A Ver Huell: Cornelis Troost en zÿn Werken. Arnhem, 1873.
+
+Changes of Taste in Germany:
+
+ Hermann Hettner: Literaturgeschichte des 18 Jahrhunderts, Bd. iii.
+ Braunschweig, 1879.
+
+Chodowiecki:
+
+ W. Engelmann: Daniel Chodowieckis sämmtliche Kupferstiche. Leipzig,
+ 1857.
+
+ Alfred Woltmann: Hogarth und Chodowiecki. From Vier Jahrhunderte
+ niederländisch-deutscher Kunstgeschichte. Berlin, 1878.
+
+ Ferdinand Meyer: Daniel Chodowiecki der Peintre-graveur. Berlin, 1888.
+
+ W. von Oettingen. Berlin, 1895.
+
+ L Kämmerer: Bd. 21 der Künstlermonographien von Knackfuss. Bielefeld,
+ 1897.
+
+ See Selection from the artist's finest engravings, in photography, by
+ A. Frisch. Berlin, 1885.
+
+ D. Chodowiecki: Von Berlin nach Danzig, eine Künstlerfahrt im Jahre
+ 1783. 108 Facsimiledrucke nach Ch.'s Zeichnungen. Berlin, 1883.
+
+Tischbein:
+
+ Aus meinem Leben. An Autobiography, published by G. G. W. Schiller.
+ Leipzig, 1861.
+
+ Fr. v. Alten: Ans Tischbeins Leben und Briefwechsel. Leipzig, 1872.
+
+ Edmond Michel: Étude biographique sur les Tischbein. Lyon, 1881.
+
+Pesne:
+
+ Paul Seidel: "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1891.
+
+ Paul Seidel: Die Berliner Kunst unter Friedrich Wilhelm I.
+ "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1888, p. 185.
+
+Anton Graft:
+
+ R. Muther: Anton Graff, ein Beitrag zur Kunstgeschichte des 18
+ Jahrhunderts. Leipzig, 1881.
+
+ Julius Vogel: A. G., mit 60 Tafeln. Leipzig, 1898.
+
+Joseph Vernet:
+
+ Amedée Durande: Joseph, Carl, et Horace Vernet, Correspondence et
+ biographie. Paris, 1863.
+
+ L. Lagrange: J. Vernet et la peinture au XVIII siècle. Paris, 1864.
+
+ A. Genevay: "L'Art," 1876, iii 254, 307; iv 61.
+
+ Albert Maire: Les Vernet in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+Hubert Robert:
+
+ C. Gabillot in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+Canaletto:
+
+ Rudolph Meyer: Die beiden Canaletti. Dresden, 1878.
+
+Francesco Guardi:
+
+ Paul Leroi: "L'Art," 1878, i 103.
+
+Gessner:
+
+ Heinrich Wölfflin: Salomon Gessner. Frauenfeld. 1889.
+
+Oudry und Desportes:
+
+ Charles Normand in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+Riedinger:
+
+ Georg Aug. Wilh. Thienemann: Leben und Wirken J. El. Riedingers.
+ Leipzig, 1856.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+German Art in General:
+
+ Raczynski: Geschichte der neueren deutschen Kunst, übersetzt von K.
+ Hagen. 3 Bde. Text, 1 Bd. Tafeln. Berlin, 1836.
+
+ Anton Hallmann: Kunstbestrebungen der Gegenwart. Berlin, 1842.
+
+ Théophile Gautier: Les Beaux Arts en Europe, 1855. Paris, 1855.
+
+ A. Hagen: Die deutsche Kunst in unserm Jahrhundert. Berlin, 1857.
+
+ E. Förster: Geschichte der neueren deutschen Kunst. Leipzig, 1863.
+
+ Anton Springer: Die bildende Kunst des 19 Jahrhunderts. Leipzig, 1858.
+
+ J. Gérard: Considérations sur l'art allemand, ses principes et
+ tendances à propos de l'exposition de Munich. Bruxelles, 1859.
+
+ Hermann Riegel: Geschichte des Wiederauflebens der deutschen Kunst
+ seit Carstens. Hannover, 1876.
+
+ Friedr. Pecht: Deutsche Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts, Studien und
+ Erinnerungen. Nördlingen, Beck, 1877-81.
+
+ J. Beavington-Atkinson: The Schools of Modern Art in Germany. With
+ numerous Illustrations. London, Seeley, 1880.
+
+ A. F. Graf v. Schack: Meine Gemäldesammlung. Stuttgart, Cotta, 1881.
+ Neue Ausgabe als Einleitung zu den Albertschen Heliogravuren der
+ Galerie Schack. München, 1889.
+
+ Kunst und Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts, unter Mitwirkung von
+ Fachgenossen, herausgegeben von R. Dohme. Leipzig, Seemann, 1881 ff.
+
+ D. Duncker, Moderne Meister. Charakteristiken aus Kunst und Leben.
+ Berlin, 1883.
+
+ Franz Reber: Geschichte der neueren deutschen Kunst, mit Excursen über
+ die parallele Kunstentwicklung der übrigen Länder. 3 Bde. 3 Aufl.
+ Leipzig, 1884.
+
+ Anton Springer: Die Wege und Ziele der gegenwärtigen Kunst, in seinen
+ Bildern aus der neueren Kunstgeschichte. 2 Aufl. Bonn, 1886.
+
+ Adolf Rosenberg: Die Münchener Malerschule seit 1871. Leipzig, 1887.
+
+ Adolf Rosenberg: Geschichte der modernen Malerei. Bd. 2 und 3,
+ Deutschland. Leipzig, 1888 ff.
+
+ Hermann Becker: Deutsche Maler von Carstens bis auf die neuere Zeit.
+ Leipzig, 1888.
+
+ L. Pfau in "Kunst und Kritik," Bd. 1. Stuttgart, 1888, pp. 445-535.
+
+ Friedrich Pecht: Geschichte der Münchener Kunst. München, 1889.
+
+ Hubert Janitscheks, final chapter in his Geschichte der Deutschen
+ Malerei. Berlin, Grote, 1890.
+
+ M. de la Mazelière: La peinture allemande au XIX siècle. Paris, 1900.
+
+ Cornelius Gurlitt: Die deutsche Kunst des 19 Jahrhunderts. Berlin,
+ 1899.
+
+ Max Schmid: Kunstgeschichte des 19 Jahrhunderts. Leipzig, 1904.
+
+ Friedrich Haack: Die Kunst des 19 Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart, 1905.
+
+ Periodicals chiefly: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," Leipzig, 1866.
+ "Die Kunst für Alle," München, 1886. "Die Kunst unserer Zeit"
+ (specially the work of H. E. v. Berlepsch and Corn. Gurlitt), München,
+ 1890. "Der Kunstwart," Dresden, 1887. "Die Gegenwart" (articles by
+ Floerke, Lichtwark, Gurlitt, etc.), Berlin, 1872 ff. "Die Nation"
+ (articles by Helferich, Elias, etc.), Berlin, 1883 ff. "Die Freie
+ Bühne" (articles by Helferich, B. Becker, etc.), Berlin, 1888 ff. "Die
+ preussischen Jahrbücher" (articles by Carl Neumann, etc.). All cited
+ in particular in the appropriate place.
+
+The Classical Reaction:
+
+ Hermann Helferich: Classicität, "Freie Bühne," 1890.
+
+ Carl Neumann: Christian Rauch, Betrachtungen über Ursprung und Anfänge
+ der modernen deutschen Plastik, "Preuss. Jahrbücher," Bd. 64, 1889.
+
+ Heinr. v. Stein: Die Entstehung der neueren Aesthetik. Stuttgart,
+ 1886.
+
+The Theories of Gérard de Lairesse:
+
+ Carl Lemcke in his Study of Adriean van der Werff in "Kunst and
+ Künstler Deutschlands und der Niederlande," vol. ii. Leipzig, 1878.
+
+Winckelmann:
+
+ Carl Justi: Winckelmann, sein Leben, seine Werke, seine Zeitgenossen.
+ Bd. 1, Leipzig, 1866; Bd. 2, Leipzig, 1872.
+
+The Influence of Archæological Studies upon Art:
+
+ K. Bernh. Stark: Handbuch der Archaeologie, Bd. 1. Leipzig, 1879.
+
+Lessing:
+
+ Danzel-Guhrauer: Lessings Leben und Werke. Leipzig. No date.
+
+ Heinr. Fischer: Lessings Laokoon und die Gesetze der bildenden Kunst.
+ Berlin, 1887.
+
+Goethe's Relations to the Plastic Arts:
+
+ H. Hettner: Goethes Stellung zur bildenden Kunst seiner Zeit,
+ "Westermanns Monatshefte," 20, 83.
+
+ H. Hettner in his "Deutsche Literaturgeschichte," ii 457.
+
+ R. v. Eithelberger: Goethe als Kunstschriftsteller, in seinen
+ gesammelten kunsthistorischen Schriften. Wien, 1884. Bd. 3, pp.
+ 221-261.
+
+ Gustav Ebe: Goethes Beziehungen zur bildenden Kunst, "Gegenwart,"
+ xxvii. Heft 16 und 18.
+
+ C. Urlichs: Ueber Goethes Verhältniss zur alten Kunst.
+ "Goethe-Jahrbuch," iii.
+
+ Hermann Uhde: Goethe, J. G. Quandt und der sächsische Kunstverein.
+ Stuttgart, Cotta, 1877.
+
+ A. Heusler: Goethe und die italienische Kunst. Basel, Reich, 1891.
+
+ E. Dobbert: Goethe und die Berliner Kunst, "Nationalzeitung," 1891, 1
+ und 3 Febr.
+
+ Bode: Goethes Asthetik. Berlin, 1901.
+
+ Julius Vogel: Aus Goethes römischen Tagen. Leipzig, 1906.
+
+Mengs:
+
+ Bianconi: Elogio storico del Cavaliere Anton R. Mengs. Pavia, 1759.
+
+ Mengs: Gedanken über die Schönheit und über den Geschmack in der
+ Malerei. Zürich, 1765. Seine sämmtlichen hinterlassenen Schriften.
+ Bonn, 1843-44.
+
+ Franz Reber in "Kunst und Künstler Deutschl. u. der Niederlande,"
+ 1878.
+
+ Friedrich Pecht: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," xiv, 1879, pp. 33
+ u. 72.
+
+ Woermann: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1894.
+
+Angelica Kauffmann:
+
+ Giov. Gher. de Rossi: Vita di Angelica Kauffmann. Firenze, 1810.
+ German by A. Weinhart, Bregenz, 1814.
+
+ J. E. Wessely in "Kunst und Künstler Deutschlands und der
+ Niederlande," 1878.
+
+ A. W. Grube: Angelika Kauffmann. Bregenz, 1889.
+
+ Wilh. Schram: Die Malerin Angelika Kauffmann. Brünn, 1890.
+
+ Fr. A. Gérard: Angelica Kauffmann. London, 1892.
+
+ _See also_ F. Guhl: Die Frauen in der Kunstgeschichte. Berlin, 1858.
+
+Oeser:
+
+ Alphons Dürr: A. F. Oeser, Ein Beitrag zur Kunstgeschichte des 18
+ Jahrh. Leipzig, Dürr, 1879.
+
+Carstens:
+
+ Karl Ludwig Fernow: Leben des Künstlers J. A. Carstens. Leipzig, 1806.
+ Neuherausgegeben von Hermann Riegel. Hannover, 1867.
+
+ Hermann Grimm: Ausgewählte Essays zur Einführung in das Studium der
+ neueren Kunst. 2 Aufl. Berlin, 1883, p. 216.
+
+ F. v. Alten: A. F. Carstens. Schleswig, 1865.
+
+ H. Grimm: Ueber Künstler und Kunstwerke, i. Berlin, 1865, pp. 73-95.
+
+ Schöne: Beiträge zur Lebensgeschichte des Malers Carstens. Leipzig,
+ 1866.
+
+ Fr. Eggers: Vier Vorträge aus der neueren Kunstgeschichte. Berlin,
+ 1867, p. 1.
+
+ Carstens' Werke, in Kupferstichen von W. Müller, herausgegeben von
+ Hermann Riegel. Leipzig, Bd. 1, 1869; Bd. 2, 1874; Bd. 3, 1884.
+
+ Jul. Lange: Nutids Kunst. Kopenhagen, 1873, pp. 1-15.
+
+ Fr. Pauli: A. Carstens. Berlin, 1876.
+
+ Hermann Riegel: Kunstgeschichtliche Vorträge und Aufsätze, p. 200,
+ "Carstensiana." Braunschweig, 1877.
+
+ Alfr. Woltmann, from Vier Jahrhunderte niederländisch-deutscher
+ Kunstgeschichte. Berlin, 1878, p. 169.
+
+ Fr. Pecht: Deutsche Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts. III Reihe.
+ Nördlingen, 1881, p. 31 ff.
+
+ August Sach: Asmus Jacob Carstens' Jugend und Lehrjahre nach
+ urkundliche Quellen. Halle, 1881.
+
+ D. Schnittgen: A. J. Carstens, "Christliches Kunstblatt," 1882, 12.
+
+ Hermann Lücke in "Kunst und Künstler des 19 Jahrh." Leipzig, 1886.
+
+The Painter Müller:
+
+ C. Seuffert: Maler Müller. Berlin, 1877.
+
+ Sauer in "Deutscher Nationallitteratur," Bd. 81.
+
+ Müller's article against Carstens is in Schiller's Horen, 1797, iii
+ 21, iv 4.
+
+Luise Seidler:
+
+ Hermann Uhde: Erinnerungen aus dem Leben der Malerin Luise Seidler,
+ aus handschriftliche Nachlass zusammengestellt und bearbeitet, 2
+ Auflage. Berlin, Hertz, 1876.
+
+Wächter:
+
+ Dav. Friedr. Strauss: Kleine Schriften. Leipzig, 1862, pp. 333-360.
+
+ A. Haakh: Beiträge aus Württemberg zur neueren deutschen
+ Kunstgeschichte. Stuttgart, 1863, pp. vii ff., 10 ff., 133 ff.
+
+Schick:
+
+ Dav. Friedr. Strauss: Kleine Schriften, pp. 361-396.
+
+ Fr. Eggers: "Deutsches Kunstblatt," 1858, pp. 129-137.
+
+ A. Haakh: Beiträge aus Württernberg zur neueren deutschen
+ Kunstgeschichte, pp. xiv ff., 23-31, 59-312.
+
+ H. Kindt: Zu Gottlieb Schicks 100 jährigem Geburtstag. Gegenwart,
+ 1879, 31.
+
+ Winterlin: Württenbergische Künstler. Stuttgart, 1895.
+
+Genelli:
+
+ H. Riegel: Deutsche Kunststudien. Hannover, 1868, pp. 291 ff.
+
+ M. Jordan: Bonaventura Genelli, "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," v
+ pp. 1-19.
+
+ H. Riegel: Kunstgeschichtliche Vorträge und Aufsätze. Braunschweig,
+ 1877, pp. 148-170.
+
+ L. v. Donop: Briefe von Bonaventura Genelli und Karl Rahl,
+ "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," xii pp. 25 ii.; xiii pp. 115 ff.
+ Letters from Schwind to Genelli, do. xi p. 11.
+
+ Fr. Pecht: Deutsche Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts, II Reihe.
+ Nördlingen, 1879, pp. 271-304.
+
+ A. F. Graf v. Schack: Meine Gemäldesammlung. Stuttgart, 1881, pp.
+ 9-40.
+
+ O. Berggruen: Die Gallerie Schack in München. Wien, 1883. Also in "Die
+ graph. Künste," iv, 1881, 1.
+
+ O. Baisch: Einzelheiten aus Genellis Leben und Briefwechsel,
+ "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," xviii pp. 257-262.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+French Art in General:
+
+ Charles Blanc: Histoire des peintres français au XIX siècle. Paris,
+ 1845.
+
+ Gustave Planché; Portraits d'artistes. Paris, 1853.
+
+ Gustave Planché: Études sur l'école française, 1831-52. Paris, 1855.
+
+ A. de la Forge: La Peinture contemporaine en France. Paris, 1856.
+
+ T Silvestre: Histoire des Artistes vivants français et étrangers.
+ Paris, 1857.
+
+ Théodore Pelloquet: Dictionnaire de poche des Artistes contemporains.
+ Paris, 1858.
+
+ L. Laurent-Pichat: L'Art et les Artistes en France. Paris, 1859.
+
+ Moritz Hartmann; Bilder und Büsten. Frankfurt-am-Main, 1860.
+
+ Ch. Lenormant: Beaux Arts et Voyages. Paris, 1861.
+
+ Olivier Merson: La Peinture en France. Paris, 1861.
+
+ E. Chesneau: La Peinture Française au XIX siècle. Les Chefs d'École,
+ L. David Gros, Géricault, Decamps, Meissonier, Ingres, H. Flandrin, E.
+ Delacroix. Paris, 1862. New Edition, Paris, 1883.
+
+ Charles Blanc: Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles. Paris,
+ 1861-76.
+
+ L. Pfau: Französische Maler und Bilder, in "Freie Studien." Stuttgart,
+ 1866. Enlarged in "Kunst und Kritik," Bd. 1, pp. 115-444. Stuttgart,
+ 1888.
+
+ Charles Clement: Études sur les Beaux Arts en France. Paris, 1865.
+ Second Edition, 1867.
+
+ Julius Meyer: Geschichte der modernen französischen Malerei seit 1789.
+ Leipzig, 1867.
+
+ Julius Meyer: Die französische Malerei seit 1848, "Zeitschrift für
+ bildende Kunst," ii pp. 13, 32, 56, 119. Leipzig, 1867.
+
+ A. Bonnin: Études sur l'art contemporain. Les Écoles françaises et
+ étrangères en 1867. Paris, 1868.
+
+ P. G. Hamerton: Contemporary French Painters. London, 1868.
+
+ H. O'Neil: Modern Art in England and France. London, 1869.
+
+ P. G. Hamerton: Painting in France. London, 1869.
+
+ W. B. Scott: Gems of French Art, with an Essay on the French School.
+ Plates. London, 1871.
+
+ M. Chaumelin: L'Art contemporain. La Peinture à l'Exposition
+ universelle de 1867. Salon de 1868, 1869, 1870. Paris, 1873.
+
+ Th. Gautier: Portraits contemporains. Paris, 1874.
+
+ Pierre Petroz: L'Art et la critique en France depuis 1822. Paris,
+ 1875.
+
+ L. Dussieux: Les Artistes français à l'étranger. Paris, Lecoffre fils
+ et Cie, 1876.
+
+ R. Ménard: French Artists of the Present Day. Notices of some
+ Contemporary Painters. 12 engravings. London, 1876.
+
+ Charles Blanc: Les Artistes de mon temps. Paris, 1876.
+
+ Jules Claretie: L'Art et les Artistes Français contemporains, avec un
+ avant-propos sur le Salon de 1876. Paris, 1876. Deuxième série, Paris,
+ 1881.
+
+ Philippe Burty: Maîtres et petits maîtres. Paris, 1877.
+
+ Marquet de Vasselot: Recherches sur l'art français. Architecture,
+ Peinture, Sculpture. Paris, 1878.
+
+ Lucien Double: Promenade à travers deux siècles et quatorze salons.
+ Paris, 1878.
+
+ G. Berger: L'école Française de Peinture. Paris, 1879.
+
+ Victor Champier: Les Beaux Arts en France et à l'Étranger. Paris,
+ 1879.
+
+ E. Bellier de la Chavignerie et L. Auvray; Dictionnaire générale des
+ Artistes de l'École Française. Paris, 1880.
+
+ Ernest Chesneau: Peintres et Statuaires Romantiques. Paris, 1880.
+
+ Maurice du Seigneur: L'Art et les artistes au Salon de 1880. Paris,
+ 1880.
+
+ Marquet de Vasselot: Histoire du Portrait en France. Paris, 1880.
+
+ George Lafenestre: L'Art vivant, la Peinture et la Sculpture aux
+ Salons de 1868 à 1877. Paris, 1881.
+
+ E. Leclerq: Caractères de l'École française moderne de Peinture.
+ Paris, 1881.
+
+ F. Gosselin: Histoire anecdotique des Salons de peinture depuis 1673.
+ Paris, Dentu, 1881.
+
+ L. de Pesquidoux: L'Art au XIX siècle. L'Art dans les deux mondes,
+ Peinture et Sculpture. 2 vols. Paris, 1881.
+
+ Eugène Montrasier. Les artistes modernes: 1. Les peintres de genre; 2.
+ Les peintres militaires et les peintres de nu. 40 Biogr., 40 Tables. 2
+ vols. Paris, 1881.
+
+ Adolf Rosenberg: Geschichte der modernen Kunst. 1 Abtheilung. Die
+ franz. Kunst Leipzig, 1882.
+
+ H. Houssaye: L'Art français depuis dix ans. Paris, 1882.
+
+ Henri de Clenzion: L'Art national en France. Paris, 1882-83.
+
+ F. Henriet: Peintres contemporains. Paris, A. Levy, 1883.
+
+ Raf. Sinset et Jules d'Auriac: Histoire du Portrait en France. Paris,
+ 1884.
+
+ V. Fournal: Les artistes contemporains français, peintres, sculpteurs.
+ With 176 Illustrations. Tours, Mame et fils, 1884.
+
+ Jean Gigoux: Causeries sur les artistes de mon temps. Paris, 1885.
+
+ Albert Wolff: La capitale de l'Art. Second Edition. Paris, 1886.
+
+ Victor d'Halle: Histoire de la peinture en France. Paris, 1886.
+
+ Paul Marmottan: L'école française de peinture (1789-1830). Paris,
+ 1886.
+
+ J. Comyns Carr: Art in Provincial France. 1883.
+
+ Henri Jouin: Maîtres contemporains. Paris, 1887.
+
+ Charles Bigot: Peintres français contemporains. Paris, 1888.
+
+ C. H. Stranahan: A History of French Painting. New York, 1888.
+
+ La peinture française à l'exposition centennaire de 1889. Ouvrage
+ publié sous la direction de Antonin Proust. Paris, 1890.
+
+ Les Chefs d'oeuvres de l'Art au XIX siècle. 5 vols. Paris, 1890 ff.
+
+ 1. L'école française de David à Delacroix, par André Michel.
+ 2. L'école française de Delacroix à H. Regnault, par Alfred de
+ Lostalot.
+ 3. La peinture française actuelle, par Paul Lefort.
+ 4. Les écoles étrangères aux XIX siècle, par Th. de Wyzewa.
+ 5. La Sculpture et la Gravure en France au XIX siècle, par Louis
+ Gonse.
+
+ Richard Muther, Ein Jahrhundert französischer Malerei. Berlin, 1901.
+
+ A. Julius Meier-Gräfe: Der Entwichlungsgeschichte der modernen Kunst.
+ (With Illustrations and a volume of Plates.) Stuttgart, 1904.
+
+ Periodicals specially to be noted: "Gazette des Beaux Arts," Paris,
+ 1865. "L'Art," Paris, 1875.
+
+The Art of the Revolution Period:
+
+ Jules Renouvier: Histoire de l'art pendant la revolution. Paris, 1863.
+
+ Edmond et Jules de Goncourt: Histoire de la société française pendant
+ la révolution. Paris, 1854. New Edition, 1889.
+
+ Edmond et Jules de Goncourt: Histoire de la société française pendant
+ le Directoire. Paris, 1855.
+
+ Anton Springer: Die Kunst während der französischen Revolution, Bilder
+ aus der neueren Kuntsgeschichte. Bonn, 1886.
+
+ Paul Marmottan: L'école française de peinture 1789-1850. Paris, 1886.
+
+ Carl v. Lützow: Die französische Kunst vor 100 Jahren, "Zeitschrift
+ für bildende Kunst," xxiv, 1889, p. 181.
+
+Madame Vigée-Lebrun:
+
+ Her Autobiography: Souvenirs de ma vie. Paris, 1835-37.
+
+ Sophia Beale: Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun, "Portfolio," 1891, 89.
+
+ Charles Pillet in "Les artistes célèbres." Paris, 1892.
+
+Vien:
+
+ H. Cozik: Vien, sa vie et ses oeuvres. Paris. No date.
+
+ Elie Roy: Vien et son temps. Paris. No date.
+
+David:
+
+ P. A. Coupin: Essai sur J. L. David. Paris, 1827.
+
+ E. J. Delécluze: Louis David. Paris, 1855.
+
+ Jules David: Le peintre Louis David (1748-1825), souvenirs et
+ documents inédits. Paris, Havard, 1879.
+
+ C. A. Regnet in "Kunst und Künstler Spaniens, Frankreichs, und
+ Englands." Leipzig, 1880.
+
+ G. Nieter: Le peintre David, "Revue générale," March 1881.
+
+ "L'Art," 1889, ii p. 46.
+
+ C. Brun: Louis David und die französische Revolution. Zürich, 1886.
+
+ Charles Normand in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+ L. Rosenthal: David. Paris, 1904.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The Parallel Movement in Literature:
+
+ Georg Brandes, Haupströmungen der Literatur des 19 Jahrhunderts. Vol.
+ ii, Die deutsche romantische Schule. Leipzig, 1887.
+
+ Georg Haim: Die romantische Schule. Berlin, 1871.
+
+ Hermann Hettner: Die romantische Schule in ihrem Zusammenhang mit
+ Goethe und Schiller. Braunschweig, 1850.
+
+On the Nazarenes in General:
+
+ Veit Valentin in "Kunst und Künstler des 19 Jahrh." Leipzig, 1886.
+
+ Alfred Woltmann: Cornelius und seine Genossen in Rom. Aus Vier
+ Jahrhunderte, etc. Berlin, 1878, pp. 208 ff.
+
+ Fr. Haack: Die deutschen Romantiker in der bildenden Kunst des 19
+ Jahrhunderts. Erlangen, 1901.
+
+Overbeck:
+
+ A. v. Zahn: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," vi, 1871, pp. 217-235.
+
+ J. R. Beavington-Atkinson, Overbeck (Great Artists). London, Low,
+ 1882.
+
+ Margaret Howitt: Friedrich Overbeck. Sein Leben u. Schaffen, etc.
+ 1886.
+
+ Amongst minor works: J. N. Sepp: Friedrich Overbeck, Gedächtnissrede.
+ Augsburg, 1869.--Franz Binder: Zur Erinnerung an Friedrich Overbeck.
+ München, 1870.--H. Holland: Zu Friedrich Overbeck's Heimgang,
+ 1870.--G. Fr. v. Hertling: Zur Erinnerung an Friedrich Overbeck. Köln,
+ 1875.
+
+Führich:
+
+ Autobiography in the "Libussa." Prag, 1844. New Edition, Vienna,
+ Sartori, 1876.
+
+ R. Zimmermann: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," vii, 1868, pp. 189,
+ 209.
+
+ F. Pecht: Deutsche Künstler des 19 Jahrh., iii. Nördlingen, 1881, pp.
+ 64-108.
+
+ Lucas v. Führich: "Graphische Künste," viii pp. 1-16, 25-64. Also
+ separate.
+
+ C. v. Lützow, from Führichs Nachlass, "Zeitschrift für bildende
+ Kunst," xvii, 1882, p. 33.
+
+ Die Führich-Ausstellung in Frankfurt: "Zeitschrift für bildende
+ Kunst," 1885, xx, Beiblatt, 32.
+
+ L. R. von Kurz: T. von Führich. Graz, 1902.
+
+Veit:
+
+ Veit Valentin: Kunst, Künstler, und Kunstwerke; also in "Zeitschrift
+ für bildende Kunst," xv 2.
+
+ Martin Spahn: Philipp Veit. (With 92 Illustrations.) Bielefeld, 1901.
+
+ The Frescoes in the Casa Bartholdy:
+
+ L. v. Donop: Die Wandgemälde der Casa Bartholdy in der
+ Nationalgalerie. Berlin, 1888.
+
+Steinle:
+
+ O. Berggruen: Die Galerie Schack, "Graph. Künste," iv. 3 and 4.
+
+ Constantin v. Wurzbach: Ed. Steinle, ein Madonnenmaler unserer Zeit.
+ Biographische Studie. Wien, 1879.
+
+ Veit Valentin: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1888, xxiii 1 and 33.
+
+ L. Christiani: Plaudereien über Kunstinteressen der Gegenwart. Berlin,
+ 1871.
+
+ A. Reichensperger: Erinnerungen an Steinle. Frankfurt, 1887.
+
+ A. M. von Steinle: E. von Steinle und August Reichensperger. Köln,
+ 1890.
+
+ _Reproductions:_
+
+ Ausgewählte Werke E. v. Steinles. Frankfurt, 1888.
+
+ Ed. Steinles Bilder zu Parcival. Frankfurt, 1884.
+
+Schnorr:
+
+ M. Jordan: Aus Julius Schnorrs Lehr-und Wanderjahren, "Zeitschrift für
+ bildende Kunst," 1867, pp. 1 ff.
+
+ H. Riegel, "Kunstgeschichtliche Vorträge und Aufsätze." Braunschweig,
+ 1877, pp. 210-248.
+
+ M. Jordan: Ausstellung von Werken Julius Schnorrs in der Berliner
+ Nationalgalerie, 1878.
+
+ Veit Valentin in "Kunst und Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts."
+
+ Friedrich Haack in "Das 19 Jahrhundert in Bildnissen." Berlin.
+ Photographische Gesellschaft, 1901.
+
+ Briefe aus Italien von Julius Schnorr v. Carolsfeld, geschrieben in
+ den Jahren 1817-1827.
+
+ Ein Beitrag zur Gesch. seines Lebens und der Kunstbestrebungen seiner
+ Zeit, herausgegeben von Franz Schnorr v. Carolsfeld. Gotha, 1886.
+
+ _Compare_ "Bibel in Bildern." Leipzig, 1852-62.
+
+ Zeichnungen von Jul. Schnorr v. Carolsfeld, mit Einleitung von Jordan.
+ Leipzig, Dürr, 1878.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The Art of Munich under King Ludwig I.:
+
+ Alfred Woltmann, from "Vier Jahrhunderte niederländisch-deutscher
+ Kunstgeschichte." Berlin, 1878, pp. 260 ff.
+
+ Hans Reidelbach: König Ludwig I und seine Kunstschöpfungen. München,
+ 1888.
+
+Cornelius:
+
+ Herm. Riegel: Cornelius, der Meister der deutschen Malerei. Hannover,
+ 1866.
+
+ M. Carrière: Denkrede auf Cornelius. Leipzig, 1867.
+
+ A. Teichlein: Betrachtungen über Riegels Buch, "Cornelius, der Meister
+ der deutschen Malerei," "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," ii. 1867,
+ pp. 128 ff., 189 ff.
+
+ Alfred Frhr. v. Wolzogen: Peter v. Cornelius. Berlin, 1867.
+
+ Max Lohde: Gespräche mit Cornelius, "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst,"
+ III 1, 30, 84. 1868.
+
+ W. Lübke: Kunsthistorische Studien. Stuttgart, 1869.
+
+ Ernst Förster: Peter Cornelius, ein Gedenkbuch aus seinem Leben und
+ Wirken. 2 vols. Berlin, 1874.
+
+ Herm. Grimm: Berlin und P. v. Cornelius (Die Cartons von P. v.
+ Cornelius, Cornelius und die ersten 50 Jahre nach 1800), in "15
+ Essays." Berlin, 1875.
+
+ V. Kaiser: Cornelius und Kaulbach in ihren Lieblingswerken. Basel,
+ 1876.
+
+ Fr. Pecht: Deutsche Künstler des 19 Jahrh., Bd. 1. Nördlingen, 1877.
+
+ A. Woltmann, from "Vier Jahrhunderte niederländisch-deutscher Kunst."
+ Berlin, 1878, pp. 208-259.
+
+ Fr. Pecht: P. v. Cornelius. "Gartenlaube," 1879, 29.
+
+ M. Carrière in "Deutscher Plutarch," Bd. vii. Leipzig, 1880, pp. 1-56.
+
+ A. Rosenberg: Cornelius im Lichte der Gegenwart. Grenzboten, 1881, I.
+
+ A. Berggruen: Die Galerie Schack, P. v. Cornelius, "Die graph.
+ Künste," 1881, 4, 2.
+
+ Rossmann: Briefe von Peter Cornelius. Grenzboten, 1882, 16.
+
+ G. Portig: Die sixtinische Madonna und die Camposanto Cartons von
+ Cornelius. Leipzig, 1882.
+
+ V. Valentin in "Kunst und Künstler des 19 Jahrh." Leipzig, 1883-85.
+
+ Herm. Riegel: Peter Cornelius, Festschrift zu des grossen Künstlers
+ 100 Geburtstage. Berlin, 1883.
+
+ Carl v. Lützow: Zur Erinnerung an P. v. Cornelius, "Zeitschrift für
+ bildende Kunst," 19, 1.
+
+ Der 100 Geburtstag von Cornelius, "Allegemeine Zeitung," 1883, B. 130.
+
+ Cornelius, ein Maler von Gottes Gnaden. Hamburg, 1884.
+
+ H. Grimm: Cornelius betreffend, "Deutsche Rundschau," March 1884.
+
+ L. v. Urlichs: Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte. Leipzig, 1885, p. 119.
+ Cornelius in München und Rom.
+
+ A. Frantz in "Kunst und Literatur." Berlin, 1888, pp. 1-60.
+
+Kaulbach:
+
+ Guido Görres: Das Narrenhaus von W. Kaulbach. München. No date.
+
+ Max Schasler: Die Wandgemälde Wilhelm von Kaulbachs im Treppenhause
+ des Neuen Museums zu Berlin. Berlin, 1854.
+
+ W. v. Kaulbachs Shakespeare-Galerie, by M. Carrière. Berlin, 1856.
+
+ V. Kaiser: Kaulbachs Bilderkreis der Weltgeschichte. Berlin, 1879.
+
+ Ed. Dobbert: Die monumentale Darstellung der Reformation durch
+ Rietschel und Kaulbach. "Sammlung gemeinverständlicher
+ wissenschaftlicher Vorträge," No. 74. Berlin, 1869.
+
+ A. Teichlein: Zur Charakteristik W. v. Kaulbachs, "Zeitschrift für
+ bildende Kunst," xi, 1876, pp. 257-264.
+
+ V. Kaiser: Macbeth und Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare's Dichtungen und in
+ Kunstwerken von Cornelius und Kaulbach. Basel, Schweighauser, 1876.
+
+ A. Woltmann, from "Vier Jahrhunderte niederländisch-deutscher
+ Kunstgeschichte." Berlin, 1878, pp. 288-316.
+
+ Fr. Pecht: "Deutsche Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts," ii. Nördlin gen,
+ 1879, pp. 54-109.
+
+ Kaulbachs Wandgemälde im Treppenhause des Neuen Museums zu Berlin, in
+ Kupfer gestochen von G. Eilers, H. Merz, J. L. Raab, A. Schultheiss.
+ Mit erläuterndem Text herausgegeben unter den Auspicien des Meisters.
+ Neue Ausgabe. Berlin, A. Duncker, 1879.
+
+ Hans Müller: W. Kaulbach. Berlin, 1893.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The Düsseldorfers:
+
+ W. Schadow: Gedanken über folgerichtige Ausbildung des Malers,
+ "Berliner Kunstblatt," 1828, pp. 264-273.
+
+ A. Fahne: Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule, 1835-36. Düsseldorf, 1837.
+
+ H. Püttmann: Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule und ihre Leistungen seit der
+ Errichtung des Kunstvereins in Jahre 1829. Leipzig, 1839.
+
+ Fr. v. Uechtritz: Blicke in das Düsseldorfer Künst- und Künstlerleben.
+ Düsseldorf, 1839.
+
+ Wolfg. Müller v. Königswinter: Düsseldorfer Künstler ans den letzten
+ 25 Jahren. Leipzig, 1854.
+
+ W. v. Schadow: Der moderne Vasari, Erinnerungen aus dem Künstlerleben.
+ Berlin, 1854.
+
+ R. Wiegmann: Die königliche Kunstakademie zu Düsseldorf, ihre
+ Geschichte, Einrichtung und Wirksamkeit und die Düsseldorfer Künstler.
+ Düsseldorf, 1854.
+
+ J. Hübner: Schadow und seine Schule, Festrede bei Enthüllung des
+ Schadowdenkmals zu Düsseldorf, 1869. Bonn, 1869.
+
+ M. Blanckarts: Düsseldorfer Künstler, Nekrologe aus den letzten zehn
+ Jahren. Stuttgart, 1877.
+
+ K. Woermann: Zur Geschichte der Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie.
+ Düsseldorf, 1880.
+
+ A. Rosenberg: Die Düsseldorfer Schule. Grenzboten, 1881, 1 1 ff.
+
+ Mor. Blanckarts: Der Künstlerverein Malkasten in Düsseldorf,
+ "Allgemeine Kunstchronik," 1883, 47.
+
+ A. Rosenberg: Die Düsseldorfer Schule. Leipzig, Seemann, 1886.
+
+ Schaarschmidt: Geschichte der Düsseldorfer Kunst, 1902.
+
+Bendemann:
+
+ Die Ausstellung der Werke von E. Bendemann in der königliche
+ Nationalgalerie v. 3 Nov. bis 15 Dez. 1890. Berlin, 1890.
+
+ L. Bund: Ed. Bendemann, "Illustrirte Zeitung," 1881, 2014.
+
+Hübner:
+
+ M. Blanckarts: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1883, 13.
+
+ Reumont, "Archiv. storico italiano," xi 2.
+
+ A. Ehrhardt, "Z. f. Museologie," 1883, 23, "Allg. Kunstchronik," 1883,
+ 46.
+
+Mintrop:
+
+ Ferd. Laufer: Th. Mintrop, der Ackersknecht und Maler, "Allg.
+ Kunstchronik," 1883, 32.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Rethel:
+
+ Wolfgang Müller v. Königswinter: Alfred Rethel. Blätter der
+ Erinnerung. Leipzig, 1861.
+
+ Friedr. Theodor Vischer: Altes und Neues. Drittes Heft. Stuttgart,
+ 1882, pp. 1-24.
+
+ Kaulen: Der Historienmaler A. Rethel, "Deutsches Kunstblatt," 1883, ii
+ 21.
+
+ Veit Valentin: A. Rethel, eine Charakteristik, "Aesthet. Schriften I."
+ Berlin, 1892.
+
+ Max Schmid: Bd. 32 der Künstlermonographien von Knackfuss. Bielefeld,
+ 1898.
+
+Schwind:
+
+ L. v. Führich: Moriz v. Schwind, Eine Lebensskizze. Leipzig, 1871.
+
+ Ed. Ille: Dem Andenken M. Schwinds. München, 1871.
+
+ A. W. Müller: M. v. Schwind. Eisenach, 1871.
+
+ Hermann Dalton: "Sechs Vorträge." St. Petersburg, 1872.
+
+ Ludwig Hevesi: M. Schwind. "Gegenwart," 1872.
+
+ H. Holland: M. v. Schwind. Stuttgart, 1873.
+
+ A. v. Zahn: Zur Charakteristik M. v. Schwinds, "Zeitschrift für
+ bildende Kunst," vii 1873, p. 287.
+
+ F. Pecht: Deutsche Künstler des 19 Jahrh. Nördlingen, 1877, i 195-231.
+
+ Bauernfeld: Moriz Schwind zum Gedächtniss, "Nord und Süd," iii, 1877,
+ p. 353.
+
+ Bernh. Schädel: Briefe von Moriz Schwind, "Nord und Süd," xiv, 1880,
+ p. 23; xv, 1881, p. 357.
+
+ Graf v. Schack: Meine Gemäldesammlung. Stuttgart, 1881, pp. 41-73.
+
+ O. Berggruen: Die Galerie Schack. Wien, 1883. Mit Radirungen.
+
+ Alph. Dürr: Ein halbvergessenes Werk von Schwind (Wandmalereien in
+ Hohenschwangau) in der Festschrift zu Ehren Anton Springers. Leipzig,
+ 1885, pp. 231-239.
+
+ Veit Valentin: Kunst, Künstler, und Kunstwerke. Leipzig, 1888.
+
+ Briefwechsel zwischen Schwind u. Ed. Mörike, mitgeth. v. J. Baechtold.
+ Leipzig, 1890.
+
+ H. W. Riehl: Studien und Charakteristiken. Stuttgart, 1891.
+
+ Friedrich Haack: Bd. 31 der Künstlermonographien von Knackfuss.
+ Bielefeld, 1898.
+
+ Otto Grantoff, in "Muthers Sammlung Die Kunst." Berlin, 1903.
+
+ Julius Naue: Worte u. Wirken v. M. von Schwind. (With a Portrait and 3
+ Illustrations.) München, 1904.
+
+ _Reproductions:_
+
+ Aschenbrödel, Bildercyclus von M. v. Schwind. Holzschnittausgabe nach
+ den Theaterschen Stichen, mit Text von H. Lücke. 1873.
+
+ Die sieben Raben u. die schöne Melusine, zuletzt unter dem Titel
+ "Deutsche Märchen" bei Neff in Stuttgart erschienen.
+
+ Operncyclus im Foyer des k. k. Opernhauses in Wien. 14 Compositionen
+ von Moritz Schwind. Mit Text von Ed. Hanslick. München, 1880.
+
+ Almanach von Radirungen mit Erklärungen. Text von Feuchtersleben.
+ Zürich, 1844.
+
+ Schwinds Wandgemälde in Hohenschwangau. 46 Compositionen nach den
+ Aquarellentwürfen gestochen von J. Naue und K. Walde. Leipzig.
+
+ Schwind-Album. München, 1880.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Gérard:
+
+ Charles Lenormant: François Gérard, peintre d'histoire. Essai de
+ biographie et de critique. Paris, 1847.
+
+ Adam: L'oeuvre du Baron Gérard. Paris, 1852-57.
+
+ Correspondance de François Gérard, peintre d'histoire. Publiée par
+ Henri Gérard, son neveu, et précédée d'une Notice sur la vie de Gérard
+ par Adolphe Viollet le Duc. Paris, 1867.
+
+ Charles Ephrussi: François Gérard d'après les lettres publiées par M.
+ le baron Gérard, "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1890, ii 449. 1891, i 57,
+ 201.
+
+Prudhon (besides Jul. Meyer, Renouvier, and Rosenberg):
+
+ Voiart: Notice historique sur la vie et les oeuvres de P. P. Prudhon,
+ peintre. Paris, 1824. Quatremère de Quincy: Notice lue à l'Institut, 2
+ Octobre 1824.
+
+ Eug. Delacroix: "Revue des Deux Mondes," 1857.
+
+ Charles Clement (chief work): Prudhon, sa vie, ses oeuvres, et sa
+ correspondance, first in 1867-68, then in "Gazette des Beaux Arts,"
+ 1872, with 30 Illustrations. Paris, Didier & Co., 3rd Edition, 1880.
+
+ Edm. et J. de Goncourt: L'Art au XVIII siècle. Paris, 1875. New
+ Edition, 1882, vol. ii, p. 385.
+
+ Edm. de Goncourt: Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, dessiné et
+ gravé de Prudhon. Paris, 1876.
+
+ Ph. Burty: L'oeuvre de P. P. Prudhon, "L'Art," 1877, i p. 33.
+
+ Alfred Sensier: Le Roman de Prudhon, "Revue internationale de l'Art et
+ de la Curiosité," 15 Dec. 1869.
+
+ Arséne Houssaye: Artiste, Janvier-Juin 1877. Article in "L'Art," 1877,
+ i p. 33.
+
+ Charles Gueullette: Mlle. Constance Mayer et Prudhon, "Gazette des
+ Beaux Arts," 1878, p. 476. 1879, p. 268.
+
+ Charles Blanc: Histoire des peintres, vol. iii.
+
+ Aug. Schmarsow in "Kunst und Künstler der ersten Hälfte des 19
+ Jahrhunderts," published by Robert Dohme, vol. ii. Leipzig, Seemann,
+ 1886.
+
+ Pierre Gauthiez: Prudhon in "Les artistes célèbres." Paris, 1891.
+
+ Almost all the works of Prudhon are photographed by Braun of Dornach.
+
+Gros (besides Charles Blanc, Jul. Meyer, and Rosenberg):
+
+ Jean Baptiste Delestre (pupil of Gros): Gros, sa vie et ses ouvrages.
+ With Illustrations. 2nd Edition. Paris, 1867.
+
+ J. Tripier le Franc: Histoire de la vie et de la mort du baron Gros,
+ le grand peintre. Paris, 1880.
+
+ Eugène Delacroix: "Revue des Deux Mondes," 1848. Also in a separate
+ reprint.
+
+ Ernest Chesneau: Les chefs d'école. 3rd Edition, 1883, pp. 58-126.
+
+ On Gros' paintings in the Pantheon: Ph. de Chennevières in the
+ "Gazette des Beaux Arts," xxiii pp. 168-174.
+
+ G. Dargenty: Les Chefs-d'oeuvre de Gros, "L'Art," 1886, ii p. 121, and
+ 1889, ii p. 100.
+
+ Richard Graul in "Kunst und Künstler der ersten Hälfte des 19
+ Jahrhunderts," vol. 2. Leipzig, Seemann, 1886.
+
+ G. Dargenty: Le baron Gros. Paris, 1887, in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+ The chief pictures of Gros are photographed by Braun of Dornach.
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+On the Parallel Movement in Literature:
+
+ Georg Brandes: Die Literatur des 19 Jahrhunderts in ihren
+ Hauptströmungen, 2 Auflage Bd. 5. Leipzig, 1883.
+
+On the Romantic Movement in General:
+
+ E. Chesneau: Peintres et statuaires romantiques (Huet, Boulanger,
+ Préault, Delacroix, Th. Rousseau, Millet, etc.). Paris, Charavay
+ frères, 1879.
+
+Géricault:
+
+ Charles Blanc: Th. Géricault, 1845.
+
+ Charles Clement: Th. Géricault, Étude biographique et critique, avec
+ le catalogue raisonné. Paris, 1868. New Edition, 1879.
+
+Delacroix:
+
+ E. Galichon: Les Peintures de M. E. Delacroix à Saint-Sulpice,
+ "Gazette des Beaux Arts," xi, 1861, p. 511.
+
+ Amédée Cantaloube: Eugène Delacroix, l'homme et l'artiste. Paris,
+ 1864.
+
+ Henri de Cleurion: L'oeuvre de Delacroix. Paris, 1865.
+
+ Piron: E. Delacroix, sa vie et ses oeuvres. Paris, 1865.
+
+ Adolphe Moreau: E. Delacroix et son oeuvre. Paris, 1873.
+
+ Lettres de E. Delacroix (1815-1863), recueillies et publiées par Phil.
+ Burty. Paris, Quantin, 1879.
+
+ Alfred Robaut: Peintures décoratives de E. Delacroix. Le Salon du roi
+ au Palais legislatif. Paris, A. Levy, 1879.
+
+ Alfred Robaut: Peintures décoratives de E. Delacroix, "L'Art," 1880,
+ 279.
+
+ M. Vachon: E. Delacroix à l'école des Beaux Arts. Paris, 1885.
+
+ Ph. Burty: Eugène Delacroix à Alger, "L'Art," 1880, 422.
+
+ Ernest Chesneau: Eugène Delacroix, "L'Art," 1882, 382.
+
+ Ernest Chesneau: L'oeuvre complet de E. Delacroix, commenté par E.
+ Chesneau. Paris, 1885.
+
+ G. Dargenty: Eug. Delacroix par lui-même. Paris, 1885.
+
+ Henri Guet: L'oeuvre de E. Delacroix, "Le Salon" de 1885, etc. Paris,
+ 1885.
+
+ Maurice Tourneux: Eug. Delacroix, devant ses contemporains, ses
+ écrits, ses biographes, ses critiques. Paris, 1886. (Bibliothèque
+ internationale de l'Art, Sér. II, vol. vi.)
+
+ Véron: Eugène Delacroix. Paris, 1887.
+
+ _See_ Eugène Delacroix: Journal de E. D. (With Introductory Study,
+ etc., by M. Paul Flat and René Piot, etc.) 3 vols., 1893-1895. Berlin,
+ 1903.
+
+Ingres:
+
+ A. Magimel: Oeuvres de J. A. I., gravées par A. Réveil. [102
+ Copperplates.] Paris, 1851.
+
+ Charles Lenormant: Beaux Arts et Voyages. Paris, 1861.
+
+ Ernest Chesneau: Les chefs d'école. Paris, 1868, p. 253.
+
+ Henri Delaborde: Ingres, sa vie et ses travaux. Paris, 1870.
+
+ Charles Blanc: Ingres, sa vie et ses ouvrages. Paris, 1870.
+
+ Amaury Duval: L'atelier d'Ingres. Souvenirs. Paris, 1878.
+
+ Th. Silvestre: Les artistes français. Paris, 1878, p. 139.
+
+ R. Balze: Ingres, son école, son enseignement du dessin: avec des
+ notes recueillies par P. et A. Flandrin, Lehman, Delaborde, etc.
+ Paris, Pillet et Dumoulin, 1880.
+
+ Ernest Chesneau: Peintres et statuaires romantiques. Paris, 1880, p.
+ 259.
+
+ Eugène Montrosier; Peintres modernes: Ingres, H. Flandrin, Robert
+ Fleury. Paris, Baschet, 1883.
+
+ August Schmarsow in "Kunst und Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts." Leipzig,
+ 1886.
+
+ Jules Mommeja in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Ary Scheffer:
+
+ Blanche de Saffray: Ary Scheffer. Paris, 1859.
+
+ Antoine Etex: Ary Scheffer, étude sur sa vie et ses ouvrages. Paris,
+ 1859.
+
+ Miss Grote: Memoir of the Life of A. Scheffer. 2nd Edition. London,
+ 1860.
+
+ L. Vitet: L'oeuvre de Ary Scheffer reproduit en Photographie par
+ Bingham. Paris, 1860.
+
+ Charles Lenormant: Beaux Arts et Voyages, vol. i. Paris, 1861.
+
+ Hofstede de Groot: Ary Scheffer, ein Charakterbild. Berlin, 1870.
+
+ M. E. Im-Thurn; Scheffer et Decamps. Nîmes, 1876.
+
+Johannot:
+
+ Charles Lenormant: Les Johannot, Beaux Arts et Voyages, vol. i. Paris,
+ 1861.
+
+Flandrin:
+
+ F. A. Gruyer: Les Conditions de la Peinture en France et les Peintures
+ Murales de H. Flandrin. Paris, 1862.
+
+ J. B. Poucet: Hippolyte Flandrin. Paris, 1864.
+
+ A. Galimard: Examen des Peintures de l'Eglise de St. Germain des Prés.
+ Paris, 1864.
+
+ Charles Clement: Études sur les Beaux Arts en France. Paris, 1865, p.
+ 191.
+
+ Anon.: Hippolyte Flandrin, A Christian Painter of the Nineteenth
+ Century. London, 1875.
+
+ M. de Montrond: H. Flandrin, Étude biographique et historique. 3rd
+ Edition, with plates. Paris, Lefort, 1876.
+
+ Ernest Chesneau: Les chefs d'école, p. 297.
+
+ Charles Blanc: Les artistes de mon temps, p. 263.
+
+ Henri Delaborde: Lettres et pensées d'Hippolyte Flandrin. Paris,
+ 1877.
+
+ Eng. Montrosier: Peintres modernes; Ingres, Flandrin, Robert-Fleury.
+ Paris, 1882.
+
+ Hermann Helferich: Etwas über französische Neuidealisten, "Kunst für
+ Alle," 1892.
+
+ Louis Flandrin: Hippolyte Flandrin, sa vie et son oeuvre, etc. Paris,
+ 1902.
+
+Chenavard:
+
+ Abel Peyrouton: Paul Chenavard et son oeuvre. Paris, 1887.
+
+ L. Riesener: Les cartons de M. Chenavard, "L'Art," 1878, i 179.
+
+ Charles Blanc: Les artistes de mon temps, p. 191.
+
+ Th. Silvestre: Les artistes français, p. 299.
+
+ Th. Chassériau:
+
+ Arthur Baignières: "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1886, i 209.
+
+Cogniet:
+
+ "Chronique des Arts," 1880, 37.
+
+ Paul Mantz: "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1881, i 33.
+
+ Léon Bonnat: "Chronique des Arts," 1883, 8. Also separate.
+
+ Ernest Vinet: Léon Cogniet. Paris. Without date.
+
+ H. Delaborde: Notice sur la vie de L. Cogniet. Paris, 1881.
+
+Devéria:
+
+ J. Guiffrey: Achille et Eugène Devéria, "L'Art," 1883, p. 422.
+
+Delaroche:
+
+ Oeuvre de Paul Delaroche: reproduit en photographie par Bingham,
+ accompagné d'une Notice par H. Delaborde et Jules Goddé. Paris, 1858.
+
+ Henri Delaborde: Études sur les Beaux Arts, vol. ii. Paris, 1857.
+
+ Charles Blanc: P. Delaroche in "Histoire des peintres."
+
+ Charles Lenormant in "Beaux Arts et Voyages." Paris, 1861.
+
+ J. Runtz-Rees: P. Delaroche. London, 1880.
+
+ Adolf Rosenberg in "Kunst und Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts."
+
+Couture:
+
+ Méthodes et Entretiens d'atelier, par Thomas Couture. Paris, 1868.
+
+ Jules Claretie: Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains. Paris, 1873, p.
+ 163.
+
+ H. Billung: "Kunst-Chronik," 1879, 30.
+
+ "L'Art," xvii p. 24. 1879.
+
+ Paul Leroy: "L'Art," 1880, 298. Also separate.
+
+ Clara Biller: Zur Erinnerung an Thomas Couture, "Zeitschrift für
+ bildende Kunst," xvi, 1881, p. 101.
+
+ H. C. Angel: Th. Couture, "American Art Review," 1881, 24.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Cabanel:
+
+ Georges Lafenestre: "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1889, i 265.
+
+Bouguereau:
+
+ Artistes modernes. "Dictionnaire illustré des Beaux Arts." Paris,
+ 1885. Parts I-V.
+
+Baudry:
+
+ Emile Bergerat: Peintures décoratives de Paul Baudry au grand foyer de
+ l'Opéra. Avec preface de Th. Gautier. Paris, 1875.
+
+ Edmond About: Paul Baudry, "L'Art," 1876, iv 169.
+
+ Jules Claretie: L'art et les artistes contemporains. Paris, 1876, p.
+ 49.
+
+ Edmond About: Peintures décoratives de Paul Baudry. Photogr. Goupil.
+ Paris, 1876.
+
+ G. Berger: Les peintures de Paul Baudry dans le Foyer de l'Opéra,
+ "Chronique des Arts," 1879.
+
+ Charles Ephrussi: L'exposition des oeuvres de M. P. Baudry, "Gazette
+ des Beaux Arts," 1882, ii 132.
+
+ G. Dargenty: Paul Baudry à propos de l'exposition de ses oeuvres à
+ l'orangerie des Tuileries, "Courrier de l'Art," 28, 1883.
+
+ Dubufe: Paul Baudry, "La nouvelle Revue," 15 Juli 1883.
+
+ Henri Delaborde: Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de M. P. Baudry.
+ Paris, 1886.
+
+ Ernest Toudouze: P. Baudry, Notes intimes. Bordeaux, 1886.
+
+ Charles Ephrussi: Paul Baudry, sa vie et son oeuvre. Paris, 1887.
+
+ Richard Graul: Paul Baudry, "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," xxii,
+ 1887, pp. 1 and 65.
+
+ A. Bonnin: Paul Baudry. Vannes, 1889.
+
+Benjamin Constant:
+
+ Victor Champier: Benjamin Constant, "Art Journal," August 1883.
+
+ F. Naquet: "L'Art," XLVIII, 237. 1890.
+
+Laurens:
+
+ Ferdinand Fabre: Le roman d'un peintre. Paris, 1878.
+
+Regnault:
+
+ H. Cazalis: Henri Regnault, sa vie et son oeuvre. Paris, 1871.
+
+ H. Baillière: H. Regnault. Paris, 1871.
+
+ Arthur Duparc: Correspondence de Henri Regnault. Paris, 1873.
+
+ Charles Blanc: Les artistes de mon temps. Paris, 1876, p. 347.
+
+ Roger-Ballu: Le monument de Henri Regnault à l'école des Beaux Arts.
+ "L'Art," 1876, iii 176.
+
+ Philip G. Hamerton: Modern Frenchmen, 5 biographies. London, 1878, p.
+ 334.
+
+ A. Angelier: Étude sur Henri Regnault. Paris, Boulanger, 1879.
+
+ Hermann Billung: Henri Regnault, "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst,"
+ 1880, xv 93. "L'Art," 1886, ii 48.
+
+ Roger Marx: Henri Regnault, in "Les artistes célèbres." Paris, 1886.
+
+ Gustave Larroumet: Henri Regnault, 1848-1871. Paris, 1889.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+The Historical School in Belgium:
+
+ Principal work: Camille Lemonnier: Histoire des beaux-arts en
+ Belgique. Cinquante ans de liberté. Bruxelles, 1881, vol. iii. Neue
+ Ausgabe. 1906.
+
+ Likewise: Von Hasselt: La Belgique, in "L'Art moderne en Allemagne,"
+ iii. Paris, 1841.
+
+ Felix Bogaerts: Esquisse d'une histoire des Arts en Belgique depuis
+ 1640 jusqu'à 1830. Anvers, 1841.
+
+ L. Pfau: Die zeitgenössische Kunst in Belgien, "Freie Studien."
+ Stuttgart, 1866.
+
+ F. Reber: Die belgische Malerei, "Deutsche Revue," vii, 1882, p. 219.
+ "Patria Belgica," tome iii, Les Expositions de tableaux depuis 1830.
+ Bruxelles, 1875.
+
+ Annuaire de l'Académie royale des Sciences, Lettres, et Beaux Arts,
+ passim.
+
+ J. A. Wauters: La peinture flamande, 3 éd. Paris, Quantin, 1891.
+
+ Compare also the final chapter in Max Rooses' "Geschichte der
+ Malerschule Antwerpens," deutsch von Reber. 2 Ausgabe. München, 1889.
+
+M. J. van Bree:
+
+ L. Gerrits: Levensbeschrijving van M. J. van Bree. Antwerp, 1852.
+
+Wappers:
+
+ Hermann Billung: Gustav Wappers, historisches Taschenbuch, 5 Folge, x.
+ 1880, p. 111.
+
+De Keyzer:
+
+ Henri Hymans: Nicaise de Keyzer. Bruxelles, 1891.
+
+ Guffens and Swerts:
+
+ Hermann Riegel: Geschichte der Wandmalerei in Belgien seit 1856. Nebst
+ Briefen von Cornelius, Kaulbach, Overbeck, Schnorr, Schwind, u. A. an
+ Gottfried Guffens und Jan Swerts. Berlin, Wasmuth, 1883.
+
+Gallait:
+
+ A. Teichlein: L. Gallait und die Malerei in Deutschland. München,
+ 1853.
+
+ Henne, Louis Gallait: Annales de l'Académie d'arch. de Belgique, 1890,
+ 4.
+
+ Nekrolog in "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1890.
+
+Bièfve:
+
+ Obituary in "L'Art moderne," 7, 1881.
+
+ "Journal des Beaux Arts," 1881, 4.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+The Germans in Paris:
+
+ Edmond About: Voyage à travers l'exposition des Beaux Arts, 1855, p.
+ 56.
+
+Feuerbach:
+
+ Ein Vermächtniss von Anselm Feuerbach. 2 Auflage. Wien, 1885. 4 Aufl,
+ 1897.
+
+ Fr. Pecht: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," viii, 1873, p. 161.
+
+ Fr. Pecht: Deutsche Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts. Nördlingen, 1877,
+ pp. 238-268.
+
+ Katalog der Ausstellung des Künstlerischen Nachlasses in der Berliner
+ Nationalgalerie, mit Biographie von Max Jordan. Berlin, 1880.
+
+ Graf v. Schack: Meine Gemäldesammlung. Stuttgart, 1881, pp. 93-116.
+
+ O. Berggruen: Die Galerie Schack in München. Wien, 1883. Mit
+ Radirungen. (Also in "Graphische Künste," 1880, iii 1.)
+
+ A. Wolf: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," xv Beiblatt, 15.
+
+ W. v. Seidlitz: A. Feuerbach, im 4 Heft der "Stichausgabe moderner
+ Meister der Dresdener Galerie."
+
+ Marc Schüssler: Zum Gedächtniss an A. Feuerbach. Nürnberg, 1880.
+
+ H. Grimm in "15 Essays," 3 Folge. Berlin, 1882, p. 337.
+
+ Feuerbachs Handzeichnungen. München, Hanfstängl, 1888.
+
+ Carl Neumann: A. Feuerbach, "Preussische Jahrbücher," Bd. 62, 1888.
+
+ C. Allgeyer: A. Feuerbach, "Nord und Süd," 1888.
+
+ Emil Hannover: A. Feuerbach, "Tilskueren." Copenhagen, 1890.
+
+ Hauptwerk: Karl Allgeyer, Anselm Feuerbach, sein Leben und seine
+ Kunst. 2 Aufl. besorgt von Karl Neumann. Berlin, 1902.
+
+The Berlin School since 1850:
+
+ A. Rosenberg: Die Berliner Malerschule 1819-1879, "Studien und
+ Kritiken." Berlin, 1879.
+
+R. Henneberg:
+
+ H. Riegel: Kunstgeschichtliche Vorträge und Aufsätze. Braunschweig,
+ 1877, p. 367.
+
+Gustav Richter:
+
+ Ludwig Pietsch: G. Richter, "Westermanns Monatshefte," 1883, Oct. and
+ Nov.
+
+Steffeck:
+
+ Nekrolog in "Kunstchronik," 1890, 31.
+
+ L. v. Donop: Ausstellung der Werke Karl Steffecks in der Berliner
+ Nationalgalerie. Berlin, Mittler, 1890.
+
+ Historical painting in General:
+
+ Ernst Guhl: Die neuere geschichtliche Malerei und die Akademien.
+ Stuttgart, 1848.
+
+ R. v. Eitelberger: Geschichte und Geschichtsmalerei, Mittheilungen des
+ österreichischen Museums, 1883, 208.
+
+Lessing:
+
+ R. Redtenbacher: Erinnerungen an Carl Fr. Lessing, "Zeitschrift für
+ bildende Kunst," xvi, 1881, p. 33.
+
+Piloty:
+
+ F. Pecht: "Westermanns Monatshefte," 1882, April.
+
+ Karl Stieler: Die Pilotyschule. Berlin, 1881.
+
+ F. Pecht: "Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts." III Reihe. Nördlingen, 1881.
+
+ C. A. Regnet: Münchener Künstlerbiographien, Bd. 2.
+
+ A. Rosenberg: Die Hauptströmungen in der bildenden Kunst der
+ Gegenwart. Grenzboten, 1880.
+
+ H. Helferich, Neue Kunst. Berlin, 1887.
+
+ Peter Jessen: Piloty und die deutsche Kunst, "Gegenwart," xxxi 1.
+
+Makart:
+
+ C. Landsteiner: H. Makart und Robert Hamerling. Wien, 1873.
+
+ C. v. Lützow; Makarts Entwürfe für den Wiener Festzug, "Zeitschrift
+ für bildende Kunst," 1879, 7.
+
+ S. Feldmann: Hans Makarts neuestes Bild, "Die Gegenwart," 1881, 24.
+
+ B. Worth: Hans Makart and his Studio, "Art Journal," 1881, 7.
+
+ Makart-Album, in 10 Lieferungen, Holzschnitte, und Lichtdrucke, mit
+ Text. Wien, Bondy, 1883.
+
+ H. Makart als Architekt. "Wochenblatt für Architekten," 1884, 89, 90.
+
+ Mrs. Schuyler van Rensselaer: Hans Makart, "Portfolio," 1886, pp.
+ 36-49.
+
+ Carl v. Lützow: "Zeitschrift fir bildende Kunst," xxi, 1886, pp. 181,
+ 214.
+
+ Robert Stiassny: H. Makart und seine bleibende Bedeutung, "Sammlung
+ kunstgewerblicher und kunsthistorischer Vorträge," Nr. 12. Leipzig,
+ 1886.
+
+Max:
+
+ Friedrich Pecht: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1879, xiv 225, 375.
+
+ Agathon Klemt: "Graphische Künste," ix 1-12, 25-36.
+
+ J. Beavington-Atkinson: Gabriel Max, "Art Journal," 1881, 6.
+
+ Adolf Kohut: Gabriel Max, "Westermanns Monatshefte," 1883, Mai.
+
+ Nic. Mann: Gabriel Max, Eine Kunsthistorische Skizze. 2 Aufl. Leipzig,
+ 1891.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Gleyre:
+
+ Charles Clement: Gleyre; Étude biographique. Paris, 1878.
+
+ Paul Mantz: "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1875, i 233.
+
+ Fr. Berthoud: Ch. Gleyre. Genève, 1874 ("Bibliothèque universelle,"
+ vol. 50).
+
+ E. Montégut: Ch. Gleyre, "Revue des Deux Mondes," 1878.
+
+ Hofmeister: Das Leben des Kunstmalers Karl Gleyre. Zürich, 1879.
+
+ Ch. Berthoud: Ch. Gleyre. Lausanne, 1880.
+
+Hamon:
+
+ Walther Fol: Jean Louis Hamon, "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1875, i 119.
+
+ Georges Lafenestre, "L'Art," 1875, i 394.
+
+Gérôme:
+
+ Charles Timbal: "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1876, ii 228, 334.
+
+Leys:
+
+ Hermann Billung: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," xv 333, 370. 1880.
+
+ Ludwig Pfau: "Freie Studien," p. 262.
+
+Meissonier:
+
+ Ernest Chesneau: Les chefs d'école, p. 241.
+
+ Otto Mündler: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1866.
+
+ Charles Clement: Études sur les Beaux Arts en France. Paris, 1869, p.
+ 237.
+
+ Jules Claretie: Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains. Paris, 1873, pp.
+ 23, 120.
+
+ Roger-Ballu: "1807," le Meissonier de M. Alexander T. Stewart.
+ "L'Art," 1875, i 14.
+
+ Charles Blanc: Les artistes de mon temps. Paris, 1876, p. 420.
+
+ J. Claretie: E. Meissonier. Paris, 1881.
+
+ John W. Mollet: Meissonier, in "The Great Artists." London, 1882.
+
+ H. Heinecke: E. Meissonier, "Westermanns Monatshefte," January 1885.
+
+ Lionel Robinson: J. L. E. Meissonier, his Life and Work. "Art Annual"
+ for 1887.
+
+ Ch. Bigot: Peintres français contemporains. Paris, 1888.
+
+ L. Gonse: Meissonier, "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1891, i 177.
+
+ G. Larroumet: Meissonier. (Study followed by a Biography by Philippe
+ Burty.) Paris, 1893.
+
+ Gréard: Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, Ses souvenirs--Ses entretiens.
+ (With a study of his life and work by M. O. Gréard; with Plates and a
+ Catalogue of the artist's work.) Paris, 1897.
+
+ E. Hubbard: Meissonier. New York, 1899.
+
+ Formentin: C. Meissonier: sa vie, son oeuvre. Paris, 1901.
+
+Menzel:
+
+ Bruno Meyer: Adolf Menzel, "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," xi, 1,
+ 41. 1876.
+
+ Alfred Woltmann: Das Preussenthum in der neueren Kunst, "Nord und
+ Süd," 1877, p. 109.
+
+ Ludwig Pietsch: A. Menzel, "Nord und Süd," 1879, p. 439.
+
+ Duranty: Adolphe Menzel, "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1880, ii 105.
+
+ J. Beavington-Atkinson: Adolph Menzel, "Art Journal," May 1882, ff.
+
+ J. Beavington-Atkinson: Menzel's Illustrations to the Works of
+ Frederick the Great, "Art Journal," November 1883.
+
+ L. Gonse: Illustrations d'Adolphe Menzel pour les oeuvres de Frédéric
+ le Grand, "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1882, i 596.
+
+ Das Werk A. Menzels. Text by Jordan and Dohme. München, 1885, ff.
+
+ Cornelius Gurlitt: A. Menzel, "Die Kunst unserer Zeit," 1892.
+
+ Sondermann: Adolph Menzel, Monographie. Magdeburg, 1896.
+
+ Knackfuss: Menzel. (With 141 Illustrations), Künstler Monographien,
+ vii. Bielefeld, 1895.
+
+ H. von Tschudi: Das Werk Adolf Menzels. Berlin, 1905.
+
+ Julius Meyer-Gräfe: Der junge Menzel. Stuttgart, 1906.
+
+
+
+
+ _Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, _Edinburgh_
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The History of Modern Painting, Volume
+1 (of 4), by Richard Muther
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43792 ***
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