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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43894 ***
+
+THE HISTORY OF MODERN PAINTING
+
+[Illustration: _Mansell Photo_
+
+ LESLIE MY UNCLE TOBY AND THE WIDOW WADMAN]
+
+ THE HISTORY OF
+ MODERN PAINTING
+
+
+ BY RICHARD MUTHER
+ PROFESSOR OF ART HISTORY
+ AT THE UNIVERSITY
+ OF BRESLAU
+
+
+ IN FOUR
+ VOLUMES
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+ VOLUME
+ TWO
+
+
+
+
+ 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
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ PAGE
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix
+
+BOOK III
+
+ THE TRIUMPH OF THE MODERNS
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+ THE DRAUGHTSMEN
+
+ The general alienation of painting from the interests of life
+ during the first half of the nineteenth century.--The draughtsmen
+ and caricaturists the first who brought modern life into the
+ sphere of art.--England: Gillray, Rowlandson, George Cruikshank,
+ "Punch," John Leech, George du Maurier, Charles Keene.--Germany:
+ Johann Adam Klein, Johann Christian Erhard, Ludwig Richter, Oscar
+ Pletsch, Albert Hendschel, Eugen Neureuther, "Die Fliegende
+ Blätter," Wilhelm Busch, Adolf Oberländer.--France: Louis
+ Philibert Debucourt, Carle Vernet, Bosio, Henri Monnier, Honoré
+ Daumier, Gavarni, Guys, Gustave Doré, Cham, Marcellin, Randon,
+ Gill, Hadol, Draner, Léonce Petit, Grévin.--Need of a fresh
+ discovery of the world by painters.--Incitement to this by the
+ English 1
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+ ENGLISH PAINTING TO 1850
+
+ England little affected by the retrospective tendency of the
+ Continent.--James Barry, James Northcote, Henry Fuseli, William
+ Etty, Benjamin Robert Haydon.--Painting continues on the course
+ taken by Hogarth and Reynolds.--The portrait painters: George
+ Romney, Thomas Lawrence, John Hoppner, William Beechey, John
+ Russell, John Jackson, Henry Raeburn.--Benjamin West and John
+ Singleton Copley paint historical pictures from their own
+ time.--Daniel Maclise.--Animal painting: John Wootton, George
+ Stubbs, George Morland, James Ward, Edwin Landseer.--The painting
+ of _genre_: David Wilkie, W. Collins, Gilbert Stuart Newton,
+ Charles Robert Leslie, W. Mulready, Thomas Webster, W. Frith.--The
+ influence of these _genre_ pictures on the painting of the
+ Continent 53
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+ THE MILITARY PICTURE
+
+ Why the victory of modernity on the Continent came only by
+ degrees.--Romantic conceptions.--Æsthetic theories and the
+ question of costume.--Painting learns to treat contemporary
+ costume by first dealing with uniform.--France: Gros, Horace
+ Vernet, Hippolyte Bellangé, Isidor Pils, Alexander Protais,
+ Charlet, Raffet, Ernest Meissonier, Guillaume Régamey, Alphonse de
+ Neuville, Aimé Morot, Edouard Détaille.--Germany: Albrecht Adam,
+ Peter Hess, Franz Krüger, Karl Steffeck, Th. Horschelt, Franz
+ Adam, Joseph v. Brandt, Heinrich Lang 92
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+ ITALY AND THE EAST
+
+ Why painters sought their ideal in distant countries, though they
+ did not plunge into the past.--Italy discovered by Leopold Robert,
+ Victor Schnetz, Ernest Hébert, August Riedel.--The East was for
+ the Romanticists what Italy had been for the Classicists.--France:
+ Delacroix, Decamps, Prosper Marilhat, Eugène Fromentin, Gustave
+ Guillaumet.--Germany: H. Kretzschmer, Wilhelm Gentz, Adolf
+ Schreyer, and others.--England: William Muller, Frederick Goodall,
+ F. J. Lewis.--Italy: Alberto Pasini 118
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+ THE PAINTING OF HUMOROUS ANECDOTE
+
+ After seeking exotic subjects painting returns home, and finds
+ amongst peasants a stationary type of life which has preserved
+ picturesque costume.--Munich: The transition from the military
+ picture to the painting of peasants.--Peter Hess, Heinrich Bürkel,
+ Carl Spitzweg.--Hamburg: Hermann Kauffmann.--Berlin: Friedrich
+ Eduard Meyerheim.--The influence of Wilkie, and the novel of
+ village life.--Munich: Johann Kirner, Carl Enhuber.--Düsseldorf:
+ Adolf Schroedter, Peter Hasenclever, Jacob Becker, Rudolf Jordan,
+ Henry Ritter, Adolf Tidemand.--Vienna: Peter Krafft, J. Danhauser,
+ Ferdinand Waldmüller.--Belgium: Influence of Teniers.--Ignatius
+ van Regemorter, Ferdinand de Braekeleer, Henri Coene, Madou, Adolf
+ Dillens.--France: François Biard 140
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+ THE PICTURE WITH A SOCIAL PURPOSE
+
+ Why modern life in all countries entered into art only under the
+ form of humorous anecdote.--The conventional optimism of these
+ pictures comes into conflict with the revolutionary temper of the
+ age.--France: Delacroix' "Freedom," Jeanron, Antigna, Adolphe
+ Leleux, Meissonier's "Barricade," Octave Tassaert.--Germany:
+ Gisbert Flüggen, Carl Hübner.--Belgium: Eugène de Block, Antoine
+ Wiertz 175
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+ THE VILLAGE TALE
+
+ Germany: Louis Knaus, Benjamin Vautier, Franz Defregger, Mathias
+ Schmidt, Alois Gabl, Eduard Kurzbauer, Hugo Kauffmann, Wilhelm
+ Riefstahl.--The Comedy of Monks: Eduard Grützner.--Tales of the
+ Exchange and the Manufactory: Ludwig Bokelmann, Ferdinand
+ Brütt.--Germany begins to transmit the principles of _genre_
+ painting to other countries.--France: Gustave Brion, Charles
+ Marchal, Jules Breton.--Norway and Sweden stand in union with
+ Düsseldorf: Karl D'Uncker, Wilhelm Wallander, Anders Koskull,
+ Kilian Zoll, Peter Eskilson, August Jernberg, Ferdinand Fagerlin,
+ V. Stoltenberg-Lerche, Hans Dahl.--Hungary fructified by Munich:
+ Ludwig Ebner, Paul Boehm, Otto von Baditz, Koloman Déry, Julius
+ Aggházi, Alexander Bihari, Ignaz Ruskovics, Johann Jankó, Tihamér
+ Margitay, Paul Vagó, Arpad Fessty, Otto Koroknyai, D.
+ Skuteczky.--Difference between these pictures and those of the old
+ Dutch masters.--From Hogarth to Knaus.--Why Hogarth succumbed, and
+ _genre_ painting had to become painting pure and simple.--This new
+ basis of art created by the landscapists 194
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+ LANDSCAPE PAINTING IN GERMANY
+
+ The significance of landscape for nineteenth-century
+ art.--Classicism: Joseph Anton Koch, Leopold Rottmann, Friedrich
+ Preller and his followers.--Romanticism: Karl Friedrich Lessing,
+ Karl Blechen, W. Schirmer, Valentin Ruths.--The discovery of
+ Ruysdael and Everdingen.--The part of mediation played by certain
+ artists from Denmark and Norway: J. C. Dahl, Christian
+ Morgenstern, Ludwig Gurlitt.--Andreas Achenbach, Eduard
+ Schleich.--The German landscape painters begin to travel
+ everywhere.--Influence of Calame.--H. Gude, Niels Björnson Möller,
+ August Cappelen, Morten-Müller, Erik Bodom, L. Munthe, E. A.
+ Normann, Ludwig Willroider, Louis Douzette, Hermann Eschke, Carl
+ Ludwig, Otto v. Kameke, Graf Stanislaus Kalkreuth, Oswald
+ Achenbach, Albert Flamm, Ascan Lutteroth, Ferdinand Bellermann,
+ Eduard Hildebrandt, Eugen Bracht.--Why many of their pictures,
+ compared with those of the old Dutch masters, indicate an
+ expansion of the geographical horizon, rather than a refinement of
+ taste.--The victory over interesting-subject-matter and
+ sensational effect by the "_paysage intime_" 230
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+ THE BEGINNINGS OF "PAYSAGE INTIME"
+
+ Classical landscape painting in France: Hubert Robert, Henri
+ Valenciennes, Victor Bertin, Xavier Bidault, Michallon, Jules
+ Cogniet, Watelet, Théodore Aligny, Edouard Bertin, Paul Flandrin,
+ Achille Benouville, J. Bellel.--Romanticism and the resort to
+ national scenery: Victor Hugo, Georges Michel, the Ruysdael of
+ Montmartre, Charles de la Berge, Camille Roqueplan, Camille Flers,
+ Louis Cabat, Paul Huet.--The English the first to free themselves
+ from composition and the tone of the galleries: Turner.--John
+ Crome, the English Hobbema, and the Norwich school: Cotman, Crome
+ junior, Stark, Vincent.--The water colour artists: John Robert
+ Cozens, Girtin, Edridge, Prout, Samuel Owen, Luke Clennel, Howitt,
+ Robert Hills.--The influence of aquarelles on the English
+ conception of colour.--John Constable and open-air
+ painting.--David Cox, William Muller, Peter de Wint, Creswick,
+ Peter Graham, Henry Dawson, John Linnell.--Richard Parkes
+ Bonington as the link between England and France 257
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+ LANDSCAPE FROM 1830
+
+ Constable in the Louvre and his influence on the creators of the
+ French _paysage intime_.--Théodore Rousseau, Corot, Jules Dupré,
+ Diaz, Daubigny and their followers.--Chintreuil, Jean Desbrosses,
+ Achard, Français, Harpignies, Émile Breton, and others.--Animal
+ painting: Carle Vernet, Géricault, R. Brascassat, Troyon, Rosa
+ Bonheur, Jadin, Eugène Lambert, Palizzi, Auguste Lançon, Charles
+ Jacque 294
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+ JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
+
+ His importance, and the task left for those who followed
+ him.--Millet's principle _Le beau c'est le vrai_ had to be
+ transferred from peasant painting to modern life, from Barbizon to
+ Paris 360
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+ THE REALISTIC PAINTERS AND THE MODERN IDEALISTS
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+ REALISM IN FRANCE
+
+ Gustave Courbet and the modern painting of artisan life.--Alfred
+ Stevens and the painting of "Society."--His followers Auguste
+ Toulmouche, James Tissot, and others.--In opposition to the
+ Cinquecento the study of the old Germans, the Lombards, the
+ Spaniards, the Flemish artists, and the _Rococo_ masters becomes
+ now a formative influence.--Gustave Ricard, Charles Chaplin,
+ Gaillard, Paul Dubois, Carolus Duran, Léon Bonnat, Roybet, Blaise
+ Desgoffe, Philippe Rousseau, Antoine Vollon, François Bonvin,
+ Théodule Ribot 391
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY 435
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+PLATES IN COLOUR
+
+
+ PAGE
+ LESLIE: My Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman _Frontispiece_
+ ROMNEY: Serena 53
+ LAWRENCE: Caroline of Brunswick, Queen of George IV 60
+ MACLISE: The Waterfall, Cornwall 64
+ MORLAND: Horses in a Stable 69
+ LANDSEER: Jack in Office 76
+ FROMENTIN: Algerian Falconers 132
+ ROTTMANN: Lake Kopaïs 234
+ TURNER: The old Téméraire 268
+ CONSTABLE: Willy Lott's House 275
+ BONINGTON: La Place de Molards, Geneva 290
+ COROT: Landscape 316
+ MILLET: The Wood-Sawyers 370
+
+
+IN BLACK AND WHITE
+
+ ACHENBACH, ANDREAS.
+ Sea Coast after a Storm 247
+ Fishing Boats in the North Sea 249
+
+ ADAM, ALBRECHT.
+ Albrecht Adam and his Sons 112
+ A Stable in Town 113
+
+ BAADE, KNUT.
+ Moonlight Night on the Coast 253
+
+ BECKER, JACOB.
+ A Tempest 165
+
+ BERGE, CHARLES DE LA.
+ Landscape 263
+
+ BOILLY, LEOPOLD.
+ The Toilette 2
+ The Newsvendor 3
+ The Marionettes 4
+
+ BONHEUR, ROSA.
+ The Horse-Fair 351
+ Ploughing in Nivernois 353
+
+ BONINGTON, RICHARD PARKES.
+ The Windmill of Saint-Jouin 290
+ Reading Aloud 291
+ Portrait of Richard Parkes Bonington 293
+
+ BONNAT, LÉON.
+ Adolphe Thiers 423
+ Victor Hugo 424
+
+ BONVIN, FRANÇOIS.
+ The Cook 427
+ The Work-Room 428
+
+ BRETON, ÉMILE.
+ The Return of the Reapers 225
+ The Gleaner 226
+
+ BRION, GUSTAVE.
+ Jean Valjean 221
+
+ BUNBURY, WILLIAM HENRY.
+ Richmond Hill 9
+
+ BÜRKEL, HEINRICH.
+ Portrait of Heinrich Bürkel 143
+ Brigands Returning 144
+ A Downpour in the Mountains 145
+ A Smithy in Upper Bavaria 146
+
+ BUSCH, WILHELM.
+ Portrait of Wilhelm Busch 29
+
+ CABAT, LOUIS.
+ Le Jardin Beaujon 264
+
+ CALAME, ALEXANDRE.
+ Landscape 250
+
+ CHAPLIN, CHARLES.
+ The Golden Age 418
+ Portrait of Countess Aimery de la Rochefoucauld 419
+
+ CHARLET, NICOLAS TOUISSAINT.
+ Un homme qui boît seul n'est pas digne de vivre 95
+
+ CHINTREUIL, ANTOINE.
+ Landscape: Morning 343
+
+ CONSTABLE, JOHN.
+ Portrait of John Constable 274
+ Church Porch, Bergholt 275
+ Dedham Vale 277
+ The Romantic House 278
+ The Cornfield 279
+ Cottage in a Cornfield 283
+ The Valley Farm 285
+
+ COPLEY, JOHN SINGLETON.
+ The Death of the Earl of Chatham 65
+
+ COROT, CAMILLE.
+ Portrait of Camille Corot 306
+ The Bridge of St. Angelo, Rome 307
+ Corot at Work 308
+ Daphnis and Chloe 309
+ Vue de Toscane 310
+ At Sunset 311
+ The Ruin 312
+ Evening 313
+ An Evening in Normandy 314
+ The Dance of the Nymphs 315
+ A Dance 316
+ La Route d'Arras 317
+
+ COURBET, GUSTAVE.
+ Portrait of Gustave Courbet 393
+ The Man with a Leather Belt. Portrait of Himself as
+ a Youth 394
+ A Funeral at Ornans 395
+ The Stone-Breakers 397
+ The Return from Market 400
+ The Battle of the Stags 401
+ A Woman Bathing 402
+ Deer in Covert 403
+ Girls lying on the Bank of the Seine 404
+ A Recumbent Woman 405
+ Berlioz 406
+ The Hind on the Snow 407
+ My Studio after Seven Years of Artistic Life 409
+ The Wave 412
+
+ COX, DAVID.
+ Crossing the Sands 286
+ The Shrimpers 287
+
+ CROME, JOHN (OLD CROME).
+ A View near Norwich 273
+
+ CRUIKSHANK, GEORGE.
+ Monstrosities of 1822 6
+
+ DANHAUSER, JOSEF.
+ The Gormandizer 179
+
+ DAUBIGNY, CHARLES FRANÇOIS.
+ Portrait of Charles François Daubigny 335
+ Springtime 336
+ A Lock in the Valley of Optevoz 337
+ On the Oise 338
+ Shepherd and Shepherdess 339
+ Landscape: Evening 341
+
+ DAUMIER, HONORÉ.
+ Portrait of Honoré Daumier 37
+ The Connoisseurs 38
+ The Mountebanks 39
+ In the Assize Court 40
+ "La voilà ... ma Maison de Campagne" 41
+ Menelaus the Victor 42
+
+ DEBUCOURT, LOUIS PHILIBERT.
+ In the Kitchen 33
+ The Promenade 34
+
+ DECAMPS, ALEXANDRE.
+ The Swineherd 127
+ Coming out from a Turkish School 129
+ The Watering-Place 131
+
+ DEFREGGER, FRANZ.
+ Portrait of Franz Defregger 208
+ Speckbacher and his Son 209
+ The Wrestlers 210
+ Sister and Brothers 211
+ The Prize Horse 213
+ Andreas Hofer appointed Governor of the Tyrol 215
+
+ DÉTAILLE, EDOUARD.
+ Salut aux Blessés 111
+
+ DIAZ, NARCISSE VIRGILIO.
+ Portrait of Narcisse Diaz 328
+ The Descent of the Bohemians 329
+ Among the Foliage 331
+ The Tree Trunk 332
+ Forest Scene 333
+
+ DUBOIS, PAUL.
+ Portrait of my Sons 421
+
+ DUPRÉ, JULES.
+ Portrait of Jules Dupré 318
+ The House of Jules Dupré at L'isle-Adam 319
+ The Setting Sun 320
+ The Bridge at L'isle-Adam 321
+ Near Southampton 322
+ The Punt 323
+ Sunset 324
+ The Hay-Wain 325
+ The old Oak 326
+ The Pool 327
+
+ DURAN, CAROLUS.
+ Portrait of Carolus Duran 422
+
+ ENHUBER, CARL.
+ The Pensioner and his Grandson 163
+
+ ERHARD, JOHANN CHRISTOPH.
+ Portrait of Johann Christoph Erhard 21
+ A Peasant Scene 22
+ A Peasant Family 23
+
+ FLÀMM, ALBERT.
+ A Summer Day 251
+
+ FLÜGGEN, GISBERT.
+ The Decision of the Suit 186
+
+ FRITH, WILLIAM POWELL.
+ Poverty and Wealth 89
+
+ FROMENTIN, EUGÈNE.
+ Portrait of Eugène Fromentin 133
+ Arabian Women returning from drawing Water 134
+ The Centaurs 135
+
+ GAILLARD, FERDINAND.
+ Portrait 420
+
+ GAVARNI (SULPICE GUILLAUME CHEVALIER).
+ Portrait of Gavarni 43
+ Thomas Vireloque 44
+ Fourberies de Femmes 45
+ Phèdre at the Théâtre Français 48
+ "Ce qui me manque à moi? Une t'ite mère comme ça,
+ qu'aurait soin de mon linge" 49
+
+ GILLRAY, JAMES.
+ Affability 5
+
+ GRÉVIN, ALFRED.
+ Nos Parisiennes 51
+
+ GRÜTZNER, EDUARD.
+ Twelfth Night 219
+
+ GUILLAUMET, GUSTAVE.
+ The Séguia, near Biskra 136
+ A Dwelling in the Sahara 137
+
+ GURLITT, LUDWIG.
+ On the Sabine Mountains 245
+
+ GUYS, CONSTANTIN.
+ Study of a Woman 50
+
+ HARPIGNIES, HENRI.
+ Moonrise 344
+
+ HÉBERT, ERNEST.
+ The Malaria 123
+
+ HESS, PETER.
+ The Reception of King Otto in Nauplia 114
+ A Morning at Partenkirche 142
+
+ HÜBNER, CARL.
+ July 187
+
+ HUET, PAUL.
+ Portrait of Paul Huet 265
+ The Inundation at St. Cloud 266
+
+ HUGO, VICTOR.
+ Ruins of a Mediæval Castle on the Rhine 261
+
+ JACQUE, CHARLES.
+ The Return to the Byre (Etching) 355
+ A Flock of Sheep on the Road 356
+ Millet at Work in his Studio 365
+ Millet's House at Barbizon 366
+
+ KAUFFMANN, HERMANN.
+ Woodcutters Returning 154
+ A Sandy Road 155
+ Returning from the Fields 156
+
+ KEENE, CHARLES.
+ The Perils of the Deep 17
+ From "Our People" 19
+
+ KIRNER, JOHANN.
+ The Fortune Teller 162
+
+ KLEIN, JOHANN ADAM.
+ A Travelling Landscape Painter 20
+
+ KNAUS, LOUIS.
+ Portrait of Louis Knaus 195
+ In great Distress 196
+ The Card-Players 197
+ The Golden Wedding 199
+ Behind the Scenes 201
+
+ KOBELL, WILLIAM.
+ A Meeting 141
+
+ KOCH, JOSEPH ANTON.
+ Portrait of Josef Anton Koch 231
+
+ KRAFFT, PETER.
+ The Soldier's Return 170
+
+ LANDSEER, SIR EDWIN.
+ A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society 72
+ The last Mourner at the Shepherd's Grave 73
+ High Life 74
+ Low Life 75
+
+ LAWRENCE, SIR THOMAS.
+ Mrs. Siddons 57
+ Princess Amelia 58
+ The English Mother 59
+ The Countess Gower 61
+
+ LEECH, JOHN.
+ The Children of Mr. and Mrs. Blenkinsop 11
+ Little Spicey and Tater Sam 11
+ From "Children of the Mobility" 12
+
+ LELEUX, ADOLPHE.
+ Mot d'ordre 181
+
+ LESLIE, CHARLES ROBERT.
+ Sancho and the Duchess 87
+
+ LESSING, CARL FRIEDRICH.
+ Portrait of Carl Friedrich Lessing 239
+ The Wayside Madonna 240
+
+ MACLISE, DANIEL.
+ Noah's Sacrifice 67
+ Malvolio and the Countess 68
+
+ MADOU, JEAN BAPTISTE.
+ In the Ale-house 172
+ The Drunkard 173
+
+ MARCHAL, CHARLES.
+ The Hiring Fair 223
+
+ MARCKE, EMILE VAN.
+ La Falaise 354
+
+ MARILHAT, PROSPER.
+ A Halt 132
+
+ DU MAURIER, GEORGE.
+ The Dancing Lesson 13
+ A Recollection of Dieppe 14
+ Down to Dinner 15
+ A Wintry Walk 16
+
+ MEISSONIER, ERNEST.
+ Portrait of Ernest Meissonier 101
+ 1814 103
+ The Outpost 105
+
+ MEYERHEIM, FRIEDRICH EDUARD.
+ Portrait of Friedrich Eduard Meyerheim 157
+ Children at Play 158
+ The King of the Shooting Match 159
+ The Morning Hour 160
+ The Knitting Lesson 161
+
+ MICHEL, GEORGES.
+ A Windmill 262
+
+ MILLAIS, SIR JOHN EVERETT.
+ George du Maurier 12
+
+ MILLET, JEAN FRANÇOIS.
+ Portrait of Himself 361
+ The House at Gruchy 363
+ The Winnower 367
+ A Man making Faggots 368
+ The Gleaners 369
+ Vine-dresser Resting 371
+ At the Well 373
+ Burning Weeds 375
+ The Angelus 377
+ The Shepherdess and her Sheep 378
+ The Shepherd at the Pen at Nightfall 379
+ A Woman feeding Chickens 380
+ The Shepherdess 381
+ The Labourer Grafting a Tree 383
+ A Woman Knitting 384
+ The Rainbow 385
+ The Barbizon Stone 387
+
+ MONNIER, HENRI.
+ A Chalk Drawing 35
+ Joseph Proudhomme 36
+
+ MORGENSTERN, CHRISTIAN.
+ A Peasant Cottage (Etching) 243
+
+ MORLAND, GEORGE.
+ The Corn Bin 69
+ Going to the Fair 70
+ The Return from Market 71
+
+ MULLER, WILLIAM.
+ Prayer in the Desert 138
+ The Amphitheatre at Xanthus 288
+
+ MULREADY, WILLIAM.
+ Fair Time 88
+ Crossing the Ford 91
+
+ DE NEUVILLE, ALPHONSE.
+ Portrait of Alphonse de Neuville 107
+ Le Bourget 109
+
+ NEWTON, GILBERT STUART.
+ Yorick and the Grisette 83
+
+ OBERLÄNDER, ADOLF.
+ Variations on the Kissing Theme. Rethel 30
+ Variations on the Kissing Theme. Gabriel Max 30
+ Variations on the Kissing Theme. Hans Makart 31
+ Portrait of Adolf Oberländer 31
+ Variations on the Kissing Theme. Genelli 32
+ Variations on the Kissing Theme. Alma Tadema 32
+
+ PETTENKOFEN, AUGUST VON.
+ A Hungarian Village (Pencil Drawing) 224
+
+ PRELLER, FRIEDRICH.
+ Portrait of Friedrich Preller 235
+ Ulysses and Leucothea 237
+
+ RAEBURN, SIR HENRY.
+ Sir Walter Scott 63
+
+ RAFFET, AUGUSTE MARIE.
+ Portrait of Auguste Marie Raffet 96
+ The Parade 97
+ 1807 98
+ Polish Infantry 99
+ The Midnight Review 100
+
+ REID, SIR GEORGE.
+ Portrait of Charles Keene 18
+
+ RIBOT, THÉODULE.
+ The Studio 429
+ At a Norman Inn 430
+ Keeping Accounts 431
+ St. Sebastian, Martyr 432
+
+ RICARD, GUSTAVE.
+ Madame de Calonne 417
+
+ RICHTER, LUDWIG.
+ Portrait of Ludwig Richter 24
+ Home 25
+ The End of the Day 26
+ Spring 27
+ After Work it's good to rest 28
+
+ RIEDEL, AUGUST.
+ The Neapolitan Fisherman's Family 124
+ Judith 125
+
+ ROBERT, HUBERT.
+ Monuments and Ruins 259
+
+ ROBERT, LEOPOLD.
+ Portrait of Leopold Robert 119
+ Fishers of the Adriatic 120
+ The Coming of the Reapers to the Pontine Marshes 121
+
+ ROMNEY, GEORGE.
+ Portrait of George Romney 55
+ Lady Hamilton as Euphrosyne 56
+
+ ROTTMANN, KARL.
+ Portrait of Karl Rottmann 232
+ The Coast of Sicily 233
+
+ ROUSSEAU, THÉODORE.
+ Portrait of Théodore Rousseau 295
+ Morning 296
+ Landscape, Morning Effect 297
+ The Village of Becquigny in Picardy 299
+ La Hutte 301
+ Evening 302
+ Sunset 303
+ The Lake among the Rocks at Barbizon 304
+ A Pond, Forest of Fontainebleau 305
+
+ ROWLANDSON, THOMAS.
+ Harmony 7
+
+ SCHIRMER, JOHANN WILHELM.
+ An Italian Landscape 241
+
+ SCHNETZ, VICTOR.
+ An Italian Shepherd 122
+
+ SPITZWEG, CARL.
+ Portrait of Carl Spitzweg 147
+ At the Garret Window 148
+ A Morning Concert 149
+ The Postman 151
+
+ STEVENS, ALFRED.
+ The Lady in Pink 413
+ La Bête à bon Dieu 414
+ The Japanese Mask 415
+ The Visitors 416
+
+ TASSAERT, OCTAVE.
+ Portrait of Octave Tassaert 182
+ After the Ball 183
+ The Orphans 184
+ The Suicide 185
+
+ TIDEMAND, ADOLF.
+ The Sectarians 167
+ Adorning the Bride 169
+
+ TROYON, CONSTANT.
+ Portrait of Constant Troyon 345
+ In Normandy: Cows Grazing 346
+ Crossing the Stream 347
+ The Return to the Farm 348
+ A Cow scratching Herself 349
+
+ TURNER, JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM.
+ Portrait of J. M. W. Turner 267
+ A Shipwreck 268
+ Dido building Carthage 269
+ Jumièges 270
+ Landscape with the Sun rising in a Mist 271
+ Venice 272
+
+ VAUTIER, BENJAMIN.
+ Portrait of Benjamin Vautier 202
+ The Conjurer 203
+ The Dancing Lesson 205
+ November 207
+
+ VERNET, HORACE.
+ The Wounded Zouave 93
+
+ VOLLON, ANTOINE.
+ Portrait of Antoine Vollon 425
+ A Carnival Scene 426
+
+ WALDMÜLLER, FERDINAND.
+ The First Step 171
+
+ WALLANDER, WILHELM.
+ The Return 227
+
+ WEBSTER, THOMAS.
+ The Rubber 85
+
+ WEST, BENJAMIN.
+ The Death of Nelson 64
+
+ WIERTZ, ANTOINE.
+ The Orphans 189
+ The Things of the Present as seen by Future Ages 191
+ The Fight round the Body of Patroclus 192
+
+ WILKIE, DAVID.
+ Blind-Man's-Buff 77
+ A Guerilla Council of War in a Spanish Posada 79
+ The Blind Fiddler 80
+ The Penny Wedding 81
+ The First Earring 82
+
+ DE WINT, PETER.
+ Nottingham 289
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+THE TRIUMPH OF THE MODERNS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE DRAUGHTSMEN
+
+
+Inasmuch as modern art, in the beginning of its career, held commerce
+almost exclusively with the spirits of dead men of bygone ages, it had
+set itself in opposition to all the great epochs that had gone before.
+All works known to the history of art, from the cathedral pictures of
+Stephan Lochner down to the works of the followers of Watteau, stand in
+the closest relationship with the people and times amid which they have
+originated. Whoever studies the works of Dürer knows his home and his
+family, the Nuremberg of the sixteenth century, with its narrow lanes
+and gabled houses; the whole age is reflected in the engravings of this
+one artist with a truth and distinctness which put to shame those of the
+most laborious historian. Dürer and his contemporaries in Italy stood in
+so intimate a relation to reality that in their religious pictures they
+even set themselves above historical probability, and treated the
+miraculous stories of sacred tradition as if they had been commonplace
+incidents of the fifteenth century. Or, to take another instance, with
+what a striking realism, in the works of Ostade, Brouwer, and Steen, has
+the entire epoch from which these great artists drew strength and
+nourishment remained vivid in spirit, sentiment, manners, and costume.
+Every man whose name has come down to posterity stood firm and unshaken
+on the ground of his own time, resting like a tree with all its roots
+buried in its own peculiar soil; a tree whose branches rustled in the
+breeze of its native land, while the sun which fell on its blossoms and
+ripened its fruits was that of Italy or Germany, of Spain or the
+Netherlands, of that time; never the weak reflection of a planet that
+formerly had shone in other zones.
+
+It was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that this
+connection with the life of the present and the soil at home was lost to
+the art of painting. It cannot be supposed that later generations will
+be able to form a conception of life in the nineteenth century from
+pictures produced in this period, or that these pictures will become
+approximately such documents as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
+possess in the works of Dürer, Bellini, Rubens, or Rembrandt. The old
+masters were the children of their age to the very tips of their
+fingers. They were saturated with the significance, the ideals, and the
+aims of their time, and they saturated them with their own aims, ideals,
+and significance. On the other hand, if any one enters a modern picture
+gallery and picks out the paintings produced up to 1850, he will often
+receive the impression that they belong to earlier centuries. They are
+without feeling for the world around, and seem even to know nothing of
+it.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._ BOILLY. THE TOILETTE.]
+
+Even David, the first of the moderns, has left no work, with the
+exception of his "Marat," which has been baptized with the blood of the
+French Revolution. To express the sentiment of Liberty militant he made
+use of the figures of Roman heroes. The political freedom of the people,
+so recently won, so fresh in men's minds, he illustrated by examples
+from Roman history. At a later time, when the allied forces entered
+Paris after the defeat of Napoleon, he made use of the story of Leonidas
+at Thermopylæ. Only in portrait painting was any kind of justice done to
+modern life by the painters in "the grand style." True it is that there
+lived, at the time, a few "little masters" who furtively turned out for
+the market modest little pictures of the life around them, paintings of
+buildings and kitchen interiors. The poor Alsatian painter _Martin
+Drolling_, contemptuously designated a "dish painter" by the critics,
+showed in his kitchen pictures that, in spite of David, something of the
+spirit of Chardin and the great Dutchmen was still alive in French art.
+But he has given his figures and his pots and pans and vegetables the
+pose and hard outline of Classicism. A few of his portraits are better
+and more delicate, particularly that of the actor Baptiste, with his
+fine head, like that of a diplomatist. At the exhibition of 1889, this
+picture, with its positive and firmly delineated characterisation, made
+the appeal of a Holbein of 1802. Another "little master," _Granet_,
+painted picturesque ruins, low halls, and the vaults of churches; he
+studied attentively the problem of light in inner chambers, and thereby
+drew upon himself the reproach of David, that "his drawing savoured of
+colour." In _Leopold Boilly_ Parisian life--still like that of a country
+town--and the arrival of the mail, the market, and the busy life of the
+streets, found an interpreter,--_bourgeois_ no doubt, but true to his
+age. In the time of the Revolution he painted a "Triumph of Marat," the
+tribune of the people, who is being carried on the shoulders of his
+audience from the _palais de justice_ in Paris, after delivering an
+inflammatory oration. In 1807, when the exhibition of David's Coronation
+picture had thrown all Paris into excitement, Boilly conceived the
+notion of perpetuating in a rapid sketch the scene of the exhibition,
+with the picture and the crowd pressing round it. His speciality,
+however, was little portrait groups of honest _bourgeois_ in their stiff
+Sunday finery. Boilly knew with accuracy the toilettes of his age, the
+gowns of the actresses, and the way they dressed their heads; he cared
+nothing whatever about æsthetic dignity of style, but represented each
+subject as faithfully as he could, and as honestly and sincerely as
+possible. For that reason he is of great historical value, but he is not
+painter enough to lay claim to great artistic interest. The execution of
+his pictures is petty and diffidently careful, and his neat, Philistine
+painting has a suggestion of china and enamel, without a trace of the
+ease and spirit with which the eighteenth century carolled over such
+work. The heads of his women are the heads of dolls, and his silk looks
+like steel. His forerunners are not the Dutchmen of the good periods,
+Terborg and Metsu, but the contemporaries of Van der Werff. He and
+Drolling and Granet were rather the last issue of the fine old Dutch
+schools, rather descendants of Chardin than pioneers, and amongst the
+younger men there was at first no one who ventured to sow afresh the
+region which had been devastated by Classicism. Géricault certainly was
+incited to his "Raft of the Medusa" not by Livy or Plutarch, but by an
+occurrence of the time which was reported in the newspapers; and he
+ventured to set an ordinary shipwreck in the place of the Deluge or a
+naval battle, and a crew of unknown mortals in the place of Greek
+heroes. But then his picture stands alone amongst the works of the
+Romanticists, and is too decidedly transposed into a classical key to
+count as a representation of modern life.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._ BOILLY. THE NEWSVENDOR.]
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._ BOILLY. THE MARIONETTES.]
+
+In its striving after movement and colour, Romanticism put forward the
+picturesque and passionate Middle Ages in opposition to the stiff and
+frigid neo-Greek or neo-Roman ideal; but it joined with Classicism in
+despising the life of the present. Even the political excitement at the
+close of the Restoration and the Revolution of July had but little
+influence on the leading spirits of the time. Accustomed to look for the
+elements of pictorial invention in religious myths, in the fictions of
+poets, or in the events of older history, they paid no attention to the
+mighty social drama enacted so near to them. The fiery spirit of
+Delacroix certainly led him to paint his picture of the barricades, but
+he drew his inspiration from a poet, from an ode of Auguste Barbier, and
+he gave the whole an air of romance and allegory by introducing the
+figure of Liberty. He lived in a world of glowing passions, amid which
+all the struggles of his age seemed to have for him only a petty
+material interest. For that reason he has neither directly nor
+indirectly drawn on what he saw around him. He painted the soul, but not
+the life of his epoch. He was attracted by Teutonic poets and by the
+Middle Ages. He set art free from Greek subject-matter and Italian form,
+to borrow his ideas from Englishmen and Germans and his colour from the
+Flemish school. He is inscrutably silent about French society in the
+nineteenth century.
+
+[Illustration: Queen Charlotte. George III.
+
+ GILLRAY. AFFABILITY.
+
+ "Well, Friend, where a' you going, hay?--what's your name, hay?--where
+ d'ye live, hay?--hay?"]
+
+And this alienation from the living world is even more noticeable in
+Ingres. His "Mass of Pius VII in the Sistine Chapel" is the only one of
+his many works which deals with a subject of contemporary life, and it
+was blamed by the critics because it deviated so far from the great
+style. As an historical painter, and when better employed as a painter
+of portraits, Ingres has crystallised all the life and marrow of the
+past in his icy works, and he appears in the midst of the century like a
+marvellous and sterile sphinx. Nothing can be learnt from him concerning
+the needs and passions and interests of living men. His own century
+might writhe and suffer and struggle and bring forth new thoughts, but
+he knew nothing about them, or if he did he never allowed it to be seen.
+
+[Illustration: CRUICKSHANK. MONSTROSITIES OF 1822.]
+
+Delaroche approached somewhat nearer to the present, for he advanced
+from antiquity and the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century; and the
+historical picture, invented by him, virtually dominated French art
+under Napoleon III, in union with the dying Classicism. Even then there
+was no painter who yet ventured to portray the manners and types of his
+age with the fresh insight and merciless observation of Balzac. All
+those scenes from the life of great cities, their fashion and their
+misery, which then began to form the substance of drama and romance, had
+as yet no counterpart in painting.
+
+[Illustration: ROWLANDSON. HARMONY.]
+
+[Illustration: BUNBURY. RICHMOND HILL.]
+
+The Belgians preserved the same silence. During the whole maturity of
+Classicism, from 1800 to 1830, François, Paelinck, van Hanselaere,
+Odevaere, de Roi, Duvivier, etc., with their coloured Greek statues,
+ruled the realm of figure painting as unmitigated dictators; and amongst
+the historical painters who followed them, Wappers, in his "Episode,"
+was the only one who drew on modern life for a subject. There was a
+desire to revive Rubens. Decaisne, Wappers, de Keyzer, Bièfve, and
+Gallait lit their candle at his sun, and were hailed as the holy band
+who were to lead Belgian art to a glorious victory. But their original
+national tendency deviated from real life instead of leading towards it.
+For the sake of painting cuirasses and helmets they dragged the most
+obscure national heroes to the light of day, just as the Classicists had
+done with Greeks and Romans. German painting wandered through the past
+with even less method, taking its material, not from native, but from
+French, English, and Flemish history. From Carstens down to Makart,
+German painters of influence carefully shut their eyes to reality, and
+drew down the blinds so as to see nothing of the life that surged below
+them in the street, with its filth and splendour, its laughter and
+misery, its baseness and noble humanity. And from an historical point of
+view this alienation from the world is susceptible of an easy
+explanation.
+
+[Illustration: LEECH. THE CHILDREN OF MR. AND MRS. BLENKINSOP.]
+
+[Illustration: LEECH. LITTLE SPICEY AND TATER SAM.]
+
+In France, as in all other countries, the end of the _ancien régime_,
+the tempest of the Revolution, and the consequent modification of the
+whole of life--of sentiments, habits, and ideas, of dress and social
+conditions--at first implied such a sudden change in the horizon that
+artists were necessarily thrown into confusion. When the monarchy
+entered laughingly upon its struggle of life and death, the survivors
+from the time of Louis XVI, charming "little masters" who had been great
+masters in that careless and graceful epoch, were suddenly made
+witnesses of a revolution more abrupt than the world had yet seen.
+Savage mobs forced their way into gardens, palaces, and reception-rooms,
+pike in hand, and with the red cap upon their heads. The walls echoed
+with their rude speech, and plebeian orators played the part of oracles
+of freedom and brotherhood like old Roman tribunes of the people. What
+was there yesterday was no longer to be seen; a thick powder-smoke hung
+between the past and the present. And the present itself had not yet
+assumed determinate shape; it hovered, as yet unready, between the old
+and the new forms of civilization. The storms of the Revolution put an
+end to the comfortable security of private life. Thus it was that the
+ready-made and more easily intelligible shapes and figures of a world
+long buried out of sight, with which men believed themselves to have an
+elective affinity, at first seemed to the artists to have an infinitely
+greater value than the new forms which were in the throes of birth.
+Painters became Classicists because they had not yet the courage to
+venture on the ground where the century itself was going through a
+process of fermentation.
+
+[Illustration: LEECH. FROM "CHILDREN OF THE MOBILITY."]
+
+[Illustration: _Magazine of Art._
+
+ SIR JOHN MILLAIS PINXT. GEORGE DU MAURIER.]
+
+The Romanticists despised it, for they thought the fermenting must had
+yielded flat lemonade instead of fiery wine. The artist must live in art
+before he can produce art. And the more the life of nations has been
+beautiful, rich, and splendid, the more nourishment and material has art
+been able to derive from it. But when they came the Romanticists
+found--in France as in Germany--everything, except a piece of reality
+which they could deem worthy of being painted. The whole of existence
+seemed to this generation so poor and bald, the costume so inartistic
+and so like a caricature, the situation so hopeless and petty, that they
+were unable to tolerate the portrayal of themselves either in poetry or
+art. It was the time of that wistfully sought phantom which, as they
+believed, was to be found only in the past. The powerful passions of the
+Middle Ages were set in opposition to a flaccid period that was barren
+of action.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ DU MAURIER. THE DANCING LESSON.]
+
+And then came the overwhelming pressure of the old masters. After the
+forlorn condition of colouring brought about by David and Carstens, it
+was so vitally necessary to restore the artistic tradition and technique
+of the old masters, that it was at first thought necessary to adopt the
+old subject-matter also--especially the splendid robes of the city of
+the lagoons--in order to test the newly acquired secrets of the palette.
+Faltering unsteadily under influences derived from the old artists,
+modern painting did not yet feel itself able to create finished works of
+art out of the novel elements which the century placed at its disposal.
+It still needed to be carried in the arms of a Venetian or Flemish
+nurse.
+
+And æsthetic criticism bestowed its blessing on these attempts. The
+Romanticists had been forced to the treatment of history and the
+deification of the past by disgust with the grey and colourless present;
+the younger generation were long afterwards held captive in this
+province by æsthetic views of the dignity of history. To paint one's own
+age was reckoned a crime. One had to paint the age of other people. For
+this purpose the _prix de Rome_ was instituted. The spirit which
+produced the pictures of Cabanel and Bouguereau was the same that
+induced David to write to Gros, that the battles of the empire might
+afford the material for occasional pictures done under the inspiration
+of chance, but not for great and earnest works of art worthy of an
+historical painter. That æsthetic criticism which taught that, whatever
+the subject be, and whatever personages may be represented, if they
+belong to the present time the picture is merely a _genre_ picture,
+still held the field. Whilst the world was laughing and crying, the
+painter, with the colossal power of doing everything, amused himself by
+trying not to appear the child of his own time. No one perceived the
+refinement and grace, the corruption and wantonness, of modern life as
+it is in great cities. No one laid hold on the mighty social problems
+which the growing century threw out with a seething creative force.
+Whoever wishes to know how the men of the time lived and moved, what
+hopes and sorrows they bore in their breasts, whoever seeks for works in
+which the heart-beat of the century is alive and throbbing, must have
+his attention directed to the works of the draughtsmen, to the
+illustrations of certain periodicals. It was in the nineteenth century
+as in the Middle Ages. As then, when painting was still an
+ecclesiastical art, the slowly awakening feeling for nature, the joy of
+life was first expressed in miniatures, woodcuts, and engravings, so
+also the great draughtsmen of the nineteenth century were the first who
+set themselves with their whole strength to bring modern life and all
+that it contained earnestly and sincerely within the range of art, the
+first who held up the glass to their own time and gave the abridged
+chronicle of their age. Their calling as caricaturists led them to
+direct observation of the world, and lent them the aptitude of rendering
+their impressions with ease; and that at a time when the academical
+methods of depicting physiognomy obtained elsewhere in every direction.
+It necessitated their representing subjects to which, in accordance with
+the æsthetic views of the period, they would not otherwise have
+addressed themselves; it led them to discover beauties in spheres of
+life by which they would otherwise have been repelled. London, the
+capital of a free people ruling in all quarters of the globe, the home
+of millions, where intricate old corners and back streets left more
+space than in other cities for old-fashioned "characters," for odd,
+eccentric creatures and better-class charlatans of every description,
+afforded a ground peculiarly favourable for caricature. In this
+province, therefore, England holds the first place beyond dispute.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ DU MAURIER. A RECOLLECTION OF DIEPPE.]
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ DU MAURIER. DOWN TO DINNER.]
+
+Direct from Hogarth come the group of political caricaturists, in whom
+the sour, bilious temper of John Bull lives on in a new and improved
+edition. Men like _James Gillray_ were a power in the political warfare
+of their time; bold liberals who fought for the cause of freedom with a
+divine rage and slashing irony, while at the same time they were
+masterly draughtsmen in a vehement and forceful style. The worst of it
+is, that the interest excited by political caricature is always of a
+very ephemeral nature. The antagonism of Pitt and Fox, Shelburne and
+Burke, the avarice and stupidity of George III, the Union, the conjugal
+troubles of the Prince of Wales, and the war with France, seem very
+uninteresting matters in these days. On the other hand, _Rowlandson_,
+who was not purely a politician, appeals to us in an intelligible
+language even after a hundred years have gone by.
+
+Like Hogarth, he was the antithesis of a humorist. Something bitter and
+gloomily pessimistic runs through all he touches. He is brutal, with an
+inborn power and an indecorous coarseness. His laughter is loud and his
+cursing barbarous. Ear-piercing notes escape from the widely opened lips
+of his singers, and the tears come thickly from the eyes of his
+sentimental old ladies who are hanging on the declamation of a tragic
+actress. His comedy is produced by the simplest means. As a rule any
+sort of contrast is enough: fat and thin, big and little, young wife and
+old husband, young husband and old wife, shying horse and helpless rider
+on a Sunday out. Or else he brings the physical and moral qualities of
+his figures into an absurd contrast with their age, calling, or
+behaviour: musicians are deaf, dancing masters bandy-legged, servants
+wear the dresscoats and orders of lords, hideous old maids demean
+themselves like coquettes, parsons get drunk, and grave dignitaries of
+state dance the cancan. And so, when the servant gets a thrashing, and
+the coquette a refusal, and the diplomatist loses his orders by getting
+a fall, it is their punishment for having forgotten their proper place.
+They are all of them "careers on slippery ground," with the same
+punishments as Hogarth delighted to depict. But Rowlandson became
+another man when he set himself to represent the life of the people.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ DU MAURIER. A WINTRY WALK.]
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ KEENE. FROM "OUR PEOPLE." THE PERILS OF THE DEEP.]
+
+Born in July 1756, in a narrow alley of old London, he grew up amidst
+the people. As a young man he saw Paris, Germany, and the Low Countries.
+He went regularly to all clubs where there was high play. As man,
+painter, and draughtsman alike, he stood in the midst of life. Street
+scenes in Paris and London engage his pencil, especially scenes from
+Vauxhall Gardens, the meeting-place of fashionable London, and there is
+often a touch of Menzel in the palpitating life of these pictures--in
+these lords and ladies, fops and ballad-singers, who pass through the
+grounds of the gardens in a billowy stream. His illustrations include
+everything: soldiers, navvies, life at home and in the tavern, in town
+and in village, on the stage and behind the scenes, at masquerades and
+in Parliament. When he died at seventy, on 22nd April 1827, the
+obituaries were able to say of him with truth that he had drawn all
+England in the years between 1774 and 1809. And all these leaves torn
+from the life of sailors and peasants, these fairs and markets, beggars,
+huntsmen, smiths, artizans, and day labourers, were not caricatures, but
+sketches keenly observed and sharply executed from life. His countrymen
+have at times a magnificent Michelangelesque stir of life which almost
+suggests Millet. He was fond of staying at fashionable watering-places,
+and came back with charming scenes from high life. But his peculiar
+field of observation was the poor quarter of London. Here are the
+artizans, the living machines. Endurance, persistence, and resignation
+may be read in their long, dismal, angular faces. Here are the women of
+the people, wasted and hectic. Their eyes are set deep in their sockets,
+their noses sharp and their skin blotched with red spots. They have
+suffered much and had many children; they have a sodden, depressed,
+stoically callous appearance; they have borne much, and can bear still
+more. And then the devastations of gin! that long train of wretched
+women who of an evening prostitute themselves in the Strand to pay for
+their lodging! those terrible streets of London, where pallid children
+beg, and tattered spectres, either sullen or drunken, rove from
+public-house to public-house, with torn linen and rags hanging about
+them in shreds! The cry of misery rising from the pavement of great
+cities was first heard by Rowlandson, and the pages on which he drew the
+poor of London are a living dance of death of the most ghastly veracity.
+
+But, curiously enough, this same man, who as an observer could be so
+uncompromisingly sombre, and so rough and brutal as a caricaturist, had
+also a wonderfully delicate feeling for feminine charm. In the pages he
+has devoted to the German waltz there lives again the chivalrous
+elegance of the period of Werther, and that peculiarly English grace
+which is so fascinating in Gainsborough. His young girls are graceful
+and wholesome in their round straw hats with broad ribbons; his pretty
+little wives in their white aprons and coquettish caps recall Chardin.
+One feels that he has seen Paris and appreciated the fine fragrance of
+Watteau's pictures.
+
+[Illustration: _Mag. of Art._
+
+ SIR GEO. REID. PORTRAIT OF CHARLES KEENE.]
+
+Mention should also be made of _Henry William Bunbury_, who excelled in
+the drawing of horses and ponies. "A long Story" is an excellent example
+of his powers as a caricaturist pure and simple. The variations rung on
+the theme of boredom and the self-centred and animated stupidity of the
+narrator have been vividly observed, and are earnestly rendered.
+Rowlandson has the savage indignation of Swift; Bunbury is not savage,
+but he has the same English seriousness and something of the same
+brutality. The faces here are crapulous and distorted, and the subject
+is treated without lightness or good-nature. Perhaps the English do not
+take their pleasures so very seriously, but undoubtedly they jest in
+earnest. Yet Bunbury's incisiveness and his thorough command of what it
+is his design to express assure him a distinct position as an artist.
+His "Richmond Hill" shows the pleasanter side of English character. The
+breeze billowing in the trees, the little lady riding by on her cob, the
+buxom dames in the shay, and the man spinning past on his curricle,
+give the scene a spirit of life and movement, besides rendering it an
+historical document of the period of social history that lies between
+_The Virginians_ and _Vanity Fair_.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ KEENE. FROM "OUR PEOPLE."]
+
+As a political caricaturist _George Cruikshank_ has the same
+significance for England as Henri Monnier has for France, and the
+drawings of the latter often go straight back to the great English
+artist. But his first works in 1815 were children's books, and such
+simple delineations from the world of childhood and the life of society
+have done more to preserve his name than political caricatures. Their
+touch of satire is only very slight. Cruikshank's ladies panting under
+heavy chignons, his serious and exceedingly prosy dames pouring out tea
+for serious and not less ceremonious gentlemen, whilst the girls are
+galloping round Hyde Park on their thoroughbreds, accompanied by a
+brilliant escort of fashionable young men--they are all of them not so
+much caricatures as pictures freshly caught from life. He had a great
+sense for toilettes, balls, and parties. And he could draw with
+artistic observation and tender feeling the babbling lips and shining
+eyes of children, the shy confidence of the little ones, their timid
+curiosity and their bashful advances. And thus he opened up the way
+along which his disciples advanced with so much success.
+
+[Illustration: KLEIN. A TRAVELLING LANDSCAPE PAINTER.]
+
+The style of illustration has adapted itself to the altered character of
+English life. What at first constituted the originality of English
+caricaturists was their mordant satire. Everything was painted in
+exceedingly vivid colours. Whatever was calculated to bring out an idea
+in comic or brutal relief--great heads and little bodies, an absurd
+similarity between persons and animals, the afflorescence of
+costume--was seized upon eagerly. These artists fought for the weary and
+heavy-laden, and mercilessly lashed the cut-throats and charlatans. They
+delighted in spontaneous obscenity, exuberant vigour, and undisguised
+coarseness. Men were shaken by a broad Aristophanic laughter till they
+seemed like epileptics. At the time when the Empire style came into
+England, Gillray could dare to represent by speaking likenesses some of
+the best-known London beauties, in a toilette which the well developed
+Madame Tallien could not have worn with more assurance. Such things were
+no longer possible when England grew out of her awkward age. After the
+time of Gillray a complete change came over the spirit of English
+caricature. Everything brutal or bitterly personal was abandoned. The
+clown put on his dress-clothes, and John Bull became a gentleman. Even
+by Cruikshank's time caricature had become serious and well-bred. And
+his disciples were indeed not caricaturists at all, but addressed
+themselves solely to a delicately poetic representation of subjects.
+They know neither Rowlandson's innate force and bitter laughter, nor the
+gallows humour and savagery of Hogarth; they are amiable and tenderly
+grave observers, and their drawings are not caricatures, but charming
+pictures of manners.
+
+_Punch_, which was founded in 1841, has perhaps caught the social and
+political physiognomy of England in the middle of the nineteenth century
+with the greatest delicacy. It is a household paper, a periodical read
+by the youngest girls. All the piquant things with which the Parisian
+papers are filled are therefore absolutely excluded. It scrupulously
+ignores the style of thing to which the _Journal Amusant_ owes
+three-fourths of its matter. Every number contains one big political
+caricature, but otherwise it moves almost entirely in the region of
+domestic life. Students flirting with pretty barmaids, neat little
+dressmakers carrying heavy bonnet-boxes and pursued by old
+gentlemen--even these are scenes which go a little too far for the
+refined tone of the paper which has been adapted to the drawing-room.
+
+[Illustration: JOHANN CHRISTOPH ERHARD.]
+
+Next to Cruikshank, the Nestor of caricature, must be mentioned _John
+Leech_, who between 1841 and 1864 was the leading artist on _Punch_. In
+his drawings there is already to be found the high-bred and fragrant
+delicacy of the English painting of the present time. They stand in
+relation to the whimsical and vigorous works of Rowlandson as the fine
+_esprit_ of a rococo abbé to the coarse and healthy wit of Rabelais. The
+mildness of his own temperament is reflected in his sketches. Others
+have been the cause of more laughter, but he loved beauty and purity.
+Men are not often drawn by him, or if he draws them they are always
+"pretty fellows," born gentlemen. His young women are not coquettish and
+_chic_, but simple, natural, and comely. The old English brutality and
+coarseness have become amiable, subtle, refined, mild, and seductive in
+John Leech. He is a fine and delicate spirit, who seems very ethereal
+beside Hogarth and Rowlandson, those giants fed on roast-beef; he
+prefers to occupy himself with sport and boating, the season and its
+fashions, and is at home in public gardens, at balls, and at the
+theatre. Here a pretty baby is being taken for an airing in Hyde Park by
+a tidy little nurse-maid, and there on mamma's arm goes a charming
+schoolgirl, who is being enthusiastically greeted by good-looking boys;
+here again a young wife is sitting by the fireside with a novel in her
+hand and her feet out of her slippers, while she looks dreamily at the
+glimmering flame. Or a girl is standing on the shore in a large straw
+hat, with her hand shading her eyes and the wind fluttering her dress.
+Even his "Children of the Mobility" are little angels of grace and
+purity, in spite of their rags. The background, be it room, street, or
+landscape, is merely given with a few strokes, but it is of more than
+common charm. Every plate of Leech has a certain fragrance and lightness
+of touch and a delicacy of line which has since been attained only by
+Frederick Walker. His simplicity of stroke recalls the old Venetian
+woodcuts. There is not an unnecessary touch. Everything is in keeping,
+everything has a significance.
+
+[Illustration: ERHARD. A PEASANT SCENE.]
+
+Leech's successor, _George du Maurier_, is less delicate--that is to
+say, not so entirely and loftily æsthetic. He is less exclusively
+poetic, but lives more in actual life, and suffers less from the raw
+breath of reality. At the same time, his drawing is pithier and more
+incisive; one discerns his French training. In 1857 du Maurier was a
+pupil of Gleyre, and returned straight to England when Leech's place on
+_Punch_ became vacant by his death. Since that time du Maurier has been
+the head of the English school of drawing--of the diarists of that
+society which is displayed in Hyde Park during the season, and found in
+London theatres and dining-rooms, and in well-kept English pleasure
+grounds, at garden parties and tennis meetings, the leaders of clubs and
+drawing-rooms. His snobs rival those of Thackeray, but he has also a
+special preference for the fair sex--for charming women and girls who
+race about the lawn at tennis in large hats and bright dresses, or sit
+by the fire in fashionable apartments, or hover through a ball-room
+waltzing in their airy skirts of tulle. The coquettishness of his little
+ones is entirely charming, and so too is the superior and comical
+exclusiveness of his æsthetically brought-up children, who will
+associate with no children not æsthetic.
+
+[Illustration: ERHARD. A PEASANT FAMILY.]
+
+But the works of _Charles Keene_ are the most English of all. Here the
+English reveal that complete singularity which distinguishes them from
+all other mortals. Both as a draughtsman and as a humorist Keene stands
+with the greatest of the century, on the same level as Daumier and
+Hokusai. An old bachelor, an original, a provincial living in the vast
+city, nothing pleased him better than to mix with the humbler class, to
+mount on the omnibus seat beside the driver, to visit a costermonger, or
+sit in a dingy suburban tavern. He led a Bohemian life, and was,
+nevertheless, a highly respectable, economical, and careful man. Trips
+into the country and little suppers with his friends constituted his
+greatest pleasures. He was a member of several glee clubs, and when he
+sat at home played the Scotch bagpipes, to the horror of all his
+neighbours. During his last years his only company was an old dog, to
+which he, like poor Tassaert, clung with a touching tenderness. All the
+less did he care about "the world." Grace and beauty are not to be
+sought in his drawings. For him "Society" did not exist. As du Maurier
+is the chronicler of drawing-rooms, Keene was the fine and unsurpassed
+observer of the people and of humble London life, and he extended
+towards them a friendly optimism and a brotherly sympathy. An endless
+succession of the most various, the truest, and the most animated types
+is contained in his work: mighty guardsmen swagger, cane in hand, burly
+and solemn; cabmen and omnibus drivers, respectable middle-class
+citizens, servants, hairdressers, the City police, waiters, muscular
+Highlanders, corpulent self-made City men, the seething discontent of
+Whitechapel; and here and there amidst them all incomparable old
+tradesmen's wives, and big, raw-boned village landladies in the
+Highlands. Keene has something so natural and self-evident in his whole
+manner of expression, that no one is conscious of the art implied by
+such drawing. Amongst those living in his time only Menzel could touch
+him as a draughtsman, and it was not through chance that each, in spite
+of their differences of temperament, greatly admired the other. Keene
+bought every drawing of Menzel's that he could get, and Menzel at his
+death possessed a large collection of Keene's sketches.
+
+[Illustration: LUDWIG RICHTER.]
+
+In the beginning of the century Germany had no draughtsmen comparable
+for realistic impressiveness with Rowlandson. At a time when the great
+art lay so completely bound in the shackles of the Classic school,
+drawing, too, appeared only in traditional forms. The artist ventured to
+draw as he liked just as little as he ventured to paint anything at all
+as he saw it; for both there were rules and strait-waistcoats. Almost
+everything that was produced in those years looks weak and flat to-day,
+forced in composition and amateurish in drawing. Where Rowlandson with
+his brusque powerful strokes recalls Michael Angelo or Rembrandt, the
+Germans have something laboured, diffident, and washed out. Yet even
+here a couple of unpretentious etchers rise as welcome and surprising
+figures out of the tedious waste of academic production, though they
+were little honoured by their contemporaries. In their homely sketches,
+however, they have remained more classic than those who put on the
+classical garment as if for eternity. What the painter refused to paint,
+and the patrons of art who sought after ideas would not allow to count
+as a picture, because the subject seemed to them too poor, and the form
+too commonplace and undignified--military scenes at home and abroad,
+typical and soldierly figures from the great time of the war of
+Liberation, the life of the people, the events of the day--was what the
+Nuremberg friends, _Johann Adam Klein_ and _Johann Christoph Erhard_,
+diligently engraved upon copper with sympathetic care, and so left
+posterity a picture of German life in the beginning of the century that
+seems the more sincere and earnest because it has paid toll neither to
+style in composition nor to idealism. This invaluable Klein was a
+healthy and sincere realist, from whom the æsthetic theories of the time
+recoiled without effect, and he had no other motive than to render
+faithfully whatever he saw. Even in Vienna, whither he came as a young
+man in 1811, it was not the picture galleries which roused him to his
+first studies, but the picturesque national costumes of the Wallachians,
+Poles, and Hungarians, and their horses and peculiar vehicles. A sojourn
+among the country manors of Styria gave him opportunity for making a
+number of pretty sketches of rural life. In the warlike years 1813 and
+1814, with their marching and their bivouacs, he went about all day long
+drawing amongst the soldiers. Even in Rome it was not the statues that
+fascinated him, but the bright street scenes, the ecclesiastical
+solemnities, and the picturesque caravans of country people. And when he
+settled down in Nuremburg, and afterwards in Munich, he did not cease to
+be sensitive to all impressions that forced themselves on him in varying
+fulness. The basis of his art was faithful and loving observation of
+life as it was around him, the pure joy the genuine artist has in making
+a picture of everything he sees.
+
+[Illustration: L. RICHTER. HOME.]
+
+Poor Erhard, who at twenty-six ended his life by suicide, was a yet more
+delicate and sensitive nature. The marching of Russian troops through
+his native town roused him to his first works, and even in these early
+military and canteen scenes he shows himself an exceptionally sharp and
+positive observer. The costumes, the uniforms, the teams and waggons,
+are drawn with decision and accuracy. From Vienna he made walking tours
+to the picturesque regions of the Schneeberg, wandered through Salzburg
+and Pinzgau, and gazed with wonder at the idyllic loveliness of nature
+as she is in these regions, on the cosy rooms of the peasants with their
+great tiled stoves and the sun-burnt figures of the country people. He
+had a heart for nature, an intimate, poetic, and profound love for what
+is humble and familiar--for homely meadows, trees, and streams, for
+groves and hedgerows, for quiet gardens and sequestered spots. He
+approached everything with observation as direct as a child's. Both
+Klein and he endeavoured to grasp a fragment of nature distinctly, and
+without any kind of transformation or generalisation; and this fresh,
+unvarnished, thoroughly German feeling for nature gives them, rather
+than Mengs and Carstens, the right to be counted as ancestors of the
+newer German art.
+
+[Illustration: L. RICHTER. THE END OF THE DAY.]
+
+Klein and Erhard having set out in advance, others, such as Haller von
+Hallerstein, L. C. Wagner, F. Rechberger, F. Moessmer, K. Wagner, E. A.
+Lebschée, and August Geist, each after his own fashion, made little
+voyages of discovery into the world of nature belonging to their own
+country. But Erhard, who died in 1822, has found his greatest disciple
+in a young Dresden master, whose name makes the familiar appeal of an
+old lullaby which suddenly strikes the ear amid the bustle of the
+world--in _Ludwig Richter_, familiar to all Germans. Richter himself has
+designated Chodowiecki, Gessner, and Erhard as those whose contemplative
+love of nature guided him to his own path. What Leech, that charming
+draughtsman of the child-world, was to the English, Ludwig Richter
+became for the Germans. Not that he could be compared with Leech in
+artistic qualities. Beside those of the British artist his works are
+like the exercises of a gifted amateur: they have a petty correctness
+and a _bourgeois_ neatness of line. But Germans are quite willing to
+forget the artistic point of view in relation to their Ludwig Richter.
+Sunny and childlike as he is, they love him too much to care to see his
+artistic failings. Here is really that renowned German "_Gemüth_" of
+which others make so great an abuse.
+
+[Illustration: L. RICHTER. SPRING.]
+
+"I am certainly living here in a rather circumscribed fashion, but in a
+very cheerful situation outside the town, and I am writing you this
+letter (it is Sunday afternoon) in a shady arbour, with a long row of
+rose-bushes in bloom before me. Now and then they are ruffled by a
+pleasant breeze--which is also the cause of a big blot being on this
+sheet, as it blew the page over." This one passage reveals the whole
+man. Can one think of Ludwig Richter living in any town except Dresden,
+or imagine him except in this dressing-gown, seated on a Sunday
+afternoon in his shady arbour with the rose-bushes, and surrounded by
+laughing children? That profound domestic sentiment which runs through
+his works with a biblical fidelity of heart is reflected in the
+homeliness of the artist, who has remained all his life a big,
+unsophisticated child; and his autobiography, in its patriarchal
+simplicity, is like a refreshing draught from a pure mountain spring.
+Richter survived into the present as an original type from a time long
+vanished. What old-world figures did he not see around him as a boy,
+when he went about, eager for novelty, with his grandfather, the
+copperplate printer, who in his leisure hours studied alchemy and the
+art of producing gold, and was surrounded by an innumerable quantity of
+clocks, ticking, striking, and making cuckoo notes in his dark workroom;
+or as he listened to his blind, garrulous grandmother, around whom the
+children and old wives of the neighbourhood used to gather to hear her
+tales. That was in 1810, and two generations later, as an old man
+surrounded by his grandsons, he found once more the old, merry child
+life of his own home. And it was once more a fragment of the good old
+times, when on Christmas Eve the little band came shouting round the
+house of gingerbread from _Hansel and Gretel_ which grandfather had
+built out of real gingerbread after his own drawing.
+
+[Illustration: L. RICHTER. AFTER WORK IT'S GOOD TO REST.]
+
+"If my art never entered amongst the lilies and roses on the summit of
+Parnassus, it bloomed by the roads and banks, on the hedges and in the
+meadows, and travellers resting by the wayside were glad of it, and
+little children made wreaths and crowns of it, and the solitary lover of
+nature rejoiced in its colour and fragrance, which mounted like a prayer
+to Heaven." Richter had the right to inscribe these words in his diary
+on his eightieth birthday.
+
+Through his works there echoes a humming and chiming like the joyous cry
+of children and the twitter of birds. Even his landscapes are filled
+with that blissful and solemn feeling that Sunday and the spring produce
+together in a lonely walk over field and meadow. The "_Gemüthlichkeit_,"
+the cordiality, of German family-life, with a trait of contemplative
+romance, could find such a charming interpreter in none but him, the old
+man who went about in his long loose coat and had the face of an
+ordinary village schoolmaster. Only he who retained to his old age that
+childlike heart--to which the kingdom of heaven is given even in
+art--could really know the heart of the child's world, which even at a
+later date in Germany was not drawn more simply or more graciously.
+
+His illustrations present an almost exhaustive picture of the life of
+the German people at home and in the world, at work and in their
+pleasure, in suffering and in joy. He follows it through all grades and
+all seasons of the year. Everything is true and genuine, everything
+seized from life in its fulness: the child splashing in a tub; the lad
+shouting as he catches the first snowflake in his hat; the lovers seated
+whispering in their cosy little chamber, or wandering arm in arm on
+their "homeward way through the corn" amid the evening landscape touched
+with gold; the girl at her spinning-wheel and the hunter in the forest,
+the travelling journeyman, the beggar, the well-to-do Philistine. The
+scene is the sitting-room or the nursery, the porch twined with vine,
+the street with old-fashioned overhanging storeys and turrets, the
+forest and the field with splendid glimpses into the hazy distance.
+Children are playing round a great tree, labourers are coming back from
+the field, or the family is taking its rest in some hour of relaxation.
+A peaceful quietude and chaste purity spread over everything. Certainly
+Richter's drawing has something pedantic and unemphatic, that weak,
+generalising roundness which, beside the sharp, powerful stroke of the
+old artists, has the spirit of a drawing-master. But what he has to give
+is always influenced by delicate and loving observation, and never
+stands in contradiction to truth. He does not give the whole of nature,
+but neither does he give what is unnatural. He is one of the first of
+Germans whose art did not spring from a negation of reality, produced by
+treating it on an arbitrary system, but rested instead upon tender
+reverie, transfigured into poetry. When in the fifties he stayed a
+summer in pleasant Loschwitz, he wrote in his diary: "O God, how
+magnificent is the wide country round, from my little place upon the
+hill! So divinely beautiful, and so sensuously beautiful! The deep blue
+heaven, the wide green world, the bright and fair May landscape alive
+with a thousand voices."
+
+[Illustration: WILHELM BUSCH.]
+
+In all that generation, to whom existence seemed so sad, Ludwig Richter
+is one of the few who really felt content with the earth, and held the
+life around them to be the best and healthiest material for the artist.
+And that is the substance of the plate to which he gave the title "Rules
+of Art." A wide landscape stretches away with mighty oaks slanting down,
+and a purling spring from which a young girl is drawing water, whilst a
+high-road, enlivened by travellers young and old, runs over hill and
+dale into the sunny distance. In the midst of this free rejoicing world
+the artist is seated with his pencil. And above stands the motto written
+by Richter's hand--
+
+ "Und die Sonne Homer's, siehe sie lächelt auch uns."
+
+By the success of Richter certain disciples were inspired to tread the
+same ground, although none of them equalled him in his charming human
+qualities. And least of all _Oskar Pletsch_, whose self-sufficient smile
+is soon recognised in all its emptiness. Everything which in Richter was
+genuine and original is in him flat, laboured, and prearranged. His
+landscapes, which in part are very pretty, are derived from R. Schuster;
+what seems good in the children is Richter's property, and what Pletsch
+contributed is the conventionality. _Albert Hendschel_ also stood on
+Richter's shoulders, but his popularity is more justifiable. Even in
+these days one takes pleasure in his sketch-books, in which he
+immortalised the joy and sorrow of youth in such a delicious way.
+
+[Illustration: _Braun, Munich._
+
+ OBERLÄNDER. VARIATIONS ON THE KISSING THEME.
+
+ RETHEL.]
+
+_Eugen Neureuther_ worked in Munich, and as an etcher revelled in the
+charming play of arabesques and ornamental borders, and told of pleasant
+little scenes from the life of the Bavarian people in his pretty peasant
+quatrains.
+
+[Illustration: _Braun, Munich._
+
+ OBERLÄNDER. VARIATIONS ON THE KISSING THEME.
+
+ GABRIEL MAX.]
+
+The rise of caricature in Germany dates from the year 1848. Though there
+are extant from the first third of the century no more than a few
+topical papers of no artistic importance, periodical publications, which
+soon brought a large number of vigorous caricaturists into notice, began
+to appear from that time, owing to the political agitations of the
+period. _Kladderadatsch_ was brought out in Berlin, and _Fliegende
+Blätter_ was founded in Munich, and side by side with it _Münchener
+Bilderbogen_. But later generations will be referred _par excellence_ to
+_Fliegende Blätter_ for a picture of German life in the nineteenth
+century. What the painters of those years forgot to transmit is here
+stored up: a history of German manners which could not imaginably be
+more exact or more exhaustive. From the very first day it united on its
+staff of collaborators almost all the most important names in their own
+peculiar branch. Schwind, Spitzweg, that genial humorist, and many
+others whom the German people will not forget, won their spurs here, and
+were inexhaustible in pretty theatre scenes, satires on German and
+Italian singing, memorial sketches of Fanny Elsler, of the inventor of
+the dress coat, etc., which enlivened the whole civilized world at that
+time. This elder generation of draughtsmen on _Fliegende Blätter_ were,
+indeed, not free from the guilt of producing stereotyped figures. The
+travelling Englishman, the Polish Jew, the counter-jumper, the young
+painter, the rich boor, the stepmother, the housemaid, and the nervous
+countess are everywhere the same in the first volumes. In caricature,
+just as in "great art," they still worked a little in accordance with
+rules and conventions. To observe life with an objective unprejudiced
+glance, and to hold it fast in all its palpitating movement, was
+reserved for men of later date.
+
+[Illustration: _Braun, Munich._
+
+ OBERLÄNDER. VARIATIONS ON THE KISSING THEME.
+
+ HANS MAKART.]
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._ ADOLF OBERLÄNDER.]
+
+Two of the greatest humorists of the world in illustrative art, _Wilhelm
+Busch_ and _Adolf Oberländer_, stand at the head of those who ushered in
+the flourishing period of German caricature. They are masters, and take
+in with their glance the entire social world of our time, and in their
+brilliant prints they have made a history of civilisation for the epoch
+which will be more vivid and instructive for posterity than the most
+voluminous works of the greatest historians. Their heads are known by
+Lenbach's pictures. One has an exceptionally clever, expressive
+countenance--a thorough painter's head. The humorist may be recognised
+by the curious narrowing of one eye, the well-known eye of the humorist
+that sees everything, proves everything, and holds fast every absurdity
+in the gestures, every eccentricity in the bearing of his neighbour.
+That is Wilhelm Busch.
+
+[Illustration: _Braun, Munich._
+
+ OBERLÄNDER. VARIATIONS ON THE KISSING THEME.
+
+ GENELLI.]
+
+[Illustration: _Braun, Munich._
+
+ OBERLÄNDER. VARIATIONS ON THE KISSING THEME.
+
+ ALMA TADEMA.]
+
+In the large orbs of the other--orbs which seem to grow strangely wide
+by long gazing as at some fixed object--there is no smile of deliberate
+mischief, and it is not easy to associate the name of Oberländer with
+this Saturnian round face, with its curiously timid glance. One is
+reminded of the definition of humour as "smiling amid tears."
+
+Even in those days when he came every year to Munich and painted in
+Lenbach's studio, Busch was a shy and moody man, who thawed only in the
+narrowest circle of his friends: now he has buried himself in a
+market-town in the province of Hanover, in Wiedensahl, which, according
+to Ritter's _Gazetteer_, numbers eight hundred and twenty-eight
+inhabitants. He lives in the house of his brother-in-law, the clergyman
+of the parish, and gives himself up to the culture of bees. His laughter
+has fallen silent, and it is only a journal on bees that now receives
+contributions from his hand. But what works this hermit of Wiedensahl
+produced in the days when he migrated from Düsseldorf and Antwerp to
+Munich, and began in 1859 his series of sketches for _Fliegende
+Blätter_! The first were stiff and clumsy, the text in prose and not
+particularly witty. But the earliest work with a versified text, _Der
+Bauer und der Windmüller_, contains in the germ all the qualities which
+later found such brilliant expression in _Max und Moritz_, in _Der
+Heilige Antonius_, _Die Fromme Helene_, and _Die Erlebnisse Knopps,_
+_des Junggesellen_, and made Busch's works an inexhaustible fountain of
+mirth and enjoyment.
+
+Busch unites an uncommonly sharp eye with a marvellously flexible hand.
+Wild as his subjects generally are, he solves the greatest difficulties
+as easily as though they were child's play. His heroes appear in
+situations of the most urgent kind, which place their bodily parts in
+violent and exceedingly uncomfortable positions: they thrash others or
+get thrashed themselves, they stumble or fall. And in what a masterly
+way are all these anomalies seized, the boldest foreshortenings and the
+most flying movements! Untrained eyes see only a scrawl, but for those
+who know how to look, a drawing by Busch is life itself, freed from all
+unnecessary detail, and marked down in its great characteristic lines.
+And amid all this simplification, what knowledge there is under the
+guise of carelessness, and what fine calculation! Busch is at once
+simpler and more inventive than the English. With a maze of flourishes
+run half-mad, and a few points and blotches, he forms a sparkling
+picture. With the fewest possible means he hits the essential point, and
+for that reason he is justly called by Grand Cartaret the classic of
+caricaturists, _le roi de la charge et la bouffonnerie_.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ DEBUCOURT. IN THE KITCHEN.]
+
+_Oberländer_, without whom it would be impossible to imagine _Fliegende
+Blätter_, has not fallen silent. He works on, "fresh and splendid as on
+the first day." A gifted nature like Busch, he possesses, at the same
+time, that fertility of which Dürer said: "A good painter is inwardly
+complete and opulent, and were it possible for him to live eternally,
+then by virtue of those inward ideas of which Plato writes he would be
+always able to pour something new into his works." It is now thirty
+years ago that he began his labours for _Fliegende Blätter_, and since
+that time some drawing of his, which has filled every one with delight,
+has appeared almost every week. Kant said that Providence has given men
+three things to console them amid the miseries of life--hope, sleep, and
+laughter. If he is right, Oberländer is amongst the greatest benefactors
+of mankind. Every one of his new sketches maintains the old precious
+qualities. It might be said that, by the side of the comedian Busch,
+Oberländer seems a serious psychologist. Wilhelm Busch lays his whole
+emphasis on the comical effects of simplicity; he knows how to reduce an
+object in a masterly fashion to its elemental lines, which are comic in
+themselves by their epigrammatic pregnancy. He calls forth peals of
+laughter by the farcical spirit of his inventions and the boldness with
+which he renders his characters absurd. He is also the author of his own
+letterpress. His drawings are unimaginable without the verse, without
+the finely calculated and dramatic succession of situations growing to a
+catastrophe. Oberländer gets his effect purely by means of the pictorial
+elements in his representation, and attains a comical result, neither by
+the distorted exaggeration of what is on the face of the matter
+ridiculous, nor by an elementary simplification, but by a refined
+sharpening of character. It seems uncanny that a man should have such
+eyes in his head; there is something almost visionary in the way he
+picks out of everything the determining feature of its being. And whilst
+he faintly exaggerates what is characteristic and renders it distinct,
+his picture is given a force and power of conviction to which no
+previous caricaturist has attained, with so much discretion at the same
+time. No one has attained the drollness of Oberländer's people, animals,
+and plants. He draws _à la_ Max, _à la_ Makart, Rethel, Genelli, or
+Piloty, hunts in the desert or theatrical representations, Renaissance
+architecture run mad or the most modern European mashers. He is as much
+at home in the Cameroons as in Munich, and in transferring the droll
+scenes of human life to the animal world he is a classic. He sports with
+hens, herrings, dogs, ducks, ravens, bears, and elephants as Hokusai
+does with his frogs. Beside such animals all the Reinecke series of
+Wilhelm Kaulbach look like "drawings from the copybook of little
+Moritz." And landscapes which in their tender intimacy of feeling seem
+like anticipations of Cazin sometimes form the background of these
+creatures. One can scarcely err in supposing that posterity will place
+certain plates from the work of this quiet, amiable man beside the best
+which the history of drawing has anywhere to show.
+
+[Illustration: DEBUCOURT. THE PROMENADE.]
+
+The _Charivari_ takes its place with _Punch_ and _Fliegende Blätter_.
+
+In the land of Rabelais also caricature has flourished since the opening
+of the century, in spite of official masters who reproached her with
+desecrating the sacred temple of art, and in spite of the gendarmes who
+put her in gaol. Here, too, it was the draughtsmen who first broke with
+æsthetic prejudices, and saw the laughing and the weeping dramas of life
+with an unprejudiced glance.
+
+Debucourt and Carle Vernet, the pair who made their appearance
+immediately after the storms of the Revolution, are alike able and
+charming artists, who depict the pleasures of the salon in a graceful
+style; and they rival the great satirists on the other side of the
+Channel in the incisiveness of their drawing, and frequently even
+surpass them by the added charm of colour.
+
+[Illustration: _Quantin, Paris._
+
+ MONNIER. A CHALK DRAWING.]
+
+_Carle Vernet_, originally an historical painter, remembered that he had
+married the daughter of the younger Moreau, and set himself to portray
+the doings of the _jeunesse dorée_ of the end of the eighteenth century
+in his _incroyables_ and his _merveilleuses_. Crazy, eccentric, and
+superstitious, he divided his time afterwards between women and his
+club-fellows, horses and dogs. He survives in the history of art as the
+chronicler of sport, hunting, racing, and drawing-room and café scenes.
+
+_Louis Philibert Debucourt_ was a pupil of Vien, and had painted _genre_
+pictures in the spirit of Greuze before he turned in 1785 to colour
+engraving. In this year appeared the pretty "Menuet de la Mariée," with
+the peasant couples dancing, and the dainty châtelaine who laughingly
+opens the ball with the young husband. After that he had found his
+specialty, and in the last decade of the eighteenth century he produced
+the finest of his colour engravings. In 1792 there is the wonderful
+promenade in the gallery of the Palais Royal, with its swarming crowd of
+young officers, priests, students, shop-girls, and _cocottes_; in 1797
+"Grandmother's Birthday," "Friday Forenoon at the Parisian Bourse," and
+many others. The effects of technique which he achieved by means of
+colour engraving are surprising. A freshness like that of water colour
+lies on these yellow straw hats, lightly rouged cheeks, and rosy
+shoulders. To white silk cloaks trimmed with fur he gives the
+iridescence of a robe by Netscher. If there survived nothing except
+Debucourt from the whole art of the eighteenth century, he would alone
+suffice to give an idea of the entire spirit of the time. Only one note
+would be wanting, the familiar simplicity of Chardin. The smiling grace
+of Greuze, the elegance of Watteau, and the sensuousness of Boucher--he
+has them all, although they are weakened in him, and precisely by his
+affectation is he the true child of his epoch. The crowd which is
+promenading beneath the trees of the Palais Royal in 1792 is no longer
+the same which fills the drawing-rooms of Versailles and Petit Trianon
+in the pages of Cochin. The faces are coarser and more plebeian. Red
+waistcoats with _breloques_ as large as fists, and stout canes with
+great gold tops, make the costume of the men loud and ostentatious,
+while eccentric hats, broad sashes, and high coiffures bedizen the
+ladies more than is consistent with elegance. At the same time,
+Debucourt gives this democracy an aristocratic bearing. His prostitutes
+look like duchesses. His art is an attenuated echo of the _rococo_
+period. In him the _décadence_ is embodied, and all the grace and
+elegance of the century is once more united, although it has become more
+_bourgeois_.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ MONNIER. JOSEPH PROUDHOMME.]
+
+The Empire again was less favourable to caricature. Not that there was
+any want of material, but the censorship kept a strict watch over the
+welfare of France. Besides, the artists who made their appearance after
+David lived on Olympus, and would have nothing to do with the common
+things of life. Neither draughtsmen nor engravers could effect anything
+so long as they saw themselves overlooked by a Greek or Roman phantom as
+they bent over their paper or their plate of copper, and felt it their
+duty to suggest the stiff lines of antique statues beneath the folds of
+modern costume.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._ HONORÉ DAUMIER.]
+
+_Bosio_ was the genuine product of this style. Every one of his pictures
+has become tedious, because of a spurious classicism to which he adhered
+with inflexible consistency. He cannot draw a grisette without seeing
+her with David's eyes. It deprives his figures of truth and interest.
+Something of the correctness of a schoolmistress is peculiar to them.
+His grace is too classic, his merriment too well-bred, and everything in
+them too carefully arranged to give the idea of scenes rapidly depicted
+from life. Beauty of line is offered in place of spontaneity of
+observation, and even the character of the drawing is lost in a pedantic
+elegance which envelopes everything with the uniformly graceful veil of
+an insipidly fluent outline.
+
+As soon as Romanticism had broken with the classic system, certain great
+draughtsmen, who laid a bold hand on modern life without being shackled
+by æsthetic formulæ, came to the front in France. _Henri Monnier_, the
+eldest of them, was born a year after the proclamation of the Empire.
+Cloaks, plumes, and sabretasches were the first impressions of his
+youth; he saw the return of triumphant armies and heard the fanfare of
+victorious trumpets. The Old Guard remained his ideal, the inglorious
+kingship of the Restoration his abhorrence. He was a supernumerary clerk
+in the Department of Justice when in 1828 his first brochure, _Moeurs
+administratives dessinées d'aprés nature par Henri Monnier_, disclosed
+to his superiors that the eyes of this poor young man in the service of
+the Ministry had seen more than they should have done. Dismissed from
+his post, he was obliged to support himself by his pencil, and became
+the chronicler of the epoch. In Monnier's prints breathes the happy
+Paris of the good old times, a Paris which in these days scarcely exists
+even in the provinces. His "Joseph Proudhomme," from his shoe-buckles to
+his stand-up collar, from his white cravat to his blue spectacles, is as
+immortal as _Eisele und Beisele_, _Schulze und Müller_, or Molière's
+_Bourgeois Gentilhomme_. Monnier himself is his own Proudhomme. He is
+the Philistine in Paris, enjoying little Parisian idylls with a
+_bourgeois_ complacency. With him there is no distinction between
+beautiful and ugly; he finds that everything in nature can be turned to
+account. How admirably the different worlds of Parisian society are
+discriminated in his _Quartiers de Paris_! How finely he has portrayed
+the grisette of the period, with her following of young tradesmen and
+poor students! As yet she has not blossomed into the fine lady, the
+luxurious _blasée_ woman of the next generation. She is still the
+bashful _modiste_ or dressmaker's apprentice whose outings in the
+country are described by Paul de Kock, a pretty child in a short skirt
+who lives in an attic and dresses up only when she goes to the theatre
+or into the country on a Sunday. Monnier gives her an air of
+good-nature, something delightfully childlike. In the society of her
+adorers she is content with the cheapest pleasures, drinks cider and
+eats cakes, rides on a donkey or breakfasts amid the trees, and hardly
+coquets at all when a fat old gentleman follows her on the boulevards.
+These innocent flirtations remind one as little of the more recent
+_lorettes_ of Gavarni as these in their turn anticipate the drunken
+street-walkers of Rops.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ DAUMIER. THE CONNOISSEURS.]
+
+Under Louis Philippe began the true modern period of French caricature,
+the flourishing time when really great artists devoted themselves to it.
+It never raised its head more proudly than under the _bourgeois_ king,
+whose onion head always served the relentless Philippon as a target for
+his wit. It was never armed in more formidable fashion; it never dealt
+more terrible blows. Charles Philippon's famous journal _La Caricature_
+was the most powerful lever that the republicans used against the "July
+government"; it was equally feared by the Ministry, the _bourgeoisie_,
+and the throne. When the _Charivari_ followed _La Caricature_ in 1832,
+political cartoons began to give way to the simple portraiture of
+manners in French life. The powder made for heavy guns exploded in a
+facile play of fireworks improvised for the occasion.
+
+French society in the nineteenth century has to thank principally
+_Daumier_ and _Gavarni_ for being brought gradually within the sphere of
+artistic representation. These men are usually called caricaturists, yet
+they were in reality the great historians of their age. Through long
+years they laboured every week and almost every day at their great
+history, which embraced thousands of chapters--at a true zoology of the
+human species; and their work, drawn upon stone in black and white,
+proves them not merely genuine historians, but really eminent artists
+who merit a place beside the greatest.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ DAUMIER. THE MOUNTEBANKS.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Eugène Montrosier, the owner of the picture._)]
+
+When in his young days Daubigny trod the pavement of the Sistine Chapel
+in Rome, he is said to have exclaimed in astonishment, "That looks as if
+it had been done by Daumier!" and from that time Daumier was aptly
+called the Michael Angelo of caricature. Even when he is laughing there
+is a Florentine inspiration of the terrible in his style, a grotesque
+magnificence, a might suggestive of Buonarotti. In the period before
+1848 he dealt the constitutional monarchy crushing blows by his
+drawings. "Le Ventre legislatif" marks the furthest point to which
+political caricature ever ventured in France. But when he put politics
+on one side and set himself free from Philippon, this same man made the
+most wonderful drawings from life. His "Robert Macaire" giving
+instructions to his clerk as a tradesman, sending his patients
+exorbitant bills as doctor to the poor, lording it over the bourse as
+banker, taking bribes as juryman, and fleecing a peasant as land-agent,
+is the incarnation of the _bourgeois_ monarchy, a splendid criticism on
+the money-grubbing century. Politicians, officials, artists, actors,
+honest citizens, old-clothes-mongers, newspaper-boys, impecunious
+painters, the most various and the basest creatures are treated by his
+pencil, and appear on pages which are often terrible in their depth and
+truthfulness of observation. The period of Louis Philippe is accurately
+portrayed in these prints, every one of which belongs to the great
+volume of the human tragicomedy. In his "Émotions parisiennes" and
+"Bohémiens de Paris" he deals with misfortune, hunger, the impudence of
+vice, and the horror of misery. His "Histoire ancienne" ridiculed the
+absurdity of Classicism _à la_ David at a time when it was still
+regarded as high treason to touch this sacred fane. These modern figures
+with the classical pose, which to some extent parodied David's pictures,
+were probably what first brought his contemporaries to a sense of the
+stiffness and falsity of the whole movement; and at a later period
+Offenbach also contributed his best ideas with much the same result.
+Moreover, Daumier was a landscape-painter of the first order. No one has
+more successfully rendered the appearance of bridges and houses, of
+quays and streets under a downpour, of nature enfeebled as it is in the
+precincts of Paris. He was an instantaneous photographer without a
+rival, a physiognomist such as Breughel was in the sixteenth century,
+Jan Steen and Brouwer in the seventeenth, and Chodowiecki in the
+eighteenth, with the difference that his drawing was as broad and
+powerful as Chodowiecki's was delicate and refined. This inborn force of
+line, suggestive of Jordaens, places his sketches as high, considered as
+works of art, as they are invaluable as historical documents. The
+treatment is so summary, the outline so simplified, the pantomime,
+gesticulation, and pose always so expressive; and Daumier's influence on
+several artists is beyond doubt. Millet, the great painter of peasants,
+owes much to the draughtsman of the _bourgeois_. Precisely what
+constitutes his "style," the great line, the simplification, the
+intelligent abstention from anecdotic trifles, are things which he
+learnt from Daumier.
+
+During the years when he drew for the _Charivari_, _Gavarni_ was the
+exact opposite of Daumier. In the one was a forceful strength, in the
+other a refined grace; in the one brusque and savage observation and
+almost menacing sarcasm, in the other the wayward mood of the butterfly
+flitting lightly from flower to flower. Daumier might be compared with
+Rabelais; Gavarni, the _spirituel_ journalist of the _grand monde_ and
+the _demi-monde_, the draughtsman of elegance and of _roués_ and
+_lorettes_, might be compared with Molière. Born of poor parentage in
+Paris in 1801, and in his youth a mechanician, he supported himself from
+the year 1835 by fashion prints and costume drawings. He undertook the
+conduct of a fashion journal, _Les Gens du Monde_, and began it with a
+series of drawings from the life of the _jeunesse dorée_: _les
+Lorettes_, _les Actrices_, _les Fashionables_, _les Artistes_, _les
+Étudiants de Paris_, _les Bals masqués_, _les Souvenirs du Carnaval_,
+_la Vie des Jeunes Hommes_. A new world was here revealed with bold
+traits. The women of Daumier are good, fat mothers, always busy,
+quick-witted, and of an enviable constitution; women who are careful in
+the management of their household, and who go to market and take their
+husband's place at his office when necessary. In Gavarni the women are
+piquant and given to pouting, draped in silk and enveloped in soft
+velvet mantles. They are fond of dining in the _cabinet particulier_,
+and of scratching the name of their lover, for the time being, upon
+crystal mirrors.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ DAUMIER. IN THE ASSIZE COURT.]
+
+[Illustration: _Quantin, Paris._
+
+ DAUMIER. "LA VOILÀ ... MA MAISON DE CAMPAGNE."]
+
+Gavarni was the first who seized the worldly side of modern life; he
+portrayed elegant figures full of _chic_, and gave them a garb which
+fitted them exactly. In his own dress he had a taste for what was
+dandified, and he plunged gaily into the enjoyment of the Parisian life
+which eddied around in a whirl of pleasure. The present generation feels
+that the air in such old journals of fashion is heavy. In every work of
+art there is, in addition to what endures, a fine perfume that
+evaporates after a certain number of years, and is no longer perceptible
+to those who come afterwards. What is fresh and modern to-day looks
+to-morrow like the dried flowers which the botanist keeps in a
+herbarium. And those who draw the fashions of their age are specially
+liable to this swift decay. Thus many of Gavarni's lithographs have the
+effect of pallid pictures of a vanished world. But the generation of
+1830 honoured in him the same _charmeur_, the same master of enamoured
+grace, which that of 1730 had done in Watteau. He was sought after as an
+inventor of fashions, whom the tailor Humann, the Worth of the "July
+Monarchy," regarded as his rival. He was the discoverer of all the fairy
+costumes which formed the chief attraction at masquerades and theatres,
+the delicate _gourmet_ of the eternal feminine; and having dangled much
+after women, he knew how to render the wave of a petticoat, the
+seductive charm of a well-proportioned leg, and the coquettishness of a
+new _coiffure_ with the most familiar connoisseurship. He has been
+called the Balzac of draughtsmen. And the sentences at the bottom of his
+sketches, for which he is also responsible, are as audacious as the
+pictures themselves. Thus, when the young exquisite in the series "La
+Vie des Jeunes Hommes" stands with his companion before a skeleton in
+the anthropological museum, the little woman opines with a shudder,
+"When one thinks that this is a man, and that women love _that_"!
+
+[Illustration: _Quantin, Paris._
+
+ DAUMIER. MENELAUS THE VICTOR.]
+
+But that is only one side of the sphinx. He is only half known when one
+thinks only of the draughtsman of ladies' fashions who celebrated the
+free and easy graces of the _demi-monde_ and the wild licence of the
+carnival. At bottom Gavarni was not a frivolous butterfly, but an artist
+of a strangely sombre imagination, a profound and melancholy philosopher
+who had a prescience of all the mysteries of life. All the mighty
+problems which the century produced danced before his spirit like
+spectral notes of interrogation.
+
+The transition was made when, as an older man, he depicted the cold,
+sober wakening that follows the wild night. _Constantin Guys_ had
+already worked on these lines. He was an unfortunate and ailing man, who
+passed his existence, like Verlaine, in hospital, and died in an
+almshouse. Guys has not left much behind him, but in that little he
+shows himself the true forerunner of the moderns, and it is not a mere
+chance that Baudelaire, the ancestor of the _décadence_, established
+Guys' memory. These women who wander aimlessly about the streets with
+weary movements and heavy eyes deadened with absinthe, and who flit
+through the ball-room like bats, have nothing of the innocent charm of
+Monnier's grisettes. They are the uncanny harbingers of death, the
+demoniacal brides of Satan. Guys exercised on Gavarni an influence which
+brought into being his _Invalides du sentiment_, his _Lorettes
+vieilles_, and his _Fourberies de femmes_. "The pleasure of all
+creatures is mingled with bitterness." The frivolous worldling became a
+misanthrope from whom no secret of the foul city was hidden; a pessimist
+who had begun to recognise the human brute, the swamp-flower of
+over-civilisation, the "bitter fruit which is inwardly full of ashes,"
+in the queen of the drawing-room as in the prostitute of the gutter.
+Henceforth he only recognises a love whose pleasures are to be reckoned
+amongst the horrors of death. His works could be shown to no lady, and
+yet they are in no sense frivolous: they are terrible and puritanic.
+
+If Daumier by preference showed mastery in his men, Gavarni showed it in
+his women as no other has done. He is not the powerful draughtsman that
+Daumier is; he has not the feeling for large movement, but with what
+terrible directness he analyses faces! He has followed woman through all
+seasons of life and in every grade, from youth to decay, and from
+brilliant wealth to filthy misery, and he has written the story of the
+_lorette_ in monumental strophes: café chantant, villa in the Champs
+Elysées, equipage, grooms, Bois de Boulogne, procuress, garret, and
+radish-woman, that final incarnation which Victor Hugo called the
+sentence of judgment.
+
+[Illustration: GAVARNI.]
+
+And Gavarni went further on this road. His glance became sharper and
+sharper, and the seriousness of meditation subdued his merriment; he
+came to the study of his age with the relentless knife of a
+vivisectionist. Fate had taught him the meaning of the struggle for
+existence. A journal he had founded in the thirties overwhelmed him with
+debts. In 1835 he sat in the prison of Clichy, and from that time he
+meditated on the miserable, tattered creatures whom he saw around him,
+with other eyes. He studied the toiling masses, and roamed about in
+slums and wine-caves amongst pickpockets and bullies. And what Paris had
+not yet revealed to him, he learnt in 1849 in London. Even there he was
+not the first-comer. Géricault, who as early as 1821 dived into the
+misery of the vast city, and brought out a series of lithographs, showed
+him the way. Beggars cowering half dead with exhaustion at a baker's
+door, ragged pipers slouching round deserted quarters of the town, poor
+crippled women wheeled in barrows by hollow-eyed men past splendid
+mansions and surrounded by the throng of brilliant equipages--these are
+some of the scenes which he brought home with him from London. But
+Gavarni excels him in trenchant incisiveness. "What is to be seen in
+London gratis," runs the heading of a series of sketches in which he
+conjures up on paper, in such a terrible manner, the new horrors of this
+new period: the starvation, the want, and the measureless suffering that
+hides itself with chattering teeth in the dens of the great city. He
+went through Whitechapel from end to end, and studied its drunkenness
+and its vice. How much more forcible are his beggars than those of
+Callot! The grand series of "Thomas Vireloque" is a dance of death in
+life; and in it are stated all the problems which have since disturbed
+our epoch. By this work Gavarni has come down to us as a contemporary,
+and by it he has become a pioneer. The enigmatical figure of "Thomas
+Vireloque" starts up in these times, following step by step in the path
+of his prototype: he is the philosopher of the back streets, the ragged
+scoundrel with dynamite in his pocket, the incarnation of the _bête
+humaine_, of human misery and human vice. Here Gavarni stands far above
+Hogarth and far above Callot. The ideas on social politics of the first
+half of the century are concentrated in "Thomas Vireloque."
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ GAVARNI. THOMAS VIRELOQUE.]
+
+Of course the assumption of government by Napoleon III marked a new
+phase in French caricature. It became more mundane and more highly
+civilised. All the piquancy and brilliance, waywardness and corruption,
+looseness and amenity, mirth and affectation of this refined city life,
+which in those days threw its dazzling splendour over all Europe, found
+intelligent and subtle interpreters in the young generation of
+draughtsmen. The _Journal pour rire_ comes under consideration as the
+leading paper. It was founded in 1848, and in 1856 assumed the title of
+_Journal amusant_, under which it is known at the present day.
+
+[Illustration: _Hetzel, Paris._
+
+ GAVARNI. FOURBERIES DE FEMMES.
+
+ _Au premier Mosieu._--"Attendez-moi ce soir, de quatre à cinq heures,
+ quai de l'Horloge du Palais.--_Votre_ AUGUSTINE."
+
+ _Au deuxième Mosieu._--"Ce soir, quai des Lunettes, entre quatre et
+ cinq heures.--_Votre_ AUGUSTINE."
+
+ _Au troisième Mosieu._--"Quai des Morfondus, ce soir, de quatre heures
+ à cinq.--_Votre_ AUGUSTINE."
+
+ _À un quatrième Mosieu._--"Je t'attends ce soir, à quatre
+ heures.--_Ton_ AUGUSTINE."]
+
+_Gustave Doré_, to the lessening of his importance, moved on this ground
+only in his earliest period. He was barely sixteen and still at school
+in his native town Burg, in Alsace, when he made an agreement with
+Philippon, who engaged him for three years on the _Journal pour rire_.
+His first drawings date from 1844: "Les animaux socialistes," which were
+very suggestive of Grandville, and "Désagréments d'un voyage
+d'agrément"--something like the German _Herr und Frau Buchholz in der
+Schweiz_--which made a considerable sensation by their grotesque wit. In
+his series "Les différents publics de Paris" and "La Ménagerie
+Parisienne" he represented with an incisive pencil the opera, the
+_Théâtre des Italiens_, the circus, the _Odéon_ and the _Jardin des
+Plantes_. But since that time the laurels of historical painting have
+given him no rest. He turned away from his own age as well as from
+caricature, and made excursions into all zones and all periods. He
+visited the Inferno with Dante, lingered in Palestine with the
+patriarchs of the Old Testament, and ran through the world of wonders
+with Perrault. The facility of his invention was astonishing, and so too
+was the aptness with which he seized for illustration on the most vivid
+scenes from all authors. But he has too much Classicism to be
+captivating for very long. His compositions dazzle by an appearance of
+the grand style, but attain only an outward and scenical effect. His
+figures are academic variations of types originally established by the
+Greeks and the Cinquescentisti. He forced his talent when he soared into
+regions where he could not stand without the support of his
+predecessors. Even in his "Don Quixote" the figures lose in character
+the larger they become. Everything in Doré is calligraphic, judicious,
+without individuality, without movement and life, composed in accordance
+with known rules. There is a touch of Wiertz in him, both in his
+imagination and in his design, and his youthful works, such as the
+"Swiss Journey," in which he merely drew from observation without
+pretensions to style, will probably last the longest.
+
+In broad lithographs and charming woodcuts, _Cham_ has been the most
+exhaustive in writing up the diary of modern Parisian life during the
+period 1848-78. The celebrated caricaturist--he has been called the most
+brilliant man in France under Napoleon III--had worked in the studio of
+Delaroche at the same time as Jean François Millet. After 1842 he came
+forward as Cham (his proper name was Count Amadée de Noë) with drawings
+which soon made him the artist most in demand on the staff of the
+_Charivari_. Neither so profound nor so serious as Gavarni, he has a
+constant sparkle of vivacity, and is a draughtsman of wonderful _verve_.
+In his reviews of the month and of the year, everything which interested
+Paris in the provinces of invention and fashion, art and literature,
+science and the theatre, passes before us in turn: the omnibuses with
+their high imperials, table-turning and spirit-rapping, the opening of
+the _Grands Magasins du Louvre_, Madame Ristori, the completion of the
+Suez Canal, the first newspaper kiosks, New Year's Day in Paris, the
+invention of ironclads, the tunnelling of Mont Cenis, Gounod's _Faust_,
+Patti and Nilsson, the strike of the tailors and hat-makers, jockeys and
+racing. Everything that excited public attention had a close observer
+in Cham. His caricatures of the works of art in the Salon were full of
+spirit, and the International Exhibition of 1867 found in him its
+classic chronicler. Here all the mysterious Paris of the third Napoleon
+lives once more. Emperors and kings file past, the band of Strauss
+plays, gipsies are dancing, equipages roll by, and every one lives,
+loves, flirts, squanders money, and whirls round in a maëlstrom. But the
+end of the exhibition betokened the end of all that splendour. In Cham's
+plates which came next one feels that there is thunder in the air.
+Neither fashions nor theatres, neither women nor pleasure, could prevent
+politics from predominating more and more: the fall of Napoleon was
+drawing near.
+
+[Illustration: _Quantin, Paris._
+
+ GAVARNI. PHÈDRE AT THE THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS.]
+
+[Illustration: _Quantin, Paris._
+
+ GAVARNI. "CE QUI ME MANQUE À MOI? UNE 'TITE MÈRE COMME ÇA, QU'AURAIT
+ SOIN DE MON LINGE."]
+
+There was a greater division of labour amongst those who followed Cham,
+since one chose "little women" as a speciality, another the theatre,
+and another high-life. Assisted by photography, _Nadar_ turned again to
+portraiture, which had been neglected since Daumier, and enjoyed a great
+success with his series "Les Contemporains de Nadar." _Marcellin_ is the
+first who spread over his sketches from the world of fashions and the
+theatre all the _chic_ and fashionable glitter which lives in the novels
+of those years. He is the chronicler of the great world, of balls and
+_soirées_; he shows the opera and the _Théâtre des Italiens_, tells of
+hunting and racing, attends the drives in the Corso, and at the call of
+fashion promptly deserts the stones of Paris to look about him in
+châteaux and country-houses, seaside haunts in France, and the little
+watering-places of Germany, where the gaming-tables formed at that time
+the rendezvous of well-bred Paris. Baden-Baden, where all the lions of
+the day, the politicians and the artists and all the beauties of the
+Paris salons, met together in July, offered the draughtsman a specially
+wide field for studies of fashion and _chic_. Here began the series
+"Histoires des variations de la mode depuis le XVI siècle jusqu'à nos
+jours." In a place where all classes of society, the great world and the
+_demi-monde_, came into contact, Marcellin could not avoid the latter,
+but even when he verged on this province he always knew how to maintain
+a correct and distinguished bearing. He was peculiarly the draughtsman
+of "society," of that brilliant, pleasure-loving, tainted, and yet
+refined society of the Second Empire which turned Paris into a great
+ball-room.
+
+[Illustration: _Quantin, Paris._
+
+ GUYS. STUDY OF A WOMAN.]
+
+_Randon_ is as plebeian as Marcellin is aristocratic. His speciality is
+the stupid recruit who is marched through the streets with his "squad,"
+or the retired tradesman of small means, as Daudet has hit him off in M.
+Chèbe, the old gentleman seated on a bench in the Bois de Boulogne: "Let
+the little ones come to me with their nurses." His province includes
+everything that has nothing to do with _chic_. The whole life of the
+Parisian people, the horse-fairs, the races at Poissy, and all the more
+important occurrences by which the appearance of the city has been
+transformed, may be followed in his drawings. When he travelled he did
+not go to watering-places, but to the provinces, to Cherbourg and
+Toulon, or to the manufacturing towns of Belgium and England, where he
+observed life at the railway stations and the custom-house, at markets
+and in barracks, at seaports and upon the street. Goods that are being
+piled together, sacks that are being hoisted, ships being brought to
+anchor, storehouses, wharfs, and docks--everywhere there is as much life
+in his sketches as in a busy beehive. Nature is a great manufactory, and
+man a living machine. The world is like an ant-hill, the dwelling of
+curious insects furnished with teeth, feelers, indefatigable feet, and
+marvellous organs proper for digging, sawing, building, and all things
+possible, but furnished also with an incessant hunger.
+
+Soon afterwards there came _Hadol_, who made his début in 1855, with
+pictures of the fashions; _Stop_, who specially represented the
+provinces and Italy; _Draner_, who occupied himself with the Parisian
+ballet and designed charming military uniforms for little dancing girls.
+_Léonce Petit_ drew peasants and sketched the charms of the country in a
+simple, familiar fashion--the mortal tedium of little towns, poor
+villages, and primitive inns, the gossip of village beldames before the
+house-door, the pompous dignity of village magistrates or of the head of
+the fire brigade. He is specially noteworthy as a landscape artist. The
+trees on the straight, monotonous road rise softly and delicately into
+the air, and the sleepy sameness of tortuous village streets is
+pregnantly rendered by a few strokes of the pencil. The land is like a
+great kitchen garden. The fields and the arable ground with their dusty,
+meagre soil chant a mighty song of hard labour, of the earnest, toilsome
+existence of the peasant folk.
+
+[Illustration: _Journal Amusant._
+
+ GRÉVIN. NOS PARISIENNES.
+
+ "Tiens! ne me parle pas de lui, je ne peux pas le souffrir, même en
+ peinture!"
+
+ "Cependant, s'il t'offrait de t'epouser?"
+
+ "Ça, c'est autre chose."]
+
+_Andrieux_ and _Morland_ discovered the _femme entretenue_, though
+afterwards her best known delineator was _Grévin_, an able, original,
+facile, and piquant draughtsman, whom some--exaggerating beyond a
+doubt--called the direct successor of Gavarni. Grévin's women are a
+little monotonous, with their ringleted chignons, their expressionless
+eyes which try to look big, their perverse little noses, their defiant,
+pouting lips, and the cheap toilettes which they wear with so much
+_chic_. But they too have gone to their rest with the grisettes of
+Monnier and Gavarni, and have left the field to the women of Mars and
+Forain. In these days Grévin's work seems old-fashioned, since it is no
+longer modern and not yet historical; nevertheless it marks an epoch,
+like that of Gavarni. The _bals publics_, the _bals de l'Opéra_, those
+of the _Jardin Mabille_, the _Closerie des Lilas_, the races, the
+promenades in the _Bois de Vincennes_, the seaside resorts, all places
+where the _demi-monde_ pitched its tent in the time of Napoleon III,
+were also the home of the artist. "How they love in Paris" and "Winter
+in Paris" were his earliest series. His finest and greatest drawings,
+the scenes from the Parisian hotels and "The English in Paris," appeared
+in 1867, the year of the Exhibition. His later series, published as
+albums--"Les filles d'Ève," "Le monde amusant," "Fantaisies
+parisiennes," "Paris vicieux," "La Chaîne des Dames"--are a song of
+songs upon the refinements of life.
+
+It does not lie within the plan of this book to follow the history of
+drawing any further. Our intention was merely to show that painting had
+to follow the path trodden by Rowlandson and Cruikshank, Erhard and
+Richter, Daumier and Gavarni, if it was to be art of the nineteenth
+century, and not to remain for ever dependent on the old masters.
+Absolute beauty is not good food for art; to be strong it must be
+nourished on the ideas of the century. When the world had ceased to draw
+inspiration from the masterpieces of the past merely with the object of
+depicting by their aid scenes out of long-buried epochs, there was for
+the first time a prospect that mere discipleship would be overcome, and
+that a new and original painting would be developed through the fresh
+and independent study of nature. The passionate craving of the age had
+to be this: to feel at home on the earth, in this long-neglected world
+of reality, which hides the unsuspected treasure of vivid works of art.
+The rising sun is just as beautiful now as on the first day, the streams
+flow, the meadows grow green, the vibrating passions are at war now as
+in other times, the immortal heart of nature still beats beneath its
+rough covering, and its pulsation finds an echo in the heart of man. It
+was necessary to descend from ideals to existing fact, and the world had
+to be once more discovered by painters as in the days of the first
+Renaissance. The question was how by the aid of all the devices of
+colour to represent the multifarious forms of human activity: the phases
+and conditions of life, fashion as well as misery, work and pleasure,
+the drawing-room and the street, the teeming activity of towns and the
+quiet labour of peasants. The essential thing was to write the entire
+natural history of the age. And this way, the way from museums to
+nature, and from the past to the world of living men, was shown by the
+English to the French and German painters.
+
+[Illustration: _Mansell Photo._
+
+ ROMNEY. SERENA.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+ENGLISH PAINTING TO 1850
+
+
+"The English school has an advantage over others in being young: its
+tradition is barely a century old, and, unlike the Continental schools,
+it is not hampered by antiquated Greek and Latin theories. What
+fortunate conditions it has for breaking away into really modern work!
+whereas in other nations the weight of tradition presses hard on the
+boldest innovators. The English do not look back; on the contrary, they
+look into life around them." So wrote Burger-Thoré in one of his Salons
+in 1867.
+
+Yet England was not unaffected by the retrospective tendency on the
+Continent. Perhaps it might even be demonstrated that this movement had
+its earliest origin on British soil. England had its "Empire style" in
+architecture fifty years before there was any empire in France; it had
+its Classical painting when David worked at Cupids with Boucher, and it
+gave the world a Romanticist at the very time when the literature of the
+Continent became "Classical." _The Lady of the Lake_, _Marmion_, _The
+Lord of the Isles_, _The Fair Maid of Perth_, _Old Mortality_,
+_Ivanhoe_, _Quentin Durward_, who is there that does not know these
+names by heart? We have learnt history from Walter Scott, and that
+programme of the artistic crafts which Lorenz Gedon drew up in 1876,
+when he arranged the department _Works of our Fathers_ in the Munich
+Exhibition, had been carried out by Scott as early as 1816. For Scott
+laid out much of the money he received for his romances in building
+himself a castle in the style of the baronial strongholds of the Middle
+Ages: "Towers and turrets all imitated from a royal building in
+Scotland, windows and gables painted with the arms of the clans, with
+lions couchant," rooms "filled with high sideboards and carved chests,
+targes, plaids, Highland broadswords, halberts, and suits of armour, and
+adorned with antlers hung up as trophies." Here was a Makartesque studio
+very many years before Makart.
+
+Amongst the painters there were Classicists and Romanticists; but they
+were neither numerous nor of importance. What England produced in the
+way of "great art" in the beginning of last century could be erased from
+the complete chart of British painting without any essential gap being
+made in the course of its development. Reynolds had had to pay dear for
+approaching the Italians in his "Ugolino," his "Macbeth," and his "Young
+Hercules." And a yet more arid mannerism befell all the others who
+followed him on the way to Italy, among them _James Barry_, who, after
+studying for years in Italy, settled down in London in 1771, with the
+avowed intention of providing England with a classical form of art. He
+believed that he had surpassed his own models, the Italian classic
+painters, by six pompous representations of the "Culture and Progress of
+Human Knowledge," which he completed in 1783, in the theatre of the
+Society for the Encouragement of Arts. The many-sided _James Northcote_,
+equally mediocre in everything, survives rather by his biographies of
+Reynolds and Titian than by the great canvases which he painted for
+Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. That which became best known was "The
+Murder of the Children in the Tower." _Henry Fuseli_, who was also much
+occupied with authorship and as _preceptor Britanniæ_, always mentioned
+with great respect by his numerous pupils, produced a series of
+exceedingly thoughtful and imaginative works, to which he was incited by
+Klopstock and Lavater. By preference he illustrated Milton and
+Shakespeare, and amongst this series of pictures his painting of
+"Titania with the Ass," from Shakespeare's _Midsummer Night's Dream_, in
+the London National Gallery, is probably the best. His pupil _William
+Etty_ was saturated with the traditions of the Venetian school; he is
+the British Makart, and followed rather heavily and laboriously in the
+track of Titian, exploring the realms of nude beauty, and toiling to
+discover that secret of blooming colour which gleams from the female
+forms of the Venetians. The assiduous _Benjamin Robert Haydon_, a spirit
+ever seeking, striving, and reflecting, became, like Gros in France, a
+victim of the grand style. He would naturally have preferred to paint
+otherwise, and more simply. The National Gallery possesses a charming
+picture by him of a London street (for some years past on loan at
+Leicester), which represents a crowd watching a Punch and Judy show.
+But, like Gros, he held it a sin against the grand style to occupy
+himself with such matters. He thought it only permissible to paint
+sacred subjects or subjects from ancient history upon large spaces of
+canvas; and he sank ever deeper into his theories, reaching the
+profoundest abyss of abstract science when he made diligent anatomical
+studies of the muscles of a lion, in order to fashion the heroic frames
+of warriors on the same plan. His end, on 26th June 1846, was like that
+of the Frenchman. There was found beside his body a paper on which he
+had written: "God forgive me. Amen. Finis," with the quotation from
+Shakespeare's _Lear_: "Stretch me no longer on the rack of this rough
+world." All these masters are more interesting for their human qualities
+than for their works, which, with their extravagant colour, forced
+gestures, and follies of every description, contain no new thing worthy
+of further development. Even when they sought to make direct copies from
+Continental performances, they did not attain the graceful sweep of
+their models. The refinements which they imitated became clumsy and
+awkward in their hands, and they remained half _bourgeois_ and half
+barbaric.
+
+The liberating influence of English art was not found in the province of
+the great painting, and it is probably not without significance that the
+few who tried to import it came to grief in the experiment. There can be
+no doubt that such art goes more against the grain of the English
+nature than of any other. Even in the days of scholastic philosophy the
+English asserted the doctrine that there are only individuals in nature.
+In the beginning of modern times a new era, grounded on the observation
+of nature, was promulgated from England. Bacon had little to say about
+beauty: he writes against the proportions and the principle of selection
+in art, and therefore against the ideal. Handsome men, he says, have
+seldom possessed great qualities. And in the same way the English stage
+had just as little bent for the august and rhythmical grandeur of
+classical literature. When he stabbed Polonius, Garrick never dreamed of
+moving according to the taste of Boileau, and was probably as different
+from the Greek leader of a chorus as Hogarth from David. The peculiar
+merits of English literature and science have been rooted from the time
+of their first existence in their capacity for observation. This
+explains the contempt for regularity in Shakespeare, the feeling for
+concrete fact in Bacon. English philosophy is positive, exact,
+utilitarian, and highly moral. Hobbes and Locke, John Stuart Mill and
+Buckle, in England take the place of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and
+Kant upon the Continent. Amongst English historians Carlyle is the only
+poet: all the rest are learned prose-writers who collect observations,
+combine experiences, arrange dates, weigh possibilities, reconcile
+facts, discover laws, and hoard and increase positive knowledge. The
+eighteenth century had seen the rise of the novel as the picture of
+contemporary life; in Hogarth this national spirit was first turned to
+account in painting. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, again,
+the good qualities of English art consisted not in bold ideality, but in
+sharpness of observation, sobriety, and flexibility of spirit.
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE ROMNEY.]
+
+Their proper domain was still to be found in portraiture, and if none of
+the new portrait painters can be compared with the great ancestors of
+English art, they are none the less superior to all their contemporaries
+on the Continent. _George Romney_, who belongs rather to the eighteenth
+century, holds the mean course between the refined classic art of Sir
+Joshua and the imaginative poetic art of Thomas Gainsborough. Less
+personal and less profound in characterisation, he was, on the other
+hand, the most dexterous painter of drapery in his age: a man who knew
+all the secrets of the trade, and possessed, at the same time, that art
+which is so much valued in portrait painters--the art of beautifying his
+models without making his picture unlike the original. Professional
+beauties beheld themselves presented in their counterfeit precisely as
+they wished to appear, and accorded him, therefore, a fervent adoration.
+And after his return from Italy in 1775 his fame was so widespread that
+it outstripped Gainsborough's and equalled that of Reynolds. Court
+beauties and celebrated actresses left no stone unturned to have their
+portraits introduced into one of his "compositions"; for Romney eagerly
+followed the fashion of allegorical portraiture which had been set by
+Reynolds, representing persons with the emblem of a god or of one of the
+muses. Romney has painted the famous Lady Hamilton, to say nothing of
+others, as Magdalen, Joan of Arc, a Bacchante, and an Odalisque.
+
+[Illustration: _Mag. of Art._
+
+ ROMNEY. LADY HAMILTON AS EUPHROSYNE.]
+
+Great as his reputation had been at the close of the eighteenth century,
+it was outshone twenty years later by that of _Sir Thomas Lawrence_.
+Born in Bristol in 1769, Lawrence had scarcely given up the calling of
+an actor before he saw all England in raptures over his genius as a
+painter. The catalogue of his portraits is a complete list of all who
+were at the time pre-eminent for talent or beauty. He received fabulous
+sums, which he spent with the grace of a man of the world. In 1815 he
+was commissioned to paint for the Windsor Gallery the portraits of all
+the "Victors of Waterloo," from the Duke of Wellington to the Emperor
+Alexander. The Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle gave him an opportunity for
+getting the portraits of representatives of the various Courts. All the
+capitals of Europe, which he visited for this purpose, received him with
+princely honours. He was member of all the Academies under the sun, and
+President of that in London; but, as a natural reaction, this
+over-estimation of earlier years has been followed by an equally
+undeserved undervaluation of his works in these days. Beneath the
+fashionable exterior of his ceremonial pictures naturalness and
+simplicity are often wanting, and so too are the deeper powers of
+characterisation, firm drawing, and real vitality. A feminine coquetry
+has taken the place of character. His drawing has a banal effect, and
+his colouring is monotonous in comparison with that realism which
+Reynolds shares with the old masters. It is easy to confound the
+majority of his pictures of ceremonies with those of Winterhalter, and
+his smaller portraits with pretty fashion plates; yet one cannot but
+admire his ease of execution and nobility of composition. Several of his
+pictures of women, in particular, are touched by an easy grace and a
+fine charm of poetic sensuousness in which he approaches Gainsborough.
+Not many at that time could have painted such pretty children's heads,
+or given young women such an attractive and familiar air of life. With
+what a girlish glance of innocence and melancholy does Mrs. Siddons look
+out upon the world from the canvas of Lawrence: how piquant is her white
+Greek garment, with its black girdle and the white turban. And what
+subtle delicacy there is in the portrait of Miss Farren as she flits
+with muff and fur-trimmed cloak through a bright green summer landscape.
+The reputation of Lawrence will rise once more when his empty formal
+pieces have found their way into lumber-rooms, and a greater number of
+his pictures of women--pictures so full of indescribable fascination, so
+redolent of mysterious charm--are accessible to the public.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ LAWRENCE. MRS. SIDDONS.]
+
+As minor stars, the soft and tender _John Hoppner_, the attractively
+superficial _William Beechey_, the celebrated pastellist _John Russell_,
+and the vigorously energetic _John Jackson_ had their share with him in
+public favour, whilst _Henry Raeburn_ shone in Scotland as a star of the
+first magnitude.
+
+He was a born painter. Wilkie says in one of his letters from Madrid,
+that the pictures of Velasquez put him in mind of Raeburn; and certain
+works of the Scot, such as the portrait of Lord Newton, the famous _bon
+vivant_ and doughty drinker, are indeed performances of such power that
+comparison with this mighty name is no profanation. At a time when there
+was a danger that portrait painting would sink in the hands of Lawrence
+into an insipid painting of prettiness, Raeburn stood alone by the
+simplicity and naturalistic impressiveness of his portraiture. The three
+hundred and twenty-five portraits by him which were exhibited in the
+Royal Scottish Academy in 1876, gave as exhaustive a picture of the life
+of Edinburgh at the close of the century as those of Sir Joshua gave of
+the life of London. All the celebrated Scotchmen of his time--Robertson,
+Hume, Ferguson, and Scott--were painted by him. Altogether he painted
+over six hundred portraits; and, small though the number may seem
+compared with the two thousand of Reynolds, Raeburn's artistic qualities
+are almost the greater. The secret of his success lies in his vigorous
+healthiness, in the indescribable _furia_ of his brush, in the harmony
+and truth of his colour-values. His figures are informed by a startling
+intensity of life. His old pensioners, and his sailors in particular,
+have something kingly in the grand air of their calm and noble
+countenances. Armstrong has given him a place between Frans Hals and
+Velasquez, and occasionally his conception of colour even recalls the
+modern Frenchmen, as it were Manet in his Hals period. He paints his
+models, just as they come into contact with him in life, in the frank
+light of day and without any attempt at the dusk of the old masters; of
+raiment he gives only as much as the comprehension of the picture
+demands, and depicts character in large and simple traits.
+
+[Illustration: LAWRENCE. PRINCESS AMELIA.]
+
+The importance of West and Copley, two Americans who were active in
+England, is that they were the first to apply the qualities acquired in
+English portrait painting to pictures on a large scale.
+
+_Benjamin West_ has undoubtedly been over-praised by his contemporaries,
+and by a critic of the present day he has, not unfairly, been designated
+"the king of mediocrity." At his appearance he was interesting to
+Europeans merely as an anthropological curiosity,--as the first son of
+barbaric America who had used a paint brush. A thoroughly American puff
+preceded his entry into the Eternal City in 1760. It was reported that
+as the son of a quaker farmer he had grown up amongst his father's
+slaves in the immediate neighbourhood of the Indians, and had painted
+good portraits in Philadelphia and New York without having ever seen a
+work of art. People were delighted when, on being brought into the
+Vatican, he clapped his hands and compared the Apollo Belvidere to an
+Indian chief. In the art of making himself interesting "the young
+savage" was ahead of all his patrons; and as he followed the ruling
+classical tendency with great aptitude, within the course of a year he
+was made an honorary member of the Academies of Parma, Bologna, and
+Florence, and praised by the critics of Rome as ranking with Mengs as
+the first painter of his day. In 1763, at a time when Hogarth and
+Reynolds, Wilson and Gainsborough, were in the fulness of their powers,
+he went to London; and as people are always inclined to value most
+highly what they do not possess, he soon won an important position for
+himself, even beside these masters. Hogarth produced nothing but
+"_genre_ pictures," Wilson only landscapes, and Reynolds and
+Gainsborough portraits: West brought to the English what they did not as
+yet possess--a "great art."
+
+[Illustration: LAWRENCE. THE ENGLISH MOTHER.]
+
+His first picture--in the London National Gallery--"Pylades and Orestes
+brought as Hostages before Iphigenia," is a tiresome product of that
+Classicism which upon the Continent found its principal representatives
+in Mengs and David: it is stiff in drawing, its composition is
+suggestive of a bas-relief, and its cold grey colouring is classically
+academic. His other pictures from antique and sacred history stand much
+on the same level as those of Wilhelm Kaulbach, with whose works they
+share their stilted dignity, their systematically antiquarian structure,
+and their mechanical combination of forms borrowed in a spiritless
+fashion from the Cinquecentisti.
+
+Fortunately West has left behind him something different from these
+ambitious attempts; for on the occasions when he turned away from the
+great style he created works of lasting importance. This is specially
+true of some fine historical pictures dealing with his own age, which
+will preserve his name for ever. "The Death of General Wolfe" at the
+storming of Quebec on 13th September 1759--exhibited at the opening of
+the Royal Academy in 1768--is by its very sobriety a sincere, honest,
+and sane piece of work, which will maintain its value as an historical
+document. It was just at this time that so great a part was played by
+the question of costume, and West encountered the same difficulties
+which Gottfried Schadow was obliged to face when he represented Ziethen
+and the Old Dessauer in the costume of their age. The connoisseurs held
+that such a sublime theme would only admit of antique dress. If West in
+their despite represented the general and his soldiers in their
+regulation uniform, it seems at the present time no more than the result
+of healthy common sense, but at that time it was an artistic event of
+great importance, and one which was only accomplished in France after
+the work of several decades. In that country Gérard and Girodet still
+clung to the belief that they could only raise the military picture to
+the level of the great style by giving the soldiers of the Empire the
+appearance of Greek and Roman statues. Gros is honoured as the man who
+first ceased from giving modern soldiers an air of the antique. But the
+American Englishman had anticipated him by forty years. As in
+Géricault's "Raft of the Medusa," it was only the pyramidal composition
+in West's picture that betrayed the painter's alliance with the
+Classical school; in other respects it forecast the realistic programme
+for decades to come, and indicated the course of development which leads
+through Gros onwards. If in Gros men are treated purely as accessories
+to throw a hero into relief, in West they stand out in action. They
+behave in the picture spontaneously as they do in life. That is to say,
+there is in West's work of 1768 the element through which Horace
+Vernet's pictures of 1830 are to be distinguished from those of Gros.
+
+This realistic programme was carried out with yet greater consistency by
+West's younger compatriot _John Singleton Copley_, who after a short
+sojourn in Italy migrated to England in 1775. His chief works in the
+London National Gallery depict in the same way events from contemporary
+history--"The Death of the Earl of Chatham, 7th April 1778" and "The
+Death of Major Pierson, 6th January 1781,"--and it is by no means
+impossible that when David, in the midst of the classicising tendencies
+of his age, ventured to paint "The Death of Marat" and "The Death of
+Lepelletier," he was led to do so by engravings after Copley. In the
+representation of such things other painters of the epoch had draped
+their figures in antique costume, called genii and river-gods into
+action, and given a Roman character to the whole. Copley, like West,
+offers a plain, matter-of-fact representation of the event, without any
+rhetorical pathos. And what raises him above West is his liquid, massive
+colour, suggestive of the old masters. In none of his works could West
+set himself free from the dead grey colour of the Classical school,
+whereas Copley's "Death of William Pitt" is the result of intimate
+studies of Titian and the Dutch. The way the light falls on the perukes
+of the men and the brown, wainscoted walls puts one in mind of
+Rembrandt's "Anatomical Lecture"; only, instead of a pathetic scene from
+the theatre, we have a collection of good portraits in the manner of the
+Dutch studies of shooting matches.
+
+[Illustration: _Mansell Photo_
+
+ LAWRENCE. CAROLINE OF BRUNSWICK, QUEEN OF GEORGE IV.]
+
+[Illustration: LAWRENCE. THE COUNTESS GOWER.]
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ RAEBURN. SIR WALTER SCOTT.]
+
+That this unhackneyed conception of daily life has its special home in
+England is further demonstrated by the work of _Daniel Maclise_, who
+depicted "The Meeting of Wellington and Blücher," "The Death of Nelson,"
+and other patriotic themes upon walls and canvases several yards square,
+with appalling energy, promptitude, and expenditure of muscle. By these
+he certainly did better service to national pride than to art.
+Nevertheless, with their forcible, healthy realism they contrast
+favourably with the mythological subjects so universally produced on the
+Continent at that time.
+
+Beside the portrait painters of men stand the portrait painters of
+animals. Since the days of Elias Riedinger animal painting had fallen
+into general disesteem on the Continent. Thorwaldsen, the first of the
+Classicists who allowed animals to appear in his works (as he did in his
+Alexander frieze), dispensed with any independent studies of nature, and
+contented himself with imitating the formal models on the frieze of the
+Parthenon; or, in lack of a Grecian exemplar, simply drew out of the
+depths of his inner consciousness. Especially remarkable is the sovran
+contempt with which he treated the most familiar domestic creatures.
+German historical painting knew still less what to make of the brute
+creation, because it only recognised beauty in the profundity of ideas,
+and ideas have nothing to do with beasts. Its four-footed creatures have
+a philosophic depth of contemplation, and are bad studies after nature.
+Kaulbach's "Reinecke" and the inclination to transplant human
+sentiments into the world of brutes delayed until the sixties any
+devoted study of the animal soul. France, too, before the days of
+Troyon, had nothing to show worth mentioning. But in England, the land
+of sport, animal painting was evolved directly from the old painting of
+the chase, without being seduced from its proper course. Fox-hunting has
+been popular in England since the time of Charles I. Racing came into
+fashion not long after, and with racing came that knowledge of
+horseflesh which has been developed in England further than elsewhere.
+Since the seventeenth century red deer have been preserved in the
+English parks. It is therefore comprehensible that English art was early
+occupied with these animals, and since it was sportsmen who cared most
+about them, the painter was at first their servant. He had not so much
+to paint pictures as reminiscences of sport and the chase. His first
+consideration in painting a horse was to paint a fine horse; as to its
+being a fine picture, that was quite a secondary matter. _John Wootton_
+and _George Stubbs_ were in this sense portrayers of racehorses. The
+latter, however, took occasion to emancipate himself from his patrons by
+representing the noble animal, not standing at rest by his manger, or
+with a groom on his back and delighting in the consciousness of his own
+beauty, but as he was in action and amongst pictorial surroundings.
+
+[Illustration: WEST. THE DEATH OF NELSON.]
+
+[Illustration: _Mansell Photo_
+
+ MACLISE. THE WATERFALL, CORNWALL.]
+
+[Illustration: COPLEY. THE DEATH OF THE EARL OF CHATHAM.]
+
+[Illustration: MACLISE. NOAH'S SACRIFICE.]
+
+Soon afterwards _George Morland_ made his appearance. He made a
+specialty of old nags, and was perhaps the most important master of the
+brush that the English school produced at all. His pictures have the
+same magic as the landscapes of Gainsborough. He painted life on the
+high-road and in front of village inns--scenes like those which Isaac
+Ostade had represented a century before: old horses being led to water
+amid the sunny landscape of the downs, market carts rumbling heavily
+through the rough and sunken lanes, packhorses coming back to their
+stalls of an evening tired out with the day's exertions, riders pulling
+up at the village inn or chatting with the pretty landlady. And he has
+done these things with the delicacy of an old Dutch painter. It is
+impossible to say whether Morland had ever seen the pictures of Adriaen
+Brouwer; but this greatest master of technique amongst the Flemings can
+alone be compared with Morland in verve and artistic many-sidedness; and
+Morland resembled him also in his adventurous life and his early death.
+To the spirit and dash of Brouwer he joins the refinement of
+Gainsborough in his landscapes, and Rowlandson's delicate feeling for
+feminine beauty in his figures. He does not paint fine ladies, but women
+in their everyday clothes, and yet they are surrounded by a grace
+recalling Chardin: young mothers going to see their children who are
+with the nurse, smart little tavern hostesses in their white aprons and
+coquettish caps busily serving riders with drink, and charming city
+madams in gay summer garb sitting of a Sunday afternoon with their
+children at a tea-garden. Over the works of Morland there lies all the
+chivalrous grace of the time of Werther, and that fine Anglo-Saxon aroma
+exhaled by the works of English painters of the present day. Genuine as
+is the fame which he enjoys as an animal painter, it is these little
+social scenes which show his finest side; and only coloured engraving,
+which was brought to such a high pitch in the England of those days, is
+able to give an idea of the delicacy of hue in the originals.
+
+[Illustration: MACLISE. MALVOLIO AND THE COUNTESS.]
+
+[Illustration: _Mansell & Co._
+
+ MORLAND. HORSES IN A STABLE.]
+
+Morland's brother-in-law, the painter and engraver _James Ward_, born in
+1769 and dying in 1859, united this old English school with the modern.
+The portrait which accompanies the obituary notice in the _Art Journal_
+is that of a very aged gentleman, with a grey beard and thick, white,
+bristly hair. The pictures which he painted when he had this
+appearance--and they are the most familiar--were exceedingly weak and
+insipid works. In comparison with Morland's broad, liquid, and
+harmonious painting, that of Ward seems burnished, sparkling, flaunting,
+anecdotic, and petty. But James Ward was not always old James Ward. In
+his early days he was one of the greatest and manliest artists of the
+English school, with whom only Briton Rivière can be compared amongst
+the moderns. When his "Lioness" appeared in the Royal Academy Exhibition
+of 1816 he was justly hailed as the best animal painter after Snyders,
+and from that time one masterpiece followed another for ten long years.
+What grace and power there are in his horses and dogs! In pictures of
+this sort Stubbs was graceful and delicate; Ward painted the same horse
+in as sporting a manner and with the same knowledge, but with an
+artistic power such as no one had before him. His field of work was
+wide-reaching. He painted little girls with the thoroughly English
+feeling of Morland, and had the whole animal world for his domain.
+Lions, snakes, cats, pigs, oxen, cows, sheep, swans, fowls, frogs are
+the characters in his pictures. And characters they were, for he never
+humanised the looks of his four-footed models, as others did later. The
+home of his animals is not the drawing-room, but the woods and meadows,
+the air and the gardens. His broad, weighty manner was transformed first
+into extravagant virtuosity and then into pettiness of style during the
+last thirty years of his life, when he became senile. His reputation
+paled more than he deserved before the star of the world-famous
+Landseer.
+
+[Illustration: MORLAND. THE CORN BIN.]
+
+The most popular animal painter, not merely of England but of the whole
+century, was _Edwin Landseer_. For fifty years his works formed the
+chief features of attraction in the Royal Academy. Engravings from him
+had such a circulation in the country that in the sixties there was
+scarcely a house in which there did not hang one of his horses or dogs
+or stags. Even the Continent was flooded with engravings of his
+pictures, and Landseer suffered greatly from this popularity. He is
+much better than the reproductions with their fatal gloss allow any one
+to suppose, and his pictures can be judged by them just as little as can
+Raphael's "School of Athens" from Jacobi's engraving.
+
+[Illustration: _Portfolio._
+
+ MORLAND. GOING TO THE FAIR.]
+
+Edwin Landseer came of a family of artists. His father, who was an
+engraver, sent him out into the free world of nature as a boy, and made
+him sketch donkeys and goats and sheep. When he was fourteen he went to
+Haydon, the prophet on matters of art; and, on the advice of this
+singular being, studied the sculptures of the Parthenon. He "anatomised
+animals under my eyes," writes Haydon, "copied my anatomical drawings,
+and applied my principles of instruction to animal painting. His genius,
+directed in this fashion, has, as a matter of fact, arrived at
+satisfactory results." Landseer was the spoilt child of fortune. There
+is no other English painter who can boast of having been made a member
+of the Royal Academy at twenty-four. In high favour at Court, honoured
+by the fashionable world, and tenderly treated by criticism, he went on
+his way triumphant. The region over which he held sway was narrow, but
+he stood out in it as in life, powerful and commanding. The exhibition
+of his pictures which took place after his death in 1873 contained three
+hundred and fourteen oil paintings and one hundred and forty-six
+sketches. The property which he left amounted to £160,000; and a further
+sum of £55,000 was realised by the sale of his unsold pictures. Even
+Meissonier, the best paid painter of the century, did not leave behind
+him five and a half million francs.
+
+One reason of Landseer's artistic success is perhaps due to that in him
+which was inartistic--to his effort to make animals more beautiful than
+they really are, and to make them the medium for expressing human
+sentiment. All the dogs and horses and stags which he painted after
+1855, and through which he was made specially familiar to the great
+public, are arrayed in their Sunday clothes, their glossiest hide and
+their most magnificent horns. And in addition to this he "Darwinises"
+them: that is to say, he tries to make his animals more than animals; he
+lends a human sentimental trait to animal character; and that is what
+distinguishes him to his disadvantage from really great animal painters
+like Potter, Snyders, Troyon, Jadin, and Rosa Bonheur. He paints the
+human temperament beneath the animal mask. His stags have expressive
+countenances, and his dogs appear to be gifted with reason and even
+speech. At one moment there is a philosophic dignity in their behaviour,
+and at another a frivolity in their pleasures. Landseer discovered the
+sentimentality of dogs, and treated them as capable of culture. His
+celebrated picture "Jack in Office" is almost insulting in its
+characterisation: there they are, Jack the sentry, an old female dog
+like a poor gentlewoman, another dog like a professional beggar, and so
+on. And this habit of bringing animals on the stage, as if they were the
+actors of tragical, melodramatic, or farcical scenes, made him a
+peculiar favourite with the great mass of people. Nor were his
+picture-stories merely easy to read and understand; the characteristic
+titles he invented for each of them--"Alexander and Diogenes," "A
+Distinguished Member of the Humane Society," and the like--excited
+curiosity as much as the most carefully selected name of a novel. But
+this search after points and sentimental anecdotes only came into
+prominence in his last period, when his technique had degenerated and
+given way to a shiny polish and a forced elegance which obliged him to
+provide extraneous attractions. His popularity would not be so great,
+but his artistic importance would be quite the same, if these last
+pictures did not exist at all.
+
+[Illustration: MORLAND. THE RETURN FROM MARKET.]
+
+But the middle period of Landseer, ranging from 1840 to 1850, contains
+masterpieces which set him by the side of the best animal painters of
+all times and nations. The well-known portrait of a Newfoundland dog of
+1838; that of the Prince Consort's favourite greyhound of 1841; "The
+Otter Speared" of 1844, with its panting and yelping pack brought to a
+standstill beneath a high wall of rock; the dead doe which a fawn is
+unsuspectingly approaching, in "A Random Shot," 1848; "The Lost Sheep"
+of 1850, that wanders frightened and bleating through a wide and lonely
+landscape covered with snow,--these and many other pictures, in their
+animation and simple naturalness, are precious examples of the fresh and
+delicate observation peculiar to him at that time. Landseer's portrait
+reveals to us a robust and serious man, with a weather-beaten face, a
+short white beard, and a snub bulldog nose. Standing six feet high, and
+having the great heavy figure of a Teuton stepping out of his aboriginal
+forest, he was indeed much more like a country gentleman than a London
+artist. He was a sportsman who wandered about all day long in the air
+with a gun on his arm, and he painted his animal pictures with all the
+love and joy of a child of nature. That accounts for their strength,
+their convincing power, and their vivid force. It is as if he had become
+possessed of a magic cap with which he could draw close to animals
+without being observed, and surprise their nature and their inmost life.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ LANDSEER. A DISTINGUISHED MEMBER OF THE HUMANE SOCIETY.]
+
+Landseer's subject-matter and conception of life are indicated by the
+pictures which have been named. Old masters like Snyders and Rubens had
+represented the contrast between man and beast in their boar and lion
+hunts. It was not wild nature that Landseer depicted, but nature tamed.
+Rubens, Snyders, and Delacroix displayed their horses, dogs, lions, and
+tigers in bold action, or in the flame of passion. But Landseer
+generally introduced his animals in quiet situations--harmless and
+without fear--in the course of their ordinary life.
+
+[Illustration: _Mag. of Art._
+
+ LANDSEER. THE LAST MOURNER AT THE SHEPHERD'S GRAVE.]
+
+Horses, which Leonardo, Rubens, Velasquez, Wouwerman, and the earlier
+English artists delighted to render, he painted but seldom, and when he
+painted them it was with a less penetrating comprehension. But lions,
+which had been represented in savage passion or in quiet dignity by
+artists from Rubens to Decamps, were for him also a subject of long and
+exhaustive studies, which had their results in the four colossal lions
+round the base of the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square. Here the
+Englishman makes a great advance on Thorwaldsen, who designed the model
+for the monument in Lucerne without ever having seen a lion. Landseer's
+brutes, both as they are painted and as they are cast in bronze, are
+genuine lions, cruel and catlike, although in savageness and bold
+passion they are not to be compared with those of Delacroix, nor with
+those of his elder compatriot, James Ward. On the other hand, stags and
+roes were really first introduced into painting by Landseer. Those of
+Robert Hills, who had previously been reckoned the best painter of
+stags, are timid, suspicious creatures, while Landseer's are the true
+kings of the forest, the shooting of which ought to be punished as an
+act of assassination. His principal field of study was the Highlands.
+Here he painted these proud creatures fighting on the mountain slopes,
+swimming the lake, or as they stand at a gaze in their quiet beauty.
+With what a bold spirit they raise their heads to snuff the mountain
+air, whilst their antlers show their delight in battle and the joy of
+victory. And how gentle and timid is the noble, defenceless roe in
+Landseer's pictures.
+
+[Illustration: LANDSEER. HIGH LIFE.]
+
+He had also a delight in painting sheep lost in a snow-storm. But dogs
+were his peculiar specialty. Landseer discovered the dog. That of
+Snyders was a treacherous, snarling cur; that of Bewick a robber and a
+thief. Landseer has made the dog the companion of man, an adjunct of
+human society, the generous friend and true comrade who is the last
+mourner at the shepherd's grave. Landseer first studied his noble
+countenance and his thoughtful eyes, and in doing so he opened a new
+province to art, in which Briton Rivière went further at a later period.
+
+But yet another and still wider province was opened to continental
+nations by the art of England. In an epoch of archæological
+resuscitations and romantic regrets for the past, it brought French and
+German painters to a consciousness that the man of the nineteenth
+century in his daily life might be a perfectly legitimate subject for
+art. Engravings after the best pictures of Wilkie hang round the walls
+of Louis Knaus's reception-room in Berlin. And that in itself betrays to
+us a fragment of the history of art. The painters who saw the English
+people with the eyes of Walter Scott, Fielding, Goldsmith, and Dickens
+were a generation in advance of those who depicted the German people in
+the spirit of Immermann, Auerbach, Gustav Freytag, and Fritz Reuter. The
+English advanced quietly on the road trodden by Hogarth in the
+eighteenth century, whilst upon the Continent the nineteenth century had
+almost completed half its course before art left anything which will
+allow future generations to see the men of the period as they really
+were. Since the days of Fielding and Goldsmith the novel of manners had
+been continually growing. Burns, the poet of the plough, and
+Wordsworth, the singer of rustic folk, had given a vogue to that poetry
+of peasant life and those village tales which have since gone the round
+of all Europe. England began at that time to become the richest country
+in the world, and great fortunes were made. Painters were thus obliged
+to provide for the needs of a new and wealthy middle class. This fact
+gives us the explanation both of the merits and the faults which are
+characteristic of English _genre_ painting.
+
+[Illustration: LANDSEER. LOW LIFE.]
+
+In the first quarter of the nineteenth century _David Wilkie_, the
+English Knaus, was the chief _genre_ painter of the world. Born in 1785
+in the small Scotch village of Cults, where his father was the
+clergyman, he passed a happy childhood, and possibly had to thank his
+youthful impressions for the consistent cheerfulness, the good-humour
+and kindliness that smile out of his pictures, and make such a contrast
+with Hogarth's biting acerbity. At fourteen he entered the Edinburgh
+School of Art, where he worked for four years under the historical
+painter John Graham. Having returned to Cults, he painted his
+landscapes. A fair which he saw in the neighbouring village gave the
+impulse for his earliest picture of country life, "Pitlessie Fair." He
+sold it for five and twenty pounds, and determined in 1805 to try his
+luck with this sum in London. In the very next year his "Village
+Politicians" excited attention in the exhibition. From that time he was
+a popular artist. Every one of his numerous pictures--"The Blind
+Fiddler," "The Card Players," "The Rent Day," "The Cut Finger," "The
+Village Festival"--called forth a storm of applause. After a short
+residence in Paris, where the Louvre gave him a more intimate knowledge
+of the Dutch, came his masterpieces, "Blind-Man's Buff," "Distraining
+for Rent," "Reading the Will," "The Rabbit on the Wall," "The Penny
+Wedding," "The Chelsea Pensioners," and so forth. Even later, after he
+had become an Academician, he kept to plain and simple themes, in spite
+of the reproaches of his colleagues, who thought that art was vulgarised
+by the treatment of subjects that contained so little dignity. It was
+only at the end of his life that he became untrue to himself. His
+reverence for Teniers and Ostade was not sufficient to outweigh the
+impression made on him during a tour taken in 1825 through Italy, Spain,
+Holland, and Germany, by the artistic treasures of the Continent, and
+especially Murillo and Velasquez. He said he had long lived in darkness,
+but from that time forth could say with the great Correggio: "_Anch' io
+sono pittore._" He renounced all that he had painted before which had
+made him famous, and showed himself to be one of the many great artists
+of those years who had no individuality, or ventured to have none. He
+would have been the Burns of painting had he remained as he was. And
+thus he offered further evidence that the museums and the Muses are
+contradictory conceptions; since the modern painter always runs the risk
+of falling helplessly from one influence into another, where he is bent
+on combining the historical student of art with the artist. Of the
+pictures that he exhibited after his return in 1829, two dealt with
+Italian and three with Spanish subjects. The critics were loud in
+praise; he had added a fresh branch of laurel to his crown. Yet,
+historically considered, he would stand on a higher pedestal if he had
+never seen more than a dozen good pictures of Teniers, Ostade, Metsu,
+Jan Steen, and Brouwer. Now he began to copy his travelling sketches in
+a spiritless fashion; he only represented _pifferari_, smugglers, and
+monks, who, devoid of all originality, might have been painted by one of
+the Düsseldorfers. Even "John Knox Preaching," which is probably the
+best picture of his last period, is no exception.
+
+"He seemed to me," writes Delacroix, who saw him in Paris after his
+return from Spain,--"he seemed to me to have been carried utterly out of
+his depth by the pictures he had seen. How is it that a man of his age
+can be so influenced by works which are radically opposed to his own?
+However, he died soon after, and, as I have been told, in a very
+melancholy state of mind." Death overtook him in 1841, on board the
+steamer _Oriental_, just as he was returning from a tour in Turkey. At
+half-past eight in the evening the vessel was brought to, and as the
+lights of the beacon mingled with those of the stars the waters passed
+over the corpse of David Wilkie.
+
+[Illustration: _Mansell Photo_
+
+ LANDSEER. JACK IN OFFICE.]
+
+[Illustration: WILKIE. BLIND-MAN'S BUFF.]
+
+In judging his position in the history of art, only those works come
+into consideration which he executed before that journey of 1825. Then
+he drew as a labour of love the familiar scenes of the household hearth,
+the little dramas, the comic or touching episodes that take place in the
+village, the festivals, the dancing, and the sports of the country-folk,
+and their meeting in the ale-house. At this time, when as a young
+painter he merely expressed himself and was ignorant of the efforts of
+continental painting, he was an artist of individuality. In the village
+he became a great man, and here his fame was decided; he painted
+rustics. Even when he first saw the old masters in the National Gallery
+their immediate effect on him was merely to influence his technique. And
+by their aid Wilkie gradually became an admirable master of technical
+detail. His first picture, "Pitlessie Fair," in its hardness of colour
+recalled a Dutch painter of the type of Jan Molenaer; but from that time
+his course was one of constant progress. In "The Village Politicians"
+the influence of Teniers first made itself felt, and it prevailed until
+1816. In this year, when he painted the pretty sketch for "Blind-Man's
+Buff," a warm gold hue took the place of the cool silver tone; and
+instead of Teniers, Ostade became his model. The works in his Ostade
+manner are rich in colour and deep and clear in tone. Finally, it was
+Rembrandt's turn to become his guiding-star, and "The Parish Beadle," in
+the National Gallery--a scene of arrest of the year 1822--clearly shows
+with what brilliant success he tried his luck with Rembrandt's dewy
+_chiaroscuro_. It was only in his last period that he lost all these
+technical qualities. His "Knox" of 1832 is hard and cold and
+inharmonious in colour.
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._
+
+ WILKIE. A GUERILLA COUNCIL OF WAR IN A SPANISH POSADA.]
+
+So long as he kept from historical painting, art meant for him the same
+thing as the portrayal of domestic life. Painting, he said, had no other
+aim than to reproduce nature and to seek truth. Undoubtedly this must be
+applied to Wilkie himself with considerable limitation. Wilkie painted
+simple fragments of nature just as little as Hogarth; he invented
+scenes. Nor was he even gifted with much power of invention. But he had
+a fund of innocent humour, although there were times when it was in
+danger of becoming much too childlike. "Blind-Man's Buff," "The Village
+Politicians," and "The Village Festival," pictures which have become so
+popular through the medium of engraving, contain all the characteristics
+of his power of playful observation. He had no ambition to be a
+moralist, like Hogarth, but just as little did he paint the rustic as he
+is. He dealt only with the absurdities and minor accidents of life. His
+was one of those happy dispositions which neither sorrow nor dream nor
+excite themselves, but see everything from the humorous side: he enjoyed
+his own jests, and looked at life as at a pure comedy; the serious part
+of it escaped him altogether. His peasantry know nothing of social
+problems; free from want and drudgery, they merely spend their time over
+trifles and amuse themselves--themselves and the frequenters of the
+exhibition, for whom they are taking part in a comedy on canvas. If
+Hogarth had a biting, sarcastic, scourging, and disintegrating genius,
+Wilkie is one of those people who cause one no lasting excitement, but
+are always satisfied to be humorous, and laugh with a contented
+appreciation over their own jokes.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ WILKIE. THE BLIND FIDDLER.]
+
+And in general such is the keynote of this English _genre_. All that was
+done in it during the years immediately following is more or less
+comprised in the works of the Scotch "little master"; otherwise it
+courts the assistance of English literature, which is always rich in
+humorists and excellent writers of anecdote and story. In painting, as
+in literature, the English delight in detail, which by its dramatic,
+anecdotic, or humorous point is intended to have the interest of a short
+story. Or perhaps one should rather say that, since the English came to
+painting as novices, they began tentatively on that first step on which
+art had stood in earlier centuries as long as it was still "the people's
+spelling-book." It is a typical form of development, and repeats itself
+constantly. All painting begins in narrative. First it is the subject
+which has a fascination for the artist, and by the aid of it he casts a
+spell over his public. The simplification of motives, the capacity for
+taking a thing in at a single glance, and finding a simple joy in its
+essentially pictorial integrity, is of later growth. Even with the
+Dutch, who were so eminently gifted with a sense for what is pictorial,
+the picture of manners was at first epical. Church festivals, skating
+parties, and events which could be represented in an ample and detailed
+fashion were the original materials of the _genre_ picture, which only
+later contented itself with a purely artistic study of one out of
+countless groups. This period of apprenticeship, which may be called the
+period of interesting subject-matter, was what England was now going
+through; and England had to go through it, since she had the
+civilisation by which it is invariably produced.
+
+[Illustration: WILKIE. THE PENNY WEDDING.]
+
+Just as the first _genre_ pictures of the Flemish school announced the
+appearance of a _bourgeoisie_, so in the England of the beginning of the
+century a new plebeian, middle-class society had taken the place of the
+patrons of earlier days, and this middle class set its seal upon manners
+and communicated its spirit to painting. Prosperity, culture, travel,
+reading, and leisure, everything which had been the privilege of
+individuals, now became the common property of the great mass of men.
+They prized art, but they demanded from it substantial nourishment. That
+two colours in connection with straight and curved lines are enough for
+the production of infinite harmonies was still a profound secret. "You
+are free to be painters if you like," artists were told, "but only on
+the understanding that you are amusing and instructive; if you have no
+story to tell we shall yawn." When they comply with these demands,
+artists are inclined to grow fond of sermonising and develop into
+censors of the public morals, almost into lay preachers.
+
+Or, if the aim of painting lies in its narrative power, there is a
+natural tendency to represent the pleasant rather than the unpleasant
+facts of life, which is the cause of this one-sided character of _genre_
+painting. Everything that is not striking and out of the way--in other
+words, the whole poetry of ordinary life--is left untouched. Wilkie only
+paints the rustic on some peculiar occasion, at merry-making and
+ceremonial events; and he depicts him as a being of a different species
+from the townsman, because he seeks to gain his effects principally by
+humorous episodes, and aims at situations which are proper to a novel.
+
+[Illustration: WILKIE. THE FIRST EARRING.]
+
+Baptisms and dances, funerals and weddings, carousals and bridal visits
+are his favourite subjects; to which may be added the various contrasts
+offered by peasant life where it is brought into contact with the
+civilisation of cities--the country cousin come to town, the rustic
+closeted with a lawyer, and the like. A continual roguishness enlivens
+his pictures and makes comical figures out of most of these good people.
+He amuses himself at their expense, exposes their little lies, their
+thrift, their folly, their pretensions, and the absurdities with which
+their narrow circle of life has provided them. He pokes fun, and is sly
+and farcical. But the hard and sour labour of ordinary peasant life is
+left on one side, since it offers no material for humour and anecdote.
+
+[Illustration: NEWTON. YORICK AND THE GRISETTE.]
+
+Through this limitation painting renounced the best part of its
+strength. To a man of pictorial vision nature is a gallery of
+magnificent pictures, and one which is as wide and far-reaching as the
+world. But whoever seeks salvation in narrative painting soon reaches
+the end of his material. In the life of any man there are only three or
+four events that are worth the trouble of telling; Wilkie told more, and
+he became tiresome in consequence. We are willing to accept these
+anecdotes as true, but they are threadbare. Things of this sort may be
+found in the gaily-bound little books which are given as Christmas
+presents to children. It is not exhilarating to learn that worldly
+marriages have their inconveniences, that there is a pleasure in talking
+scandal about one's friends behind their backs, that a son causes pain
+to his mother by his excesses, and that egoism is an unpleasant failing.
+All that is true, but it is too true. We are irritated by the
+intrusiveness of this course of instruction. Wilkie paints insipid
+subjects, and by one foolery after another he has made painting into a
+toy for good children. And good children play the principal parts in
+these pictures.
+
+As a painter, one of George Morland's pupils, _William Collins_, threw
+the world into ecstasies by his pictures of children. Out of one hundred
+and twenty-one which he exhibited in the Academy in the course of forty
+years the principal are: the picture of "The Little Flute-Player," "The
+Sale of the Pet Lamb," "Boys with a Bird's Nest," "The Fisher's
+Departure," "Scene in a Kentish Hop-Garden," and the picture of the
+swallows. The most popular were "Happy as a King"--a small boy whom his
+elder playmates have set upon a garden railing, from which he looks down
+laughing proudly--and "Rustic Civility"--children who have drawn up like
+soldiers, by a fence, so as to salute some one who is approaching. But
+it is clear from the titles of such pictures that in this province
+English _genre_ painting did not free itself from the reproach of being
+episodic. Collins was richer in ideas than Meyer of Bremen. His children
+receive earrings, sit on their mother's knee, play with her in the
+garden, watch her sewing, read aloud to her from their spelling-book,
+learn their lessons, and are frightened of the geese and hens which
+advance in a terrifying fashion towards them in the poultry-yard. He is
+an admirable painter of children at the family table, of the pleasant
+chatter of the little ones, of the father watching his sleeping child of
+an evening by the light of the lamp, with his heart full of pride and
+joy because he has the consciousness of working for those who are near
+to him. Being naturally very fond of children, he has painted the life
+of little people with evident enjoyment of all its variations, and yet
+not in a thoroughly credible fashion. Chardin painted the poetry of the
+child-world. His little ones have no suspicion of the painter being near
+them. They are harmlessly occupied with themselves, and in their
+ordinary clothes. Those of Collins look as if they were repeating a
+copybook maxim at a school examination. They know that the eyes of all
+the sightseers in the exhibition are fixed upon them, and they are doing
+their utmost to be on their best behaviour. They have a lack of
+unconsciousness. One would like to say to them: "My dear children,
+always be good." But no one is grateful to the painter for taking from
+children their childishness, and for bringing into vogue that codling
+which had its way for so long afterwards in the pictures of children.
+
+_Gilbert Stuart Newton_, an American by birth, who lived in England from
+1820 to 1835, devoted himself to the illustration of English authors.
+Like Wilkie, he has a certain historical importance, because he devoted
+himself with great zeal to a study of the Dutchmen of the seventeenth
+century and to the French painters of the eighteenth, at a time when
+these masters were entirely out of fashion on the Continent and sneered
+at as representatives of "the deepest corruption." Dow and Terborg were
+his peculiar ideals; and although the colour of his pictures is
+certainly heavy and common compared with that of his models, it is
+artistic, and shows study when one thinks of contemporary productions on
+the Continent. His works ("Lear attended by Cordelia," "The Vicar of
+Wakefield restoring his Daughter to her Mother," "The Prince of Spain's
+Visit to Catalina" from _Gil Blas_, and "Yorick and the Grisette" from
+Sterne), like the pictures of the Düsseldorfers, would most certainly
+have lost in actuality but for the interest provided by the literary
+passages; yet they are favourably distinguished from the literary
+illustrations of the Düsseldorfers by the want of any sort of idealism.
+While the painters of the Continent in such pictures almost invariably
+fell into a rounded, generalising ideal of beauty, Newton had the scene
+played by actors and painted them realistically. The result was a
+theatrical realism, but the way in which the theatrical effects are
+studied and the palpableness of the histrionic gestures are so
+convincingly true to nature that his pictures seem like records of stage
+art in London about the year 1830.
+
+[Illustration: WEBSTER. THE RUBBER.]
+
+[Illustration: C. R. LESLIE. SANCHO AND THE DUCHESS.]
+
+_Charles Robert Leslie_, known as an author by his pleasant book on
+Constable and a highly conservative _Handbook for Young Painters_, had a
+similar _repértoire_, and rendered in oils Shakespeare, Cervantes,
+Fielding, Sterne, Goldsmith, and Molière, with more or less ability. The
+National Gallery has an exceedingly prosaic and colourless picture of
+his, "Sancho Panza in the Apartment of the Duchess." Some that are in
+the South Kensington Museum are better; for example, "The Taming of the
+Shrew," "The Dinner at Mr. Page's House" from _The Merry Wives of
+Windsor_, and "Sir Roger de Coverley." His finest and best-known work is
+"My Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman," which charmingly illustrates the
+pretty scene in _Tristram Shandy_: "'I protest, madam,' said my Uncle
+Toby, 'I can see nothing whatever in your eye.' 'It is not in the
+white!' said Mrs. Wadman. My Uncle Toby looked with might and main into
+the pupil." As in Newton's works, so in Leslie's too, there is such a
+strong dose of realism that his pictures will always keep their value as
+historical documents--not for the year 1630 but for 1830. As a colourist
+he was--in his later works at any rate--a delicate imitator of the
+Dutch _chiaroscuro_; and in the history of art he occupies a position
+similar to that of Diez in Germany, and was esteemed in the same way,
+even in later years, when the young Pre-Raphaelite school began its
+embittered war against "brown sauce"--the same war which a generation
+afterwards was waged in Germany by Liebermann and his followers against
+the school of Diez.
+
+[Illustration: MULREADY. FAIR TIME.]
+
+_Mulready_, thirty-two of whose pictures are preserved in the South
+Kensington Museum, is in his technique almost more delicate than Leslie,
+and he has learnt a great deal from Metsu. By preference he took his
+subjects out of Goldsmith. "Choosing the Wedding Gown" and "The
+Whistonian Controversy" would make pretty illustrations for an _édition
+de luxe_ of _The Vicar of Wakefield_. Otherwise he too had a taste for
+immortalising children, by turns lazy and industrious, at their tea or
+playing by the water's edge.
+
+From _Thomas Webster_, the fourth of these kindly, childlike masters,
+yet more inspiriting facts are to be obtained. He has informed the world
+that at a not very remote period of English history all the agricultural
+labourers were quite content with their lot. No one ever quarrelled with
+his landlord, or sat in a public-house and let his family starve. The
+highest bliss of these excellent people was to stay at home and play
+with their children by the light of a wax-candle. Webster's rustics,
+children, and schoolmasters are the citizens of an ideal planet, but the
+little country is a pleasant world. His pictures are so harmless in
+intention, so neat and accurate in drawing, and so clear and luminous in
+colour that they may be seen with pleasure even at the present day.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ FRITH. POVERTY AND WEALTH.]
+
+The last of the group, _William Powell Frith_, was the most copious in
+giving posterity information about the manners and costumes of his
+contemporaries, and would be still more authentic if life had not seemed
+to him so genial and roseate. His pictures represent scenes of the
+nineteenth century, but they seem like events of the good old times. At
+that period people were undoubtedly good and innocent and happy. They
+had no income-tax and no vices and worries, and all went to heaven and
+felt in good spirits. And so they do in Frith's pictures, only not so
+naturally as in Ostade and Beham. For example, he goes on the beach at a
+fashionable English watering-place during the season, in July or August.
+The geniality which predominates here is quite extraordinary. Children
+are splashing in the sea, young ladies flirting, niggers playing the
+barrel-organ and women singing ballads to its strains; every one is
+doing his utmost to look well, and the pair of beggars who are there for
+the sake of contrast have long become resigned to their fate. In his
+racecourse pictures everything is brought together which on such
+occasions is representative of London life: all types, from the baronet
+to the ragman; all beauties, from the lady to the street-walker. A
+rustic has to lose his money, or a famished acrobat to turn his pockets
+inside out to assure himself that there is really nothing in them. His
+picture of the gaming-table in Homburg is almost richer in such examples
+of dry observation and humorous and spirited episode.
+
+[Illustration: MULREADY. CROSSING THE FORD.]
+
+This may serve to exemplify the failures of these painters of _genre_.
+Not light and colour, but anecdote, comedy, and genial tale-telling are
+the basis of their labours. And yet, notwithstanding this attempt to
+express literary ideas through the mediums of a totally different art,
+their work is significant. While continental artists avoided nothing so
+much as that which might seem to approach nature, the English, revolting
+from the thraldom of theory, gathered subjects for their pictures from
+actual life. These men, indeed, pointed out the way to painters from
+every country; and they, once on the right road, were bound ultimately
+to arrive at the point from which they no longer looked on life through
+the glasses of the anecdotist, but saw it with the eye of the true
+artist.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE MILITARY PICTURE
+
+
+While English painting from the days of Hogarth and Wilkie embraced
+rustic and middle-class life, the victory of modernity on the Continent
+could only be accomplished slowly and by degrees. The question of
+costume played an important part in it. "Artists love antiquated costume
+because, as they say, it gives them greater sweep and freedom. But I
+should like to suggest that in historical representations of their own
+age an eye should be kept on propriety of delineation rather than on
+freedom and sweep. Otherwise one might just as well allow an historian
+to talk to us about phalanxes, battlements, triarii, and argyraspids in
+place of battalions, squadrons, grenadiers, and cuirassiers. The
+painters of the great events of the day ought, especially, to be more
+true to fact. In battle-pieces, for example, they ought not to have
+cavalry shooting and sabreing about them in leather collars, in round
+and plumed hats, and the vast jack-boots which exist no longer. The old
+masters drew, engraved, and painted in this way because people really
+dressed in such a manner at the time. It is said that our costume is not
+picturesque, and therefore why should we choose it? But posterity will
+be curious to know how we clothed ourselves, and will wish to have no
+gap from the eighteenth century to its own time."
+
+[Illustration: VERNET. THE WOUNDED ZOUAVE.]
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ CHARLET. UN HOMME QUI BOÎT SEUL N'EST PAS DIGNE DE VIVRE.]
+
+These words, which the well-known Vienna librarian Denis wrote in 1797
+in his _Lesefrüchte_, show how early came the problem which was at
+high-water mark for a generation afterwards. The painting of the
+nineteenth century could only become modern when it succeeded in
+recognising and expressing the characteristic side of modern costume.
+But to do that it took more than half a century. It was, after all,
+natural that to people who had seen the graceful forms and delicate
+colours of the _rococo_ time, the garb of the first half of the century
+should seem the most unfortunate and the least enviable in the whole
+history of costume. "What person of artistic education is not of the
+opinion," runs a passage in Putmann's book on the Düsseldorf school in
+1835,--"what person of artistic education is not of the opinion that the
+dress of the present day is tasteless, hideous, and ape-like? Moreover,
+can a true style be brought into harmony with hoop-petticoats and
+swallow-tail coats and such vagaries? In our time, therefore, art is
+right in seeking out those beautiful fashions of the past, about which
+tailors concern themselves so little. How much longer must we go about,
+unpicturesque beings, like ugly black bats, in swallow-tail coats and
+wide trousers? The peasant's blouse, indeed, can be accepted as one of
+the few picturesque dresses which have yet been preserved in Germany
+from the inauspicious influence of the times." The same plaint is sung
+by Hotho in his history of German and Netherlandish painting; the
+costume of his age he declares to be thoroughly prosaic and tiresome. It
+is revolting to painters and an offence to the educated eye. Art must
+necessarily seek salvation in the past, unless it is to wait, and give
+brush and palette a holiday, until that happy time when the costume of
+nations comes to its pictorial regeneration. Only one zone, the realm of
+blouse and military uniform, was beyond the domain of tail-coat and
+trousers, and still furnished art with rich material.
+
+Since it was by working on uniform that plastic artists first learnt how
+to treat contemporary costume, so it was the military picture that first
+entered the circle of modern painting. By exalting the soldier into a
+warrior, and the warrior into a hero, it was here possible, even in the
+times of David and Carstens, to effect a certain compromise with the
+ruling classical ideas. Gérard, Girodet--to some extent even Gros--made
+abundant use of the mask of the Greek or Roman warrior, with the object
+of admitting the battle-piece into painting in the grand style. The real
+heroes of the Napoleonic epoch had not this plastic appearance nor these
+epic attitudes. Classicism altered their physiognomies and gave them,
+most illogically, the air of old marble statues. It was Horace Vernet
+who freed battle painting from this anathema. This, but little else,
+stands to his credit.
+
+Together with his son-in-law Paul Delaroche, _Horace Vernet_ is the most
+genuine product of the _Juste-milieu_ period. The king with the umbrella
+founded the Museum of Versailles, that monstrous depôt of daubed canvas,
+which is a horrifying memory to any one who has ever wandered through
+it. However, it is devoted _à toutes les gloires de la France_. In a few
+years a suite of galleries, which it takes almost two hours merely to
+pass through from end to end, was filled with pictures of all sizes,
+bringing home the history of the country, from Charlemagne to the
+African expedition of Louis Philippe, under all circumstances which are
+in any way flattering to French pride. For miles numberless
+manufacturers of painting bluster from the walls. As _pictor celerrimus_
+Horace Vernet had the command-in-chief, and became so famous by his
+chronicle of the conquest of Algiers that for a long time he was held by
+trooper, Philistine, and all the kings and emperors of Europe as the
+greatest painter in France. He was the last scion of a celebrated
+dynasty of artists, and had taken a brush in his hand from the moment he
+threw away his child's rattle. A good deal of talent had been given him
+in his cradle: sureness of eye, lightness of hand, and an enviable
+memory. His vision was correct, if not profound; he painted his pictures
+without hesitation, and is favourably distinguished from many of his
+contemporaries by his independence: he owes no one anything, and reveals
+his own qualities without arraying himself in those of other people.
+Only these qualities are not of an order which gives his pictures
+artistic interest. The spark of Géricault's genius, which seems to have
+been transmitted to him in the beginning, was completely quenched in his
+later years. Having swiftly attained popularity by the aid of
+lithography which circulated his "Mazeppa" through the whole world, he
+became afterwards a bad and vulgar painter, without poetry, light, or
+colour; a reporter who expressed himself in banal prose and wounded all
+the finer spirits of his age. "I loathe this man," said Baudelaire, as
+early as 1846.
+
+[Illustration: AUGUSTE MARIE RAFFET.]
+
+Devoid of any sense of the tragedy of war, which Gros possessed in such
+a high degree, Vernet treated battles like performances at the circus.
+His pictures have movement without passion, and magnitude without
+greatness. If it had been required of him, he would have daubed all the
+boulevards; his picture of Smala is certainly not so long, but there
+would have been no serious difficulty in lengthening it by half a mile.
+This incredible stenographical talent won for him his popularity. He was
+decorated with all the orders in the world. The _bourgeois_ felt happy
+when he looked at Vernet's pictures, and the paterfamilias promised to
+buy a horse for his little boy. The soldiers called him "_mon colonel_,"
+and would not have been surprised if he had been made a Marshal of
+France. A lover of art passes the pictures of Vernet with the sentiment
+which the old colonel owned to entertaining towards music. "Are you fond
+of music, colonel?" asked a lady. "Madame, I am not afraid of it."
+
+[Illustration: RAFFET. THE PARADE.]
+
+The trivial realism of his workmanship is as tedious as the unreal
+heroism of his soldiers. In the manner in which he conceived the
+trooper, Vernet stands between the Classicists and the moderns. He did
+not paint ancient warriors, but French soldiers: he knew them as a
+corporal knows his men, and by this respect for prescribed regulation he
+was prevented from turning them into Romans. But though he disregarded
+Classicism, in outward appearance, he did not drop the heroic tone. He
+always saw the soldier as the bold defender of his country, the warrior
+performing daring deeds, as in the "Battle of Alexander"; and in this
+way he gave his pictures their unpleasant air of bluster. For neither
+modern tactics nor modern cannon admit of the prominence of the
+individual as it is to be seen in Vernet's pictures. The soldier of the
+nineteenth century is no longer a warrior, but the unit in a multitude;
+he does what he is ordered, and for that he has no need of the spirit of
+an ancient hero; he kills or is killed, without seeing his enemy or
+being seen himself. The course of a battle advances, move by move,
+according to mathematical calculation. It is therefore false to
+represent soldiers in heroic attitudes, or even to suggest deeds of
+heroism on the part of those in command. In giving his orders and
+directing a battle a general has to behave pretty much as he does at
+home at his writing-table. And he is never in the battle, as he is
+represented by Horace Vernet; on the contrary, he remains at a
+considerable distance off. Therefore, even with the dimensions of which
+Vernet availed himself, the exact portrait of a modern battle is
+exclusively an affair for panorama, but never for the flat surface of a
+picture. A picture must confine itself, either to the field-marshal
+directing the battle from a distance upon a hill in the midst of his
+staff, or else to little pictorial episodes in the individual life of
+the soldier. The gradual development from unreal battle-pieces to simple
+episodic paintings can be followed step by step in the following works.
+
+[Illustration: RAFFET. 1807.]
+
+What was painted for the Versailles Museum in connection with deeds of
+arms in the Crimean War and the Italian campaign kept more or less to
+the blustering official style of Horace Vernet. In the galleries of
+Versailles the battles of Wagram, Loano, and Altenkirche (1837-39), and
+an episode from the retreat from Russia (1851), represent the work of
+_Hippolyte Bellangé_. These are huge lithochromes which have been very
+carefully executed. _Adolphe Yvon_, who is responsible for "The
+Taking of Malakoff," "The Battle of Magenta," and "The Battle of
+Solferino," is a more tedious painter, and remained during his whole
+life a pupil of Delaroche; he laid chief stress on finished and rounded
+composition, and gave his soldiers no more appearance of life than could
+be forced into the accepted academic convention. The fame of _Isidor
+Pils_, who immortalised the disembarkation of the French troops in the
+Crimea, the battle of Alma, and the reception of Arab chiefs by Napoleon
+III, has paled with equal rapidity. He could paint soldiers, but not
+battles, and, like Yvon, he was too precise in the composition of his
+works. In consequence they have as laboured an effect in arrangement as
+they have in colour. He was completely wanting in sureness and
+spontaneity. It is only his water-colours that hold one's attention; and
+this they do at any rate by their unaffected actuality, and in spite of
+their dull and heavy colour. _Alexandre Protais_ verged more on the
+sentimental. He loved soldiers, and therefore had the less toleration
+for war, which swept the handsome young fellows away. Two pendants, "The
+Morning before the Attack" and "The Evening after the Battle," founded
+his reputation in 1863. The first showed a group of riflemen waiting in
+excitement for the first bullets of the enemy; the second represented
+the same men in the evening delighted with their victory, but at the
+same time--and here you have the note of Protais--mournful over the loss
+of their comrades. "The Prisoners" and "The Parting" of 1872 owed their
+success to the same lachrymose and melodramatic sensibility.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ RAFFET. POLISH INFANTRY.]
+
+[Illustration: RAFFET. THE MIDNIGHT REVIEW.
+
+ C'est la grande revue
+ Qu'aux Champs-Elysées
+ A l'heure de minuit
+ Tient César décédé.]
+
+A couple of mere lithographists, soldiers' sons, in whom a repining for
+the Napoleonic legend still found its echo, were the first great
+military painters of modern France. "Charlet and Raffet," wrote
+Bürger-Thoré in his _Salon_ of 1845, "are the two artists who best
+understand the representation of that almost vanished type, the trooper
+of the Empire; and after Gros they will assuredly endure as the
+principal historians of that warlike era."
+
+_Charlet_, the painter of the old bear Napoleon I, might almost be
+called the Béranger of painting. The "little Corporal," the "great
+Emperor" appears and reappears in his pictures and drawings without
+intermission; his work is an epic in pencil of the grey coat and the
+little hat. From his youth he employed himself with military studies,
+which were furthered in Gros' studio, which he entered in 1817. The
+Græco-Roman ideal did not exist for him, and he was indifferent to
+beauty of form. His was one of those natures which have a natural turn
+for actual fact; he had a power for characterisation, and in his many
+water-colours and lithographs he was merely concerned with the proper
+expression of his ideas. How it came that Delacroix had so great a
+respect for him was nevertheless explained when his "Episode in the
+Retreat from Russia," in the World Exhibition of 1889, emerged from the
+obscurity of the Lyons Museum; it is perhaps his best and most important
+picture. When it appeared in the Salon of 1836, Alfred de Musset wrote
+that it was "not an episode but a complete poem"; he went on to say that
+the artist had painted "the despair in the wilderness," and that, with
+its gloomy heaven and disconsolate horizon, the picture gave the
+impression of infinite disaster. After fifty years it had lost none of
+its value. Since the reappearance of this picture it has been recognised
+that Charlet was not merely the specialist of old grey heads with their
+noses reddened with brandy, the Molière of barracks and canteens, but
+that he understood all the tragical sublimity of war, from which Horace
+Vernet merely produced trivial anecdotes.
+
+[Illustration: _Mag. of Art._
+
+ ERNEST MEISSONIER.]
+
+Beside him stands his pupil _Raffet_, the special painter of the _grande
+armée_. He mastered the brilliant figure of Napoleon; he followed it
+from Ajaccio to St. Helena, and never left it until he had said
+everything that was to be said about it. He showed the "little Corsican"
+as the general of the Italian campaign, ghastly pale and consumed with
+ambition; the Bonaparte of the Pyramids and of Cairo; the Emperor
+Napoleon on the parade-ground reviewing his Grenadiers; the triumphal
+hero of 1807 with the Cuirassiers dashing past, brandishing their sabres
+with a hurrah; the Titan of Beresina riding slowly over the waste of
+snow, and, in the very midst of disaster, spying a new star of fortune;
+the war-god of 1813, the great hypnotiser greeted even by the dying with
+a cry of "Long life to the Emperor"; the adventurer of 1814, riding at
+the head of shattered troops over a barren wilderness; the vanquished
+hero of 1815, who, in the midst of his last square, in the thick of his
+beloved battalions, calls fickle fate once more into the lists; and the
+captive lion who, from the bridge of the ship, casts a last look on the
+coast of France as it fades in the mist. He has called the Emperor from
+the grave, as a ghostly power, to hold a midnight review of the _grande
+armée_. And with love and passion and enthusiasm he has followed the
+instrument of these victories, the French soldiers, the swordsmen of
+seven years' service, through bivouac and battle, on the march and on
+parade, as patrols and outposts. The ragged and shoeless troops of the
+Empire are portrayed in his plates, with a touch of real sublimity, in
+defeat and in victory. The empty inflated expression of martial
+enthusiasm has been avoided by him; everything is true and earnest.
+
+In a masterly fashion he could make soldiers deploy in masses. No one
+has known in the same way how to render the impression of the multitude
+of an army, the notion of men standing shoulder to shoulder, the welding
+of thousands of individuals into one complete entity. In Raffet a
+regiment is a thousand-headed living being that has but one soul, one
+moral nature, one spirit, one sentiment of willing sacrifice and heroic
+courage. His death was as adventurous as his life; he passed away in a
+hotel in Genoa, and was brought back to French soil as part of the cargo
+of a merchant ship. For a long time his fame was thrown into the shade,
+at first by the triumphs of Horace Vernet, and then by those of
+Meissonier, until at length a fitting record was devoted to him by the
+piety of his son Auguste.
+
+Never had _Ernest Meissonier_ to complain of want of recognition. After
+his _rococo_ pictures had been deemed worth their weight in gold he
+climbed to the summit of his fame, his universal celebrity and his
+popularity in France, when he devoted himself in the sixties to the
+representation of French military history. The year 1859 took him to
+Italy in the train of Napoleon III. Meissonier was chosen to spread the
+martial glory of the Emperor, and, as the nephew was fond of drawing
+parallels between himself and his mighty uncle, Meissonier was obliged
+to depict suitable occasions from the life of the first Napoleon. His
+admirers were very curious to know how the great "little painter" would
+acquit himself in such a monumental task. First came the "Battle of
+Solferino," that picture of the Musée Luxembourg which represents
+Napoleon III overlooking the battle from a height in the midst of his
+staff. After lengthy preparations it appeared in the Salon of 1864, and
+showed that the painter had not been untrue to himself: he had simply
+adapted the minute technique of his _rococo_ pictures to the painting of
+war, and he remained the Dutch "little master" in all the battle-pieces
+which followed.
+
+Napoleon III had no further deeds of arms to record, so the intended
+parallel series was never accomplished. It is true, indeed, that he took
+the painter with the army in 1870; but after the first battle was lost,
+Meissonier went home: he did not wish to immortalise the struggles of a
+retreat. Henceforward his brush was consecrated to the first Napoleon.
+"1805" depicts the triumphant advance to the height of fame; "1807"
+shows Napoleon when the summit has been reached and the soldiers are
+cheering their idol in exultation; "1814" represents the fall: the star
+of fortune has vanished; victory, so long faithful to the man of might,
+has deserted his banners. There is still a look of indomitable energy on
+the pale face of the Emperor, as, in utter despair, he aims his last
+shot against the traitor destiny; but his eyes seem weary, his mouth is
+contorted, and his features are wasted with fever.
+
+[Illustration: MEISSONIER. 1814.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Georges Petit, the owner of the copyright._)]
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ MEISSONIER. THE OUTPOST.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Georges Petit, the owner of the copyright._)]
+
+Meissonier has treated all these works with the carefulness which he
+expended on his little _rococo_ pictures. To give an historically
+accurate representation of Napoleon's boots he did not content himself
+with borrowing them from the museum. Walking and riding--for he was a
+passionate horseman--he wore for months together boots of the same make
+and form as those of the "little Corporal." To get the colour of the
+horses of the Emperor and his marshals, in their full-grown winter coat,
+and to paint them just as they must have appeared after the hardships
+and negligence of a campaign, he bought animals of the same race and
+colour as those ridden by the Emperor and his generals, according to
+tradition, and picketed them for weeks in the snow and rain. His models
+were forced to wear out the uniforms in sun and storm before he painted
+them; he bought weapons and harness at fancy prices when he could not
+borrow them from museums. And there is no need to say that he copied all
+the portraits of Napoleon, Ney, Soult, and the other generals that were
+to be had, and read through whole libraries before beginning his
+Napoleon series. To paint the picture "1814," which is generally
+reckoned his greatest performance--Napoleon at the head of his staff
+riding through a snow-clad landscape--he first prepared the scenery on a
+spot in the plain of Champagne, corresponding to the original locality,
+just as he did in earlier years with his interiors of the _rococo_
+period; he even had the road laid out on which he wished to paint the
+Emperor advancing. Then he waited for the first fall of snow, and had
+artillery, cavalry, and infantry to march for him upon this snowy path,
+and actually contrived that overturned transport waggons, discarded
+arms, and baggage should be decoratively strewn about the landscape.
+
+From these laborious preparations it may be understood that he spent
+almost as many millions of francs upon his pictures as he received. In
+his article, _What an Old Work of Art is Worth_, Julius Lessing has
+admirably dealt with the hidden ways of taste and commerce applied to
+art. Amongst all painters of modern times Meissonier is the only one
+whose pictures, during his own lifetime, fetched prices such as are only
+reached by the works of famous old masters of the greatest epochs. And
+yet he sold them straight from his easel, and never to dealers.
+Meissonier avenged himself magnificently for the privations of his
+youth. In 1832, when he gave up his apprenticeship with Menier, the
+great chocolate manufacturer, to become a painter, he had fifteen francs
+a month to spend. He had great difficulty in disposing of his drawings
+and illustrations for five or ten francs, and was often obliged to
+console himself with a roll for the want of a dinner. Only ten years
+later he was able to purchase a small place in Poissy, near St. Germain,
+where he went for good in 1850, to give himself up to work without
+interruption. Gradually this little property became a pleasant country
+seat, and in due course of time the stately house in Paris, in the
+Boulevard Malesherbes, was added to it. His "Napoleon, 1814," for which
+the painter himself received three hundred thousand francs, was bought
+at an auction by one of the owners of the "Grands Magasins du Louvre"
+for eight hundred and fifty thousand francs; "Napoleon III at Solferino"
+brought him two hundred thousand, and "The Charge of the Cuirassiers"
+three hundred thousand. And in general, after 1850, he only painted for
+such sums. It was calculated that he received about five thousand francs
+for every centimetre of painted canvas, and left behind him pictures
+which, according to present rate, were worth more than twenty million
+francs, without having really become a rich man; for, as a rule, every
+picture that he painted cost him several thousand.
+
+And Meissonier never sacrificed himself to money-making and the trade.
+He never put a stroke on paper without the conviction that he could not
+make it better, and for this artistic earnestness he was universally
+honoured, even by his colleagues, to his very death. As master beyond
+dispute he let the Classicists, Romanticists, Impressionists, and
+Symbolists pass by the window of his lonely studio, and always remained
+the same. A little man with a firm step, an energetic figure, eyes that
+shone like coals, thick, closely cropped hair, and the beard of a
+river-god, that always seemed to grow longer, at eighty years of age he
+was as hale and active as at thirty. By a systematic routine of life he
+kept his physique elastic, and was able to maintain that unintermittent
+activity under which another man would have broken down. During long
+years Meissonier went to rest at eight every evening, slept till
+midnight, and then worked at his drawings by lamplight into the morning.
+In the course of the day he made his studies from nature and painted.
+Diffident in society and hard of access, he did not permit himself to be
+disturbed in his indefatigable diligence by any social demands. A sharp
+ride, a swim or a row was his only relaxation. In 1848, as captain of
+the National Guard, he had taken part in the street and barricade
+fighting; and again in 1871, when he was sixty-six, he clattered through
+the streets of the capital, with the dangling sword he had so often
+painted and a gold-laced cap stuck jauntily on one side, as a smart
+staff-officer. Even the works of his old age showed no exhaustion of
+power, and there is something great in attaining ripe years without
+outliving one's reputation. As late as the spring of 1890, only a short
+time before his death, he was the leader of youth, when it transmigrated
+from the Palais des Champs Elysées to the Champ de Mars; and he
+exhibited in this new Salon his "October 1806," with which he closed his
+Napoleonic epic and his general activity as a painter. Halting on a
+hill, the Emperor in his historical grey coat, mounted on a powerful
+grey, is thoughtfully watching the course of the battle, without
+troubling himself about the Cuirassiers who salute him exultantly as
+they storm by, or about the brilliant staff which has taken up position
+behind him. Not a feature moves in the sallow, cameo-like face of the
+Corsican. The sky is lowering and full of clouds. In the foreground lie
+a couple of dead soldiers, in whose uniform every button has been
+painted with the same conscientious care that was bestowed on the
+buttons of the _rococo_ coats of fifty years before.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._ ALPHONSE DE NEUVILLE.]
+
+Beyond this inexhaustible correctness I can really see nothing that can
+be said for Meissonier's fame as an artist. He, whose name is honoured
+in both hemispheres, was most peculiarly the son of his own work. The
+genius for the infinitesimal has never been carried further. He knew
+everything that a man can learn. The movements in his pictures are
+correct, the physiognomies interesting, the delicacy of execution
+indescribable, and his horses have been so exactly studied that they
+stand the test of instantaneous photography. But painter, in the proper
+sense, he never was. Precisely through their marvellous minuteness of
+execution--a minuteness which is merely attractive as a trial of
+patience and as an example of what the brush can do--his pictures are
+wanting in unity of conception, and they leave one cold by the hardness
+of their contours, the aridness of their colour, and the absence of all
+vibrating, nervous feeling. In a cavalry charge, with the whirling dust
+and the snorting horses, who thinks of costume? And who thinks of
+anything else when Meissonier paints a charge? Here are life and
+movement, and there a museum of military uniforms. When Manet saw
+Meissonier's "Cuirassiers" he said, "Everything is iron here except the
+cuirasses."
+
+His _rococo_ pictures are probably his best performances; they even
+express a certain amount of temperament. His military pictures make one
+chilly. Reproduced in woodcuts they are good illustrations for
+historical works, but as pictures they repel the eye, because they lack
+air and light and spirit. They rouse nothing except astonishment at the
+patience and incredible industry that went to the making of them. One
+sees everything in them--everything that the painter can have seen--to
+the slightest detail; only one does not rightly come into contact with
+the artist himself. His battle-pieces stand high above the scenic
+pictures of Horace Vernet and Hippolyte Bellangé, but they have nothing
+of the warmth of Raffet or the vibrating life of Neuville. There is
+nothing in them that is contagious and carries one away, or that appeals
+to the heart. Patience is a virtue: genius is a gift. Precious without
+originality, intelligent without imagination, dexterous without verve,
+elegant without charm, refined and subtile without delicacy, Meissonier
+has all the qualities that interest, and none of those which lay hold of
+one. He was a painter of a distinctness which causes astonishment, but
+not admiration; an artist for epicures, but for those of the second
+order, who pay the more highly for works of art in proportion as they
+value their artifice. His pictures recall the unseasonable compliment
+which Charles Blanc made to Ingres: "_Cher maître, vous avez deviné la
+photographie trente ans avant qu'il y eut des photographes._" Or else
+one thinks of that malicious story of which Jules Dupré is well known as
+the author. "Suppose," said he, "that you are a great personage who has
+just bought a Meissonier. Your valet enters the salon where it is
+hanging. 'Ah! Monsieur,' he cries, 'what a beautiful picture you have
+bought! That is a masterpiece!' Another time you buy a Rembrandt, and
+show it to your valet, in the expectation that he will at any rate be
+overcome by the same raptures. _Mais non!_ This time the man looks
+embarrassed. 'Ah! Monsieur,' he says, '_il faut s'y connaître_,' and
+away he goes."
+
+_Guillaume Regamey_, who is far less known, supplies what is wanting in
+Meissonier. Sketchy and of a highly strung nervous temperament, he could
+not adapt himself to the picture-market; but the history of art honours
+him as the most spirited draughtsman of the French soldier, after
+Géricault and Raffet. He did not paint him turned out for parade, ironed
+and smartened up, but in the worst trim. Syria, the Crimea, Italy, and
+the East are mingled with the difference of their types and the
+brightness of their exotic costumes. He had a great love for the
+catlike, quick-glancing chivalry of Turcos and Sapphis; but especially
+he loved the cavalry. His "Chasseurs d'Afrique" are part and parcel of
+their horses, like centaurs, and many of his cavalry groups recall the
+frieze of the Parthenon. Unfortunately he died at thirty-eight, shortly
+before the war of 1870, the historians of which were the younger
+painters, who had grown up in the shadow of Meissonier.
+
+[Illustration: DE NEUVILLE. LE BOURGET.
+
+ (_By permission of Messrs. Goupil, the owners of the copyright._)]
+
+[Illustration: DÉTAILLE. SALUT AUX BLESSÉS.
+
+ (_By permission of Messrs. Goupil, the owners of the copyright._)]
+
+The most important of the group, _Alphonse de Neuville_, had looked at
+war very closely as an officer during the siege of Paris, and in this
+way he made himself a fine illustrator, who in his anecdotic pictures
+specially understood the secret of painting powder-smoke and the
+vehemence of a fusillade. The "Bivouac before Le Bourget" brought him
+his first success. "The Last Cartridges," "Le Bourget," and "The
+Graveyard of Saint-Privat" made him a popular master. Neuville is
+peculiarly the French painter of fighting. He did not know, as Charlet
+did, the soldier in time of peace, the peasant lad of yesterday who only
+cares about his stomach and has little taste for martial adventure. His
+soldier is an elegant and enthusiastic youthful hero. He even neglected
+the troops of the line; his preference was for the Chasseur, whose cap
+is stuck jauntily on his head and whose trousers fall better. He loved
+the plumes, the high boots of the officers, the sword-knots, canes, and
+eye-glasses. Everything received grace from his dexterous hand; he even
+saw in the trooper a gallant and ornamental _bibelot_, which he painted
+with chivalrous verve.
+
+The pictures of Aimé Morot, the painter of "The Charge of the
+Cuirassiers," possibly smell most of powder. Neuville's frequently
+over-praised rival, Meissonier's favourite pupil, _Edouard Détaille_,
+after he had started with pretty little costume pictures from the
+_Directoire_ period, went further on the way of his teacher with less
+laboriousness and more lightness, with less calculation and more
+sincerity. The best of his works was "Salut aux Blessés"--the
+representation of a troop of wounded Prussian officers and soldiers on a
+country road, passing a French general and his staff, who with graceful
+chivalry lift their caps and salute the wounded men. Détaille's great
+pictures, such as "The Presentation of the Colours," and his panoramas
+were as accurate as they were tedious and arid, although they are far
+superior to most of the efforts which the Germans made to depict scenes
+from the war of 1870.
+
+[Illustration: _Soldan, Nürnberg._ ALBRECHT ADAM AND HIS SONS.]
+
+In Germany the great period of the wars of liberation first inspired a
+group of painters with the courage to enter the province of
+battle-painting, which had been so much despised by their classical
+colleagues. Germany had been turned into a great camp. Prussian, French,
+Austrian, Russian, and Bavarian troops passed in succession through the
+towns and villages: long trains of cannon and transport waggons came in
+their wake, and friends and foes were billeted amongst the inhabitants;
+the Napoleonic epoch was enacted. Such scenes followed each other like
+the gay slides in a magic lantern, and once more gave to some among the
+younger generation eyes for the outer world. There was awakened in them
+the capacity for receiving impressions of reality and transferring them
+swiftly to paper. Two hundred years before, the emancipation of Dutch
+art from the Italian house of bondage had been accomplished in precisely
+the same fashion. The Dutch struggle for freedom and the Thirty Years'
+War had filled Holland with numbers of soldiery. The doings of these
+mercenaries, daily enacted before them in rich costume and with manifold
+brightness, riveted the pictorial feeling of artists. Echoes of war,
+fighting scenes, skirmishes and tumult, the incidents of camp life,
+arming, billeting, and marauding episodes are the first independent
+products of the Dutch school. Then the more peaceable doings of soldiers
+are represented. At Haarlem, in the neighbourhood of Frans Hals, were
+assembled the painters of social pieces, as they are called; pieces in
+which soldiers, bold and rollicking officers, make merry with gay
+maidens at wine and play and love. From thence the artist came to the
+portrayal of a peasantry passing their time in the same rough, free and
+easy life, and thence onward to the representation of society in towns.
+
+[Illustration: ADAM. A STABLE IN TOWN.]
+
+German painting in the nineteenth century took the same road. Eighty
+years ago foreign troops, and the extravagantly "picturesque and often
+ragged uniforms of the Republican army, the characteristic and often
+wild physiognomies of the French soldiers," gave artists their first
+fresh and variously hued impressions. Painters of military subjects make
+their studies, not in the antiquity class of the academy, but upon the
+parade-ground and in the camp. Later, when the warlike times were over,
+they passed from the portrayal of soldiers to that of rustics; and so
+they laid the foundation on which future artists built.
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._
+
+ HESS. THE RECEPTION OF KING OTTO IN NAUPLIA.]
+
+In Berlin Franz Krüger and in Munich Albrecht Adam and Peter Hess were
+figures of individual character, belonging to the spiritual family of
+Chodowiecki and Gottfried Schadow; and, entirely undisturbed by
+classical theories or romantic reverie, they penetrated the life around
+them with a clear and sharp glance. They lacked, indeed, the temperament
+to comprehend either the high poetic tendencies of the old Munich school
+or the sentimental enthusiasm of the old Düsseldorf.
+
+On the other hand, they were unhackneyed artists, facing facts in a
+completely unprejudiced spirit: entirely self-reliant, they refused to
+form themselves upon any model derived from the old masters; they had
+never had a teacher and never enjoyed academic instruction. This naïve
+straightforwardness makes their painting a half-barbaric product;
+something which has been allowed to run wild. But in a period of
+archæological resuscitations, pedantic brooding over the past and
+slavish imitation of the ancients, it seems, for this very reason, the
+first independent product of the nineteenth century. As vigorous,
+matter-of-fact realists they know nothing of more delicate charms, but
+represented fact for all it was worth and as honestly and
+conscientiously as was humanly possible. They are lacking in the
+distinctively pictorial character, but they are absolutely untouched by
+the Classicism of the epoch. They never dream of putting the uniforms
+of their warriors upon antique statues. It is this downright honesty
+that renders their pictures not merely irreplaceable as documents for
+the history of civilisation, and in spite of their unexampled frigidity,
+hardness, and gaudiness, lends them, even from the standpoint of art, a
+certain innovating quality. In a pleasantly written autobiography
+_Albrecht Adam_ has himself described the drift of historical events
+which made him a painter of battles.
+
+He was a confectioner's apprentice in Nördlingen when, in the year 1800,
+the marches of the French army began in the neighbourhood. In an inn he
+began to sketch sergeants and Grenadiers, and went proudly home with the
+pence that he earned in this way. "Adam, when there's war, I'll take you
+into the field with me," said an old major-general, who was the
+purchaser of his first works. That came to pass in 1809, when the
+Bavarians went with Napoleon against Austria. After a few weeks he was
+in the thick of raging battle. He saw Napoleon, the Crown-Prince Ludwig,
+and General Wrede, was present at the battles of Abensberg, Eckmühl, and
+Wagram, and came to Vienna with his portfolios full of sketches. There
+his portraits and pictures of the war found favour with the officers,
+and Eugène Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy, took him to Upper Italy and
+afterwards to Russia. He was an eye-witness of the battles at Borodino
+and on the Moskwa, and saved himself from the conflagration of Moscow by
+his courage and determination. A true soldier, he mounted a horse when
+he was sixty-two years of age to be present on the Italian expedition of
+the Austrian army under Radetzky in 1848. His battle-pieces are
+therefore the result of personal experience. When campaigning he led the
+same life as the soldiers whom he portrayed, and as he proceeded in this
+portrayal with the objective quietness and fidelity of an historian, his
+artistic productions are invaluable as documents. Even where he could
+not draw as an eye-witness he invariably made studies afterwards,
+endeavouring to collect the most reliable material upon the spot, and
+preparing it with the utmost conscientiousness. The ground occupied by
+bodies of troops, the marshalling of them, and the conflict of masses,
+together with the smallest episodes, are represented with simplicity and
+reality. In the portrayal of the soldier's life in time of peace he was
+inexhaustible. Just as vividly could he render horses undergoing the
+strain of the march and in the tumult of battle as in the stall, the
+farm-horse of the transport waggon no less than the noble creature
+ridden for parade. That his colour was sharp and hard, and his pictures
+therefore devoid of harmony, is to be explained by the helplessness of
+the age in regard to colouring. Only his last pictures, such as "The
+Battle on the Moskwa," have a certain harmony of hue; and there is no
+doubt that this is to be set to the account of his son Franz.
+
+After Adam, the father of German battle-painters, _Peter Hess_ made an
+epoch by the earnestness and actuality of his pictures. He too
+accompanied General Wrede on the 1813-15 campaigns, and has left behind
+him exceedingly healthy, sane, and objectively viewed Cossack scenes,
+bivouacs, and the like, belonging to this period; though in his great
+pictures he aimed at totality of effect just as little as Adam. Confused
+by the complexity of his material, he only ventured to single out
+individual incidents, and then put them together on the canvas after the
+fashion of a mosaic; and, to make the nature of the action as clear as
+possible, he assumed as his standpoint the perspective view of a bird.
+Of course, pictures produced in this way make an effect which is
+artistically childish, but as the primitive endeavours of modern German
+art they will keep their place. The best known of his pictures are those
+inspired by the choice of Prince Otto of Bavaria as King of Greece,
+especially "The Reception of King Otto in Nauplia," which is to be found
+in the new Pinakothek in Munich. In spite of its hard, motley, and quite
+impossible colouring, and its petty pedantry of execution, this is a
+picture which will not lose its value as an historical source.
+
+Vigorous _Franz Krüger_ had been long known in Berlin, by his famous
+pictures of horses, before the Emperor of Russia in 1829 commissioned
+him to paint, on a huge canvas, the great parade on the _Opernplatz_ in
+Berlin, where he had reviewed his regiment of Cuirassiers before the
+King of Prussia. From that time such parade pictures became Krüger's
+specialty; especially famous is the great parade of 1839, with the
+likenesses of those who at the time played a political or literary part
+in Berlin. In these works he has left a true reflection of old Berlin,
+and bridged over the chasm between Chodowiecki and Menzel: this is
+specially the case with his curiously objective water-colour portrait
+heads. Mention should be made of Karl Steffeck as a pupil of Krüger, and
+Theodor Horschelt--in addition to Franz Adam--as a pupil of Adam. By
+_Steffeck_, a healthy, vigorous realist, there are some well-painted
+portraits of horses, and by _Th. Horschelt_, who in 1858 took part in
+the fights of the Russians against the Circassians in the Caucasus,
+there survive some of the spirited and masterly pen-and-ink sketches
+which he published collectively in his _Memories from the Caucasus_.
+_Franz Adam_, who first published a collection of lithographs on the
+Italian campaign of 1848 in connection with Raffet, and in the Italian
+war of 1859 painted his first masterpiece, a scene from the battle of
+Solferino, owes his finest successes--although he had taken no part in
+it--to the war of 1870. In respect of harmony of colouring he is perhaps
+the finest painter of battle-pieces Germany has produced. As I shall
+later have no opportunity of doing so, I must mention here the works of
+_Josef Brandt_, the best of Franz Adam's pupils. They are painted with
+verve and chivalrous feeling. There is a flame and a sparkle, both in
+the forms of his warriors and of his horses, in his pictures of old
+Polish cavalry battles. Everything is aristocratic: the distinction of
+the grey colouring no less than the ductile drawing with its chivalrous
+sentiment. In everything there breathes life, vigour, fire, and
+freshness: the East of Eugène Fromentin translated into Polish.
+_Heinrich Lang_, a spirited draughtsman, who had the art of seizing the
+most difficult positions and motions of a horse, embodied the wild
+tumult of cavalry charges ("The Charge of the Bredow Brigade," "The
+Charge at Floing," etc.) in rapid pictures of incisive power, though
+otherwise the heroic deeds of the Germans in 1870 resulted in but few
+heroic deeds in art.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+ITALY AND THE EAST
+
+
+In the beginning of the century the man who did not wear a uniform was
+not a proper subject for art unless he lived in Italy as a peasant or a
+robber. That is to say, painters were either archæologists or tourists;
+when they did not dive into the past they sought their romantic ideal in
+the distance. Italy, where monumental painting had first seen the light,
+was the earliest goal for travellers, and satisfied the desire of
+artists, since, for the rest of the world, it was still enveloped in
+poetic mystery. Only in Rome, in Naples, and in Tuscany was it thought
+possible to meet with human beings who had not become vulgar and hideous
+under the influence of civilisation. There they still preserved
+something of the beauty of Grecian statues. There artists were less
+afraid of being diverted from absolute beauty by the study of nature,
+and thus an important principle was carried. Instead of copying directly
+from antique statues, as David and Mengs had done before them, painters
+began to study the descendants of those who had been the models of the
+old Roman sculptors; and so it was that, almost against their will, they
+turned from museums to look rather more closely into nature, and from
+the past to cast a glance into the present.
+
+To _Leopold Robert_ belongs the credit of having opened out this new
+province to an art which was enclosed in the narrow bounds of
+Classicism. He owes his success with the public of the twenties and his
+place in the history of art entirely to the fact that in spite of his
+strict classical training he was one of the first to interest himself,
+however little, in contemporary life. Hundreds of artists had wandered
+into Italy and seen nothing but the antique until this young man set out
+from Neufchâtel in 1818 and became the painter of the Italian people.
+What struck him at the first glance was the character of the people,
+together with their curious habits and usages, and their rude and
+picturesque garb. "He wished to render this with all fidelity," and
+especially "to do honour to the absolute nobility of that people which
+still bore a trace of the heroic greatness of their forefathers." Above
+all, he fancied that he could find this phenomenon of atavism amongst
+the bandits; and as Sonnino, an old brigand nest, had been taken and the
+inhabitants removed to Engelsburg shortly after his arrival, a
+convenient opportunity was offered to him for making his studies in this
+place. The pictures of brigand life which he painted in the beginning of
+the twenties soon found a most profitable market. "Dear M. Robert,"
+said the fashionable guests who visited his studio by the dozen, "could
+you paint a little brigand, if it is not asking too much?" Robbers with
+sentimental qualms were particularly prized: for instance, at the moment
+when they were fondling their wives, or praying remorsefully to God, or
+watching over the bed of a sick child.
+
+From brigands he made a transition to the girls of Sorrento, Frascati,
+Capri, and Procida, and to shepherd lads, fishers, pilgrims, hermits,
+and _pifferari_. Early in the twenties, when he made an exhibition of a
+number of these little pictures in Rome, it effectually prepared the way
+for his fame; and when he sent a succession of larger pictures to the
+Paris Salon in 1824-31 he was held as one of the most brilliant masters
+of the French school, to whom Romanticists and Classicists paid the same
+honour. In the first of these pictures, painted in 1824, he had
+represented a number of peasants listening to a Neapolitan fisherman
+improvising to the accompaniment of a harmonica. "The Return from a
+Pilgrimage to the Madonna dell' Arco" of 1827 is the painting of a
+triumphal waggon yoked with oxen. Upon it are seated lads and maidens
+adorned with foliage, and in their gay Sunday best. An old _lazzarone_
+is playing the mandolin, and girls are dancing with tambourines, whilst
+a young man springs round clattering his castanets, and a couple of
+boys, to complete the seasons of life, head the procession. His third
+picture, "The Coming of the Reapers to the Pontine Marshes," was the
+chief work in the Salon of 1831 after the "Freedom" of Delacroix. Heine
+accorded him a classical passage of description, and the orthodox
+academical critics were liberal with most unmerited praise, treating the
+painter as a dangerous revolutionary who was seducing art into the
+undignified naturalism of Ribera and Caravaggio. Robert, the honest,
+lamblike man, who strikes us now as being a conscientious follower of
+the school of David!
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ LEOPOLD ROBERT.]
+
+How little did the artistic principles which he laid down in his letters
+accord with his own paintings! "I try," he wrote to a friend in 1819,
+"to follow Nature in everything. Nature is the only teacher who should
+be heard. She alone inspires and moves me, she alone appeals to me: it
+is Nature that I seek to fathom, and in her I ever hope to find the
+special impulse for work." She is a miracle to him, and one that is
+greater than any other, a book in which "the simple may read as well as
+the great." He could not understand "how painters could take the old
+masters as their model instead of Nature, who is the only great
+exemplar!" What is to be seen in his pictures is merely an awkward
+transference of David's manner of conception and representation to the
+painting of Italian peasants--a scrupulously careful adaptation of
+classical rules to romantic subjects. He looked at modern Italians
+solely through the medium of antique statuary, and conducts us to an
+Italy which can only be called Leopold Robert's Italy, since it never
+existed anywhere except in Robert's map. All his figures have the
+movement of some familiar work of antique sculpture, and that expression
+of cherished melancholy which went out of fashion after the time of Ary
+Scheffer. Never does one see in his pictures a casual and unhackneyed
+gesture in harmony with the situation. It seems as if he had dressed up
+antique statues or David's Horatii and his Sabine women in the costume
+of the Italian peasantry, and grouped them for a _tableau vivant_ in
+front of stage scenery, and in accordance with Parisian rules of
+composition. His peasants and fishers make beautiful, noble, and often
+magnificent groups. But one can always give the exact academic rules for
+any particular figure standing here and not there, or in one position
+and not in another. His pictures are much too official, and obtrusively
+affect the favourite pyramid form of composition.
+
+[Illustration: L. ROBERT. FISHERS OF THE ADRIATIC.]
+
+But as they are supposed to be pictures of Italian manners, the contrast
+between nature and the artificial construction is almost more irritating
+than it is in David's mythological representations. It is as if Robert
+had really never seen any Italian peasants, though he maintains all the
+while that he is depicting their life. The hard outlines and the sharp
+bronze tone of his works are a ghastly evidence of the extent to which
+the sense of colour had become extinct in the school of David. It was
+merely form that attracted him; the sun of Italy left him indifferent.
+The absence of atmosphere gives his figures an appearance of having been
+cut out of picture sheets. O great artists of Holland, masters of
+atmospheric effect and of contour bathed in light, what would you have
+said to such heartless silhouettes! In his youth Robert had been a line
+engraver, and he adapted the prosaic technique of line engraving to
+painting. However, he was a transitional painter, and as such he has an
+historical interest. He was a modern Tasso, too, and on the strength of
+the adventurous relationship to Princess Charlotte Napoleon, which
+ultimately drove him to suicide, he could be used with effect as the
+hero of a novel. Through the downfall of the school of David his star
+has paled--one more proof that only Nature is eternal, and that
+conventional painting falls into oblivion with the age that saw it rise.
+"I wished to find a _genre_ which was not yet known, and this _genre_
+has had the fortune to please. It is always an advantage to be the
+first." With these words he has himself indicated, in a way which is as
+modest as it is accurate, the ground of his reputation amongst
+contemporaries, and why it is that the history of art cannot quite
+afford to forget him.
+
+[Illustration: L. ROBERT. THE COMING OF THE REAPERS TO THE PONTINE
+ MARSHES.]
+
+Amongst the multitude of those who, incited by Robert's brilliant
+successes, made the Spanish staircase in Rome the basis of their art,
+_Victor Schnetz_, by his "Vow to the Madonna" of 1831, specially
+succeeded in winning public favour. At a later time his favourite themes
+were the funerals of children, inundations, and the like; but his arid
+method of painting contrasts with the sentimental melancholy of these
+subjects in a fashion which is not particularly agreeable.
+
+[Illustration: SCHNETZ. AN ITALIAN SHEPHERD.]
+
+It was _Ernest Hébert_ who first saw Italy with the eyes of a painter.
+He might be called the Perugino of this group. He was the most romantic
+of the pupils of Delaroche, and owed his conception of colour to that
+painter. His spiritual father was Ary Scheffer. The latter has
+discovered the poetry of sentimentality; Hébert the poetry of disease.
+His pictures are invariably of great technical delicacy. His style has
+something femininely gracious, almost languishing: his colouring is
+delicately fragrant and tenderly melting. He is, indeed, a refined
+artist who occupies a place by himself, however mannered the melancholy
+and sickliness of his figures may be. In "The Malaria" of 1850 they were
+influenced by the subject itself. The barge gliding over the waters of
+the Pontine Marshes, with its freight of men, women, and children, seems
+like a gloomy symbol of the voyage of life; the sorrow of the passengers
+is that of resignation: dying they droop their heads like withering
+flowers. But later the fever became chronic in Hébert. The interesting
+disease returned even where it was out of place, as it does still in the
+pictures of his followers. The same fate befell the painters of Italy
+which befalls tourists. What Robert had seen in the country as the first
+comer whole generations saw after him, neither more nor less than that.
+The pictures were always variations on the old theme, until in the
+sixties Bonnat came with his individual and realistic vision.
+
+[Illustration: _Portfolio._
+
+ HÉBERT. THE MALARIA.]
+
+In Germany, where "the yearning for Italy" had been ventilated in an
+immoderate quantity of lyrical poems ever since the time of
+Wackenroder's _Herzensergiessungen_, _August Riedel_ represented this
+phase of modern painting; and as Leopold Robert is still celebrated,
+Riedel ought not to be forgotten. Riedel lived too long (1800-1883),
+and, as he painted nothing but bad pictures during the last thirty
+years of his life, what he had done in his youth was forgotten. At that
+time he was the first apostle of Leopold Robert in Germany, and as such
+he has his importance as an innovator. When he began his career in the
+Munich Academy in 1819 Peter Langer, a Classicist of the order of Mengs,
+was still director there. Riedel also painted classical subjects and
+church pictures--"Christ on the Mount of Olives," "The Resurrection of
+Lazarus," and "Peter and Paul healing the Lame." But when he returned
+from Italy in 1823 he reversed the route which others had taken: the
+classic land set him free from Classicism, and opened his eyes to the
+beauty of life. Instead of working on saints in the style of Langer, he
+painted beautiful women in the costume of modern Italy. His "Neapolitan
+Fisherman's Family" was for Germany a revelation similar to that which
+Robert's "Neapolitan Improvisator" had been for France. The fisherman,
+rather theatrically draped, is sitting on the shore, while his wife and
+his little daughter listen to him playing the zither. The blue sea,
+dotted with white sails, and distant Ischia and Cape Missene, form the
+background; and a blue heaven, dappled with white clouds, arches above.
+Everything was of an exceedingly conventional beauty, but denoted
+progress in comparison with Robert. It already announced that search for
+brilliant effects of light which henceforward became a characteristic of
+Riedel, and gave him a peculiar position in his own day. "Even hardened
+connoisseurs," wrote Emil Braun from Rome about this time, "stand
+helpless before this magic of colouring. It is often long before they
+are able to persuade themselves that such glory of colour can be
+produced by the familiar medium of oil painting, and with materials that
+any one can buy at a shop where pigments are sold." Riedel touched a
+problem--diffidently, no doubt--which was only taken up much later in
+its full extent. And if Cornelius said to him, "You have fully attained
+what I have avoided with the greatest effort during the course of my
+whole life," it is none the less true that Riedel's Italian girls in the
+full glow of sunlight have remained, in spite of their stereotyped
+smile, so reminiscent of Sichel, better able to stand the test of
+galleries than the pictures of the Michael-Angelo of Munich. Before his
+"Neapolitan Fisherman's Family," which went the world over like a melody
+from Auber's _Masaniello_, before his "Judith" carrying the head of
+Holofernes in the brightest light of morning, before his "Girls Bathing"
+in the dimness of the forest, and before his "Sakuntala," painted "with
+refined effects of light," the cartoon painters mumbled and grumbled,
+and raised hue and cry over the desecration of German art; but Riedel's
+friends were just as loud in proclaiming the witchery of his colour, and
+"the Southern sunlight which he had conjured on to his palette," to be
+splendid beyond the powers of comprehension. It is difficult at the
+present day to understand the fame that he once had as "a pyrotechnist
+in pigments." But the results which he achieved by himself in colouring,
+long before the influence of the Belgians in Germany, will always give
+him a sure place in the history of German art. And these qualities were
+unconsciously inherited by his successors, who troubled their heads no
+further about the pioneer and founder.
+
+[Illustration: RIEDEL. THE NEAPOLITAN FISHERMAN'S FAMILY.]
+
+[Illustration: RIEDEL. JUDITH.]
+
+Those who painted the East with its clear radiance, its interesting
+people, and its picturesque localities, stand in opposition to the
+Italian enthusiasts. They are the second group of travellers. Gros had
+given French art a vision of that distant magic land, but he had had no
+direct disciples. Painters were as yet in too close bondage to their
+classical proclivities to receive inspiration from Napoleon's expedition
+into Egypt. But the travels of Chateaubriand and the verse of Byron, and
+then the Greek war of liberation, and, above all, the conquest of
+Algiers, once more aroused an interest in these regions, and, when the
+revolution of the Romanticists had once taken place, taught art a way
+into the East. Authors, journalists, and painters found their place in
+this army of travellers. The first view of men and women standing on the
+shore in splendid costume, with turbans or high sheepskin hats, and
+surrounded by black slaves, or mounted upon horses richly caparisoned,
+or listening to the roll of drums and the muezzin resounding from the
+minarets, was like a scene from _The Arabian Nights_. The bazaars and
+the harems, the quarters of the Janizaries and gloomy dungeons were
+visited in turn. Veiled women were seen, and mysterious houses where
+every sound was hushed. At first the Moors, obedient to the stern laws
+of the Koran, fled before the painters as if before evil spirits, but
+the Moorish women were all the more ready to receive these conquerors
+with open arms. Artists plunged with rapture into a new world; they
+anointed themselves with the oil of roses, and tasted all the sweets of
+Oriental life. The East was for the Byronic enthusiasts of 1830 what
+Italy had been for the Classicists. Could anything be imagined more
+romantic? You went on board a steamer provided with all modern comforts
+and all the appliances of the nineteenth century, and it carried you
+thousands of years back in the history of the world; you set foot on a
+soil where the word progress did not exist--in a land where the
+inhabitants still sat in the sun as if cemented to the ground, and wore
+the same costumes in which their forefathers had sat there two thousand
+years ago. Here the Romanticists not only found nature decked in the
+rich hues which satisfied their passion for colour, but discovered a
+race of people possessed of that beauty which, according to the
+Classicists, was only to be seen in the Italian peasants. They beheld
+"men of innate dignity and remarkable distinction of pose and gesture."
+Thus a new experience was added to life. There was the East, where
+splendour and simplicity, cruelty and beauty, softness of temper and
+savage austerity, and brilliant colour and blinding light are more
+completely mingled than anywhere else in the world; there was the East,
+where rich tints laugh in the midst of squalor and misery, the
+brightness of earlier days in the midst of outworn usages, and the pride
+of art in the midst of ruined villages. It was so great, so
+unfathomable, and so like a fairy tale that it gave every one the chance
+of discovering in it some new qualities.
+
+For _Delacroix_, the Byron of painting, it was a splendid setting for
+passion in its unfettered wildness and its unscrupulous daring. He, who
+had lived exclusively in the past, now turned to the observation of
+living beings, as may be seen in his "Algerian Women," his "Jewish
+Wedding," his "Emperor of Morocco," and his "Convulsionaries of
+Tangier." Amongst the Orientals he also found the hotly flaming
+sensuousness and primitive wildness which beset his imagination with its
+craving for everything impassioned.
+
+The great _charmeur_, the master of pictorial caprice, _Decamps_, found
+his province in the East, because its sun was so lustrous, its costume
+so bright, and its human figures so picturesque. If Delacroix was a
+powerful artist, Decamps was no more than a painter,--but painter he was
+to his finger-tips. He was indifferent to nothing in nature or history:
+he showed as much enthusiasm for a pair of tanned beggar-boys playing in
+the sunshine at the corner of a wall as for Biblical figures and
+old-world epics. He has painted hens pecking on a dung-heap, dogs on the
+chase and in the kennel, monkeys as scholars, and musicians in all the
+situations which Teniers and Chardin loved. His "Battle of Tailleborg"
+of 1837 has been aptly termed the only picture of a battle in the
+Versailles Museum. He looked on everything as material for painting, and
+never troubled as to how another artist would have treated the subject.
+There is an individuality in every one of his works; not an
+individuality of the first order, but one that is decidedly charming and
+that assures him a very high place amongst his contemporaries.
+
+Having made a success in 1829 with an imaginary picture of the East, he
+had a wish to see how far the reality corresponded with his ideas of
+Turkey, and in the same year--therefore before Delacroix--he went on
+that journey to the Greek Archipelago, Constantinople, and Asia Minor
+which became a voyage of discovery for French painting. In the Salon of
+1831 was exhibited his "Patrol of Smyrna," which at once made him one of
+the favourite French painters of the time. Soon afterwards came the
+picture of the "Pasha on his Rounds," accompanied by a lean troop of
+running and panting guards, that of the great "Turkish Bazaar," in which
+he gave such a charming representation of the gay and noisy bustle of an
+Oriental fair, those of the "Turkish School," the "Turkish Café," "The
+Halt of the Arab Horsemen," and "The Turkish Butcher's Shop." In
+everything which he painted from this time forward--even in his Biblical
+pictures--he had before his eyes the East as it is in modern times. Like
+Horace Vernet, he painted his figures in the costume of modern Arabs and
+Egyptians, and placed them in landscapes with modern Arab buildings. But
+the largeness of line in these landscapes is expressive of something so
+patriarchal and Biblical, and of such a dreamy, mystical poetry, that,
+in spite of their modern garb, the figures seem like visions from a far
+distance.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ DECAMPS. THE SWINEHERD.]
+
+Decamps' painting never became trivial. All his pictures soothe and
+captivate the eye, however much they disappoint, on the first glance,
+the expectations which the older descriptions of them may have excited.
+Fifty years ago it was said that Delacroix painted with colour and
+Decamps with light; that his works were steeped in a bath of sunshine.
+This vibrating light, this transparent atmosphere, which contemporaries
+admired, is not to be found in Decamps' pictures. Their brilliancy of
+technique is admirable, but he was no painter of light. The world of
+sunshine in which everything is dipped, the glow and lustre of objects
+in shining, liquid, and tremulous air, is what Gustave Guillaumet first
+learnt to paint a generation later. Decamps attained the effect of
+light in his pictures by the darkening of shadows, precisely in the
+manner of the old school. To make the sky bright, he threw the
+foreground into opaque and heavy shade. And as, in consequence of the
+ground of bole used to produce his beautiful red tones, the dark parts
+of his pictures gradually became as black as pitch, and the light parts
+dead and spotty, he will rather seem to be a contemporary of Albert Cuyp
+than of Manet.
+
+As draughtsman to a German baron making a scientific tour in the East,
+_Prosper Marilhat_, the third of the painters of Oriental life, was
+early in following this career. He visited Greece, Asia Minor, and
+Egypt, and returned to Paris in 1833 intoxicated with the beauties of
+these lands. Especially dear to him was Egypt, and in his pictures he
+called himself, "Marilhat the Egyptian." Decamps had been blinded by the
+sharp contrast between light and shadow in Oriental nature, by the vivid
+blaze of colour in its vegetation, and by the tropical glow of the
+Southern sky. Marilhat took novelties with a more quiet eye, and kept
+close to pure reality. He has not so much virtuosity as Decamps, and in
+colour he is less daring, but he is perhaps more poetic, and on that
+account, in the years 1833-44, he was prized almost more. The exhibition
+of 1844, in which eight of his pictures appeared, closed his career. He
+had expected the Cross of the Legion of Honour, but did not get it, and
+this disappointment affected him so deeply that he became first
+hypochondriacal and then mad. His early death at thirty-six set Decamps
+free from a powerful rival.
+
+_Eugène Fromentin_ went further in the same direction as Marilhat. He
+knew nothing of the preference for the glowing hues of the tropics nor
+of the fantastic colouring of the Romanticists. He painted in the spirit
+of a refined social period in which no loud voice is tolerated, but only
+light and familiar talk. The East gave him his grace; the proud and
+fiery nature of the Arab horse was revealed to him. In his portraits
+Fromentin looks like a cavalry officer. In his youth he had studied law,
+but that was before his acquaintance with the landscape painter Cabat
+brought him to his true calling, and a sojourn made on three different
+occasions--in 1845, 1848, and 1852--on the borders of Morocco decided
+for him his specialty. By his descriptions of travels, _A Year in
+Sahel_, which appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, he became known
+as a writer: it was only after 1857, however, that he became famous as a
+painter. Fromentin's East is Algiers. While Marilhat tried to render the
+marvellous clearness of the Southern light, and Decamps depicted the
+glowing heat of the East, its dark brooding sky in the sultry hours of
+summer and the grand outlines of its landscape, Fromentin has tried--and
+perhaps with too much system--to express the grace and brilliant spirit
+of the East. Taste, refinement, ductility, distinction of colouring, and
+grace of line are his special qualities. His Arabs galloping on their
+beautiful white horses have an inimitable chivalry; they are true
+princes in every pose and movement. The execution of his pictures is
+always spirited, easy, and in keeping with their high-bred tone.
+Whatever he does has the nervous vigour of a sketch, with that degree of
+finish which satisfies the connoisseur. There is always a coquetry in
+his arrangement of colour, and his tones are light and delicate if they
+are not deep. In the landscape his little Arab riders have the effect of
+flowers upon a carpet.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ DECAMPS. COMING OUT FROM A TURKISH SCHOOL.
+
+ (_By permission of Mme. Moreau-Nélaton, the owner of the picture._)]
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ DECAMPS. THE WATERING PLACE.]
+
+Afterwards, when naturalism was at its zenith, Fromentin was much
+attacked for this wayward grace. He was accused of making a superficial
+appeal to the eye, and of offering everything except truth. And for its
+substantive fidelity Fromentin's "East" cannot certainly be taken very
+seriously. He was a man of fine culture, and in his youth he had studied
+the old Dutch masters more than nature; he even saw the light of the
+East through the Dutch _chiaroscuro_. His pictures are subtle works of
+art, nervous in drawing and dazzling in brilliancy of construction, but
+they are washed in rather than painted, and stained rather than
+coloured. In his book he speaks himself of the cool, grey shadows of the
+East. But in his pictures they turn to a reddish hue or to brown. An
+effort after beauty of tone in many ways weakened his Arab scenes. He
+looked at the people of the East too much with the eyes of a Parisian.
+And the more his recollections faded, the more did he begin to create
+for himself an imaginary Africa. He painted grey skies simply because he
+was tired of blue; he tinted white horses with rosy reflections,
+chestnuts with lilac, and dappled-greys with violet. The grace of his
+works became more and more an affair of affectation, until at last,
+instead of being Oriental pictures, they became Parisian fancy goods,
+which merely recalled the fact that Algiers had become a French town.
+
+[Illustration: MARILHAT. A HALT.]
+
+But after all what does it matter whether pictures of the East are true
+to nature or not? Other people whose names are not Fromentin can provide
+such documents. In his works Fromentin has expressed himself, and that
+is enough. Take up his first book, _L'été dans la Sahara_: by its grace
+of style it claims a place in French literature. Or read his classic
+masterpiece, _Les maîtres d'autrefois_, published in 1876 after a tour
+through Belgium and Holland: it will remain for ever one of the finest
+works ever written on art. A connoisseur of such refinement, a critic
+who gauged the artistic works of Belgium and Holland with such subtlety,
+necessarily became in his own painting an epicure of beautiful tones.
+This man, who never made an awkward movement nor uttered a brutal word,
+this sensitive, distinguished spirit could be no more than a subtle
+artist who had eyes for nothing but the aristocratic side of Eastern
+life. As a painter, however, he might wish to be true to nature; he
+could be no more than this. His art, compact of grace and distinction,
+was the outcome of his own nature. He is a descendant of those
+delicately feminine, seductively brilliant, facile and spontaneous,
+sparkling and charming painters who were known in the eighteenth century
+as _peintres des fêtes galantes_. He is the Watteau of the East, and in
+this capacity one of the most winning and captivating products of French
+art.
+
+[Illustration: E. FROMENTIN. ARABIAN FALCONERS.]
+
+Finally, _Guillaumet_, the youngest and last of the group, found in the
+East peace: a scion of the Romanticists, there is none the less a
+whole world of difference between him and them. While the Romanticists,
+as sons of a flaccid, inactive period, lashed themselves into enthusiasm
+for the passion and wild life of the East, Guillaumet, the child of a
+hurried and neurotic epoch, sought here an opiate for his nerves. Where
+they saw contrasts he found harmony; and he did not find it, like
+Fromentin, in what is understood as _chic_. Manet's conception of colour
+had taught him that nature is everywhere in accord and harmoniously
+delicate.
+
+He writes: "_Je commence à distinguer quelques formes: des silhouettes
+indécises bougent le long des murs enfumés sous des poutres luisantes de
+sui. Les détails sortent du demi-jour, s'animent graduellement avec la
+magie des Rembrandt. Même mystère des ombres, mêmes ors dans les
+reflets--c'est l'aube.... Des terrains poudreux inondés de soleil; un
+amoncellement de murailles grises sous un ciel sans nuage; une cité
+somnolente baignée d'une lumière égale, et dans le frémissement visible
+des atomes aériens quelques ombres venant ça et là détacher une forme,
+accuser un geste parmi les groupes en burnous qui se meuvent sur les
+places ... tel m'apparait le ksar, vers dix heures du matin...._
+
+"_L'oeil interroge: rien ne bouge. L'oreille écoute: aucun bruit. Pas un
+souffle, si ce n'est le frémissement presque imperceptible de l'air
+au-dessus du sol embrasé. La vie semble avoir disparu, absorbée par la
+lumière. C'est le milieu du jour.... Mais le soir approche.... Les
+troupeaux rentrent dans les douars; ils se pressent autour des tentes, à
+peine visibles, confondus sous cette teinte neutre du crépuscule, faite
+avec les gris de la nuit qui vient et les violets tendres du soir qui
+s'en va. C'est l'heure mystérieuse, où les couleurs se mèlent, où les
+contours se noient, où toute chose s'assombrit, où toute voix se tait,
+où l'homme, à la fin du jour, laisse flotter sa pensée devant ce qui
+s'éteint, s'efface et s'evanouit._"
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._ EUGÈNE FROMENTIN.]
+
+This description of a day in Algiers in Guillaumet's _Tableaux
+algériens_ interprets the painter Guillaumet better than any critical
+appreciation could possibly do. For him the East is the land of dreams
+and melting softness, a far-off health-resort for neurotic patients,
+where one lies at ease in the sun and forgets the excitements of Paris.
+It was not what was brilliant and pictorial in sparkling jewels and
+bright costume that attracted him at all, but the silence, the mesmeric
+spell of the East, the vastness of the infinite horizon, the imposing
+majesty of the desert, and the sublime and profound peace of the nights
+of Africa. "The Evening Prayer in the Desert" was the name of the first
+picture that he brought back with him in 1863. There is a wide and
+boundless plain; the straight line of the horizon is broken by a few
+mountain forms and by the figures of a party belonging to a caravan;
+but, bowed as they are in prayer, these figures are scarcely to be
+distinguished. The smoke of the camp ascends like a pillar into the air.
+The monotony of the wilderness seems to stretch endlessly to the right
+and to the left, like a grand and solemn Nirvana smiting the human
+spirit with religious delirium.
+
+[Illustration: FROMENTIN. ARABIAN WOMEN RETURNING FROM DRAWING WATER.]
+
+For Decamps and Marilhat the East was a great, red copper-block beneath
+a blue dome of steel; a beautiful monster, bright and glittering.
+Guillaumet has no wish to dazzle. His pictures give one the impression
+of intense and sultry heat. His light is really "_le frémissement
+visible des atomes aériens_." Moreover, he did not see the chivalry of
+the East like Fromentin. The latter was fascinated by the nomad, the
+pure Arab living in tent or saddle, the true aristocrat of the desert,
+mounted on his white palfrey, hunting wild beasts through fair blue and
+green landscapes. Poor folk who never owned a horse are the models of
+Guillaumet. With their dogs--wild creatures who need nothing--they squat
+in the sun as if with their own kin: they are the lower, primitive
+population, the pariahs of the wilderness; tattered men whose life-long
+siesta is only interrupted by the anguish of death, animal women whose
+existence flows by as idly as in the trance of opium.
+
+After the French Romanticists had shown the way, other nations
+contributed their contingent to the painters of Oriental subjects. In
+Germany poetry had discovered the East. Rückert imitated the measure and
+the ideas of the Oriental lyric, and the Greek war of liberation
+quickened all that passionate love for the soil of old Hellas which
+lives in the German soul. _Wilhelm Müller_ sang his songs of the Greeks,
+and in 1825 _Leopold Schefer_ brought out his tale _Die Persierin_. But
+just as the Oriental tale was a mere episode in German literature, an
+exotic grafted on the native stem, so the Oriental painting produced no
+leading mind in the country, but merely a number of good soldiers who
+dutifully served in the troops of foreign commanders.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ FROMENTIN. THE CENTAURS.]
+
+_Kretszchmer_ of Berlin led the way with ethnographical representations,
+and was joined at a later time by Wilhelm Gentz and Adolf Schreyer of
+Frankfort. _Gentz_, a dexterous painter, and, as a colourist, perhaps
+the most gifted of the Berlin school in the sixties, is, in comparison
+with the great Frenchmen who portrayed the East, a thoroughly arid
+realist. He brought to his task a certain amount of rough vigour and
+restless diversity, together with North German sobriety and Berlin
+humour. _Schreyer_, who lived in Paris, belonged to the following of
+Fromentin. The Arab and his steed interested him also. His pictures are
+bouquets of colour, dazzling the eye. Arabs in rich and picturesque
+costume repose on the ground or are mounted on their milk-white steeds,
+which rear and prance with tossing manes and wide-stretched nostrils.
+The desert undulates away to the far horizon, now pale and now caressed
+by the softened rays of the setting sun, which tip the waves of sand
+with burnished gold. Schreyer was--for a German--a man with an
+extraordinary gift for technique and a brilliantly effective sense of
+life. The latter remark is specially true of his sketches. At a later
+date--in 1875, after being with Lembach and Makart in Cairo--the
+Viennese _Leopold Müller_ found the domain of his art beneath the clear
+sky, in the brightly coloured land of the Nile. Even his sketches are
+often of great delicacy of colour, and the ethnographical accuracy which
+he also possessed has long made him the most highly valued delineator of
+Oriental life and a popular illustrator of works on Egypt. The learned
+and slightly pedantic vein in his works he shares with Gérôme, but by
+his greater charm of colour he comes still nearer to Fromentin.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ GUILLAUMET. THE SÉGUIA, NEAR BISKRA.]
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ GUILLAUMET. A DWELLING IN THE SAHARA.]
+
+The route to the East was shown to the English by the glowing landscapes
+of _William Müller_; but the English were just as unable to find a Byron
+amongst their painters. _Frederick Goodall_ has studied the classical
+element in the East, and endeavoured to reconstruct the past from the
+present. Best known amongst these artists was _J. F. Lewis_, who died in
+1876 and was much talked of in earlier days. For long years he wandered
+through Asia Minor, filling his portfolios with sketches and his trunks
+with Oriental robes and weapons. When he returned there was a perfect
+scramble for his pictures. They revealed a new world to the English
+then, but no one scrambles for them now. John Lewis was exceedingly
+diligent and conscientious; he studied the implements, the costumes, and
+the popular types of the East with incredible industry. In his harem
+pictures as in his representations of Arabian camp life everything is
+painted, down to the patterns of embroidery, the ornaments of turbans,
+and the pebbles on the sand. Even his water-colours are triumphs of
+endurance; but patience and endurance are not sufficient to make an
+interesting artist. John Lewis stands in respect of colour, too, more or
+less on a level with Gentz. He has seized neither the dignity of the
+Mussulman nor the grace of the Bedouin, but has contented himself with a
+faithful though somewhat glaring reproduction of accessories. _Houghton_
+was the first who, moving more or less parallel with Guillaumet,
+succeeded in delicately interpreting the great peace and the mystic
+silence of the East.
+
+[Illustration: W. MÜLLER. PRAYER IN THE DESERT.]
+
+The East was in this way traversed in all directions. The first comers
+who beheld it with eager, excited eyes collected a mass of gigantic
+legends, with no decided aim or purpose and driven by no passionate
+impulse, merely eager to pluck here or there an exotic flower, or
+lightly to catch some small part of the glamour that overspread all that
+was Eastern, piled up dreams upon dreams, and gave it a gorgeous and
+fantastic life. There were deserts shining in the sun, waves lashed by
+the storm, the nude forms of women, and all the Asiatic splendour of the
+East: dark-red satin, gold, crystal, and marble were heaped in confusion
+and executed in terrible fantasies of colour in the midst of darkness
+and lightning. After this generation had passed like a thunderstorm the
+_chic_ of Fromentin was delicious. He profited by the taste which others
+had excited. Painters of all nationalities overran the East. The great
+dramas were transformed into elegies, pastorals, and idylls; even
+ethnographical representations had their turn. Guillaumet summed up the
+aims of that generation. His dreamy and tender painting was like a
+beautiful summer evening. The radiance of the blinding sky was
+mitigated, and a peaceful sun at the verge of the horizon covered the
+steppes of sand, which it had scorched a few hours before, with a
+network of rosy beams.
+
+They were all scions of the Romantic movement. The yearning which filled
+their spirits and drove them into distant lands was only another symptom
+of their dissatisfaction with the present.
+
+Classicism had dealt with Greek and Roman history by the aid of antique
+statues, and next used the colours of the Flemish masters to paint
+Italian peasantry. Romanticism had touched the motley life of the Middle
+Ages and the richly coloured East; but both had anxiously held aloof
+from the surroundings of home and the political and social relations of
+contemporaries.
+
+It was obvious that art's next task was to bring down to earth again the
+ideal that had hovered so long over the domain of ancient history, and
+then winged its flight to the realms of the East. "_Ah la vie, la vie!
+le monde est là; il rit, crie, souffre, s'amuse, et on ne le rend pas._"
+In these words the necessity of the step has been indicated by Fromentin
+himself. The successful delivery of modern art was first accomplished,
+the problem stated in 1789 was first solved, when the subversive
+upheaval of the Third Estate, which had been consummating itself more
+and more imperiously ever since the Revolution, found distinct
+expression in the art of painting. Art always moves on parallel lines
+with religious conceptions, with politics, and with manners. In the
+Middle Ages men lived in the world beyond the grave, and so the subjects
+of painting were Madonnas and saints. According to Louis XIV, everything
+was derived from the King, as light from the sun, and so royalty by the
+grace of God was reflected in the art of his epoch. The royal sun
+suffered total eclipse in the Revolution, and with this mighty change of
+civilisation art had to undergo a new transformation. The 1789 of
+painting had to follow on the politics of 1789: the proclamation of the
+liberty and equality of all individuals. Only painting which recognised
+man in his full freedom, no privileged class of gods and heroes,
+Italians and Easterns, could be the true child of the Revolution, the
+art of the new age. Belgium and Germany made the first diffident steps
+in this direction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE PAINTING OF HUMOROUS ANECDOTE
+
+
+At the very time when the East attracted the French Romanticists, the
+German and Belgian painters discovered the rustic. Romanticism, driven
+into strange and tropical regions by its disgust of a sluggish,
+colourless and inglorious age, now planted a firm foot upon native soil.
+Amid rustics there was to be found a conservative type of life which
+perpetuated old usages and picturesque costume.
+
+It is not easy for a dilettante to enter into sympathetic relationship
+with these early pictures of peasant life. They are gaudy in tone,
+smooth as metal, and the figures stand out hard against the atmosphere,
+as if they had been cut from a picture-sheet. But the historian has no
+right to be merely a dilettante. It would be unfair of him to make the
+artistic conceptions of the present time the means of depreciating the
+past. For, after all, works of the past are only to be measured with
+those of their own age, and when one once remembers what an importance
+these modest "little masters" had for their time it is no longer
+difficult to treat them with justice. In an age when futile and aimless
+intentions lost their way in theory and imitation of the "great
+painting" there blossomed here, and for the first time, a certain
+individuality of mind and temper. While Cornelius, Kaulbach, and their
+fellows formed a style which was ideal in a purely conventional sense,
+and epitomised the art of the great masters according to method, the
+"_genre_ painters" seized upon the endless variety of nature, and, after
+a long period of purely reproductive painting, made the first diffident
+attempt to set art free from the curse of system and the servile
+repetition of antiquated forms.
+
+Even as regards colour they have the honour of preparing the way for a
+restoration in the technique of painting. Their own defects in technique
+were not their fault, but the consequence of that fatal interference of
+Winckelmann through which art lost its technical traditions. They did
+not enjoy the advantages of issuing from a long line of ancestors. In a
+certain sense they had to make a beginning in the history of art by
+themselves; for between them and the older German painting they only met
+with men who held the ability to paint as a shame and a disgrace. With
+the example of the old Dutch and Flemish masters before them, they had
+to knit together the bonds which these men had cut; and considering the
+æsthetic ideas of the age, this reference to Netherlandish models was an
+event of revolutionary importance. In doing this they may have been
+partially influenced by Wilkie, who made his tour in Germany in 1825,
+and whose pictures had a wide circulation through the medium of
+engraving. And from another side attention was directed to the old Dutch
+masters by Schnaase's letters of 1834. While the entire artistic school
+which took its rise from Winckelmann gave the reverence of an empty,
+formal idealism to classical antiquity and the Cinquecento, applying
+their standards to all other periods, Schnaase was the first to give an
+impulse to the historical consideration of art. In this way he revealed
+wide and hitherto neglected regions to the creative activity of modern
+times. The result of his book was that the Netherlandish masters were no
+longer held to be "the apes of vulgar nature," but took their place as
+exquisite artists from whom the modern painter had a great deal to
+learn.
+
+[Illustration: KOBELL. A MEETING.]
+
+In Munich the conditions of a popular, national art were supplied by the
+very site of the town. Since the beginning of the century Munich had
+been peculiarly the type of a peasant city, the capital of a peasant
+province; it had a peasantry abounding in old-fashioned singularities,
+gay and motley in costume as in their ways of life, full of bright and
+easy-going good-humour, and gifted with the Bavarian force of character.
+Here it was, then, that "the resort to national traits" was first made.
+And if, in the event, this painting of rustic life produced many
+monstrosities, it remained throughout the whole century an unfailing
+source from which the art of Munich drew fresh and vivid power.
+
+Even in the twenties there was an art in Munich which was native to the
+soil, and in later years shot up all the more vigorously through being
+for a time cramped in its development by the exotic growths of the
+school of Cornelius. It was as different from the dominant historical
+painting as the "_magots_" of Teniers from the mythological machinery of
+Lebrun, and it was treated by official criticism with the same contempt.
+Cornelius and his school directed the attention of educated people so
+exclusively to themselves, and so entirely proscribed the literature of
+the day, that what took place outside their own circle in Munich was
+but little discussed. The vigorous group of naturalists had not much to
+offer critics who wished to display their knowledge by picking to pieces
+historical pictures, interpreting philosophical cartoons, and pointing
+to similarities of style between Cornelius and Michael Angelo. But for
+the historian, seeking the seeds of the present in the past, they are
+figures worthy of respect. Setting their own straightforward conception
+of nature against the eclecticism of the great painters, they laid the
+foundation of an independent modern art.
+
+The courtly, academic painting of Cornelius derived its inspiration from
+the Sistine Chapel; the naturalism of these "_genre_ painters" was
+rooted in the life of the Bavarian people. The "great painters" dwelt
+alone in huge monumental buildings; the naturalists, who sought their
+inspiration in the life of peasants, in the life of camps, and in
+landscape, without troubling themselves about antique or romantic
+subjects, furnished the material for the first collections of modern
+art. Both as artists and as men they were totally different beings.
+Cornelius and his school stand on the one side, cultured, imperious,
+fancying themselves in the possession of all true art, and abruptly
+turning from all who are not sworn to their flag; on the other side
+stand the naturalists, brisk and cheery, rough it may be, but sound to
+the core, and with a sharp eye for life and nature.
+
+[Illustration: PETER HESS. A MORNING AT PARTENKIRCHE.]
+
+Painting in the grand style owed its origin to the personal tastes of
+the king and to the great tasks to which it was occasionally set;
+independent of princely favour, realistic art found its patrons amongst
+the South German nobility and, at a later date, in the circle of the
+Munich Art Union, and seems the logical continuation of that military
+painting which, at the opening of the century, had its representatives
+in Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Munich. The motley swarm of foreign soldiers
+which overran the soil of Germany incited Albrecht Adam, Peter Hess,
+Johann Adam Klein, and others, to represent what they saw in a fashion
+which was sincere and simple if it was also prosy. And when the warlike
+times were over it was quite natural that some of the masters who had
+learnt their art in camps should turn to the representation of peasant
+life, where they were likewise able to find gay, pictorial costumes.
+_Wilhelm Kobell_, whose etchings of the life of the Bavarian people are
+more valuable than his battle-pieces, was one of the first to make this
+transition. In 1820 sturdy _Peter Hess_ painted his "Morning at
+Partenkirche," in which he depicted a simple scene of mountain
+life--girls at a well in the midst of a sunny landscape--in a homely but
+poetic manner. When this breach had been made, Bürkel was able to take
+the lead of the Munich painters of rustic subjects.
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._ HEINRICH BÜRKEL.]
+
+_Heinrich Bürkel's_ portrait reveals a square-built giant, whose
+appearance contrasts strangely with that of his celebrated
+contemporaries. The academic artists sweep back their long hair and look
+upwards with an inspired glance. Bürkel looks down with a keen eye at
+the hard, rough, and stony earth. The academic artists had a mantle--the
+mantle of Rauch's statues--picturesquely draped about their shoulders;
+Bürkel dressed like anybody else. No attribute is added which could
+indicate that he was a painter; neither palette, nor brush, nor picture;
+beside him on the table there is--a mug of beer. There he sits without
+any sort of pose, with his hand resting on his knee--rough, athletic,
+and pugnacious--for all the world as if he were quite conscious of his
+peculiarities. Even the photographer's demand for "a pleasant smile" had
+no effect upon him. This portrait is itself an explanation of Bürkel's
+art. His was a healthy, self-reliant nature, without a trace of romance,
+sentimentality, affected humour, or sugary optimism. Amongst all his
+Munich contemporaries he was the least academic in his whole manner of
+feeling and thinking.
+
+Sprung from the people, he became their painter. He was born, 29th May
+1802, in Pirmasens, where his father combined a small farm with a
+public-house and his mother kept a shop; and he had been first a
+tradesman's apprentice, and then assistant clerk in a court of justice,
+before he came to Munich in 1822. Here the Academy rejected him as
+without talent; but while it shut the door against the pupil, life
+revealed itself to the master. He went to the Schleissheimer Gallery,
+and sat there copying the pictures of Wouwerman, Ostade, Brouwer, and
+Berghem, and developed his powers, by the study of these Netherlandish
+masters, with extraordinary rapidity. His first works--battles,
+skirmishes, and other martial scenes--are amateurish and diffident
+attempts; it is evident that he was without any kind of guidance or
+direction. All the more astonishing is the swiftness with which he
+acquired firm command of abilities, admirable for that age, and the
+defiant spirit of independence with which he went straight from pictures
+to nature, though hardly yet in possession of the necessary means of
+expression. He painted and drew the whole new world which opened itself
+before him: far prospects over the landscape, mossy stones in the
+sunlight, numbers of cloud-pictures, peasants' houses with their
+surroundings, forest paths, mountain tracks, horses, and figures of
+every description. The life of men and animals gave him everywhere some
+opportunity for depicting it in characteristic situations. And later,
+when he had settled down again in Munich, he did not cease from
+wandering in the South German mountains with a fresh mind. Up to old age
+he made little summer and winter tours in the Bavarian highlands.
+Tegernsee, Rottach, Prien, Berchtesgaden, South Tyrol, and Partenkirche
+were visited again and again, on excursions for the week or the day; and
+he returned from them all with energetic studies, from which were
+developed pictures that were not less energetic.
+
+[Illustration: BÜRKEL. BRIGANDS RETURNING.]
+
+[Illustration: BÜRKEL. A DOWNPOUR IN THE MOUNTAINS.]
+
+For, as every artist is the result of two factors, of which one lies in
+himself and the other in his age and surroundings, the performances of
+Bürkel are to be judged, not only according to the requirements of the
+present day, but according to the conditions under which they were
+produced. What is weak in him he shares with his contemporaries; what is
+novel is his own most peculiar and incontestable merit. In a period of
+false idealism worked up in a museum--false idealism which had aped from
+the true the way in which one clears one's throat, as Schiller has it,
+but nothing more indicative of genius--in a period of this
+accomplishment Bürkel preferred to expose his own insufficiency rather
+than adorn himself with other people's feathers; at a time which prided
+itself on representing with brush and pigment things for which pen and
+ink are the better medium, he looked vividly into life; at a time when
+all Germany lost itself aimlessly in distant latitudes, he brought to
+everything an honest and objective fidelity which knew no trace of
+romantic sentimentalism; and by these fresh and realistic qualities he
+has become the father of that art which rose in Munich in a later day.
+Positive and exact in style, and far too sincere to pretend to raise
+himself to the level of the old masters by superficial imitation, he
+was the more industrious in penetrating the spirit of nature and showing
+his love for everything down to its minutest feature; weak in the
+sentiment for colour, he was great in his feeling for nature. That was
+Heinrich Bürkel, and his successors had to supplement what was wanting
+in him, but not to wage war against his influence.
+
+[Illustration: BÜRKEL. A SMITHY IN UPPER BAVARIA.]
+
+The peculiarity of all his works, as of those of the early Dutch and
+Flemish artists, is the equal weight which he lays on figures and on
+landscape. In his eyes the life of man is part of a greater whole;
+animals and their scenic surroundings are studied with the same love,
+and in his most felicitous pictures these elements are so blended that
+no one feature predominates at the expense of another. Seldom does he
+paint interiors, almost always preferring to move in free and open
+nature. But here his field is extraordinarily wide.
+
+Those works in which he handled Italian subjects form a group by
+themselves. Bürkel was in Rome from 1829 to 1832, the very years in
+which Leopold Robert celebrated his triumphs there; but curious is the
+difference between the works of the Munich and those of the Swiss
+painter. In the latter are beautiful postures, poetic ideas, and all
+the academical formulas; in the former unvarnished, naturalistic
+bluntness of expression. Even in Italy he kept romantic and academic art
+at a distance. They had no power over the rough, healthy, and sincere
+nature of the artist. He saw nothing in Italy that he had not met with
+at home, and he painted things as he saw them, honestly and without
+beatification.
+
+To find material Bürkel did not need to go far. Picture to yourself a
+man wandering along the banks of the Isar, and gazing about him with a
+still and thoughtful look. A healthy peasant lass with a basket, or a
+plough moving slowly in the distance behind a sweating yoke of horses,
+is quite enough to fill him with feelings and ideas.
+
+His peculiar domain was the high-road, which in the thirties and the
+forties, before the railways had usurped its traffic, was filled with a
+much more manifold life than it is to-day. Waggons and mail-carts passed
+along before the old gateways; in every village there were taverns
+inviting the wayfarer to rest, and blacksmiths sought for custom on the
+road. There were vehicles of every description, horses at the forge,
+posting-stages, change of teams, the departure of marketing folk, and
+passengers taking their seats or alighting. Here horses were being
+watered, and an occasion was given for brief dialogues between the
+coachman and his fares. There travellers surprised by a shower were
+hurrying under their umbrellas into an inn; or, in wintry weather, they
+were waiting impatiently, wrapped up in furs, whilst a horse was being
+shod.
+
+[Illustration: CARL SPITZWEG.]
+
+The beaten tracks through field and forest offered much of the same
+sort. Peasants were driving to market with a cart-load of wood. Horses
+stood unyoked at a drinking-trough whilst the driver, a muscular fellow
+with great sinews, quietly enjoyed his pipe. Along some shadowy woodland
+path a team drew near to a forge or a lonely charcoal-burner's hut,
+where the light flickered, and over which there soared a bare and snowy
+mountain peak.
+
+Such pictures of snow-clad landscape were a specialty of Bürkel's art,
+and in their simplicity and harmony are to be ranked with the best that
+he has done. Heavily freighted wood-carts passing through a drift,
+waggons brought to a standstill in the snow, raw-boned woodmen
+perspiring as they load them in a wintry forest, are the accessory
+objects and figures.
+
+[Illustration: _Albert, Munich._
+
+ SPITZWEG. AT THE GARRET WINDOW.]
+
+But life in the fields attracted him also. Having a love of representing
+animals, he kept out of the way of mowers, reapers, and gleaners. His
+favourite theme is the hay, corn, or potato harvest, which he paints
+with much detail and a great display of accessory incidents. Maids and
+labourers, old and young, are feverishly active in the construction of
+hay-cocks, or, in threatening weather, pile up waggons, loaded as high
+as a house, with fresh trusses.
+
+In this enumeration all the rustic life of Bavaria has been described.
+It is only the Sunday and holiday themes, the peculiar motives of the
+_genre_ painter, that are wanting. And in itself this is an indication
+of what gives Bürkel his peculiar position.
+
+By their conception his works are out of keeping with everything which
+the contemporary generation of "great painters" and the younger _genre_
+painters were attempting. The great painters had their home in museums;
+Bürkel lived in the world of nature. The _genre_ painters, under the
+influence of Wilkie, were fond of giving their motive a touch of
+narrative interest, like the English. Cheerful or mournful news, country
+funerals, baptisms, and public dinners offered an excuse for
+representing the same sentiment in varying keys. Their starting-point
+was that of an illustrator; it might be very pretty in itself, but it
+was too jovial or whimpering for a picture. Bürkel's works have no
+literary background; they are not composed of stories with a humorous or
+sentimental tinge, but depict with an intimate grasp of the subject the
+simplest events of life. He neither offered the public lollipops, nor
+tried to move them and play upon their sensibilities by subjects which
+could be spun out into a novel. He approached his men, his animals, and
+his landscapes as a strenuous character painter, without gush,
+sentimentality, or romanticism. In contradistinction from all the
+younger painters of rustic subjects, he sternly avoided what was
+striking, peculiar, or in any way extraordinary, endeavouring to paint
+everyday life in the house or the farmyard, in the field or upon the
+highway, in all plainness and simplicity.
+
+At first, indeed, he thought it necessary to satisfy the demands of the
+age by, at any rate, painting in a broad and epical manner. The public
+collections chiefly possess pictures of his which contain many figures:
+"The Return from the Mountain Pasture," "Coming Back from the Bear
+Hunt," "The Cattle Show," and "From the Fair"; scenes before an inn at
+festivals, or waggoners setting out, and the like. But in these works
+the scheme of composition and the multitude of figures have a somewhat
+overladen and old-fashioned effect. On the other hand, there are
+pictures scattered about in private collections which are of a
+simplicity which was unknown at the time: dusty roads with toiling
+horses, lonely charcoal burners' huts in the dimness of the forest,
+villages in rain or snow, with little figures shivering from frost or
+damp as they flit along the street. From the very beginning, free from
+the vices of _genre_ and narrative painting and the search after
+interesting subjects, he has, in these pictures, renounced the epical
+manner of representing a complicated event. Like the moderns, he paints
+things which can be grasped and understood at a glance.
+
+[Illustration: SPITZWEG. A MORNING CONCERT.]
+
+But, after all, Bürkel occupies a position which is curiously
+intermediate. His colour relegates him altogether to the beginning of
+the century. He was himself conscious of the weakness of his age in this
+respect, and stands considerably above the school of Cornelius, even
+where its colouring is best. Yet, in spite of the most diligent study of
+the Dutch masters, he remained, as a colourist, hard and inartistic to
+the end. Having far too much regard for outline, he is not light enough
+with what should be lightly touched, nor fugitive enough with what is
+fleeting. What the moderns leave to be indistinctly divined he renders
+sharp and palpable in his drawing. He trims and rounds off objects which
+have a fleeting form, like clouds. But although inept in technique, his
+works are more modern in substance than anything that the next
+generation produced. They have an intimacy of feeling beyond the reach
+of the traditional _genre_ painting. In his unusually fresh, simple, and
+direct studies of landscape he did not snatch at dazzling and
+sensational effects, but tried to be just to external nature in her
+work-a-day mood; and, in the very same way, in his figures he aimed at
+the plain reproduction of what is given in nature.
+
+The hands of his peasants are the real hands of toil--weather-stained,
+heavy, and awkward. There are no movements that are not simple and
+actual. Others have told droller stories; Bürkel unrolls a true picture
+of the surroundings of the peasant's life. Others have made their
+rustics persons suitable for the drawing-room, and cleaned their nails;
+Bürkel preaches the strict, austere, and pious study of nature. An
+entirely new age casts its shadow upon this close devotion to life. In
+their intimacy and simplicity his pictures contain the germ of what
+afterwards became the task of the moderns. All who came after him in
+Germany were the sons of Wilkie until Wilhelm Leibl, furnished with a
+better technical equipment, started in spirit from the point at which
+Bürkel had left off.
+
+_Carl Spitzweg_, in whose charming little pictures tender and discreet
+sentiment is united with realistic care for detail, must likewise be
+reckoned with the few who strove and laboured in quiet, apart from the
+ruling tendency, until their hour came. Thrown entirely on his own
+resources, without a teacher, he worked his way upwards under the
+influence of the older painters. By dint of copying he discovered their
+secrets of colour, and gave his works, which are full of poetry, a
+remarkable impress of sympathetic delicacy, suggestive of the old
+masters. One turns over the leaves of the album of Spitzweg's sketches
+as though it were a story-book from the age of romance, and at the same
+time one is astonished at the master's ability in painting. He was a
+genius who united in himself three qualities which seem to be
+contradictory--realism, fancy, and humour. He might be most readily
+compared with Schwind, except that the latter was more of a romanticist
+than a realist, and Spitzweg is more of a realist than a romanticist.
+The artists' yearning carries Schwind to distant ages and regions far
+from the world, and a positive sense of fact holds Spitzweg firmly to
+the earth.
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._
+
+ SPITZWEG. THE POSTMAN.]
+
+Like Jean Paul, he has the boundless fancy which revels in airy dreams,
+but he is also like Jean Paul in having a cheery, provincial
+satisfaction in the sights of his own narrow world. He has all Schwind's
+delight in hermits and anchorites, and witches and magic and nixies, and
+he plays with dragons and goblins like Boecklin; but, for all that, he
+is at home and entirely at his ease in the society of honest little
+schoolmasters and poor sempstresses, and gives shape to his own small
+joys and sorrows in a spirit of contemplation. His dragons are only
+comfortable, Philistine dragons, and his troglodytes, who chastise
+themselves in rocky solitudes, perform their penance with a kindly
+irony. In Spitzweg a fine humour is the causeway between fancy and
+reality. His tender little pictures represent the Germany of the
+forties, and lie apart from the rushing life of our time, like an
+idyllic hamlet slumbering in Sunday quietude. Indeed, his pictures come
+to us like a greeting from a time long past.
+
+There they are: his poor poet, a little, lean old man, with a sharp nose
+and a night-cap, sits at his garret window scanning verses on his frozen
+fingers, enveloped in a blanket drawn up to his chin, and protected from
+the inclemency of the weather by a great red umbrella; his clerk, grown
+grey in the dust of parchments, sharpens his quill with dim-sighted
+eyes, and feels himself part of a bureaucracy which rules the world; his
+book-worm stands on the highest ladder in the library, with books in his
+hand, books in his pockets, books under his arms, and books jammed
+between his legs, and neglects the dinner-hour in his peaceful
+enjoyment, until an angry torrent of scolding is poured over his devoted
+head by the housekeeper; there is his old gentleman devoutly sniffing
+the perfume of a cactus blossom which has been looked forward to for
+years; there is his little man enticing his bird with a lump of sugar;
+the widower glancing aside from the miniature of his better half at a
+pair of pretty maidens walking in the park; the constable whiling away
+the time at the town-gate in catching flies; the old-fashioned bachelor,
+solemnly presenting a bouquet to a kitchen-maid who is busied at the
+market-well, to the amusement of all the gossips watching him from the
+windows; the lovers who in happy oblivion pass down a narrow street by
+the stall of a second-hand dealer, where amidst antiquated household
+goods a gilded statuette of Venus reposes in a rickety cradle; the
+children holding up their pinafores as they beg the stork flying by to
+bring them a little brother.
+
+Spitzweg, like Jean Paul, makes an effect which is at once joyous and
+tender, _bourgeois_ and idyllic. The postillion gives the signal on his
+horn that the moment for starting has arrived; milk-maids look down from
+the green mountain summit into the far country; hermits sit before their
+cells forgotten by the world; old friends greet each other after years
+of separation; Dachau girls in their holiday best pray in woodland
+chapels; school children pass singing through a still mountain valley;
+maidens chatter of an evening as they fetch water from the moss-grown
+well, or the arrival of the postman in his yellow uniform brings to
+their windows the entire population of an old country town.
+
+The little man with the miserable figure of a tailor had been an
+apothecary until he was thirty years of age, but he had an independent
+and distinctive artistic nature which impresses itself on the memory in
+a way that is unforgettable. It is only necessary to see his portrait as
+he sits at his easel in his dressing-gown with his meagre beard, his
+long nose, and the droll look about the corners of his eyes, to feel
+attracted by him before one knows his works. Spitzweg reveals in them
+his own life: the man and the painter are one in him. There is a pretty
+little picture of him as an elderly bachelor, looking out of the window
+in the early morning and nodding across the roofs to an old sempstress
+who had worked the whole night through without noticing that the day had
+broken; that is the world he lived in, and the world which he has
+painted. As a kind-hearted, inflexible Benedick, full of droll
+eccentricities, he lived in the oldest quarter of Munich in a
+fourth-storey attic. His only visitor was his friend Moritz Schwind, who
+now and then climbed the staircase to the little room that looked over
+the roofs and gables and pinnacles to distant, smoky towers. His studio
+was an untidy confusion of prosaic discomfort and poetic cosiness.
+
+[Illustration: KAUFFMANN. WOODCUTTERS RETURNING.]
+
+Here he sat, an ossified hermit, _bourgeois_, and book-worm, as if he
+were in a spider's nest, and here at a little window he painted his
+delightful pictures. Here he took his homely meal at the rickety little
+table where he sat alone in the evening buried in his books. A pair of
+heavy silver spectacles with keen glasses sparkled on his thick nose,
+and the great head with its ironically twinkling eyes rested upon a huge
+cravat attached to a pointed stand-up collar. When disturbed by
+strangers he spoke slowly and with embarrassment, though in the society
+of Schwind he was brilliant and satirical. Then he became as mobile as
+quicksilver, and paced up and down the studio with great strides,
+gesticulating and sometimes going through a dramatic performance in
+vivid mimicry of those of whom he happened to be talking.
+
+His character has the same mixture of Philistine contentment and genial
+comedy which gleams from his works with the freshness of dew. A touch of
+the sturdy Philistinism of Eichendorf is in these provincial idylls of
+Germany; but at the same time they display an ability which even at the
+present day must compel respect. The whole of Romanticism chirps and
+twitters in the Spitzweg Album, as from behind the wires of a birdcage.
+Everything is here united: the fragrance of the woods and the song of
+birds, the pleasures of travelling and the sleepy life of provincial
+towns, moonshine and Sunday quiet, vagabonds, roving musicians, and the
+guardians of law, learned professors and students singing catches,
+burgomasters and town-councillors, long-haired painters and strolling
+players, red dressing-gowns, green slippers, night-caps, and pipes with
+long stems, serenades and watchmen, rushing streams and the trill of
+nightingales, rippling summer breezes and comely lasses, stroking back
+their hair of a morning, and looking down from projecting windows to
+greet the passers-by. In common with Schwind he shows a remarkable
+capacity for placing his figures in their right surroundings. All these
+squares, alleys, and corners, in which his provincial pictures are
+framed, seem--minutely and faithfully executed as they are--to be
+localities predestined for the action, though they are painted freely
+from memory. Just as he forgot none of the characteristic figures which
+he had seen in his youth, so he held in his memory the whimsical and
+marvellous architecture of the country towns of Swabia and Upper Bavaria
+which he had visited for his studies, with such a firm grip that it was
+always at his command; and he used it as a setting for his figures as a
+musician composes an harmonious accompaniment for a melody.
+
+[Illustration: KAUFFMANN. A SANDY ROAD.]
+
+[Illustration: KAUFFMANN. RETURNING FROM THE FIELDS.]
+
+To look at his pictures is like wandering on a bright Sunday morning
+through the gardens and crooked, uneven alleys of an old German town. At
+the same time one feels that Spitzweg belonged to the present and not
+to the period of the ingenuous Philistines. It was only after he had
+studied at the university and passed his pharmaceutical examination that
+he turned to painting. Nevertheless he succeeded in acquiring a
+sensitiveness to colour to which nothing in the period can be compared.
+He worked through Burnett's _Treatise on Painting_, visited Italy, and
+in 1851 made a tour, for the sake of study, to Paris, London, and
+Antwerp, in company with Eduard Schleich. In the gallery of
+Pommersfelden he made masterly copies from Berghem, Gonzales Coquez,
+Ostade, and Poelenburg, and lived to see the appearance of Piloty. But
+much as he profited by the principles of colour which then became
+dominant, he is like none of his contemporaries, and stands as far from
+Piloty's brown sauce as from the frigid hardness of the old _genre_
+painters. He was one of the first in Germany to feel the really sensuous
+joy of painting, and to mix soft, luxuriant, melting colours. There are
+landscapes of his which, in their charming freshness, border directly on
+the school of Fontainebleau. Spitzweg has painted bright green meadows
+in which, as in the pictures of Daubigny, the little red figures of
+peasant women appear as bright and luminous patches of colour. His
+woodland glades penetrated by the sun have a pungent piquancy of colour
+such as is only to be found elsewhere in Diaz. And where he diversified
+his desolate mountain glens and steeply rising cliffs with the fantastic
+lairs of dragons and with eccentric anchorites, he sometimes produced
+such bold colour symphonies of sapphire blue, emerald green, and red,
+that his pictures seem like anticipations of Boecklin. Spitzweg was a
+painter for connoisseurs. His refined cabinet pieces are amongst the
+few German productions of their time which it is a delight to possess,
+and they have the savour of rare delicacies when one comes across them
+in the dismal wilderness of public galleries.
+
+Bürkel's realistic programme was taken up with even greater energy by
+_Hermann Kauffmann_, who belonged to the Munich circle from 1827 to
+1833, and then painted until his death in 1888 in his native Hamburg.
+His province was for the most part that of Bürkel: peasants in the
+field, waggoners on the road, woodmen at their labour, and hunters in
+the snowy forest. For the first few years after his return home he used
+for his pictures the well-remembered motives taken from the South German
+mountain district. A tour in Norway, undertaken in 1843, gave him the
+impulse for a series of Norwegian landscapes which were simple and
+direct, and of more than common freshness. In the deanery at Holstein he
+studied the life of fishers. Otherwise the neighbourhood of Hamburg is
+almost always the background of his pictures: Harburg, Kellinghusen,
+Wandsbeck, and the Alster Valley. Concerning him Lichtwark is right in
+insisting upon the correctness of intuition, the innate soundness of
+perception which one meets with in all his works.
+
+[Illustration: FRIEDRICH EDUARD MEYERHEIM.]
+
+In Berlin the excellent _Eduard Meyerheim_ went on parallel lines with
+these masters. An old tradition gives him the credit of having
+introduced the painting of peasants and children into German art. But in
+artistic power he is not to be compared with Bürkel or Kauffmann. They
+were energetic realists, teeming with health, and in everything they
+drew they were merely inspired by the earnest purpose of grasping life
+in its characteristic moments. But Meyerheim, good-humoured and
+childlike, is decidedly inclined to a sentimentally pathetic compromise
+with reality. At the same time his importance for Berlin is
+incontestable. Hitherto gipsies, smugglers, and robbers were the only
+classes of human society, with the exception of knights, monks, noble
+ladies, and Italian women, which, upon the banks of the Spree, were
+thought suitable for artistic representation. Friedrich Eduard
+Meyerheim sought out the rustic before literature had taken this step,
+and in 1836 he began with his "King of the Shooting Match," a series of
+modest pictures in which he was never weary of representing in an honest
+and sound-hearted way the little festivals of the peasant, the happiness
+of parents, and the games of children.
+
+He had grown up in Dantzic, and played as a child in the tortuous lanes
+of the old free imperial city, amid trumpery shops, general dealers, and
+artisans. Later, when he settled down in Berlin, he painted the things
+which had delighted him in his youth. The travels which he made for
+study were not extensive: they hardly led him farther beyond the
+boundaries of the Mark than Hesse, the Harz district, Thüringen,
+Altenburg, and Westphalia. Here he drew with indefatigable diligence the
+pleasant village houses and the churches shadowed by trees; the cots,
+yards, and alleys; the weather-beaten town ramparts, with their
+crumbling walls; the unobtrusive landscapes of North Germany, lovely
+valleys, bushy hills, and bleaching fields, traversed by quiet streams
+fringed with willows, and enlivened by the figures of peasants, who
+still clung to so much of their old costume. His pictures certainly do
+not give an idea of the life of the German people at the time. For the
+peasantry have sat to Meyerheim only in their most pious mood, in Sunday
+toilette, and with their souls washed clean. Clearness, neatness, and
+prettiness are to be found everywhere in his pictures. But little as
+they correspond to the truth, they are just as little untrue through
+affectation, for their idealism sprang from the harmless and cheerful
+temperament of the painter, and from no convention of the schools.
+
+[Illustration: MEYERHEIM. CHILDREN AT PLAY.]
+
+A homely, idyllic poetry is to be found in his figures and his
+interiors. His women and girls are chaste and gracious. It is evident
+that Meyerheim had a warm sympathy for the sorrows and joys of humble
+people; that he had an understanding for this happy family life, and
+liked himself to take part in these merry popular festivals; that he did
+not idealise the world according to rules of beauty, but because in his
+own eyes it really was so beautiful. His "King of the Shooting Match"
+of 1836 (Berlin National Gallery) has as a background a wide and
+pleasant landscape, with blue heights in the distance and the cheerful
+summer sunshine resting upon them. In the foreground are a crowd of
+figures, neatly composed after studies. The crowned king of the match,
+adorned for a festival, stands proudly on the road by which the
+procession of marksmen is advancing, accompanied by village music. An
+old peasant is congratulating him, and the pretty village girls and
+peasant women, in their gay rustic costumes, titter as they look on,
+while the neighbours are merrily drinking his health. Then there is the
+"Morning Lesson," representing a carpenter's house, where an old man is
+hearing his grandson repeat a school task; "Children at Play," a picture
+of a game of hide-and-seek amongst the trees; "The Knitting Lesson," and
+the picture of a young wife by the bed of a naked boy who has thrown off
+the bedclothes and is holding up one of his rosy feet; and "The Road to
+Church," where the market-place is shadowed with lime trees and the
+fresh young girlish figures adorned in their Sunday best. These are all
+pictures which in lithograph and copperplate engraving once flooded all
+Germany and enraptured the public at exhibitions.
+
+[Illustration: MEYERHEIM. THE KING OF THE SHOOTING MATCH.]
+
+But the German _genre_ picture of peasant life only became universally
+popular after the village novel came into vogue at the end of the
+thirties. Walter Scott was not only a Romanticist, but the founder of
+the peasant novel: he was the first to study the life and the human
+character of the peasantry of his native land, their rough and healthy
+merriment, their humorous peculiarities, and their hot-headed love of
+quarrelling; and he led the Romanticists from their idyllic or sombre
+world of dreams nearer to the reality and its poetry. A generation later
+Immermann created this department of literature in Germany by the
+Oberhof-Episode of his _Münchhausen_. "The Village Magistrate" was soon
+one of those typical figures which in literature became the model of a
+hundred others. In 1837 Jeremias Gotthelf began in his _Bauernspiegel_
+those descriptions of Bernese rustic life which found general favour
+through their downright common sense. Berthold Auerbach, Otto Ludwig,
+and Gottfried Keller were then active, and Fritz Reuter lit upon a more
+clear-cut form for his tales in dialect.
+
+[Illustration: MEYERHEIM. THE MORNING HOUR.]
+
+The influence which these writers had upon painting was enormous. It now
+turned everywhere to the life of the people, and took its joy and
+pleasure in devoting itself to reality. And the rustic was soon a
+popular figure much sought after in the picture market. Yet this
+reliance on poetry and fiction had its disadvantage. For in Germany,
+also, a vogue was given to that "_genre_ painting" which, instead of
+starting with a simple, straightforward representation of what the
+artist had seen, offered an artistically correct composition of what he
+had invented, and indulged in a rambling display of humorous narrative
+and pathetic pieces.
+
+In Carlsruhe _Johann Kirner_ was the first to work on these lines,
+adapting the life of the Swabian peasantry to the purposes of humorous
+anecdote. In Munich _Carl Enhuber_ was especially fertile in the
+invention of comic episodes amongst the rustics of the Bavarian
+highlands, and his ponderous humour made him one of the favourite heroes
+of the Art Union. Every one was in raptures over his "Partenkirche
+Fair," over the charlatan in front of the village inn, who (like a
+figure after Gerhard Dow) is bringing home to the multitude by his
+lofty eloquence the fabulous qualities of his soap for removing spots;
+over that assembly of peasants which gave the painter an opportunity for
+making clearly recognisable people to be found everywhere in any little
+town, from the judge of the county court and the local doctor down to
+the watchmen. His second hit was "The Interrupted Card Party": the
+blacksmith, the miller, the tailor, and other dignitaries of the village
+are so painfully disturbed in their social reunion by the unamiable wife
+of the tailor that her happy spouse makes his escape under the table.
+The house servant holds out his blue apron to protect his master, whilst
+the miller and the blacksmith try to look unconcerned; but a small boy
+who has accompanied his mother with a mug discovers the concealed sinner
+by his slipper, which has come off. The "Session Day" contains a still
+greater wealth of comical types: here is the yard of a country assize
+court, filled with people, some of them waiting their turn, some issuing
+in contentment or dejection. Most contented, of course, are a bridal
+pair from the mountains--a stout peasant lad and a buxom maiden--who
+have just received official consent to their marriage. Disastrous
+country excursions--townspeople overtaken by rain on their arrival in
+the mountains--were also a source of highly comical situations.
+
+[Illustration: MEYERHEIM. THE KNITTING LESSON.]
+
+In Düsseldorf the reaction against the prevailing sentimentality
+necessarily gave an impulse to art on these humorous lines. When it
+seemed as if the mournfulness of the thirties would never be ended,
+_Adolf Schroedter_, the satirist of the band of Düsseldorf artists in
+those times, broke the spell when he began to parody the works of the
+"great painters." When Lessing painted "The Sorrowing Royal Pair,"
+Schroedter painted "The Triumphal Procession of King Bacchus"; when
+Hermann Stilke produced his knights and crusaders, Schroedter
+illustrated _Don Quixote_ as a warning; and when Bendemann gave the
+world "The Lamentation of Jeremiah" and "The Lamentation of the Jews,"
+Schroedter executed his droll picture "The Sorrowful Tanners," in which
+the tanners are mournfully regarding a hide carried away by the stream.
+Since he was a humorist, and humour is rather an affair for drawing than
+painting, the charming lithographs, "The Deeds and Opinions of Piepmeyer
+the Delegate," published in conjunction with Detmold, the Hanoverian
+barrister, and author of the _Guide to Connoisseurship_, are perhaps to
+be reckoned as his best performances. _Hasenclever_ followed the
+dilettante Schroedter as a delineator of the "stolid Peter" type, and
+painted the "Study" and similar pictures for Kortum's _Jobsiade_ with
+great technical skill, and, at the same time, with little humour and
+much complacency. By the roundabout route of illustration artists were
+gradually brought more directly into touch with life, and painted side
+by side with melodramatic brigands, rustic folk, or a student at a
+tavern on the Rhine, absurd people reading the newspapers, comic men
+sneezing, or the smirking Philistine tasting wine.
+
+[Illustration: KIRNER. THE FORTUNE TELLER.]
+
+[Illustration: ENHUBER. THE PENSIONER AND HIS GRANDSON.]
+
+[Illustration: JACOB BECKER. A TEMPEST.]
+
+_Jacob Becker_ went to the Westerwald to sketch little village
+tragedies, and won such popularity with his "Shepherd Struck by
+Lightning" that for a long time the interest of the public was often
+concentrated on this picture in the collection of the Staedel Institute.
+_Rudolf Jordan_ of Berlin settled on Heligoland, and became by his
+"Proposal of Marriage in Heligoland" one of the most esteemed painters
+of Düsseldorf. And in 1852 _Henry Ritter_, his pupil, who died young,
+enjoyed a like success with his "Middy's Sermon," which represents a
+tiny midshipman with comical zeal endeavouring to convert to temperance
+three tars who are staggering against him. A Norwegian, _Adolf
+Tidemand_, became the Leopold Robert of the North, and, like Robert,
+attained an international success when, after 1845, he began to present
+his compatriots, the peasants, fishers, and sailors of the shores of the
+North Sea, to the public of Europe. There was no doubt that a true
+ethnographical course of instruction in the life of a distant race, as
+yet unknown to the rest of Europe, was to be gathered from his pictures,
+as from those of Robert, or from the Oriental representations of Vernet.
+In Tidemand's pictures the Germans learnt the Norwegian usage of
+Christmas, accompanied the son of the North on his fishing of a night,
+joined the bridal party on the Hardanger Fjord, or listened to the
+sexton giving religious instruction; sailed with fishing girls in a
+skiff to visit the neighbouring village, or beheld grandmother and the
+children dance on Sunday afternoon to father's fiddle. Norwegian peasant
+life was such an unknown world of romance, and the costume so novel,
+that Tidemand's art was greeted as a new discovery. That the truth of
+his pictures went no further than costume was only known at a later
+time. Tidemand saw his native land with the eyes of a Romanticist, as
+Robert saw Italy, and, in the same one-sided way, he only visited the
+people on festive occasions. Though a born Norwegian, he, too, was a
+foreigner, a man who was never familiar with the life of his country
+people, who never lived at home through the raw autumn and the long
+winter, but came only as a summer visitor, when nature had donned her
+bridal garb, and naturally took away with him the mere impressions of a
+tourist. As he only went to Norway for recreation, it is always
+holiday-tide and Sabbath peace in his pictures. He represents the same
+idyllic optimism and the same kindly view of "the people" as did
+Björnson in his earliest works; and it is significant that the latter
+felt himself at the time so entirely in sympathy with Tidemand that he
+wrote one of his tales, _The Bridal March_, as text to Tidemand's
+picture "Adorning the Bride."
+
+To seek the intimate poetry in the monotonous life of the peasant, and
+to go with him into the struggle for existence, was what did not lie in
+Tidemand's method of presentation; he did not live amongst the people
+sufficiently long to penetrate to their depths. The sketches that
+resulted from his summer journeys often reveal a keen eye for the
+picturesque, as well as for the spiritual life of this peasantry; but
+later in Düsseldorf, when he composed his studies for pictures with the
+help of German models, all the sharp characterisation was watered down.
+What ought to have been said in Norwegian was expressed in a German
+translation, where the emphasis was lost. His art is Düsseldorf art with
+Norwegian landscapes and costumes; a course of lectures on the manners
+and customs of Norwegian villages composed for Germans. The only thing
+which distinguishes Tidemand to his advantage from the German
+Düsseldorfers is that he is less humorously and sentimentally disposed.
+Pictures of his, such as "The Lonely Old People," "The Catechism," "The
+Wounded Bear Hunter," "The Grandfather's Blessing," "The Sectarians,"
+etc., create a really pleasant and healthy effect by a certain actual
+simplicity which they undoubtedly have. Other men would have made a
+melodrama out of "The Emigrant's Departure" (National Gallery in
+Christiania). Tidemand portrays the event without any sort of emphasis,
+and feels his way with tact on the boundary between sentiment and
+sentimentality. There is nothing false or hysterical in the behaviour of
+the man who is going away for life, nor in those who have come to see
+him off.
+
+In Vienna the _genre_ painters seem to owe their inspiration especially
+to the theatre. What was produced there in the province of grand art
+during the first half of the century was neither better nor worse than
+elsewhere. The Classicism of Mengs and David was represented by
+_Heinrich Füger_, who had a more decided leaning towards the operatic.
+The representative-in-chief of Nazarenism was _Josef Führich_, whose
+frescoes in the Altlerchenfeld Church are, perhaps, better in point of
+colour than the corresponding efforts of the Munich artists, though they
+are likewise in a formal way derivative from the Italians. Vienna had
+its Wilhelm Kaulbach in _Carl Rahl_, its Piloty in _Christian Ruben_,
+who, like the Munich artist, had a preference for painting Columbus, and
+was meritorious as a teacher. It was only through portrait painting
+that Classicism and Romanticism were brought into some sort of relation
+with life; and the Vienna portraitists of this older régime are even
+better than their German contemporaries, as they made fewer concessions
+to the ruling idealism. Amongst the portrait painters was _Lampi_, after
+whom followed _Moritz Daffinger_ with his delicate miniatures; but the
+most important of them all was _Friedrich Amerling_, who had studied
+under Lawrence in London and under Horace Vernet in Paris, and brought
+back with him great acquisitions in the science of colour. In the first
+half of the century these assured him a decided advantage over his
+German colleagues. It was only later, when he was sought after as the
+fashionable painter of all the crowned heads, that his art degenerated
+into mawkishness.
+
+[Illustration: TIDEMAND. THE SECTARIANS.]
+
+_Genre_ painting was developed here as elsewhere from the military
+picture. As early as 1813 _Peter Krafft_, an academician of the school
+of David, had exhibited a great oil-painting, "The Soldier's
+Farewell"--the interior of a village room with a group of life-size
+figures. The son of the family, in grey uniform, with a musket in his
+hand, is tearing himself from his young wife, who has a baby on her arm
+and is trying in tears to hold him back. His old father sits in a corner
+with folded hands beside his mother, who is also crying, and has hid her
+face. In 1820 Krafft added "The Soldier's Return" as a pendant to this
+picture. It represents the changes which have taken place in the family
+during the warrior's absence: his old mother is at rest in her grave;
+his grey-headed father has become visibly older, his little sister has
+grown up, and the baby in arms is carrying the musket after his father.
+They are both exceedingly tiresome pictures; the colour is cold and
+grey, the figures are pseudo-classical in modern costume, and the pathos
+of the subject seems artificial and forced. Nevertheless a new principle
+of art is declared in them. Krafft was the first in Austria to recognise
+what a rich province had been hitherto ignored by painting. He warned
+his pupils against the themes of the Romanticists. These, as he said,
+were worked out, since no one would do anything better than the "Last
+Supper of Leonardo da Vinci or the Madonnas of Raphael." And he warmly
+advocated the conviction "that nothing could be done for historical
+painting so long as it refused to choose subjects from modern life."
+Krafft was an admirable teacher with a sober and clear understanding,
+and he invariably directed his pupils to the immediate study of life and
+nature. The consequence of his career was that _Carl Schindler_,
+_Friedrich Treml_, _Fritz L'Allemand_, and others set themselves to
+treat in episodic pictures the military life of Austria, from the
+recruiting stage to the battle, and from the soldier's farewell to his
+return to his father's house. A further result was that the Viennese
+_genre_ painting parted company with the academical and historic art.
+
+Just at this time Tschischka and Schottky began to collect the popular
+songs of the Viennese. Castelli gave a poetic representation of
+_bourgeois_ life, and Ferdinand Raimund brought it upon the stage in his
+dramas. Bauernfeld's types from the life of the people enjoyed a rapid
+popularity. Josef Danhauser, Peter Fendi, and Ferdinand Waldmüller went
+on parallel lines with these authors. In their _genre_ pictures they
+represented the Austrian people in their joys and sorrows, in their
+merriment and heartiness and good-humour; the people, be it understood,
+of Raimund's popular farces, not those of the pavement of Vienna.
+
+_Josef Danhauser_, the son of a Viennese carpenter, occupied himself
+with the artisan and _bourgeois_ classes. David Wilkie gave him the form
+for his work and Ferdinand Raimund his ideas. His studio scenes, with
+boisterous art students caught by their surly teacher at the moment when
+they are playing their worst pranks, gave pleasure to the class of
+people who, at a later date, took so much delight in Emanuel Spitzer.
+His "Gormandizer" is a counterpart to Raimund's _Verschwender_; and
+when, in a companion picture, the gluttonous liver is supping up the
+"monastery broth" amongst beggars, and his former valet remains true to
+him even in misfortune, Grillparzer's _Treuer Diener seines Herrn_
+serves as a model for this type. Girls confessing their frailty to their
+parents had been previously painted by Greuze. Amongst those of his
+pictures which had done most to amuse the public was the representation
+of the havoc caused by a butcher's dog storming into a studio. In his
+last period he turned with Collins to the nursery, or wandered through
+the suburbs with a sketch-book, immortalising the doings of children in
+the streets, and drawing "character heads" of the school-teacher tavern
+_habitués_ and the lottery adventurer.
+
+[Illustration: TIDEMAND. ADORNING THE BRIDE.]
+
+And this was likewise the province to which _Waldmüller_ devoted
+himself. Chubby peasant children are the heroes of almost all his
+pictures. A baby is sprawling with joy on its mother's lap, while it is
+contemplated with proud satisfaction by its father, or it is sleeping
+under the guardianship of a little sister; a boy is despatched upon the
+rough path which leads to school, and brings the reward of his conduct
+home with rapturous or dejected mien, or he stammers "Many happy returns
+of the day" to grandpapa. Waldmüller paints "The First Step," the joys
+of "Christmas Presents," and "The Distribution of Prizes to Poor School
+Children"; he follows eager juveniles to the peep-show; he is to be met
+at "The Departure of the Bride" and at "The Wedding"; he is our guide to
+the simple "Peasant's Room," and shows the benefit of "Almsgiving."
+Though his pictures may seem old-fashioned in subject nowadays, their
+artistic qualities convey an entirely modern impression. Born in 1793,
+he anticipated the best artists of later days in his choice of material.
+Both in his portraits and in his country scenes there is a freshness
+and transparency of tone which was something rare among the painters of
+that time.
+
+[Illustration: PETER KRAFFT. THE SOLDIER'S RETURN.]
+
+_Friedrich Gauermann_ wandered in the Austrian Alps, in Steiermark, and
+Salzkammergut, making studies of nature, the inhabitants, and the animal
+world. In contradistinction from Waldmüller, painter of idylls, and the
+humorist Danhauser, he aimed above all at ethnographical exactness. With
+sincere and unadorned observation Gauermann represents the local
+peculiarities of the peasantry, differentiated according to their
+peculiar valleys; life on the pasture and at the market, when some
+ceremonial occasion--a shooting match, a Sunday observance, or a church
+consecration--has gathered together the scattered inhabitants.
+
+_Genre_ painting in other countries worked with the same types. The
+costume was different, but the substance of the pictures was the same.
+
+In Belgium Leys had already worked in the direction of painting everyday
+life; for although he had painted figures from the sixteenth century,
+they were not idealised, but as rough and homely as in reality. When the
+passion for truthfulness increased, as it did in the following years,
+there came a moment when the old German tradition, under the shelter of
+which Leys yet took refuge, was shaken off, and artists went directly to
+nature without seeking the mediation of antiquated style. At that time
+Belgium was one of the most rising and thriving countries in Europe. It
+had private collections by the hundred. Wealthy merchants rivalled one
+another in the pride of owning works by their celebrated painters. This
+necessarily exerted an influence on production. Pretty _genre_ pictures
+of peasant life soon became the most popular wares; as for their
+artistic sanction, it was possible to point to Brouwer and Teniers, the
+great national exemplars.
+
+At first, then, the painters worked with the same elements as Teniers.
+The common themes of their pictures were the ale-house with its thatched
+roof, the old musician with his violin, the mountebank standing in the
+midst of a circle of people, lovers, or drinkers brawling. Only the
+costume was changed, and everything coarse, indecorous, or unrestrained
+was scrupulously excluded _ad usum Delphini_. That the deep colouring of
+the old masters became meagre and motley was in Belgium also an
+inevitable result of the helplessness in regard to colour which had been
+brought on by Classicism. The pictorial _furia_ of Adriaen Brouwer gave
+way to a polished porcelain painting which hardly bore a trace of the
+work of the hand. Harsh and gaudy reds and greens were especially
+popular.
+
+[Illustration: WALDMÜLLER. THE FIRST STEP.]
+
+The first who began a modest career on these lines was _Ignatius van
+Regemorter_. As one recognises the pictures of Wouwerman by the
+dappled-grey horse, Regemorter's may be recognised by the violin. Every
+year he turned out one picture at least in which music was being played,
+and people were dancing with a rather forced gaiety. Then came
+_Ferdinand de Braekeleer_, who painted the jubilees of old people, or
+children and old women amusing themselves at public festivities. Teniers
+was his principal model, but his large joviality was transformed into a
+chastened merriment, and his broad laughter into a discreet smile.
+Braekeleer's peasantry and proletariat are of an idyllic mildness;
+honest, pious souls who, with all their poverty, are as moral as they
+are happy. _Henri Coene_ elaborated such themes as "Oh, what beautiful
+Grapes!" or "A Pinch of Snuff for the Parson!"
+
+[Illustration: MADOU. IN THE ALE-HOUSE.]
+
+Madou's merit lies in having extended Belgian _genre_ painting somewhat
+beyond these narrow bounds; he introduced a greater variety of types
+verging more on reality than that everlasting honest man painted by
+Ferdinand de Braekeleer. _Madou_ was a native of Brussels. There he was
+born in 1796, and he died there in 1877. When he began his career
+Wappers had just made his appearance. Madou witnessed his successes, but
+did not feel tempted to follow him. Whilst the latter in his large
+pictures in the grand style aimed at being Rubens _redivivus_, Madou
+embodied his ideas in fleeting pencil sketches. A great number of
+lithographs of scenes from the past bore witness to his conception of
+history. There was nothing in them that was dignified, nothing that was
+stilted, no idealism and no beauty; in their tabards and helmets the
+figures moved with the natural gestures of ordinary human beings. By the
+side of great seigneurs, princes, and knights, and amid helmets and
+hose, drunken scoundrels, tavern politicians, and village cretins
+started into view, and grimaced and danced and scuffled. In Belgium his
+plates occupy a position similar to that of the first lithographs of
+Menzel in Germany. But Madou lingered for a still briefer period in the
+Pantheon of history; the tavern had for him a yet greater attraction.
+The humorous books which he published in Paris and Brussels first showed
+him in his true light. Having busied himself for several years
+exclusively with drawings, he made his _début_ in 1842 as a painter. It
+is difficult to decide how much Madou produced after that date. The long
+period between 1842 and 1877 yields a crowded chronicle of his works.
+Even in the seventies he was just as vigorous as at the beginning, and
+though he was regarded as a jester during his lifetime he was honoured
+as a great painter after his death. At the auction of his unsold works,
+pictures fetched 22,000 francs, sketches reached 3200, water-colours
+2150, and drawings 750. The present generation has reduced this
+over-estimation to its right measure, but it has not shaken Madou's
+historical importance. He has a firm position as the man who conquered
+modern life in the interests of Belgian art, and he is the more
+significant for the _genre_ painting of his age, as he eclipsed all his
+contemporaries, even in Germany and England, in the inexhaustible fund
+of his invention.
+
+[Illustration: MADOU. THE DRUNKARD.]
+
+A merry world is reflected in his pictures. One of his most popular
+figures is the ranger, a sly old fox with a furrowed, rubicund visage
+and huge ears, who roves about more to the terror of love-making couples
+than of poachers, and never aims at any one except for fun at the rural
+justice, a portly gentleman in a gaudy waistcoat, emerging quietly at
+the far end of the road. He introduces a varied succession of braggarts,
+poor fellows, down-at-heel and out-at-elbows, old grenadiers joking with
+servant girls, old marquesses taking snuff with affected dignity,
+charlatans at their booth, deaf and dumb flute-players, performing dogs,
+and boys sick over their first pipe. Here and there are fatuous or
+over-wise politicians solemnly opening a newly printed paper, with their
+legs astraddle and their spectacles resting on their noses. Rascals with
+huge paunches and blue noses fall asleep on their table in the
+ale-house, and enliven the rest of the company by their snoring. At
+times the door is opened and a scolding woman appears with a broom in
+her hand. On these occasions the countenance of the toper is a comical
+sight. At the sound of the beloved voice he endeavours to raise
+himself, and anxiously follows the movements of his better half as he
+clings reeling to the table, or plants himself more firmly in his chair
+with a resigned and courageous "_J'y suis, j'y reste_."
+
+Being less disposed to appear humorous, _Adolf Dillens_ makes a more
+sympathetic impression. He, too, had begun with forced anecdotes, but
+after a tour to Zealand opened his eyes to nature; he laid burlesque on
+one side, and depicted what he had seen in unhackneyed pictures: sound
+and healthy men of patriarchal habits. Even his method of painting
+became simpler and more natural; his colouring, hitherto borrowed from
+the old masters, became fresher and brighter. He emancipated himself
+from Rembrandt's _chiaroscuro_, and began to look at nature without
+spectacles. There is something poetic in his method of observation: he
+really loved these good people and painted them in the unadorned
+simplicity of their life--cheery old age that knows no wrinkles and
+laughing youth that knows no sorrows. He is indeed one-sided, for a good
+fairy has banished all trouble from his happy world; but his pictures
+are the product of a fresh and amiable temperament. His usual themes are
+a friendly gathering at the ale-house, a conversation beneath the porch,
+skating, scenes in cobblers' workshops, a gust of wind blowing an
+umbrella inside out; and if he embellishes them with little episodic
+details, this tendency is so innocent that nobody can quarrel with him.
+
+In France it was _François Biard_, the Paul de Kock of French painting,
+who attained most success in the thirties by humorous anecdote. He
+devoted his whole life to the comical representation of the minor
+trespasses and misfortunes of the commonplace _bourgeoisie_. He had the
+secret of displaying his comicalities with great aptitude, and of
+mocking at the ridiculous eccentricities of the Philistine in an obvious
+and downright fashion. Strolling players made fools of themselves at
+their toilette; lads were bathing whilst a gendarme carried off their
+clothes; a sentry saluted a decorated veteran, whose wife gratefully
+acknowledged the attention with a curtsey; the village grandee held a
+review of volunteers with the most pompous gravity; a child was
+exhibited at the piano to the admiration of its yawning relatives. One
+of his chief pictures was called "Posada Espagnol." The hero was a monk
+winking at a beauty of forty who was passing by while he was being
+shaved. Women were sitting and standing about, when a herd of swine
+dashing in threw everything over and put the ladies to flight, and so
+called forth one of those comic effects of terror in which Paul de Kock
+took such delight.
+
+Biard was inexhaustible in these expedients for provoking laughter; and
+as he had travelled far he had always in reserve a slave-market, a
+primeval forest, or an ice-field to appease the curiosity of his
+admirers when there was nothing more to laugh at. From the German
+standpoint he had importance as an artist whose flow of ideas would have
+furnished ten _genre_ painters; and if he is the only representative of
+the humorously anecdotic picture in France, the reason is that there
+earlier than elsewhere art was led into a more earnest course by the
+tumult of ideas on social politics.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE PICTURE WITH A SOCIAL PURPOSE
+
+
+That modern life first entered art, in all countries, under the form of
+humorous anecdote is partly the consequence of the one-sided æsthetic
+ideas of the period. In an age that was dominated by idealism it was
+forgotten that Murillo had painted lame beggars sitting in the sun,
+Velasquez cripples and drunkards, and Holbein lepers; that Rembrandt had
+so much love for humble folk, and that old Breughel with a strangely
+sombre pessimism turned the whole world into a terrible hospital. The
+modern man was hideous, and art demanded "absolute beauty." If he was to
+be introduced into painting, despite his want of _beauté suprême_, the
+only way was to treat him as a humorous figure which had to be handled
+ironically. Mercantile considerations were also a power in determining
+this form of humour. At a time when painting was forced to address
+itself to a public which was uneducated in art, and could only
+appreciate anecdotes, such comicalities had the best prospect of favour
+and a rapid sale. The object was to provoke laughter, at all hazards, by
+drollness of mien, typical stupidity, and absurdity of situation. The
+choice of figures was practically made according as they were more or
+less serviceable for a humorous purpose. Children, rustics, and
+provincial Philistines seemed to be most adapted to it. The painter
+treated them as strange and naïve beings, and brought them before the
+public as a sort of performing dogs, who could go through remarkable
+tricks just as if they were human beings. And the public laughed over
+whimsical oddities from another world, as the courtiers of Louis XIV had
+laughed in Versailles when M. Jourdain and M. Dimanche were acted by the
+king's servants upon the stage of Molière.
+
+Meanwhile painters gradually came to remark that this humour _à l'huile_
+was bought at too dear a price. For humour, which is like a soap-bubble,
+can only bear a light method of representation, such as Hokusai's
+drawing or Brouwer's painting, but becomes insupportable where it is
+offered as a laborious composition executed with painstaking realism.
+And ethical reasons made themselves felt independently of these artistic
+considerations.
+
+The drollness of these pictures did not spring from the characters, but
+from an effort to amuse the public at the expense of the painted
+figures. As a general rule a peasant is a serious, square-built, angular
+fellow. For his existence he does battle with the soil; his life is no
+pleasure to him, but hard toil. But in these pictures he appeared as a
+figure who had no aim or purport; in his brain the earnestness of life
+was transformed into a romping game. Painters laughed at the little
+world which they represented. They were not the friends of man, but
+parodied him and transformed life into a sort of Punch and Judy show.
+
+And even when they did not approach their figures with deliberate irony,
+they never dreamed of plunging with any sincere love of truth into the
+depths of modern life. They painted modern matter without taking part in
+it, like good children who know nothing of the bitter facts that take
+place in the world. When the old Dutch painters laughed, their laughter
+had its historical justification. In the pictures of Ostade and Dirk
+Hals there is seen all the primitive exuberance and wild joy of life
+belonging to a people who had just won their independence and abandoned
+themselves after long years of war with a sensuous transport to the
+gladness of existence. But the smile of these modern _genre_ painters is
+forced, conventional, and artificial; the smile of a later generation
+which only took the trouble to smile because the old Dutch had laughed
+before them. They put on rose-coloured glasses, and through these gaudy
+spectacles saw only a gay masque of life, a fair but hollow deception.
+They allowed their heroes to pass such a merry existence that the
+question of what they lived upon was never touched. When they painted
+their tavern pictures they anxiously suppressed the thought that people
+who drained their great mugs so carelessly possibly had sick children at
+home, hungry and perishing with cold in a room without a fire. Their
+peasants are the favoured sons of fortune: they sowed not, neither did
+they reap, nor gathered into barns, but their Heavenly Father fed them.
+Poverty and vice presented themselves merely as amiable weaknesses, not
+as great modern problems.
+
+Just at this time the way was being paved for the Revolution of 1848:
+the people fought and suffered, and for years before literature had
+taken part in this struggle. Before the Revolution the battle had been
+between the nobility and the middle class; but now that the latter had
+to some extent taken the place of the nobility of earlier days, there
+rose the mighty problem of strife between the unproductive and the
+productive, between rich and poor.
+
+In England, the birthplace of the modern capitalistic system, in a
+country where great industry and great landed property first ousted the
+independent yeomanry and called forth ever sharper division between
+those who possessed everything and those who possessed nothing, the
+unsolved problem of the nineteenth century found its earliest utterance.
+More than sixty years ago, in the year of Goethe's death, a new
+literature arose there, the literature of social politics. With Ebenezer
+Elliott, who had been himself a plain artisan, the Fourth Estate made
+its entry into literature; a workman led the train of socialistic poets.
+Thomas Hood wrote his _Song of the Shirt_, that lyric of the poor
+sempstress which soon spread all over the Continent. Carlyle, the
+friend and admirer of Goethe, came forward in 1843 as the burning
+advocate of the poor and miserable in _Past and Present_. He wrote there
+that this world was no home to the working-man, but a dreary dungeon
+full of mad and fruitless plagues. It was an utterance that shook the
+world like a bomb. Benjamin Disraeli's _Sybil_ followed in 1845. As a
+novel it is a strange mixture of romantic and naturalistic chapters, the
+latter seeming like a prophetic announcement of Zola's _Germinal_. As a
+reporter Charles Dickens had in his youth the opportunity of learning
+the wretchedness of the masses in London, even in the places where they
+lurked distrustfully in dark haunts. In his Christmas stories and his
+London sketches he worked these scenes of social distress into thrilling
+pictures. The poor man, whose life is made up of bitter weeks and scanty
+holidays, received his citizenship in the English novel.
+
+In France the year 1830 was an end and a beginning--the close of the
+struggles begun in 1789, and the opening of those which led to the
+decisive battle of 1848. With the _roi bourgeois_, whom Lafayette called
+"the best of republicans," the Third Estate came into possession of the
+position to which it had long aspired; it rose from the ranks of the
+oppressed to that of the privileged classes. As a new ruling class it
+made such abundant capital with the fruits of the Revolution of July
+that even in 1830 Börne wrote from Paris: "The men who fought against
+all aristocracy for fifteen years have scarcely conquered--they have not
+yet wiped the sweat from their faces--and already they want to found for
+themselves a new aristocracy, an aristocracy of money, a knighthood of
+fortune." To the same purpose wrote Heine in 1837: "The men of thought
+who, during the eighteenth century, were so indefatigable in preparing
+the Revolution, would blush if they saw how self-interest is building
+its miserable huts on the site of palaces that have been broken down,
+and how, out of these huts, a new aristocracy is sprouting up which,
+more ungraciously than the old, has its primary cause in money-making."
+
+There the radical ideas of modern socialism were touched. The
+proletariat and its misery became henceforward the subject of French
+poetry, though they were not observed with any naturalistic love of
+truth, but from the romantic standpoint of contrast. Béranger, the
+popular singer of _chansons_, composed his _Vieux Vagabond_, the song of
+the old beggar who dies in the gutter; Auguste Barbier wrote his Ode to
+Freedom, where _la sainte canaille_ are celebrated as immortal heroes,
+and with the scorn of Juvenal "lashes those who drew profit from the
+Revolution, those _bourgeois_ in kid gloves who watched the sanguinary
+street fights comfortably from the window." In 1842-43 Eugène Sue
+published his _Mystères de Paris_, a forbidding and nonsensical book,
+but one which made an extraordinary sensation, just because of the
+disgusting openness with which it unveiled the life of the lower strata
+of the people. Even the great spirits of the Romantic school began to
+follow the social and political strife of the age with deep emotion and
+close sympathy. Already in the course of the thirties socialistic ideas
+forced their way into the Romantic school from every side. Their source
+was Saint Simon, whose doctrines first found a wide circulation under
+Louis Philippe.
+
+According to Saint Simon, the task of the new Christianity consisted in
+improving as quickly as possible the fate of the class which was at once
+the poorest and the most numerous. His pupils regarded him as the
+Messiah of the new era, and went forth into the world as his disciples.
+George Sand, the boldest feminine genius in the literature of the world,
+mastered these seething ideas and founded the artisan novel in her
+_Compagnon du Tour de France_. It is the first book with a real love of
+the people--the people as they actually are, those who drink and commit
+deeds of violence as well as those who work and make mental progress. In
+her periodical, _L'Éclaireur de l'Indre_, she pleads the cause both of
+the artisan in great towns and of the rustic labourer; in 1844 she
+declared herself as a Socialist, without qualification, in her great
+essay _Politics and Socialism_, and she brought out her celebrated
+_Letters to the People_ in 1848.
+
+The democratic tide of ideas came to Victor Hugo chiefly through the
+religious apostle Lamennais, whose book, written in prison, _De
+l'Esclavage Moderne_, gave the same fuel to the Revolution of 1848 as
+the works of Rousseau had done to that of 1789. "The peasant bears the
+whole burden of the day, exposes himself to rain and sun and wind, to
+make ready by his work the harvest which fills our barns in the late
+autumn. If there are those who think the lighter of him on that account,
+and will not accord him freedom and justice, build a high wall round
+them, so that their noisome breath may not poison the air of Europe."
+From the forties there mutters through Hugo's poems the muffled sound of
+the Revolution which was soon to burst over Paris, and thence to move,
+like a rolling thunderstorm, across Europe. In place of the tricolor
+under which the _bourgeoisie_ and the artisan class had fought side by
+side eighteen years before, the banner of the artisan was hoisted
+blood-red against the ruling _bourgeoisie_.
+
+This _Zeitgeist_, this spirit of the age which had grown earnest,
+necessarily guided art into another course; the painted humour and
+childlike optimism of the first _genre_ painters began to turn out a
+lie. In spite of Schiller, art cannot be blithe with sincerity when life
+is earnest. It can laugh with the muscles of the face, but the laughter
+is mirthless; it may haughtily declare itself in favour of some
+consecrated precinct, in which nothing of the battles and struggles of
+the outside world is allowed to echo; but, for all that, harsh reality
+demands its rights. Josef Danhauser's modest little picture of 1836,
+"The Gormandizer," is an illustration of this. In a sumptuously
+furnished room a company of high station and easy circumstances are
+seated at dinner. The master of the house, a sleek little man, is
+draining his glass, and a young dandy is playing the guitar. But an
+unwelcome disturbance breaks in. The figure of a beggar, covered with
+rags and with a greasy hat in his hand, appears at the door. The ladies
+scream, and a dog springs barking from under a chair, whilst the flunkey
+in attendance angrily prepares to send the impudent intruder about his
+business. That was the position which art had hitherto taken up towards
+the social question. It shrank peevishly back as soon as rude and brutal
+reality disturbed its peaceful course. People wished to see none but
+cheerful pictures of life around them.
+
+[Illustration: DANHAUSER. THE GORMANDIZER.]
+
+For this reason peasants were invariably painted in neat and cleanly
+dress, with their faces beaming with joy, an embodiment of the blessing
+of work and the delights of country life. Even beggars were harmless,
+peacefully cheerful figures, sparkling with health and beauty, and
+enveloped in æsthetic rags. But as political, religious, and social
+movements have always had a vivid and forcible effect on artists,
+painters in the nineteenth century could not in the long run hold
+themselves aloof from this influence. The voice of the disinherited made
+itself heard sullenly muttering and with ever-increasing strength. The
+parable of Lazarus lying at the threshold of the rich man had become a
+terrible reality. Conflict was to be seen everywhere around, and it
+would have been mere hardness of heart to have used this suffering
+people any longer as an agreeable subject for merriment. A higher
+conception of humanity, the entire philanthropic character of the age,
+made the jests at which the world had laughed seem forced and tasteless.
+Modern life must cease altogether before it can be a humorous episode
+for art, and it had become earnest reality through and through. Painting
+could no longer affect trivial humour; it had to join issue, and speak
+of what was going on around it. It had to take its part in the struggle
+for aims that belonged to the immediate time.
+
+Powerfully impressed by the Revolution of July, it made its first
+advance. The Government had been thrown down after a blood-stained
+struggle, and a liberated people were exulting; and the next Salon
+showed more than forty representations of the great events, amongst
+which that of _Delacroix_ took the highest place in artistic
+impressiveness. The principal figure in his picture is "a youthful
+woman, with a red Phrygian cap, holding a musket in one hand and a
+tricolor in the other. Naked to the hip, she strides forward over the
+corpses, giving challenge to battle, a beautiful vehement body with a
+face in bold profile and an insolent grief upon her features, a strange
+mixture of Phryne, _poissarde_, and the goddess of Liberty." Thus has
+Heine described the work while still under a vivid impression of the
+event it portrayed. In the thick of the powder smoke stands "Liberty"
+upon the barricade, at her right a Parisian gamin with a pistol in his
+hand, a child but already a hero, at her left an artisan with a gun on
+his arm: it is the people that hastens by, exulting to die the death for
+the great ideas of liberty and equality.
+
+The painter himself had an entirely unpolitical mind. He had drawn his
+inspiration for the picture, not from experience, but out of _La Curée_,
+those verses of Auguste Barbier that are ablaze with wrath--
+
+ "C'est que la Liberté n'est pas une comtesse
+ Du noble faubourg Saint-Germain,
+ Une femme qu'un cri fait tomber en faiblesse,
+ Qui met du blanc et du carmin;
+ C'est un forte femme aux puissantes mamelles,
+ À la voix rauque, aux durs appas,
+ Qui, du brun sur la peau, du feu dans les prunelles,
+ Agile et marchant à grands pas,
+ Se plait aux cris du peuple, aux sanglantes mêlées,
+ Aux longs roulements des tambours,
+ À l'odeur de la poudre, aux lointaines volées
+ Des cloches et des canons sourds."
+
+And by this allegorical figure he has certainly weakened its grip and
+directness; but it was a bold, naturalistic achievement all the same. By
+this work the great Romanticist became the father of the naturalistic
+movement, which henceforward, supported by the revolutionary democratic
+press, spread more and more widely.
+
+The critics on these journals began to reproach painters with troubling
+themselves too little about social and political affairs. "The actuality
+and social significance of art," it was written, "is the principal
+thing. What is meant by Beauty? We demand that painting should influence
+society, and join in the work of progress. Everything else belongs to
+the domain of Utopias and abstractions." The place of whimsicalities is
+accordingly taken by sentimental and melodramatic scenes from the life
+of the poor. Rendered enthusiastic by the victory of the people, and
+inspired by democratic sentiments, some painters came to believe that
+the sufferings of the artisan class were the thing to be represented,
+and that there was nothing nobler than work.
+
+[Illustration: LELEUX. MOT D'ORDRE.]
+
+One of the first to give an example was _Jeanron_. His picture of "The
+Little Patriots," produced in connection with the Revolution of July,
+was a glorification of the struggle for freedom; his "Scene in Paris" a
+protest against the sufferings of the people. He sought his models
+amongst the poor of the suburb, painted their ragged clothes and their
+rugged heads without idealisation. For him the aim of art was not
+beauty, but the expression of truth--a truth, no doubt, which made
+political propaganda. It was Jeanron's purpose to have a socialistic
+influence. One sees it in his blacksmiths and peasants, and in that
+picture "The Worker's Rest" which in 1847 induced Thoré's utterance: "It
+is a melancholy and barren landscape from the neighbourhood of Paris, a
+plebeian landscape which hardly seems to belong to itself, and which
+gives up all pretensions to beauty merely to be of service to man.
+Jeanron is always plebeian, even in his landscapes: he loves the plains
+which are never allowed to repose, on which there is always labour;
+there are no beautiful flowers in his fields, as there is no gold
+ornament on the rags of his beggars and labourers."
+
+And afterwards, during the early years of the reign of Louis Philippe,
+when the tendency became once more latent, the Revolution of February
+worked out what the Revolution of July had begun. Mediocre painters like
+_Antigna_ became famous because they bewailed the sorrows of the "common
+man" in small and medium-sized pictures. Others began to display a
+greater interest in rustics, and to take them more seriously than they
+had done in earlier works. _Adolphe Leleux_ made studies in Brittany,
+and discovered earnest episodes in the daily life of the peasant, which
+he rendered with great actuality. And after sliding back into
+Romanticism, as he did with his Arragon smugglers, he enjoyed his chief
+success in 1849 with that picture at the Luxembourg to which he was
+incited by the sad aspect of the streets of Paris during the rising of
+1848. The men who, driven by hunger and misery, fought upon the
+barricades may be found in Leleux's "Mot d'Ordre."
+
+After the _coup d'état_ of 1851 even _Meissonier_, till then exclusively
+a painter of _rococo_ subjects, encroached on this province. In his
+picture of the barricades (2 December 1851) heaps of corpses are lying
+stretched out in postures which could not have been merely invented. The
+execution, too, has a nervous force which betrays that even so
+calculating a spirit as Meissonier was at one time moved and agitated.
+In his little smokers and scholars and waiting-men he is an adroit but
+cold-blooded painter: here he has really delivered himself of a modern
+epic. His "Barricade" (formerly in the Van Praet Collection) is the one
+thrilling note in the master's work, which was elsewhere so quiet.
+_Alexandre Antigna_, originally an historical painter, turned from
+historical disasters to those which take place in the life of the lower
+strata of the people. A dwelling of a poor family is struck by
+lightning; poor people pack up their meagre goods with the haste of
+despair on the outbreak of fire; peasants seek refuge from a flood upon
+the roof of their little house; petty shopkeepers are driving with their
+wares across the country, when their nag drops down dead in the shafts;
+or an old crone, cowering at the street corner, receives the pence which
+her little daughter has earned by playing on the fiddle.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._ OCTAVE TASSAERT.]
+
+But the artist in whose works the philanthropic if sentimental humour of
+the epoch is specially reflected is that remarkable painter, made up of
+contradictions, _Octave Tassaert_. Borrowing at one and the same time
+from Greuze, Fragonard, and Prudhon, he painted subjects mythological,
+ribald, and religious, boudoir pictures, and scenes of human misery.
+Tassaert was a Fleming, a grandson of that Tassaert who educated
+Gottfried Schadow and died as director of the Berlin Academy in 1788.
+His name has been for the most part forgotten; it awakes only a dim
+recollection in those who see "The Unhappy Family" in the Luxembourg
+_Musée_. But forty years ago he was amongst the most advanced of his
+day, and enjoyed the respect of men like Delacroix, Rousseau, Troyon,
+and Diaz. He took Chardin and Greuze as his models, and is a real master
+in talent. He was the poet of the suburbs, who spoke in tender
+complaining tones of the hopes and sufferings of humble people. He
+painted the elegy of wretchedness: suicide in narrow garrets, sick
+children, orphans freezing in the snow, seduced and more or less
+repentant maidens--a sad train. He was called the Correggio of the
+attic, the Prudhon of the suburbs. His labours are confined to eleven
+years, from 1846 to 1857. After that he sent no more to the Salon and
+sulkily withdrew from artistic life. He had no wish ever to see his
+pictures again, and sold them--forty-four altogether--to a dealer for
+two thousand francs and a cask of wine. With a glass in his hand he
+forgot his misanthropy. He lived almost unknown in a little house in the
+suburbs with a nightingale, a dog, and a little shop-girl for his sole
+companions.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ TASSAERT. AFTER THE BALL.]
+
+But his nightingale died, and then the dog, who should have followed at
+his funeral. He could not survive the blow. He broke his palette, threw
+his colours into the fire, lit a pan of charcoal that he might die like
+"The Unhappy Family," and was found suffocated on the following day. On
+a scrap of paper he had written, without regard to metre or orthography,
+a few verses to his nightingale and his dog.
+
+There is much that is magniloquent and sentimental in Tassaert's
+pictures. His poor women perish with the big eyes of the heroines of Ary
+Scheffer. Nevertheless he belongs to the advance line of modern art, and
+suffered shipwreck merely because he gave the signal too early. The sad
+reality prevails in his work. Merciless as a surgeon operating on a
+diseased limb, he made a dissecting-room of his art, which is often
+brutal where his brush probes the deepest wounds of civilisation. There
+is nothing in his pictures but wretched broken furniture, stitched rags,
+and pale faces in which toil and hunger have ploughed their terrible
+furrows. He painted the degeneration of man perishing from lack of light
+and air. Himself a Fleming, he has found his greatest follower in
+another Netherlander, _Charles de Groux_, whose sombre pessimism
+dominates modern Belgian art.
+
+In Germany, where the socialistic writings of the French and English had
+a wide circulation, _Gisbert Flüggen_, in Munich known as the German
+Wilkie, was perhaps the first who as early as the forties went somewhat
+further than the humorous representation of rustics, and entered into a
+certain relation with the social ideas of his age in such pictures as
+"The Interrupted Marriage Contract," "The Unlucky Gamester," "The
+_Mésalliance_," "Decision of the Suit," "The Disappointed Legacy
+Hunter," "The Execution for Rent," and the like. Under his influence
+Danhauser in Vienna deserted whimsicalities for the representation of
+social conflicts in middle-class life. To say nothing of his
+"Gormandizer," he did this in "The Opening of the Will," where in a
+somewhat obtrusive manner the rich relations of the deceased are grouped
+to the right and the poor relations to the left, the former rubicund,
+sleek, and insolent, the latter pale, spare, and needily clad. An
+estimable priest is reading the last testament, and informs the poor
+relatives with a benevolent smile that the inheritance is theirs,
+whereon the rich give way to transports of rage.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ TASSAERT. THE ORPHANS.]
+
+Yet more clearly, although similarly transposed into a sentimental key,
+is the mood of the time just previous to 1848, reflected in the works of
+_Carl Hübner_ of Düsseldorf. Ernest Wilkomm in the beginning of the
+forties had represented in his sensational _genre_ pictures,
+particularly in the "White Slaves," the contrast between afflicted serfs
+and cruel landlords, between rich manufacturers and famishing artisans;
+Robert Prutz had written his _Engelchen_, in which he had announced the
+ruin of independent handicraft by the modern industrial system. Soon
+afterwards the famine among the Silesian weavers, the intelligence of
+which in 1844 flew through all Germany, set numbers of people reflecting
+on the social question. Freiligrath made it the subject of his verses,
+_Aus dem Schlesischen Gebirge_, the song of the poor weaver's child who
+calls on Rübezahl--one of his most popular poems. And yet more
+decisively does the social and revolutionary temper of the age find an
+echo in Heine's _Webern_, composed in 1844. Even Geibel was impelled to
+his poem _Mene Tekel_ by the spread of the news, though it stands in
+curious opposition to his manner of writing elsewhere. Carl Hübner
+therefore was acting very seasonably when he likewise treated the
+distress of the Silesian weavers in his first picture of 1845.
+
+Hübner knew the life of the poor and the heavy-laden; his feelings were
+with them, and he expressed what he felt. This gives him a position
+above and apart from the rest in the insipidly smiling school of
+Düsseldorf, and sets his name at the beginning of a new chapter in the
+history of German _genre_ painting. His next picture, "The Game Laws,"
+sprang from an occasion which was quite as historical: a gamekeeper had
+shot a poacher. In 1846 followed "The Emigrants," "The Execution for
+Rent" in 1847, and in 1848 "Benevolence in the Cottage of the Poor."
+These were works in which he continued to complain of the misery of the
+working classes, and the contrast between ostentatious wealth and
+helpless wretchedness, and to preach the crusade for liberty and human
+rights. In opposition to the usual idyllic representations, he spoke
+openly for the first time of the material weight oppressing large
+classes of men. Undoubtedly, however, the artistic powers of the painter
+corresponded but little to the good intentions of the philanthropist.
+
+[Illustration: TASSAERT. THE SUICIDE.]
+
+In 1853 even the historical painter Piloty entered this path in one of
+his earliest pictures, "The Nurse": the picture represents a peasant
+girl in service as a nurse in the town, with her charge on her arm,
+entering the dirty house of an old woman with whom she is boarding her
+own child. The rich child, already dressed out like a little lady, is
+exuberant in health, whilst her own is languishing in a dark and cold
+room without food or warm clothing.
+
+In Belgium _Eugène de Block_ first took up these lines. The artistic
+development of his character is particularly interesting, inasmuch as he
+went through various transformations. First he had come forward in 1836
+with the representation of a brawl amongst peasants, a picture which
+contrasted with the tameness of contemporary painting by a native power
+suggestive of Brouwer. Then, following the example of Madou and
+Braekeleer, he occupied himself for a long time with quips and jests. At
+a time when every one had a type to which he remained true as long as he
+lived, Block chose poachers and game-keepers, and represented their
+mutual cunning, now enveloping them, after the example of Braekeleer, in
+the golden light and brown shadows of Ostade, now throwing over them a
+tinge of Gallait's cardinal red. But this forced humour did not satisfy
+him long; he let comicalities alone, and became the serious observer of
+the people. A tender compassion for the poor may be noticed in his
+works, though without doubt it often turns to a tearful sentimentalism.
+He was an apostle of humanity who thundered against pauperism and set
+himself up as spokesman on the social question; a tribune of the people,
+who by his actions confirmed his reputation as a democratic painter.
+This it is which places him near that other socialistic agitator who in
+those days was filling Brussels with his fame.
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._
+
+ FLÜGGEN. THE DECISION OF THE SUIT.]
+
+It was in 1835 that a young man wrote to one of his relatives from Italy
+the proud words: "I will measure my strength with Rubens and Michael
+Angelo."
+
+[Illustration: HÜBNER. JULY.]
+
+Having gained the _Prix de Rome_, he was enabled to make a sojourn in
+the Eternal City. He was thinking of his return. He was possessed of a
+lofty ambition, and dreamt of rivalling the fame of the old masters. As
+a victor he made an entry into his native land, into the good town of
+Dinant, which received him like a mother. He was accompanied by a huge
+roll of canvas like a declaration of war. But he needed a larger
+battle-field for his plans. "I imagine," said he, "that the universe has
+its eyes upon me." So he went on to Paris with his "Patroclus" and a few
+other pictures. No less than six thousand artists had seen the work in
+Rome: a prince of art, Thorwaldsen, had said when he beheld it: "This
+young man is a giant." And the young man was himself of that opinion.
+With the gait of a conqueror he entered Paris, in the belief that
+artists would line the streets to receive him. But when the portals of
+the _Salon_ of 1839 were opened he did not see his picture there. It was
+skied over a door, and no one noticed it. Théophile Gautier, Gustave
+Planché, and Bürger-Thoré wrote their articles without even mentioning
+it with one word of praise or blame.
+
+For one moment he thought of exhibiting it out of doors in front of the
+Louvre, of calling together a popular assembly and summoning all France
+to decide. But an application to the minister was met with a refusal,
+and he returned to Brussels hanging his head. There he puffed his
+masterpiece, "The Fight round the Body of Patroclus," in magniloquent
+phrases upon huge placards. A poet exclaimed, "Hats off: here is a new
+Homer." The _Moniteur_ gave him a couple of articles. But when the
+Exhibition came, artists were again unable to know what to make of it.
+The majority were of an opinion that Michael Angelo was brutally
+parodied by these swollen muscles and distorted limbs. And no earthquake
+disturbed the studios, as the painter had expected. However, he was
+awarded a bronze medal and thanked in an honest citizen-like fashion
+"for the distinguished talent which he had displayed." Then his whole
+pride revolted. He circulated caricatures and cried out: "This medal
+will be an eternal blot on the century." Then he published in the
+_Charivari_ an open letter to the king. "Michael Angelo," he wrote,
+"never allowed himself to pass final judgment on the works of
+contemporary artists, and so His Majesty, who hardly understands as much
+about art as Michael Angelo, would do well not to decide on the worth of
+modern pictures after a passing glance."
+
+_Antoine Wiertz_, the son of a gendarme who had once been a soldier of
+the great Republic, was born in Dinant in 1806. By his mother he was a
+Walloon, and he had German blood in him through his father, whose family
+had originally come from Saxony. German moral philosophy and treatises
+on education had formed the reading of his youthful years. He had not to
+complain of want of assistance. At the declaration of Belgian
+independence he was five-and-twenty; so his maturity fell in the proud
+epoch when the young nation laid out everything to add artistic to
+political splendour. Even as a boy, their only child, he was idolised by
+his parents, the old gendarme and the honest charwoman. His first
+attempts were regarded by his relations as marvels. The neighbours went
+into raptures over a frog he had modelled, "which looked just as if it
+were alive." The landlord of a tavern ordered a signboard from him, and
+when it was finished the whole population stood before it in admiration.
+A certain Herr Maibe, who was artistically inclined, had his attention
+directed to the young genius, undertook all the expenses of his
+education, and sent him to the Antwerp Academy. There he obtained a
+government scholarship, and gained in 1832 the _Prix de Rome_. From the
+first he was quite clear as to his own importance.
+
+[Illustration: _American Art Review._
+
+ WIERTZ. THE ORPHANS.]
+
+Even as a pupil at the Antwerp Academy he wrote in a letter to his
+father contemptuously of his fellow-students' reverence for the old
+masters. "They imagine," said he, "that the old masters are invincible
+gods, and not men whom genius may surpass." And instead of admonishing
+him to be modest, his father answered with pride: "Be a model to the
+youth of the future, so that in later centuries young painters may say,
+'I will raise myself to fame as the great Wiertz did in Belgium.'" Such
+dangerous flattery would have affected stronger characters. It needed
+only the Italian journey to send him altogether astray. Michael Angelo
+made him giddy, as had been the case with Cornelius, Chenavard, and many
+another. With all the ambition of a self-taught man he held every touch
+of his brush to be important, and was indignant if others refused to
+think the same. After his failures in Paris and Brussels he began to
+find high treason in every criticism, and started a discussion on "the
+pernicious influence of journalism upon art and literature." We find him
+saying: "If any one writes ill of me when I am dead, I will rise from
+the grave to defend myself."
+
+In his hatred of criticism he resolved to exhibit no more, lived a
+miserable existence till his death in 1865, and painted hasty and
+careless portraits, _pour la soupe_, when he was in pressing need of
+money. These brought him at first from three to four hundred, and later
+a thousand francs. He indulged in colossal sketches, for the completion
+of which the State built him in 1850 a tremendous studio, the present
+_Musée Wiertz_. It stands a few hundred paces from the Luxembourg
+station, to the extreme north of the town, in a beautiful though rather
+neglected little park, a white building with a pillared portico and a
+broad perron leading up to it. Here he sat in a fantastically gorgeous
+costume, for ever wearing his great Rubens hat. Philanthropic lectures
+on this world and the next, on the well-being of the people and the
+diseases of modern civilisation, were the fruits of his activity.
+Whoever loves painting for painting's sake need never visit the museum.
+
+There there are battles, conflagrations, floods, and earthquakes; heaven
+and earth are in commotion. Giants hurl rocks at one another, and try,
+like Jupiter, to shake the earth with their frown. All of them delight
+in force, and bring their muscles into play like athletes. But the
+painter himself is no athlete, no giant as Thorwaldsen called him, and
+no genius as he fancied himself to be. _Le singe des génies_, he
+conceived the notion of "great art" purely in its relation to space, and
+believed himself greater than the greatest because his canvases were of
+greater dimensions. When the ministry thought of making him Director of
+the Antwerp Academy, after the departure of Wappers, he wrote the
+following characteristic sentences: "I gather from the newspapers that I
+may be offered the place of Wappers." If in the moment when the profound
+philosopher is pondering over sublime ideas people were to say to him,
+"Will you teach us the A, B, C? I believe that he whose dwelling-place
+is in the clouds would fall straight from heaven to earth." Living in an
+atmosphere of flattery at home, and overpowered by the incense which was
+there offered to his genius, he could not set himself free from the
+fixed idea of competing with Michael Angelo and Rubens. Below his
+picture of "The Childhood of Mary" he placed the words: "Counterpart to
+the picture by Rubens in Antwerp treating the same subject." He offered
+his "Triumph of Christ" to the cathedral there under the condition of
+its being hung beside Rubens' "Descent from the Cross." "The Rising up
+of Hell" he wished to exhibit of an evening in the theatre when it was
+opened for a performance. During the waits the audience were to
+contemplate the picture while a choir sang with orchestral
+accompaniment. But all these offers were declined with thanks.
+
+Such failures make men pessimists; but it was through them that Wiertz,
+after being an historical painter, became the child of his age. He began
+to hurl thunderbolts against the evils of modern civilisation. He
+preaches and lashes and curses and suffers. The forms of which he makes
+use are borrowed from the old masters. The man of Michael Angelo, with
+his athletic build, his gigantic muscles, his nude body, the man of the
+Renaissance and not the man of the nineteenth century, strides through
+his works; it is only in the subject-matter of his pictures that the
+modern spirit has broken through the old formula. All the questions
+which have been thrown out by the philosophy and civilisation of the
+nineteenth century are reflected as vast problems in his vast pictures.
+He fashions his brush into a weapon with which he fights for the
+disinherited, for the pariahs, for the people. He is bent on being the
+painter of democracy--a great danger for art.
+
+[Illustration: WIERTZ. THE THINGS OF THE PRESENT AS SEEN BY FUTURE
+ AGES.]
+
+He agitates in an impassioned way against the horrors of war. His
+picture "Food for Powder" begins this crusade. A cannon is lying idle on
+the wall of a fortress, and around this slumbering iron monster children
+are playing at soldiers, with no suspicion that their sport will soon be
+turned into bitter earnest, and that in war they will themselves become
+food for this demon. In another picture, "The civilisation of the
+Nineteenth Century," soldiers intoxicated with blood and victory have
+broken into a chamber by night and are stabbing a mother with her child.
+A third, "The Last Cannon Shot," hints dimly at the future pacification
+of the world. "A Scene in Hell," however, is the chief of the effusions
+directed against war. The Emperor Napoleon in his grey coat and his
+historical three-cornered hat is languishing in hell; wavering flames
+envelop him as with a flowing purple mantle, and an innumerable
+multitude of mothers and sisters, wives and betrothed maidens, children
+and fathers, from whom he has taken their dearest are pressing round
+him. Fists are clenched against him, and screams issue from toothless,
+raging mouths. He, on the other hand, with his arms crossed on his
+breast, and his haughty visage stern and gloomy, stands motionless,
+looking fixedly with satanic eyes upon the thousands whose happiness he
+has destroyed.
+
+[Illustration: WIERTZ. THE FIGHT ROUND THE BODY OF PATROCLUS.]
+
+In his "Thoughts and Visions of a Decapitated Head", Wiertz, moved by
+Victor Hugo's _Le dernier jour d'un condamné_, makes capital punishment
+a subject of more lengthy disquisition. The picture, which is made up of
+three parts, is supposed to represent the feelings of a man, who has
+been guillotined, during the first three minutes after execution. The
+border of the picture contains a complete dissertation: "The man who has
+suffered execution sees his body dried up and in corruption in a dark
+corner; and sees also, what it is only given to spirits of another world
+to perceive, the secrets of the transmutation of matter. He sees all the
+gases which have formed his body, and its sulphurous, earthy, and
+ammoniacal elements, detach themselves from its decaying flesh and serve
+for the structure of other living beings.... When that abominable
+instrument the guillotine is one day actually abolished, may God be
+praised," and so on.
+
+Beside this painted plea against capital punishment hangs "The Burnt
+Child," as an argument in favour of _crêches_. A poor working woman has
+for one moment left her garret. Meanwhile a fire has broken out, and she
+returns to find the charred body of her boy. In the picture "Hunger,
+Madness, and Crime" he treats of human misery in general, and touches on
+the question of the rearing of illegitimate children. There is a young
+girl forced to live on the carrots which a rich man throws into the
+gutter. In consequence of a notification to pay taxes she goes out of
+her mind, and with hellish laughter cuts to pieces the baby who has
+brought her to ruin. Cremation is recommended in the picture "Buried too
+soon": there is a vault, and in it a coffin, the lid of which has been
+burst open from the inside; through the cleft may be seen a clenched
+hand, and in the darkness of the coffin the horror-stricken countenance
+of one who is piteously crying for help.
+
+In the "Novel Reader" he endeavours to show the baneful influence of
+vicious reading upon the imagination of a girl. She is lying naked in
+bed, with loosened hair and a book in her hand; her eyes are reddened
+with hysterical tears, and an evil spirit is laying a new book on the
+couch, _Antonine_, by Alexandre Dumas _Fils_. "The Retort of a Belgian
+Lady"--an anticipation of Neid--glorifies homicide committed in the
+defence of honour. A Dutch officer having taken liberties with a Belgian
+woman, she blows out his brains with a pistol. In "The Suicide" the
+fragments of a skull may be seen flying in all directions. How the young
+man who has just destroyed himself came to this pass may be gathered
+from the book entitled _Materialism_, which lies on his table. And thus
+he goes on, though the spectator feels less and less inclined to take
+any serious interest in these lectures. For although the intentions of
+Wiertz had now and then a touch of the sublime, he was neither clear as
+to the limits of what could be represented nor did he possess the
+capacity of expressing what he wished in artistic forms. Like many a
+German painter of those years, he was a philosopher of the brush, a
+scholar in disguise, who wrote out his thoughts in paint instead of ink.
+
+Wiertz made painting a vehicle for more than it can render as painting:
+with him it begins to dogmatise; it is a book, and it awakens a regret
+that this rich mind was lost to authorship. There he might, perhaps,
+have done much that was useful towards solving the social and
+philosophical questions of the day; as he is, he has nothing to offer
+the understanding, and only succeeds in offending the eye. A human brain
+with both great and trivial ideas lays itself bare. But, like Cornelius,
+from the mere fulness of his ideas he was unable to give them artistic
+expression. He groped from Michael Angelo to Rubens, and from Raphael to
+Ary Scheffer, without realising that the artistic utterance of all these
+masters had been an individual gift. The career of Wiertz is an
+interesting psychological case. He was an abnormal phenomenon, and he
+cannot be passed over in the history of art, because he was one of the
+first who treated subjects from modern life in large pictures. Never
+before had a genuinely artistic age brought forth such a monster, yet it
+is impossible to ignore him, or deny that he claims a certain degree of
+importance in the art history of the past century.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE VILLAGE TALE
+
+
+During the decade following the year 1848 _genre_ painting in Germany
+threw off the shackles of the anecdotic style, and continued a
+development similar to that of history, which, in the same country,
+flourished long after it was moribund elsewhere. After the elder
+artists, who showed so much zeal in producing perfectly ineffective
+little pictures, executed with incredible pains and a desperate veracity
+of detail, there followed, from 1850, a generation who were technically
+better equipped. They no longer confined themselves to making tentative
+efforts in the manner of the old masters, but either borrowed their
+lights directly from the historical painters in Paris, or were
+indirectly made familiar with the results of French technique through
+Piloty. Subjects of greater refinement were united with a treatment of
+colour which was less offensive.
+
+The childlike innocence which had given pleasure in Meyerheim and
+Waldmüller was now thought to be too childlike by far. The merriment
+which radiated from the pictures of Schroedter or Enhuber found no echo
+amidst a generation which was tired of such cheap humour: the works of
+Carl Hübner were put aside as lachrymose and sentimental efforts. When
+the world had issued from the period of Romanticism there was no
+temptation to be funny over modern life nor to make socialistic
+propaganda; for after the Revolution of 1848 people had become
+reconciled to the changed order of affairs and to life as it actually
+was--its cares and its worries, its mistakes and its sins. It was the
+time when Berthold Auerbach's village tales ran through so many
+editions; and, hand in hand with these literary productions, painting
+also set itself to tell little stories from the life of sundry classes
+of the people, amongst which rustics were always the most preferable
+from their picturesqueness of costume.
+
+At the head of this group of artists stands _Louis Knaus_, and if it is
+difficult to hymn his praises at the present day, that is chiefly
+because Knaus mostly drew upon that sarcastic and ironical
+characteristic which is such an unpleasant moral note in the pictures of
+Hogarth, Schroedter, and Madou. The figures of the old Dutch masters
+behave as if the glance of no stranger were resting upon them: it is
+possible to share their joys and sorrows, which are not merely acted. We
+feel at our ease with them because they regard us as one of themselves.
+In Knaus there is always an artificial bond between the figures and the
+frequenters of the exhibition. They plunge into the greatest
+extravagances to excite attention, tickle the spectator to make him
+laugh, or cry out to move him to tears. With the exception of Wilkie, no
+_genre_ painter has explained his purpose more obtrusively or in greater
+detail. Even when he paints a portrait, by way of variation, he stands
+behind with a pointer to explain it. On this account the portraits of
+Mommsen and Helmholtz in the Berlin National Gallery are made too
+official. Each of them is visibly conscious that he is being painted for
+the National Gallery, and by emphasis and the accumulation of external
+characteristics Knaus took the greatest pains to lift these
+personalities into types of the nineteenth-century scholar.
+
+[Illustration: L. Knaus.]
+
+Since popular opinion is wont to represent the philologist as one
+careless of outward appearance, and the investigator of natural
+philosophy as an elegant man of the world,--Mommsen must wear boots
+which have seen much service, and those of Helmholtz must be of polished
+leather; the shirt of the one must be genially rumpled, and that of the
+other must fit him to perfection. By such obvious characterisation the
+Sunday public was satisfied, but those who were represented were really
+deprived of character. It is not to be supposed that in Mommsen's room
+the manuscripts of all his principal works would lie so openly upon the
+writing-table and beneath it, so that every one might see them: it is
+not probable that his famous white locks would flutter so as he sat at
+the writing-table. Even the momentary gesture of the hand has in both
+pictures something obtrusively demonstrative. "Behold, with this pen I
+have written the history of Rome," says Mommsen. "Behold, there is the
+famous ophthalmometer which I invented," says Helmholtz.
+
+But as a _genre_ painter Knaus has fallen still more often into such
+intolerable stage gesticulation. The picture "His Highness upon his
+Travels" is usually mentioned as that in which he reached his zenith in
+characterisation. Yet is not this characterisation in the highest degree
+exaggerated? Is not the expression apportioned to every figure, like
+parts to a theatrical company, and does not the result seem to be
+strained beyond all measure? Just look at the children, see how each
+plays a part to catch your eye. A little girl is leaning shyly on her
+elder sister, who has bashfully thrust her finger into her mouth: some
+are looking on with rustic simplicity, others with attention: a child
+smaller than the others is puckering up its face and crying miserably.
+The prince, in whose honour the children are drawn up, passes the group
+with complete indifference, while his companion regards "the people"
+haughtily through his eyeglass. The schoolmaster bows low, in the hope
+that his salary may be raised, whilst the stupid churchwarden looks
+towards the prince with a jovial smile, as though he were awaiting his
+colleague from the neighbouring village. Of course, they are all very
+intelligible types; but they are no more than types. For the painter the
+mere accident of the moment is the source of all life. Would that
+six-year-old peasant child who stands with the greatest dignity in
+Knaus's picture as "The Village Prince" have ever stood in that fashion,
+with a flower between his teeth and his legs thrust apart, unless he had
+been carefully taught this self-conscious pose by the painter himself?
+So that there may not be the slightest doubt as to which of the
+shoemaker's apprentices is winning and which is losing, one of them has
+to have a knowing smirk, whilst the other is looking helplessly at his
+cards. And how that little Maccabee is acting to the public in "The
+First Profit!" The old man in threadbare clothes, who stands in an
+ante-chamber rubbing his hands in the picture "I can Wait"; the
+frightened little girl who sees her bit of bread-and-butter imperilled
+by geese in "In Great Distress,"--they have all the same deliberate
+comicality, they are all treated with the same palpable carefulness, the
+same pointed and impertinently satirical sharpness. Even in "The
+Funeral" he is not deserted by the humorous proclivity of the
+anecdotist, and the schoolmaster has to brandish the bâton with which he
+is conducting the choir of boys and girls as comically as possible.
+Knaus uses too many italics, and underlines as if he expected his public
+to be very dull of understanding. In this way he appeals to
+simple-minded people, and irritates those of more delicate taste. The
+peasant sits in his pictures like a model; he knows that he must keep
+quiet, and neither alter his pose nor his grimace, because otherwise
+Knaus will be angry. All his pictures show signs of the superior and
+celebrated city gentleman, who has only gone into the country to
+interest himself in the study of civilisation: there he hunts after
+effectively comical features, and, having arranged his little world in
+_tableaux vivants_, he coolly surrenders it to the derision of the
+cultivated spectator.
+
+[Illustration: KNAUS. IN GREAT DISTRESS.
+
+ (_By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., the owners of the
+ copyright._)]
+
+[Illustration: KNAUS. THE CARD PLAYERS.
+
+ (_By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., the owners of the
+ copyright._)]
+
+But such a judgment, which seems like a condemnation, could not be
+maintained from the historical standpoint. Germany could not forget
+Knaus, if it were only for the fact that in the fifties he sided with
+those who first spread the unusual opinion that painting was
+incomprehensible without sound ability in the matter of colour. He was
+not content, like the elder generation, to arrange the individual
+characters in his pictures in well-disposed groups. He took care to make
+his works faultless in colouring, so that in the fifties he not only
+roused the enthusiasm of the great public by his "poetic invention," but
+made even the Parisian painters enthusiastic by his easy mastery of
+technique.
+
+To the following effect wrote Edmond About in 1855: "I do not know
+whether Herr Knaus has long nails; but even if they were as long as
+those of Mephistopheles, I should still say that he was an artist to his
+fingers' ends. His pictures please the Sunday public and the Friday
+public, the critics, the _bourgeois_, and (God forgive me!) the
+painters. What is seductive to the great multitude is the clearly
+expressed dramatic idea, while artists and connoisseurs are won by his
+knowledge and thorough ability. Herr Knaus has the capacity of
+satisfying every one. His pictures attract the most incompetent eyes,
+because they tell pleasant anecdotes; but they likewise fascinate the
+most jaded by perfect execution of detail. The whole talent of Germany
+is contained in the person of Herr Knaus. So Germany lives in the Rue de
+l'Arcade in Paris."
+
+In the fifties all the technical ability which was to be gained from the
+study of the old Dutch masters and from constant commerce with the
+modern French reached its highest point in Knaus. Even in his youth the
+great Netherlandish painters, Ostade, Brouwer, and Teniers, must have
+had more effect upon him than his teachers, Sohn and Schadow, since his
+very first pictures, "The Peasants' Dance" of 1850 and "The Card
+Sharpers" of 1850, had little in common with the Düsseldorf school, and
+therefore so much the more with the Netherlandish _chiaroscuro_. "The
+Card Sharpers" is precisely like an Ostade modernised. By his migration
+to Paris in 1852 he sought to acquire the utmost perfection of finish;
+and when he returned home, after a sojourn of eight years, he had at his
+command such a sense for effect and fine harmony of tone, such a
+knowledge of colour, and such a disciplined and refined taste, that his
+works indicate an immeasurable advance on the motley harshness of his
+predecessors. His "Golden Wedding" of 1858--perhaps his finest
+picture--had nothing of the antiquated technique of the older type of
+Düsseldorf pictures of peasant life; technically it stood on a level
+with the works of the French.
+
+[Illustration: KNAUS. THE GOLDEN WEDDING.
+
+ (_By permission of Messrs. Goupil & Co., the owners of the
+ copyright._)]
+
+And Knaus has remained the same ever since: a separate personality which
+belongs to history. He painted peasant pictures of tragic import and
+rustic gaiety; he recognised a number of graceful traits in child-life,
+and, having seen a great deal of the world, he made a transition, after
+he had settled in Berlin, from the character picture of the Black Forest
+to such as may be painted from the life of cities. He even ventured to
+touch on religious subjects, and taught the world the limitations of his
+talent by his "Holy Families," composed out of reminiscences of all
+times and all schools, and by his "Daniel in the Lions' Den." Knaus is
+whole-heartedly a _genre_ painter; though that, indeed, is what he has
+in common with many other people. But thirty years ago he had a genius
+for colour amid a crowd of narrative and character painters, and this
+makes him unique. He is a man whose significance does not merely lie in
+his talent for narrative, but one who did much for German art. It may be
+said that in giving the _genre_ picture unsuspected subtleties of colour
+he helped German art to pass from mere _genre_ painting to painting pure
+and simple. In this sense he filled an artistic mission, and won for
+himself in the history of modern painting a firm and sure place, which
+even the opponent of the illustrative vignette cannot take from him.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ KNAUS. BEHIND THE SCENES.]
+
+_Vautier_, who must always be named in the same breath with Knaus, is in
+truth the exact opposite of the Berlin master. He also is essentially a
+_genre_ painter, and his pictures should not be merely seen but studied
+in detail; but where Knaus has merits Vautier is defective, and where
+Knaus is jarring Vautier has merits. In technique he cannot boast of
+similar qualities. He is always merely a draughtsman who tints, but has
+never been a colourist. As a painter he has less value, but as a _genre_
+painter he is more sympathetic. In the pictures of Knaus one is annoyed
+by the deliberate smirk, by his exaggerated and heartlessly frigid
+observation. Vautier gives pleasure by characterisation, more delicately
+reserved in its adjustment of means, and profound as it is simple, by
+his wealth of individual motives and their charm, and by the
+sensitiveness with which he renders the feelings and relationship of his
+figures. A naïve, good-humoured, and amiable temperament is betrayed in
+his works. He is genially idyllic where Knaus creates a pungently
+satirical effect, and a glance at the portraits of the two men explains
+this difference.
+
+[Illustration: _Kunst für Alle._
+
+ BENJAMIN VAUTIER.]
+
+Knaus with his puckered forehead, and his searching look shooting from
+under heavy brows, is like a judge or a public prosecutor. Vautier, with
+his thoughtful blue eyes, resembles a prosperous banker with a turn for
+idealism, or a writer of village tales _à la_ Berthold Auerbach. Knaus
+worried himself over many things, brooded much and made many
+experiments; Vautier was content with the acquisition of a plain and
+simple method of painting, which appeared to him a perfectly sufficient
+medium for the expression of that which he had realised with profound
+emotion. The one is a reflective and the other a dreamy nature. Vautier
+was a man of a happy temperament, one with whom the world went well from
+his youth upwards, who enjoyed an existence free from care, and who had
+accustomed himself as a painter to see the world in a rosy light. There
+is something sound and pure in his characters, in his pictures something
+peaceful and cordial; it does not, indeed, make his paltry pedantic
+style of painting any the better, but from the human standpoint it
+touches one sympathetically. His countrymen may be ashamed of Vautier as
+a painter when they come across him amongst aliens in foreign
+exhibitions, but they rejoice in him none the less as a _genre_ painter.
+It is as if they had been met by the quiet, faithful gaze of a German
+eye amid the fiery glances of the Latin nations. It is as if they
+suddenly heard a simple German song, rendered without training, and yet
+with a great deal of feeling. A generation ago Knaus could exhibit
+everywhere as a painter; as such Vautier was only possible in Germany
+during the sixties. But in Knaus it is impossible to get rid of the
+impress of the Berlin professor, while from Vautier's pictures there
+smiles the kindly sentiment of German home-life. Vautier's world, no
+doubt, is as one-sided as that of old Meyerheim. His talkative Paul
+Prys, his brides with their modest shyness, his smart young fellows
+throwing amorous glances, his proud fathers, and his sorrow-stricken
+mothers are, it may be, types rather than beings breathing positive and
+individual life. Such a golden radiance of grace surrounds the pretty
+figures of his bare-footed rustic maidens as never pertained to those of
+the real world, but belongs rather to the shepherdess of a fairy tale
+who marries the prince. His figures must not be measured by the standard
+of realistic truth to nature. But they are the inhabitants of a dear,
+familiar world in which everything breathes of prettiness and lovable
+good-humour. It is almost touching to see with what purity and beauty
+life is reflected in Vautier's mind.
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._
+
+ VAUTIER. THE CONJURER.]
+
+How dainty are these brown-eyed Swabian peasant girls, how tender and
+sympathetic the women, and how clean and well-behaved the children! You
+could believe that Vautier mixed with his peasants like a friend or a
+benevolent god-father, that he delighted in their harmless pleasures,
+that he took part in their griefs and cares. In his pictures he does not
+give an account of his impressions with severity or any deliberate
+attempt to amuse, but with indulgence and cordiality. It is not his
+design to excite or to thrill, to waken comedy through whimsicalities or
+mournfulness by anything tragical. Life reveals to him "merely pleasant
+things," as it did to Goethe during his tour in Italy, and even in its
+tragedies only people "who bear the inevitable with dignity." He never
+expressed boisterous grief: everything is subdued, and has that
+tenderness which is associated with the mere sound of his Christian
+name, Benjamin. Knaus has something of Menzel, Vautier of Memlinc: he
+has it even in the loving familiarity with which he penetrates minute
+detail. In their religious pictures the old German and Netherlandish
+masters painted everything, down to the lilies worked on the Virgin's
+loom, or the dust lying on the old service-book; and this thoroughly
+German delight in still life, this complacent rendering of minutiæ, is
+found again in Vautier.
+
+Men and their dwellings, animated nature and atmosphere, combine to make
+a pleasant world in his pictures. Vautier was one of the first to
+discover the magic of environment, the secret influence which unites a
+man to the soil from which he sprang, the thousand unknown, magnetic
+associations existing between outward things and the spirit, between the
+intuitions and the actions of man. The environment is not there like a
+stage scene in front of which the personages come and go; it lives and
+moves in the man himself. One feels at home in these snug and cosy
+rooms, where the Black Forest clock is ticking, where little, tasteless
+photographs look down from the wall with an honest, patriarchal air,
+where the floor is scoured so clean, and greasy green hats hang on
+splendid antlers. There is the great family bed with the flowered
+curtains, the massive immovable bench by the stove, the solid old table,
+around which young and old assemble at meal-times. There are the great
+cupboards for the treasures of the house, the prayer-book given to
+grandmother at her confirmation, the filigree ornaments, the glasses and
+coffee-cups, which are kept for show, not for daily use. Over the
+bedstead are hung the little pictures of saints painted on glass, and
+the consecrated tokens. From the window one overlooks other
+appurtenances of the house; gaudy scarlet runners clamber in from the
+little garden, blossoming fruit-trees stand in its midst, and the gable
+of the well-filled barn rises above it. Everything has an air of peace
+and prosperity, the mood of a Sunday forenoon; one almost fancies that
+one can catch the chime of the distant church bells through the blissful
+stillness. But completeness of effect and pictorial harmony are not to
+be demanded: the illustrated paper is better suited to his style than
+the exhibition.
+
+[Illustration: VAUTIER. THE DANCING LESSON.
+
+ (_By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., the owners of the
+ copyright._)]
+
+The third member of the alliance is _Franz Defregger_, a man of splendid
+talent; of all the masters of the great Munich school of Piloty, he is
+at once the simplest and the healthiest. True it is, no doubt, that when
+posterity sifts and weighs his works, much of him, also, will be found
+too light. Defregger's art has suffered from his fame and from the
+temptations of the picture market. Moreover, he had not Vautier's fine
+sense of the limitations of his ability, but often represented things
+which he did not understand. He was less of a painter than any of the
+artists of Piloty's school, and more completely tethered by the size of
+his picture. He could not go beyond a certain space of canvas without
+suffering for it; and he bound his talent on the bed of Procrustes when
+he attempted to paint Madonnas, or placed himself with his Hofer
+pictures in the rank of historical painters. But as a _genre_ painter he
+stands beside Vautier, in the first line; and by these little _genre_
+pictures--the simpler and quieter the better--and some of his genially
+conceived and charming portrait studies, he will survive. Those are
+things which he understood and felt. He had himself lived amid the life
+he depicted, and so it was that what he depicted made such a powerful
+appeal to the heart.
+
+[Illustration: VAUTIER. NOVEMBER.]
+
+The year 1869 made him known. The Munich Exhibition had in that year a
+picture on a subject from the history of the Hofer rising of 1809. It
+represented how the little son of Speckbacher, one of the Tyrolese
+leaders, had come after his father, armed with a musket; and at the side
+of an old forester he is entering the room in which Speckbacher is just
+holding a council of war. The father springs up angry at his
+disobedience, but also proud of the little fellow's pluck. From this
+time Defregger's art was almost entirely devoted to the Tyrolese people.
+To paint the smart lads and neat lasses of Tyrol in joy and sorrow, love
+and hate, at work and merry-making, at home or outside on the mountain
+pasture, in all their beauty, strength, and robust health, was the
+life-long task for which he more than any other man had been created. He
+had, over Knaus and most other painters of village tales, the enormous
+advantage of not standing personally outside or above the people, and
+not regarding them with the superficial curiosity of a tourist--for he
+belonged to them himself. Others, if ironically disposed, saw in the
+rustic the stupid, comic peasant; or, if inclined to sentimentalism,
+introduced into the rural world the moods and feelings of "society,"
+traits of drawing-room sensitiveness, the heavy air of the town. Models
+in national costume were grouped for pictures of Upper Bavarian rustic
+life. But Defregger, who up to the age of fifteen had kept his father's
+cattle on the pastures of the Ederhof, had shared the joys and sorrows
+of the peasantry long enough to know that they are neither comic nor
+sentimental people.
+
+The roomy old farmhouse where he was born in 1835 lay isolated amid the
+wild mountains. He went about bare-footed and bare-headed, waded through
+deep snow when he made his way to school in winter, and wandered about
+amid the highland pastures with the flocks in summer. Milkmaids and
+wood-cutters, hunters and cowherds, were his only companions. At fifteen
+he was the head labourer of the estate, helped to thresh the corn, and
+worked on the arable land and in the stable and the barn like others.
+When he was twenty-three he lost his father and took over the farm
+himself: he was thus a man in the full sense of the word before his
+artistic calling was revealed to him. And this explains his qualities
+and defects. When he came to Piloty after the sale of his farm and his
+aimless sojourn in Innsbruck and Paris he was mature in mind; he was
+haunted by the impressions of his youth, and he wanted to represent the
+land and the people of Tyrol. But he was too old to become a good
+"painter." On the other hand, he possessed the great advantage of
+knowing what he wanted. The heroes of history did not interest him; it
+was only the Tyrolese woodmen who persisted in his brain. He left
+Piloty's studio almost as he had entered it--awkward, and painting
+heavily and laboriously, and but very little impressed by Piloty's
+theatrical sentiment. His youth and his recollections were rooted in the
+life of the people; and with a faithful eye he caught earnest or
+cheerful phases of that life, and represented them simply and cordially:
+and if he had had the strength to offer a yet more effectual resistance
+to the prevalent ideal of beauty, there is no doubt that his stories
+would seem even more fresh and vigorous.
+
+[Illustration: FRANZ DEFREGGER.]
+
+"The Dance" was the first picture which followed that of "Speckbacher,"
+and it was circulated through the world in thousands of reproductions.
+There are two delightful figures in it: the pretty milkmaid who looks
+around her, radiant with pleasure, and the wiry old Tyrolese who is
+lifting his foot, cased in a rough hobnail shoe, to dance to the
+_Schuhplattler_. At the same time he painted "The Prize Horse"
+returning to his native village from the show decked and garlanded and
+greeted exultantly by old and young as the pride of the place. "The Last
+Summons" was again a scene from the Tyrolese popular rising of 1809. All
+who can still carry a rifle, a scythe, or a pitchfork have enrolled
+themselves beneath the banners, and are marching out to battle over the
+rough village street. The wives and children are looking earnestly at
+the departing figures, whilst a little old woman is pressing her
+husband's hand. Everything was simply and genially rendered without
+sentimentality or emphasis, and the picture even makes an appeal by its
+colouring. As a sequel "The Return of the Victors" was produced in 1876:
+a troop of the Tyrolese levy is marching through its native mountain
+village, with a young peasant in advance, slightly wounded, and looking
+boldly round. Tyrolese banners are waving, and the fifes and drums and
+clarionet players bring up the rear. The faces of the men beam with the
+joy of victory, and women and children stand around to welcome those
+returning home. Joy, however, is harder to paint faithfully than sorrow.
+It is so easy to see that it has been artificially worked up from the
+model; nor is Defregger's picture entirely innocent on this charge.
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._
+
+ DEFREGGER. SPECKBACHER AND HIS SON.]
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._
+
+ DEFREGGER. THE WRESTLERS.]
+
+"Andreas Hofer going to his Death" was his first concession to Piloty.
+Defregger had become professor at the Munich Academy, and was entered in
+the directory as "historical painter." The figures were therefore
+painted life size; and in the grouping and the choice of the "psychic
+moment" the style aimed at "grand painting." The result was the same
+emptiness which blusters through the historical pictures of the school
+of Delaroche, Gallait, and Piloty. The familiar stage effect and stilted
+passion has taken the place of simple and easy naturalism. Nor was he
+able to give life to the great figures of a large canvas as he had done
+in the smaller picture of the "Return of the Victors." This is true of
+"The Peasant Muster" of 1883--which represented the Tyrolese, assembled
+in an arms manufactory, learning that the moment for striking had
+arrived--and of the last picture of the series, "Andreas Hofer receiving
+the Presents of the Emperor Francis in the Fortress of Innsbruck." All
+the great Hofer pictures, which in earlier days were honoured as his
+best performances, have done less for his memory than for that of the
+sturdy hero. The _genre_ picture was Defregger's vocation. There lay his
+strength, and as soon as he left that province he renounced his fine
+qualities.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ DEFREGGER. SISTER AND BROTHERS.]
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._
+
+ DEFREGGER. THE PRIZE HORSE.]
+
+And a holiday humour, a tendency to beautify what he saw, is spread over
+even his _genre_ pictures. They make one suppose that there is always
+sunshine in the happy land of Tyrol, that all the people are chaste and
+beautiful, all the young fellows fine and handsome, all the girls smart,
+every household cleanly and well-ordered, all married folk and children
+honest and kind; whereas in reality these milk-maids and woodmen are far
+less romantic in their conduct; and so many a townsman who avoids
+contact with the living people goes into raptures over them as they are
+pictures. With Vautier he shares this one-sidedness as well as his
+defective colour. Almost all his pictures are hard, dry, and diffident
+in colouring, but, as with Vautier, the man atones for the painter. From
+Defregger one asks for no qualities of colour and no realistic Tyrolese,
+since he has rendered himself in his pictures, and gives one a glimpse
+into his own heart; and a healthy, genial, and kindly heart it is. His
+idealism is not born of laboriously acquired principles of beauty; it
+expresses the temperament of a painter--a temperament which
+unconsciously sees the people through a medium whereby they are
+glorified. A rosy glow obscures sadness, ugliness, wretchedness, and
+misery, and shows only strength and health, tenderness and beauty,
+fidelity and courage. He treasured sunny memories of the cheerful
+radiance which rested on his home in the hour of his return; he painted
+the joy which swelled in his own breast as he beheld again the rocks of
+his native country, heard once more the peaceful chime of its Sabbath
+bells. And this is what gives his works their human, inward truth,
+little as they may be authentic documents as to the population of Tyrol.
+
+Later this will be more impartially recognised than it possibly can be
+at present. The larger the school of any artist, the more it will make
+his art trivial; and thus for a time the originality of the master
+himself seems to be mere trifling. The Tyrolese were depreciated in the
+market by Defregger's imitators; only too many have aped his painting of
+stiff leather breeches and woollen bodices, without putting inside them
+the vivid humanity which is so charming in a genuine Defregger. But his
+position in the history of art is not injured by this. He has done
+enough for his age; he has touched the hearts of many by his cheerful,
+fresh, and healthy art, and he would be certain of immortality had he
+thrown aside his brush altogether from the time when the progress of
+painting left him in the rear.
+
+With Defregger, the head of the Tyrolese school, Gabl and Mathias
+Schmidt, standing at a measurable distance from him, may find a
+well-merited place. _Mathias Schmidt_, born in the Tyrolese Alps in the
+same year as Defregger, began with satirical representations of the
+local priesthood. A poor image-carver has arrived with his waggon at an
+inn, on the terrace of which are sitting a couple of well-fed
+ecclesiastics, and by them he is ironically called to account as he
+offers a crucifix for sale. A young priest, as an austere judge of
+morals, reproves a pair of lovers who are standing before him, or asks a
+young girl such insidious questions at the bridal examination that she
+lowers her eyes, blushing. His greatest picture was "The Emigration of
+the Zillerthal Protestants." Amongst later works, without controversial
+tendencies, "The Hunter's Greeting" and "The Lathered Parson" may be
+named. The latter is surprised by two pretty girls while shaving. To
+these may be added "The Parson's Patch," a picture of a robust
+housekeeper hastily mending a weak spot in the pastor's inexpressibles
+just before service.
+
+Shortly after Defregger had painted his picture of "Speckbacher," _Alois
+Gabl_ came forward with his "Haspinger preaching Revolt," and followed
+it up by smaller pictures with a humorous touch, representing a levy of
+recruits in Tyrol, the dance at the inn interrupted by the entrance of
+the parson, magnates umpiring at the shooting butts, a bar with laughing
+girls, and the like.
+
+In 1870, _Eduard Kurzbauer_, who died young, in his "Fugitives
+Overtaken" executed a work representing an entire class of painted
+illustrations. A young man who has eloped with a girl is discovered with
+her by her mother in a village inn. The old lady is looking
+reproachfully at her daughter, who is overwhelmed by shame and
+penitence; the young man is much moved, the old servant grave and
+respectful, the young landlady curious, and the postilion who has driven
+the eloping pair has a sly smirk. Elsewhere Kurzbauer, who is a fresh
+and lively anecdotist, painted principally episodes, arraying his
+figures in the peasant garb of the Black Forest: a rejected suitor takes
+a sad farewell of a perverse blonde who disdains his love; or the
+engagement of two lovers is hindered by the interference of the father.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ DEFREGGER. ANDREAS HOFER APPOINTED GOVERNOR OF THE TYROL.]
+
+_Hugo Kauffmann_, the son of Hermann Kauffmann, planted himself in the
+interior of village taverns or in front of them, and made his dressed-up
+models figure as hunters, telling incredible tales, dancing to the
+fiddle, or quarrelling over cards.
+
+Another North German, _Wilhelm Riefstahl_, showed how the peasants in
+Appenzell or Bregenz conduct themselves at mournful gatherings, at their
+devotions in the open air, and at All Souls' Day Celebrations, and
+afterwards extended his artistic dominion over Rügen, Westphalia, and
+the Rhine country with true Mecklenburg thoroughness. He was a careful,
+conscientious worker, with a discontent at his own efforts in his
+composition, a certain ponderousness in his attempts at _genre_; but his
+diligently executed pictures--full of colour and painted in a peculiarly
+German manner--are highly prized in public galleries on account of their
+instructive soundness.
+
+After the various classes of the German peasantry had been naturalised
+in the picture market by these narrative painters, _Eduard Grützner_,
+when religious controversy raged in the seventies, turned aside to
+discover drolleries in monastic life. This he did with the assistance of
+brown and yellowish white cowls, and the obese and copper-nosed models
+thereto pertaining. He depicts how the cellarer tastes a new wine, and
+the rest of the company await his verdict with anxiety; how the entire
+monastery is employed at the vintage, at the broaching of a wine cask or
+the brewing of the beer; how they tipple; how bored they are over their
+chess or their dice, their cards or their dominoes; how they whitewash
+old frescoes or search after forbidden books in the monastery library.
+This, according to Grützner, is the routine in which the life of monks
+revolves. At times amidst these figures appear foresters who tell of
+their adventures in the chase, or deliver hares at the cloister kitchen.
+And the more Grützner was forced year after year to make up for his
+decline as a colourist, by cramming his pictures with so-called humour,
+the greater was his success.
+
+It was only long afterwards that _genre_ painting in broad-cloth came
+into vogue by the side of this _genre_ in peasant blouse and monastic
+cowl, and stories of the exchange and the manufactory by the side of
+village and monastic tales. Here Düsseldorf plays a part once more in
+the development of art. The neighbourhood of the great manufacturing
+towns on the Rhine could not but lead painters to these subjects.
+_Ludwig Bokelmann_, who began by painting tragical domestic scenes--card
+players, and smoking shop-boys, in the style of Knaus--made the pawnshop
+a theme for art in 1875, and dexterously crowded into his picture all
+the types which popular fancy brings into association with the
+conception: business-like indifference, poverty ashamed, fallen
+prosperity, bitter need, avarice, and the love of pleasure. In 1877,
+when the failure of the house of Spitzeder made a sensation in the
+papers, he painted his picture "The Savings Bank before the Announcement
+of Failure," which gave him another opportunity for ranging in front of
+the splendid building an assembly of deluded creditors of all classes,
+and of showing how they expressed their emotion according to temperament
+and education, by excited speeches, embittered countenances, gloomy
+resignation, or vivid gesticulation. Much attention was likewise excited
+by "The Arrest." In this picture a woman was being watched for by a
+policeman, whilst the neighbours--male and female--loitered round with
+the requisite expression of horror, indignation, sympathy, or
+indifferent curiosity. The opening of a will, the last moments of an
+electioneering struggle, scenes in the entrance hall of a court of
+justice, the emigrants' farewell, the gaming-table at Monte Carlo, and a
+village fire, were other newspaper episodes from the life of great towns
+which he rendered in paint.
+
+His earlier associate in Düsseldorf, _Ferdinand Brütt_, after first
+painting _rococo_ pictures, owed his finest successes to the Stock
+Exchange. It, too, had its types: the great patrician merchants and
+bankers of solid reputation, the jobbers, break-neck speculators, and
+decayed old stagers; and, as Brütt rendered these current figures in a
+very intelligible manner, his pictures excited a great deal of
+attention. Acquittals and condemnations, acts of mortgage, emigration
+agents, comic electors, and prison visits, as further episodes from the
+social, political, and commercial life of great towns, fill up the odd
+corners of his little local chronicle.
+
+Thus the German _genre_ painting ran approximately the same course as
+the English had done at the beginning of the century. At that time the
+kingdom of German art was not of this world. Classicism taught men to
+turn their eyes on the art of a past age. Art in Germany had progressed
+slowly, and at first with an uncertain and hesitating step, before it
+learnt that what blossoms here, and thrives and fades, should be the
+subject of its labours. Gradually it brought one sphere of reality after
+the other into its domain. Observation took the place of abstraction,
+and the discoverer that of the inventor. The painter went amongst his
+fellow-creatures, opened his eyes and his heart to share their fortunes
+and misfortunes, and to reproduce them in his own creation. He
+discovered the peculiarities of grades of life and professional classes.
+Every one of the beautiful German landscapes with its peasantry, every
+one of the monastic orders and every manufacturing town found its
+representative in _genre_ painting. The country was mapped out. Each one
+took over his plot, which he superintended, conscientiously, like an
+ethnographical museum. And just as fifty years before, Germany had been
+fertilised by England, so it now gave in its turn the principles of
+_genre_ painting to the powers of the second rank in art.
+
+Even France was in some degree influenced. As if to indicate that Alsace
+would soon become German once more, after 1850 there appeared in that
+province certain painters who busied themselves with the narration of
+anecdote from rustic life quite in the manner of Knaus and Vautier.
+
+_Gustave Brion_, the grand-nephew of Frederica of Sesenheim, settled in
+the Vosges, and there gave intelligence of a little world whose life
+flowed by, without toil, in gentle, patriarchal quietude, interrupted
+only by marriage feasts, birthdays, and funeral solemnities. He appears
+to have been rather fond of melancholy and solemn subjects. His
+interiors, with their sturdy and honest people, bulky old furniture, and
+large green faïence stoves, which are so dear to him, are delightful in
+their familiar homeliness and their cordial Alsatian and German
+character, and recall Vautier; in fact, he might well be termed the
+French Vautier. He lives in them himself--the quiet old man, who in his
+last years occupied himself solely with the management of his garden and
+the culture of flowers, or sat by the hour in an easy-chair at the
+window telling stories to his old dog Putz. But pictorial unity of
+effect must be asked from him as little as from Vautier.
+
+_Charles Marchal_, too, was no painter, but an anecdotist, with a bias
+towards the humorous or sentimental; and so very refined and superior
+was he that he saw none but pretty peasant girls, who might easily be
+mistaken for "young ladies," if they exchanged their kerchiefs and
+bodices for a Parisian toilette. His chief picture was "The Hiring Fair"
+of 1864: pretty peasant girls are standing in a row along the street,
+bargaining with prospective masters before hiring themselves out.
+
+[Illustration: GRÜTZNER. TWELFTH NIGHT.]
+
+The most famous of this group of artists is _Jules Breton_, who after
+various humorous and sentimental pieces placed himself in 1853 in the
+front rank of the French painters of rustics by his "Return of the
+Reapers" (Musée Luxembourg). His "Gleaners" in 1855, "Blessing the
+Fields" in 1857, and "The Erection of the Picture of Christ in the
+Churchyard" were pretty enough to please the public, and sufficiently
+sound in technique not to be a stumbling-block to artists. After 1861 he
+conceived an enthusiasm for sunsets, and was never weary of depicting
+the hour when the fair forms of peasant maidens stand gracefully out
+against the quiet golden horizon. Jules Breton wrote many poems, and a
+vein of poetry runs through his pictures. They tell of the sadness of
+the land when the fields sleep dreamily beneath the shadows of the
+evening, touched by the last ray of the departing sun; but they tell of
+it in verses where the same rhymes are repeated with wearisome monotony.
+Breton is a charming and sympathetic figure, but he never quite
+conquered Classicism. His gleaners moving across the field in the
+evening twilight bear witness to an attentive, deliberate study of the
+works of Leopold Robert; and unfortunately much of the emphasis and
+classical style of Robert has been transmitted to Breton's rustic
+maidens. They have most decidedly a lingering weakness for pose, and a
+sharp touch of the formula of the schools. There is an affectation of
+style in their garb, and their hands are those of _bonnes_ who have
+never even handled a rake. Breton, as Millet said of him, paints girls
+who are too beautiful to remain in the country. His art is a well-bred,
+idyllic painting, with gilt edges; it is pleasing and full of delicate
+figures which are always elegant and always correct, but it is a little
+like flat lemonade; it is monotonous and only too carefully composed,
+destitute of all masculinity and seldom avoiding the reef of
+affectation.
+
+Norway and Sweden were fructified from Düsseldorf immediately. When
+Tidemand had shown the way, the academy on the Rhine was the high school
+for all the sons of the North during the fifties. They set to
+translating Knaus and Vautier into Swedish and Norwegian, and caught the
+tone of their originals so exactly that they almost seem more
+Düsseldorfian than the Düsseldorfers themselves.
+
+_Karl D'Uncker_, who arrived in 1851 and died in 1866, was led by the
+influence of Vautier to turn to little humorous incidents. After "The
+Two Deaf Friends" (two old people very hard of hearing, who are making
+comical efforts to understand each other) and "The Vagabond Musician and
+his Daughter before the Village Magistrates" there followed in 1858 the
+scene in "The Pawnshop," which divided the honours of the year with
+Knaus's "Golden Wedding." He is an artistic compromise between Knaus and
+Schroedter, a keen observer and a humorous narrator, who takes special
+pleasure in the sharp opposition of characteristic figures. In his
+"Pawnshop" and his "Third Class Waiting Room" vagabonds mingle in the
+crowd beside honest people, beggars beside retired tradesmen, old
+procuresses beside pure and innocent girls, and heartless misers beside
+warm-hearted philanthropists. In these satirically humorous little
+comedies Swedish costume has been rightly left out of sight. This
+ethnographical element was the _forte of Bengt Nordenberg_, who as a
+copyist of Tidemand gradually became the Riefstahl of the North. His
+"Golden Wedding in Blekingen," his "Bridal Procession," his "Collection
+of Tithes," "The Pietists," and "The Promenade at the Well," are of the
+same ethnographical fidelity and the same anecdotic dryness. He gets his
+best effects when he strikes an idyllic, childlike note or one of
+patriarchal geniality. The "Bridal Procession" received in the village
+with salvoes and music, "The Newly Married Pair" making a first visit to
+the parents of one of them, the picture of schoolboys playing tricks
+upon an old organist, that of children mourning over a lamb slain by a
+wolf, are, in the style of the sixties, the works of a modest and
+amiable anecdotist, who had a fine sense for the peaceful, familiar side
+of everyday life in town and country.
+
+[Illustration: BRION. JEAN VALJEAN.]
+
+In _Wilhelm Wallander_, as in Madou, noise and frolic and jest have the
+upper hand. His pictures are like saucy street ditties sung to a
+barrel-organ. The crowd at the market-place, the gossip in the
+spinning-room on a holiday evening, hop-pickings, dances, auctions on
+old estates, weddings, and the guard turning out, are his favourite
+scenes. Even when he came to Düsseldorf he was preceded by his fame as a
+jolly fellow and a clever draughtsman, and when he exhibited his "Market
+in Vingaker" he was greeted as another Teniers. His "Hop-Harvest" is
+like a waxwork show of teasing lads and laughing lasses. He was an
+incisive humorist and a spirited narrator, who under all circumstances
+was more inclined to jest than to touch idyllic and elegiac chords. In
+his pictures peasant girls never wander solitary across the country, for
+some lad who is passing by always has a joke to crack with them; it
+never happens that girls sit lonely by the hearth, there is always a
+lover to peep out laughing from behind the cupboard door.
+
+_Anders Koskull_ cultivated the _genre_ picture of children in a more
+elegiac fashion; he has poor people sitting in the sun, or peasant
+families in the Sunday stillness laying wreaths upon the graves of their
+dear ones in the churchyard. _Kilian Zoll_, like Meyer of Bremen,
+painted very childish pictures of women spinning, children with cats,
+the joys of grandmother, and the like. _Peter Eskilson_ turned to the
+representation of an idyllic age of honest yeomen, and has given in his
+best known work, "A Game of Skittles in Faggens," a pleasant picture
+from peasant life in the age of pig-tails. The object of _August
+Jernberg's_ study was the Westphalian peasant with his slouching hat,
+long white coat, flowered waistcoat, and large silver buttons. He was
+specially fond of painting dancing bears surrounded by a crowd of amused
+spectators, or annual fairs, for which a picturesque part of old
+Düsseldorf served as a background. _Ferdinand Fagerlin_ has something
+attractive in his simplicity and good-humour. If he laughs, as he
+delights in doing, his laughter is cordial and kind-hearted, and if he
+touches an elegiac chord he can guard against sentimentalism. In
+contrast with D'Uncker and Wallander, who always hunted after character
+pieces, he devotes himself to expression with much feeling, and
+interprets it delicately even in its finer _nuances_. Henry Ritter, who
+influenced him powerfully in the beginning of his career, drew his
+attention to Holland, and Fagerlin's quiet art harmonises with the Dutch
+phlegm. Within the four walls of his fishermen's huts there are none but
+honest grey-beards and quiet women, active wives and busy maidens,
+vigorous sailors and lively peasant lads. But his pictures are
+sympathetic in spite of this one-sided optimism, since the sentiment is
+not too affected nor the anecdotic points too heavily underlined.
+
+Amongst the Norwegians belonging to this group is _V.
+Stoltenberg-Lerche_, who with the aid of appropriate accessories adapted
+the interiors of cloisters and churches to _genre_ pictures, such as
+"Tithe Day in the Cloister," "The Cloister Library," and "The Visit of a
+Cardinal to the Cloister," and so forth. _Hans Dahl_, a _juste-milieu_
+between Tidemand and Emanuel Spitzer, carried the Düsseldorf village
+idyll down to the present time. "Knitting the Stocking" (girls knitting
+on the edge of a lake), "Feminine Attraction" (a lad with three peasant
+maidens who are dragging a boat to shore in spite of his resistance), "A
+Child of Nature" (a little girl engaged to sit as model to a painter
+amongst the mountains, and running away in alarm), "The Ladies' Boarding
+School on the Ice," "First Pay Duty," etc., are some of the witty titles
+of his wares, which are scattered over Europe and America. Everything is
+sunny, everything laughs, the landscapes as well as the figures; and if
+Dahl had painted fifty years ago, his fair maidens with heavy blond
+plaits, well-bred carriage, and delicate hands that have never been
+disfigured by work, would undoubtedly have assured him no unimportant
+place beside old Meyerheim in the history of the development of the
+_genre_ picture.
+
+An offshoot from the Munich painting of rustics shot up into a vigorous
+sapling in Hungary. The process of refining the raw talents of the
+Magyar race had been perfected on the shores of the Isar, and the
+Hungarians showed gratitude to their masters by applying the principles
+of the Munich _genre_ to Magyar subjects when they returned home. The
+Hungarian rooms of modern exhibitions have consequently a very local
+impress. Everything seems aboriginal, Magyar to the core, and purely
+national. Gipsies are playing the fiddle and Hungarian national songs
+ring forth, acrobats exhibit, slender sons of Pusta sit in Hungarian
+village taverns over their tokay, muscular peasant lads jest with buxom,
+black-eyed girls, smart hussars parade their irresistible charms before
+lively damsels, and recruits endeavour to imbibe a potent enthusiasm for
+the business of war from the juice of the grape. Stiff peasants, limber
+gipsies, old people dancing, smart youths, the laughing faces of girls
+and bold fellows with flashing eyes, quarrelsome heroes quick with the
+knife, tipsy soldiers and swearing sergeants, drunkards, suffering women
+and poor orphans, pawnshops and vagabonds, legal suits, electioneering
+scenes, village tragedies and comic proposals, artful shop-boys, and
+criminals condemned to death, the gay confusion of fairs and the merry
+return from the harvest and the vintage, waxed moustaches, green and red
+caps and short pipes, tokay, Banat wheat, Alfoeld tobacco, and Sarkad
+cattle,--such are the elements worked up, as the occasion demanded,
+either into little tales or great and thrilling romances. And the names
+of the painters are as thoroughly Magyar as are the figures. Beside
+_Ludwig Ebner_, _Paul Boehm_, and _Otto von Baditz_, which have a German
+sound, one comes across such names as _Koloman Déry_, _Julius Aggházi_,
+_Alexander Bihari_, _Ignaz Ruskovics_, _Johann Jankó_, _Tihamér
+Margitay_, _Paul Vagó_, _Arpad Fessty_, _Otto Koroknyai_, _D.
+Skuteczky_, etc.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ MARCHAL. THE HIRING FAIR.]
+
+But setting aside the altered names and the altered locality and garb,
+the substance of these pictures is precisely the same as that of the
+Munich pictures of twenty years before: dance and play, maternal
+happiness, wooing, and the invitation to the wedding. Instead of the
+_Schuhplattler_ they paint the Czarda, instead of the drover's cottage
+the taverns of Pesth, instead of the blue Bavarian uniform the green of
+the Magyar Hussars. Their painting is tokay adulterated with Isar
+water, or Isar water with a flavour of tokay. What seems national is at
+bottom only their antiquated standpoint. It is a typical development
+repeating itself in the nineteenth century through all branches of art;
+the sun rises in the West and sets in the East. Any other progress than
+that of the gradual expansion of subject-matter cannot be established in
+favour of the productions of all this _genre_ painting. In colour and in
+substance they represent a phase of art which the leading countries of
+Europe had already left behind about the middle of the century, and
+which had to be overcome elsewhere, if painting was again to be what it
+had been in the old, good periods.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ PETTENKOFEN. A HUNGARIAN VILLAGE (PENCIL DRAWING).]
+
+For as yet all these _genre_ painters were the children of Hogarth;
+their productions were the outcome of the same spirit, plebeian and
+alien to art, which had come into painting when the middle classes began
+to hold a more important position in society. Yet their artistic
+significance ought not to be and cannot be contested. In an age which
+was prouder of its antiquarian knowledge than of its own achievements,
+which recognised the faithful imitation of the method of all past
+periods, the mere performance of a delicate task, as the highest aim of
+art, these _genre_ painters were the first to portray the actual man of
+the nineteenth century; the first to desert museums and appeal to
+nature, and thus to lay the foundation of modern painting. They wandered
+in the country, looked at reality, sought to imitate it, and often
+displayed in their studies a marvellous directness of insight. But these
+vigorous initial studies were too modest to find favour and esteem with
+a public as yet insufficiently educated for the appreciation of art.
+Whilst in England the exhibitions of the Royal Academy and in France
+those of the Paris Salon created, comparatively early, a certain ground
+for the comprehension of art, the _genre_ painters of other countries
+worked up to and into the sixties without the appropriate social
+combinations. After 1828 the Art Unions began to usurp the position of
+that refined society which had formerly played the Mæcenas as the
+leading dictators of taste.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ BRETON. THE RETURN OF THE REAPERS.]
+
+Albrecht Adam, who was chiefly responsible for the foundation of the
+Munich Union, has himself spoken clearly in his autobiography of the
+advantages and disadvantages of this step. "Often," he writes, "often
+have I asked myself whether I have done good or not by this scheme, and
+to this hour I have not been able to make up my mind. The cultivation of
+art clearly received an entirely different bias from that which it had
+in earlier days. What was formerly done by artistic and judicious
+connoisseurs was now placed for the most part in the hands of the
+people. Like so much else in the world, that had its advantages, but in
+practice the shady side of the matter became very obvious." The
+disadvantages were specially these: "the people" for a long time could
+only understand such paintings as represented a story in a broad and
+easy fashion; paintings which in the narrative cohesion of the subject
+represented might be read off at a glance, since the mere art of reading
+had been learnt at school, rather than those which deserved and required
+careful study. The demand for anecdotic subject was only waived in the
+case of ethnographical painting, in Italian and Oriental _genre_; for
+here the singular types, pictorial costumes, and peculiar customs of
+foreign countries were in themselves enough to provoke curiosity. What
+was prized in the picture was merely something external, the subject of
+representation, not the representation itself, the matter and not the
+manner, that which concerned the theme, that which fell entirely beyond
+the province of art. The illustrated periodicals which had been making
+their appearance since the forties gave a further impetus to this phase
+of taste. The more inducement there was to guess charades, the more
+injury was done to the sensuous enjoyment of art; for the accompanying
+text of the author merely translated the pictures back into their
+natural element. Painters, however, were not unwilling to reconcile
+themselves to the circumstances, because, as a result of their technical
+insufficiency, they were forced, on their side, to try to lend their
+pictures the adjunct of superficial interest by anecdotic additions.
+Literary humour had to serve the purpose of pictorial humour, and the
+talent of the narrator was necessary to make up for their inadequate
+artistic qualities. As the historical painters conveyed the knowledge of
+history in a popular style, the _genre_ painters set up as agreeable
+tattlers, excellent anecdotists: they were in turn droll, meditative,
+sentimental, and pathetic, but they were not painters.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ BRETON. THE GLEANER.]
+
+And painters, under these conditions, they could not possibly become.
+For though it is often urged in older books on the history of art that
+modern _genre_ painting far outstripped the old Dutch _genre_ in
+incisiveness of characterisation, depth of psychological conception, and
+opulence of invention, these merits are bought at the expense of all
+pictorial harmony. In the days of Rembrandt the Dutch were painters to
+their fingers' ends, and they were able to be so because they appealed
+to a public whose taste was adequately trained to take a refined
+pleasure in the contemplation of works of art which had sterling merits
+of colour. Mieris painted the voluptuous ruffling of silken stuffs; Van
+der Meer, the mild light stealing through little windows into quiet
+chambers, and playing upon burnished vessels of copper and pewter, on
+majolica dishes and silver chattels, on chests and coverings; De Hoogh,
+the sunbeam streaming like a golden shaft of dust from some bright
+lateral space into a darker ante-chamber. Each one set before himself
+different problems, and each ran through an artistic course of
+development.
+
+[Illustration: WALLENDER. THE RETURN.]
+
+The more recent masters are mature from their first appearance; the
+Hungarians paint exactly like the Swedes and the Germans, and their
+pictures have ideas for the theme, but never such as are purely
+artistic. Like simple woodland birds, they sing melodies which are, in
+some ways, exceedingly pretty; but their plumage is not equal to their
+song. No man can be painter and _genre_ painter at the same time. The
+principal difference between them is this: a painter sees his picture,
+rather than what may be extracted from it by thought; the _genre_
+painter, on the other hand, has an idea in his mind, an "invention," and
+plans out a picture for its expression. The painter does not trouble his
+head about the subject and the narrative contents; his poetry lies in
+the kingdom of colour. There reigns in his works--take Brouwer, for
+example--an authentic, uniformly plastic, and penetrative life welling
+from the artist's soul. But the leading motive for the _genre_ painter
+is the subject as such. For example, he will paint a children's festival
+precisely because it is a children's festival. But one must be a Jan
+Steen to accomplish such a task in a soundly artistic manner. The
+observation of these more recent painters meanwhile ventured no further
+than detail, and did not know what to do with the picture as a whole.
+They got over their difficulties because they "invented" the scene, made
+the children pose in the places required by the situation, and then
+composed these studies. The end was accomplished when the leading heroes
+of the piece had been characterised and the others well traced. The
+colouring was merely an unessential adjunct, and in a purely artistic
+sense not at all possible. For a picture which has come into being
+through a piecing together from separate copies of set models, and of
+costumes, vessels, interiors, etc., may be ever so true to nature in
+details, but this mosaic work is bound systematically to destroy the
+pictorial appearance, unity, and quietude of the whole. Knaus is
+perhaps the only one who, as a fine connoisseur of colour, concealed
+this scrap-book drudgery, and achieved a certain congruity of colour in
+a really artistic manner by a subtilised method of harmony. But as
+regards the pictures of all the others, it is clear at once that, as
+Heine wrote, "they have been rather edited than painted." The
+effectiveness of the picture was lost in the detail, and even the truth
+of detail was lost in the end in the opulence of subject, seductive as
+that was upon the first glance. For, as it was held that the incident
+subjected to treatment--the more circumstantial the better--ought to be
+mirrored through all grades and variations of emotion in the faces, in
+the gestures of a family, of the gossips, of the neighbours, of the
+public in the street, the inevitable consequence was that the artist, to
+make himself understood, was invariably driven to exaggerate the
+characterisation, and to set in the place of the unconstrained
+expression of nature that which has been histrionically drilled into the
+model. Not less did the attempt to unite these set figures as a
+composition in one frame lead to an intolerable stencilling. The rules
+derived from historical painting in a time dominated by that form of art
+were applied to our chequered and many-sided modern life. Since the
+structure of this composition prescribed laws from which the undesigned
+manifestation of individual objects is free, the studies after nature
+had to be readjusted in the picture according to necessity. There were
+attitudes in a conventional sense beautiful, but unnatural and strained,
+and therefore creating an unpleasing effect. An arbitrary construction,
+a forced method of composition, usurped the place of what was flexible,
+various, and apparently casual. The painters did not fit the separate
+part as it really was into the totality which the coherence of life
+demands: they arranged scenes of comedy out of realistic elements just
+as a stage manager would put them together.
+
+And this indicates the further course which development was obliged to
+take. When Hogarth was left behind, painting had once more gained the
+independence which it had had in the great periods of art. The painter
+was forced to cease from treating secondary qualities--such as humour
+and narrative power--as though they were of the first account; and the
+public had to begin to understand pictures as paintings and not as
+painted stories. An "empty subject" well painted is to be preferred to
+an "interesting theme" badly painted. Pictures of life must drive out
+_tableaux vivants_, and human beings dislodge character types which
+curiosity renders attractive. Rather let there be a moment of breathing
+reality rendered by purely artistic means of expression than the most
+complete village tale defectively narrated; rather the simplest figure
+rendered with actuality and no thought of self than the most suggestive
+and ingenious characterisation. A conception, coloured by the
+temperament of the artist, of what was simple and inartificial,
+expressing nature at every step, had to take the place of laborious
+composition crowded with figures, the plainness and truth of sterling
+art to overcome what was overloaded and arbitrary, and the fragment of
+nature seized with spontaneous freshness to supplant episodes put
+together out of fragmentary observations. Only such painting as confined
+itself, like that of the Dutch, "to the bare empirical observation of
+surrounding reality," renouncing literary byplay, spirited anecdotic
+fancies, and all those rules of beauty which enslave nature, could
+really become the basis of modern art: and this the landscape painters
+created. When once these masters resolved to paint from nature, and no
+longer from their inner consciousness, there inevitably came a day when
+some one amongst them wished to place in the field or the forest, which
+he had painted after nature, a figure, and then felt the necessity of
+bringing that figure into his picture just as he had seen it, without
+giving it an anecdote mission or forcing it arbitrarily into his
+compositions. The landscapist found the woodcutter in the forest, and
+the woodcutter seemed to him the ideal he was seeking; the peasant
+seemed to him to have the right to stand amid the furrows he had traced
+with his plough. He no longer drove the fisher and the sailor from their
+barks, and had no scruple in representing the good peasant woman, laden
+with wood, striding forwards in his picture just as she strode through
+the forest. And so entry was made into the way of simplicity; the
+top-heavy burden of interesting subject-matter was thrown aside, and the
+truth of figures and environments was gained. The age contained all the
+conditions for bringing landscape painting such as this to maturity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+LANDSCAPE PAINTING IN GERMANY
+
+
+That landscape would become for the nineteenth century even more
+important than it was for the Holland of the seventeenth century had
+been clearly announced since the days of Watteau and Gainsborough, and
+since this tendency, in spite of all coercive rules, could be only
+momentarily delayed by Classicism, it came to pass that the era which
+began with Winckelmann's conception of "vulgar nature" ended a
+generation later with her apotheosis. The thirty years from 1780 to 1810
+denoted no more than a brief imprisonment for modern landscape, the
+luxuriantly blooming child being arbitrarily confined meanwhile in the
+strait-waistcoat of history. At first the phrase of Gotthold Ephraim
+Lessing, which declared that landscape was no subject for painting
+because it had no soul, held painters altogether back from injuring
+their reputation by such pictures. And when, after the close of the
+century, some amongst them overcame this dread, Poussin the Classicist
+was of course set up as the only model. For an age which did not paint
+men but only statues, nature was too natural. As the figure painter
+subordinated everything to style and moulded the human body accordingly,
+landscape became mannered to suit an historical idea, and was used
+merely as a theatrical background for Greek tragedies. As the
+draughtsmen of the age freed the human figure from all "individual
+blemishes," and thereby abandoned the most essential points of life and
+credibility which are bound up with personality, the landscapists wished
+to purify nature from everything "accidental," with the result that
+dreary commonplaces were produced from her, the infinitely manifold. As
+the former sought the chief merit of their works in "well-balanced
+composition," the latter regarded trees and mountains, temples and
+palaces, clouds and rivers, merely as counters which only needed to be
+changed in their mutual position according to acquired rules of
+composition to make new pictures. They did not reflect that nature
+possesses a more original force than the most able self-conscious work
+of man, or, as Ludwig Richter has so well expressed it, that "what God
+Almighty has made is always more beautiful than what men can invent."
+There were summary rules for landscapes in the Poussin style, the beauty
+of which was sought above all in an opulent play of noble lines,
+corresponding to the fine and flowing lines of Carstens' figures. But
+the conception was all the more pedantic whilst the drawing was hard and
+dry and the colour feeble and vitreous. The most familiar of the group
+is the old Tyrolese _Josef Anton Koch_, who came to Rome in 1796, and,
+during two years, had an opportunity of allying himself with Carstens.
+His pictures are usually composed with motives taken from the Sabine
+Mountains. A landscape with "The Rape of Hylas" is possessed by the
+Staedel Institute in Frankfort, a "Sacrifice of Noah" by the Museum in
+Leipzig, and a landscape from the Sabine Mountains by the New Pinakothek
+in Munich. All three show little promise in technique; it was only in
+water-colour that he painted with more freedom.
+
+[Illustration: JOSEF ANTON KOCH.]
+
+Without a doubt nature in Italy is favourable to this "heroic" style of
+landscape. In South Italy the country is at once magnificent and
+peaceful. The naked walls of rock display their majestic lines with a
+sharp contour; the sea is blue, and there is no cloud in the sky. As far
+as the eye reaches everything is dead and nugatory in its colour, and
+rigid and inanimate in form: a plastic landscape, full of style but
+apparently devoid of soul. Nowhere is there anything either stupendous
+or familiar, though, at the same time, there is no country on the earth
+where there is such a sweep of proud majestic lines. It was not the
+composition of Poussin, but the classic art of Claude--which aimed at
+being nothing but the transparent mirror of sunny and transparent
+nature--that gave perfect expression to this classic landscape; and in
+the nineteenth century _Karl Rottmann_, according to what one reads, has
+most completely represented this same classical form of art. His
+twenty-eight Italian landscapes in the arcades of the Munich Hofgarten
+are said to display a sense of the beauty of line and a greatness of
+conception paralleled by few other landscape works of the century. And
+those who draw their critical appreciations from books will probably
+continue to make this statement, with all the greater right since the
+world has been assured that the Arcade pictures are but a shadow of
+earlier splendour. To a spectator who has not been primed and merely
+judges with his own eyes without knowing anything about Rottmann's
+celebrity, these pictures with their hard, inept colouring and their
+pompous "synthetic" composition seem in the majority of cases to be
+excessively childish, though it is not contested that before their
+restoration by Leopold Rottmann and their present state of decay they
+may very possibly have been good. Rottmann's Grecian landscapes in the
+New Pinakothek are not ranked high even by his admirers. Standing in the
+beginning entirely upon Koch's ground, he was led in these pictures to
+give more importance to colour and light, and even to introduce unusual
+phenomena, such as lowering skies, with rainbows, sunsets, moonlight
+scenes, thunderstorms, and the like. This mixture of classical
+principles of drawing with effect-painting in the style of Eduard
+Hildebrandt brought a certain confusion into his compositions, to say
+nothing of the fact that he never got rid of his harsh and heavy colour,
+Bengal lights, and a crudeness of execution suggestive of tapestry. His
+water-colours, probably, contain the only evidence from which it may be
+gathered that Rottmann really had an eminent feeling for great
+characteristic lines, and did not unsuccessfully go through the school
+of Claude with his finely moulded, rhythmically perfected, and yet
+simple conception of nature.
+
+[Illustration: _Gräphische Künst._
+
+ KARL ROTTMANN.]
+
+Otherwise _Friedrich Preller_ is the only one of all the stylists
+deriving from Koch who rose to works consistent in execution. To him
+only was it granted to assure his name a lasting importance by
+exhaustively working out a felicitous subject. The _Odyssey_ landscapes
+extend through his whole life. During a sojourn in Naples in 1830 he was
+struck by the first idea. After his return home he composed for Doctor
+Härtel in Leipzig the first series as wall decoration in tempera in
+1832-34. Then there followed his journeys to Rügen and Norway, where he
+painted wild strand and fell landscapes of a sombre austerity. After
+this interruption, so profitably extending his feeling for nature, he
+returned to the _Odyssey_. The series grew from seven to sixteen
+cartoons, which were to be found in 1858 at the Munich International
+Exhibition. The Grand Duke of Weimar then commissioned him to paint the
+complete sequence for a hall in the Weimar Museum. In 1859-60 Preller
+prepared himself afresh in Italy, and as an old man completed the work
+which he had planned in youth. This Weimar series, executed in encaustic
+painting, is artistically the maturest that he ever did. Of the entire
+school he only had the secret of giving his figures a semblance of life,
+and concealed the artificiality of his compositions. Nature in his
+pictures has an austere, impressive sublimity, and is the worthy home of
+gods and heroes. During his long life he had made so many and such
+incessant studies of nature in North and South--even at seventy-eight he
+was seen daily with his sketch-book in the Campagna--that he could
+venture to work with great, simple lines without the danger of becoming
+empty.
+
+At the time when these pictures were painted the rendering of still-life
+in landscape had in general been long buried, although even to-day it
+has scattered representatives in the younger Preller, Albert Hertel, and
+Edmund Kanoldt. As antique monuments came into fashion with Classicism,
+German ruins became the mode at the beginning of the romantic period and
+the return to the national past. For Koch and his followers landscape
+was only of value when, as the background of classical works of
+architecture, it directed one's thoughts to the antique: shepherds had
+to sit with their flock around them on the ruins of the temple of Vesta,
+or cows to find pasture between the truncated pillars of the Roman
+Forum. But now it could only find its justification by allying itself
+with mediæval German history, by the portrayal of castles and
+strongholds.
+
+[Illustration: ROTTMANN. THE COAST OF SICILY.]
+
+"What is beautiful?--A landscape with upright trees, fair vistas,
+atmosphere of azure blue, ornamental fountains, stately palaces in a
+learned architectural style, with well-built men and women, and well-fed
+cows and sheep. What is ugly?--Ill-formed trees with aged, crooked, and
+cloven stems, uneven and earthless ground, sharp-cut hills and mountains
+which are too high, rude or dilapidated buildings, with their ruins
+lying strewn in heaps, a sky with heavy clouds, stagnant water, lean
+cattle in the field, and ungraceful wayfarers."
+
+In these words Gérard de Lairesse, the ancestor of Classicism, defined
+his ideal of landscape, and in the last clause, where he speaks of
+ugliness, he prophetically indicated the landscape ideal of the
+Romanticists, as this is given for the first time in literature in
+Tieck's _Sternbald_. For the young knight in _Sternbald_ who desires to
+become a painter exclaims with enthusiasm: "Then would I depict lonely
+and terrible regions, rotting and broken bridges, between two rough
+cliffs facing a precipice, through which the forest stream forces its
+foaming course, lost travellers whose garments flutter in the moist
+wind, the dreaded figures of robbers ascending from the gully, waggons
+fallen upon and plundered, and battle against the travellers." Which is
+all exactly the opposite to what Lairesse demanded from the landscapist.
+Alexander Humboldt has shown that the men of antiquity only found beauty
+in nature so far as she was kindly, smiling, and useful to them. But to
+the Romanticists nature was uncomely where she was the servant of
+civilisation, and beautiful only in tameless and awe-inspiring
+savageness. The light, therefore, was never to be that of simple day,
+but the gloom of night and of the mountain glens. Such phenomena are
+neither to be seen in Berlin nor in Breslau, and to be a Romanticist was
+to love the opposite of all that one sees around one. Tieck, who lived
+in the cold daylight of Berlin with its modern North German rationalism,
+has therefore--and not by chance--first felt the yearning for moonlight
+landscapes of primæval forest; _Lessing_, from Breslau, was the first to
+give it pictorial expression.
+
+[Illustration: K. ROTTMANN. LAKE KOPAÏS.]
+
+Even in the twenties Koch's classical heroic landscapes, executed with
+an ideal sweep of line, were contrasted with castle chapels, ruins, and
+cloister courts composed in a similarly arbitrary manner. Landscape was
+no longer to make its appeal to the understanding by lines, as in the
+work of the Classicists, but to touch the spirit by colour. The various
+hues of moonlight seemed specially made to awaken sombre emotions. But
+as yet the technique of painting was too inadequately trained to express
+this preconceived "mood" through nature itself. To make his intentions
+clearer, therefore, the painter showed the effect of natural scenery on
+the figures in his pictures, illustrating the "mood" of the landscape in
+the "accessories." Lessing's early works represent in art that
+self-consciously elegiac and melancholy sentimental rendering of a mood
+introduced into literature by _Sternbald_, in his knights, squires,
+noble maidens, and other romantic requisites. The melancholy lingers
+upon rocks savagely piled upon each other, tumble-down chapels and
+ruined castles, in swamps and sombre woods, in old, decaying trees,
+half-obliterated paths, and ghostly gravestones; it veils the sky with a
+dark grey cerement. Amid hills and glens with wayside crosses, mills,
+and charcoal-burners' huts may be seen lonely wanderers, praying
+pilgrims, priests hurrying from the cloister to bring the last
+consolation to the dying, riders who have lost their way, and mercenary
+soldiers lying dead. His first picture of 1828 revealed a desolate
+churchyard beneath a dark and lowering heaven, from which a solitary
+sunbeam bursts forth to illumine a grave-stead. Then followed the castle
+by the sea standing upon strangely moulded cliffs heaped in confusion;
+the churchyard in the snow where the nuns in the cloisters are following
+a dead sister to the grave; the churchyard cloister, likewise in
+snow, where an old man has dug a fresh grave; the cloister in the light
+of evening with a priest visiting the sick; the landscape with the
+weary, grey-headed crusader, riding on a weary horse through a lonely
+mountain district, probably meant as an illustration to Uhland's ballad
+_Das Rosennest_--
+
+ "Rühe hab ich nie gefunden,
+ Als ein Jahr im finstern Thurm";
+
+and then came the desolate tableland with the robbers' den burnt to
+ashes, and the landscape with the oak and the shrine of the Virgin,
+before which a knight and noble lady are making their devotions. As yet
+all these pictures were an arbitrary _potpourri_ from Walter Scott,
+Tieck, and Uhland, and their ideal was the Wolf's Glen in the
+_Freischütz_.
+
+[Illustration: FRIEDRICH PRELLER.]
+
+The next step which Romanticism had to take was to discover such
+primæval woodland scenes in actual nature, and as Italian landscape
+seems, as it were, to have been made for Claude, nature, as she is in
+Germany, makes a peculiar appeal to this romantic temperament. In
+certain parts of Saxon Switzerland the rocks look as if giants of the
+prime had played ball with them or piled them one on top of the other in
+sport. Lessing found in 1832 a landscape corresponding to the romantic
+ideal of nature in the Eifel district, whither he had been induced to go
+by a book by Nöggerath, _Das Gebirge im Rheinland und Westfalen nach
+Mineralogischem und Chemischem Bezuge_. Up to that time he had only
+known the romantic ideal of nature through Scott, Tieck, and Uhland,
+just as the Classicists had taken their ideal from Homer, Theocritus,
+and Virgil: in the Eifel district it came before him in tangible form.
+Flat, swampy tracts of shrub and spruce alternated with dark woods,
+where gigantic firs, weird pines, and primæval oaks raised their
+branches to the sky. At the same time he beheld the rude and lonely
+sublimity of nature in union with a humanity which was as yet
+uncultivated, and for that reason all the simpler and the healthier,
+judged by the Romanticist's distaste for civilisation. Defiant cones of
+rock and huge masses of mountain wildly piled upon each other overlooked
+valleys in which a stalwart race of peasants passed their days in
+patriarchal simplicity. Here, for the first time, a sense for actual
+landscape was developed in him; hitherto it had been alloyed by a taste
+for knights, robbers, and monks. "Oh, had I been born in the seventeenth
+century," he wrote, "I would have wandered after the Thirty Years' War
+throughout Germany, plundered, ruined, and run wild as she then was."
+Hitherto only "composed" Italian landscapes had been painted, the soil
+of home ostensibly offering no _sujets_, or, in other words, not suiting
+those tendencies which subordinated everything to style: so Lessing was
+now the first painter of German landscape. His "Eifel Landscape" in the
+Berlin National Gallery, which was followed by a series of such
+pictures, introduces the first period of German landscape painting. The
+forms of the ground and of the rough sides of rock are rendered sharply
+and decisively, from geological knowledge. On principle he became an
+opponent of all artistic influence derived from Italy, and located
+himself in the Eifel district. The landscapes which he painted there are
+founded on immediate studies of nature, and are sustained by large and
+earnest insight. He draws the picture of this quarter in strong and
+simple lines: the sadness of the heath and the dark mist, the dull
+breath of which rises from swampy moorland. Still he painted only scenes
+in which nature had taken the trouble to be fantastic. The eye of the
+painter did not see her bright side, approaching her only when she
+looked gloomy or was in angry humour. Either he veils the sky with vast
+clouds or plunges into the darkness of an untrodden forest. Gnarled
+trees spread around, their branches stretching out fantastically
+twisted; the unfettered tumult of the powers of nature, the dull sultry
+atmosphere before the burst of the storm or its moaning subsidence, are
+the only moments which he represents. But the whole baggage of
+unseasonable Romanticism, the nuns and monks, pious knights and
+sentimental robbers, at first used to embody the mood of nature, were
+thrown overboard. A quieter and more melancholy though thoroughly manly
+seriousness, something strong and pithy, lies in the representations of
+Lessing. The Romanticists had lost all sense of the dumb silent life of
+nature. They only painted the changing adornment of the earth: heroes
+and the works of men, palaces, ruins, and classic temples. Nature served
+merely as a stage scene: the chief interest lay in the persons, the
+monuments, and the historical ideas associated with them. Even in the
+older pictures of Lessing the mood was exclusively given by the lyrical
+accessories. But now it was placed more and more in nature herself, and
+rings in power like an organ peal, from the cloudy sky, the dim lights,
+and the swaying tree-tops. For the first time it is really nature that
+speaks from the canvas, sombre and forceful. In this respect his
+landscapes show progress. They show the one-sidedness, but also the
+poetry of the Romantic view of nature. And they are no less of an
+advance in technique; for in making the discovery that his haunting
+ideal existed in reality, Lessing first began to study nature apart from
+preconceived and arbitrary rules of composition, and--learnt to paint.
+
+[Illustration: _Albert, Munich._
+
+ PRELLER. ULYSSES AND LEUCOTHEA.]
+
+Up to 1840 there stood at his side a master no less powerful, the
+refractory, self-taught _Karl Blechen_, who only took up painting when
+he was five-and-twenty, and became one of the most original of German
+landscapists, in spite of a ruined life prematurely closing in mental
+darkness and suicide. He possessed a delicate feeling for nature,
+inspiration, boldness, and a spirited largeness of manner, although his
+technique was hard, awkward, and clumsy to the very end. He might be
+called the Alfred Rethel of landscape painting. He was not moved by what
+was kindly or formally beautiful in nature, but by loneliness,
+melancholy, and solitude. Many of his landscapes break away from
+peaceful melancholy, and are like the pictures in some horrible
+nightmare, ghastly and terrifying; on the other hand, he often surprises
+us by the pleasure he takes in homely everyday things, a characteristic
+hitherto of rare occurrence. Whereas Lessing never crossed the Alps for
+fear of losing his originality, Blechen was the first who saw even
+modern Italy without the spectacles of ideal style. From his Italian
+pictures it would not be supposed that he had previously studied the
+landscapes of the Classicists, or that beside him in Berlin Schinkel
+worked on the entirely abstract and ideal landscape. As a painter
+Blechen has even discovered the modern world. For Lessing landscape
+"with a purpose" was something hideous and insupportable. He cared
+exclusively for nature untouched by civilisation, painted the murmuring
+wood and the raging storm, here and there at most a shepherd who
+indicated the simplest and the oldest employment on the earth's surface.
+But the Blechen Exhibition of 1881 contained an entirely singular
+phenomenon as regards the thirties, an evening landscape before the iron
+works in Eberswald: a long, monotonous plain with a sluggish river,
+behind which the dark outlines of vomiting manufactory chimneys rise
+sullenly into the bright evening sky. Even in that day Blechen painted
+what others scarcely ventured to draw: nature working in the service of
+man, and thereby--to use Tieck's expression--"robbed of her austere
+dignity."
+
+[Illustration: CARL FRIEDRICH LESSING.]
+
+Lessing's most celebrated follower, _Schirmer_, appears in general as a
+weakened and sentimental Lessing. He began in 1828 with "A Primæval
+German Forest," but a journey to Italy caused him in 1840 to turn aside
+from this more vigorous path. Henceforth his efforts were directed to
+nobility of form and line, to turning out Southern ideal landscapes with
+classically romantic accessories. The twenty-six Biblical landscapes
+drawn in charcoal, belonging to the Düsseldorf Kunsthalle, the four
+landscapes in oil with the history of the Good Samaritan in the
+Kunsthalle of Carlsruhe, and the twelve pictures on the history of
+Abraham in the Berlin National Gallery, are the principal results of
+this second period--his period of ideal style. They are tame efforts at
+a compromise between Lessing and Preller, and therefore of no
+consequence to the history of the development of landscape painting.
+Amongst the many who regarded him as a model, _Valentin Ruths_ of
+Hamburg is one of the most natural and delicate. His pictures, however,
+did not display any new impulse to widen the boundary by proceeding more
+in the direction of healthy and honestly straightforward observation of
+nature, or by emancipating himself from the school of regular
+composition and the rendering of an arbitrary mood.
+
+[Illustration: LESSING. THE WAYSIDE MADONNA.]
+
+Meanwhile this impulse came from another quarter. At the very time when
+the _genre_ artists were painting their earliest pictures of rustic life
+under the influence of Teniers and Ostade, the landscapists also began
+to return to the old Dutch masters, following Everdingen in particular.
+Thus another strip of nature was conquered, another step made towards
+simplicity. The landscape ideal of the Classicists had been
+architecture, that of the Romanticists poetry; from this time forward it
+became pure painting. Little Denmark, which fifty years before had
+exercised through Carstens that fateful influence on Germany which led
+painters from the treatment of contemporary life and sent them in
+pursuit of the antique, now made recompense for the evil it had done.
+During the twenties and thirties it produced certain landscapists who
+guided the Germans to look with a fresh and unfettered gaze, undisturbed
+by the ideal, at nature in their own country, after the aberrations of
+Classicism and the one-sidedness of the Romanticists. Under Eckersberg
+the Academy of Copenhagen was the centre of a healthy realism founded on
+the Dutch, and some of the painters who received their training there
+and laboured in later years in Dresden, Düsseldorf, and Munich spread
+abroad the principles of this school.
+
+[Illustration: SCHIRMER. AN ITALIAN LANDSCAPE.]
+
+_J. C. Dahl_ taught as professor in the Academy of Dresden. At the
+present time his Norwegian landscapes seem exceedingly old-fashioned,
+but in the thirties they evidently must have been something absolutely
+new, for they raised a hue and cry amongst the German painters as "the
+most wild naturalism." In 1788 Johann Christian Clausen Dahl was born in
+Bergen. He was the son of one of those Norwegian giants who are one day
+tillers of the soil and on the morrow fishers or herdsmen and hunters,
+who cross the sea in their youth as sailors and clear the waste land
+when they return home. As he wandered with his father through the dense,
+solitary pine forests, along abrupt precipices, sullen lakes, rushing
+waterfalls, silvery shining glaciers, the majesty of Northern nature was
+revealed to him, and he rendered them in little coloured drawings,
+which, in spite of their awkward technique, bear witness to an
+extraordinary freshness of observation. The course of study at the
+Copenhagen Academy, whither he proceeded in his twentieth year, enabled
+him to become acquainted with Everdingen and Ruysdael, and these two old
+masters, who had also painted Norwegian landscapes, stimulated him to
+further efforts.
+
+Dahl became the first representative of Norwegian landscape painting,
+and remained true to his country even when in 1819 he undertook a
+professorship in Dresden. Italy and Germany occupied his brush as much
+as Norway, but he was only himself when he worked amongst the Norwegian
+cliffs. Breadth of painting and softness of atmosphere are wanting in
+all his pictures. They are hard and dry in their effect, and not seldom
+entirely conventional; especially the large works painted after 1830. In
+them he gave the impression of a bewildering, babbling personality. They
+have been swiftly conceived and swiftly painted, but without artistic
+love and fine feeling. In his later years Dahl did not allow himself the
+time to bury himself in nature quietly and with devotion, and
+finally--especially in his moonlight pictures--took to using a
+violet-blue, which has a very conventional effect. Everdingen sought by
+preference for what was forceful and violently agitated in nature;
+Ruysdael felt an enthusiasm for rushing mountain streams. But for Dahl
+even these romantic elements of Northern nature were not enough. He
+approached nature, not to interpret her simply, but to arrange his
+effects. In his picture the wild Norwegian landscape had to be wilder
+and more restless than in reality it is. Not patient enough to win all
+its secrets from the savage mountain torrent, he forced together his
+effects, made additions, brought confusion into his picture as a whole,
+and a crudeness into the particular incidents. His large pictures have a
+loud effect contrasted with the simple intuition of nature amongst the
+Netherlanders. Many of them are merely fantastically irrational
+compositions of motives which have been learned by heart.
+
+But there were also years in which Dahl stood in the front rank of his
+age, and even showed it the way to new aims. He certainly held that
+position from 1820 to 1830 in those pictures in which, instead of making
+romantic adaptations of Ruysdael and Everdingen, he resembled them by
+rendering the weirdness and eeriness and the rough and wild features of
+Norwegian scenery: red-brown heaths and brownish green turf-moors,
+stunted oaks and dark pine forests, erratic blocks sown without design
+amid the roots of trees, branches snapped by the storm and hanging as
+they were broken, and trunks felled by the tempest and lying where they
+fell. In certain pictures in the Bergen and Copenhagen Galleries he
+pointed out the way to new aims. The tendency to gloom and seriousness
+which reigns in those Dutch Romanticists has here yielded to what is
+simple and familiar, to the homely joy of the people of the North in the
+crisp, bright day and the wayward sunbeams. He loves the glimmer of
+light upon the birch leaves and the peacefully rippling sea. Like Adrian
+van der Neer, he studied with delight the wintry sky, the snow-clad
+plains, and the night and the moonshine. He began to feel even the charm
+of spring. Poor peasant cots are brightly and pleasantly perched upon
+moist, green hills, as though he had quite forgotten what his age
+demanded in "artistic composition." Or the summer day spreads opulent
+and real between the cliffs, and the warm air vibrates over the fields.
+Peasants and cattle, glimmering birches and village spires, stand
+vigorously forth in the landscape; even the execution is so simple that
+with all his richness of detail he succeeds in attaining a great effect.
+It is felt that this painting has developed amid a virgin nature,
+surrounded by the poetry of the fjord, the lofty cliff, and the torrent.
+In the same measure the Dutch had not the feeling for quietude and
+habitable, humble, and familiar places. And perhaps it was not by chance
+that this reformer came from the most virgin country of Europe, from a
+country that had had no share in any great artistic epoch of the past.
+
+[Illustration: MORGENSTERN. A PEASANT COTTAGE (ETCHING).]
+
+_Caspar David Friedrich_, that singular painter who carried on his
+artistic work in Greifswald, and later in Dresden also, is, if anything,
+almost more original and startling. Like Dahl, he studied under
+Eckersberg, at the Academy in Copenhagen, and it was this elder artist
+who opened his eyes to nature, in which he saw moods and humours as
+romantic as they were modern. His work was not seen in a right light
+until shown in the German Centenary Exhibition of 1906, when his just
+place was first, in the history of art, assigned to him.
+
+For Munich a similar importance was won by the Hamburg painter
+_Christian Morgenstern_, who, like all artists of this group, imitated
+the Dutch in the tone of his colour, though as a draughtsman he remained
+a fresh and healthy son of nature. Even what he accomplished in all
+naïveté between 1826 and 1829, through direct study of Hamburg
+landscape, is something unique in the German production of that age. His
+sketches and etchings of these years assure him a high place amongst the
+earliest German "mood" painters, and show that as a landscapist he had
+at that time made the furthest advance towards simplicity and intimacy
+of feeling. A journey to Norway, undertaken in 1829, and a sojourn at
+the Copenhagen Academy, where he worked up his Norwegian studies, only
+extended his ability without altering his principles; and when he came
+to Munich in the beginning of the thirties his new and personal
+intuition of nature made a revolution in artistic circles. The landscape
+painters learnt from him that Everdingen, Ruysdael, and Rembrandt were
+contemporaries of Poussin, that foliage need not be an exercise of
+style, and is able properly to indicate the nature of the tree. He
+discovered the beauty of the Bavarian plateau for the Munich school.
+
+Even the first picture that he brought with him from Hamburg displayed a
+wide plain shadowed by clouds--a part of the Lüneberg heath--and to this
+type of subject he remained faithful even in later days. Himself a child
+of the plains, he sought for kindred motives in Bavaria, and found them
+in rich store on the shore of the Isar, in the quarries near Polling, at
+Peissenberg, and in the mossy region near Dachau. His pictures have not
+the power of commanding the attention of an indifferent spectator, but
+when they have been once looked into they are seen to be poetic, quiet,
+harmless, sunny, and thoughtful. He delighted in whatever was ordinary
+and unobtrusive, the gentle nature of the wood, the surroundings of the
+village, everything homely and familiar. If Rottmann revelled in the
+forms of Southern nature, Morgenstern abided by his native Germany;
+where Lessing only listened to the rage of the hurricane, Morgenstern
+hearkened to the quiet whisper of the breeze. The shadows of the clouds
+and the radiance of the sun lie over the dark heath, the moonlight
+streams dreamily over the quiet streets of the village, the waves break,
+at one moment rushing noisily and at another gently caressing the shore.
+Later, when he turned to the representation of the mountains, he lost
+the intimacy of feeling which was in the beginning peculiar to him. In
+mountain pictures, often as he attempted ravines, waterfalls, and snowy
+Alpine summits, he never succeeded in doing anything eminently good.
+These pictures have something petty and dismembered, and not the great,
+simple stroke of his plains and skies.
+
+What Morgenstern was for Munich, _Ludwig Gurlitt_ was for
+Düsseldorf--the most eminent of the great Northern colony which migrated
+thither in the thirties. His name is not to be found in manuals, and the
+pictures of his later period which represent him in public galleries
+seldom give a full idea of his importance. After a journey to Greece in
+1859 he took to a brown tone, in which much is conventional. Moreover,
+his retired life--he resided from 1848 to 1852 in a Saxon village, and
+from 1859 to 1873 in Siebleben, near Gotha--contributed much to his
+being forgotten by the world. But the history of art which seeks
+operative forces must do him honour as the first healthy, realistic
+landscape painter of Germany, and--still more--as one who opened the
+eyes of a number of younger painters who have since come to fame.
+
+Gurlitt was a native of Holstein, and, like Morgenstern, received his
+first instruction in Hamburg, where at that time Bendixen, Vollmer, the
+Lehmanns, and the Genslers formed an original group of artists. After
+this, as in the case of Morgenstern also, there followed a longer
+sojourn in Norway and Copenhagen. In Düsseldorf, where he then went, a
+Jutland heath study made some sensation on his arrival. It was the first
+landscape seen in Düsseldorf which had not been composed, and Schadow is
+said to have come to Gurlitt's studio, accompanied by his pupils, to
+behold the marvel. In 1836 he migrated to Munich, where Morgenstern had
+worked before him, and here he produced a whole series of works, which
+reveals an artist exceedingly independent in sentiment, and one who even
+preserves his individuality in the presence of the Dutch. His pictures
+were grey in tone, and not yellowish, like those of the Dutch; moreover,
+they were less composed and less "intelligently" dressed out with
+accessories than the pictures of Dahl; they were glances into nature
+resulting from earnest, realistic striving. Even when he began to paint
+Italian pictures, as he did after 1843, he preserved a straightforward
+simplicity which was not understood by criticism in that age, though it
+makes the more sympathetic appeal at the present day. The strength of
+his realism lay, as was the case with all artists of those years, rather
+in drawing; but at times he reaches, even in painting, a remarkable
+clearness and delicacy, which at one time verges on the silver tone of
+Canaletto, at another on the fine grey of Constable.
+
+[Illustration: GURLITT. ON THE SABINE MOUNTAINS.]
+
+Realism begins in German art with the entry of these Northern painters
+into Düsseldorf and Munich. They were less affected by æsthetic
+prejudices, and fresher and healthier than the Germans. Gurlitt was
+specially their intellectual leader, the soul, the driving force of the
+great movement which now followed. Roused by him, _Andreas Achenbach_
+emancipated himself from the landscape of style, and, in the years from
+1835 to 1839, painted Norwegian pictures even before he knew Norway.
+Roused by Gurlitt, Achenbach set forth upon the pilgrimage thither, the
+journey which was a voyage of discovery for German landscape painting.
+
+Until Achenbach's death in 1905 he yearly exhibited works which were no
+longer in touch with the surrounding efforts of younger men, and there
+was an inclination to make little of his importance as a pioneer. What
+is wanting in his pictures is artistic zeal; what he seems to have too
+much of is routine. Andreas Achenbach is, as his portrait shows, a man
+of great acuteness. From his clear, light blue eyes he looks sharply and
+sagaciously into the world around; his short, thick-set figure, proud
+and firm of carriage, in spite of years, bears witness to his tough
+energy. His forehead, like Menzel's, is rather that of an architect than
+of a poet; and his pictures correspond to his outward appearance. Each
+one of his earlier good pictures was a battle fought and won. Realism
+incarnate, a man from whom all visionary enthusiasm lay at a world-wide
+distance, he conquered nature by masculine firmness and unexampled
+perseverance. He appears as a _maître-peintre_, a man of cool, exact
+talent with a clear and sober vision. The chief characteristic of his
+organism was his eminent capacity for appreciating the artistic methods
+of other artists, and adapting what was essential in them to his own
+manner of production. One breathes more freely before the works of the
+masters of Barbizon, and merely sees good pictures in those of
+Achenbach. The former are captivating by their intimate penetration,
+where he is striking by his bravura of execution. His landscapes have no
+chance inspiration, no geniality. Everything is harmonised for the sake
+of pictorial effect. The structure and scaffolding are of monumental
+stability. Yet fine as his observation undoubtedly is, he has never
+surprised the innermost working of nature, but merely turned her to
+account for the production of pictures. For the French artists colour is
+the pure expression of nature and of her inward humour, but for
+Achenbach it is just the means for attaining an effectiveness similar to
+that of the Dutch. Penetrating everything thoroughly with those
+sparkling blue eyes of his, he learnt to render conscientiously and
+firmly the forms of the earth and its outward aspect, but the moods of
+its life appealing to the spirit like music were never disclosed to him.
+The paintings of the Dutch attracted him to art, not the impulse to give
+token to his own peculiar temperament. He thinks more of producing
+pictures which may equal those of his forerunners in their merits than
+of rendering the impression of nature which he has himself received. His
+intelligence quickens at the study of the rules and theories set up by
+the Dutch, and he seeks for spots in nature where he may exercise these
+principles, but remains chill at the sight of sky and water, trees and
+mountains. It is not mere love of nature that has guided his brush, but
+a refined calculation of pictorial effect; and as he never went beyond
+this endeavour after rounded expression, as it was understood by the
+Dutch, though he certainly set German landscape free from a romantic
+subjection to style like Schirmer's, he never led it to immediate
+personal observation of nature. It is not the fragrance of nature that
+is exhaled from his pictures, but the odour of oil and varnish; and as
+the means he made use of to attain his effects never alter, the result
+is frequently conventional and methodic.
+
+[Illustration: ACHENBACH. SEA COAST AFTER A STORM.]
+
+But this does not alter the fact that, when the development of German
+landscape painting is in question, the name of Andreas Achenbach will be
+always heard in connection with it. He united technical qualities of the
+higher order with the capacity of impressing the public, and therefore
+he completed the work that the Danes had begun. He was the reformer who
+gave evidence that it was not alone by cliffs and baronial castles and
+murmuring oaks that sentiment was to be awakened; he hated everything
+unhealthy, mawkish, and vague, and by showing the claws of the lion of
+realism in the very heart of the romantic period he came to have the
+significance of a hero in German landscape painting. He forced demure
+Lower German landscape to surrender to him its charms; he revealed the
+fascination of Dutch canal scenes, with their quaint architecture and
+their characteristic human figures; he went to the stormy, raging North
+Sea, and opposed the giant forces of boisterous, unfettered nature to
+the tame pictures of the school of Schirmer. Achenbach's earliest North
+Sea pictures were exhibited at the very time when Heine's North Sea
+series made its appearance, and they soon ousted the wrecks of the
+French painter Gudin, which, up to that time, had dominated the picture
+market. For the first time in the nineteenth century sea-pieces were so
+painted that the water really seemed a fluent, agitated element, the
+waves of which did not look as if they had been made of lead, and the
+froth and foam of cotton wool. The things which he was specially
+felicitous in painting were Rhine-land villages with red-tiled roofs,
+Dutch canals with yellow sandbanks and running waves breaking at the
+wooden buttresses of the harbour, Norwegian scenes with stubborn cliffs
+and dark pines, wild torrents and roaring waterfalls. He did not paint
+them better than Everdingen and Ruysdael had done, but he painted them
+better than any of his contemporaries had it in their power to do.
+
+As Gurlitt is connected with the present by Achenbach, Morgenstern is
+connected with it by _Eduard Schleich_. The Munich picture rendering a
+mood took the place of Rottmann's architectural pictures. Instead of the
+fair forms of the earth's surface, artists began to study the play of
+sunlight on the plain and amid the flight of the clouds, and instead of
+the build of the landscape they turned to notice its atmospheric mood.
+Through Morgenstern Schleich was specially directed to Ruysdael and
+Goyen. In Ruysdael he was captivated by that profound seriousness and
+that sombre observation of nature which corresponded to something in his
+own humour; in Goyen by the pictorial harmony of sunlight, air, water,
+and earth. Schleich has visited France, Belgium, Hungary, and Italy, yet
+it is only by exception that he has painted anything but what the most
+immediate vicinity of Munich might offer. He chose the plainest spot in
+nature--a newly tilled field, a reedy pond, a stretch of brown moorland,
+a pair of cottages and trees; and under the guidance of Goyen he
+observed the changes of the sky with great care--the retreat of
+thunderclouds, the sun shrouded by thin veils of haze, the tremulous
+moonlight, or the hovering of the morning and evening mists. The Isar
+district and the mossy Dachauer soil were his favourite places of
+sojourn. He had a special preference for rain and moonlight and the mood
+of autumn, in rendering which he toned brown and grey hues to fine Dutch
+harmonies. His keynote was predominantly serious and elegiac, but he
+also loved scenes in which there was a restless and violent change of
+light. Over a wide plateau the sunlight spreads its radiance, whilst
+from the side an army of dense thunderclouds approaches, threatening
+storm and casting dark shadows. Over a monotonous plain, broken by
+solitary clumps of trees, the warm summer rain falls dripping down.
+Trees and shrubs throw light shadows, and the plain glistens in the
+beams of the sun. Or else there is a wide expanse of moor. Darkling the
+clouds advance, the rushes bend before the wind, and narrow strips of
+moonlight glitter amid the slender reeds. By such works Schleich became
+the head of the Munich school of landscape without having ever directed
+the study of pupils. Through him and through Achenbach capacity for the
+fresh observation of the life of nature was given to German painters.
+
+[Illustration: ACHENBACH. FISHING BOATS IN THE NORTH SEA.]
+
+Undoubtedly amongst the younger group of artists there was a great
+difference in regard to choice of subject. The modern rendering of mood
+has only had its origin in Germany; it could not finally develop itself
+there. Just as figure painting, after making so vigorous a beginning
+with Bürkel, turned to _genre_ painting in the hands of Enhuber and
+Knaus, until it returned to its old course in Leibl, landscape also went
+through the apprentice period of interesting subject, until it once more
+recognised the poetry of simpleness. The course of civilisation itself
+led it into these lines. When Morgenstern painted his first pictures the
+post-chaise still rattled from village to village, but now the whistle
+of the railway engine screams shrill as the first signal of a new age
+throughout Europe. Up to that time the possibility of travelling had
+been greatly circumscribed by the difficulties of traffic. But
+facilitated arrangements of traffic brought with them such a desire for
+travel as had never been before. In literature the revolution displayed
+itself by the rise of books of travels as a new branch of fiction.
+Hackländer sent many volumes of touring sketches into the market.
+Theodor Mügge made Norway, Sweden, and Denmark the scene of his tales.
+But America was the land where the Sesame was to be found, for Germany
+had been set upon the war-trail with Cooper's Indians, it had Charles
+Sealsfield to describe the grotesque mountain land of Mexico, the magic
+of the prairie, and the landscapes of Susquehannah and the Mississippi,
+and read Gerstäcker's, Balduin Möllhausen's, and Otto Ruppius'
+transatlantic sketches with unwearying excitement. The painters who
+found their greatest delight in seeing the world with the eyes of a
+tourist also became cosmopolitan.
+
+[Illusration: CALAME. LANDSCAPE.]
+
+In Geneva _Alexander Calame_ brought Germany to the knowledge of what is
+to be seen in Switzerland. Calame was, indeed, a dry, unpoetic
+landscapist. He began as a young tradesman by making little coloured
+views of Switzerland which foreigners were glad to bring away with them
+as mementoes of their visits, just as they now do photographs. Even his
+later pictures can only lay claim to the merit of such "mementoes of
+Switzerland." His colour is insipid and monotonous, his atmosphere
+heavy, his technique laborious. By painting he understood the
+illumination of drawings, and his drawing was that of an engraver. An
+excellent drawing-master, he possessed an unusual mastery of
+perspective. On the other hand, all warmth and inward life are wanting
+in his works. Sentiment has been replaced by correct manipulation, and
+in the deep blue mirror of his Alpine lakes, as in the luminous red of
+his Alpine summits, there is always to be seen the illuminator who has
+first drawn the contours with a neat pencil and pedantic correctness.
+His pictures are grandiose scenes of nature felt in a petty way--in
+science too it is often the smallest spirit that seeks the greatest
+heroes. "The Ruins of Pæstum," like "The Thunderstorm on the Handeck"
+and "The Range of Monte-Rosa at Sunrise," merely attain an external,
+scenical effect which is not improved by crude and unnatural contrasts
+of light. And as, in later years, when orders accumulated, he fell a
+victim to an astounding fertility, many of his works give one the
+impression of a dexterous calligrapher incessantly repeating the same
+ornamental letters. "_Un Calame, deux Calame, trois Calame--que de
+calamités_," ran the phrase every year in the Paris Salon.
+
+[Illustration: FLAMM. A SUMMER DAY.]
+
+But if France remained cool he found the more numerous admirers in
+Germany. When, in 1835, he exhibited his first pictures in Berlin, a
+view of the Lake of Geneva, his appearance was at once hailed with the
+warmest sympathy. The dexterity, the rounded form, the finish of his
+pictures, were exactly what gave pleasure, and the distinctness of his
+drawing made its impression. His lithograph studies of trees and his
+landscape copies attained the importance of canonical value, and for
+whole decades remained in use as a medium of instruction in drawing.
+Amongst German painters _Carl Ludwig_, _Otto von Kameke_, and _Count
+Stanislaus Kalkreuth_ were specially incited by Calame to turn to the
+sublimity of Alpine nature. Desolate wastes of cliffs, still, clear blue
+lakes, wild, plunging torrents, and mountain summits covered with
+glaciers and glowing to rose colour in the reflection of the setting sun
+are the elements of their pictures as of those of the Genevan master.
+
+After Achenbach there came a whole series of artists from the North who
+began to depict the mountains of their native Norway under the strong
+colour effects of the Northern sun. The majestic formations of the
+fjords, the emerald green walls of rock, the cloven valleys, the
+terrible forest wildernesses, and the mountains of Norway dazzlingly
+illuminated and reflecting themselves like glittering jewels in the
+quiet waters of sapphire blue lakes, were interesting enough to afford
+nourishment for more than one landscapist.
+
+_Knud Baade_, who worked from 1842 in Munich, after a lengthy sojourn at
+the Copenhagen Academy and with Dahl in Dresden, delighted in moonlight
+scenes, gloomy fir forests, and midnight suns. The sea rises in waves
+mountain high, and tosses mighty vessels like withered leaves or dashes
+foaming against the cliffs of the shore. Fantastic clouds chase each
+other across the sky, and the wan moonlight rocks unsteadily upon the
+waves. More seldom he paints the sea lit up afar by the moon, or the
+fjord with its meadows and silver birches; and in such plain pictures he
+makes a far more attractive effect than in those which are wild and
+ambitious, for his diffident, petty execution is, as a rule, but little
+suited to restless and, as it were, dramatic scenes of nature.
+
+Having come to Düsseldorf in 1841, _Hans Gude_ became the Calame of the
+North. Achenbach taught him to approach the phenomena of nature boldly
+and realistically, and not to be afraid of a rich and soft scale of
+colour. Schirmer, the representative of Italian still landscape, guided
+him to the acquisition of a certain large harmony and sense for style in
+the structure of his pictures, to beauty of line and effective
+disposition of great masses of light and shade. This quiet, sure-footed,
+and robust realism, which had, at the same time, a gift of style, became
+the chief characteristic of his Northern landscapes, in which, however,
+the mutable and fleeting moods of nature were all the more neglected.
+Here are Norwegian mountain landscapes with lakes, rivers, and
+waterfalls, then pictures of the shore under the most varied phases of
+light, or grand cliff scenery with a sombre sky and a sea in commotion.
+Hans Gude, living from 1864 in Carlsruhe, and from 1880 in Berlin, is
+one of those painters whom one esteems, but for whom it is not possible
+to feel great enthusiasm--one of those conscientious workers who from
+their very solidity run the risk of becoming tedious. His landscapes are
+good gallery pictures, soberly and prosaically correct, and never
+irritating, though at the same time they seldom kindle any warm feeling.
+
+Like Gude, _Niels Björnson Möller_ devoted himself to pictures of the
+shore and the sea. Undisturbed by men in his sequestered retreat,
+_August Capellen_ gave way to the melancholy charms of the Norwegian
+forest. He represented the tremulous clarity of the air above the
+cliffs, old, shattered tree-trunks and green water plants, sleepy ponds,
+and far prospects bounded by blue mountains; but he would have made an
+effect of greater originality had he thought less of Schirmer's noble
+line and compositions arranged in the grand style. _Morten-Müller_
+became the specialist of the fir forest. His native woods where the
+valleys stretch towards the high mountain region offered him motives,
+which he worked up in large and excessively scenical pictures. His
+strong point was the contrast between sunlight playing on the mountain
+tops and mysterious darkness reigning in the forest depths, and his
+pictures have many admirers on account of "their elegiac melancholy,
+their minor key of touching sadness." The Norwegian spring changing the
+earth into one carpet of moorland, broken by marshes, found its
+delineator in _Erik Bodom_. _Ludwig Munthe_ became the painter of wintry
+landscape in thaw, when the snow is riddled with holes and a dirty brown
+crust of earth peeps from the dazzling mantle. A desolate field, a pair
+of crippled trees stretching their naked branches to the dark-grey sky,
+a swarm of crows and a drenched road marked with the tracks of wheels, a
+tawny yellow patch of light gleaming through the cloud-bank and
+reflected in the wayside puddles, such are the elements out of which one
+of Munthe's landscapes is composed. Through _Eilert Adelsten Normann_
+representations of the fjords gained currency in the picture market. His
+specialty was the delineation of the steep and beetling rocky fastnesses
+of Lofodden with their various reflections of light and colour, the
+midnight sun glaring over the deep clear sea, the contrast between the
+blue-black masses of the mountains and the gleaming fields of snow.
+
+[Illustration: BAADE. MOONLIGHT NIGHT ON THE COAST.]
+
+Others, such as _Ludwig Willroider_, _Louis Douzette_, and _Hermann
+Eschke_, set themselves to observe the German heath and the German
+forest from similar points of view; the one painted great masses of
+mountain and giant trees, the other the setting sun, and the third the
+sea. _Oswald Achenbach_, _Albert Flamm_, and _Ascan Lutteroth_ set out
+once more on the pilgrimage to the South, where, in contrast to their
+predecessors, they studied no longer the classic lines of nature in
+Italy, but the splendour of varied effects of colour in the
+neighbourhood of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples. The most enterprising
+turned their backs on Europe altogether, and began to paint the primæval
+forests of South America, to which Alexander Humboldt had drawn
+attention, the azure and scarlet wonders of the tropics, and the gleam
+and sparkle of the icy world at the ultimate limits of the Polar
+regions. _Ferdinand Bellermann_ was honoured as a new Columbus when in
+1842 he returned home with his sketches, botanically accurate as they
+were, of the marvels of the virgin forest. _Eduard Hildebrandt_, who in
+1843 had already gone through the Canary Islands, Italy, Sicily, North
+Africa, Egypt, Nubia, Sahara, and the Northern sea of ice, at the
+mandate of Frederich Wilhelm IV in 1862 undertook a voyage round the
+world "to learn from personal view the phenomena that the sea, the air,
+and the solid earth bring forth beneath the most various skies." _Eugen
+Bracht_ traversed Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, and returned with a
+multitude of studies from the sombre and majestic landscape of the
+desert, and from that world of ruins and mountains in the East, and
+developed them at home into as many pictures.
+
+A modicum of praise is due to all these masters for having continually
+widened the circuit of subject-matter, and gradually disclosed the whole
+world; and if their works cannot be reckoned as the products of a
+delicate landscape painting, that is a result of the same taste which
+prescribed anecdotic and narrative subjects to the _genre_ picture of
+those years. The landscape painters conquered the earth, but, above all,
+those parts of it which were geographically remarkable. This they did in
+the interest of the public. They went with a Baedeker in their pocket
+into every quarter of the globe, brought with them all the carmine
+necessary for sunsets, and set up their easels at every place marked
+with an asterisk in the guidebook. And in these fair regions they noted
+everything that was to be seen with the said Baedeker's assistance.
+Through satisfying the interest of the tourist by a rendering, faithful
+to a hair's breadth, of topographically instructive points, they could
+best reckon on the sale of their productions.
+
+At the same time, their pictures betray that, during this generation,
+historical painting was throned on a summit whence it could dictate the
+æsthetic catechism. The historical picture represented a humanity that
+carried about with it the consciousness of its outward presence, draped
+itself in front of the glass, and made an artificial study of every
+gesture and every expression of emotion. _Genre_ painting followed, and
+rendered the true spirit of life, illustrating it histrionically, but
+without surprising it in its unconstrained working. And so trees,
+mountains, and clouds also were forced to lay aside the innocence of
+unconscious being and wrap themselves in the cloak of affectation.
+Simple reality in its quiet, delicate beauty, the homely "mood" of
+nature, touching the forms of landscape with the play of light and air,
+had nothing to tell an age overstrained by the heroics of history and
+the grimaces of _genre_ painting. A more powerful stimulus was
+necessary. So the landscapists also were forced to seek nature where she
+was histrionic and came forth in blustering magnificence; they were
+forced to send off brilliant pyrotechnics to fire out sun, moon, and
+stars in order to be heard, or, more literally, seen.
+
+Instruction or theatrical effect--the aim of historical painting--had
+also to be that of the landscape painter. And as railroads are
+cosmopolitan arrangements, he was in a position to satisfy both demands
+with promptitude. As historical painters in the chase of striking
+subjects directed their gaze to the farthest historical horizon, and the
+_genre_ painters sought to take their public captive principally through
+what was alien and strange, Oriental and Italian, the landscape
+painters, too, found their highest aim in the widest possible expansion
+of the geographical horizon. "Have these good people not been born
+anywhere in particular?" asked Courbet, when he contemplated the German
+landscapes in the Munich Exhibition of 1869. What would first strike the
+inhabitant of a Northern country in foreign lands was made the theme of
+the majority of the pictures. But as the historical painting, in
+illustrating all the great dramatic scenes from the Trojan War to the
+French Revolution, yielded at one time to a pædagogical doctrinaire
+tendency and at another to theatrical impassionedness, so landscape
+painting on its cosmopolitan excursions became partly a dry synopsis of
+famous regions, only justifiable as a memento of travel, partly a
+tricked-out piece of effect which, like everything obtrusive, soon lost
+its charm. Pictures of the first description which chiefly borrowed
+their motives from Alpine nature, so imposing in its impressiveness of
+form--grand masses of rock, glaciers, snow-fields, and abrupt
+precipices--only needed to have the fidelity of a portrait. Where that
+was given, the public, guided by the instinct for what is majestic and
+beautiful in nature, stood before them quite content, while Alpine
+travellers instructed the laity that the deep blue snow of the picture
+was no exaggeration, but a phenomenon of the mountain world which had
+been correctly reproduced. In all these cases there can be no possible
+doubt about geographical position, but there is seldom any need to make
+inquiries after the artist. The interest which they excite is purely of
+a topographical order; otherwise they bear the stamp of ordinary prose,
+of the aridity and unattractiveness which always creeps in as a
+consequence of pure objectivity. Works of the second description, which
+depict exotic regions, striking by the strangeness of various phenomena
+of light and the splendour and glow of colour, are generally irritating
+by their professional effort to display "mood." The old masters revealed
+"mood" without intending to do so, because they approached nature
+piously and with a wealth of feeling. The new masters obtain a purely
+external effect, because they strain after a "mood" in their painting
+without feeling it; and though art does not exclude the choice of exotic
+subjects, it is not healthy when a tendency of this sort becomes
+universal. Really superior art will, from principle, never seek the
+charm of what is strange and distant, since it possesses the magical
+gift of bestowing the deepest interest on what lies nearest to it. In
+addition to this, such effects are as hard to seize as the moment of
+most intense excitement in the historical picture. As an historical
+painter Delacroix could render it, and Turner as a landscape painter,
+but geniuses like Delacroix and Turner are not born every day. As these
+phenomena were painted at the time in Germany, the right "mood" was not
+excited by them, but merely a frigid curiosity. Almost all landscapes of
+these years create an effect merely through their subject; they are
+entertaining, astonishing, instructive, but the poetry of nature has not
+yet been aroused. It could only reveal itself when the preponderance of
+interest in mere subject was no longer allowed. As the figure painters
+at last disdained through narrative and "points" to win the applause of
+those who had no sensitiveness for art, so the landscape painters were
+obliged to cease from giving geographical instruction by the
+representation of nature as beloved by tourists, and to give up forcing
+a "mood" in their pictures by a subterfuge. The necessary degree of
+artistic absorption could only go hand in hand with a revolt against
+purely objective interest of motive, and with a strenuous effort at the
+representation of familiar nature in the intimate charm of its moods of
+light and atmosphere. It was necessary for refinement of taste to follow
+on the expression of subject-matter; and this impulse had to bring
+artists back to the path struck by Dahl, Morgenstern, and Gurlitt. To
+unite the simple, moving, and tender observation of those older artists
+with richer and more complex methods of expression was the task given to
+the next generation in France, where _paysage intime_, the most refined
+and delicate issue of the century, grew to maturity in the very years
+when German landscape painting roamed through the world with the joy of
+an explorer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE BEGINNINGS OF "PAYSAGE INTIME"
+
+
+How it was that the secrets of _paysage intime_ were reserved for our
+own century--and this assuredly by no mere accident--can only be
+delineated in true colours when some one writes a special history of
+landscape painting, a book which at the present time would be the most
+seasonable in the literature of art. Wereschagin once declared that in
+the province of landscape the works of the old masters seem like the
+exercises of pupils in comparison with the performances of modern art;
+and certain it is that the nineteenth century, if it is inferior to
+previous ages in everything else, may, at any rate, offer them an
+equivalent in landscape. It was only city life that could produce this
+passionately heightened love of nature. It was only in the century of
+close rooms and over-population, neurosis and holiday colonies, that
+landscape painting could attain to this fulness, purity, and sanctity.
+It was only our age of hurry and work that made possible a relation
+between nature and the human soul, which really has something of what
+the Earth Spirit vouchsafed to Faust: "to gaze into her heart as into
+the bosom of a friend."
+
+In France also, the tendency which since the eighteenth century had made
+itself felt in waves rising ever higher, had been for a short time
+abruptly interrupted by Classicism. Of the pre-revolutionary
+landscapists _Hubert Robert_ was the only one who survived into the new
+era. His details of nature and his _rococo_ savour were pardoned to him
+for the sake of his classic ruins. At first there was not one of the
+newer artists who was impelled to enter this province. A generation
+which had become ascetic, and which dreamed only of rude, manly virtue,
+expressed through the plastic and purified forms of the human body, had
+lost all sense for the charms of landscape. And when the first
+landscapes appeared once more, after several years, they were, as in
+Germany, solemn stage-tragedy scenes, abstract "lofty" regions such as
+Poussin ostensibly painted. Only in Poussin a great feeling for nature
+held together the conventional composition, in spite of all his
+straining after style; whereas nothing but frigid rhetoric and sterile
+formalism reigns in the works of these newer painters, works which were
+created at second-hand. The type of the beautiful which had been
+borrowed from the antique was worked into garden and forest with a
+laboured effort at style, as it had been worked into the human form and
+the flow of drapery. A _prix de Rome_ was founded for historical
+landscapes.
+
+_Henri Valenciennes_ was the Lenôtre of this Classicism, the admired
+teacher of several generations. The beginner in landscape painting
+modelled himself upon Valenciennes as the figure painter upon Guérin.
+His _Traité élémentaire de perspective pratique_, in which he formulated
+the principles of landscape, contains his personal views as well as the
+æsthetics of the age. Although, as he premises, he "is convinced that
+there is in reality only one kind of painting, historical painting, it
+is true that an able historical painter ought not entirely to neglect
+landscape." Rembrandt, of course, and the old Dutch painters were
+without any sort of ideal, and only worked for people without soul or
+intelligence. How far does a landscape with cows and sheep stand below
+one with the funeral of Phocion, or a rainy day by Ruysdael below a
+picture of the Deluge by Poussin! Hardly does Claude Lorrain find grace
+in the eyes of Valenciennes. "He has painted with a pretty fidelity to
+nature the morning and evening light. But just for that very reason his
+pictures make no appeal to the intelligence. He has no tree where a
+Dryad could dwell, no spring in which nymphs could splash. Gods,
+demigods, nymphs, satyrs, even heroes are too sublime for these regions;
+shepherds could dwell there at best." Claude, indeed, loved Italy, but
+knew the old writers all too little, and they are the groundwork for
+landscape painters. As David said to his pupil Gros, "Look through your
+Plutarch," Valenciennes advised his own pupils to study Theocritus,
+Virgil, and Ovid: only from these authors might be learnt what were the
+regions suitable for gods and heroes.
+
+ "Vos exemplaria græca
+ Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna."
+
+If, for example, the landscapist would paint Morning, let him portray
+the moment when Aurora rises laughing from the arms of her aged spouse,
+when the hours are yoking four fiery steeds to the car of the sun-god,
+or Ulysses kneels imploring before Nausicaa. For Noon the myth of Icarus
+or of Phaëton might be turned to account. Evening may be represented by
+painting Phoebus hastening his course as he nears the horizon in flaming
+desire to cast himself into the arms of Thetis. Having once got his
+themes from the old poets, the landscape painter must know the laws of
+perspective to execute his picture; he must be familiar with Poussin's
+rules of composition, and occasionally he ought even to study nature.
+Then he needs a weeping willow for an elegy, a rock for the death of
+Phaëton, and an oak for the dance of the nymphs. To find such motives he
+should make journeys to the famed old lands of civilisation; best of all
+on the road which art itself has traversed--first to Asia Minor, then to
+Greece, and then to Italy.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ HUBERT ROBERT. MONUMENTS AND RUINS.]
+
+These æsthetics produced _Victor Bertin_ and _Xavier Bidault_, admired
+by their contemporaries for "richness of composition and a splendid
+selection of sites." Their methodical commonplaces, their waves and
+valleys and temples, bear the same relation to nature as the talking
+machine of Raimundus Lullus does to philosophy. The scholastic landscape
+painter triumphed; a school it was which nourished itself on empty
+formulas, and so died of anæmia. Bidault, who in his youth made very
+good studies, is, with his stippled leaves and polished stems, his grey
+skies looking sometimes like lead and sometimes like water, the peculiar
+essence of a tiresome Classicism; and he is the same Bidault who, as
+president of the hanging committee, for years rejected the landscapes of
+Théodore Rousseau from the Salon. It is only the figure of _Michallon_,
+who died young, that still survives from this group. He too belongs to
+the school of Valenciennes, through his frigid, meagre, and pedantically
+correct style; but he is distinguished from the rest, for he endeavoured
+to acquire a certain truth to nature in the drawing of plants, and was
+accounted a bold innovator at the time. He did not paint "the plant in
+itself," but burs, thistles, dandelions, everything after its kind, and
+through this botanical exactness he acquired in the beginning of the
+century a fame which it is now hard to understand. In the persons of
+_Jules Cogniet_ and _Watelet_ the gates of the school were rather more
+widely opened to admit reality. Having long populated their classic
+valleys with bloodless, dancing nymphs and figurants of divine race,
+they abandoned historical for picturesque landscape, and "dared" to
+represent scenes from the environs of Paris, castles and windmills. But
+as they clung even here to the classical principles of composition, it
+is only nature brushed and combed, trimmed and coerced by rules, that is
+reflected in their painting. Even in 1822, when Delacroix exhibited his
+"Dante's Bark," the ineffable Watelet shone in his full splendour.
+Amongst his pictures there was a view of Bar-sur-Seine, which the
+catalogue appropriately designated not simply as a _vue_, but as a _vue
+ajustée_. Till his last breath Watelet was convinced that nature did not
+understand her own business, and was always in need of a painter to
+revise her errors and correct them.
+
+Beside this group who adapted French localities for classical landscapes
+there arose in the meantime another group, and they proceeded in the
+opposite direction. Their highest aim was to go on pilgrimage to sacred
+Italy, the classic land, which, with their literary training and their
+one-sided æsthetics, they invariably thought more beautiful and more
+worthy of veneration than any other. But they tried to break with
+Valenciennes' arbitrary rules of composition, and to seize the great
+lines of Italian landscape with fidelity to fact. In going back from
+Valenciennes to Claude they endeavoured to pour new life into a style of
+landscape painting which was its own justification, compromised as it
+had been by the Classic school. They made a very heretical appearance in
+the eyes of the strictly orthodox pupils of Valenciennes. They were
+called the Gothic school, which was as much as to say Romanticists, and
+the names of _Théodore Aligny_ and _Edouard Bertin_ were for years
+mentioned with that of Corot in critiques. They brought home very pretty
+drawings from Greece, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, and Bertin did
+this especially. Aligny is even not without importance as a painter. He
+aimed at width of horizon and simplicity of line more zealously than the
+traditional school had done. He is, indeed, a man of sombre, austere,
+and earnest talent, and the solemn rhythm of his pictures would have
+more effect if the colour were not so dry, and if a fixed and monotonous
+light were not uniformly shed over everything in place of a vibrating
+atmosphere.
+
+_Alexandre Desgoffe_, _Paul Flandrin_, _Benouville_, _Bellel_, and
+others drew from the same sources with similar conviction and varying
+talent. Paul Flandrin, in particular, was in his youth a good painter in
+the manner of 1690. His composition is noble and his execution certain,
+recalling Poussin. Ingres, his master, said of him, "If I were not
+Ingres I would be Flandrin." It was only later that the singular charm
+of Claude Lorrain and the Roman majesty of Poussin were transformed
+under the brush of Flandrin into arid still-life, into landscapes of
+pasteboard and wadding.
+
+But not from this quarter could the health of a school which had become
+anæmic be in any way restored. French landscape had to draw a new power
+of vitality from the French soil itself. It was saved when its eyes were
+opened to the charms of home, and this revelation was brought about by
+Romanticism. In the Salon notices, from 1822 onwards, the complaints of
+critics are repeated with increasing violence--complaints that, instead
+of fair regions, noble character, and monumental lines, nothing but
+"malarious lakes, desolate wastes, and terrible cliffs" should be
+painted, which, in the language of Classicism, means that French
+landscape painting had taken firm hold of the soil in France. The day
+when Racine was declared by the young Romanticists to be a maker of fine
+phrases put an end to the whole school of David and to Classical
+landscape at the same time. It fell into oblivion, as, sooner or later,
+every artistic movement which does not rest on the nature and
+personality of the artist inevitably must. The young revolutionaries no
+longer believed that an alliance with mythological subjects and "grand
+composition" could compensate for the lack of air and light. They were
+tired of pompous, empty, and distant scenery. They only thought of
+nature, and that amid which they lived seemed the less to forego its
+charms the more Italy came under suspicion as the home of all these
+ugly, unpleasant, and academical pictures. That was the birthday of
+French landscape. At the very time when Delacroix renewed the
+_répertoire_ of grand painting, enriching art with a world of feeling
+which was not merely edited, a parallel movement began in landscape.
+"Dante's Bark" was painted in 1822, "The Massacre of Chios" in 1824.
+Almost at the same hour a tornado swept through the branches of the old
+French oaks, and bent the rustling corn; the sky was covered with
+clouds, and the waters, which had been hard-bound for so long, sped
+purling once more along their wonted course. The little paper temples,
+built on classic heights, toppled down, and there rose lowly rustic
+cottages, from the chimneys of which the smoke mounted wavering to the
+sky. Nature awoke from her wintry sleep, and the spring of modern
+landscape painting broke with its sadness and its smiles.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ VICTOR HUGO. RUINS OF A MEDIÆVAL CASTLE ON THE RHINE.]
+
+This is where the development of French art diverges from that of
+German. After it had stood under the influence of Poussin, the German
+long continued to have a suspicious preference for scenery that was
+devoid of soul, for beautiful views, as the phrase is, and it penetrated
+much later into the spirit of familiar nature. But as early as the
+twenties this spirit had revealed itself to the French. It was only in
+the province of poetry that they went through the period of enthusiasm
+for exotic nature--and even there not to the same extent as Germany.
+Only in Chateaubriand's _Atala_ are there to be found pompously
+pictorial descriptions of strange landscapes which have been in no
+degree inwardly felt. Chiefly it was the virgin forests of North America
+that afforded material for splendid pictures, which he describes in
+grandiloquent and soaring prose. A nature which is impressive and
+splendid serves as the scenery of these dramas of human life. But with
+Lamartine the reaction was accomplished. He is the first amongst the
+poets of France who conceived landscape with an inward emotion, and
+brought it into harmony with his moods of soul. His poetry was made
+fervent and glorified by love for his home, for his own province, for
+South Burgundy. Even in the region of art a poet was the first
+initiator.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ MICHEL. A WINDMILL.]
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ DE LA BERGE. LANDSCAPE.]
+
+_Victor Hugo_, the father of Romanticism in literature, cannot be passed
+over in the history of landscape painting. Since 1891, when that
+remarkable exhibition of painter-poets was opened in Paris--an
+exhibition in which Théophile Gautier, Prosper Merimée, the two de
+Goncourts, and others were represented by more or less important
+works--the world learnt what a gifted draughtsman, what a powerful
+dramatist in landscape, was this great Romanticist. Even in the
+reminiscences of nature--spirited and suggestive of colour as they
+are--which he drew with a rapid hand in the margin of his manuscripts,
+the fiery glow of Romanticism breaks out. The things of which he speaks
+in the text appear in black shadows and ghostly light. Old castles stand
+surrounded by clouds of smoke or the blinding glare of fire, moonrise
+makes phantom silhouettes of the trees, waves lashed by the storm dash
+together as they spout over vessels; and there are gloomy seas and dark
+unearthly shores, fairy palaces, proud citadels, and cathedrals of
+fabled story. Whenever one of his finished drawings is bequeathed to the
+Louvre, Hugo is certain to receive a place in the history of art as one
+of the champions of Romanticism.
+
+The movement was so universal amongst the painters that it is difficult
+at the present time to perceive the special part that each individual
+played in the great drama. This is especially true of _Georges Michel_,
+a genius long misunderstood, a painter first made known in wider circles
+by the World Exhibition in 1889, and known to the narrower circle of art
+lovers only since his death in 1843. At that time a dealer had bought at
+an auction the works left behind by a half-famished painter--pictures
+with no signature, and only to be identified because they collectively
+treated motives from the surroundings of Paris. A large, wide horizon, a
+hill, a windmill, a cloudy sky were his subjects, and all pointed to an
+artist schooled by the Dutch. Curiosity was on the alert, inquiry was
+made, and it was found that the painter was named Georges Michel, and
+had been born in 1763; that at twelve years of age he had shirked school
+to go drawing, had run away with a laundress at fifteen, was already the
+father of five children when he was twenty, had married again at
+sixty-five, and had worked hard to his eightieth year. Old men
+remembered that they had seen early works of his in the Salon. It was
+said that Michel had produced a great deal immediately after the
+Revolution, but exceedingly tedious pictures, which differed in no
+respect from those of the other Classicists; for instance, from Demarne
+and Swebach, garnished with figures. It was only after 1814 that he
+disappeared from the Salon; not, as has been now discovered, because he
+had no more pictures to exhibit, but because he was rejected as a
+revolutionary. During his later years Michel had been most variously
+employed: for one thing, he had been a restorer of pictures.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ CABAT. LE JARDIN BEAUJON.]
+
+In this calling many Dutch pictures had passed through his hands, and
+they suggested to him the unseasonable idea of looking more closely into
+nature in the neighbourhood than he had done in his youth--nature not as
+she was in Italy, but in the environs of the city. While Valenciennes
+and his pupils made so many objections to painting what lay under their
+eyes, Georges Michel remained in the country, and was the first to light
+on the idea of placing himself in the midst of nature, and not above
+her; no longer to arrange and adapt, but to approach her by painting her
+with directness. If any one spoke of travelling to Italy, he answered:
+"The man who cannot find enough to paint during his whole life in a
+circuit of four miles is in reality no artist. Did the Dutch ever run
+from one place to another? And yet they are good painters, and not
+merely that, but the most powerful, bold, and ideal artists." Every day
+he made a study in the precincts of Paris, without any idea that he
+would count in these times among the forerunners of modern art. He
+shares the glory of having discovered Montmartre with Alphonse Karr,
+Gérard de Nerval, and Monselet. After his death such studies were found
+in the shops of all the second-hand dealers of the Northern Boulevard;
+they were invariably without a frame, as they had never seemed worth
+framing, and when they were very dear they were to be had for forty
+francs. Connoisseurs appreciated his wide horizons, stormy skies, and
+ably sketched sea-shores. For, in spite of his poverty, Michel had now
+and then deserted Montmartre and found means to visit Normandy.
+Painfully precise in the beginning, while he worked with Swebach and
+Demarne, he had gradually become large and bold, and employed all means
+in giving expression to what he felt. He was a dreamer, who brought into
+his studies a unison of lights, and, now and then, beams of sun which
+would have delighted Albert Cuyp. A genuine offspring of the old Dutch
+masters--of the grand and broad masters, not of those who worked with a
+fine brush--already he was aiming at _l'expression par l'ensemble_, and
+since the Paris Universal Exhibition he has been fittingly honoured as
+the forerunner of Théodore Rousseau. His pictures, as it seems, were
+early received in various studios, and there they had considerable
+effect in setting artists thinking. But as he ceased to date his
+pictures after 1814 it is, nevertheless, difficult to be more precise in
+determining the private influence which this Ruysdael of Montmartre
+exerted on men of the younger generation.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._ PAUL HUET.]
+
+One after the other they began to declare the Italian pilgrimage to be
+unnecessary. They buried themselves as hermits in the villages around
+the capital. The undulating strip of country, rich in wood and water,
+which borders on the heights of Saint-Cloud and Ville d'Avray, is the
+cradle of French landscape painting. In grasping nature they proceeded
+by the most various ways, whilst they drew everything scrupulously and
+exactly which an observing eye may discern, or wedded their own
+temperament with the moods of nature.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ HUET. THE INUNDATION AT ST. CLOUD.]
+
+That remarkable artist _Charles de la Berge_ seems like a forerunner of
+the English Pre-Raphaelite school. He declared the ideal of art to
+consist in painting everything according to nature, and overlooking
+nothing; in carrying drawing to the most minute point, and yet
+preserving the impression of unison and harmony in the picture--which is
+as easy to say as it is difficult to perform. His brief life was passed
+in this struggle. His pictures are miracles of patience: to see that it
+is only necessary to know the "Sunset" of 1839, in the Louvre. There is
+something touching in the way this passionate worker had branches and
+the bark of trees brought to his room, even when he lay on his deathbed,
+to study the contortions of wood and the interweaving of fibres with all
+the zeal of a naturalist. The efforts of de la Berge have something of
+the religious devotion with which Jan van Eyck or Altdorfer gazed at
+nature. But he died too young to effect any result. He copied the
+smallest particulars of objects with the utmost care, and in the
+reproduction even of the smallest aimed at a mathematical precision,
+neutralising his qualities of colour, which were otherwise of serious
+value, by such hair-splitting detail.
+
+_Camille Roqueplan_, the many-sided pupil of Gros, made his first
+appearance as a landscape painter with a sunset in 1822. He opposed the
+genuine windmills of the old Dutch masters to those everlasting
+windmills of Watelet, with their leaden water and their meagre
+landscape. In his pictures a green plain, intersected by canals,
+stretches round; a fresh and luminous grey sky arches above. That
+undaunted traveller _Camille Flers_, who had been an actor and ballet
+dancer in Brazil before his appearance as a painter, represented the
+rich pastures of Normandy with truth, but was diffident in the presence
+of nature where she is grand. His pupil, _Louis Cabat_, was hailed with
+special enthusiasm by the young generation on account of his firm
+harmonious style. His pictures showed that he had been a zealous student
+of the great Dutch artists, and that it was his pride to handle his
+brush in their manner, expressing as much as possible without injuring
+pictorial effect. He is on many sides in touch with Charles de la Berge.
+Later he even had the courage to see Italy with fresh eyes, and in a
+simple manner to record his impressions without regard for the rules and
+theories of the Classicists. But the risk was too great. He became once
+more an admirer of imposing landscape, an adherent of Poussin, and as
+such he is almost exclusively known to us of a younger generation.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._ J. M. W. TURNER.]
+
+_Paul Huet_ was altogether a Romanticist. In de la Berge there is the
+greatest objectivity possible, in Huet there is impassioned expression.
+His heart told him that the hour was come for giving passion utterance;
+he wanted to render the energy of nature, the intensity of her life,
+with the whole might of vivid colouring. In his pictures there is
+something of Byronic poetry; the conception is rich and powerful, the
+symphony of colour passionately dramatic. In every one of his landscapes
+there breathes the human soul with its unrest, its hopelessness, and its
+doubts. Huet was the child of an epoch, which at one moment exulted to
+the skies and at another sorrowed to death in the most violent contrast;
+and he has proclaimed this temper of the age with all the freedom and
+power possible, where it is only earth and sky, clouds and trees that
+are the medium of expression. Most of his works, like Romanticism in
+general, have an earnest, passionate, and sombre character; nothing of
+the ceremonial pompousness peculiar to Classical landscapes. He has a
+passion for boisterous storms and waters foaming over, clouds with the
+lightning flashing through them, and the struggle of humanity against
+the raging elements. In this effort to express as much as possible he
+often makes his pictures too theatrical in effect. In one of his
+principal works, the "View of Rouen," painted in 1833, the breadth of
+execution almost verges on emptiness and panoramic view. Huet was in the
+habit of heaping many objects together in his landscapes. He delighted
+in expressive landscapes in the sense in which, at that time, people
+delighted in expressive heads. This one-sidedness hindered his success.
+When he appeared in the twenties his pictures were thought bizarre and
+melancholy. And later, when he achieved greater simplicity, he was
+treated by the critics merely with the respect that was paid to the Old
+Guard, for now a pleiad of much brighter stars beamed in the sky.
+
+[Illustration: TURNER. A SHIPWRECK.]
+
+[Illustration: J. M. W. TURNER. THE OLD TÉMÉRAIRE.]
+
+But we must not forget that Michel and Huet showed the way. Rousseau and
+his followers left them far behind, as Columbus threw into oblivion all
+who had discovered America before him, or Gutenberg all who had
+previously printed books. The step on which these initiators had stood
+was more or less that of Andreas Achenbach and Blechen. They are good
+and able painters, but they still kept the Flemish and Dutch masters too
+much in their memory. It is easy to detect in them reminiscences of
+Ruysdael and Hobbema and the studies of gallery pictures grown dim with
+age. They still coloured objects brown, and made spring as mournful as
+winter, and morning as gloomy as evening; they had yet no sense that
+morning means the awakening of life, the youth of the sun, the
+springtide of the day. They still composed their pictures and finished
+and rounded them off for pictorial effect. The next necessary step was
+no longer to look at Ruysdael and Cuyp, but at nature--to lay more
+emphasis on sincerity of impression, and therefore the less upon
+pictorial finish and rounded expression--to paint nature, not in the
+style of galleries, but in its freshness and bloom. And the impulse to
+this last step, which brought French landscape painting to its highest
+perfection, was given by England.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ TURNER. DIDO BUILDING CARTHAGE.]
+
+The most highly gifted work produced in this province between the years
+1800 and 1830 is of English origin. At the time when landscape painting
+was in France and Germany confined in a strait-waistcoat by Classicism,
+the English went quietly forward in the path trodden by Gainsborough in
+the eighteenth century. In these years England produced an artist who
+stands apart from all others as a peculiar and inimitable phenomenon in
+the history of landscape painting, and at the same time it produced a
+school of landscape which not only fertilised France, but founded
+generally the modern conception of colour.
+
+That phenomenon is _Joseph Mallord William Turner_, the great
+pyrotechnist, one of the most individual and intellectual landscape
+painters of all time. What a singular personality! And how vexatious he
+is to all who merely care about correctness in art! Such persons divide
+the life of Turner into two halves, one in which he was reasonable and
+one in which he was a fool. They grant him a certain talent during the
+first fifteen years of his activity, but from the moment when he is
+complete master of his instrument, from the moment when the painter
+begins in glowing enthusiasm to embody his personal ideal, they would
+banish him from the kingdom of art, and lock him up in a madhouse. When
+in the forties the Munich Pinakothek was offered a picture by Turner,
+glowing with colour, people, accustomed to the contours of Cornelius,
+knew no better than to laugh at it superciliously. It is said that in
+his last days he sent a landscape to an exhibition. The committee,
+unable to discover which was the top or which the bottom, hung it
+upside-down. Later, when Turner came into the exhibition and the mistake
+was about to be rectified, he said: "No, let it alone; it really looks
+better as it is." One frequently reads that Turner suffered from a sort
+of colour-blindness, and as late as 1872 Liebreich wrote an article
+printed in _Macmillan_, which gave a medical explanation of the alleged
+morbid affection of the great landscape painter's eyes. Only thus could
+the German account for his pictures, which are impressionist, although
+they were painted about the middle of the century. The golden dreams of
+Turner were held to be eccentricities of vision, since no one was
+capable of following this painter of momentary impressions in his
+majesty of sentiment, and the impressiveness and poetry of his method of
+expression.
+
+[Illustration: _S. Low & Co._
+
+ TURNER. JUMIÈGES.]
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ TURNER. LANDSCAPE WITH THE SUN RISING IN A MIST.]
+
+[Illustration: _S. Low & Co._
+
+ TURNER. VENICE.]
+
+In reality Turner was the same from the beginning. He circled round the
+fire like a moth, and craved, like Goethe, for more light; he wanted to
+achieve the impossible and paint the sun. To attain his object nothing
+was too difficult for him. He restrained himself for a long time; placed
+himself amongst the followers of the painter of light _par excellence_;
+studied, analysed, and copied Claude Lorrain; completely adopted his
+style, and painted pictures which threw Claude into eclipse by their
+magnificence and luminous power of colour. The painting of "Dido
+building Carthage" is perhaps the most characteristic of this phase of
+his art. One feels that the masses of architecture are merely there for
+the sake of the painter; the tree in the foreground has only been
+planted in this particular way so that the background may recede into
+farther distance. The colour is splendid, though still heavy. By the
+union of the principles of classic drawing with an entirely modern
+feeling for atmosphere something chaotic and confused is frequently
+introduced into the compositions of these years. But at the hour when it
+was said to him, "You are the real Claude Lorrain," he answered, "Now I
+am going to leave school and begin to be Turner." Henceforth he no
+longer needs Claude's framework of trees to throw the light beaming into
+the corners of his pictures. At first he busied himself with the
+atmospheric phenomena of the land of mist. Then when the everlasting
+grey became too splenetic for him he repaired to the relaxing, luxuriant
+sensuousness of Southern seas, and sought the full embodiment of his
+dreams of light in the land of the sun. It is impossible in words to
+give a representation of the essence of Turner; even copies merely
+excite false conceptions. "Rockets shot up, shocks of cannon thundered,
+balls of light mounted, crackers meandered through the air and burst,
+wheels hissed, each one separately, then in pairs, then altogether, and
+even more turbulently one after the other and together." Thus has
+Goethe described a display of fireworks in _The Elective Affinities_,
+and this passage perhaps conveys most readily the impression of Turner's
+pictures. To collect into a small space the greatest possible quantity
+of light, he makes the perspective wide and deep and the sky boundless,
+and uses the sea to reflect the brilliancy. He wanted to be able to
+render the liquid, shining depths of the sky without employing the earth
+as an object of comparison, and these studies which have merely the sky
+as their object are perhaps his most astonishing works. Everywhere, to
+the border of the picture, there is light. And he has painted all the
+gradations of light, from the silvery morning twilight to the golden
+splendour of the evening red. Volcanoes hiss and explode and vomit forth
+streams of lava, which set the trembling air aglow, and blind the eyes
+with flaring colours. The glowing ball of the sun rises behind the mist,
+and transforms the whole ether into fine golden vapour; and vessels sail
+through the luminous haze. In reality one cannot venture on more than a
+swift glance into blinding masses of light, but the impression remained
+in the painter's memory. He painted what he saw, and knew how to make
+his effect convincing. And at the same time his composition became ever
+freer and easier, the work of his brush ever more fragrant and
+unfettered, the colouring and total sentiment of the picture ever more
+imaginative and like those of a fairy-tale. His world is a land of sun,
+where the reality of things vanishes, and the light shed between the eye
+and the objects of vision is the only thing that lives. At one time he
+took to painting human energy struggling with the phenomena of nature,
+as in "Storm at Sea," "Fire at Sea," and "Rain, Steam, and Speed"; at
+another he painted poetic revels of colour born altogether from the
+imagination, like the "Sun of Venice." He is the greatest creator in
+colour, the boldest poet amongst the landscape painters of all time! In
+him England's painting has put forth its greatest might, just as in
+Byron and Shelley, those two great powers, the English imagination
+unrolled its standard of war most proudly and brilliantly. There is only
+one Turner, and Ruskin is his prophet.
+
+[Illusration: _L'Art._
+
+ OLD CROME. A VIEW NEAR NORWICH.]
+
+[Illustration: _S. Low & Co._ JOHN CONSTABLE.]
+
+As a man, too, he was one of those original characters seldom met with
+nowadays. He was not the fastidious _gourmet_ that might have been
+expected from his pictures, but an awkward, prosaic, citizen-like being.
+He had a sturdy, thick-set figure, with broad shoulders and tough
+muscles, and was more like a captain in the merchant service than a
+disciple of Apollo. He was sparing to the point of miserliness, unformed
+by any kind of culture, ignorant even of the laws of orthography, silent
+and inaccessible. Like most of the great landscape painters of the
+century, he was city-bred. In a gloomy house standing back in a foggy
+little alley of Old London, in the immediate vicinity of dingy,
+monotonous lodging-houses, he was born, the son of a barber, on 23rd
+April 1775. His career was that of a model youth. At fifteen he
+exhibited in the Royal Academy; when he was eighteen, engravings were
+already being made after his drawings. At twenty he was known, and at
+twenty-seven he became a member of the Academy. His first earnings he
+gained by the neat and exact preparation of little views of English
+castles and country places--drawings which, at the time, took the place
+of photographs, and for which he received half a crown apiece and his
+supper. Thus he went over a great part of England, and upon one of his
+excursions he is said to have had a love-affair _à la_ Lucy of
+Lammermoor, and to have so taken it to heart that he resolved to remain
+a bachelor for the rest of his life. In 1808 he became Professor of
+Perspective at the Academy, and delivered himself, it is said, of the
+most confused utterances on his subjects. His father had now to give up
+the barber's business and come to live with him, and he employed him in
+sawing, planing, and nailing together boards, which were painted yellow
+and used as frames for his pictures. The same miserly economy kept him
+from ever having a comfortable studio. He lived in a miserable lodging
+where he received nobody, had his meals at a restaurant of the most
+primitive order, carried his dinner wrapped up in paper when he went on
+excursions, and was exceedingly thankful if any one added to it a glass
+of wine. His diligence was fabulous. Every morning he rose on the stroke
+of six, locked his door, and worked with the same dreadful regularity
+day after day. His end was as unpoetic as his life. After being several
+times a father without ever having had a wife, he passed his last years
+with an old housekeeper, who kept him strictly under the yoke. If he was
+away from the house for long together he pretended that he was
+travelling to Venice for the sake of his work, until at last the honest
+housekeeper learnt, from a letter which he had put in his overcoat
+pocket and forgotten, that the object of all these journeys was not
+Venice at all, but Chelsea. There she found him in an attic which he had
+taken for another mistress, and where he was living under the name of
+Booth. In this little garret, almost more miserable than the room in the
+back street where he was born, the painter of light ended his days; and,
+to connect an atom of poetry with so sad a death, Ruskin adds that the
+window looked towards the sunset, and the dying eyes of the painter
+received the last rays of the sun which he had so often celebrated in
+glowing hymns. He left countless works behind him at his death, several
+thousands of pounds, and an immortal fame. This thought of glory after
+death occupied him from his youth. Only thus is it possible to
+understand why he led the life of a poor student until his end, why he
+did things which bordered on trickery in the sale of his _Liber
+Studiorum_, and kept for himself all those works by which he could have
+made a fortune. He left them--taken altogether, three hundred and
+sixty-two oil-paintings and nineteen thousand drawings--to the nation,
+and £20,000 to the Royal Academy, and merely stipulated that the two
+best pictures should be hung in the National Gallery between two Claude
+Lorrains. Another thousand pounds was set aside for the erection of a
+monument in St. Paul's. There, in that temple of fame, he lies buried
+near Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great ancestor of English painting, and
+he remains a phenomenon without forerunners and without descendants.
+
+[Illustration: CONSTABLE. WILLY LOTT'S HOUSE.]
+
+[Illustration: CONSTABLE. CHURCH PORCH, BERGHOLT.]
+
+For it does not need to be said that Turner, with his marked
+individuality, could have no influence on the further development of
+English painting. The dramatic fervour of Romanticism was here expressed
+just as little as Classicism. It was only the poets who fled into the
+wilderness of nature, and sang the splendour and the mysteries of the
+mountains, the lightning and the storm, the might of the elements. In
+painting there is no counterpart to Scott's descriptions of the
+Highlands or Wordsworth's rhapsodies upon the English lakes, or to the
+tendency of landscape painting which was represented in Germany by
+Lessing and Blechen. Wordsworth is majestic and sublime, and English
+painting lovely and full of intimate emotion. It knows neither ancient
+Alpine castles nor the sunsets of Greece. Turner, as a solitary
+exception, represented nature stately, terrible, stormy, glorious,
+mighty, grand, and sublime; all the others, like Gainsborough, loved
+simplicity, modest grace, and virginal quietude. England has nothing
+romantic. At the very time when Lessing painted his landscapes, Ludwig
+Tieck experienced a bitter disappointment when he trod the soil where
+Shakespeare wrote the witch scenes in _Macbeth_. A sombre, melancholy,
+primæval maze was what he had expected, and there lay before him a soft,
+luxuriant, and cultivated country. What distinguishes English landscape
+is a singular luxuriance, an almost unctuous wealth of vegetation. Drive
+through the country on a bright day on the top of a coach, and look
+around you; in all directions as far as the eye can reach an endless
+green carpet is spread over gentle valleys and undulating hills;
+cereals, vegetables, clover, hops, and glorious meadows with high rich
+grasses stretch forth; here and there stand a group of mighty oaks
+flinging their shadows wide, and around are pastures hemmed in by
+hedges, where splendid cattle lie chewing the cud. The moist atmosphere
+surrounds the trees and plants like a shining vapour. There is nothing
+more charming in the world, and nothing more delicate than these tones
+of colour; one might stand for hours looking at the clouds of satin, the
+fine ærial bloom, and the soft transparent gauze which catches the
+sunbeams in its silver net, softens them, and sends them smiling and
+toying to the earth. On both sides of the carriage the fields extend,
+each more beautiful than the last, in constant succession, interwoven
+with broad patches of buttercups, daisies, and meadowsweet. A strange
+magic, a loveliness so exquisite that it is well-nigh painful, escapes
+from this inexhaustible vegetation. The drops sparkle on the leaves like
+pearls, the arched tree-tops murmur in the gentle breeze. Luxuriantly
+they thrive in these airy glades, where they are ever rejuvenated and
+bedewed by the moist air of the sea. And the sky seems to have been made
+to enliven the colours of the land. At the tiniest sunbeam the earth
+smiles with a delicious charm, and the bells of flowers unfold in rich,
+liquid colour. The English look at nature as she is in their country,
+with the tender love of the man nurtured in cities, and yet with the
+cool observation of the man of business. The merchant, enveloped the
+whole day long in the smoke of the city, breathes the more freely of an
+evening when the steam-engine brings him out into green places. With a
+sharp practical glance he judges the waving grain, and speculates on the
+chances of harvest. And this spirit of attentive, familiar observation
+of nature, which is in no sense romantic, reigns also in the works of
+the English landscape painters. They did not think of becoming
+cosmopolitan like their German comrades, and of presenting remarkable
+points, the more exotic the better, for the instruction of the public.
+Like Gainsborough, they relied upon the intimate charm of places which
+they knew and loved. And as a centre Norwich first took the place of
+Suffolk, which Gainsborough had glorified.
+
+[Illustration: CONSTABLE. DEDHAM VALE.]
+
+_John Crome_, known as Old Crome, the founder of the powerful Norwich
+school of landscape, is a healthy and forcible master. Born poor, in a
+provincial town a hundred miles from London, in 1769, and at first an
+errand boy to a doctor, whose medicines he delivered to the patients,
+and then an apprentice to a sign-painter, he lived completely cut off
+from contemporary England. Norwich was his native town and his life-long
+home. He did not know the name of Turner, nor anything of Wilson, and
+perhaps never heard the name of Gainsborough. Thus his pictures are
+neither influenced by the contemporary nor by the preceding English art.
+Whatever he became he owed to himself and to the Dutch. Early married,
+and blessed with a numerous family, he tried to gain his bread by
+drawing-lessons, given in the great country-houses in the neighbourhood,
+and in this way had the opportunity of seeing many Dutch pictures. In
+later life he came to know Paris at a time when all the treasures of the
+world were collected in the Louvre, and this enthusiasm for the Dutch
+found fresh nourishment. Even on his deathbed he spoke of Hobbema.
+"Hobbema," he said, "my dear Hobbema, how I have loved you!" Hobbema is
+his ancestor, the art of Holland his model.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ CONSTABLE. THE ROMANTIC HOUSE.]
+
+His pictures were collectively "exact" views of places which he loved,
+and neither composed landscapes nor paintings of "beautiful regions."
+Crome painted frankly everything which Norfolk, his own county, had to
+offer him--weather-beaten oaks, old woods, fishers' huts, lonely pools,
+wastes of heath. The way he painted trees is extraordinary. Each has its
+own physiognomy, and looks like a living thing, like some gloomy
+Northern personality. Oaks were his peculiar specialty, and in later
+years they only found a similarly great interpreter in Théodore
+Rousseau. At the same time his pictures of the simplest scenes have a
+remarkable largeness of conception, and a subtlety of colour recalling
+the old masters, and reached by no other painter in that age. An
+uncompromising realist, he drew his portraits of nature with almost
+pedantic pains, but preserved their relation of colour throughout. And
+as a delicate adept in colouring he finally harmonised everything in the
+manner of the Dutch to a juicy brown tone, which gives his beautiful
+wood and field pictures a discreet and refined beauty, a beauty in
+keeping with the art of galleries.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ CONSTABLE. THE CORNFIELD.]
+
+Crome took a long time before he made a way for himself. His whole life
+long he sold his work merely at moderate prices: for no picture did he
+ever receive more than fifty pounds. Even his end was uneventful. He had
+begun as a manual worker, and he died in 1821 as a humble townsman whose
+only place of recreation was the tavern, and who passed his leisure in
+the society of sailors, shopkeepers, and artisans. Yet the principles of
+his art survived him. In 1805 he had founded in Norwich, far from all
+Academies, a society of artists, who gave annual exhibitions and had a
+common studio, which each used at fixed hours. _Cotman_, whose specialty
+was ash-trees, _the younger Crome_, _Stark_, and _Vincent_, are the
+leading representatives of the vigorous school of Norwich; and by them
+the name of this town became as well known as an art-centre in Europe as
+Delft and Haarlem had been in former times.
+
+Their relation to the Dutch was similar to that of Georges Michel in
+France, or that of Achenbach in Germany. They painted what they saw,
+rounded it with a view to pictorial effect, and harmonised the whole in
+a delicate brown tone. They felt more attracted by the form of objects
+than by their colour; the latter was, in the manner of the Dutch, merely
+an epidermis delicately toned down. The next step of the English
+painters was that they became the first to get the better of this Dutch
+phase, and to found that peculiarly modern landscape painting which no
+longer sets out from the absolutely concrete reality of objects, but
+from the _milieu_, from the atmospheric effect; which values in a
+picture less what is ready-made and perfectly rounded in drawing than
+the freshly seized impression of nature.
+
+Hardly twenty years have gone by since "open-air painting" was
+introduced into Germany. At present, things are no longer painted as
+they are in themselves but as they appear in their atmospheric
+environment. Artists care no longer for landscapes which float in a
+neutral brown sauce; they represent objects flooded with light and air.
+People no longer wish for brown trees and meadows, for the eye has
+perceived that trees and meadows are green. The world is no longer
+satisfied with the indeterminate light of the studio and the
+conventional tone of the picture gallery; it requires some indication of
+the hour of the day, since it is felt that the light of morning is
+different from the light of noon. And it is the English who made these
+discoveries, which have lent to modern landscape painting its most
+delicate and fragrant charm.
+
+The very mist of England, the damp and the heaviness of the atmosphere,
+necessarily forced English landscape painters, earlier than those of
+other nations, to the observation of the play of light and air. In a
+country where the sky is without cloud, in a pure, dry, and sparkling
+air, nothing is seen except lines. Shadow is wanting, and without shadow
+light has no value. For that reason the old classical masters of Italy
+were merely draughtsmen; they knew how to prize the value of sunshine no
+more than a millionaire the value of a penny. But the English understood
+the charm even of the most scanty ray of light which forces its way like
+a wedge through a wall of clouds. The entire appearance of nature, in
+their country, where a damp mist spreads its pearly grey veil over the
+horizon even upon calm and beautiful summer days, guided them to see the
+vehicle of some mood of landscape in the subtlest elements of light and
+air. The technique of water-colour painting which, at that very time,
+received such a powerful impetus, encouraged them to give expression to
+what they saw freshly and simply even in their oil-paintings, and to do
+so without regard for the scale of colour employed by the old masters.
+
+_John Robert Cozens_, "the greatest genius who ever painted a
+landscape," had been the first to occupy himself with water-colour
+painting as understood in the modern sense. _Tom Girtin_ had
+experimented with new methods. _Henry Edridge_ and _Samuel Prout_ had
+come forward with their picturesque ruins, _Copley Fielding_ and _Samuel
+Owen_ with sea-pieces, _Luke Clennel_ and _Thomas Heaphy_ with graceful
+portrayals of country life, _Howitt_ and _Robert Hills_ with their
+animal pictures. From 1805 there existed a Society of Painters in
+Water-Colours, and this extensive pursuit of water-colour painting could
+not fail to have an influence upon oil-painting also. The technique of
+water-colour accustomed English taste to that brightness of tone which
+at first seemed so bizarre to the Germans, habituated as they were to
+the prevalence of brown. Instead of dark, brownish-green tones, the
+water-colour painters produced bright tones. Direct study of nature, and
+the completion of a picture in the presence of nature and in the open
+air, guided their attention to light and atmosphere more quickly than
+that of the oil-painters. An easier technique, giving more scope for
+improvisation, of itself suggested the idea that rounded finish with a
+view to pictorial effect was not the final aim of art, but that it was
+of the most immediate importance to catch the first freshness of
+impression, that flower so hard to pluck and so prone to wither.
+
+The first who applied these principles to oil-painting was _John
+Constable_, one of the greatest pioneers in his own province and one of
+the most powerful individualities of the century.
+
+East Bergholt, the pretty little village where Constable's cradle stood,
+is fourteen miles distant from Sudbury, the birthplace of Gainsborough.
+Here he was born on 11th June 1776, at the very time when Gainsborough
+settled in London. His father was a miller, a well-to-do man, who had
+three windmills in Bergholt. The other famous miller's son in the
+history of art is Rembrandt. At first a superior career was chosen for
+him; it was intended that he should become a clergyman. But he felt more
+at home in the mill than in the schoolroom, and became a miller like his
+fathers before him. Observation of the changes of the sky is an
+essential part of a miller's calling, and this occupation of his youth
+seems to have been not without influence on the future artist; no one
+before him had observed the sky with the same attention.
+
+[Illustration: CONSTABLE. COTTAGE IN A CORNFIELD.]
+
+A certain Dunthorne, an eccentric personage to whom the boy often came,
+gave him--always in the open air--his first instruction; and another of
+his patrons, Sir George Beaumont, as an æsthetically trained
+connoisseur, criticised what he painted. When Constable showed him a
+study he asked: "Where do you mean to place your brown tree?" For the
+first law in his æsthetics was this: a good painting must have the
+colour of a good fiddle; it must be brown. Sojourn in London was without
+influence on Constable. He was twenty-three years of age, a handsome
+young fellow with dark eyes and a fine expressive countenance, when, in
+1799, he wrote to his teacher Dunthorne: "I am this morning admitted a
+student at the Royal Academy; the figure which I drew for admittance was
+the Torso. I am now comfortably settled in Cecil Street, Strand, No.
+23." He was known to the London girls as "the handsome young miller of
+Bergholt." He undertook the most varied things, copied pictures of
+Reynolds, and painted an altar-piece, "Christ blessing Little Children,"
+which was admired by no one except his mother. In addition he studied
+Ruysdael, whose works made a great impression on him, in the National
+Gallery. In 1802 he appears for the first time in the Catalogue of the
+Royal Academy as the exhibitor of a landscape, and from this time to the
+year of his death, 1837, he was annually represented there, contributing
+altogether one hundred and four pictures. In the earliest--windmills and
+village parties--every detail is carefully executed; every branch is
+painted on the trees, and every tile on the houses; but as yet one can
+breathe no air in these pictures and see no sunshine.
+
+But he writes, in 1803, a very important letter to his old friend
+Dunthorne. "For the last two years," he says, "I have been running after
+pictures, and seeking the truth at second-hand. I have not endeavoured
+to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which I set
+out, but have rather tried to make my performance look like the work of
+other men. I am come to a determination to make no idle visits this
+summer, nor to give up my time to commonplace people. I shall return to
+Bergholt, where I shall endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of
+representing the scenes that may employ me. There is little or nothing
+in the exhibition worth looking up to. _There is room enough for a
+natural painter._" He left London accordingly, and worked, in 1804, the
+whole summer "quite alone among the oaks and solitudes of Helmingham
+Park. I have taken quiet possession of the parsonage, finding it empty.
+A woman comes from the farmhouse, where I eat, and makes my bed, and I
+am left at liberty to wander where I please during the day." And having
+now returned to the country he became himself again. "Painting," he
+writes, "is with me but another word for feeling; and I associate 'my
+careless boyhood' with all that lies upon the banks of the Stour; those
+scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful." He had passed his whole
+youth amid the lovely valleys and luxuriant meadows of Bergholt, where
+the flocks were at pasture and the beetles hummed; he had wandered about
+the soft banks of the Stour, in the green woods of Suffolk, amongst old
+country-houses and churches, farms and picturesque cottages. This
+landscape which he had loved as a boy he also painted. He was the
+painter of cultivated English landscape, the portrayer of country life,
+of canals and boats, of windmills and manor-houses. He had a liking for
+all simple nature which reveals everywhere the traces of human
+activity--for arable fields and villages, orchards and cornfields. A
+strip of meadow, a watergate with a few briars, a clump of branching,
+fibrous trees, were enough to fill him with ideas and feelings.
+Gainsborough had already painted the like; but Constable denotes an
+advance beyond Gainsborough as beyond Crome. Intimate in feeling as
+Gainsborough undoubtedly was, he had a tendency to beautify the objects
+of nature; he selected and gave them a delicacy of arrangement and a
+grace of line which in reality they did not possess. Constable was the
+first to renounce every species of adaptation and arbitrary arrangement
+in composition. His boldness in the rendering of personal impressions
+raises him above Crome. Crome gets his effect principally by his
+accuracy: he represented what he saw; Constable showed how he saw the
+thing. While the former, following Hobbema, has an air reminiscent of
+galleries and old masters, Constable saw the world with his own eyes,
+and was the first entirely independent modern landscape painter. In his
+young days he had made copies after Claude, Rubens, Reynolds, Ruysdael,
+Teniers, and Wilson, which might have been mistaken for the originals,
+but later he had learnt much from Girtin's water-colour paintings. From
+that time he felt that he was strong enough to trust his own eyes. He
+threw to the winds all that had hitherto been considered as the chief
+element of beauty, and gave up the rounding of his pictures for
+pictorial effect; cut trees right through the middle to get into his
+picture just what interested him, and no more.
+
+[Illustration: _S. Low & Co._
+
+ CONSTABLE. THE VALLEY FARM.]
+
+[Illustration: _S. Low & Co._
+
+ COX. CROSSING THE SANDS.]
+
+He set himself right in the midst of verdure; the nightingales sang, the
+leaves murmured, the meadows grew green, and the clouds gleamed. In the
+fifteenth-century art there were the graceful spring trees of Perugino;
+in the seventeenth, the bright spring days of those two Flemings Jan
+Silberecht and Lucas Uden; in the nineteenth, Constable became the first
+painter of spring. If Sir George Beaumont now asked him where he meant
+to put his brown tree, he answered: "Nowhere, because I don't paint
+brown trees any more." He saw that foliage is green in summer,
+and--painted it so; he saw that summer rain and morning dew makes the
+verdure more than usually intense, and--he painted what he saw. He
+noticed that green leaves sparkle, gleam, and glitter in the sun--and
+painted them accordingly; he saw that the light, when it falls upon
+bright-looking walls, dazzles like snow in the sunshine--and painted it
+accordingly. There was a good deal of jeering at the time about
+"Constable's snow," and yet it was not merely all succeeding English
+artists who continued to put their faith in this painting of light, but
+the masters of Barbizon too, and Manet afterwards.
+
+[Illustration: _Mansell_
+
+ BONINGTON. LA PLACE DES MOULARDS, GENEVA.]
+
+The problem of painting light and air, which the older school had left
+unsolved, was taken up by him first in its complete extent. Crome had
+shown great reserve in approaching the atmospheric elements. Constable
+was the first landscape painter who really saw effects of light and air
+and learnt to paint them. His endeavour was to embody the impression of
+a mood of light with feeling, without lingering on the reproduction of
+those details which are only perceptible to an analytical eye. Whereas
+in the old Dutch masters the chief weight is laid on the effect of the
+drawing of objects, here it rests upon light, no matter upon what it
+plays. Thus Constable freed landscape painting from the architectonic
+laws of composition. They were no longer needed when the principle was
+once affirmed that the atmospheric mood gave greater value to the
+picture than subject. He not only studied the earth and foliage in their
+various tones, according as they were determined by the atmosphere, but
+observed the sky, the air, and the forms of cloud with the
+conscientiousness of a student of natural philosophy. The comments which
+he wrote upon them are as subtle as those in Ruskin's celebrated
+treatise on the clouds. A landscape, according to him, is only beautiful
+in proportion as light and shadow make it so; in other words, he was the
+first to understand that the "mood" of a landscape, by which it appeals
+to the human spirit, depends less on its lines and on objects in
+themselves than on the light and shadow in which it is bathed, and he
+was the first painter who had the secret of painting these subtle
+gradations of atmosphere. In his pictures the wind is heard murmuring in
+the trees, the breeze is felt as it blows over the corn, the sunlight is
+seen glancing on the leaves and playing on the clear mirror of the
+waters. Thus Constable for the first time painted nature in all its
+freshness. His principle of artistic creation is entirely opposed to
+that which was followed by the Pre-Raphaelites at a later date. Whilst
+the latter tried to reconstruct a picture of nature by a faithful,
+painstaking execution of all details--a process by which the expression
+of the whole usually suffers--Constable's pictures are broadly and
+impressively painted, often of rude and brutal force, at times solemn,
+at times elegant, but always cogent, fresh, and possessing a unity of
+their own.
+
+[Illustration: _S. Low & Co._
+
+ COX. THE SHRIMPERS.]
+
+A genius in advance of its age is only first recognised in its full
+significance when following generations have come abreast with it. And
+that Constable was made to feel. In 1837 he died in poverty at
+Hampstead, in the modest "country retreat" where he spent the greatest
+part of his life. He said that his painting recalled no one, and was
+neither polished nor pretty, and asked: "How can I hope to be popular?
+I work only for the future." And that belonged to him.
+
+[Illustration: _Portfolio._
+
+ MÜLLER. THE AMPHITHEATRE AT XANTHUS.]
+
+Constable's powerful individuality has brought forth enduring fruit, and
+helped English landscape painting to attain that noble prime which it
+enjoyed during the forties and fifties.
+
+With his rich, brilliant, bold, and finely coloured painting, _David
+Cox_ stands out as perhaps the greatest of Constable's successors. Like
+Constable, he was a peasant, and observed nature with the simplicity of
+one who was country-bred. He was born in 1783, the son of a blacksmith,
+in a humble spot near Birmingham, and, after a brief sojourn in London,
+migrated with his family to Hereford, and later to Harborne, also in the
+neighbourhood of Birmingham. The strip of country which he saw from his
+house was almost exclusively his field of study. He knew that a painter
+can pass his life in the same corner of the earth, and that the scene of
+nature spread before him will never be exhausted. "Farewell, pictures,
+farewell," he is reported to have said when he took his last walk, on
+the day before his death, round the walls of Harborne. He has treated of
+the manner in which he understood his art in his _Treatise on Landscape
+Painting_, written in 1814. His ideal was to see the most cogent effect
+in nature, and leave everything out which did not harmonise with its
+character; and in Cox's pictures it is possible to trace the steps by
+which he drew nearer to this ideal the more natural he became. The magic
+of his brush was never more captivating than in the works of his last
+years, when, fallen victim to a disease of the eye, he could no longer
+see distinctly and only rendered an impression of the whole scene.
+
+Cox is a great and bold master. The townsman when he first comes into
+the country, after being imprisoned for months together in a wilderness
+of brick and mortar, does not begin at once to count the trees, leaves,
+and the stones lying on the ground. He draws a long breath and exclaims,
+"What balm!" Cox, too, has not painted details in the manner of the
+Pre-Raphaelites. He represented the soft wind sweeping over the English
+meadows, the fresh purity of the air, the storms that agitate the
+landscape of Wales. A delicate silver-grey is spread over most of his
+pictures, and his method of expression is powerful and nervous. By
+preference he has celebrated, both in oil-paintings and in boldly
+handled water-colours, the boundless depths of the sky in its thousand
+variations of light, now deep blue in broad noon and now eerily gloomy
+and disturbed. The fame of being the greatest of English water-colour
+painters is his beyond dispute, yet if he had painted in oils from his
+youth upwards he would probably have become the most important English
+landscapist. His small pictures are pure and delicate in colour, and
+fresh and breezy in atmospheric effect. It is only in large pictures
+that power is at times denied him. In his later years he began to paint
+in oils, and in this medium he is a less important artist, though a very
+great painter. _William Müller_, who died young, stood as leader at his
+side.
+
+[Illustration: _S. Low & Co._
+
+ DE WINT. NOTTINGHAM.]
+
+He was one of the most dexterous amongst the dexterous, next to Turner
+the greatest adept of English painting. Had he been simpler and quieter
+he might be called a genius of the first order. But he has sometimes a
+touch of what is theatrical; it does not always break out, but it does
+so occasionally. He has an inclination for pageantry, and nothing of
+that self-sufficiency and quiet tenderness with which Constable and Cox
+devoted themselves to home scenery. He was at pains to give a trace of
+largeness and sublimity to modest and unpretentious English landscape,
+to give to the most familiar subject a tinge of preciosity. His pictures
+are grandiose in form, and show an admirable lightness of hand, but
+light and air are wanting in them, the local colour of England and its
+atmosphere. As a foreigner--he was the son of a Danzig scholar, who had
+migrated to Bristol--Müller has not seen English landscape with
+Constable's native sentiment. He was not content with an English
+cornfield or an English village; the familiar homeliness of the country
+in its work-a-day garb excited no emotion in him.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ BONINGTON. THE WINDMILL OF SAINT-JOUIN.]
+
+Something in Müller's imagination, which caused him to love decided
+colours and sudden contrasts rather than delicate gradations, attracted
+him to Southern climes. His natural place was in the East, which had not
+at that time been made the vogue. Here, like Decamps and Marilhat, he
+found those vivid rather than delicate effects which appealed to his
+eye. He was twice in the South--the first time in Athens and Egypt in
+1838, and once again in Smyrna, Rhodes, and Lycia in 1843-44. In the
+year during which he had yet to live he collected those Oriental
+pictures which form his legacy, containing the best that he did. Certain
+of them, such as "The Amphitheatre at Xanthus," are painted with
+marvellous verve; they are not the work of a day, but of an hour. All
+these mountain castles upon abrupt cliffs, these views of the Acropolis
+and of Egypt, are real masterpieces of broad painting, their colour
+clear and their light admirable. Not one of the many Frenchmen who were
+in the South at this time has represented its sunshine and its brilliant
+atmosphere with such flattering, voluptuous tones.
+
+_Peter de Wint_, who was far more true and simple, was, like Constable
+and Cox, entirely wedded to his own birthplace. At any rate, his sojourn
+in France lasted only for a short time, and left no traces in his art.
+From youth to age he was the painter of England in its work-a-day
+garb--of the low hills of Surrey, of the plains of Lincolnshire, or of
+the dark canals of the Thames, which he specially portrayed in
+unsurpassable water-colour paintings. His ancestor in art is Philips de
+Koning, the pupil of Rembrandt, the master of Dutch plains and wide
+horizons.
+
+[Illustration: _Studio._
+
+ BONINGTON. READING ALOUD.]
+
+After Cox and de Wint came _Creswick_, more laborious, more patient,
+more studious of detail, furnished perhaps with a sharper eye for the
+green tones of nature, though with less feeling for atmosphere. It
+cannot be said that he advanced art, but merely that he added a regard
+for light and sunshine, unknown to the period before 1820, to the study
+of Hobbema and Waterloo. With those who would not have painted as they
+did but for Constable, _Peter Graham_ and _Dawson_ may be likewise
+ranked; and these artists peculiarly devoted themselves to the study of
+sky and water. Henry Dawson painted the most paltry and unpromising
+places--a reach of the Thames close to London, or a quarter in the smoky
+precincts of Dover, or Greenwich; but he painted them with a power such
+as only Constable possessed. In particular he is unequalled in his
+masterly painting of clouds. Constable had seldom done this in the same
+way. He delighted in an agitated sky, in clouds driven before the wind
+and losing their form in indeterminate contours; in nature he saw merely
+reflections of his own restless spirit, striving after colour and
+movement. Dawson painted those clouds which stand firm in the sky like
+piles of building--cloud-cathedrals, as Ruskin has called them. There
+are pictures of his consisting of almost nothing but great clouds. But
+that wide space, the earth, which our eyes regard as their own peculiar
+domain, is wanting. Colours and forms are nowhere to be seen, but only
+clouds and undulating yellowish mist in which objects vanish like pallid
+spectres. _John Linnell_ carried the traditions of this great era on to
+the new period: at first revelling in golden light, in sunsets and rosy
+clouds of dusk, and at a later time, in the manner of the
+Pre-Raphaelites, bent on the precise execution of bodily form.
+
+The young master, who died at twenty-seven, _Richard Parkes Bonington_,
+unites these English classic masters with the French. An Englishman by
+birth and origin, but trained as a painter in France, where he had gone
+when fifteen years of age, he seems from many points of view one of the
+most gracious products of the Romantic movement in France, though at the
+same time he has qualities over which only the English had command at
+that period, and not the French. He entered Gros's studio in France,
+which was then the favourite meeting-place of all the younger men of
+revolutionary tendencies, but repeated journeys to London did not allow
+him to forget Constable. In Normandy and Picardy he painted his first
+landscapes, following them up with a series of Venetian sea-pieces and
+little historical scenes. Then consumption seized him and took but a
+brief time in striking him down. On 23rd September 1828 he died in
+London, whither he had gone to consult a specialist. In consequence of
+his early death his talent never ripened, but he was a simple, natural,
+pure, and congenial artist for all that. "I knew him well and loved him
+much. His English composure, which nothing could disturb, robbed him of
+none of the qualities which make life pleasant. When I first came across
+him I was myself very young, and was making studies in the Louvre. It
+was about 1816 or 1817. He was in the act of copying a Flemish
+landscape--a tall youth who had grown rapidly. He had already an
+astonishing dexterity in water-colours, which were then an English
+novelty. Some which I saw later at a dealer's were charming, both in
+colour and composition. Other modern artists are perhaps more powerful
+and more accurate than Bonington, but no one in this modern school,
+perhaps no earlier artist, possessed the ease of execution which makes
+his works, in a certain sense, diamonds by which the eye is pleased and
+fascinated, quite independently of the subject and the particular
+representation of nature. And the same is true of the costume pictures
+which he painted later. Even here I could never grow weary of marvelling
+at his sense of effect, and his great ease of execution. Not that he was
+quickly satisfied; on the contrary, he often began over again perfectly
+finished pieces which seemed wonderful to us. But his dexterity was so
+great that in a moment he produced with his brush new effects, which
+were as charming as the first." With these words his friend and comrade,
+the great Eugène Delacroix, drew the portrait of Bonington. Bonington
+was at once the most natural and the most delicate in that Romantic
+school in which he was one of the first to make an appearance. He had a
+fine eye for the charm of nature, saw grace and beauty in her
+everywhere, and represented the spring and the sunshine in bright and
+clear tones. No Frenchman before him has so painted the play of light on
+gleaming costumes and succulent meadow grasses. Even his lithographs
+from Paris and the provinces are masterpieces of spirited, impressionist
+observation--qualities which he owed, not to Gros, but to Constable. He
+was the first to communicate the knowledge of the great English classic
+painters to the youth of France, and they of Barbizon and Ville d'Avray
+continued to spin the threads which connect Constable with the present.
+
+[Illustration: RICHARD PARKES BONINGTON.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+LANDSCAPE FROM 1830
+
+
+That same Salon of 1822 in which Delacroix exhibited his "Dante's Bark"
+brought to Frenchmen a knowledge of the powerful movement which had
+taken place on the opposite side of the Channel. English water-colour
+painting was brilliantly represented by Bonington, who sent his "View of
+Lillebonne" and his "View of Havre." Copley Fielding, Robson, and John
+Varley also contributed works; and these easy, spirited productions,
+with their skies washed in broadly and their bright, clear tones, were
+like a revelation to the young French artists of the period. The horizon
+was felt to be growing clear. In 1824, at the time when Delacroix's
+"Massacre of Chios" appeared, the sun actually rose, bringing a flood of
+light. The English had learnt the way to France, and took the Louvre by
+storm. John Constable was represented by three pictures, and Bonington,
+Copley Fielding, Harding, Samuel Prout, and Varley were also accorded a
+place. This exhibition gave the deathblow to Classical landscape
+painting. Michallon had died young in 1822; and men like Bidault and
+Watelet could do nothing against such a battalion of colourists.
+Constable alone passed sentence upon them of eternal condemnation.
+Familiar neither with Georges Michel nor with the great Dutch painters,
+the French had not remarked that a landscape has need of a sky
+expressive of the spirit of the hour and the character of the season.
+Even what was done by Michel seemed a kind of diffident calligraphy when
+set beside the fresh strand-pieces of Bonington, the creations of the
+water-colour artists, bathed as they were in light, and the bold
+pictures of the Bergholt master, with their bright green and their
+cloudy horizon. The French landscape painters, who had been so timid
+until then, recognised that their painting had been a convention,
+despite all their striving after truth to nature.
+
+Constable had been the first to free himself from every stereotyped
+rule, and he was an influence in France. The younger generation were in
+ecstasies over this intense green, the agitated clouds, this
+effervescent power inspiring everything with life. Though as yet but
+little esteemed even in England, Constable received the gold medal in
+Paris, and from that time took a fancy to Parisian exhibitions, and
+still in 1827 exhibited in the Louvre by the side of Bonington, who had
+but one year more in which to give admirable lessons by his bright
+plains and clear shining skies. At the same time Bonington's friend and
+compatriot, William Reynolds, then likewise domiciled in Paris,
+contributed some of his powerful and often delicate landscape studies,
+the tender grey notes of which are like anticipations of Corot. This
+influence of the English upon the creators of _paysage intime_ has long
+been an acknowledged fact, since Delacroix himself, in his article
+"Questions sur le Beau" in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ in 1854, has
+affirmed it frankly.
+
+The very next years announced what a ferment Constable had stirred in
+the more restless spirits. The period from 1827 to 1830 showed the
+birth-throes of French landscape painting. In 1831 it was born. In this
+year, for ever marked in the annals of French, and indeed of European
+art, there appeared together in the Salon, for the first time, all those
+young artists who are now honoured as the greatest in the century: all,
+or almost all, were children of Paris, the sons of small townsmen or of
+humble artisans; all were born in the old quarter of the city or in its
+suburbs, in the midst of a desolate wilderness of houses, and destined
+for that very reason to be great landscape painters. For it is not
+through chance that _paysage intime_ immediately passed from London, the
+city of smoke, to Paris, the second great modern capital, and reached
+Germany from thence only at a much later time.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ THÉODORE ROUSSEAU.]
+
+"Do you remember the time," asks Bürger-Thoré of Théodore Rousseau in
+the dedicatory letter to his _Salon_ of 1844,--"do you still recall the
+years when we sat on the window-ledges of our attics in the Rue de
+Taitbout, and let our feet dangle at the edge of the roof, contemplating
+the chaos of houses and chimneys, which you with a twinkle in your eye
+compared to mountains, trees, and outlines of the earth? You were not
+able to go to the Alps, into the cheerful country, and so you created
+picturesque landscapes for yourself out of these horrible skeletons of
+wall. Do you still recall the little tree in Rothschild's garden, which
+we caught sight of between two roofs? It was the one green thing that we
+could see; every fresh shoot of the little poplar wakened our interest
+in spring, and in autumn we counted the falling leaves."
+
+From this mood sprang modern landscape painting with its delicate
+reserve in subject, and its vigorously heightened love of nature. Up to
+the middle of the century nature was too commonplace and ordinary for
+the Germans; and it was therefore hard for them to establish a
+spiritual relationship with her. Landscape painting recognised its
+function in appealing to the understanding by the execution of points of
+geographical interest, or exciting a frigid curiosity by brilliant
+fireworks. But these children of the city, who with a heartfelt sympathy
+counted the budding and falling leaves of a single tree descried from
+their little attic window; these dreamers, who in their imagination
+constructed beautiful landscapes from the moss-crusted gutters of the
+roof and the chimneys and chimney smoke, were sufficiently schooled,
+when they came into the country, to feel the breath of the great mother
+of all, even where it was but faintly exhaled. Where a man's heart is
+full he does not think about geographical information, and no roll of
+tom-toms is needed to attract the attention of those whose eyes are
+opened. Their spirit was sensitive, and their imagination sufficiently
+alert to catch with ecstasy, even from the most delicate and reserved
+notes, the harmony of that heavenly concert which nature executes on all
+its earthly instruments, at every moment and in all places.
+
+[Illustration: ROUSSEAU. MORNING.]
+
+[Illustration: ROUSSEAU. LANDSCAPE, MORNING EFFECT.]
+
+Thus they had none of them any further need for extensive pilgrimage; to
+seek impulse for work they had not far to go. Croissy, Bougival,
+Saint-Cloud, and Marly were their Arcadia. Their farthest journeys were
+to the banks of the Oise, the woods of L'Isle Adam, Auvergne, Normandy,
+and Brittany. But they cared most of all to stay in the forest of
+Fontainebleau, which--by one of those curious chances that so often
+recur in history--played for a second time a highly important part in
+the development of French art. A hundred years before, it was the
+brilliant centre of the French Renaissance, the resort of those Italian
+artists who found in the palace there a second Vatican, and in Francis I
+another Leo X. In the nineteenth century, too, the Renaissance of French
+painting was achieved in Fontainebleau, only it had nothing to do with a
+school of mannered figure painters, but with a group of the most
+delicate landscape artists. From a sense of one's duty to art one
+studies in the palace the elegant goddesses of Primaticcio, the laughing
+bacchantes of Cellini, and all the golden, festal splendour of the
+Cinquecento; but the heart is not touched till one stands outside in the
+forest on the soil where Rousseau and Corot and Millet and Diaz painted.
+How much may be felt and thought when one saunters of a dreamy evening,
+lost in one's own meditations, across the heath of the _plateau de la
+Belle Croix_ and through the arching oaks of _Bas Bréau_ to Barbizon,
+the Mecca of modern art, where the secrets of _paysage intime_ were
+revealed to the Parisian landscape painters by the nymph of
+Fontainebleau! There was a time when men built their Gothic cathedrals
+soaring into the sky, after the model of the majestic palaces of the
+trees. The dim and sacred mist of incense hovered about the lofty
+pointed arches, and through painted windows the broken daylight shone,
+inspiring awe; the fair picture of a saint beckoned from above the
+altar, touched by the gleam of lamps and candles; gilded carvings
+glimmered strangely, and overwhelming strains from the fugues of Bach
+reverberated in the peal of the organ throughout the consecrated space.
+But now the Gothic cathedrals are transformed once more into palaces of
+trees. The towering oaks are the buttresses, the tracery of branches the
+choir screen, the clouds the incense, the wind sighing through the
+boughs the peal of the organ, and the sun the altar-piece. Man is once
+more a fire-worshipper, as in his childhood; the church has become the
+world, and the world has become the church.
+
+How the spirit soars at the trill of a blackbird beneath the leafy roof
+of mighty primæval oaks! One feels as though one had been transplanted
+into the Saturnian age, when men lived a joyous, unchequered life in
+holy unison with nature. For this park is still primæval, in spite of
+all the carriage roads by which it is now traversed, in spite of all the
+guides who lounge upon the granite blocks of the hollows of Opremont.
+Yellowish-green ferns varying in tint cover the soil like a carpet. The
+woods are broken by great wastes of rock. Perhaps there is no spot in
+the world where such splendid beeches and huge majestic oaks stretch
+their gnarled branches to the sky--in one place spreading forth in
+luxuriant glory, and in another scarred by lightning and bitten by the
+wintry cold. It is just such scenes of ravage that make the grandest,
+the wildest, and the most sombre pictures. The might of the great forces
+of nature, striking down the heads of oaks like thistles, is felt
+nowhere in the same degree.
+
+Barbizon itself is a small village three miles to the north of
+Fontainebleau, and, according to old tradition, founded by robbers who
+formerly dwelt in the forest. On both sides of the road connecting it
+with the charming little villages of Dammarie and Chailly there stretch
+long rows of chestnut, apple, and acacia trees. There are barely a
+hundred houses in the place. Most of them are overgrown with wild vine,
+shut in by thick hedges of hawthorn, and have a garden in front, where
+roses bloom amid cabbages and cauliflowers. At nine o'clock in the
+evening all Barbizon is asleep, but before four in the morning it awakes
+once more for work in the fields.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ ROUSSEAU. THE VILLAGE OF BECQUIGNY IN PICARDY.]
+
+Historians of after-years will occupy themselves in endeavouring to
+discover when the first immigration of Parisian painters to this spot
+took place. It is reported that one of David's pupils painted in the
+forest of Fontainebleau and lived in Barbizon. The only lodging to be
+got at that time was in a barn, which the former tailor of the place, a
+man of the name of Ganne, turned into an inn in 1823. Here, after 1830,
+Corot, Rousseau, Diaz, Brascassat, and many others alighted when they
+came to follow their studies in Barbizon from the spring to the autumn.
+Of an evening they clambered up to their miserable bedroom, and fastened
+to the head of the bed with drawing-pins the studies made in the course
+of the day. It was only later that Père Copain, an old peasant, who had
+begun life as a shepherd with three francs a month, was struck with the
+apt idea of buying in a few acres and building upon them small houses to
+let to painters. By this enterprise the man became rich, and gradually
+grew to be a capitalist, lending money to all who, in spite of their
+standing as celebrated Parisian artists, did not enjoy the blessings of
+fortune. But the general place of assembly was still the old barn
+employed in Ganne's establishment, and in the course of years its walls
+were covered with large charcoal drawings, studies, and pictures. Here,
+in a patriarchal, easy-going, homely fashion, artists gathered together
+with their wives and children of an evening. Festivities also were held
+in the place, in particular that ball when Ganne's daughter, a godchild
+of Madame Rousseau, celebrated her wedding. Rousseau and Millet were the
+decorators of the room; the entire space of the barn served as
+ball-room, the walls being adorned with ivy. Corot, always full of fun
+and high spirits, led the polonaise, which moved through a labyrinth of
+bottles placed on the floor.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ ROUSSEAU. LA HUTTE.]
+
+They painted in the forest. But they did not take the trouble to carry
+the instruments of their art home again. They kept breakfast, canvas,
+and brushes in holes in the rocks. Never before, probably, have men so
+lost themselves in nature. At every hour of the day, in the cool light
+of morning, at sunny noon, in the golden dusk, even in the twilight of
+blue moonlight nights, they were out in the field and the forest,
+learning to surprise everlasting nature at every moment of her
+mysterious life. The forest was their studio, and revealed to them all
+its secrets.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ ROUSSEAU. EVENING.]
+
+The result of this life _en plein air_ became at once the same as it had
+been with Constable. Earlier artists worked with the conception and the
+technique of Waterloo, Ruysdael, and Everdingen, and believed themselves
+incapable of doing anything without gnarled, heroic oaks. Even Michel
+was hard-bound in the gallery style of the Dutch, and for Decamps
+atmosphere was still a thing unknown or non-existent. He placed a harsh
+light, opaque as plaster, against a background as black as coal. Even
+the colours of Delacroix were merely tones of the palette; he wanted to
+create preconceived decorative harmonies, and not simply to interpret
+reality. Following the English, the masters of Fontainebleau made the
+discovery of air and light. They did not paint the world, like the other
+Romanticists, in exuberantly varying hues recalling the old masters:
+they saw it _entouré d'air_, and tempered by the tones of the
+atmosphere. And since their time the "harmony of light and air with that
+of which they are the life and illumination" has become the great
+problem of painting. Through this art grew young again, and works of art
+received the breathing life, the fresh bloom, and the delicate harmony
+which are to be found everywhere in nature itself, and which are only
+reached with much difficulty by any artificial method of tuning into
+accord. After Constable they were the first who recognised that the
+beauty of a landscape does not lie in objects themselves, but in the
+lights that are cast upon them. Of course, there is also an
+articulation of forms in nature. When Boecklin paints a grove with tall
+and solemn trees in the evening, when he forms to himself a vision of
+the mysterious haunts of his "Fire-worshippers," there is scarcely any
+need of colour. The outline alone is so majestically stern that it makes
+man feel his littleness utterly, and summons him to devotional thoughts.
+But the subtle essence by which nature appeals either joyously or
+sorrowfully to the spirit depends still more on the light or gloom in
+which she is bathed; and this mood is not marked by an inquisitive eye:
+the introspective gaze, the imagination itself, secretes it in nature.
+And here a second point is touched.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ ROUSSEAU. SUNSET.]
+
+The peculiarity of all these masters, who on their first appearance were
+often despised as realists or naturalists, consists precisely in this:
+they never represented, at least in the works of their later period in
+which they thoroughly expressed themselves,--they never represented
+actual nature in the manner of photography, but freely painted their own
+moods from memory, just as Goethe when he stood in the little house in
+the Kikelhahn near Ilmenau, instead of elaborating a prosaic description
+of the Kikelhahn, wrote the verses _Ueber allen Wipfeln ist Ruh_. In
+this poem of Goethe one does not learn how the summits looked, and there
+is no allusion to the play of light, and yet the forest, dimly
+illuminated by the rays of the setting sun, is presented clearly to the
+inward eye. Any poet before Goethe's time would have made a broad and
+epical description, and produced a picture by the addition of details;
+but here the very music of the words creates a picture of rest and
+quietude. The works of the Fontainebleau artists are Goethe-like poems
+of nature in pigments. They are as far removed from the æsthetic
+aridness of the older landscape of composition, pieced together from
+studies, as from the flat, prosaic fidelity to nature of that "entirely
+null and void, spuriously realistic painting of the so-called guardians
+of woods and waters." They were neither concerned to master nature and
+compose a picture from her according to conventional rules, nor
+pedantically to draw the portrait of any given region. They did not
+think of topographical accuracy, or of preparing a map of their country.
+A landscape was not for them a piece of scenery, but a condition of
+soul. They represent the victory of lyricism over dry though inflated
+prose. Impressed by some vision of nature, they warm to their work and
+produce pictures that could not have been anticipated. And thus they
+fathomed art to its profoundest depths. Their works were fragrant poems
+sprung from moods of spirit which had risen in them during a walk in the
+forest. Perhaps only Titian, Rubens, and Watteau had previously looked
+upon nature with the same eyes. And as in the case of these artists, so
+also in that of the Fontainebleau painters, it was necessary that a
+genuine realistic art, a long period of the most intimate study of
+nature, should have to be gone through before they reached this height.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ ROUSSEAU. THE LAKE AMONG THE ROCKS AT BARBIZON.]
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ ROUSSEAU. A POND, FOREST OF FONTAINEBLEAU.]
+
+In the presence of nature one saturates one's self with truth; and after
+returning to the studio one squeezes the sponge, as Jules Dupré
+expressed it. Only after they had satiated themselves with the knowledge
+of truth, only after nature with all her individual phenomena had been
+interwoven with their inmost being, could they, without effort, and
+without the purpose of representing determined objects, paint from
+personal sentiment, and give expression to their humour, in the mere
+gratification of impulse. Thence comes their wide difference from each
+other. Painters who work according to fixed rules resemble one another,
+and those who aim at a distinct copy of nature resemble one another no
+less. But each one of the Fontainebleau painters, according to his
+character and his mood for the time being, received different
+impressions from the same spot in nature, and at the same moment of
+time. Each found a landscape and a moment which appealed to his
+sentiment more perceptibly than any other. One delighted in spring and
+dewy morning, another in a cold, clear day, another in the threatening
+majesty of storm, another in the sparkling effects of sportive sunbeams,
+and another in evening after sundown, when colours have faded and forms
+are dim. Each one obeyed his peculiar temperament, and adapted his
+technique to the altogether personal expression of his way of seeing
+and feeling. Each one is entirely himself, each one an original mind,
+each picture a spiritual revelation, and often one of touching
+simplicity and greatness: _homo additus naturæ_. And having dedicated
+themselves, more than all their predecessors, to personality creating in
+and for itself, they have become the founders of the new creed in art.
+
+That strong and firmly rooted master _Théodore Rousseau_ was the epic
+poet, the plastic artist of the Pleïades. "_Le chêne des roches_" was
+one of his masterpieces, and he stands himself amid the art of his time
+like an oak embedded in rocks. His father was a tailor who lived in the
+Rue Neuve-Saint Eustache, Nr. 4 _au quatrième_. As a boy he is said to
+have specially devoted himself to mathematics, and to have aimed at
+becoming a student at the Polytechnic Institute. Thus the dangerous,
+doctrinaire tendency, which beset him in his last years, of making art
+more of a science than is really practicable, and of referring
+everything to some law, lay even in his boyish tastes. He grew up in the
+studio of the Classicist Lethière, and looked on whilst the latter
+painted both his large Louvre pictures, "The Death of Brutus" and "The
+Death of Virginia." He even thought himself of competing for the _Prix
+de Rome_. But the composition of his "historical landscape" was not a
+success. Then he took his paint-boxes, left Lethière's studio, and
+wandered over to Montmartre. Even his first little picture, "The
+Telegraph Tower" of 1826, announced the aim which he was tentatively
+endeavouring to reach.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._ CAMILLE COROT.]
+
+At the very time when Watelet's metallic waterfalls and zinc trees were
+being drawn up in line, when the pupils of Bertin hunted the Calydonian
+boar, or drowned Zenobia in the waves of the Araxes, Rousseau, set free
+from the ambition of winning the _Prix de Rome_, was painting humble
+plains within the precincts of Paris, with little brooks in the
+neighbourhood which had nothing that deserved the name of waves.
+
+His first excursion to Fontainebleau occurred in the year 1833, and in
+1834 he painted his first masterpiece, the "Côtés de Grandville," that
+picture, replete with deep and powerful feeling for nature, which seems
+the great triumphant title-page of all his work. A firm resolve to
+accept reality as it is, and a remarkable eye for the local character of
+landscape and for the structure and anatomy of the earth--all qualities
+revealing the Rousseau of later years--were here to be seen in their
+full impressiveness and straightforward actuality. He received for this
+work a medal of the third class. At the same time his works were
+excluded from making any further appearance in the Salon for many years
+to come. Concession might be made to a beginner; but the master seemed
+dangerous to the academicians. Two pictures, "Cows descending in the
+Upper Jura" and "The Chestnut Avenue," which he had destined for the
+Salon of 1835, were rejected by the hanging committee, and during twelve
+years his works met with a similar fate, although the leading critical
+intellects of Paris, Thoré, Gustave Planché, and Théophile Gautier,
+broke their lances in his behalf. Amongst the rejected of the present
+century, Théodore Rousseau is probably the most famous. At that period
+he was selling his pictures for five and ten louis-d'or. It was only
+after the February Revolution of 1848, when the Academic Committee had
+fallen with the _bourgeois_ king, that the doors of the Salon were
+opened to him again, and in the meanwhile his pictures had made their
+way quietly and by their unassisted merit. In the sequestered solitude
+of Barbizon he had matured into an artistic individuality of the highest
+calibre, and become a painter to whom the history of art must accord a
+place by the side of Ruysdael, Hobbema, and Constable.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ COROT. THE BRIDGE OF ST. ANGELO, ROME.]
+
+He painted everything in Barbizon--the plains and the hills, the river
+and the forest, all the seasons of the year and all the hours of the
+day. The succession of his moods is as inexhaustible as boundless nature
+herself. Skies gilded by the setting sun, phases of dewy morning, plains
+basking in light, woods in the russet-yellow foliage of autumn: these
+are the subjects of Théodore Rousseau--an endless procession of poetic
+effects, expressed at first by the mere instinct of emotion and later
+with a mathematical precision which is often a little strained, though
+always irresistibly forcible. Marvellous are his autumn landscapes with
+their ruddy foliage of beech; majestic are those pictures in which he
+expressed the profound sentiment of solitude as it passes over you in
+the inviolate tangle of the forest, inviting the spirit to commune with
+itself; but especially characteristic of Rousseau are those plains with
+huge isolated trees, over which the mere light of common day rests
+almost coldly and dispassionately.
+
+[Illustration: COROT AT WORK.]
+
+It is an artistic or psychological anomaly that in this romantic
+generation a man could be born in whom there was nothing of the
+Romanticist. Théodore Rousseau was an experimentalist, a great worker, a
+restless and seeking spirit, ever tormented and unsatisfied with itself,
+a nature wholly without sentimentality and impassionless, the very
+opposite of his predecessor Huet. Huet made nature the mirror of the
+passions, the melancholy and the tragic suffering which agitate the
+human spirit with their rage. Whilst he celebrated the irresistible
+powers and blind forces, the elemental genii which rule the skies and
+the waters, he wanted to waken an impression of terror and desolation in
+the spirit of the beholder. He piled together masses of rock, lent
+dramatic passion to the clouds, and revelled with delight in the
+sharpest contrasts. Rousseau's pervasive characteristic is absolute
+plainness and actuality. Such a simplicity of shadow had never existed
+before. Since the Renaissance artists had systematically heightened the
+intensity of shadows for the sake of effect; Rousseau relied on the true
+and simple doctrine that may be formulated in the phrase: the more light
+there is the fainter and more transparent are the shadows, not the
+darker, as Decamps and Huet painted them. Or, to speak more generally,
+in nature the intensity of shadows stands in an inverse relation to the
+intensity of the light.
+
+[Illustration: COROT. DAPHNIS AND CHLOE.]
+
+Rousseau does not force on the spectator any preconceived mood of his
+own, but leaves him before a picture with all the freedom and capacity
+for personal feeling which he would have received from the spectacle of
+nature herself. The painter does not address him directly, but lets
+nature have free play, just as a medium merely acts as the vehicle of a
+spirit. So personal in execution and so absolutely impersonal in
+conception are Rousseau's pictures. Huet translated his moods by the
+assistance of nature; Rousseau is an incomparable witness, confining
+himself strictly to the event, and giving his report of it in brief,
+virile speech, in clear-cut style. Huet puts one out of humour, because
+it is his own humour which he is determined to force. Rousseau seldom
+fails of effect, because he renders the effect which has struck him,
+faithfully and without marginal notes. Only in the convincing power of
+representation, and never in the forcing of a calculated mood, does the
+"mood" of his landscape lie. Or, to take an illustration from the
+province of portrait painting, when Lenbach paints Prince Bismarck, it
+is Lenbach's Bismarck; as an intellectual painter he has given an
+entirely subjective rendering of Bismarck, and compels the spectator so
+to see him. Holbein, when he painted Henry VIII, proceeded in the
+opposite way: for him characterisation depended on his revealing his own
+character as little as possible; he completely subordinated himself to
+his subject, surrendered himself, and religiously painted all that he
+saw, leaving it to others to carry away from the picture what they
+pleased. And Théodore Rousseau, too, was possessed by the spirit of the
+old German portrait painter. He set his whole force of purpose to the
+task of letting nature manifest herself, free from any preconceived
+interpretation. His pictures are absolutely without effective point, but
+there is so much power and deep truth, so much simplicity, boldness, and
+sincerity in his manner of seeing and painting nature, and of feeling
+her intense and forceful life, that they have become great works of art
+by this alone, like the portraits of Holbein. More impressive tones,
+loftier imagination, more moving tenderness, and more intoxicating
+harmonies are at the command of other masters, but few had truer or more
+profound articulation, and not one has been so sincere as Théodore
+Rousseau. Rousseau saw into the inmost being of nature, as Holbein into
+Henry VIII, and the impression he received, the emotion he felt, is a
+thing which he communicates broadly, boldly, and entirely. He is a
+portrait painter who knows his model through and through; moreover, he
+is a connoisseur of the old masters who knows what it is to make a
+picture. Every production of Rousseau is a deliberate and
+well-considered work, a cannon-shot, and no mere dropping fusilade of
+small arms; not a light _feuilleton_, but an earnest treatise of strong
+character. Though a powerful colourist, he works by the simplest means,
+and has at bottom the feeling of a draughtsman; which is principally the
+reason why, at the present day, when one looks at Rousseau's pictures,
+one thinks rather of Hobbema than of Billotte and Claude Monet.
+
+His absolute mastery over drawing even induced him in his last years to
+abandon painting altogether. He designated it contemptuously as
+falsehood, because it smeared over the truth, the anatomy of nature.
+
+[Illustration: COROT. VUE DE TOSCANE.]
+
+In Rousseau there was even more the genius of a sculptor than of a
+portrait painter. His spirit, positive, exact, like that of a
+mathematician, and far more equipped with artistic precision than
+pictorial qualities, delighted in everything sharply defined, plastic,
+and full of repose: moss-grown stones, oaks of the growth of centuries,
+marshes and standing water, rude granite blocks of the forest of
+Fontainebleau, and trees bedded in the rocks of the glens of Opremont.
+In a quite peculiar sense was the oak his favourite tree--the mighty,
+wide-branching, primæval oak which occupies the centre of one of his
+masterpieces, "A Pond," and spreads its great gnarled boughs to the
+cloudy sky in almost every one of his pictures. It is only Rembrandt's
+three oaks that stand in like manner, firm and broad of stem, as though
+they were living personalities of the North, in a lonely field beneath
+the hissing rain. To ensure the absolute vitality of organisms was for
+Rousseau the object of unintermittent toil.
+
+[Illustration: COROT. AT SUNSET.]
+
+Plants, trees, and rocks were not forms summarily observed and clumped
+together in an arbitrary fashion; for him they were beings gifted with a
+soul, breathing creatures, each one of which had its physiognomy, its
+individuality, its part to play, and its distinction of being in the
+great harmony of universal nature. "By the harmony of air and light with
+that of which they are the life and the illumination I will make you
+hear the trees moaning beneath the North wind and the birds calling to
+their young." To achieve that aim he thought that he could not do too
+much. As Dürer worked seven times on the same scenes of the Passion
+until he had found the simplest and most speaking expression, so
+Rousseau treated the same motives ten and twenty times. Restless are his
+efforts to discover different phases of the same subject, to approach
+his model from the most various points of view, and to do justice to it
+on every side. He begins an interrupted picture again and again, and
+adds something to it to heighten the expression, as Leonardo died with
+the consciousness that there was something yet to be done to his
+"Joconda." Sometimes a laboured effect is brought into his works by this
+method, but in other ways he has gained in this struggle with reality a
+power of exposition, a capacity of expression, a force of appeal, and
+such a remarkable insight for rightness of effect that every one of his
+good pictures could be hung without detriment in a gallery of old
+masters; the nineteenth century did not see many arise who could bear
+such a proximity in every respect. His landscapes are as full of sap as
+creation itself; they reveal a forcible condensation of nature. The only
+words which can be used to describe him are strength, health, and
+energy. "It ought to be: in the beginning was the Power."
+
+[Illustration: _S. Low & Co._
+
+ COROT. THE RUIN.]
+
+From his youth upwards Théodore Rousseau was a masculine spirit; even as
+a stripling he was a man above all juvenile follies--one might almost
+say, a philosopher without ideals. In literature Turgenief's conception
+of nature might be most readily compared with that of Rousseau. In
+Turgenief's _Diary of a Sportsman_, written in 1852, everything is so
+fresh and full of sap that one could imagine it was not so much the work
+of a human pen as a direct revelation from the forest and the steppes.
+Though men are elsewhere habituated to see their joys and sorrows
+reflected in nature, the sentiment of his own personality falls from
+Turgenief when he contemplates the eternal spectacle of the elements. He
+plunges into nature and loses the consciousness of his own being in
+hers; and he becomes a part of what he contemplates. For him the majesty
+of nature lies in her treating everything, from the worm to the human
+being, with impassiveness. Man receives neither love nor hatred at her
+hands; she neither rejoices in the good that he does nor complains of
+sin and crime, but looks beyond him with her deep, earnest eyes because
+he is an object of complete indifference to her. "The last of thy
+brothers might vanish off the face of the earth and not a needle of the
+pine branches would tremble." Nature has something icy, apathetic,
+terrible; and the fear which she can inspire through this indifference
+of hers ceases only when we begin to understand the relationship in
+which we are to our surroundings, when we begin to comprehend that man
+and animal, tree and flower, bird and fish, owe their existence to this
+one Mother. So Turgenief came to the same point as Spinoza.
+
+[Illustration: COROT. EVENING.]
+
+And Rousseau did the same. The nature of Théodore Rousseau was devoid of
+all excitable enthusiasm. Thus the world he painted became something
+austere, earnest, and inaccessible beneath his hands. He lived in it
+alone, fleeing from his fellows, and for this reason human figures are
+seldom to be found in his pictures. He loved to paint nature on cold,
+grey impassive days, when the trees cast great shadows and forms stand
+out forcibly against the sky. He is not the painter of morning and
+evening twilight. There is no awakening and no dawn, no charm in these
+landscapes and no youth. Children would not laugh here, nor lovers
+venture to caress. In these trees the birds would build no nests, nor
+their fledglings twitter. His oaks stand as if they had so stood from
+eternity.
+
+ "Die unbegrieflich hohen Werke
+ Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag."
+
+Like Turgenief, Rousseau ended in Pantheism.
+
+[Illustration: _S. Low & Co._
+
+ COROT. AN EVENING IN NORMANDY.]
+
+He familiarised himself more and more with the endless variety of plants
+and trees, of the earth and the sky at the differing hours of the day:
+he made his forms even more precise. He wished to paint the organic life
+of inanimate nature--the life which heaves unconsciously everywhere,
+sighing in the air, streaming from the bosom of the earth, and vibrating
+in the tiniest blade of grass as positively as it palpitates through the
+branches of the old oaks. These trees and herbs are not human, but they
+are characterised by their peculiar features, just as though they were
+men. The poplars grow like pyramids, and have green and silvered leaves,
+the oaks dark foliage and gnarled far-reaching boughs. The oaks stand
+fixed and immovable against the storm, whilst the slender poplars bend
+pliantly before it. This curious distinction in all the forms of nature,
+each one of which fulfils a course of existence like that of man, was a
+problem which pursued Rousseau throughout his life as a vast riddle.
+Observe his trees: they are not dead things; the sap of life mounts
+unseen through their strong trunks to the smallest branches and shoots,
+which spread from the extremity of the boughs like clawing fingers. The
+soil works and alters; every plant reveals the inner structure of the
+organism which produced it. And this striving even became a curse to him
+in his last period. Nature became for him an organism which he studied
+as an anatomist studies a corpse, an organism all the members of which
+act one upon the other according to logical laws, like the wheels of a
+machine; and for the proper operation of this machine the smallest
+plants seemed as necessary as the mightiest oaks, the gravel as
+important as the most tremendous rock.
+
+[Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._
+
+ COROT. THE DANCE OF THE NYMPHS.]
+
+Convinced that there was nothing in nature either indifferent or without
+its purpose, and that everything had a justification for its existence
+and played a part in the movement of universal life, he believed also
+that in everything, however small it might be, there was a special
+pictorial significance; and he toiled to discover this, to make it
+evident, and often forgot the while that art must make sacrifices if it
+is to move and charm. In his boundless veneration for the logical
+organism of nature he held, as a kind of categorical imperative, that it
+was right to give the same importance to the infinitely small as to the
+infinitely great. The notion was chimerical, and it wrecked him. In his
+last period the only things that will preserve their artistic reputation
+are his marvellously powerful drawings. No one ever had such a feeling
+for values, and thus he knew how to give his drawings--quite apart from
+their pithy weight of stroke--an effect of light which was forcibly
+striking. Just as admirable were the water-colours produced under the
+influence of Japanese picture-books. The pictures of petty detail which
+belong to these years have only an historical interest, and that merely
+because it is instructive to see how a great genius can deceive himself.
+One of his last works, the view of Mont Blanc, with the boundless
+horizon and the countless carefully and scrupulously delineated planes
+of ground, has neither pictorial beauty nor majesty. In the presence of
+this bizarre work one feels astonishment at the artist's endurance and
+strength of will, but disappointment at the result. He wanted to win the
+secret of its being from every undulation of the ground, from every
+blade of grass, and from every leaf; he was anxiously bent upon what he
+called _planimétrie_, upon the importance of horizontal planes, and he
+accentuated detail and accessory work beyond measure. His pantheistic
+faith in nature brought Théodore Rousseau to his fall. Those who did not
+know him spoke of his childish stippling and of the decline of his
+talent. Those who did know him saw in this stippling the issue of the
+same endeavours which poor Charles de la Berge had made before him, and
+of the principles on which the landscape of the English Pre-Raphaelites
+was being based about this time. If one looks at his works and then
+reads his life one almost comes to have for him a kind of religious
+veneration. There is something of the martyr in this insatiable
+observer, whose life was one long struggle, and to whom the study of the
+earth's construction and the anatomy of branches was almost a religion.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ COROT. A DANCE.]
+
+[Illustration: J. B. C. COROT. LANDSCAPE.]
+
+At first he had to struggle for ten years for bread and recognition. It
+seems hardly credible that his landscapes, even after 1848, when they
+had obtained entry into the Salon, were a source of irritation there for
+years, simply because they were green. The public was so accustomed to
+brown trees and brown grass, that every other colour in the landscape
+was an offence against decency, and before a green picture the
+Philistine immediately cried out, "Spinage!" "_Allez, c'était dur
+d'ouvrir la brêche_," said he, in his later years. And at last, at the
+World Exhibition of 1855, when he had made it clear to Europe who
+Théodore Rousseau was, the evening of his life was saddened by pain and
+illness. He had married a poor unfortunate creature, a wild child of the
+forest, the only feminine being that he had found time to love during
+his life of toil. After a few years of marriage she became insane, and
+whilst he tended her Rousseau himself fell a victim to an affection of
+the brain which darkened his last years. Death came to his release in
+1867. As he lay dying his mad wife danced and trilled to the screaming
+of her parrot. He rests "_dans le plain calme de la nature_" in the
+village churchyard at Chailly, near Barbizon, buried in front of his
+much-loved forest. Millet erected the headstone--a simple cross upon an
+unhewn block of sandstone, with a tablet of brass on which are inscribed
+the words:
+
+[Illustration: _Hanjstaengl._
+
+ COROT. LA ROUTE D'ARRAS.]
+
+
+THÉODORE ROUSSEAU, PEINTRE.
+
+"_Rousseau c'est un aigle. Quant à moi, je ne suis qu'une alouette qui
+pousse de petites chansons dans mes nuages gris._" With these words
+_Camille Corot_ has indicated the distinction between Rousseau and
+himself. They denote the two opposite poles of modern landscape. What
+attracted the plastic artists, Rousseau, Ruysdael, and Hobbema--the
+relief of objects, the power of contours, the solidity of forms--was not
+Corot's concern. Whilst Rousseau never spoke about colour with his
+pupils, but as _ceterum censeo_ invariably repeated, "_Enfin, la forme
+est la première chose à observer_," Corot himself admitted that drawing
+was not his strong point. When he tried to paint rocks he was but
+moderately effective, and all his efforts at drawing the human figure
+were seldom crowned with real success, although in his last years he
+returned to the task with continuous zeal. Apart from such peculiar
+exceptions as that wonderful picture "The Toilet," his figures are
+always the weakest part of his landscapes, and only have a good effect
+when in the background they reveal their delicate outlines, half lost in
+rosy haze. He was not much more felicitous with his animals, and in
+particular there often appear in his pictures great heavy cows, which
+are badly planted on their feet, and which one wishes that he had left
+out. Amongst trees he did not care to paint the oak, the favourite tree
+with all artists who have a passion for form, nor the chestnut, nor the
+elm, but preferred to summon, amid the delicate play of sunbeams, the
+aspen, the poplar, the alder, the birch with its white slender stem and
+its pale, tremulous leaves, and the willow with its light foliage. In
+Rousseau a tree is a proud, toughly knotted personality, a noble,
+self-conscious creation; in Corot it is a soft tremulous being rocking
+in the fragrant air, in which it whispers and murmurs of love and joy.
+His favourite season was not the autumn, when the turning leaves, hard
+as steel, stand out with firm lines, quiet and motionless, against the
+clear sky, but the early spring, when the farthest twigs upon the boughs
+deck themselves with little leaves of tender green, which vibrate and
+quiver with the least breath of air. He had, moreover, a perfectly
+wonderful secret of rendering the effect of the tiny blades of grass and
+the flowers which grow upon the meadows in June; he delighted to paint
+the banks of a stream with tall bushes bending to the water, and he
+loved water itself in undetermined clearness and in the shifting glance
+of light, leaving it here in shadow and touching it there with
+brightness; the sky in the depths beneath wedded to the bright border of
+the pool or the vanishing outlines of the bank, and the clouds floating
+across the sky, and here and there embracing a light shining fragment of
+the blue. He loved morning before sunrise, when the white mists hover
+over pools like a light veil of gauze, and gradually disperse as the sun
+breaks through, but he had a passion for evening which was almost
+greater: he loved the soft vapours which gather in the gloom, thickening
+until they become pale grey velvet mantles, as peace and rest descend
+upon the earth with the drawing on of night.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._ JULES DUPRÉ.]
+
+In contradistinction from Rousseau his specialty was everything soft and
+wavering, everything that has neither determined form nor sharp lines,
+and that, by not appealing too clearly to the eye, is the more conducive
+to dreamy reveries. It is not the spirit of a sculptor that lives in
+Corot, but that of a poet, or still better, the spirit of a musician,
+since music is the least plastic of the arts. It is not surprising to
+read in his biography that, like Watteau, he had almost a greater
+passion for music than for painting, and that when he painted he had
+always an old song or an opera aria upon his lips, that when he spoke of
+his pictures he had a taste for drawing comparisons from music, and that
+he had a season-ticket at the _Conservatoire_, never missed a concert,
+and played upon the violin himself. Indeed, there is something of the
+tender note of this instrument in his pictures, which make such a
+sweetly solemn appeal through their delicious silver tone. Beside
+Rousseau, the plastic artist, Père Corot is an idyllic painter of
+melting grace; beside Rousseau, the realist, he seems a dreamy musician;
+beside Rousseau, the virile spirit earnestly making experiments in art,
+he appears like a bashful schoolgirl in love. Rousseau approached nature
+in broad daylight, with screws and levers, as a cool-headed man of
+science; Corot caressed and flattered her, sung her wooing love-songs
+till she descended to meet him in the twilight hours, and whispered to
+him, her beloved, the secrets which Rousseau was unable to wring from
+her by violence.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._ THE HOUSE OF JULES DUPRÉ AT L'ISLE-ADAM.]
+
+_Corot_ was sixteen years senior to Rousseau. He still belonged to the
+eighteenth century, to the time when, under the dictatorship of David,
+Paris transformed herself into imperial Rome. David, Gérard, Guérin, and
+Prudhon, artists so different in talent, were the painters whose works
+met his first eager glances, and no particular acuteness is needed to
+recognise in the Nymphs and Cupids with which Corot in after-years,
+especially in the evening of his life, dotted his fragrant landscapes,
+the direct issue of Prudhon's charming goddesses, the reminiscences of
+his youth nourished on the antique. He, too, was a child of old Paris,
+with its narrow streets and corners. His father was a hairdresser in the
+Rue du Bac, number 37, and had made the acquaintance of a girl who lived
+at number 1 in the same street, close to the Pont Royal, and was
+shop-girl at a milliner's. He carried on his barber's shop until 1778,
+when Camille, the future painter, was two years old. Then Madame Corot
+herself undertook the millinery establishment in which she had once
+worked. There might be read on the front of the narrow little house,
+number 1 of the Rue du Bac, _Madame Corot, Marchande de Modes_. M.
+Corot, a polite and very correct little man, raised the business to
+great prosperity. The Tuileries were opposite, and under Napoleon I
+Corot became Court "modiste." As such he must have attained a certain
+celebrity, as even the theatre took his name in vain. A piece which was
+then frequently played at the Comédie Française contains the passage: "I
+have just come from Corot, but could not speak to him; he was locked up
+in his private room occupied in composing a new spring hat."
+
+[Illustration: _S. Low & Co._
+
+ DUPRÉ. THE SETTING SUN.]
+
+Camille went to the high school in Rouen, and was then destined,
+according to the wish of his father, to adopt some serious calling "by
+which money was to be made." He began his career with a yard-measure in
+a linen-draper's establishment, ran through the suburbs of Paris with a
+book of patterns under his arm selling cloth--_Couleur olive_--and in
+his absence of mind made the clumsiest mistakes. After eight years of
+opposition his father consented to his becoming a painter. "You will
+have a yearly allowance of twelve hundred francs," said old Corot, "and
+if you can live on that you may do as you please." At the Pont Royal,
+behind his father's house, he painted his first picture, amid the
+tittering of the little dressmaker's apprentices who looked on with
+curiosity from the window, but one of whom, Mademoiselle Rose, remained
+his dear friend through life. This was in 1823, and twenty years went
+by before he returned to French soil in the pictures that he painted.
+Victor Bertin became his teacher; in other words, Classicism, style, and
+coldness. He sought diligently to do as others; he drew studies,
+composed historical landscapes, and painted as he saw the academicians
+painting around him. To conclude his orthodox course of training it only
+remained for him to make the pilgrimage to Italy, where Claude Lorrain
+had once painted and Poussin had invented the historical landscape. In
+1825--when he was twenty-eight--he set out with Bertin and Aligny,
+remained long in Rome, and came to Naples. The Classicists, whose circle
+he entered with submissive veneration, welcomed him for his cheerful,
+even temper and the pretty songs which he sang in fine tenor voice.
+Early every morning he went into the Campagna, with a colour-box under
+his arm and a sentimental ditty on his lips, and there he drew the ruins
+with an architectural severity, just like Poussin. In 1827, after a
+sojourn of two years and a half in Italy, he was able to make an
+appearance in the Salon with his carefully balanced landscapes. In 1835
+and 1843 he stayed again in Italy, and only after this third pilgrimage
+were his eyes opened to the charms of French landscape.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._ THE BRIDGE AT L'ISLE-ADAM.]
+
+One can pass rapidly over this first section of Corot's work. His
+pictures of this period are not without merit, but to speak of them with
+justice they should be compared with contemporary Classical productions.
+Then one finds in them broad and sure drawing, and can recognise a
+powerful hand and notice an astonishing increase of ability. Even on his
+second sojourn in Italy he painted no longer as an ethnographical
+student, and no longer wasted his powers on detail. But it is in the
+pictures of his last twenty years that Corot first becomes the
+Theocritus of the nineteenth century. The second Corot has spoilt one's
+enjoyment for the first. But who would care to pick a quarrel with him
+on that score! Beside his later pictures how hard are those studies from
+Rome, which the dying painter left to the Louvre, and which, as his
+maiden efforts, he regarded with great tenderness all through his life.
+How little they have of the delicate, harmonious light of his later
+works! The great historical landscape with Homer in it, where light and
+shadow are placed so trenchantly beside each other, the landscape
+"Aricia," "Saint Jerome in the Desert," the picture of the young girl
+sitting reading beside a mountain stream, "The Beggar" with that team in
+mad career which Decamps could not have painted with greater
+virtuosity,--they are all good pictures by the side of those of his
+contemporaries, but in comparison with real Corots they are like the
+exercises of a pupil, in their hard, dry painting, their black, coarse
+tones, and their chalky wall of atmosphere. There is neither breeze nor
+transparency nor life in the air; the trees are motionless, and look as
+if they were heavily cased in iron.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ DUPRÉ. NEAR SOUTHAMPTON.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Jules Beer, the owner of the picture._)]
+
+Corot was approaching his fortieth year, an age at which a man's ideas
+are generally fixed, when the great revolution of French landscape
+painting was accomplished under the influence of the English and of
+Rousseau. Trained in academical traditions, he might have remained
+steadfast in his own province. To follow the young school he had
+completely to learn his art again, and alter his method of treatment
+with the choice of subjects, and this casting of his slough demanded
+another fifteen years. When he passed from Italian to French landscape,
+after his return from his third journey to Rome in 1843, his pictures
+were still hard and heavy. He had already felt the influence of
+Bonington and Constable, by the side of whose works his first exhibited
+picture had hung in 1827. But he still lacked the power of rendering
+light and air, and his painting had neither softness nor light. Even in
+the choice of subject he was still undecided, returning more than once
+to the historical landscape and working on it with unequal success. His
+masterpiece of 1843, "The Baptism of Christ," in the Church of Saint
+Nicolas du Chardonnet in Paris, is no more than a delicate imitation of
+the old masters. The "Christ upon the Mount of Olives" of 1844, in the
+Museum of Langres, is the first picture which seems like a convert's
+confession of faith. In the centre of the picture, before a low hill,
+Christ kneels upon the ground praying; His disciples are around Him, and
+to the right, vanishing in the shadows, the olive trees stretch their
+gnarled branches over the darkened way. A dark blue sky, in which a star
+is flickering, broods tremulously over the landscape. One might pass the
+Christ over unobserved; but for the title He would be hard to recognise.
+But the star shining far away, the transparent clearness of the night
+sky, the light clouds, and the mysterious shadows gliding swiftly over
+the ground,--these have no more to do with the false and already
+announce the true Corot. From this time he found the way on which he
+went forward resolute and emancipated.
+
+[Illustration: DUPRÉ. THE PUNT.]
+
+For five-and-twenty years it was permitted to him to labour in perfect
+ripeness, freedom, and artistic independence. One thinks of Corot as
+though he had been a child until he was fifty and then first entered
+upon his adolescence. Up to 1846 he took from his father the yearly
+allowance of twelve hundred francs given him as a student, and in that
+year, when he received the Cross of the Legion of Honour, M. Corot
+doubled the sum for the future, observing: "Well, Camille seems to have
+talent after all." About the same time his friends remarked that he went
+about Barbizon one day more meditatively than usual. "My dear fellow,"
+said he to one of them, "I am inconsolable. Till now I had a complete
+collection of Corots, and it has been broken to-day, for I have sold one
+for the first time." And even at seventy-four he said: "How swiftly
+one's life passes, and how much must one exert one's self to do anything
+good!" The history of art has few examples to offer of so long a spring.
+Corot had the privilege of never growing old; his life was a continual
+rejuvenescence. The works which made him Corot are the youthful works of
+an old man, the matured creations of a grey-headed artist, who--like
+Titian--remained for ever young; and for their artistic appreciation it
+is not without importance to remember this.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ DUPRÉ. SUNSET.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Jules Beer, the owner of the picture._)]
+
+Of all the Fontainebleau painters Corot was the least a realist: he was
+the least bound to the earth, and he was never bent upon any exact
+rendering of a part of nature. No doubt he worked much in the open air,
+but he worked far more in his studio; he painted many scenes as they lay
+before him, but more often those which he only saw in his own mind. He
+is reported to have said on his deathbed: "Last night I saw in a dream a
+landscape with a sky all rosy. It was charming, and still stands before
+me quite distinctly; it will be marvellous to paint." How many
+landscapes may he not have thus dreamed, and painted from the
+recollected vision!
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ DUPRÉ. THE HAY-WAIN.]
+
+For a young man this would be a very dangerous method. For Corot it was
+the only one which allowed him to remain Corot, because in this way no
+unnecessary detail disturbed the pure, poetic reverie. He had spent his
+whole life in a dallying courtship with nature, ever renewed. As a child
+he looked down from his attic window upon the wavering mists of the
+Seine; as a schoolboy in Rouen he wandered lost in his own fancies along
+the borders of the great river; when he had grown older he went every
+year with his sister to a little country-house in Ville d'Avray, which
+his father had bought for him in 1817. Here he stood at the open window,
+in the depth of the night, when every one was asleep, absorbed in
+looking at the sky and listening to the plash of waters and the rustling
+of leaves. Here he stayed quite alone. No sound disturbed his reveries,
+and unconsciously he drank in the soft, moist air and the delicate
+vapour rising from the neighbouring river. Everything was harmoniously
+reflected in his quick and eager spirit, and his eyes beheld the
+individual trait of nature floating in the universal life. He began not
+merely to see nature, but to feel her presence, like that of a beloved
+woman, to receive her very breath and to hear the beating of her heart.
+
+One knows the marvellous letter in which he describes the day of a
+landscape painter to Jules Dupré: "_On se lève de bonne heure, à trois
+heures du matin, avant le soleil; on va s'asseoir au pied d'un arbre, on
+regarde et on attend. On ne voit pas grand'chose d'abord. La nature
+ressemble à une toile blanchâtre où s'esquissent à peine les profils de
+quelques masses: tout est embaumé, tout frisonne au souffle fraîchi de
+l'aube. Bing! le soleil s'éclaircit ... le soleil n'a pas encore déchiré
+la gaze derrière laquelle se cachent la prairie, le vallon, les collines
+de l'horizon.... Les vapeurs nocturnes rampent encore commes des flocons
+argentés sur les herbes d'un vert transi. Bing!... Bing!... un premier
+rayon de soleil ... un second rayon de soleil.... Les petites fleurettes
+semblent s'éveiller joyeuses.... Elles out toutes leur goutte de rosée
+qui tremble ... les feuilles frileuses s'agitent au souffle du matin ...
+dans la feuillée, les oiseaux invisibles chantent.... Il semble que ce
+sont les fleurs qui font la prière. Les Amours à ailes de papillons
+s'ébattent sur la prairie et font onduler les hautes herbes.... On ne
+voit rien ... tout y est. Le paysage est tout entier derrière la gaze
+transparente du brouillard, qui, au reste ... monte ... monte ... aspiré
+par le soleil ... et laisse, en se levant, voir la rivière lamée
+d'argent, les prés, les arbres, les maisonettes, le lointain fuyant....
+On distingue enfin tout ce que l'on divinait d'abord._"
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ DUPRÉ. THE OLD OAK.]
+
+At the end there is an ode to evening which is perhaps to be reckoned
+amongst the most delicate pages of French lyrics: "_La nature s'assoupit
+... cependant l'air frais du soir soupire dans les feuilles ... la rosée
+emperle le velours des gazons.... Les nymphes fuient ... se cachent ...
+et désirent être vues.... Bing! une étoile du ciel qui pique une tête
+dans l'étang.... Charmante étoile, dont le frémissement de l'eau
+augmente le scintillement, tu me regardes ... tu me souris en clignant
+de l'oeil.... Bing! une seconde étoile apparaît dans l'eau; un second
+oeil s'ouvre. Soyez les bienvenues, fraîches et charmantes étoiles....
+Bing! Bing! Bing! trois, six, vingt étoiles.... Toutes les étoiles du
+ciel se sont donné rendez-vous dans cet heureux étang.... Tout
+s'assombrit encore.... L'étang seul scintille.... C'est un fourmillement
+d'étoiles.... L'illusion se produit.... Le soleil étant couché, le
+soleil intérieur de l'âme, le soleil de l'art se lève.... Bon! voilâ mon
+tableau fait_."
+
+[Illustration: DUPRÉ. THE POOL.]
+
+Any one who has never read anything about Corot except these lines may
+know him through them alone. Even that little word "Bing" comprises and
+elucidates his art by its clear, silvery resonance. The words vibrate
+like the strings of a violin that have been gently touched, and they
+want Mozart's music as an accompaniment. I do not know any one who has
+described all the feminine tenderness of nature, the dishevelled leaves
+of the birches, the heaving bosom of the air, the fresh virginity of
+morning, the weary, sensuous charm of evening, with such seductive
+tenderness and such highly strung feeling, so voluptuously and yet so
+coyly.
+
+To these impressions of Rouen, Ville d'Avray, and Barbizon were added
+finally those of Paris. For Corot was born in Paris, and, often as he
+left it, he always came back; he passed the greatest part of his life
+there, and there it was, perhaps, that in his last period he created his
+most poetic works. In these years he had no more need of actual
+landscapes; he needed only a sky and they rose before him. Every evening
+after sundown he left his studio just at the time when the dusk fell
+veiling everything. He raised his eyes to the sky, the only part of
+nature which remained visible. And how often does this twilight sky of
+Paris recur in Corot's pictures! At the end of his life he could really
+give himself over to a dream. The drawings and countless studies of his
+youth bear witness to the care, patience, and exactitude of his
+preparation. They gave him in after-years, when he was sure of his
+hand, the right to simplify, because he knew everything thoroughly. Thus
+Boecklin paints his pictures without a model, and thus Corot painted his
+landscapes. The hardest problems are solved apparently as if he were
+improvising; and for that very reason the sight of a Corot gives such
+unspeakable pleasure, such an impression of charming ease. It is only a
+hand which has used a brush for forty years that can paint thus. All
+effects are attained with the minimum expenditure of strength and
+material. The drawing lies as if behind colour that has been blown on to
+the canvas; it is as if one looked through a thin gauze into the
+distance. Whoever has studied reality so many years, with patient and
+observant eye, as Corot did, whoever has daily satiated his imagination
+with the impressions of nature, may finally venture on painting, not
+this or that scenery, but the fragrance, the very essence of things, and
+render merely his own spirit and his own visions free from all earthly
+and retarding accessories. There is a temptation to do honour to Corot's
+pictures merely as "the confessions of a beautiful soul."
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._ NARCISSE DIAZ.]
+
+But Corot was as great and strong as a Hercules. In his blue blouse,
+with his woollen cap and the inevitable short Corot pipe in his mouth--a
+pipe which has become historical--one would have taken him for a carter
+rather than a celebrated painter. At the same time he remained during
+his whole life--a girl: twenty years senior to all the great landscape
+painters of the epoch, he was at once a patriarch in their eyes and
+their younger comrade. His long white hair surrounded the innocent face
+of a ruddy country girl, and his kind and pleasant eyes were those of a
+child listening to a fairy-tale. In 1848, during the fighting on the
+barricades, he asked with childish astonishment: "What is the matter?
+Are we not satisfied with the Government?" And during the war in 1870
+this great hoary-headed child of seventy-four bought a musket, to join
+in fighting against Germany. Benevolence was the joy of his old age.
+Every friend who begged for a picture was given one, while for money he
+had the indifference of a hermit who has no wants and neither sows nor
+reaps, but is fed by his Heavenly Father. He ran breathlessly after an
+acquaintance to whom, contrary to his wont, he had refused five thousand
+francs: "Forgive me," he said; "I am a miser, but there they are." And
+when a picture-dealer brought him ten thousand francs he gave him the
+following direction: "Send them," he said, "to the widow of my friend
+Millet; only, she must believe that you have bought pictures from
+_him_." His one passion was music, his whole life "an eternal song."
+Corot was a happy man, and no one more deserved to be happy. In his
+kind-hearted vivacity and even good spirits he was a favourite with all
+who came near him and called him familiarly their Papa Corot. Everything
+in him was healthy and natural; his was a harmonious nature, living and
+working happily. This harmony is reflected in his art. And he saw the
+joy in nature which he had in himself.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ DIAZ. THE DESCENT OF THE BOHEMIANS.]
+
+Everything that was coarse or horrible in nature he avoided, and his own
+life passed without romance or any terrible catastrophes. He has no
+picture in which there is a harassed tree vexed by the storm. Corot's
+own spirit was touched neither by passions nor by the strokes of fate.
+There is air in his landscapes, but never storm; streams, but not
+torrents; waters, but not floods; plains, but not rugged mountains. All
+is soft and quiet as his own heart, whose peace the storm never
+troubled.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ DIAZ. AMONG THE FOLIAGE.]
+
+No man ever lived a more orderly, regular, and reasonable life. He was
+only spendthrift where others were concerned. No evening passed that he
+did not play a rubber of whist with his mother, who died only a little
+before him, and was loved by the old man with the devoted tenderness of
+a child. From an early age he had the confirmed habits which make the
+day long and prevent waste of time. The eight years which he passed in
+the linen-drapery establishment of M. Delalain had accustomed him to
+punctuality. Every morning he rose very early, and at three minutes to
+eight he was in his studio as punctually as he had been in earlier years
+at the counter, and went through his daily task without feverish haste
+or idleness, humming with that quietude which makes the furthest
+progress.
+
+For that reason he had also an aversion to everything passionate in
+nature, to everything irregular, sudden, or languid, to the feverish
+burst of storm as to the relaxing languor of summer heat. He loved all
+that is quiet, symmetrical, and fresh, peaceful and blithe, everything
+that is enchanting by its repose: the bright, tender sky, the woods and
+meadows tinged with green, the streamlets and the hills, the regular
+awakening of spring, the soft, quiet hours of evening twilight, the dewy
+laughing morning, the delicate mists which form slowly the over surface
+of still waters, the joy of clear, starry nights, when all voices are
+silent and every breeze is at rest; and the cheerfulness of his own
+spirit is reflected in everything.
+
+[Illustration: DIAZ. A TREE TRUNK.]
+
+One might go further, and say that Corot's goodness is mirrored in his
+pictures. Corot loved humanity and wished it well, and he shrank from no
+sacrifice in helping his friends. And even so did he love the country,
+and wished to see it animated, enlivened, and blest by human beings.
+That is the great distinction between him and Chintreuil, who is
+otherwise so like him. Chintreuil also painted nature when she quivers
+smiling beneath the gentle and vivifying glance of spring, but figures
+are wanting in his pictures. As a timid, fretful, unsociable man, he
+imagined that nature also felt happiest in solitude. The scenery in
+which Chintreuil delighted was thick, impenetrable copse, lonely haunts
+in the tangle of the thicket, from which now and then a startled hind
+stretches out its head, glancing uneasily. Corot, who could not endure
+solitude, being always the centre of a cheery social gathering, made
+nature a sociable being. Men, women, and children give animation to his
+woods and meadows. And at times he introduces peasants at work in the
+fields, but how little do they resemble the peasants of Millet! The
+rustics of the master of Gruchy are as hard and rough as they are
+actual; the burden of life has bowed their figures and lined their faces
+prematurely; they are old before their time, and weary every evening.
+Corot's labourers never grow weary: lightly touched in rather than
+painted, dreamt of rather than seen, they carry on an ethereal existence
+in the open air, free and contented; they have never suffered, just as
+Corot himself knew no sufferings. But as a rule human beings were
+altogether out of place in the happy fields conjured up by his fairy
+fantasy; and then came the moment when Prudhon lived again. The nymphs
+and bacchantes whom he had met as a youth by the tomb of Virgil visited
+him in the evening of life in the forest of Fontainebleau and in the
+meadows of Ville d'Avray.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ DIAZ. FOREST SCENE.]
+
+In his pictures he dreamed of pillars and altars near which mythical
+figures moved once more, dryads sleeping by the stream, dancing fauns,
+_junctæque nymphis gratiæ decentes_ in classical raiment. In this sense
+he was a Classicist all his life. His nymphs, however, are no mere
+accessories; they have nothing in common with the faded troop of classic
+beings whose old age in the ruins of forsaken temples was so long tended
+by the Academy. In Corot they are the natural habitants of a world of
+harmony and light, the logical complement of his visions of nature: in
+the same way Beethoven at the close of the Ninth Symphony introduced the
+human voice. No sooner has he touched in the lines of his landscapes
+than the nymphs and tritons, the radiant children of the Greek idyllic
+poets, desert the faded leaves of books to populate Corot's groves, and
+refresh themselves in the evening shadows of his forests.
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY.]
+
+For the evening dusk, the hour after sunset, is peculiarly the hour of
+Corot; his very preference for the harmonious beauty of dying light was
+the effluence of his own harmonious temperament. When he would, Corot
+was a colourist of the first order. The World Exhibition of 1889
+contained pictures of women by his hand which resembled Feuerbach in
+their strict and austere beauty of countenance, and which recalled
+Delacroix in the liquid fulness of tone and their fantastic and
+variously coloured garb. But, compared with the orgies of colour
+indulged in by Romanticism, his works are generally characterised by the
+most delicate reserve in painting. A bright silvery sheet of water and
+the ivory skin of a nymph are usually the only touches of colour that
+hover in the pearly grey mist of his pictures. As a man Corot avoided
+all dramas and strong contrasts; everything abrupt or loud was repellent
+to his nature. Thus it was that the painter, too, preferred the clear
+grey hours of evening, in which nature envelops herself as if in a
+delicate, melting veil of gauze. Here he was able to be entirely Corot,
+and to paint without contours and almost without colours, and bathe in
+the soft, dusky atmosphere. He saw lines no longer; everything was
+breath, fragrance, vibration, and mystery. "_Ce n'est plus une toile et
+ce n'est plus un peintre, c'est le bon Dieu et c'est le soir._" Elysian
+airs began to breathe, and the faint echo of the prattling streamlet
+sounded gently murmuring in the wood; the soft arms of the nymphs clung
+round him, and from the neighbouring thicket tender, melting melodies
+chimed forth like Æolian harps--
+
+ "Rege dich, du Schilfgeflüster;
+ Hauche leise, Rohrgeschwister;
+ Säuselt, leichte Weidensträuche;
+ Lispelt, Pappelzitterzweige
+ Unterbroch'nen Träumen zu."
+
+His end was as harmonious as his life and his art. "_Rien ne trouble sa
+fin, c'est le soir d'un beau jour._" His sister, with whom the old
+bachelor had lived, died in the October of 1874, and Corot could not
+endure loneliness. On 23rd February 1875--when he had just completed his
+seventy-ninth year--he was heard to say as he lay in bed drawing with
+his fingers in the air: "_Mon Dieu_, how beautiful that is; the most
+beautiful landscape I have ever seen." When his old housekeeper wanted
+to bring him his breakfast he said with a smile: "To-day Père Corot will
+breakfast above." Even his last illness robbed him of none of his
+cheerfulness, and when his friends brought him as he lay dying the medal
+struck to commemorate his jubilee as an artist of fifty years' standing,
+he said with tears of joy in his eyes: "It makes one happy to know that
+one has been so loved; I have had good parents and dear friends. I am
+thankful to God." With those words he passed away to his true home, the
+land of spirits--not the paradise of the Church, but the Elysian fields
+he had dreamt of and painted so often: "_Largior hic campos æther et
+lumine vestit purpureo._"
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ DAUBIGNY. SPRINGTIME.]
+
+When they bore him from his house in the Faubour-Poissonière and a
+passer-by asked who was being buried, a fat shopwoman standing at the
+door of her house answered: "I don't know his name, but he was a good
+man." Beethoven's Symphony in C minor was played at his funeral,
+according to his own direction, and as the coffin was being lowered a
+lark rose exulting to the sky. "The artist will be replaced with
+difficulty, the man never," said Dupré at Corot's grave. On 27th May
+1880 an unobtrusive monument to his memory was unveiled at the border of
+the lake at Ville d'Avray, in the midst of the dark forest where he had
+so often dreamed. He died in the fulness of his fame as an artist, but
+it was the forty pictures collected in the Centenary Exhibition of 1889
+which first made the world fully conscious of what modern art possessed
+in Corot: a master of immortal masterpieces, the greatest poet and the
+tenderest soul of the nineteenth century, as Fra Angelico was the
+tenderest soul of the fifteenth, and Watteau the greatest poet of the
+eighteenth.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ DAUBIGNY. A LOCK IN THE VALLY OF OPTEVOZ.]
+
+_Jules Dupré_, a melancholy spirit, who was inwardly consumed by a
+lonely existence spent in passionate work, stands as the Beethoven of
+modern painting beside Corot, its Mozart. If Théodore Rousseau was the
+epic poet of the Fontainebleau school, and Corot the idyllic poet, Dupré
+seems its tragic dramatist. Rousseau's nature is hard, rude, and
+indifferent to man. For Corot God is the great philanthropist, who
+wishes to see men happy, and lets the spring come and the warm winds
+blow only that children may have their pleasure in them. His soul is, as
+Goethe has it in _Werther_, "as blithe as those of sweet spring
+mornings." Jules Dupré has neither Rousseau's reality nor Corot's
+tenderness; his tones are neither imperturbable nor subdued. "_Quant
+derrière un tronc d'arbre ou derrière une pierre, vous ne trouvez pas un
+homme à quoi ça sert-il de faire du paysage._" In Corot there is a charm
+as of the light melodies of the _Zauberflöte_; in Dupré the ear is
+struck by the shattering notes of the _Sinfonie Eroica_. Rousseau looks
+into the heart of nature with widely dilated pupils and a critical
+glance. Corot woos her smiling, caressing, and dallying; Dupré courts
+her uttering impassioned complaint and with tears in his eyes. In him
+are heard the mighty fugues of Romanticism. The trees live, the waves
+laugh and weep, the sky sings and wails, and the sun, like a great
+conductor, determines the harmony of the concert. Even the two pictures
+with which he made an appearance in the Salon in 1835, after he had left
+the Sèvres china manufactory and become acquainted with Constable
+during a visit to England--the "Near Southampton" and "Pasture-land in
+the Limousin"--displayed him as an accomplished master. In "Near
+Southampton" everything moves and moans. Across an undulating country a
+dark tempest blusters, like a wild host, hurrying and sweeping forward
+in the gloom, tearing and scattering everything in its path, whirling
+leaves from the slender trees. Clouds big with rain hasten across the
+horizon as if on a forced march. The whole landscape seems to partake in
+the flight; the brushwood seems to bow its head like a traveller. In the
+background a few figures are recognisable: people overtaken by the storm
+at their work; horses with their manes flying in the wind; and a rider
+seeking refuge for himself and his beast. A stretch of sluggish water
+ruffles its waves as though it were frowning. Everything is alive and
+quaking in this majestic solitude, and in the mingled play of confused
+lights, hurrying clouds, fluttering branches, and trembling grass.
+
+[Illustration: _Cassell & Co._
+
+ DAUBIGNY. ON THE OISE.]
+
+[Illustration: _S. Low & Co._
+
+ DAUBIGNY. SHEPHERD AND SHEPHERDESS.]
+
+"Pasture-land in the Limousin" had the same overpowering energy; it was
+an admirable picture in 1835, and it is admirable still. The fine old
+trees stand like huge pillars; the grass, drenched with rain, is of an
+intense green; nature seems to shudder as if in a fever. And through his
+whole life Dupré was possessed by the lyrical fever of Romanticism. As
+the last champion of Romanticism he bore the banner of the proud
+generation of 1830 through well-nigh two generations, and until his
+death in 1889 stood on the ground where Paul Huet had first placed
+French landscape; but Huet attained his pictorial effects by combining
+and by calculation, while Dupré is always a great, true, and convincing
+poet. Every evening he was seen in L'Isle Adam, where he settled in
+1849, wandering alone across the fields, even in drenching rain. One of
+his pupils declares that once, when they stood at night on the bridge of
+the Oise during a storm, Dupré broke into a paroxysm of tears at the
+magnificent spectacle. He was a fanatic rejoicing in storms, one who
+watched the tragedies of the heaven with quivering emotion, a passionate
+spirit consumed by his inward force, and, like his literary counterpart
+Victor Hugo, he sought beauty of landscape only where it was wild and
+magnificent. He is the painter of nature vexed and harassed, and of the
+majestic silence that follows the storm. The theme of his pictures is at
+one time the whirling torture of the yellow leaves driven before the
+wind in eddying confusion; tormented and quivering they cleave to the
+furrows in the mad chase, fall into dykes, and cling against the trunks
+of trees, to find refuge from their persecutor. At another time he
+paints how the night wind whistles round an old church and whirls the
+screaming weather-cock round and round, how it moans and rattles with
+invisible hand against the doors, forces its way through the windows,
+and, once shut in its stony prison, seeks a way out again, howling and
+wailing. He paints sea-pieces in which the sea rages and mutters like
+some hoarse old monster; the colour of the water is dirty and pallid;
+the howling multitude of waves storms on like an innumerable army before
+which every human power gives way. Stones are torn loose and hurled
+crashing upon the shore. The clouds are dull and ghostly, here black as
+smoke, there of a shining whiteness, and swollen as though they must
+burst. He celebrates the commotion of the sky, nature in her angry
+majesty, and the most brilliant phenomena of atmospheric life.
+Rousseau's highest aim was to avoid painting for effect, and Corot only
+cared for grace of tone; a picture of his consists "of a little grey and
+a certain _je ne sais quoi_." Jules Dupré is peculiarly the colour-poet
+of the group, and sounds the most resonant notes in the romantic
+concert. His light does not beam in gently vibrating silver tones, but
+is concentrated in glaring red suns. "_Ah, la lumière, la lumière!_"
+Beside the flaming hues of evening red he paints the darkest shadows. He
+revels in contrasts. His favourite key of colour is that of a ghostly
+sunset, against which a gnarled oak or the dark sail of a tiny vessel
+rises like a phantom.
+
+Trembling and yet with ardent desire he looks at the tumult of waters,
+and hears the roll and resonance of the moon-silvered tide. He delights
+in night, rain, and storm. Corot's gentle rivulets become a rolling and
+whirling flood in his pictures, a headlong stream carrying all before
+it. The wind no longer sighs, but blusters across the valley, spreading
+ruin in its path. The clouds which in Corot are silvery and gentle, like
+white lambs, are in Dupré black and threatening, like demons of hell. In
+Corot the soft morning breeze faintly agitates the tender clouds in the
+sky; in Dupré a damp, cold wind of evening blows a spectral grey mist
+into the valley, and the hurricane tears apart the thunderclouds.
+
+ "Wenn ich fern auf nackter Haide wallte,
+ Wo aus dämmernder Geklüfte Schooss
+ Der Titanensang der Ströme schallte
+ Und die Nacht der Wolken mich umschloss,
+ Wenn der Sturm mit seinen Wetterwogen
+ Mir vorüber durch die Berge fuhr
+ Und des Himmels Flammen mich umflogen,
+ Da erscheinst du, Seele der Natur."
+
+[Illustration: DAUBIGNY. LANDSCAPE: EVENING.]
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ CHINTREUIL. LANDSCAPE: MORNING.]
+
+The first of the brilliant pleiad who did not come from Paris itself is
+_Diaz_, who in his youth worked with Dupré in the china manufactory of
+Sèvres. Of noble Spanish origin--Narciso Virgilio Diaz de la Peña ran
+his high-sounding name in full--he was born in Bordeaux in 1807, after
+his parents had taken refuge from the Revolution across the Pyrenees,
+and in his landscapes, too, perhaps, his Spanish blood betrays him now
+and then. Diaz has in him a little of Fortuny. Beside the great genius
+wrestling for truth and the virile seriousness of Rousseau, beside the
+gloomy, powerful landscapes of Dupré with their deep, impassioned
+poetry, the sparkling and flattering pictures of Diaz seem to be rather
+light wares. For him nature is a keyboard on which to play capricious
+fantasies. His pictures have the effect of sparkling diamonds, and one
+must surrender one's self to this charm without asking its cause;
+otherwise it evaporates. Diaz has perhaps rather too much of the talent
+of a juggler, the sparkle of a magic kaleidoscope. "You paint stinging
+nettles, and I prefer roses," is the characteristic expression which he
+used to Millet. His painting is piquant and as iridescent as a peacock's
+tail, but in this very iridescence there is often an unspeakable charm.
+It has the rocket-like brilliancy and the glancing chivalry which were
+part of the man himself, and made him the best of good company, the
+_enfant terrible_, the centre of all that was witty and spirited in the
+circle of Fontainebleau.
+
+He, too, was long acquainted with poverty, as were his great
+brother-artists Rousseau and Dupré. Shortly after his birth he lost his
+father. Madame Diaz, left entirely without means, came to Paris, where
+she supported herself by giving lessons in Spanish and Italian. When he
+was ten years old the boy was left an orphan alone in the vast city. A
+Protestant clergyman in Bellevue then adopted him. And now occurred the
+misfortune which he was so fond of relating in after-years. In one of
+his wanderings through the wood he was bitten by a poisonous insect, and
+from that time he was obliged to hobble through life with a wooden leg,
+which he called his _pilon_. From his fifteenth year he worked, at first
+as a lame errand boy, and afterwards as a painter on china, together
+with Dupré, Raffet, and Cabat, in the manufactory of Sèvres. Before long
+he was dismissed as incompetent, for one day he took it into his head to
+decorate a vase entirely after his own taste. Then poverty began once
+more. Often when the evening drew on he wandered about the boulevards
+under cover of the darkness, opened the doors of carriages which had
+drawn up at the pavement, and stretched out his hand to beg. "What does
+it matter?" he said; "one day I shall have carriages and horses, and a
+golden crutch; my brush will win them for me." He exhibited a picture on
+speculation at a picture-dealer's, in the hope of making a hundred
+francs; it was "The Descent of the Bohemians," that picturesque band of
+men, women, and children, who advance singing, laughing, and shouting by
+a steep woodland road, to descend on some neighbouring village like a
+swarm of locusts. A Parisian collector bought it for fifteen hundred
+francs. Diaz was saved, and he migrated to the forest of Fontainebleau.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ HARPIGNIES. MOONRISE.]
+
+His biography explains a great deal in the character of the painter's
+art. His works are unequal. In his picture "Last Tears," which appeared
+in the World Exhibition of 1855, and which stands to his landscapes as a
+huge block of copper to little ingots of gold, he entered upon a course
+in which he wandered long without any particular artistic result. He
+wanted to be a figure-painter, and with this object he concocted a style
+of painting by a mixture of various traditions, seeking to unite
+Prudhon, Correggio, and Leonardo. From the master of Cluny he borrowed
+the feminine type with a snub nose and long almond-shaped eyes, treated
+the hair like da Vinci, and placed over it the _sfumato_ of Allegri. His
+drawing, usually so pictorial in its light sweep, became weak in his
+effort to be correct, and his colouring grew dull and monotonous by its
+imitation of the style of the Classicists. But during this period Diaz
+made a great deal of money, sold his pictures without intermission, and
+avenged himself, as he had determined to do, upon his former poverty.
+He, who had begged upon the boulevards, was able to buy weapons and
+costumes at the highest figure, and build himself a charming house in
+the Place Pigalle. In all that concerns his artistic position these
+works, which brought him an income of fifty thousand francs, and, for a
+long time, the fame of a new Prudhon, are nevertheless without
+importance. Faltering between the widely divergent influences of the old
+masters, he did not get beyond a wavering eclecticism, and was too weak
+in drawing to attain results worth mentioning. It is as a landscape
+painter that he will be known to posterity. He is said to have been the
+terror of all game as long as he was the house-mate of Rousseau and
+Millet in Fontainebleau, and wandered through the woods there with a gun
+on his arm to get a cheap supper. It is reported, too, that when his
+pictures were rejected by the Salon in those days he laughingly made a
+hole in the canvas with his wooden leg, saying: "What is the use of
+being rich? I can't have a diamond set in my _pilon_!" It was however in
+the years before 1855, when he had nothing to do with any
+picture-dealer, that the immortal works of Diaz were executed.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._ CONSTANT TROYON.]
+
+The mention of his name conjures up before the mind the recesses of a
+wood, reddened by autumn, a wood where the sunbeams play, gilding the
+trunks of the trees; naked white forms repose amid mysterious lights, or
+on paths of golden sand appear gaily draped odalisques, their rich
+costume glittering in the rays of the sun. Few have won from the forest,
+as he did, its beauty of golden sunlight and verdant leaves. Others
+remained at the entrance of the forest; he was the first who really
+penetrated to its depths. The branches met over his head like the waves
+of the sea, the blue heaven vanished, and everything was shrouded. The
+sunbeams fell like the rain of Danaë through the green leaves, and the
+moss lay like a velvet mantle on the granite piles of rock. He settled
+down like a hermit in his verdant hollow. The leaves quivered green and
+red, and covered the ground, shining like gold in the furtive rays of
+the evening sun. Nothing was to be seen of the trees, nothing of the
+outline of their foliage, nothing of the majestic sweep of their boughs,
+but only the mossy stems touched by the radiance of the sun. The
+pictures of Diaz are not landscapes, for the land is wanting; they are
+"tree scapes," and their poetry lies in the sunbeams which dance playing
+round them. "Have you seen my last stem?" he would himself inquire of
+the visitors to his studio.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ TROYON. IN NORMANDY: COWS GRAZING.]
+
+These woodland recesses were the peculiar specialty of Diaz, and he but
+seldom abandoned them to paint warm, dreamy pictures of summer. For,
+like a true child of the South, he only cared to see nature on beautiful
+days. He knows nothing of spring with its light mist, and still less of
+the frozen desolation of winter. The summer alone does he know, the
+summer and the autumn; and the summers of Diaz are an everlasting song,
+like the springs of Corot. Beautiful nymphs and other beings from the
+golden age give animation to his emerald meadows and his sheltered woods
+bathed in the sun: here are little, homely-looking nixies, and there are
+pretty Cupids and Venuses and Dianas of charming grace. And none of
+these divinities think about anything or do anything; they are not
+piquant, like those of Boucher and Fragonard, and they know neither
+coquetry nor smiles. They are merely goddesses of the palette; their
+wish is to be nothing but shining spots of colour, and they love nothing
+except the silvery sunbeams which fall caressingly on their naked skin.
+If the painter wishes for more vivid colour they throw around them
+shining red, blue, yellowish-green, or gold-embroidered clothes, and
+immediately are transformed from nymphs into Oriental women, as in a
+magic theatre. A fragment of soft silk, gleaming with gold, and a red
+turban were means sufficient for him to conjure up his charming and
+fanciful land of Turks. Sometimes even simple mortals--wood-cutters,
+peasant girls, and gipsies--come into his pictures, that the sunbeams
+may play upon them, while their picturesque rags form piquant spots of
+colour.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ TROYON. CROSSING THE STREAM.]
+
+Diaz belongs to the same category as Isabey and Fromentin, a fascinating
+artist, a great _charmeur_, and a feast to the eyes.
+
+When in the far South, amid the eternal summer of Mentone, he closed his
+dark, shining eyes for ever, at dawn on 18th November 1876, a breath of
+sadness went through the tree-tops of the old royal forest of
+Fontainebleau. The forest had lost its hermit, the busy woodsman who
+penetrated farthest into its green depths; and it preserves his memory
+gratefully. Only go, in October, through the copse of Bas Bréau, lose
+yourself amid the magnificent foliage of these century-old trees that
+glimmer with a thousand hues like gigantic bouquets, dark green and
+brown, or golden and purple, and at the sight of this brilliant gleam of
+autumn tones you can only say, A Diaz!
+
+The youngest of the group, _Daubigny_, came when the battle was over,
+and plays a slighter _rôle_, since he cannot be reckoned any longer
+among the discoverers; nevertheless he has a physiognomy of his own, and
+one of peculiar charm. The others were painters of nature; Daubigny is
+the painter of the country. If one goes from Munich to Dachau to see the
+apple trees blossom and the birches growing green, to breathe in the
+odour of the cow-house and the fragrance of the hay, to hear the tinkle
+of cow-bells, the croaking of frogs, and the hum of gnats, one does not
+say, "I want to see nature," but "I am going into the country." Jean
+Jacques Rousseau was the worshipper of nature, while Georges Sand, in
+certain of her novels, has celebrated country life. In this sense
+Daubigny is less an adorer of nature than a man fond of the country. His
+pictures give the feeling one has in standing at the window on a country
+excursion, and looking at the laughing and budding spring. One feels no
+veneration for the artist, but one would like to be a bird to perch on
+those boughs, a lizard to creep amongst this green, a cockchafer to fly
+humming from tree to tree.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ TROYON. THE RETURN TO THE FARM.]
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ TROYON. A COW SCRATCHING HERSELF.]
+
+Daubigny, possibly, has not the great and free creative power of the
+older artists, their magnificent simplicity in treating objects: the
+feminine element, the susceptibility to natural beauty, preponderates in
+him, and not the virile, creative power of embodiment, which at once
+discovers in itself a telling force of expression for the image received
+from nature. He seeks after no poetic emotions, like Dupré; he has not
+the profound, penetrative eye for nature, like Rousseau; in his charm
+and amiability he approaches Corot, except that mythological beings are
+no longer at home in his landscapes. They would take no pleasure in this
+odour of damp grass, the smell of the cow-byres, and the dilapidated old
+skiffs which rock, in Daubigny's pictures, fastened to a swampy bank.
+Corot, light, delicate, and simple as a boy, sitting on a school-bench
+all his life, is always veiled and mysterious. Daubigny, heavier and
+technically better equipped, has more power and less grace; he dreams
+less and paints more. Corot made the apotheosis of nature: his silvery
+grey clouds bore him to the Elysian fields, where nothing had the
+heaviness of earth and everything melted in poetic vapour. Daubigny,
+borne by no wings of Icarus, seems like Antæus beside him; he is bodily
+wedded to the earth. Dupré made the earth a mirror of the tears and
+passions of men. Corot surprised her before the peasant is up of a
+morning, in the hours when she belongs altogether to the nymphs and the
+fairies. In Daubigny the earth has once more become the possession of
+human beings. It is not often that figures move in his pictures. Even
+Rousseau more often finds a place in his landscapes for the rustic, but
+nature in him is hard, unapproachable, and deliberately indifferent to
+man. She looks down upon him austerely, closing and hardening her heart
+against him. In Daubigny nature is familiar with man, stands near him,
+and is kindly and serviceable. The skiffs rocking at the river's brink
+betray that fishers are in the neighbourhood; even when they are empty
+his little houses suggest that their inhabitants are not far off, that
+they are but at work in the field and may come back at any moment. In
+Rousseau man is merely an atom of the infinite; here he is the lord of
+creation. Rousseau makes an effect which is simple and powerful, Dupré
+one which is impassioned and striking, Corot is divine, Diaz charming,
+and Daubigny idyllic, intimate, and familiar. He closed a period and
+enjoyed the fruits of what the others had called into being. One does
+not admire him--one loves him.
+
+He had passed his youth with his nurse in a little village, surrounded
+with white-blossoming apple trees and waving fields of corn, near L'Isle
+Adam. Here as a boy he received the impressions which made him a painter
+of the country, and which were too strong to be obliterated by a sojourn
+in Italy. The best picture that he painted there showed a flat stretch
+of land with thistles. A view of the island of St. Louis was the work
+with which he first appeared in the Salon in 1838.
+
+Daubigny is the painter of water, murmuring silver-grey between ashes
+and oaks, and reflecting the clouds of heaven in its clear mirror. He is
+the painter of the spring in its fragrance, when the meadows shine in
+the earliest verdure, and the leaves but newly unfolded stand out
+against the sky as bright green patches of colour, when the limes
+blossom and the crops begin to shoot. A field of green corn waving
+gently beneath budding apple trees in the breeze of spring, still rivers
+in which banks and bushy islands are reflected, mills beside little
+streams rippling in silvery clearness over shining white pebbles,
+cackling geese, and washerwomen neatly spreading out their linen, are
+things which Daubigny has painted with the delicate feeling of a most
+impressionable lover of nature. At the same time he had the secret of
+shedding over his pictures the most marvellous tint of delicate,
+vaporous air; especially in those representations, at once so poetic and
+so accurate, of evening by the water's edge, or of bright moonlight
+nights, when all things are sharply illuminated, and yet softly shrouded
+with a dream-like exhalation. His favourite light was that of cool
+evening dusk, after the sun and every trace of the after-glow has
+vanished from the sky. Valmandois, where he passed his youth, and
+afterwards the Oise, with its green banks and vineyards and hedged
+gardens, the most charming and picturesque river in North France, are
+most frequently rendered in his pictures. Every day, when nature put on
+her spring garb, he sailed along the banks in a small craft, with his
+son Charles. His most vigorous works were executed in the cabin of this
+vessel: spirited sketches of regions delicately veiled in mist and bound
+with a magical charm of peace, regions with the moon above them,
+shedding its clear, silver light--refined etchings which assure him a
+place of honour in the history of modern etching. The painter of the
+banks of the Oise saw everything with the curiosity and the love of a
+child, and remained always a naïve artist in spite of all his dexterity.
+
+[Illustration: ROSA BONHEUR. THE HORSE-FAIR.
+
+ (_By permission of Mr. L. H. Lefèvre, the owner of the copyright._)]
+
+[Illustration: ROSA BONHEUR. PLOUGHING IN NIVERNOIS.]
+
+After these great masters had opened up the path a tribe of landscape
+painters set themselves to render, each in his own way, the vigorous
+power, the tender charm, and the plaintive melancholy of the earth. Some
+loved dusk and light, the simple reproduction of ordinary places in
+their ordinary condition; others delighted in the struggle of the
+elements, the violent scudding of clouds, the parting glance of the sun,
+the sombre hours when nature shrouds her face with the mourning veil of
+a widow.
+
+Although he never tasted the pleasures of fame, _Antoine Chintreuil_ was
+the most refined of them all--an excessively sensitive spirit, who
+seized with as much delicacy as daring swiftly transient effects of
+nature, such as seldom appear: the moment when the sun casts a fleeting
+radiance in the midst of clouds, or when a shaft of light quivers for an
+instant through a dense mist; the effect of green fields touched by the
+first soft beams of the sun, or that of a rainbow spanning a fresh
+spring landscape. His pupil _Jean Desbrosses_ was the painter of hills
+and valleys. _Achard_ followed Rousseau in his pictures of lonely,
+austere, and mournful regions. _Français_ painted familiar corners in
+the neighbourhood of Paris with grace, although more heavily than Corot,
+and without the shining light which is poured through the works of that
+rare genius. The pictures of _Harpignies_ are rather dry, and betray a
+heavy hand. He is rougher than his great predecessors, less seductive
+and indeed rather staid, but he has a convincing reality, and is loyal
+and simple. He is valuable as an honest, genial artist, a many-sided and
+sure-footed man of talent, somewhat inclined to Classicism. _Émile
+Breton_, the brother of Jules, delighted in the agitation of the
+elements, wild, out-of-the-way regions, and harsh climate. His
+execution is broad, his tones forcible, and he has both simplicity and
+largeness. Apart from his big, gloomy landscapes, _Léonce Chabry_ has
+also painted sea-pieces, with dark waves dashing against the cleft
+rocks.
+
+[Illustration: VAN MARCKE. LA FALAISE.]
+
+The representation of grazing animals plays a great part in the art of
+almost all of these painters. Some carried the love of animal painting
+so far that they never painted a landscape without introducing into the
+foreground their dearly loved herds of cows or flocks of sheep. The key
+of the landscape, the cheerful and sunny brilliancy of colour or the
+still melancholy of the evening dusk, is harmoniously repeated in the
+habits and being of these animals. Thus, too, new paths were opened to
+animal painting, which had suffered, no less than landscape, from the
+yoke of conventionality.
+
+Up to the close of the eighteenth century French artists had contented
+themselves with adapting to French taste the light and superficial art
+of Nicolaus Berghem. Demarne, one of the last heirs of this Dutch
+artist, brought, even in the period of the Revolution, a little
+sunshine, blitheness, and country air amongst the large pictures in the
+classical manner. The animal painting of the _ancien régime_ expired in
+his arms, and the "noble style" of Classicism obstructed the rise of the
+new animal painting. The fact that the great Jupiter, father of gods and
+men, assumed the form of a four-footed creature when he led weak,
+feminine beings astray had no doubt given a certain justification to
+the animal picture during the reign of the school of David. But the
+artists preferred to hold aloof from it, either because animals are hard
+to idealise in themselves, or because the received antique sculpture of
+animals was difficult to employ directly in pictures. In landscapes,
+which gods and heroes alone honoured with their presence, idealised
+animals would have been altogether out of place. Only animals which are
+very difficult to draw correctly, such as sphinxes, sirens, and winged
+horses--beings which the old tragedians were fond of turning to
+account--are occasionally allowed to exist in the pictures of Bertin and
+Paul Flandrin. _Carle Vernet_, who composed cavalry charges and hunting
+scenes, had not talent enough seriously to make a breach, or to find
+disciples to follow his lead. _Géricault_, the forerunner of
+Romanticism, was likewise the first eminent painter of horses; and
+although his great "Raft of the Medusa" is heavily fettered by the
+system of Classicism, his jockey pictures and horse races are as fresh,
+as vivid, and as unforced as if they had been painted yesterday instead
+of seventy years ago. In dashing animation, verve, and temperament
+Géricault stands alone in these pictures; he is the very opposite of
+Raymond Brascassat, who was the first specialist of animal pieces with a
+landscape setting, and was much praised in the thirties on account of
+his neat and ornamental style of treatment. _Brascassat_ was the
+Winterhalter of animal painting, neither Classicist nor Romanticist nor
+Realist, but the embodiment of mediocrity; a man honestly and sincerely
+regarding all nature with the eyes of a Philistine. His fame, which has
+so swiftly faded, was founded by those patrons of art who above all
+demand that a picture should be the bald, banal reproduction of fact,
+made with all the accuracy possible.
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES JACQUE. THE RETURN TO THE BYRE (ETCHING).
+
+ (_By permission of M. Frédéric Jacque, the owner of the copyright._)]
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ CHARLES JACQUE. A FLOCK OF SHEEP ON THE ROAD.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Frédéric Jacque, the owner of the copyright._)]
+
+It was only when the landscape school of Fontainebleau had initiated a
+new method of vision, feeling, and expression that France produced a new
+great painter of animals. As Dupré and Rousseau tower over their
+predecessors Cabat and Flandrin in landscape, so _Constant Troyon_ rises
+above Brascassat in animal painting. In the latter there may be found a
+scrupulous pedantic observation in union with a thin, polished,
+academic, and carefully arranged style of painting; in the former, a
+large and broad technique in harmony with wild nature, and a directness
+and force of intuition without parallel in the history of art.
+Brascassat belongs to the same category as Denner, Troyon to that of
+Frans Hals and Brouwer.
+
+There would be no purpose in saying anything of his labours in the china
+manufactory of Sèvres, of his industrial works, and of the little
+classical views with which he made a first appearance in the Salon in
+1833, or of the impulse which he received from Roqueplan. He first found
+his own powers when he made the acquaintance of Théodore Rousseau and
+Jules Dupré, and migrated with them into the forest of Fontainebleau. At
+the headquarters of the new school his ideas underwent a revolution.
+Here, in the first instance, as a landscape painter, he was attracted by
+the massive forms of cattle, which make such a harmonious effect of
+colour in the atmosphere and against verdure, and the philosophic
+quietude of which gives such admirable completion to the dreamy spirit
+of nature. A journey to Holland and Belgium in 1847, in the course of
+which he became more familiar with the old animal painters, confirmed
+him in the resolve of devoting himself exclusively to this province. He
+was captivated not so much by Paul Potter as by Albert Cuyp, with his
+rich and powerful colouring, and his technique, which is at once so
+virile and so easy. But above all Rembrandt became his great ideal, and
+filled him with wonder. In his first masterpiece of 1849, "The Mill,"
+the influence of the great Dutch artist is clearly recognisable, and
+from that time up to 1855 it remained dominant. In this year, during a
+prolonged sojourn in Normandy, he became Troyon, and painted "Oxen going
+to their Work," that mighty picture in the Louvre which displays him in
+the zenith of his creative power. Till then no animal painter had
+rendered with such a combination of strength and actuality the long,
+heavy gait, the philosophical indifference, and the quiet resignation of
+cattle, the poetry of autumnal light, and the mist of morning rising
+lightly from the earth and veiling the whole land with grey, silvery
+hues. The deeply furrowed smoking field makes an undulating ascent, so
+that one seems to be looking at the horizon over the broad face of the
+earth. A primitive, Homeric feeling rests over it.
+
+Troyon is perhaps not so correct as Potter, nor so lucid as Albert Cuyp,
+but he is more forcible and impressive than either. No one has ever
+seized the poetry of these heavy masses of flesh, with their strong
+colour and largeness of outline, as he has done. What places him far
+above the old painters is his fundamental power as a landscapist, a
+power unequalled except in Rousseau. His landscapes have always the
+smell of the earth, and they smack of rusticity. At one time he paints
+the atmosphere, veiling the contours of objects with a light mist
+recalling Corot, and yet saturated with clear sunshine; at another he
+sends his heavy, fattened droves in the afternoon across field-paths
+bright in the sunlight and dark green meadows, or places them beneath a
+sky where dense thunderclouds are swiftly rolling up. Troyon is no poet,
+but a born painter, belonging to the irrepressibly forceful family of
+Jordaens and Courbet, a _maître peintre_ of strength and plastic genius,
+as healthy as he is splendid in colour. His "Cow scratching Herself" and
+his "Return to the Farm" will always be counted amongst the most
+forcible animal pictures of all ages.
+
+When he died in 1865, after passing twelve years with a clouded
+intellect, _Rosa Bonheur_ sought to fill the place which he had left
+vacant. She had already won the sympathies of the great public, as she
+united in her pictures all the qualities which were missed in Troyon,
+and had the art of pleasing where he was repellent. For a long time
+Troyon's works were held by _amateurs_ to be wanting in finish. They did
+not acknowledge to themselves that "finish" in artistic creations is,
+after all, only a work of patience, rather industrial than artistic, and
+at bottom invented for the purpose of enticing half-trained
+connoisseurs. Rosa Bonheur had this diligence, and is indebted to it for
+the spread of her fame through all Europe, when Troyon was only known
+as yet to the few. The position has now been altered. Without doubt it
+is a pleasure to look at her fresh and sunny maiden picture of 1840,
+"Ploughing in Nivernois," with its yoke of six oxen, its rich red-brown
+soil turned up into furrows, and its wide, bright, simple, and laughing
+landscape beneath the clear blue sky. She had all the qualities which
+may be appreciated without one's being an epicure of art--great
+anatomical knowledge, dexterous technique, charming and seductive
+colouring. And it is an isolated fact in the history of art that a woman
+has painted pictures so good as the "Hay Harvest in Auvergne" of 1853,
+with its brutes which are almost life-size, or the "Horse Fair" of 1855,
+which is perhaps her most brilliant work, and for which she made
+studies, going in man's clothes for eighteen months, at all the Parisian
+_manèges_, amongst stable-boys and horse-dealers. Until her death, from
+the Château By, between Thomery and Fontainebleau, she carried on an
+extensive transpontine export, and her pictures are by no means the
+worst of those which find their way from the Continent to England and
+America. She was perhaps the only feminine celebrity of the century who
+painted her pictures, instead of working at them like knitting. But
+Troyon is a strong master who suffers no rival. His landscapes, with
+their deep verdure, their powerful animals, and their skies traversed by
+heavy clouds, are the embodiment of power. Rosa Bonheur is an admirable
+painter with largeness of style and beauty of drawing, whose artistic
+position is between Troyon and Brascassat.
+
+Troyon's only pupil was _Émile van Marcke_, half a Belgian, who met the
+elder master in Sèvres, and for a long time worked by his side at
+Fontainebleau. He united the occupation of a painter with that of a
+landed proprietor. The cattle which he bred on an extensive scale at his
+property, Bouttencourt in Normandy, had a celebrity amongst French
+landowners, as he had the reputation of rearing the best fat cattle. He
+too had not the impressiveness of Troyon, though he was, none the less,
+a healthy and forcible master. His animals have no passions, no
+movement, and no battles. They seem lost in endless contemplation,
+gravely and sedately chewing the cud. Around them stretch the soft green
+Norman pastures, and above them arches the wide sky, which at the
+horizon imperceptibly melts into the sea.
+
+_Jadin_ is a painter of horses and dogs who had once a great reputation,
+though to-day his name is almost, if not entirely forgotten. He was fond
+of painting hunting scenes, and is not wanting in life and movement; but
+he is too impersonal to play a part in the history of painting. Having
+named him, some mention must likewise be made of _Eugène Lambert_, the
+painter of cats, and _Palizzi_, who painted goats. Lambert, who was fond
+of introducing his little heroes as the actors of comical scenes, is by
+admission the chief amongst all those who were honoured amongst the
+different nations with the title of "Raphaels of the Cat." Palizzi, an
+incisive master of almost brutal energy, a true son of the wild Abruzzo
+hills, delighted, like his compatriots Morelli and Michetti, in the
+blazing light of noon, shining over rocky heights, and throwing a
+dazzle of gold on the dark green copse. _Lançon_, a rather arid painter,
+though a draughtsman with a broad and masculine stroke, was the greatest
+descendant of Delacroix in the representation of tigers, lions, bears,
+and hippopotamuses. An unobtrusive artist, though one of very genial
+talent, was _Charles Jacque_, the Troyon of sheep. He has been compared
+with the _rageur_ of Bas Bréau, the proud oak which stands alone in a
+clearing. A man of forcible character, over whom age had no power, he
+survived until 1894 as the last representative of the noble school of
+Barbizon. He has painted sheep in flocks or separately, in the pasture,
+on the verge of the field-path, or in the fold; and he loved most of all
+to paint them in the misty hours of evening twilight, at peace and amid
+peaceful nature. But in spirited etchings he has likewise represented
+old weather-beaten walls, the bright films of spring, the large outlines
+of peasant folk, the tender down of young chickens, the light play of
+the wind upon the sea, murmuring brooks, and quiet haunts of the wood.
+Like Millet, he had in an eminent degree the gift of simplification, the
+greatest quality that an artist can have. With three or four strokes he
+could plant a figure on its feet, give life to an animal, or construct a
+landscape. He was the most intimate friend of Jean François Millet, and
+painted part of what Millet painted also.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
+
+
+Whence has _Millet_ come?
+
+It was the time when art, still blind to the life around, could find no
+subjects worthy of it except in the past and in the distance. Then
+Millet came and overthrew an art vegetating in museums or astray in
+tropical countries. It was the time when Leopold Robert in Italy tested
+the noble pose of the school of David upon the peasant, and when the
+German painters of rustics recognised in the labourer an object for
+pleasantries and pathetic little scenes. Then Millet stepped forward and
+painted, with profound simplicity, the people at work in the field, or
+in their distress, without sentimentality and without beautifying or
+idealising them. That great utterance, "I work," the utterance of the
+nineteenth century, is here spoken aloud for the first time. Rousseau
+and his fellow-artists were the painters of the country. Millet became
+the painter of the labourer. He, the great peasant, is the creator of
+that painting of peasants which is entwined with the deepest roots of
+intimate landscape. Misunderstood in the beginning, it proclaimed for
+the first time the new gospel of art before which the people of all
+nations bow at the present date. What others did later was merely to
+advance on the path opened by Millet. And as time passes the figure of
+this powerful man shines more and more brilliantly. The form of Jean
+François Millet rises so powerfully, so imperiously, and so suddenly
+that one might almost imagine him to have come from Ibsen's third
+kingdom; for he is without forerunners in art. An attempt has been made
+to bring him into relation with the social and political movement of
+ideas in the forties, but certainly this is unjust. Millet was in no
+sense revolutionary. During his whole life he repudiated the designs
+which some of the democratic party imputed to him, as well as the
+conclusions which they drew from his works.
+
+Millet's life in itself explains his art. Never have heart and hand, a
+man and his work, tallied with each other as they did in him. He does
+not belong to those painters who, even when one admires them, give one
+nevertheless a sense that they could just as easily have produced
+something different. Let any one consider his works and read the letters
+published in Sensier's book: the man whom one knows from the letters
+lives in his works, and these works are the natural illustration of the
+book in which the man has depicted himself. In the unity of man and
+artist lies the source of his strength, the secret of his greatness.
+
+[Illustration: _S. Low & Co._
+
+ JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.]
+
+Even the circumstances over which he triumphed necessitated his being
+the painter that he actually was, if he became one at all. He was not
+born in a city where a child's eyes are everywhere met by works of
+art--pictures which no doubt early awaken the feeling for art, but which
+just as easily disturb a free outlook into nature. Moreover, he did not
+spring from one of those families where art is itself practised, or
+where art is discussed and taste early guided upon definite lines. He
+was a peasant, whose father and grandfather were peasants before him,
+and whose brothers were farm labourers. He was born in 1814, far away
+from Paris, in a little Norman village hard by the sea, and there he
+grew up. The regular and majestic plunge of the waves against the
+granite rocks of the coast, the solemn murmurs of the ebb and flow of
+the sea, the moaning of the wind in the apple trees and the old oaks of
+his father's garden, were the first sounds which struck upon the ear in
+Gruchy, near Cherbourg. It has been adduced that his father loved music,
+and had had success as the leader of the village choir. But though there
+may have always been a dim capacity for art in the youngster's blood,
+there was nothing calculated to strengthen it in his education. Millet's
+sturdy father had no idea of making an artist of his son; the boy saw no
+artist at work in the neighbourhood; nature and instinct guided him
+alone.
+
+For a man brought up in a city and trained at an academy all things
+become hackneyed. Many centuries of artistic usage have dimmed their
+original freshness; and he finds a ready-made phrase coined for
+everything. Millet stood before the world like the first man in the day
+of creation. Everything seemed new to him; he was charmed and
+astonished, and a wild flood of impressions burst in upon him. He did
+not come under the influence of any tradition, but approached art like
+the man in the age of stone who first scratched the outline of a mammoth
+on a piece of ivory, or like the primæval Greek who, according to the
+legend, invented painting by making a likeness of his beloved with a
+charred stick upon a wall. No one encouraged him in his first attempts.
+No one dreamt that this young man was destined to any life other than
+that of a peasant. From the time he was fourteen until he was eighteen
+he did every kind of field labour upon his father's land in the same way
+as his brothers--hoeing, digging, ploughing, mowing, threshing, sowing
+the seed, and dressing the ground. But he always had his eyes about him;
+he drew upon a white patch of wall, without guidance, the picture of a
+tree, an orchard, or a peasant whom he had chanced to meet on a Sunday
+when going to church. And he drew so correctly that every one recognised
+the likenesses. A family council was held upon the matter. His father
+brought one of his son's drawings to a certain M. Mouchel in Cherbourg,
+a strange personage who had once been a painter and had the reputation
+of being a connoisseur; and he was to decide whether François "had
+really enough talent for painting to gain his bread by it." So Millet,
+the farm-hand, was twenty when he received his first lessons in drawing.
+He was learning the A B C of art, but humanly speaking he was already
+Millet. What had roused his talent and induced him to take a stump of
+charcoal in his hand was not the study of any work of art, but the sight
+of nature--nature, the great mother of all, who had embraced him, nature
+with whom and through whom he lived. Through her, visions and emotions
+were quickened in him, and he felt the secret impulse to give them
+expression.
+
+[Illustration: MILLET. THE HOUSE AT GRUCHY.]
+
+Of what concerned the manual part of his art he understood nothing, and
+his two teachers in Cherbourg, Mouchel and Langlois, who were
+half-barbarians themselves, gave him the less knowledge, as only two
+months later, in 1835, his father died, and the young man returned to
+his own people as a farm-labourer once more. And it was only after an
+interruption of three years that a subsidy from the community of
+Cherbourg, which was collected by his teacher Langlois, and a small sum
+saved by his parents--six hundred francs all told--enabled him to
+journey up to Paris. He was twenty-three years of age, a broad-chested
+Hercules in stature, for till that time he had breathed nothing but the
+pure, sharp sea air; his handsome face was framed in long fair locks,
+which fell wildly about his shoulders. What had this peasant to do in
+the capital! In Delaroche's school he was called _l'homme des bois_. He
+had all the awkwardness of a provincial, and the artist was only to be
+surmised from the fire in the glance of his large dark blue eyes. At
+first Delaroche took peculiar pains with his new pupil. But to submit to
+training is to follow the lead of another person. A man like Millet, who
+knew what he wanted, was no longer to be guided upon set lines. The
+pictures of Delaroche made no appeal to him. They struck him as being
+"huge vignettes, theatrical effects without any real sentiment." And
+Delaroche soon lost patience with the clumsy peasant, whom he--most
+unfairly--regarded as stiff-necked and obstinate.
+
+Other aims floated before Millet, and he _could_ not now learn to
+produce academical compositions, so, as these were alone demanded in the
+school of Delaroche, he never cleared himself from a reputation for
+mediocrity. It was the period of the war between the Classicists and the
+Romanticists. "An Ingres, a Delacroix!" was the battle-cry that rang
+through the Parisian studios. For Millet neither of these movements had
+any existence. His memory only clung to the plains of Normandy, and the
+labourers, shepherds, and fishermen of his home, with whom he mingled in
+spirit once more. Incessantly he believed himself to hear what he has
+called "_le cri de la terre_," and neither Romanticists nor Classicists
+caught anything of this cry of the earth. He lived alone with his own
+thoughts, associating with none of his fellow-artists, and indeed
+keeping out of their way. Always prepared for some scornful attempt at
+witticism, he turned his easel round whenever he was approached, or
+gruffly cut all criticism short with the remark: "What does my painting
+matter to you? I don't trouble my head about your bread and grease."
+Thus it was that Delaroche certainly taught him very little of the
+technique of painting, though, at the same time, he taught him no
+mannerism. He did not learn to paint pretty pictures with beautiful
+poses, flattering colour, and faces inspired with intellect. He left the
+studio as he had entered it in 1837, painting with an awkward, thick,
+heavy, and laborious brush, though with the fresh, untroubled vision
+which he had had in earlier days. He was still the stranger, the
+incorrigible Norman peasant.
+
+For a time he exerted himself to make concessions to the public. At
+seven-and-twenty he had married a Cherbourg girl, who died of
+consumption three years afterwards. Without acquaintances in Paris, and
+habituated to domestic life from his youth upwards, he married a second
+time in 1845. He had to earn his bread, to please, to paint what would
+sell. So he toiled over pretty pictures of nude women, like those which
+Diaz had painted with such great success--fair shepherdesses and gallant
+herdsmen, and bathing girls, in the _genre_ of Boucher and Fragonard.
+And he who did this spoke of both of them afterwards as pornographists.
+But the attempt was vain, for he satisfied neither others nor himself.
+The peasant of Gruchy could not be piquant, easy, and charming; on the
+contrary, he remained helpless, awkward, and crude. "Your women bathing
+come from the cow-house" was the appropriate remark of Diaz in reference
+to these pictures. When Burger-Thoré, who was the first to take notice
+of Millet, declared, on the occasion of "The Milkmaid" being exhibited
+in 1844, that Boucher himself was surpassed in this picture, the critic
+took a literary licence, because he had a human pity for the poor
+painter. How little the picture has of the fragrance of the old masters!
+how laboured it seems! how obvious it is that it was painted without
+pleasure! Millet was not long at pains to conceal his personality. An
+"Oedipus" and "The Jewish Captives in Babylon" were his last rhetorical
+exercises. In 1848 he came forward with a manifesto--"The Winnower," a
+peasant in movement and bearing, in his whole character and in the work
+on which he is employed. Millet returns here to the thoughts and
+feelings of his youth; for the future he will paint nothing but peasants
+in all the situations of their rude and simple life. In 1849 he made a
+great resolve.
+
+[Illustration: F. JACQUE. MILLET AT WORK IN HIS STUDIO.
+
+ (_By permission of M. F. Jacque, the owner of the copyright._)]
+
+The sale of his "Winnower" had brought him five hundred francs, and
+these five hundred francs gave him courage to defy the world. "Better
+turn bricklayer than paint against conviction." Charles Jacque, the
+painter of animals, who lived opposite to him in the Rue Rochechouard,
+wanted to quit Paris in 1849 on account of the outbreak of cholera. He
+proposed that Millet should go with him into the country for a short
+time; he did so, and the peasant's son of former times became once more
+a peasant, to end his days amongst peasants. "In the middle of the
+forest of Fontainebleau," said Jacque, "there is a little nest, with a
+name ending in 'zon'--not far off and cheap,--Diaz has been telling me a
+great deal about it." Millet consented. One fine June day they got into
+a heavy, rumbling omnibus, with their wives and their five children, and
+they arrived in Fontainebleau that evening after two hours' journey.
+"To-morrow we are going in search of our 'zon.'" And the next day they
+went forward on foot to Barbizon, Millet with his two little girls upon
+his shoulders, and his wife carrying in her arms the youngest child, a
+boy of five months old, having her skirt drawn over her head as a
+protection against the rain.
+
+[Illustration: F. JACQUE. MILLET'S HOUSE AT BARBIZON.
+
+ (_By permission of M. F. Jacque, the owner of the copyright._)]
+
+As yet the forest had no walks laid out as it has to-day; it was virgin
+nature, which had never been disturbed. "_Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, que c'est
+beau!_" cried Millet, exulting. Once more he stood in the presence of
+nature, the old love of his youth. The impressions of childhood rushed
+over him. Born in the country, he had to return to the country to be
+himself once again. He arrived at Ganne's inn just as the dinner-hour
+had assembled twenty persons at the table, artists with their wives and
+children. "New painters! The pipe, the pipe!" was the cry which greeted
+the fresh arrivals. Diaz rose, and, in spite of his wooden leg, did the
+honours of the establishment to the two women with the dignity of a
+Spanish nobleman, and then turned gravely to Millet and Jacque, saying:
+"Citizens, you are invited to smoke the pipe of peace." Whenever the
+colony of Barbizon received an addition this was always taken down from
+its sacred place above the door. An expressly appointed jury had then to
+decide from the ascending rings of smoke whether the new-comer was to be
+reckoned amongst the "Classicists" or the "Colourists." Jacque was with
+one voice declared to be a "Colourist." As to Millet's relation to the
+schools, there was a discrepancy of opinion. "_Eh bien_," said Millet,
+"_si vous êtes embarrassés, placez-moi dans la mienne_." Whereupon
+Diaz, as the others would not let this pass, cried: "Be quiet; it is a
+good retort, and the fellow looks powerful enough to found a school
+which will bury us all." He was right, even though it was late before
+his prophecy was fulfilled.
+
+[Illustration: _Quantin, Paris._
+
+ MILLET. THE WINNOWER.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Charles Millet._)]
+
+Millet was thirty-five when he settled in Barbizon; he had reached the
+age which Dante calls the middle point of life. He had no further tie
+with the outward world; he had broken all the bridges behind him, and
+relied upon himself. He only went back to Paris on business, and he
+always did so unwillingly and for as short a time as possible. He lived
+at Barbizon in the midst of nature and in the midst of his models, and
+to his last day unreservedly gave himself up to the work which in youth
+he had felt himself called to fulfil. Neither criticism, mockery, nor
+contempt could lead him any more astray; even if he had wished it, he
+would have been incapable of following the paths of official art. "_Mes
+critiques_," said he as though by way of excuse, "_sont gens instruits
+et de goût, mais je ne peux me mettre dans leur peau, et comme je n'ai
+jamais vu de ma vie autre chose que les champs, je tâche de dire comme
+je peux ce que j'y ai éprouvé quand j'y travaillais_." When such a man
+triumphs, when he succeeds in forcing upon the world his absolutely
+personal art, it is not Mahomet who has come to the mountain, but the
+mountain to Mahomet.
+
+Millet's life has been, in consequence, a continuous series of
+renunciations. It is melancholy to read in Sensier's biography that such
+a master, even during his Paris days, was forced to turn out copies at
+twenty francs and portraits at five, and to paint tavern signs or
+placards for the booths of rope-dancers and horse-dealers, each one of
+which brought him in a roll of thick sous. When the Revolution of June
+broke out his capital consisted of thirty francs, which the owner of a
+small shop had paid him for a sign, and on this he and his family lived
+for a fortnight. In Barbizon he boarded with a peasant and lived with
+his family in a tiny room where wheat was stored and where bread was
+baked twice in the week; then he took a little house at a hundred and
+sixty francs a year. In winter he sat in a workroom without a fire, in
+thick straw shoes and with an old horse-cloth over his shoulders. Living
+like this he painted "The Sower," that marvellous strophe in his great
+poem on the earth. By the produce of a vegetable garden he endeavoured
+to increase his income, lived on credit with grocer and butcher, and at
+last had creditors in every direction--in particular Gobillot, the baker
+of Chailly, from whom he often hid at his friend Jacque's.
+
+He was forced to accept a loaf from Rousseau for his famishing family,
+and small sums with which he was subsidised by Diaz. "I have received
+the hundred francs," he writes in a letter to Sensier, "and they came
+just at the right time; neither my wife nor I had tasted food for
+four-and-twenty hours. It is a blessing that the little ones, at any
+rate, have not been in want."
+
+[Illustration: _Neurdein Frères, photo._
+
+ MILLET. A MAN MAKING FAGGOTS.]
+
+[Illustration: _Levy et ses Fils, photo._
+
+ MILLET. THE GLEANERS.]
+
+All his efforts to exhibit in Paris were vain. Even in 1859 "Death and
+the Woodcutter" was rejected by the Salon. The public laughed, being
+accustomed to peasants in a comic opera, and, at best, his pictures were
+honoured by a caricature in a humorous paper. Even the most delicate
+connoisseurs had not the right historical perspective to appreciate the
+greatness of Millet, so far was it in advance of the age. And all this
+is so much the sadder when one thinks of the price which his works
+fetched at a later period, when one reads that drawings for which he
+could get with difficulty from twenty to forty francs are the works for
+which as many thousands are now offered. It was only from the middle of
+the fifties that he began to sell at the rate of from two hundred and
+fifty to three hundred francs a picture. Rousseau was the first to offer
+him a large sum, buying his "Woodcutter" for four thousand francs, on
+the pretext that an American was the purchaser. Dupré helped him to
+dispose of "The Gleaners" for two thousand francs. An agreement which
+the picture-dealer Arthur Stevens, brother of Stevens the painter,
+concluded with him had to be dissolved six months afterwards, since
+Millet's time had not yet come. At last, in 1863, when he painted four
+large decorative pictures--"The Four Seasons," which are, by the way,
+his weakest works--for the dining-room of the architect Feydau,
+superfluity came in place of need. He was then in a position, like
+Rousseau and Jacque, to buy himself a little house in Barbizon, close to
+the road by which the place is entered and opposite Ganne's inn. Wild
+vine, ivy, and jessamine clambered round it, and two bushes of white
+roses twisted their branches around the window. It was surrounded by a
+large garden, in which field-flowers bloomed amongst vegetables and
+fruit-trees, whilst a border of white roses and elders led to another
+little house which he used as a studio. Behind was a poultry-yard, and
+behind that again a thickly grown little shrubbery. Here he lived,
+simple and upright, with his art and his own belongings, as a peasant
+and a father of a family, like an Old Testament patriarch. His father
+had had nine children, and he himself had nine. While he painted the
+little ones played in the garden, the elder daughters worked, and when
+the younger children made too much noise, Jeanne, who was seven years
+old, would say with gravity, "_Chut! Papa travaille._" After the
+evening meal he danced his youngest boy upon his knee and told Norman
+tales, or they all went out together into the forest, which the children
+called _la forêt noire_, because it was so wild, gloomy, and
+magnificent.
+
+Millet's poverty was not quite so great as might be supposed from
+Sensier's book. Chintreuil, Théodore Rousseau, and many others were
+acquainted with poverty likewise, and bore it with courage. It may even
+be said that, all things considered, success came to Millet early. The
+real misfortune for an artist is to have had success, to have been rich,
+and later to see himself forgotten when he is stricken with poverty.
+Millet's course was the opposite. From the beginning of the sixties his
+reputation was no longer in question. At the World Exhibition of 1867 he
+was showered with all outward honours. He was represented by nine
+pictures and received the great medal. The whole world knew his name,
+subsistence was abundantly assured to him, and all the younger class of
+artists honoured him like a god. In the Salon of 1869 he was on the
+hanging committee. The picture-dealers, who had passed him by in earlier
+days, now beset his doors; he lived to see his "Woman with the Lamp" for
+which he had received a hundred and fifty francs, sold for thirty-eight
+thousand five hundred at Richard's sale. "_Allons, ils commencent à
+comprendre que c'est de la peinture serieuse._" M. de Chennevières
+commissioned him to take part in the paintings in the Panthéon, and he
+began the work. But strength was denied him; he was prostrated by a
+violent fever, and on 20th January 1875, at six o'clock in the morning,
+Millet was dead. He was then sixty.
+
+[Illustration: _Mansell & Co._
+
+ MILLET. THE WOOD SAWYERS.]
+
+His funeral, indeed, was celebrated with no great parade, for it took
+place far from Paris. It was a cold, dull morning, and there was mist
+and rain. Not many friends had come, only a few painters and critics. At
+eleven o'clock the procession was set in order. And it moved in the rain
+quickly over the two _centimètres_ from Barbizon to Chailly. Even those
+who had hastened from various villages, drawn by curiosity, could not
+half fill the church. But in Paris the announcement of death raised all
+the greater stir. When forty newspapers were displayed in a
+picture-dealer's shop on the morning after his demise, all Paris
+assembled and the excitement was universal. In the critical notices he
+was named in the same breath with Watteau, Leonardo, Raphael, and
+Michael Angelo. The auction which was held soon afterwards in the Hôtel
+Drouot for the disposal of the sketches which he had left behind him
+brought his family three hundred and twenty-one thousand francs. And in
+these days, the very drawings and pastels which were bought for six
+thousand francs immediately after his death have on the average risen in
+value to thirty thousand, while the greater number of his pictures rose
+to a figure beyond the reach of European purchasers, and passed across
+the ocean to the happy land of dollars. Under such circumstances to
+speak any longer of Millet being misunderstood, or to sing hymns of
+praise upon him as a counterblast to the undervaluation of Millet in the
+beginning, would be knocking at an open door. It is merely necessary
+to inquire in an entirely objective spirit what position he occupies in
+the history of modern painting, and what future generations will say of
+him.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ MILLET. VINE-DRESSER RESTING.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Charles Millet._)]
+
+Millet's importance is to some extent ethical; he is not the first who
+painted peasants, but he is the first who has represented them
+truthfully, in all their ruggedness, and likewise in their
+greatness--not for the amusement of others, but as they claim a right to
+their own existence. The spirit of the rustic is naturally grave and
+heavy, and the number of his ideas and emotions is small. He has neither
+wit nor sentimentalism. And when in his leisure moments he sometimes
+gives way to a broad, noisy merriment, his gaiety often resembles
+intoxication, and is not infrequently its consequence. His life, which
+forces him to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, always reminds
+him of the hard fundamental conditions of existence. He looks at
+everything in a spirit of calculation and strict economy. Even the earth
+he stands on wakens in him a mood of seriousness. It is gravely sublime,
+this nature with its wide horizon and its boundless sky. At certain
+seasons it wears a friendly smile, especially for those who have escaped
+for a few hours from town. But for him who always lives in its midst it
+is not the good, tender mother that the townsman fancies. It has its
+oppressive heats in summer and its bitter winter frosts; its majesty is
+austere. And nowhere more austere than in Millet's home, amid those
+plains of Normandy, swept by the rude wind, where he spent his youth as
+a farm labourer.
+
+From this peasant life, painting, before his time, had collected merely
+trivial anecdotes with a conventional optimism. It was through no very
+adequate conception of man that peasants, in those earlier pictures, had
+always to be celebrating marriages, golden weddings, and baptisms,
+dancing rustic dances, making comic proposals, behaving themselves
+awkwardly with advocates, or scuffling in the tavern for the amusement
+of those who frequent exhibitions. They had really won their right to
+existence by their labour. "The most joyful thing I know," writes Millet
+in a celebrated letter to Sensier in 1851, "is the peace, the silence,
+that one enjoys in the woods or on the tilled lands. One sees a poor,
+heavily laden creature with a bundle of faggots advancing from a narrow
+path in the fields. The manner in which this figure comes suddenly
+before one is a momentary reminder of the fundamental condition of human
+life, toil. On the tilled land around one watches figures hoeing and
+digging. One sees how this or that one rises and wipes away the sweat
+with the back of his hand. 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat
+bread.' Is that merry, enlivening work, as some people would like to
+persuade us? And yet it is here that I find the true humanity, the great
+poetry."
+
+Perhaps in his conception of peasant life Millet has been even a little
+too serious; perhaps his melancholy spirit has looked too much on the
+sad side of the peasant's life. For Millet was altogether a man of
+temperament and feelings. His family life had made him so even as a boy.
+To see this, one needs only to read in Sensier's book of his old
+grandmother, who was his godmother likewise, to hear how he felt in
+after-years the news of his father's death and of his mother's, and how
+he burst into tears because he had not given his last embrace to the
+departed. Of course, a man who was so sad and dreamy might be expected
+to lay special stress on the dark side of rustic life, its toil and
+trouble and exhaustion. He had not that easy spirit which _amara lento
+temperat risu_. The passage beneath the peasant-picture in Holbein's
+"Dance of Death" might stand as motto for his whole work--
+
+ "À la sueur de ton visage
+ Tu gagneras ta pauvre vie;
+ Après travail et long usage
+ Voici la mort qui te convie."
+
+[Illustration: _Mansell, photo._
+
+ MILLET. AT THE WELL.]
+
+[Illustration: _Neudein Frères, photo._
+
+ MILLET. BURNING WEEDS.]
+
+This grave and sad trait in Millet's character sets him, for example, in
+abrupt contrast with Corot. Corot had a cheerful temperament, which
+noticed what was kindly in nature everywhere. His favourite hour was
+morning, when the sun rises and the lark exults, when the mists are
+dissipated and the shining dew lies upon the grass like pearls. His
+favourite season was spring, bringing with the new leaves life and joy
+upon the earth. And if he sometimes peopled this laughing world with
+peasant lads and maidens in place of the joyous creatures of his fancy,
+they were only those for whom life is a feast rather than a round of
+hard toil. Compared with so sanguine a man as Corot, Millet is
+melancholy all through; whilst the former renders the spring, the latter
+chooses the oppressive and enervating sultriness of summer. From
+experience he knew that hard toil which makes men old before their time,
+which kills body and spirit, and turns the image of God into an ugly,
+misshapen, and rheumatic thing; and perhaps he has been one-sided in
+seeing only this in the life of the peasant. Nevertheless, it is
+inapposite to cite as a parallel to Millet's paintings of the peasant
+that cruel description of the rustic made in the time of Louis XIV by
+Labruyère: "One sees scattered over the field dwarfed creatures that
+look like some strange kind of animal, black, withered, and sun-burnt,
+fastened to the earth, in which they grub with invincible stubbornness;
+they have something resembling articulate language, and when they raise
+themselves they show a human countenance,--as a matter of fact they are
+men. At night they retire to their holes, where they live on black
+bread, water, and roots. They save other men the trouble of sowing,
+ploughing, and gathering in the harvest, and so gain the advantage of
+not themselves being in want of the bread that they have sown." Yes,
+Millet's peasants toil, and they toil hard, but in bowing over the earth
+at their work they are, in a sense, proudly raised by their whole
+peasant nature. Millet has made human beings out of the manikins of
+illustrated humour, and in this lies his ethical greatness.
+
+As his whole life passed without untruth or artificiality, so his whole
+endeavour as an artist was to keep artificiality and untruth at a
+distance. After a period of _genre_ painting which disposed of things in
+an arbitrary manner, he opened a way for the new movement with its
+unconditional devotion to reality. The "historical painters" having
+conjured up the past with the assistance of old masterpieces, it was
+something to the credit of the _genre_ painters that, instead of looking
+back, they began to look around them. Fragments of reality were
+arranged--in correspondence with the principle of Classical landscape
+painting--according to the rules of composition known to history to make
+_tableaux vivants_ crowded with figures; and such pictures related a
+cheerful or a moving episode of the painter's invention. Millet's virtue
+is to have set emotion in the place of invention, to have set a part of
+nature grasped in its totality with spontaneous freshness in the place
+of composition pieced together from scattered observation and forcing
+life into inconsistent relations--to have set painting in the place of
+history and anecdote. As Rousseau and his fellows discovered the poetry
+of work-a-day nature, Millet discovered that of ordinary life. The
+foundation of modern art could only be laid on painting which no longer
+subjected the world to one-sided rules of beauty, but set itself piously
+to watch for the beauty of things as they were, and renounced all
+literary episodes. Millet does not appear to think that any one is
+listening to him; he communes with himself alone. He does not care to
+make his ideas thoroughly distinct and salient by repetitions and
+antitheses; he renders his emotion, and that is all. And thus painting
+receives new life from him: his pictures are not compositions that one
+sees, but emotions that one feels; it is not a painter who speaks
+through them, but, a man. From the first he had the faculty of seeing
+things simply, directly, and naturally; and to exercise himself in this
+faculty he began with the plainest things: a labourer in the field,
+resting upon his spade and looking straight before him; a sower amid the
+furrows, on which flights of birds are settling down; a man standing in
+a ploughed field, putting on his coat; a woman stitching in a room; a
+girl at the window behind a pot of marguerites. He is never weary of
+drawing land broken up for cultivation, and oftener still he draws
+huddled flocks of sheep upon a heath, their woolly backs stretching with
+an undulatory motion, and a shepherd lad or a girl in their midst.
+
+"The Sower" (1850), "The Peasants going to their Work," "The
+Hay-trussers," "The Reapers," "A Sheep-shearer," "The Labourer grafting
+a Tree" (1855), "A Shepherd," and "The Gleaners" (1857) are his
+principal works in the fifties. And what a deep intuition of nature is
+to be found in "The Gleaners"! They have no impassioned countenances,
+and their movements aim at no declamatory effect of contrast. They do
+not seek compassion, but merely do their work. It is this which gives
+them loftiness and dignity. They are themselves products of nature,
+plants of which the commonest is not without a certain pure and simple
+beauty. Look at their hands. They are not hands to be kissed, but to be
+cordially pressed. They are brave hands, which have done hard work from
+youth upwards--reddened with frost, chapped by soda, swollen with toil,
+or burnt by the sun.
+
+[Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._
+
+ MILLET. THE ANGELUS.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Georges Petit, the owner of the copyright._)]
+
+"The Labourer grafting a Tree" of 1855 is entirely idyllic. In the midst
+of one of those walled-in spaces which are half courtyard and half
+garden, separating in villages the barns from the house, there is
+standing a man who has cut a tree and is grafting a fresh twig. His wife
+is looking on, with their youngest child in her arms. Everything around
+bears the mark of order, cleanliness, and content. Their clothes have
+neither spot nor hole, and wear well under the anxious care of the wife.
+Here is the old French peasant, true to the soil, and living and dying
+in the place of his birth: it is a picture of patriarchal simplicity. In
+1859 appeared "The Angelus," that work which chimes like a low-toned and
+far-off peal of bells. "I mean," he said--"I mean the bells to be heard
+sounding, and only natural truth of expression can produce the effect."
+Nothing is wanting in these creations, neither simplicity nor truth. The
+longer they are looked at, the more something is seen in them which goes
+beyond reality. "The Man with the Mattock," the celebrated picture of
+1863, is altogether a work of great style; it recalls antique statues
+and the figures of Michael Angelo, without in any way resembling them.
+In his daring veracity Millet despised all the artificial grace and
+arbitrary beatification which others introduced into rustic life; and
+while, in turning from it, he rested only on the most conscientious
+reverence for nature, his profound draughtsmanlike knowledge of the
+human form has given a dignity and a large style to the motions of the
+peasant which no one discovered before his time. There is a simplicity,
+a harmony, and a largeness in the lines of his pictures such as only the
+greatest artists have had. He reached it in the same way as Rousseau and
+Corot reached their style in landscape: absorbed and saturated by
+reality, he was able, in the moment of creation, to dispense with the
+model without suffering for it, and to attain truth and condensation
+without being hindered by petty detail.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ MILLET. THE SHEPHERDESS AND HER SHEEP.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Charles Millet._)]
+
+He himself went about in Barbizon like a peasant. And he might have been
+seen wandering over the woods and fields with an old, red cloak, wooden
+shoes, and a weather-beaten straw hat. He rose at sunrise, and wandered
+about the country as his parents had done. He guarded no flocks, drove
+no cows, and no yokes of oxen or horses; he carried neither mattock nor
+spade, but rested on his stick; he was equipped only with the faculty of
+observation and poetic intuition. He went about like the people he met,
+roamed round the houses, entered the courtyards, looked over the hedges,
+knew the gleaners and reapers, the girls who took care of the geese, and
+the shepherds in their big cloaks, as they stood motionless amongst
+their flocks, resting on a staff. He entered the wash-house, the
+bake-house, and the dairies where the butter was being churned. He
+witnessed the birth of a calf or the death of a pig, or leant with
+folded arms on the garden wall and looked into the setting sun, as it
+threw a rosy veil over field and forest. He heard the chime of vesper
+bells, watched the people pray and then return home. And he returned
+also, and read the Bible by lamplight, while his wife sewed and the
+children slept. When all was quiet he closed the book and began to
+dream. Once more he saw all that he had come across in the course of the
+day. He had gone out without canvas or colours; he had merely noted down
+in passing a few motives in his sketch-book: as a rule he never took his
+pencil from his pocket, but merely meditated, his mind being compelled
+to notice all that his eye saw. Then he went through it again in his
+memory. On the morrow he painted.
+
+[Illustration: _Quantin, Paris._
+
+ MILLET. THE SHEPHERD AT THE PEN AT NIGHTFALL.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Charles Millet._)]
+
+His study seems to have been an incessant exercise of the eye to see and
+to retain the essential, the great lines in nature as in the human body.
+Advancing upon Daumier's path, he divested figures of all that is merely
+accidental, and simplified them, to bring the character and ground-note
+more into relief. This simplification, this marvellous way of expressing
+forcibly as much as possible with the smallest means, no one has ever
+understood like Millet. There is nothing superfluous, nothing petty, and
+everything bears witness to an epic spirit attracted by what is great
+and heroic. His drawing was never encumbered by what was subsidiary and
+anecdotic; his mind was fixed on the decisive lines which characterise a
+movement, and give it rhythm. It was just this feeling for rhythm which
+his harmonious nature possessed in the very highest degree. He did not
+give his peasants Grecian noses, and he never lost himself in arid and
+trivial observation; he simplified and sublimated their outlines, making
+them the heroes and martyrs of toil. His figures have a majesty of
+style, an august grandeur; and something almost resembling the antique
+style of relief is found in his pictures. It is no doubt characteristic
+that the only works of art which he had in his studio were plaster casts
+of the metopes of the Parthenon. He himself was like a man of antique
+times, both in the simplicity of his life and in his outward
+appearance--a peasant in wooden shoes who had, set upon his shoulders,
+the head of the Zeus of Otricoli. And as his biography reads like an
+Homeric poem, so his great and simple art sought for what was primitive,
+aboriginal, and heroic. Note the Michelangelesque motions of "The
+Sower." The peasant, striding on with a firm tread, seems to show by his
+large movements his consciousness of the grandeur of his daily toil: he
+is the heroic embodiment of man, swaying the earth, making it fruitful
+and subservient to his own purposes.
+
+ "Il marche dans la plaine immense,
+ Va, vient, lance la graine au loin,
+ Rouvre sa main et recommence;
+ Et je médite, obscur témoin,
+ Pendant que déployant ses voiles
+ L'ombre où se mêle une rumeur
+ Semble élargir jusqu'aux étoiles
+ Le geste auguste du semeur."
+
+Note the epical quietude of "The Gleaners," the three Fates of poverty,
+as Gautier called them, the priestly dignity of "The Woodcutter," the
+almost Indian solemnity of "The Woman leading her Cow to Grass." She
+stands in her wooden shoes as if on a pedestal, her dress falls into
+sculpturesque folds, and a grave and melancholy hebetude is imprinted on
+her countenance. Millet is the Michael Angelo of peasants. In their
+large simplicity his pictures make the appeal of religious painting, at
+once plastic and mystical.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ MILLET. A WOMAN FEEDING CHICKENS.]
+
+But it is in no sense merely through instinct that Millet has attained
+this altitude of style. Although the son of a peasant, and himself a
+peasant and the painter of peasants, he knew thoroughly well what he
+wanted to do; and this aim of his he has not only formulated practically
+in his pictures, but has made theoretically clear in his letters and
+treatises. For Millet was not simply a man who had a turn for dreaming;
+he had, at the same time, a brooding, philosophic mind, in which the
+ideas of a thinker were harboured beside the emotions of a poet. In the
+portrait of himself, given on the title-page of Sensier's book, a
+portrait in which he has something sickly, something ethereal and tinged
+with romance, only one side of his nature is expressed. The great
+medallion of Chappu reveals the other side: the keen, consecutive
+thinker, to be found in the luminous and remorselessly logical letters.
+In this respect he is the true representative of his race. In opposition
+to the _esprit_ and graceful levity of the Parisian, a quieter and more
+healthy human understanding counts as the chief characteristic of the
+Norman; and this clear and precise capacity for thought was intensified
+in Millet by incessant intellectual training.
+
+[Illustration: _Mansell, photo._
+
+ MILLET. THE SHEPHERDESS.]
+
+Even as a child he had received a good education from his uncle, who was
+an ecclesiastic, and he learnt enough Latin to read the _Georgics_ of
+Virgil and other ancient authors in the original text. He knows them
+almost by heart, and cites them continually in his letters. When he came
+to Paris he spent long hours in the galleries, not copying this or that
+portion of a picture, but fathoming works of art to their inmost core
+with a clear eye. In Cherbourg he devoured the whole of Vasari in the
+library, and read all he could find about Dürer, Leonardo, Michael
+Angelo, and Poussin. Even in Barbizon he remained throughout his whole
+life an eager reader. Shakespeare fills him with admiration; Theocritus
+and Burns are his favourite poets. "Theocritus makes it evident to me,"
+he says, "that one is never more Greek than when one simply renders
+one's own impressions, let them come whence they may." When not painting
+or studying nature he had always a book in his hand, and knew no more
+cordial pleasure than when a friend increased his little library by the
+present of a fresh one. Though in his youth he tilled the ground and
+ploughed, and in later days lived like a peasant, he was better
+instructed than most painters; he was a philosopher, a scholar. His
+manner in speaking was leisurely, quiet, persuasive, full of conviction,
+and impregnated by his own peculiar ideas, which he had thoroughly
+thought out.
+
+"My dear Millet," wrote a critic, "you must sometimes see good-looking
+peasants and pretty country girls." To which Millet replied: "No doubt;
+but beauty does not lie in the face. It lies in the harmony between man
+and his industry. Your pretty country girls prefer to go up to town; it
+does not suit them to glean and gather faggots and pump water. Beauty is
+expression. When I paint a mother I try to render her beautiful by the
+mere look she gives her child." He goes on to say that what has been
+once clearly seen is beautiful if it is simply and sincerely
+interpreted. Everything is beautiful which is in its place, and nothing
+is beautiful which appears out of place. Therefore no emasculation of
+characters is ever beautiful. Apollo is Apollo and Socrates is Socrates.
+Mingle them and they both lose, and become a mixture which is neither
+fish nor flesh. This was what brought about the decadence of modern art.
+"_Au lieu de naturaliser l'art, ils artialisent la nature._" The
+Luxembourg Gallery had shown him that he ought not to go to the theatre
+to create true art. "_Je voudrais que les êtres que je représente aient
+l'air voués à leur position; et qu'il soit impossible d'imaginer qu'il
+leur puisse venir à l'idée d'être autre chose que ce qu'ils sont. On est
+dans un milieu d'un caractère ou d'un autre, mais celui qu'on adopte
+doit primer. On devrait être habitué à ne recevoir de la nature ses
+impressions de quelque sorte qu'elles soient et quelque temperament
+qu'on ait. Il faut être imprégné et saturé d'elle, et ne penser que ce
+qu'elle vous fait penser. Il faut croire qu'elle est assez riche pour
+fournir à tout. Et où puiserait-on, sinon à la source? Pourquoi donc à
+perpétuité proposer aux gens, comme but suprême à atteindre, ce que de
+hautes intelligences ont découvert en elle. Voila donc qu'on rendrait
+les productions de quelques-uns le type et le but de toutes les
+productions à venir. Les gens de génie sont comme doués de la baguette
+divinatoire; les uns découvrent que, dans la nature, ici se trouve cela,
+les autres autre chose ailleurs, selon le temperament de leur flair.
+Leurs productions vous assurent dans cette idée que celui-là trouve qui
+est fait pour trouver, mais il est plaisant de voir, quand le trésor est
+déterré et enlevé, que des gens viennent à perpétuité gratter à cette
+place-là. Il faut savoir découvrir où il y a des truffes. Un chien qui
+n'a pas de flair ne peut que faire triste chasse, puisqu'il ne va qu'en
+voyant chasser celui qui sent la bête et qui naturellement va le
+premier.... Un immense orgueil ou une immense sottise seulement peut
+faire croire à certains hommes qu'ils sont de force à redresser les
+prétendus manques de goût et les erreurs de la nature. Les oeuvres que
+nous aimons, ce n'est qu'à cause qu'elles procèdent d'elle. Les autres
+ne sont que des oeuvres pédantes et vides. On peut partir de tous les
+points pour arriver au sublime, et tout est propre à l'exprimer, si on a
+une assez haute visée. Alors ce que vous aimez avec le plus
+d'emportement et de passion devient votre beau à vous et qui s'impose
+aux autres. Que chacun apporte le sien. L'impression force l'expression.
+Tout l'arsenal de la nature est à la disposition des hommes. Qui oserait
+décider qu'une pomme de terre est inférieure à une grenade._"
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ MILLET. THE LABOURER GRAFTING A TREE.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Charles Millet._)]
+
+Thus he maintains that when a stunted tree grows upon sterile soil it is
+more beautiful in this particular place, because more natural, than a
+slender tree artificially transplanted. "The beautiful is that which is
+in keeping. Whether this is to be called realism or idealism I do not
+know. For me, there is only one manner of painting, and that is to paint
+with fidelity." In what concerns poetry old Boileau has already
+expressed this in the phrase: "Nothing is beautiful except truth"; and
+Schiller has thrown it into the phrase, "Let us, ultimately, set up
+truth for beauty." For the art of the nineteenth century Millet's words
+mean the erection of a new principle, of a principle that had the effect
+of a novel force, that gave the consciousness of a new energy of
+artistic endeavour, that was a return to that which the earth was to
+Antæus. And by formulating this principle--the principle that
+everything is beautiful so far as it is true, and nothing beautiful so
+far as it is untrue, that beauty is the blossom, but truth the tree--by
+clearly formulating this principle for the first time, Millet has become
+the father of the new French and, indeed, of European art, almost more
+than by his own pictures.
+
+For--and here we come to the limitations of his talent--has Millet as a
+painter really achieved what he aimed at? No less a person than
+Fromentin has put this question in his _Maîtres d'autrefois_. On his
+visit to Holland he chances for a moment to speak of Millet, and he
+writes:--
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ MILLET. A WOMAN KNITTING.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Charles Millet._)]
+
+"An entirely original painter, high-minded and disposed to brooding,
+kind-hearted and genuinely rustic in nature, he has expressed things
+about the country and its inhabitants, about their toil, their
+melancholy, and the nobleness of their labour, which a Dutchman would
+never have discovered. He has represented them in a somewhat barbaric
+fashion, in a manner to which his ideas gave a more expressive force
+than his hand possessed. The world has been grateful for his intentions;
+it has recognised in his method something of the sensibility of a Burns
+who was a little awkward in expression. But has he left good pictures
+behind him or not? Has his articulation of form, his method of
+expression, I mean the envelopment without which his ideas could not
+exist, the qualities of a good style of painting, and does it afford an
+enduring testimony? He stands out as a deep thinker if he is compared
+with Potter and Cuyp; he is an enthralling dreamer if he is opposed to
+Terborch and Metsu, and he has something peculiarly noble compared with
+the trivialities of Steen, Ostade, and Brouwer. As a man he puts them
+all to the blush. Does he outweigh them as a painter?"
+
+[Illustration: _Neurdein Frères, photo._
+
+ MILLET. THE RAINBOW.]
+
+If any one thinks of Millet as a draughtsman he will answer this
+question without hesitation in the affirmative. His power is firmly
+rooted in the drawings which constitute half his work. And he has not
+merely drawn to make sketches or preparations for pictures, like
+Leonardo, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Watteau, or Delacroix; his drawings
+were for him real works of art complete in themselves; and his enduring
+and firmly grounded fame rests upon them. Michael Angelo, Raphael,
+Leonardo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Prudhon, Millet; that is, more or less, the
+roll of the greatest draughtsmen in the history of art. His pastels and
+etchings, his drawings in chalk, pencil, and charcoal, are astonishing
+through their eminent delicacy of technique. The simpler the medium the
+greater is the effect achieved. "The Woman Churning" in the Louvre; the
+quietude of his men reaping, and of his woman-reaper beside the heaps of
+corn; "The Water Carriers," who are like Greek kanephoræ; the peasant
+upon the potato-field, lighting his pipe with a flint and a piece of
+tinder; the woman sewing by the lamp beside her sleeping child; the
+vine-dresser resting; the little shepherdess sitting dreamily on a
+bundle of straw near her flock at pasture,--in all these works in black
+and white he is as great as he is as a colourist and as a painter in
+open air. There are no sportive and capricious sunbeams, as in Diaz.
+Millet's sun is too serious merely to play over the fields; it is the
+austere day-star, ripening the harvest, forcing men to sweat over their
+toil and with no time to waste in jest. And as a landscape painter he
+differs from Corot in the same vital manner.
+
+Corot, the old bachelor, dallies with nature; Millet, nine times a
+father, knows her only as the fertile mother, nourishing all her
+children. The temperament of the brooding, melancholy man breaks out in
+his very conception of nature: "Oh, if they knew how beautiful the
+forest is! I stroll into it sometimes of an evening, and always return
+with a sense of being overwhelmed. It has a quiet and majesty which are
+terrible, so that I have often a feeling of actual fear. I do not know
+what the trees talk about amongst themselves, but they say to each other
+something which we do not understand, because we do not speak the same
+language. That they are not making bad jokes seems certain." He loved
+what Corot has never painted--the sod, the sod as sod, the sod which
+steams beneath the rays of the fertilising sun. And yet, despite all
+difference of temperament, he stands beside Corot as perhaps the
+greatest landscape painter of the century. His landscapes are vacant and
+devoid of charm; they smell of the earth rather than of jessamine, yet
+it is as if the Earth-Spirit itself were invisibly brooding over them. A
+few colours enable him to attain that great harmony which is elsewhere
+peculiar to Corot alone, and which, when his work was over, he so often
+discussed with his neighbour Rousseau. With a few brilliant and easily
+executed shadings he gives expression to the vibration of the
+atmosphere, the lustre of the sky at sunset, the massive structure of
+the ground, the blissful tremor upon the plain at sunrise. At one time
+he renders the morning mist lying over the fields, at another the haze
+of sultry noon, veiling and as it were absorbing the outlines and
+colours of all objects, the light of sunset streaming over field and
+woodland with a tender, tremulous glimmering, the delicate silver tone
+which veils the landscape on clear moonlight nights.
+
+There is not another artist of the century who renders night as Millet
+does in his pastels. One of the most charming and poetic works is the
+biblical and mystical night-piece "The Flight into Egypt." As he strides
+forward Saint Joseph holds upon his arm the Child, whose head is
+surrounded by a shining halo, whilst the Mother moves slowly along the
+banks of the Nile riding upon an ass. The stars twinkle, the moon throws
+its tremulous light uncertainly over the plain. Joseph and Mary are
+Barbizon peasants, and yet these great figures breathe of the Sistine
+Chapel and of Michael Angelo. And which of the old masters has so
+eloquently rendered the sacred silence of night as Millet has done in
+his "Shepherd at the Pen"? The landscapes which he has drawn awaken the
+impression of spaciousness as only Rembrandt's etchings have done, and
+that of fine atmosphere as only Corot's pictures. A marvellously
+transparent and tender evening sky rests over his picture of cows coming
+down to drink at the lake, and a liquid moonlight washes over the crests
+of the waves around "The Sailing Boat." The garden in stormy light with
+a high-lying avenue spanned by a rainbow--the motive which he developed
+for the well-known picture in the Louvre--is found again and again in
+several pastels, which progress from a simple to a more complicated
+treatment of the theme. Everything is transparent and delicate, full of
+air and light, and the air and light are themselves full of magic and
+melting charm.
+
+[Illustration: _S. Low & Co._ THE BARBIZON STONE.]
+
+But it is a different matter when one attempts to answer Fromentin's
+question in the form in which it is put. For without in any way
+detracting from Millet's importance, one may quietly make the
+declaration: No, Millet was _not_ a good painter. Later generations,
+with which he will no longer be in touch through his ethical greatness,
+if they consider his paintings alone, will scarcely understand the high
+estimation in which he is held at present. For although many works which
+have come into private collections in Boston, New York, and Baltimore
+are, in their original form, withdrawn from judgment, they are certainly
+not better than the many works brought together in the Millet Exhibition
+of 1886 or the World Exhibition of 1889. And these had collectively a
+clumsiness, and a dry and heavy colouring, which are not merely
+old-fashioned, primitive, and antediluvian in comparison with the works
+of modern painters, but which fall far below the level of their own time
+in the quality of colour. The conception in Millet's paintings is always
+admirable, but never the technique; he makes his appeal as a poet only,
+and never as a painter. His painting is often anxiously careful, heavy,
+and thick, and looks as if it had been filled in with masonry; it is
+dirty and dismal, and wanting in free and airy tones. Sometimes it is
+brutal and hard, and occasionally it is curiously indecisive in effect.
+Even his best pictures--"The Angelus" not excepted--give no æsthetic
+pleasure to the eye. The most ordinary fault in his painting is that it
+is soft, greasy, and woolly. He is not light enough with what should be
+light, nor fleeting enough with what is fleeting. And this defect is
+especially felt in his treatment of clothes. They are of a massive,
+distressing solidity, as if moulded in brass, and not woven from flax
+and wool. The same is true of his air, which has an oily and material
+effect. Even in "The Gleaners" the aspect is cold and gloomy; it is
+without the intensity of light which is shed through the atmosphere, and
+streams ever changing over the earth.
+
+And this is a declaration of what was left for later artists to achieve.
+The problem of putting real human beings in their true surroundings was
+stated by Millet, solved in his pastels, and left unsolved in his oil
+paintings. This same problem had to be taken up afresh by his
+successors, and followed to its furthest consequences. At the same time,
+it was necessary to widen the choice of subject.
+
+For it is characteristic of Millet, the great peasant, that his art is
+exclusively concerned with peasants. His sensitive spirit, which from
+youth upwards had compassion for the hard toil and misery of the country
+folk, was blind to the sufferings of the artisans of the city, amid whom
+he had lived in Paris in his student days. The _ouvrier_, too, has his
+poetry and his grandeur. As there is a cry of the earth, so is there
+also a cry, as loud and as eloquent, which goes up from the pavement of
+great cities. Millet lived in Paris during a critical and terrible time.
+He was there during the years of ferment at the close of the reign of
+Louis Philippe. Around him there muttered all the terrors of Socialism
+and Communism. He was there during the February Revolution and during
+the days of June. While the artisans fought on the barricades he was
+painting "The Winnower." The misery of Paris and the sufferings of the
+populace did not move him. Millet, the peasant, had a heart only for the
+peasantry. He was blind to the sufferings, blind to the charms of modern
+city life. Paris seemed to him a "miserable, dirty nest." There was no
+picturesque aspect of the great town that fascinated him. He felt
+neither its grace, its elegance and charming frivolity, nor remarked the
+mighty modern movement of ideas and the noble humanity which set their
+seal upon that humanitarian century. The development of French art had
+to move in both of these directions. It was partly necessary to take up
+afresh with improved instruments the problem of the modern conception of
+colour, touched on by Millet; it was partly necessary to extend from the
+painting of peasants to modern life the principle formulated by Millet,
+"_Le beau c'est le vrai_," to transfer it from the forest of
+Fontainebleau to Paris, from the solitude to life, from the evening
+gloom to sunlight, from the softness of romance to hard reality.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The fourth book of this work will be devoted to the consideration of
+those masters who, acting on this principle, extended beyond the range
+of Millet and brought the art which he had created to fuller fruition.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+THE REALISTIC PAINTERS AND THE MODERN IDEALISTS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+REALISM IN FRANCE
+
+
+To continue in Paris what Millet had begun in the solitude of the forest
+of Fontainebleau there was need of a man of the unscrupulous animal
+power of _Gustave Courbet_. The task assigned to him was similar to that
+which fell to Caravaggio in the seventeenth century. In that age, when
+the eclectic imitation of the Cinquecento had reached the acme of
+mannerism, when Carlo Dolci and Sassoferato devoted themselves in
+mythological pictures to watering down the types of Raphael by
+idealising, Caravaggio painted scenes amongst dregs of the people and
+the unbridled soldiery of his age. At a period when these artists
+indulged in false, artificial, and doctrinaire compositions, which, on a
+barren system, merely traced the performances of classic masters back to
+certain rules of art, Caravaggio created works which may have been
+coarse, but which had an earnest and fruitful veracity, and gave the
+entire art of the seventeenth century another direction by their healthy
+and powerful naturalism.
+
+When Courbet appeared the situation was similar: Ingres, in whose frigid
+works the whole Cinquecento had been crystallised, was at the zenith of
+his fame. Couture had painted his "Decadent Romans" and Cabanel had
+recorded his first successes. Beside these stood that little Neo-Grecian
+school with Louis Hamon at its head--a school whose prim style of china
+painting had the peculiar admiration of the public. Courbet, with all
+his brutal weight, pushed between the large symmetrical figures of the
+thoroughbred Classicists and the pretty confectionery of the Neo-Grecian
+painters of beauty. But the old panacea is never without effect: in all
+periods when art has overlived its bloom and falls into mannerism it is
+met by a strong cross-current of realism pouring into it new life-blood.
+In painting, nature had been made artificial, and it was time for art to
+be made natural. Painters still strayed in the past, seeking to awaken
+the dead, and give life once more to history. The time had come for
+accentuating the claims of the present more sharply than before, and for
+setting art amid the seething life of modern cities: it was a
+development naturally and logically following that of political life; it
+is historically united with the unintermittent struggle for universal
+suffrage. Courbet merely fought the decisive battle in the great fight
+which Jeanron, Leleux, Octave Tassaert, and others had begun as
+skirmishing outposts. As a painter he towered over these elder artists,
+whose sentimental pictures had not been taken seriously as works of
+art, and challenged attention all the more by painting life-size. In
+this manner the last obstacle was removed which had stood in the way of
+the treatment of modern subjects. Scanty notice had been taken of
+Millet's little peasant figures, which were merely reckoned as
+accessories to the landscape. But Courbet's pictures first taught the
+Academy that the "picture of manners," which had seemed so harmless, had
+begun to usurp the place of historical painting in all its pride.
+
+At the same time--and this made Courbet's appearance of still more
+consequence than that of his predecessors--a most effective literary
+propaganda went hand in hand with that which was artistic. Millet had
+been silent and was known only by his friends. He had never arranged for
+an exhibition of his works, and quietly suffered the rejections of the
+hanging committee and the derision of the public. Courbet blustered,
+beat the big drum, threw himself into forcible postures like a strong
+man juggling with cannon-balls, and announced in the press that he was
+the only serious artist of the century. No one could ever _embêter le
+bourgeois_ with such success, no one has called forth such a howl of
+passion, no one so complacently surrendered his private life to the
+curiosity of the great public, with the swaggering attitude of an
+athlete displaying his muscles in the circus. As regards this method of
+making an appearance--a method by which he became at times almost
+grotesque--one may take whatever view one pleases; but when he came he
+was necessary. In art revolutions are made with the same brutality as in
+life. People shout and sing, and break the windows of those who have
+windows to break. For every revolution has a character of inflexible
+harshness. Wisdom and reason have no part in the passions necessary for
+the work of destruction and rebuilding. Caravaggio was obliged to take
+to his weapons, and make sanguinary onslaughts. In our civilised
+nineteenth century everything was accomplished according to law, but not
+with less passion. One has to make great demands to receive even a
+little; this has been true in all times, and this is precisely what
+Courbet did. He was a remarkable character striving for high aims, an
+eccentric man of genius, a modern Narcissus for ever contemplating
+himself in his vanity, and yet he was the truest friend, the readiest to
+sacrifice himself; for the crowd a cynic and a reckless talker; at home
+an earnest and mighty toiler, bursting out like a child and appeased the
+very next moment; outwardly as brutal as he was inwardly sensitive, as
+egotistic as he was proud and independent; and being what he was, he
+formulated his purposes as incisively by his words as in his works. Full
+of fire and enthusiasm, destroying and inciting to fresh creation--a
+nature like Lorenz Gedon, whom he also resembled in appearance--he
+became the soul and motive power of the great realistic movement which
+flooded Europe from the beginning of the fifties. Altogether he was the
+man of whom art had need at that time: a doctor who brought health with
+him, shed it abroad, and poured blood into the veins of art. Both as man
+and artist his entry upon the arena is in some degree like the breaking
+in of an elemental force of nature. He comes from the country in wooden
+shoes, with the self-reliance of a peasant who is afraid of nothing. He
+is a great and powerful man, as sound and natural as the oxen of his
+birthplace. He had broad shoulders, with which he pushed aside
+everything standing in his way. His was an instinct rather than a
+reflecting brain, a _peintre-animal_, as he was called by a Frenchman.
+And such a plebeian was wanted to beat down the academic Olympus. In
+making him great and strong, nature had herself predestined him for the
+part he had to play: a man makes a breach the more easily for having big
+muscles. Furnished with the strength of a Samson wrecking the temple of
+the Philistines, he was himself "The Stone-breaker" of his art, and,
+like the men he painted, he has done a serviceable day's work.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._ GUSTAVE COURBET.]
+
+Gustave Courbet, the strong son of Franche-Comté, was born in 1819, in
+Ornans, a little town near Besançon. Like his friend and
+fellow-countryman Proudhon, the socialist, he had a strain of German
+blood in his veins, and in their outward appearance it gave them both
+something Teutonic, rugged, and heavy, contrasting with French ease and
+elegance. On his massive frame was set a thick, athletic neck, and a
+broad countenance with black hair, and big, strong eyes like those of a
+lion-tamer, which sparkled like black diamonds. A strong man, who had
+never been stinted, he was of medium height, broad-shouldered, bluff,
+ruddy like a slaughterman, and, as the years passed, disposed to acquire
+a more liberal circumference of body. He went about working like
+Sisyphus, and never without a short pipe in his mouth, the classic
+_brûle-gueule_, loaded with strong caporal. His movements were broad and
+heavy, and, being a little short in his breathing, he wheezed when he
+was excited, and perspired over his painting. His dress was comfortable,
+but not elegant; and his head was formed for a cap rather than the
+official tall hat. In speech he was cynical, and often broke into a
+contemptuous laugh. Both in his studio and at his tavern he moved more
+freely in his shirt-sleeves, and at the Munich Exhibition of 1869 he
+seemed to the German painters like a thorough old Bavarian, when he sat
+down to drink with them at the _Deutsches Haus_ in his jovial way, and,
+by a rather Teutonic than Latin capacity for disposing of beer, threw
+the most inveterate of the men of Munich into the shade.
+
+Originally destined for the law, he determined in 1837 to become a
+painter, and began his artistic studies under Flageoulot, a mediocre
+artist of the school of David, who had drifted into the provinces, and
+boastfully called himself _le roi du dessin_. In 1839 he came to Paris,
+already full of self-reliance, fire and strength. On his first turn
+through the Luxembourg Gallery he paused before Delacroix's "Massacre of
+Chios," glowing as it is in colour, and said it was not bad, but that he
+could do that style of thing whenever he liked. After a short time he
+acquired a power of execution full of bravura by studying the old
+masters in the Louvre. Self-taught in art, he was in life a democrat and
+in politics a republican. In 1848, during a battle in June, he had a
+fair prospect of being shot with a party of insurgents whom he had
+joined, if certain "right-minded" citizens had not interceded for their
+neighbour, who was popular as a man and already much talked about as a
+painter. In the beginning of the fifties he was to be found every
+evening at a _brasserie_ much frequented by artists and students in the
+Rue Hautefeuille in the _Quartier Latin_, in the society of young
+authors of the school of Balzac. He had his studio at the end of the
+street, and is said to have been at the time a strong, fine, spirited
+young man, who made free use of the drastic slang of the studios.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ COURBET. THE MAN WITH A LEATHER BELT.
+
+ PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF AS A YOUTH.]
+
+"His notable features," writes Théophile Silvestre of Courbet at this
+time,--"his notable features seem as though they had been modelled from
+an Assyrian bas-relief. His well-shaped and brilliant dark eyes,
+shadowed by long silken lashes, have the soft quiet light of an
+antelope's. The moustache, scarcely traceable beneath his slightly
+curved aquiline nose, is joined by a fan-shaped beard, and borders his
+thick, sensuous lips; his complexion is olive-brown, but of a changing,
+sensitive tone. The round, curiously shaped head and prominent
+cheek-bones denote stubbornness, and the flexible nostrils passion."
+
+A great dispute over realism usually took the place of dessert at
+meal-times. Courbet never allowed himself to be drawn into controversy.
+He threw his opinion bluntly out, and when he was opposed cut the
+conversation short in an exceedingly forcible manner. It was another
+murder of the innocents when he spoke of the celebrities of his time. He
+designated historical painting as nonsense, style as humbug, and blew
+away all ideals, declaring that it was the greatest impudence to wish to
+paint things which one has never seen, and of the appearance of which
+one cannot have the faintest conception. Fancy was rubbish, and reality
+the one true muse.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ COURBET. A FUNERAL AT ORNANS.]
+
+"Our century," he says, "will not recover from the fever of imitation by
+which it has been laid low. Phidias and Raphael have hooked themselves
+on to us. The galleries should remain closed for twenty years, so that
+the moderns might at last begin to see with their own eyes. For what can
+the old masters offer us? It is only Ribera, Zurbaran, and Velasquez
+that I admire; Ostade and Craesbeeck also allure me; and for Holbein, I
+feel veneration. As for M. Raphael, there is no doubt that he has
+painted some interesting portraits, but I cannot find any ideas in him.
+And the artistic kin, the heirs, or more properly the slaves of this
+great man, are really preceptors of the lowest art. What do they teach
+us? Nothing. A good picture will never come from their _École des
+Beaux-Arts_. The most precious thing is the originality, the
+independence of an artist. Schools have no right to exist; there are
+only painters. Independently of system and without attaching myself to
+any party, I have studied the art of the old masters and of the more
+modern. I have tried to imitate the one as little as I have tried to
+copy the other, but out of the total knowledge of tradition I have
+wished to draw a firm and independent sense of my own individuality. My
+object was by gaining knowledge to gain in ability; to have the power of
+expressing the ideas, the manners, and the aspect of our epoch
+according to an appreciation of my own, not merely to be a painter, but
+a man also--in a word, to practise living art is the compass of my
+design. I am not only a socialist, but also a democrat and a
+republican--that is to say, a supporter of every revolution; and
+moreover, a sheer realist, which means a loyal adherent to the _vérité
+vraie_. But the principle of realism is the negation of the ideal. And
+following all that comes from this negation of the ideal, I shall arrive
+at the emancipation of the individual, and, finally, at democracy.
+Realism, in its essence, is democratic art. It can only exist by the
+representation of things which the artist can see and handle. For
+painting is an entirely physical language, and an abstract, invisible,
+non-existent object does not come within its province. The grand
+painting which we have stands in contradiction with our social
+conditions, and ecclesiastical painting in contradiction with the spirit
+of the century. It is nonsensical for painters of more or less talent to
+dish up themes in which they have no belief, themes which could only
+have flourished in some epoch other than our own. Better paint railway
+stations with views of the places through which one travels, with
+likenesses of great men through whose birthplace one passes, with
+engine-houses, mines, and manufactories; for these are the saints and
+miracles of the nineteenth century."
+
+These doctrines fundamentally tallied with those which the Neapolitan
+and Spanish naturalists vindicated in the seventeenth century against
+the eclectics. For men like Poussin, Leseur, and Sassoferato, Raphael
+was "an angel and not a man," and the Vatican "the academy of painters."
+But Velasquez when he came to Rome found it wearisome. "What do you say
+of our Raphael? Do you not think him best of all, now that you have seen
+everything that is fair and beautiful in Italy?" Don Diego inclined his
+head ceremoniously, and observed: "To confess the truth, for I like to
+be candid and open, I must acknowledge that I do not care about Raphael
+at all." There are reported utterances of Caravaggio which correspond
+almost word for word with those of Courbet. He, too, declaimed against
+the antique and Raphael, in whose shadow he saw so many shallow
+imitators sitting at their ease, and he declared, in a spirit of sharp
+opposition, that the objects of daily life were the only true teachers.
+He would owe all to nature and nothing to art. He held painting without
+the model to be absurd. So long as the model was out of sight, his hands
+and his spirit were idle. Moreover, he called himself a democratic
+painter, who brought the fourth estate into honour; he "would rather be
+the first of vulgar painters than second amongst the superfine." And
+just as these naturalists in the seventeenth century were treated by the
+academical artists as rhyparographists, Courbet's programme did not on
+the whole facilitate his acceptance in formal exhibitions as he desired
+that it should. A play must be acted, a manuscript printed, and a
+picture viewed. So Courbet had no desire to remain an outsider. When the
+picture committee of the World Exhibition of 1855 gave his pictures an
+unfavourable position, he withdrew them and offered them to public
+inspection separately in a wooden hut in the vicinity of the Pont de
+Jena, just at the entry of the exhibition. Upon the hut was written in
+big letters: REALISM--G. COURBET. And in the interior the theories which
+he had urged hitherto by his tongue and his pen, at the tavern and in
+his pamphlets, were demonstrated by thirty-eight large pictures, which
+elucidate his whole artistic development.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ COURBET. THE STONE-BREAKERS.]
+
+"Lot's Daughters" and "Love in the Country" were followed in 1844 by the
+portrait of himself and the picture of his dog, in 1845 by "A
+Guitarrero," in 1846 by the "Portrait of M. M----," and in 1847 by "The
+Walpurgisnacht"; all works in which he was still groping his way. "The
+Sleeping Bathers," "The Violoncello Player," and a landscape from his
+native province, belonging to the year 1848, made a nearer approach to
+his realistic aim, and with the date 1849 there are seven portraits,
+landscapes, and pictures from popular national life: "The Painter," "M.
+H. T---- looking over Engravings," "The Vintage in Ornans below the
+Roche du Mont," "The Valley of the Bue seen from the Roche du Mont,"
+"View of the Château of Saint-Denis," "Evening in the Village of
+Scey-en-Varay," and "Peasants returning from Mass near Flagey." All
+these works had passed the doors of the Salon without demur.
+
+The first picture which brought about a collision of opinion was "A Fire
+in Paris," and, according to the account given by contemporaries, it
+must have been one of his finest works. Firemen, soldiers, artisans in
+jacket and blouse, were exerting themselves, according to Paul d'Abrest
+who describes the picture, around a burning house; even women helped in
+the work of rescue, and formed part of the chain handing buckets from
+the pump. Opposite stood a group of young dandies with girls upon their
+arms looking inactively upon the scene. An artillery captain, who was
+amongst Courbet's acquaintances, had through several nights sounded the
+alarm for his men and exercised them on the scaffolding of a wall, so
+that the painter could make his studies. Courbet transferred his studio
+to the barracks and made sketches by torch-light. But he had reckoned
+without the police; scarcely was the picture finished before it was
+seized, as the Government recognised in it, for reasons which did not
+appear, "an incitement to the people of the town." This was after the
+_coup d'état_ of 1851.
+
+So Courbet's manifesto was not "The Fire in Paris." "The
+Stone-breakers," two men in the dress of artisans, in a plain evening
+landscape, occupied once more the first place in the exhibition of 1855,
+having already made the effect, amongst its classical surroundings in
+the Salon of 1851, of a rough, true, and honest word, spoken amid
+elaborate society phrases. There was also to be seen "Afternoon at
+Ornans,"--a gathering of humble folk sitting after meal-time at a table
+laid out in a rustic kitchen. A picture which became celebrated under
+the title of "Bonjour, M. Courbet" dealt with a scene from Courbet's
+native town. Courbet, just arrived, is alighting from a carriage in his
+travelling costume, looking composedly about him with a pipe in his
+mouth. A respectable prosperous gentleman, accompanied by a servant in
+livery, who is carrying his overcoat, is stretching out his hand to him.
+This gentleman is M. Bryas, the Mæcenas of Ornans, who for long was
+Courbet's only patron, and who had a whim for having his portrait taken
+by forty Parisian painters in order to learn the "manners" of the
+various artists. And there was further to be seen the "Demoiselles de
+Village" of 1852, three country beauties giving a piece of cake to a
+peasant-girl. Finally, as masterpieces, there were "The Funeral at
+Ornans," which now hangs in the Louvre, and that great canvas,
+designated in the catalogue as "a true allegory," "My Studio after Seven
+Years of Artistic Life," the master himself painting a landscape. Behind
+him is a nude model, and in front of him a beggar-woman with her child.
+Around are portrait figures of his friends, and the heroes of his
+pictures, a poacher, a parson, a sexton, labourers, and artisans.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ COURBET. THE RETURN FROM MARKET.]
+
+The exhibition was, at all events, a success with young painters, and
+Courbet set up a teaching studio, at the opening of which he again
+issued a kind of manifesto in the _Courrier du Dimanche_. "Beauty," he
+wrote, "lies in nature, and it is to be met with under the most various
+forms. As soon as it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the
+artist who discovers it. But the painter has no right to add to this
+expression of nature, to alter the form of it and thereby weaken it. The
+beauty offered by nature stands high above all artistic convention. That
+is the basis of my views of art." It is said that his first model was an
+ox. When his pupils wanted another, Courbet said: "Very well, gentlemen,
+next time let us study a courtier." The break-up of the school is
+supposed to have taken place when one day the ox ran away and was not to
+be recaptured.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ COURBET. THE BATTLE OF THE STAGS.]
+
+Courbet did not trouble himself over such ridicule, but painted quietly
+on, the many-sidedness of his talent soon giving him a firm seat in
+every saddle. After the scandal of the separate exhibition of 1855 he
+was excluded from the Salon until 1861, and during this time exhibited
+in Paris and Besançon upon his own account. "The Funeral at Ornans" was
+followed by "The Return from Market," a party of peasants on the
+high-road, and in 1860 by "The Return from the Conference," in which a
+number of French country priests have celebrated their meeting with a
+hearty lunch and set out on the way back in a condition which is far too
+jovial. In 1861, when the gates of the Champs Elysées were thrown open
+to him once more, he received the medal for his "Battle of the Stags,"
+and regularly contributed to the Salon until 1870. In these years he
+attempted pictures with many figures less frequently, and painted by
+preference hunting and animal pieces, landscapes, and the nude figures
+of women. "The Woman with the Parrot," a female figure mantled with
+long hair, lying undressed amid the cushions of a couch playing with her
+gaudily feathered favourite, "The Fox Hunt," a coast scene in Provence,
+the portrait of Proudhon and his family, "The Valley of the Puits-Noir,"
+"Roche Pagnan," "The Roe Hunt," "The Charity of a Beggar," the picture
+of women bathing in the gloom of the forest, and "The Wave," afterwards
+acquired by the Luxembourg, belong to his principal works in the
+sixties.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ COURBET. A WOMAN BATHING.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Sainctelette, of Brussels, the owner of the
+ picture._)]
+
+These works gradually made him so well known that after 1866 his
+pictures came to have a considerable sale. The critics began to take him
+seriously. Castagnary made his début in the _Siècle_ with a study of
+Courbet; Champfleury, the apostle of literary realism, devoted to him a
+whole series of _feuilletons_ in the _Messager de l'Assemblée_, and from
+his intercourse with him Proudhon derived the fundamental principles of
+his book on Realism. The son of Franche-Comté triumphed, and there was a
+beam in his laughing eyes, always like those of a deer. His talent began
+more and more to unfold its wings in the sun of success, and his power
+of production seemed inexhaustible. When the custom arose of publishing
+in the Parisian papers accounts of the budget of painters, he took care
+to communicate that in six months he had made a hundred and twenty-three
+thousand francs. Incessantly busy, he had in his hand at one moment the
+brush and at another the chisel. And when he gave another special
+exhibition of his works in 1867, at the time of the great World
+Exhibition--he had a mania for wooden booths--he was able to put on view
+no less than a hundred and thirty-two pictures in addition to numerous
+pieces of sculpture. In 1869 the committee of the Munich Exhibition set
+apart a whole room for his works. With a self-satisfied smile he put on
+the Order of Michael, and was the hero of the day whom all eyes followed
+upon the boulevards.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ COURBET. DEER IN COVERT.]
+
+The nature of the bullfighter was developed in him more strongly than
+before, and he stretched his powerful limbs, prepared to do battle
+against all existing opinions. Naturally the events of the following
+years found no idle spectator in such a firebrand as Courbet; and
+accordingly he rushed into those follies which embittered the evening of
+his life. The _maître peintre d'Ornans_ became Courbet _le colonnard_.
+First came the sensational protest with which he returned to the Emperor
+Napoleon the Order of the Legion of Honour. Four weeks after Courbet had
+plunged into this affair the war broke out. Eight weeks later came Sedan
+and the proclamation of the Republic, and shortly afterwards the siege
+of Paris and the insurrection. On 4th September 1870 the Provisional
+Government appointed him Director of the Fine Arts. Afterwards he became
+a member of the Commune, and dominated everywhere, with the
+_brûle-gueule_ in his mouth, by the power of his voice; and France has
+to thank him for the rescue of a large number of her most famous
+treasures of art. He had the rich collections of Thiers placed in the
+Louvre, to protect them from the rough and ready violence of the
+populace. But to save the Luxembourg he sacrificed the column of the
+Vendôme. When the Commune fell, however, Courbet alone was held
+responsible for the destruction of the column. He was brought before the
+court-martial of Versailles, and, although Thiers undertook his
+defence, he was condemned to six months' imprisonment. Having undergone
+this punishment he received his freedom once more, but the artist had
+still to suffer a mortal blow. The pictures which he had destined for
+the Salon of 1873 were rejected by the committee, because Courbet was
+held morally unworthy to take part in the exhibition.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ COURBET. GIRLS LYING ON THE BANK OF THE SEINE.]
+
+Soon after this an action was brought against him, on the initiative of
+certain reactionary papers, for the payment of damages connected with
+the overthrow of the Vendôme column, and the painter lost his case. For
+the recovery of these damages, which were assessed at three hundred and
+thirty-four thousand francs, the Government brought to the hammer his
+furniture and the pictures that were in his studio, at a compulsory sale
+at the Hôtel Drouot, where they fetched the absurdly trifling figure of
+twelve thousand one hundred and eighteen francs fifty centimes. The loss
+of his case drove him from France to Switzerland. He gave the town of
+Vevay, where he settled, a bust of Helvetia, as a mark of his gratitude
+for the hospitality it had extended towards him. But the artist was
+crushed in him. "They have killed me," he said; "I feel that I shall
+never do anything good again." And thus the jovial, laughing Courbet,
+that honoured leader of a brilliant pleiad of disciples, the friend and
+companion of Corot, Decamps, Gustave Planché, Baudelaire, Théophile
+Gautier, Silvestre, Proudhon, and Champfleury; the enthusiastic patriot
+and idol of the fickle Parisians, passed his last years in melancholy
+solitude, forgotten by his adherents and scorned by his adversaries. He
+was attacked by a disease of the liver, and privation, disillusionment,
+and depression came all at once. Moreover, the French Government began
+again to make claims for indemnification. His heart broke in a prolonged
+mortal struggle. Shortly before his death he said to a friend: "What am
+I to live upon, and how am I to pay for the column? I have saved Thiers
+more than a million francs, and the State more than ten millions, and
+now they are at my heels--they are baiting me to death. I can do no
+more. To work one must have peace of spirit, and I am a ruined man." And
+Champfleury writes, referring to the last visit which he paid to the
+dying exile on 19th December 1877: "His beard and hair were white, and
+all that remained of the handsome, all-powerful Courbet whom I had known
+was that notable Assyrian profile, which he raised to the snow of the
+Alps, as I sat beside him and saw it for the last time. The sight of
+such pain and misery as this premature wreck of the whole man was
+overwhelming."
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ COURBET. A RECUMBENT WOMAN.]
+
+The Lake of Geneva, over which he looked from his window in Vevay, was
+the subject of the last picture that he painted in Switzerland. Far from
+home and amid indifferent strangers he closed his eyes, which had once
+been so brilliant, in endless grief of spirit. The apostle of Realism
+died of a broken heart, the herculean son of Franche-Comté could not
+suffer disillusionment. Courbet passed away, more or less forgotten,
+upon New Year's Eve in 1877, in that chilly hour of morning when the
+lake which he had learnt to love trembles beneath the first beams of the
+sun. It was only in Belgium, where he had often stayed and where his
+influence was considerable, that the intelligence of his death woke a
+painful echo. In Paris it met with no word of sympathy. Courbetism was
+extinguished; as impressionists and independents his adherents had
+gathered round new flags. Zola has done him honour in _L'Oeuvre_ in the
+person of old Bongrand, that half-perished veteran who is only mentioned
+now and then with veneration.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ COURBET. BERLIOZ.]
+
+And the course of development has indeed been so rapid since Courbet's
+appearance that in these days one almost fails to understand, apart from
+historical reasons, the grounds which in 1855 made his separate
+exhibition of his works an event of epoch-making importance. It was not
+Cham alone who at that time devoted a large cartoon to Courbet, as he
+did in "The Opening of Courbet's Studio and Concentrated Realism." All
+the comic journals of Paris were as much occupied with him as with the
+crinoline, the noiseless pavement, the new tramways, or the balloon.
+Haussard, the principal representative of criticism, in discussing "The
+Funeral at Ornans," spoke of "these burlesque masks with their fuddled
+red noses, this village priest who seems to be a tippler, and the
+harlequin of a veteran who is putting on a hat which is too big for
+him." All this, he continued, suggested a masquerade funeral, six metres
+long, in which there was more to laugh at than to weep over. Even Paul
+Mantz declared that the most extravagant fancy could not descend to such
+a degree of jejune triviality and repulsive hideousness. In a _revue
+d'année_ produced at the Odéon, the authors, Philoxène Hoyer and
+Théodore de Banville, make "a realist" say--
+
+ "Faire vrai ce n'est rien pour être réaliste,
+ C'est faire laid qu'il faut! Or, monsieur, s'il vous plait,
+ Tout ce que je dessine est horriblement laid!
+ Ma peinture est affreuse, et, pour qu'elle soit vraie,
+ J'en arrache le beau comme on fait de l'ivraie.
+ J'aime les teints terreux et les nez de carton,
+ Les fillettes avec de la barbe au menton,
+ Les trognes de Varasque et de coquecigrues,
+ Les dorillons, les cors aux pieds et les verrues!
+ Voilà le vrai!"
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ COURBET. THE HIND ON THE SNOW.]
+
+So it went on through the sixties also. When the Empress Eugénie passed
+through the exhibition on the opening day of the Salon of 1866, with an
+elegant walking-stick in her hand, she was so indignant at Courbet's
+"Naked Women" that the picture had to be immediately removed. In the
+beginning of the seventies, when he exhibited in Germany, a few young
+Munich painters recognised in his pictures something like the cry of a
+conscience. But otherwise "artists and laymen shook their heads, not
+knowing what to make of them. Some smiled and went indifferently on,
+while others were indignant in their condemnation of this degradation of
+art." For "Courbet went to the lowest depths of society, and took his
+themes from a class where man really ceases to be man, and the image of
+God prolongs a miserable existence as a moving mass of flesh. Living
+bodies with dead souls, which exist only for the sake of their animal
+needs; in one place sunk in misery and wretchedness, and in another
+having never risen from their brutal savagery--that is the society from
+which Courbet chooses his motives, to gloss over the debility of his
+imagination and his want of any kind of training. Had he possessed the
+talent for composition, then perhaps his lifeless technique would have
+become interesting; as it is he offers a merely arbitrary succession of
+figures in which coherence is entirely wanting." In "The Stone-breakers"
+it was an offence that he should have treated such "an excessively
+commonplace subject" at all as mere artisans in ragged and dirty
+clothes. And by "The Funeral at Ornans" it was said that he meant to
+sneer at the religious ceremony, since the picture had a defiant and
+directly brutal vulgarity. The painter was alleged to have taken pains
+to expose the repulsive, ludicrous, and grotesque elements in the
+members of the funeral party, and to have softened no feature which
+could excite an unseasonable merriment. In the "Demoiselles de Village"
+the design had been to contrast the stilted, provincial nature of these
+village misses with the healthy simplicity of a peasant child. In the
+picture, painted in 1857, of the two grisettes lying in the grass on the
+bank of the Seine he had "intentionally placed the girls in the most
+unrefined attitudes, that they might appear as trivial as possible." And
+umbrage was taken at his two naked wrestlers because he "had not painted
+wrestlers more or less like those of classic times, but the persons who
+exhibit the strength of their herculean frames at the Hippodrome," and
+therefore given "the most vulgar rendering of nudity that was at all
+possible." And in his naked women it was said that this love of ugly and
+brutal forms became actually base.
+
+All these judgments are characteristic symptoms of the same sort of
+taste which rose in the seventeenth century against Caravaggio. Even his
+principal work, the altar-piece to St. Matthew, which now hangs in the
+Berlin Museum, excited so much indignation that it had to be removed
+from the Church of St. Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. Annibale Carracci has
+a scornful caricature in which the Neapolitan master appears as a hairy
+savage, with a dwarf at his side and two apes upon his knees, and, in
+this fashion, intended to brand the hideousness of his rival's art and
+his ape-like imitation of misshapen nature. Francesco Albani called him
+the "Antichrist of Painting," and "a ruination to art." And Baglione
+adds: "Now a number of young men sit down to copy a head after nature;
+they study neither the foundations of drawing, nor concern themselves
+about the more profound conditions of art, merely contenting themselves
+with a crude reproduction of nature, and therefore they do not even know
+how to group two figures appropriately, nor to bring any theme into an
+artistic composition. No one any longer visits the temples of art, but
+every one finds his masters and his models for a servile imitation of
+nature in the streets and open places." The nineteenth century formed a
+different estimate of Caravaggio. In opposing his fortune-telling
+gipsies, his tipplers, gamblers, musicians, and dicing mercenaries to
+the noble figures of the academical artists, with their generalised and
+carefully balanced forms, their trivial, nugatory countenances, and
+their jejune colouring, he accomplished the legitimate and necessary
+reaction against a shallow and empty idealistic mannerism. No one is
+grateful to the eclectic artists for the learned efforts which it cost
+them to paint so tediously: in Caravaggio there is the fascination of a
+strong personality and a virile emphasis in form, colour, and light. The
+Carracci and Albani were the issue of their predecessors; Caravaggio is
+honoured as a fearless pioneer who opened a new chapter in the history
+of art.
+
+[Illustration: COURBET. MY STUDIO AFTER SEVEN YEARS OF ARTISTIC LIFE.]
+
+Courbet met with a similar fate.
+
+If one approaches him after reading the criticisms of his pictures
+already cited, a great disillusionment is inevitable. Having imagined a
+grotesque monster, one finds to one's astonishment that there is not the
+slightest occasion either for indignation or laughter in the presence of
+these powerful, sincere, and energetic pictures. One has expected
+caricatures and a repulsive hideousness, and one finds a broad and
+masterly style of painting. The heads are real without being vulgar, and
+the flesh firm and soft and throbbing with powerful life. Courbet is a
+personality. He began by imitating the Flemish painters and the
+Neapolitans. But far more did he feel himself attracted by the actual
+world, by massive women and strong men, and wide fertile fields smelling
+of rich, rank earth. As a healthy and sensuously vigorous man he felt a
+voluptuous satisfaction in clasping actual nature in his herculean arms.
+Of course, by the side of his admirable pictures there are others which
+are heavy and uncouth. But if one is honest one paints according to
+one's inherent nature, as old Navez, the pupil of David, was in the
+habit of saying. Courbet was honest, and he was also a somewhat unwieldy
+being, and therefore his painting too has something bluff and cumbrous.
+But where in all French art is there such a sound painter, so sure of
+his effects and with such a large bravura, a _maître peintre_ who was so
+many-sided, extending his dominion as much over figure-painting as
+landscape, over the nude as over _nature morte_? There is no artist so
+many of whose pictures may be seen together without surfeit, for he is
+novel in almost every work. He has painted not a few pictures of which
+it may be said that each one is _sui generis_, and on the variations of
+which elsewhere entire reputations might have been founded. With the
+exception of Millet, no one had observed man and nature with such
+sincere and open eyes. With the great realists of the past Courbet
+shares the characteristic of being everywhere and exclusively a portrait
+painter. A pair of stone-breakers, kneeling as they do in his picture,
+with their faces protected by wire-masks, were figures which every one
+saw working at the street corner, and Courbet represented the scene as
+faithfully as he could, as sincerely and positively as was at all
+possible. "Afternoon in Ornans" is a pleasant picture, in which he took
+up again the good tradition of Lenain. And in "The Funeral at Ornans" he
+has painted exactly the manner in which such ceremonies take place in
+the country. The peasants and dignitaries of a little country
+town--portrait figures such as the masters of the fifteenth century
+brought into their religious pictures--have followed the funeral train,
+and behave themselves at the grave just as peasants would. They make no
+impassioned gesticulations, and form themselves into no fine groups, but
+stand there like true rustics, sturdy and indifferent. They are men of
+flesh and blood, they are like the people of real life, and they have
+been subjected to no alteration: on the one side are the women tearfully
+affected by the words of the preacher, on the other are the men bored by
+the ceremony or discussing their own affairs. In the "Demoiselles de
+Village" he gives a portrait of his own sisters, as they went to a dance
+of a Sunday afternoon. The "Girls lying on the Bank of the Seine" are
+grisettes of 1850, such as Gavarni often drew; they are both dressed in
+doubtful taste, one asleep, the other lost in a vacant reverie. His
+naked women make a very tame effect compared with the colossal masses of
+human flesh in that cascade of nude women of the plumpest description
+who in Rubens' "Last Judgment" plunge in confusion into hell, like fish
+poured out from a bucket. But they are amongst the best nude female
+figures which have been created in the nineteenth century. Courbet was a
+painter of the family of Rubens and Jordaens. He had the preference
+shown by the old Flemish artists for healthy, plump, soft flesh, for
+fair, fat, and forty, the three F's of feminine beauty, and in his
+works he gave the academicians a lesson well worth taking to heart; he
+showed them that it was possible to attain a powerful effect, and even
+grace itself, by strict fidelity to the forms of reality.
+
+[Illustration: _Neuerdein, photo._
+
+ COURBET. THE WAVE.]
+
+His portraits--and he had the advantage of painting Berlioz and
+Baudelaire, Champfleury and Proudhon--are possibly not of conspicuous
+eminence as likenesses. As Caravaggio, according to Bellori, "had only
+spirit, eyes and diligence for flesh-tints, skin, blood, and the natural
+surface of objects," a head was merely a _morceau_ like anything else
+for Courbet too, and not the central point of a thinking and sensitive
+being. The physical man, Taine's human animal, was more important in his
+eyes than the psychical. He painted the epidermis without giving much
+suggestion of what was beneath. But he painted this surface in such a
+broad and impressive manner that the pictures are interesting as
+pictorial masterpieces if not as analyses of character.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ STEVENS. THE LADY IN PINK.]
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ STEVENS. LA BÊTE À BON DIEU.]
+
+To these his landscapes and animal pieces must be added as the works on
+which his talent displayed itself in the greatest purity and most
+inherent vigour: "The Battle of the Stags," that most admirable picture
+"The Hind on the Snow," "Deer in Covert," views of the moss-grown rocks
+and sunlit woods of Ornans and the green valleys of the Franche-Comté.
+He had the special secret of painting with a beautiful tone and a broad,
+sure stroke dead plumage and hunting-gear, the bristling hide of
+wild-boars, and the more delicate coat of deer and of dogs. As a
+landscape painter he does not belong to the family of Corot and Dupré.
+His landscapes are green no doubt, but they have limitations; the leaves
+hang motionless on the branches, undisturbed by a breath of wind.
+Courbet has forgotten the most important thing, the air. Whatever the
+time of the year or the day may be, winter or summer, evening or
+morning, he sees nothing but the form of things, regarding the sun as a
+machine which has no other purpose than to mark the relief of objects by
+light and shade. Moreover, the lyricism of the Fontainebleau painters
+was not in him. He paints without reverie, and knows nothing of that
+tender faltering of the landscape painter in which the poet awakes, but
+has merely the equanimity of a good and sure worker. In regard to
+nature, he has the sentiments of a peasant who tills his land, is never
+elegiac or bucolic, and would be most indignant if a nymph were to tread
+on the furrows of his fields. He paints with a pipe in his mouth and a
+spade in his hand, the plain and the hills, potatoes and cabbages, rich
+turf and slimy rushes, oxen with steaming nostrils heavily ploughing the
+clods, cows lying down and breathing at ease the damp air of the meadows
+drenched with rain. He delights in fertile patches of country, and in
+the healthy odour of the cow-house. A material heaviness and a prosaic
+sincerity are stamped upon all. But his painting has a solidity
+delightful to the eye. It is inspiriting to meet a man who has such a
+resolute and simple love of nature, and can interpret her afresh in
+powerful and sound colour without racking his brains. His attachment to
+the spot of earth where he was born is a leading characteristic of his
+art. He borrowed from Ornans the motives of his most successful
+creations, and was always glad to return to his parents' house. The
+patriotism of the church-spire, provincialism, and a touching and vivid
+sense of home are peculiar to all his landscapes. But in his sea-pieces,
+to which he was incited by a residence in Trouville in the summer of
+1865, he has opened an altogether new province to French art. _Eugène Le
+Poittevin_, who exhibited a good deal in Berlin in the forties, and
+therefore became very well known in Germany, cannot count as a painter.
+_Théodore Gudin_, whose signature is likewise highly valued in the
+market, was a frigid and rough-and-ready scenical painter. His little
+sea-pieces have a professional manner, and the large naval battles and
+fires at sea which he executed by the commission of Louis Philippe for
+the Museum of Versailles are frigid, pompous, and spectacular sea-pieces
+parallel with Vernet's battle-pieces. _Ziem_, who gave up his time to
+Venice and the Adriatic, is the progenitor of Eduard Hildebrandt. His
+water and sky take all the colours of the prism, and the objects
+grouped between these luminous elements, houses, ships, and men, equally
+receive a share of these flattering and iridescent tones. This gives
+something seductive and dazzling to his sketches, until it is at last
+perceived that he has only painted one picture, repeating it
+mechanically in all dimensions. Courbet was the first French painter of
+sea-pieces who had a feeling for the sombre majesty of the sea. The
+ocean of Gudin and Ziem inspires neither wonder nor veneration; that of
+Courbet does both. His very quietude is expressive of majesty; his peace
+is imposing, his smile grave; and his caress is not without a menace.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ STEVENS. THE JAPANESE MASK.]
+
+Courbet has positively realised the programme which he issued in that
+pamphlet of 1855. When he began his activity, eclectic idealism had
+overgrown the tree of art. But Courbet stripped off the parasitic
+vegetation to reach the firm and serviceable timber. And having once
+grasped it he showed the muscles of an athlete in making its power felt.
+Something of the old Flemish sturdiness lived once more in his bold
+creations. If he and Delacroix were united, the result would be Rubens.
+Delacroix had the fervour and passionate tamelessness, while Courbet
+contributed the Flemish weight. Each made use of blood, purple, thrones,
+and Golgothas in composing the dramas they had imagined. The latter
+pictured creation with the absolutism of complete objectivity. Delacroix
+rose on the horizon like a brilliant meteor catching flame from the
+light of vanished suns; he reflected their radiance, had almost their
+magnitude, and followed the same course amid the same coruscation and
+blaze of light. Courbet stands firm and steady upon the earth. The
+former had the second sight known to visionaries, the latter opened his
+eyes to the world that can be felt and handled. Neurotic and
+distempered, Delacroix worked feverishly. As a sound, full-blooded being
+Courbet painted, as a man drinks, digests, and talks, with an activity
+that knows no exertion, a force that knows no weariness. Delacroix was a
+small, weakly man, and his whole power rested in his huge head. That of
+Courbet, as in animals of beauty and power, was dispersed through his
+whole frame; his big arms and athletic hands render the same service to
+his art as his eyes and his brain. And as, like all sincere artists, he
+rendered himself, he was the creator of an art which has an
+irrepressible health and overflows with an exuberant opulence. His
+pictures brought a savour of the butcher's shop into French painting,
+which had become anæmic. He delighted in plump shoulders and sinewy
+necks, broad breasts heaving over the corset, the glow of the skin
+dripping with warm drops of water in the bath, the hide of deer and the
+coat of hares, the iridescent shining of carp and cod-fish. Delacroix,
+all brain, caught fire from his inward visions; Courbet, all eye and
+maw, with the sensuousness of an epicure and the satisfaction of a
+_gourmet_, gloats over the shining vision of things which can be
+devoured--a Gargantua with a monstrous appetite, he buried himself in
+the navel of the generous earth. Plants, fruit, and vegetables take
+voluptuous life beneath his brush. He triumphs when he has to paint a
+_déjeuner_ with oysters, lemons, turkeys, fish, and pheasants. His mouth
+waters when he heaps into a picture of still-life all manner of
+delicious eatables. The only drama that he has painted is "The Battle of
+the Stags," and this will end in brown sauce amid a cheerful clatter of
+knives and forks.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ STEVENS. THE VISITORS.
+
+ (_By permission of M. Faure, the owner of the picture._)]
+
+Even as a landscape painter he is luxurious and phlegmatic. In his
+pictures the earth is a corpulent nurse, the trees fine and well-fed
+children, and all nature healthy and contented. His art is like a
+powerful body fed with rich nourishment. In such organisms the capacity
+for enthusiasm and delicacy of sentiment are too easily sacrificed to
+their physical satisfaction, but their robust health ensures them the
+longer life. Here is neither the routine and external technique and the
+correct, academic articulation of form belonging to mannerists, nor the
+strained, neurotic, sickly refinement of the decadents, but the
+powerful utterance of inborn, instinctive talent, and the strong cries
+of nature which rise out of it will be understood at all times, even the
+most distant. It is hardly necessary to add that the appearance of a
+genius of this kind was fraught with untold consequences to the further
+development of French painting.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ RICARD. MADAME DE CALONNE.]
+
+What is held beautiful in nature must likewise be beautiful in pictorial
+art when it is faithfully represented, and nature is beautiful
+everywhere. In announcing this and demonstrating it in pictures of
+life-size, Courbet won for art all the wide dominion of modern life
+which had hitherto been so studiously avoided--the dominion in which it
+had to revel if it was to learn to see with its own eyes. One fragment
+of reality after another would then be drawn into the sphere of
+representation, and no longer in the form of laboriously composed
+_genre_ pictures, but after the fashion of really pictorial works of
+art.
+
+What Millet had done for the peasant, and Courbet for the artisan,
+_Alfred Stevens_ did for "society": he discovered the _Parisienne_.
+Until 1850 the graceful life of the refined classes, which Gavarni,
+Marcellin, and Cham had so admirably drawn, found no adequate
+representation in the province of painting. The _Parisienne_, who is so
+_chic_ and piquant, and can hate and kiss with such fervour, fascinated
+every one, but Grecian profile was a matter of prescription. _Auguste
+Toulmouche_ painted little women in fashionable toilette, but less from
+any taste he had for the graceful vision than from delight in _genre_
+painting. They were forced to find forbidden books in the library, to
+resist worldly marriages, or behave in some such interesting fashion, to
+enter into the kingdom of art. It was reserved for a foreigner to reveal
+this world of beauty, _chic_, and grace.
+
+Alfred Stevens was a child of Brussels. He was born in the land of
+Flemish matrons on 11th May 1828, and was the second of three children.
+Joseph, the elder brother, became afterwards the celebrated painter of
+animals; Arthur, the youngest, became an art-critic and a
+picture-dealer; he was one of the first who brought home to the public
+comprehension the noble art of Rousseau, Corot, and Millet. Stevens'
+father fought as an officer in the great army at the battle of Waterloo,
+and is said to have been an accomplished critic. Some of the ablest
+sketches of Delacroix, Devéria, Charlet, and Roqueplan found their way
+into his charming home. Roqueplan, who often came to Brussels, took the
+younger Stevens with him to his Parisian studio. He was a tall, graceful
+young man, who, with his vigorous upright carriage, his finely chiselled
+features, and his dandified moustache, looked like an officer of
+dragoons or cuirassiers. He was a pleasure-loving man of the world, and
+was soon the lion of Parisian drawing-rooms. The grace of modern life in
+great cities became the domain of his art. The _Parisienne_, whom his
+French fellow-artists passed by without heed, was a strange, interesting
+phenomenon to him, who was a foreigner--an exotic and exquisitely
+artistic _bibelot_, which he looked upon with eyes as enraptured as
+those with which Decamps had looked upon the East.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ CHAPLIN. THE GOLDEN AGE.
+
+ (_By permission of Messrs. Goupil & Co., the owners of the
+ copyright._)]
+
+His very first picture, exhibited in 1855, was called "At Home." A
+charming little woman is warming her feet at the fire; she has returned
+from visiting a friend, and it has been raining or snowing outside. Her
+delicate hands are frozen in spite of her muff, her cheeks have been
+reddened by the wind, and she has a pleasant sense of comfort as her
+rosy lips breathe the warm air of the room. From the time of this
+picture women took possession of Stevens' easel. His way was prescribed
+for him, and he never left it. Robert Fleury, the president of the
+judging committee in the Salon, said to him: "You are a good painter,
+but alter your subjects; you are stifling in a sphere which is too
+small; how wide and grand is that of the past!" Whereon Stevens is said
+to have showed him a volume of photographs from Velasquez. "Look here at
+Velasquez," he said. "This man never represented anything but what he
+had before his eyes--people in the Spanish dress of the seventeenth
+century. And as the justification of my _genre_ may be found in this
+Spanish painter, it may be found also in Rubens, Raphael, Van Dyck, and
+all the great artists. All these masters of the past derived their
+strength and the secret of their endurance from the faithful
+reproduction of what they had themselves seen: it gives their pictures a
+real historical as well as an artistic value. One can only render
+successfully what one has felt sincerely and seen vividly before one's
+eyes in flesh and blood." In these sentences he is at one with Courbet,
+and by not allowing himself to be led astray into doing sacrifice to the
+idols of historical painting he continues to live as the historical
+painter of the _Parisienne_.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ CHAPLIN. PORTRAIT OF COUNTESS AIMERY DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.]
+
+In his whole work he sounds a pæan to the delicate and all-powerful
+mistress of the world, and it is significant that it was through woman
+that art joined issue with the interests of the present. Millet, the
+first who conquered a province of modern life, was at the same time the
+first great painter of women in the century. Stevens shows the other
+side of the medal. In Millet woman was a product of nature; in Stevens
+she is the product of modern civilisation. The woman of Millet lives a
+large animal life, in the sweat of her brow, bowed to the earth. She is
+the primæval mother who works, bears children, and gives them
+nourishment. She stands in the field like a caryatid, like a symbol of
+fertile nature. In Stevens woman does not toil and is seldom a mother.
+He paints the woman who loves, enjoys, and knows nothing of the great
+pangs of child-birth and hunger. The one woman lives beneath the wide,
+open sky, _dans le grand air_; the other is only enveloped in an
+atmosphere of perfume. She is ancient Cybele in the pictures of Millet;
+in those of Stevens the holy Magdalene of the nineteenth century, to
+whom much will be forgiven, because she has loved much. The pictures of
+Stevens represent, for the first time, the potent relations of woman to
+the century. Whilst most works of this time are silent concerning
+ourselves, his art will speak of our weaknesses and our passions. In a
+period of archaic painting he upheld the banner of modernity. On this
+account posterity will honour him as one of the first historians of the
+nineteenth century, and will learn from his pictures all that Greuze has
+revealed to the present generation about the civilisation of the
+eighteenth century.
+
+[Illustration: _Baschet._
+
+ GAILLARD. PORTRAIT.]
+
+And perhaps more, for Stevens never moralised--he merely painted.
+Painter to his finger tips, like Delacroix, Roqueplan, and Isabey, he
+stood in need of no anecdotic substratum as an adjunct. The key of his
+pictures was suggested by no theme of one sort or another, but by his
+treatment of colour. The picture was evolved from the first tone he
+placed upon the canvas, which was the ground-note of the entire scale.
+He delighted in a thick pasty handling, in beautiful hues, and in finely
+chased detail. And he was as little inclined to sentimentality as to
+pictorial novels. Everything is discreet, piquant, and full of charm. He
+was a delicate spirit, avoiding tears and laughter. Subdued joy,
+melancholy, and everything delicate and reserved are what he loves; he
+will have nothing to do with stereotyped arrangement nor supernumerary
+figures, but although a single person dominates the stage he never
+repeats himself. He has followed woman through all her metamorphoses--as
+mother or in love, weary or excited, proud or humbled, fallen or at the
+height of success, in her morning-gown or dressed for visiting or a
+promenade, now on the sea-shore, now in the costume of a Japanese, or
+dallying with her trinkets as she stands vacantly before the glass. The
+surroundings invariably form an accompaniment to the melody. A world of
+exquisite things is the environment of the figures. Rich stuffs,
+charming _petit-riens_ from China and Japan, the most delicate ivory and
+lacquer-work, the finest bronzes, Japanese fire-screens, and great vases
+with blossoming sprays, fill the boudoir and drawing-room of the
+_Parisienne_. In the pictures of Stevens she is the fairy of a paradise
+made up of all the most capricious products of art. A new world was
+discovered, a painting which was in touch with life; the symphony of the
+salon was developed in a delicate style. A tender feminine perfume,
+something at once melancholy and sensuous, was exhaled from the pictures
+of Stevens, and by this shade of _demi-monde haut-goût_ he won the great
+public. They could not rise to Millet and Courbet, and Stevens was the
+first who gave general pleasure without paying toll to the vicious taste
+for melodramatic, narrative, and humorous _genre_ painting. Even in the
+sixties he was appreciated in England, France, Germany, Russia, and
+Belgium, and represented in all public and private collections; and
+through the wide reception offered to his pictures he contributed much
+to create in the public a comprehension for good painting.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ DUBOIS. PORTRAIT OF MY SONS.
+
+ (_By permission of the Artist._)]
+
+In the same way _James Tissot_ achieved the representation of the modern
+woman. Stevens, a Belgian, painted the _Parisienne_; Tissot, a
+Frenchman, the Englishwoman. It was not till they went into foreign
+countries that these artists perceived the grace of what was not deemed
+suitable to art at home. In Paris from the year 1859 Tissot had painted
+scenes from the fifteenth century, to which he was moved by Leys, and he
+studied with archæological accuracy the costume and furniture of the
+late Gothic period. When he migrated to England in 1871 he gave up the
+romantic proclivities of his youth, and devoted himself to the
+representation of fashionable society. His oil paintings fascinate us by
+their delicate feeling for cool transparent tone values, whilst his
+water-colours--restaurant, theatre, and ball scenes--assure him a place
+among the pioneers of modernity.
+
+At first Stevens found no successors amongst Parisian painters. A few,
+indeed, painted interiors in graceful Paris, but they were only frigid
+compositions of dresses and furniture, without a breath of that delicate
+aroma which exhales from the works of the Belgian. The portrait painters
+alone approached that modern grace which still awaited its historian and
+poet.
+
+An exceedingly delicate artist, _Gustave Ricard_, in whose portraits the
+art of galleries had a congenial revival, was called the modern Van Dyck
+in the sixties. Living nature did not content him; he wished to learn
+how it was interpreted by the old masters, and therefore frequented
+galleries, where he sought counsel sometimes from the English
+portrait-painters, sometimes from Leonardo, Rubens, and Van Dyck. In
+this way Ricard became a _gourmet_ of colour, who knew the technique of
+the old masters as few others have done, and his works have an
+attractive golden gallery-tone of great distinction.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._ CAROLUS DURAN.]
+
+In _Charles Chaplin_ Fragonard was revived. He was the specialist of
+languishing flesh and _poudre de riz_, the refined interpreter of
+aristocratic beauty, one on whose palette there might still be found a
+delicate reflection of the _fêtes galantes_ of the eighteenth century.
+In Germany he was principally known by those dreamy, frail, and sensual
+maidens, well characterised by the phrase of the Empress Eugénie. "M.
+Chaplin," she said, "I admire you. Your pictures are not merely
+indecorous, they are more." But Chaplin had likewise the other qualities
+of the _rococo_ painter. He was a decorative artist of the first rank,
+and, like Fragonard, he carelessly scattered round him on all sides
+grace and beauty, charm and fascination. In 1857 he decorated the _Salon
+des Fleurs_ in the Tuileries, in 1861-65 the bathroom of the Empress in
+the _Palais de l'Elysée_, and from 1865 a number of private houses in
+Paris, Brussels, and New York; and there is in all these works a refined
+_haut-goût_ of modern Parisian elegance and fragrant _rococo_ grace. He
+revived no nymphs, and made no pilgrimage to the island of Cythera; he
+was more of an epicurean. But Fragonard's fine tones and Fragonard's
+sensuousness were peculiar to him. He had a method of treating the hair,
+of introducing little patches, of setting a dimple in the chin, and
+painting the arms and bosom, which had vanished since the _rococo_
+period from the power of French artists. Rosebuds and full-blown roses
+blossom like girls _à la_ Greuze, and fading beauties, who are all the
+more irresistible, are the elements out of which his refined,
+indecorous, and yet fragrant art is constituted.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ BONNAT. ADOLPHE THIERS.
+
+ (_By permission of the Artist._)]
+
+The great engraver _Gaillard_ brought Hans Holbein once more into
+honour. He was the heir of that method of painting, the eternal matrix
+of which Jan van Eyck left to the world in unapproachable perfection.
+His energetic but conscientiously minute brush noted every wrinkle of
+the face, without doing injury to the total impression by this labour of
+detail. Indeed, his pictures are as great in conception and as powerful
+in characterisation as they are small in size. Gaillard is a profound
+physiognomist who attained the most vivid analysis of character by means
+of the utmost precision.
+
+_Paul Dubois_ takes us across the Alps; in his portraits he is the same
+great quattrocentist that he was from the beginning in his plastic
+works. His ground is that of the excellent and subtle period when
+Leonardo, who had been in the beginning somewhat arid, grew delicate and
+allowed a mysterious sphinx-like smile to play round the lips of his
+women. Manifestly he has studied Prudhon and had much intercourse with
+Henner in those years when the latter, after his return from Italy,
+directed attention once more to the old Lombards. From the time when he
+made his début in 1879, with the portrait of his sons, he received great
+encouragement, and stands out in these days as the most mature painter
+of women that the present age has to show. Only the great English
+portrait painters Watts and Millais, who are inferior to him in
+technique, have excelled him in the embodiment of personalities.
+
+As the most skilful painter of drapery, the most brilliant decorator of
+feminine beauty, _Carolus Duran_ was long celebrated. The studies which
+he had made in Italy had not caused him to forget that he took his
+origin from across the Flemish border; and when he appeared with his
+first portraits, in the beginning of the seventies, it was believed that
+an eminent colourist had been born to French painting. At that time he
+had a fine feeling for the eternal feminine and its transitory phases of
+expression, and he was as dexterous in seizing a fleeting gesture or a
+turn of the head as he was in the management of drapery and the play of
+its hues. Then, again, he made a gradual transition from delicate and
+discreetly coquettish works to the crude arts of upholstery. Yet even in
+his last period he has painted some masculine portraits--those of
+Pasteur, and of the painters Français, Fritz Thaulow, and René
+Billotte--which are striking in their vigorous simplicity and unforced
+characterisation after the glaring virtuosity of his pictures of women.
+
+[Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._
+
+ BONNAT. VICTOR HUGO.
+
+ (_By permission of the Artist._)]
+
+_Léon Bonnat_, the pupil of Madrazos, brought about the fruitful
+connection between French painting and that of the old Spaniards. By
+this a large quantity of the fresh blood of naturalism was poured into
+it once more. Born in the South of France and educated in Spain, he had
+conceived there a special enthusiasm for Ribera, and these youthful
+impressions were so powerful that he remained faithful to them in Paris.
+As early as his residence in Italy, which included the three years from
+1858 to 1860, his individuality had been fortified in a degree which
+prevented him from wasting himself on large academical compositions like
+the holders of the _Prix de Rome_; on the contrary, he painted scenes
+from the varied life of the Roman people. Several religious pictures,
+such as "The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew" (1863), "Saint Vincent de Paul"
+(1866), and the "Job" of the Luxembourg, showed that he was steadily
+progressing on the road paved by Spagnoletto. He had a virtuosity in
+conjuring on to the canvas visages furrowed by the injustices of
+life--grey hair, waving grey beards, and the starting sinews and muscles
+of old weather-beaten frames. In the beginning of the seventies, when he
+had to paint a Crucifixion for the jury-chamber in the Paris Palais de
+Justice, he executed a virile figure, the muscles and anatomy of which
+were as clearly marked as the buttresses in a Gothic cathedral. As in
+the paintings of Caravaggio, a sharp, glaring light fell upon certain
+parts of the body, whilst others remained dark and colourless in the
+gloomy background. He applied the same principles to his portraits. A
+French Lenbach, he painted in France a gallery of celebrated men. With
+an almost tangible reality he painted Hugo, Madame Pasta, Dumas, Gounod,
+Thiers, Grévy, Pasteur, Puvis de Chavannes, Jules Ferry, Carnot,
+Cardinal Lavigerie, and others. Over two hundred persons, famous or not,
+have sat to him, and he has painted them with an exceedingly intelligent
+power, masculine taste, and a learning which never loses itself in
+unnecessary detail.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._ ANTOINE VOLLON.]
+
+The delicate physiognomy of women, the _frou-frou_ of exquisite
+toilettes, the dreaminess, the fragrance, the coquetry of the modern
+Sphinx, were no concern of his. On the other hand, his masculine
+portraits will always keep their interest, if only on historical
+grounds. In all of them he laid great stress on characteristic
+accessories, and could indicate in the simplest way the thinker, the
+musician, the scholar, and the statesman. One remembers his pictures as
+though they were phrases uttered with conviction, though a German does
+not hesitate to place Lenbach far above Bonnat as a psychologist. The
+latter has not the power of seizing the momentary effect, the intimacy,
+the personal note, the palpitating life peculiar to Lenbach. With the
+intention of saying all things he often forgets the most important--the
+spirit of the man and the grace of the woman. His pictures are great
+pieces of still-life--exceedingly conscientious, but having something of
+the conscientiousness of an actuary copying a tedious protocol. The
+portrait of Léon Cogniet, the teacher of the master, with his aged face,
+his spectacled eyes, and his puckered hands (Musée Luxembourg), is
+perhaps the only likeness in which Bonnat rivals Lenbach in depth of
+characterisation. His pictorial strength is always worthy of respect;
+but, for the sake of variety, the _esprit_ is for once on the side of
+the German.
+
+Ruled by a passion for the Spanish masters, such as Bonnat possessed,
+_Roybet_ painted cavaliers of the seventeenth century, and other
+historical pictures of manners, which are distinguished, to their
+advantage, from older pictures of their type, because it is not the
+historical anecdote but the pictorial idea which is their basis. All the
+earlier painters were rather bent upon archæological accuracy than on
+pictorial charm in the treatment of such themes. Roybet revelled in the
+rich hues of old costumes, and sometimes attained, before he strained
+his talent in the Procrustean bed of pictures of great size, a bloom and
+a strong, glowing tone which rival the old masters.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ VOLLON. A CARNIVAL SCENE.]
+
+In all periods which have learnt to see the world through a pictorial
+medium, still-life has held an important place in the practice of art. A
+technical instinct, which is in itself art, delights in investing
+musical instruments, golden and silver vessels, fruit and other
+eatables, glasses and goblets, coverings of precious work, gauntlets and
+armour, all imaginable _petit-riens_, with an artistic magic, in
+recognising and executing pictorial problems everywhere. After the
+transition from historical and _genre_ painting had been made to
+painting proper there once more appeared great painters of still-life in
+France as there did in Chardin's days.
+
+Yet _Blaise Desgoffe_, who painted piecemeal and with laborious patience
+goldsmith's work, crystal vases, Venetian glass, and such things, is
+certainly rather petty. In France he was the chief representative of
+that precise and detailed painting which understands by art a deceptive
+imitation of objects, and sees its end attained when the holiday public
+gathers round the pictures as the birds gathered round the grapes of
+Zeuxis.
+
+It is as if an old master had revived in _Philippe Rousseau_. He had the
+same earnest qualities as the Dutch and Flemish Classic masters--a
+broad, liquid, pasty method of execution, a fine harmony of clear and
+powerful tones--and with all this a marvellous address in so composing
+objects that no trace of "composition" is discernible. His work arose
+from the animal picture. His painting of dogs and cats is to be ranked
+with the best of the century. He makes a fourth with Gillot, Chardin,
+and Decamps, the great painters of monkeys. As a decorator of genius,
+like Hondekoeter, he embellished a whole series of dining-halls with
+splendidly coloured representations of poultry, and, like Snyders, he
+heaped together game, dead and living fowl, fruit, lobsters, and oysters
+into huge life-size masses of still-life. Behind them the cook may be
+seen, and thievish cats steal around. But, like Kalf, he has also
+painted, with an exquisite feeling for colour, Japanese porcelain bowls
+with bunches of grapes, quinces, and apricots, metal and ivory work,
+helmets and fiddles, against that delicate grey-brown-green tone of
+background which Chardin loved.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ BONVIN. THE COOK.]
+
+_Antoine Vollon_ became the greatest painter of still-life in the
+century. Indeed, Vollon is as broad and nervous as Desgoffe is precise
+and pedantic. Flowers, fruit, and fish--they are all painted in with a
+firm hand, and shine out of the dark background with a full liquid
+freshness of colour. He paints dead salt-water fish like Abraham van
+Beyeren, grapes and crystal goblets like Davids de Heem, dead game like
+Frans Snyders, skinned pigs like Rembrandt and Maes. He is a master in
+the representation of freshly gathered flowers, delicate vegetables,
+copper kettles, weapons, and suits of armour. Since Chardin no painter
+depicted the qualities of the skin of fresh fruit, its life and its play
+of colour, and the moist bloom that rests upon it, with such fidelity to
+nature. His fish in particular will always remain the wonder of all
+painters and connoisseurs. But landscapes, Dutch canal views, and
+figure-pictures are also to be found amongst his works. He has painted
+everything that is picturesque, and the history of art must do him
+honour as, in a specifically pictorial sense, one of the greatest in the
+century. A soft grey-brown wainscoting, a black and white Pierrot
+costume, and a white table-cloth and dark green vegetables--such is the
+harmony of colour which he chiefly loved in his figure-pictures.
+
+On the same purely pictorial grounds nuns became very popular in
+painting, as their white hoods and collars standing out against a black
+dress gave the opportunity for such a fine effect of tone. This was the
+province in which poor _François Bonvin_ laboured. Deriving from the
+Dutch, he conceived an enthusiasm for work, silence, the subdued shining
+of light in interiors, cold days, the slow movements and peaceful faces
+of nuns, and painted kitchen scenes with a strong personal accent.
+Before he took up painting he was for a long time a policeman, and was
+employed in taking charge of the markets. Here he acquired an eye for
+the picturesqueness of juicy vegetables, white collars, and white hoods,
+and when he had a day free he studied Lenain and Chardin in the Louvre.
+Bonvin's pictures have no anecdotic purport. Drinkers, cooks, orphan
+children in the schoolroom, sempstresses, choristers, sisters of mercy,
+boys reading, women in church, nuns conducting a sewing-class--Bonvin's
+still, picturesque, congenial world is made up of elements such as
+these. What his people may think or do is no matter: they are only meant
+to create an effect as pictorial tones in space. During his journey to
+Holland he had examined Metsu, Frans Hals, Pieter de Hoogh, Terborg, and
+Van der Meer with an understanding for their merits, but it was Chardin
+in both his phases--as painter of still-life and of familiar events--who
+was in a special sense revived in Bonvin. All his pictures are simple
+and quiet; his figures are peaceful in their expression, and have an
+easy geniality of pose; his hues have a beauty and fulness of tone
+recalling the old masters.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ BONVIN. THE WORK-ROOM.]
+
+Even _Théodule Ribot_, the most eminent of the group, one of the most
+dexterous executants of the French school, a master who for power of
+expression is worthy of being placed between Frans Hals and Ribera, made
+a beginning with still-life. He was born in 1823, in a little town of
+the department of Eure. Early married and poor, he supported himself at
+first by painting frames for a firm of mirror manufacturers, and only
+reserved the hours of the evening for his artistic labours. In
+particular he is said to have accustomed himself to work whole nights
+through by lamplight, while he nursed his wife during a long illness,
+watching at her bedside. The lamplight intensified the contrasts of
+light and shadow. Thus Ribot's preference for concentrated light and
+strong shadows is partially due, in all probability, to what he had
+gone through in his life, and in later days Ribera merely bestowed upon
+him a benediction as his predecessor in the history of art.
+
+[Illustration: RIBOT. THE STUDIO.]
+
+His first pictures from the years 1861 to 1865 were, for the most part,
+scenes from household and kitchen life: cooks, as large as life,
+plucking poultry, setting meat before the fire, scouring vessels, or
+tasting sauces; sometimes, also, figures in the streets; but even here
+there was a strong accentuation of the element of still-life. There were
+men with cooking utensils, food, dead birds, and fish. Then after 1865
+there followed a number of religious pictures which, in their hard,
+peasant-like veracity and their impressive, concentrated life, stood in
+the most abrupt contrast with the conventionally idealised figures of
+the academicians. His "Jesus in the Temple," no less than "Saint
+Sebastian" and "The Good Samaritan"--all three in the Musée
+Luxembourg--are works of simple and forceful grandeur, and have a
+thrilling effect which almost excites dismay. Sebastian is no smiling
+saint gracefully embellished with wounds, but a suffering man, with the
+blood streaming from his veins, stretched upon the earth; yet
+half-raising himself, a cry of agony upon his lips, and his whole body
+contorted by spasms of pain. In his "Jesus in the Temple," going on
+parallel lines with Menzel, he proclaims the doctrine that it is only
+possible to pour new life-blood into traditional figures by a tactful
+choice of models from popular life around. And in "The Good Samaritan,"
+also, he was only concerned to paint, with naturalistic force, the body
+of a wounded man lying in the street, a thick-set French peasant robbed
+of his clothes. From the seventies his specialty was heads--separate
+figures of weather-beaten old folk, old women knitting or writing, old
+men reading or lost in thought; and these will always be ranked with the
+greatest masterpieces of the century. Ribot attains a remarkable effect
+when he paints those expressive faces of his, which seem to follow you
+with their looks, and are thrown out from the darkness of his canvas. A
+black background, in which the dark dresses of his figures are
+insensibly lost, a luminous head with such eyes as no one of the
+century has ever painted, wrinkled skin and puckered old hands rising
+from somewhere--one knows not whence--these are things which all lend
+his figures something phantasmal, superhuman, and ghostly. Ribot is the
+great king of the under-world, to which a sunbeam only penetrates by
+stealth. Before his pictures one has the sense of wandering in a deep,
+deep shaft of some mine, where all is dark and only now and then a
+lantern glimmers. No artist, not even Ribera, has been a better painter
+of old people, and only Velasquez has painted children who have such
+sparkling life. Ribot worked in Colombes, near Paris, to which place he
+had early withdrawn, in a barn where only tiny dormer-windows let in two
+sharp rays of light.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ RIBOT. AT A NORMAN INN.]
+
+By placing his canvas beneath one window and his model beneath the
+other, in a dim light which allowed only one golden ray to fall upon the
+face, he isolated it completely from its surroundings, and in this way
+painted the parts illuminated with the more astonishing effect. No one
+had the same power in modelling a forehead, indicating the bones beneath
+the flesh, and rendering all the subtleties of skin. A terrible and
+intense life is in his figures. His old beggars and sailors especially
+have something kingly in the grand style of their noble and quiet faces.
+An old master with a powerful technique, a painter of the force and
+health of Jordaens, has manifested himself once more in Ribot.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ RIBOT. KEEPING ACCOUNTS.]
+
+Courbet's principles, accordingly, had won all down the line, in the
+course of a few years. "It is only Ribera, Zurbaran, and Velasquez that
+I admire; Ostade and Craesbeeck also allure me; and for Holbein I feel
+veneration. As for M. Raphael, there is no doubt that he has painted
+some interesting portraits, but I cannot find any ideas in him." In
+these words he had prophesied as early as 1855 the course which French
+art would take in the next decade. When Courbet appeared the grand
+painting stood in thraldom to the _beauté suprême_, and the æsthetic
+conceptions of the time affected the treatment of contemporary subjects.
+Artists had not realism enough to give truth and animation to these
+themes. When Cabanel, Hamon, and Bouguereau occasionally painted beggars
+and orphans, they were bloodless phantoms, because by beautifying the
+figures they deprived them of character in the effort to give them,
+approximately, the forms of historical painting. Because painters did
+not regard their own epoch, because they had been accustomed to consider
+living beings merely as elements of the second and third rank, they
+never discovered the distinctiveness of their essential life. Like a
+traveller possessed by one fixed mania, they made a voyage round the
+world, thinking only how they might adapt living forms to those which
+their traditional training recommended as peculiarly right and alone
+worthy of art. Even portrait painting was dominated by this false
+method, of rendering figures as types, of improving the features and the
+contour of bodies, and giving men the external appearance of fair, ideal
+figures.
+
+But now the sway of the Cinquecento has been finally broken. A fresh
+breeze of realism from across the Pyrenees has taken the place of the
+sultry Italian sirocco. From the pictures of the Neapolitans, the
+Spaniards, and the Dutch it has been learnt that the joys and sorrows of
+the people are just as capable of representation as the actions of gods
+and heroes, and under the influence of these views a complete change in
+the cast has taken place.
+
+[Illustration: _L'Art._
+
+ RIBOT. ST. SEBASTIAN, MARTYR.]
+
+The figures which in 1855 filled Courbet's picture "The
+Studio"--beggar-women, agricultural labourers, artisans, sailors,
+tippling soldiers, buxom girls, porters, rough members of the
+proletariat of uncouth stature--now crowd the stage of French art, and
+impart even to the heroes of history, bred through centuries from
+degenerated gods, something of their full-blooded, rough, hearty, and
+plebeian force of life. The artists of Italian taste only gave the
+rights of citizenship to "universal forms"; every reminiscence of
+national customs or of local character was counted vulgar; they did not
+discover the gold of beauty in the rich mines of popular life, but in
+the classic masters of foreign race. But now even what is unearthly is
+translated into the terms of earth. If religious pictures are to be
+painted, artists take men from the people for their model, as Caravaggio
+did before them--poor old peasants with bones of iron, and bronzed,
+weather-beaten faces, porters with figures bowed and scarred by labour,
+men of rough, common nature, though of gnarled and sinewy muscles. The
+pictures of martyrs, once artificial compositions of beautiful gesture
+and vacant, generalised countenances, receive a tone local to the
+scaffold, a trait of merciless veracity--the heads the energy of a
+relief, the gestures force and impressiveness, the bodies a science in
+their modelling which would have rejoiced Ribera. As Caravaggio said
+that the more wrinkles his model had the more he liked him, so no one
+is any longer repelled by horny hands, tattered rags, and dirty feet. In
+the good periods of art it is well known that the beauty or uncomeliness
+of a work has nothing to do with the beauty or uncomeliness of the
+model, and that the most hideous cripple can afford an opportunity for
+making the most beautiful work. The old doctrine of Leonardo, that every
+kind of painting is portrait painting, and that the best artists are
+those who can imitate nature in the most convincing way, comes once more
+into operation. The apotheosis of the model has taken the place of
+idealism. And during these same years England reached a similar goal by
+another route.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Leopold Boilly:
+
+ Jules Houdoy: "L'Art," 1877, iv 63, 81.
+
+On the History of Caricature in General:
+
+ J. P. Malcolm: An Historical Sketch of the Art of Caricaturing.
+ London, 1813.
+
+ Th. Wright: A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and
+ Art. London, 1875.
+
+ Arsène Alexandre: L'Art du rire. Paris, 1892.
+
+ E. Bayard: La caricature et les caricaturistes. Paris, 1900.
+
+ Fuchs und Krämer: Die Karikatur der europäischen Völker vom Altertum
+ bis zur Neuzeit. Berlin, 1901.
+
+On the English Caricaturists:
+
+ Victor Champier: La caricature anglaise contemporaine, "L'Art," 1875,
+ i 29, 293, ii 300, iii 277 and 296.
+
+ Ernest Chesneau: Les livres à caricatures en Angleterre, "Le Livre,"
+ Novembre 1881.
+
+ Augustin Filon: La caricature en Angleterre, W. Hogarth, "Revue des
+ Deux Mondes," 15 Janvier 1885.
+
+ Graham Everitt: English Caricaturists and Graphic Humorists of the
+ Nineteenth Century. How they illustrated and interpreted their Times.
+ With 67 Illustrations. London, 1886.
+
+Rowlandson:
+
+ C. M. Westmacott: The Spirit of the Public Journals. 3 vols.
+ 1825-1826.
+
+ Joseph Grego: Thomas Rowlandson, the Caricaturist. A selection from
+ his works, with anecdotal descriptions of his famous Caricatures and a
+ sketch of his Life, Times, and Contemporaries. With about 400
+ Illustrations. 2 vols. London, 1880.
+
+ F. G. Stephens: Thomas Rowlandson the Humorist, "Portfolio," 1891,
+ 141.
+
+Cruikshank:
+
+ Cruikshankiana. Engravings by Richard Dighton. London, 1855.
+
+ F. G. Stephens: G. Cruikshank, "Portfolio," 1872, 77.
+
+ G. W. Reid: Complete Catalogue of the Engraved Works of George
+ Cruikshank. London, 1873.
+
+ G. A. Sala: George Cruikshank, a Life Memory, "Gentleman's Magazine,"
+ 1878.
+
+ William Bates: George Cruikshank, the Artist, the Humorist, and the
+ Man. With Illustrations and Portraits. London and Birmingham, 1878.
+
+ Frederick Wedmore: Cruikshank, "Temple Bar," April 1878.
+
+ W. B. Jerrold: The Life of George Cruikshank. 2 vols. 1882.
+
+ H. Thornber: The Early Work of George Cruikshank. 1887.
+
+ F. G. Stephens: A Memoir of George Cruikshank. London, 1891.
+
+ R. F. H. Douglas: Catalogue of Works by Cruikshank. London, 1903.
+
+John Leech:
+
+ Ernest Chesneau: Un humoriste anglais, "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1875,
+ i 532.
+
+ John Brown: John Leech, and Other Papers. Edinburgh, 1882.
+
+ F. G. Kitton: John Leech, Artist and Humorist. London, 1884.
+
+ <b>George Du Maurier:</b>
+
+ "L'Art," 1876, iv 279. See also English Society at Home. Fol. London,
+ 1880.
+
+Charles Keene:
+
+ Claude Phillips: Charles Keene, "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1891, i 327.
+
+ G. L. Layard: The Life and Letters of Charles Keene. London, 1892.
+
+On the German Draughtsmen:
+
+ Beiträge zur Geschichte der Caricatur, "Zeitschrift für Museologie,"
+ 1881, 13 ff.
+
+ J. Grand-Carteret: Les moeurs et la caricature en Allemagne, en
+ Autriche, en Suisse. Paris, 1885.
+
+ R. v. Seydlitz: Die moderne Caricatur in Deutschland, "Zur guten
+ Stunde," Mai 1891.
+
+ Hermann: Die deutsche Karikatur im 19 Jahrhundert. Bielefeld, 1901.
+
+Johann Christian Erhard:
+
+ Alois Apell: Das Werk von Johann Christian Erhard. Leipzig, 1866-75.
+
+Johann Adam Klein:
+
+ F. M.: Verzeichniss der von Johann Adam Klein gezeichneten und
+ radirten Blätter. Stuttgart, 1853.
+
+ John: Das Werk von Johann Adam Klein. Munich, 1863.
+
+Ludwig Richter:
+
+ Richter-Album. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1861.
+
+ Jahn, in Richter-Album, and in the Biographische Aufsätze. Leipzig,
+ 1867.
+
+ W. Heinrichsen: Ueber Richters Holzschnitte. Carlsruhe, 1870.
+
+ Johann F. Hoff: Adrian Ludwig Richter, Maler und Radirer. List and
+ description of his works, with a biographical sketch by H. Steinfeld.
+ Dresden, 1871.
+
+ L. Richter's Landschaften. Text by H. Lücke. Leipzig, 1875.
+
+ Georg Scherer: Aus der Jugendzeit. Leipzig, 1875. Ernst und Scherz.
+ Leipzig, 1875.
+
+ Deutsche Art und Sitte. Published by G. Scherer. Leipzig, 1876.
+
+ Friedrich Pecht: Deutsche Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts, i. Nördlingen,
+ 1877, pp. 57 ff.
+
+ A. Springer: Zum 80 Geburtstag Ludwig Richter's, "Zeitschrift für
+ bildende Kunst," 1883, pp. 377-386.
+
+ J. E. Wessely: Adrian Ludwig Richter zum 80 Geburtstag. A Monograph.
+ "Graphische Künste," 1884, vi 1.
+
+ Obituary: "Allgemeine Zeitung," 1884, No. 175; "Allgemeine
+ Kunst-Chronik," 1884, 26; G. Weisse, "Deutsches Künstlerblatt," iii 1.
+
+ Lebenserinnerungen eines deutschen Malers: Autobiography of Ludwig
+ Richter. Published by Heinrich Richter. Frankfurt a. M., 1886.
+
+ Robert Waldmüller: Ludwig Richter's religiöse Entwickelung.
+ "Gegenwart," 37, pp. 198, 218.
+
+ Veit Valentin: Kunst, Künstler, und Kunstwerke. 1889.
+
+ Richard Meister: Land und Leute in Ludwig Richter's
+ Holzschnitt-Bildern. Leipzig, 1889.
+
+ Die vervielfältigende Kunst der Gegenwart. Edited by C. v. Lützow.
+ Vol. i. Woodcut Engravings. Wien, 1890.
+
+ H. Gerlach: Ludwig Richters Leben, dem deutschen Volke erzählt.
+ Dresden, 1891.
+
+ Budde: Ludwig Richter, "Preussische Jahrbücher." Bd. 87. Berlin, 1897.
+
+ P. Mohn: Ludwig Richter, "Künstlermonographien," Edited by Knackfuss.
+ Bd. 14. 2 Aufl. Bielefeld, 1898.
+
+ J. Erler: Ludwig Richter, der Maler des deutschen Hauses. Leipzig,
+ 1898.
+
+ David Ludwig Koch: Ludwig Richter. Stuttgart, 1903.
+
+Albert Hendschel:
+
+ J. E. Wessely: Aus Albert Hendschels Bildermappe, "Vom Fels zum Meer,"
+ 1883, iii 3.
+
+ Obituary: "Le Portefeuille," 1884, 30.
+
+ F. Luthmer: Albert Hendschel. "Vom Fels zum Meer," December 1884.
+
+W. Busch:
+
+ Paul Lindau: "Nord und Süd," 1878, iv 257.
+
+ Eduard Daelen: W. Busch, "Kunst für Alle," 1887, ii 217.
+
+ See Busch-Album, Humoristischer Hausschatz. Collection of the twelve
+ most popular works, with 1400 pictures. München, 1885.
+
+Adolf Oberländer:
+
+ Adolf Bayersdorfer: Adolf Oberländer, "Kunst für Alle," 1888, iv 49.
+
+ Robert Stiassny: Zur Geschichte der deutschen Caricatur, "Neue Freie
+ Presse," 20th August 1889.
+
+ Hermann Essenwein: Adolf Oberländer, "Moderne Illustratoren." Bd. 5.
+ Munich, 1903.
+
+ See Oberländer-Album. 7 vols. Munich, Braun & Schneider, 1881-89.
+
+On the French Draughtsmen:
+
+ Champfleury: Histoire générale de la caricature. 5 vols. Paris,
+ 1856-80.
+
+ J. Grand-Carteret: Les moeurs et la caricature en France. Paris, 1888.
+
+ Armand Dayot: Les Maîtres de la caricature au XIX siècle. 115
+ facsimilés de grand caricatures en noir, 5 facsimilés de lithographies
+ en couleurs. Paris, 1888.
+
+ Henri Béraldi: Les graveurs du XIX siècle. Paris, 1885.
+
+ Paul Mantz: La caricature moderne, "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1888, i
+ 286.
+
+ Augustin de Buisseret: Les caricaturistes français, "L'Art," 1888, ii
+ 91.
+
+Moreau:
+
+ J. F. Mahérault: L'oeuvre de Moreau le jeune. Paris, 1880.
+
+ A. Moureau: Les Moreau in "Les artistes célèbres." 1903.
+
+ Emanuel Bocher: Jean Michel Moreau le jeune. Paris, 1882.
+
+Debucourt:
+
+ Roger Portalis and Henri Béraldi: Les graveurs du XVIII siècle, vol.
+ i. Paris, 1880.
+
+ Henri Bouchot, in "Les artistes célèbres." 1905.
+
+Carle Vernet:
+
+ Amédée Durande: Joseph Carle, et Horace Vernet. Paris, 1865.
+
+ A. Genevay: Carle Vernet, "L'Art," 1877, i 73, 96.
+
+Henri Monnier:
+
+ Philippe Burty: "L'Art," 1877, ii 177.
+
+ Champfleury: "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1877, i 363.
+
+ Champfleury: Henri Monnier, sa vie et son oeuvre. Paris, 1879.
+
+Daumier:
+
+ Champfleury: L'oeuvre de Daumier, Essai de catalogue, "L'Art," 1878,
+ ii 217, 252, 294.
+
+ Eugène Montrosier: La caricature politique, H. Daumier, "L'Art," 1878,
+ ii 25.
+
+ H. Billung: H. Daumier, "Kunstchronik," 24, 1879.
+
+ Arsène Alexandre: Honoré Daumier, l'homme et son oeuvre. Paris, 1890.
+
+ H. Frantz: Daumier and Gavarni. London, 1904.
+
+ Erich Klossowski: H. Daumier. Stuttgart, 1906.
+
+Guys:
+
+ Baudelaire: Le peintre de la vie moderne, in the volume "L'Art
+ romantique" of his complete works. Paris, 1869.
+
+Gavarni:
+
+ Manières de voir et façons de penser, par Gavarni, précédé d'une étude
+ par Charles Yriarte. Paris, 1869.
+
+ Edmond et Jules de Goncourt: Gavarni, l'Homme et l'Oeuvre. Paris,
+ 1873.
+
+ Armelhault et Bocher: Catalogue raisonné de l'Oeuvre de Gavarni.
+ Paris, 1873.
+
+ G. A. Simcox: "Portfolio," 1874, p. 56.
+
+ Georges Duplessis: "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1875, ii 152, 211.
+
+ Georges Duplessis: Gavarni, Étude, ornée de 14 dessins inédits. Paris,
+ 1876.
+
+ Ph. de Chennevières: Souvenirs d'un Directeur des Beaux-Arts, IIIième
+ partie. Paris, 1876.
+
+ Bruno Walden: "Unsere Zeit," 1881, ii 926.
+
+ Eugène Forgues: Gavarni, in "Les artistes célèbres." Paris, 1887.
+
+ See also Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux Lundis. Henri Béraldi, Graveurs du XIX
+ siècle. Oeuvres choisies de Gavarni. 4 vols. Paris, 1845-48.
+
+Gustave Doré:
+
+ K. Delorme, Gustave Doré, peintre, sculpteur, dessinateur, graveur.
+ Avec gravures et photographies hors texte. Paris, Baschet, 1879.
+
+ Jules Claretie: Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, II Série. Paris,
+ 1884, p. 105.
+
+ Obituary: "Magazine of Art," March 1883; Fernand Brouet: "Revue
+ artistique," March 1883; Dubufe: "Nouvelle Revue," March and April
+ 1883; A. Michel: "Revue Alsacienne," February 1883; "Chronique des
+ Arts," 1883, p. 4; "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1883; A. Hustin,
+ "L'Art," 1883, p. 424.
+
+ Van Deyssel: Gustave Doré, "De Dietsche Warande," iv 5.
+
+ Blanche Roosevelt: Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré. London,
+ 1885.
+
+ Claude Phillips: Gustave Doré, "Portfolio," 1891, p. 249.
+
+Cham:
+
+ Marius Vachon: "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1879, ii 443.
+
+ Felix Ribeyre: Cham, sa vie et son oeuvre. Paris, 1884.
+
+ Cham-Album. 3 vols. Paris. Without date.
+
+Grévin:
+
+ Ad. Racot: Portraits d'aujourd'hui. Paris, 1891.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Barry:
+
+ The Works of James Barry, Esq.--to which is prefixed some account of
+ the Life and the Writings of the Author. 2 vols. London, 1809.
+
+ J. J. Hittorf: Notice historique et biographique de Sir J. Barry.
+ 1860.
+
+
+ Alfred Barry: The Life and Works of Sir J. Barry. London, 1867.
+
+ Sidney Colvin: James Barry, "Portfolio," 1873, p. 150.
+
+ H. Trueman Wood: Pictures of James Barry at the Society of Arts.
+ London, 1880.
+
+Benjamin West:
+
+ John Galt: The Life, Studies, and Works of Benjamin West. London,
+ 1820. Second Edition, 1826.
+
+ Sidney Colvin: "Portfolio," 1873, p. 150.
+
+ See also Cornelius Gurlitt: Die amerikanische Malerei in Europa, "Die
+ Kunst unserer Zeit," 1893.
+
+Fuseli:
+
+ J. Knowles: Life and Works of Henry Fuseli. 3 vols. London, 1831.
+
+ Sidney Colvin: Henry Fuseli, "Portfolio," 1873, p. 50.
+
+Stothard:
+
+ Anna Eliza Bray: Life of Thomas Stothard. London, 1851.
+
+Opie:
+
+ John J. Rogers: Opie and his Works, being a Catalogue of 760 Pictures
+ by John Opie, R. A. Preceded by a biographical sketch. London, 1878.
+
+ Claude Phillips: John Opie, "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1892, i 299.
+
+Northcote:
+
+ John Thackeray Bunce: James Northcote, R. A., "Fortnightly Review,"
+ June 1876.
+
+Copley:
+
+ A. T. Perkins: A Sketch of the Life and a List of the Works of John
+ Singleton Copley. London, 1873.
+
+Haydon:
+
+ Life of B. R. Haydon, Historical Painter, from his Autobiography,
+ edited by Tom Taylor. 3 vols. London, 1853.
+
+Maclise:
+
+ James Dafforne: Pictures by Maclise. London, 1871.
+
+ James Dafforne: Leslie and Maclise. London, 1872.
+
+Etty:
+
+ A. Gilchrist: Life of W. Etty, R. A. 2 vols. London, 1855.
+
+ P. G. Hamerton: Etty, "Portfolio," 1875, p. 88.
+
+ W. C. Monkhouse: Pictures by William Etty, with Descriptions. London,
+ 1874.
+
+Edward Armitage:
+
+ J. Beavington-Atkinson: "Portfolio," 1870, p. 49.
+
+Romney:
+
+ William Hagley: The Life of George Romney. London, 1809.
+
+ Rev. John Romney (son of the painter): Memoirs of the life and
+ Writings of George Romney. London, 1830.
+
+ P. Selvatico: Il pittore Sir Giorgio Romney ed Emma Lyon, "Arte ed
+ Artisti," p. 143. Padova, 1863.
+
+ Sidney Colvin: George Romney, "Portfolio," 1873, pp. 18 and 34.
+
+ Lord Ronald Gower: Romney and Lawrence. London, 1882.
+
+ T. H. Ward and W. Roberts: Romney, A biographical and critical essay,
+ with a catalogue raisonné of his works. London, 1904.
+
+ G. Paston: George Romney, etc. (Little Books on Art). London, 1903.
+
+Thomas Lawrence:
+
+ D. E. Williams: The Life and Correspondence of Sir Thomas Lawrence. 2
+ vols. With 3 Portraits. London, 1831.
+
+ F. Lewis: Imitations of Sir Thomas Lawrence's Finest Drawings. 1 vol.
+ Reproductions in crayon. London, 1839.
+
+ A. Genevay: "L'Art," 1875, iii 385.
+
+ Th. de Wyzewa: Thomas Lawrence et la Société anglaise de son temps,
+ "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1891, i 119, ii 112, 335.
+
+ Lord Ronald Gower: Romney and Lawrence. London, 1882.
+
+Raeburn:
+
+ Portraits by Sir Henry Raeburn, photographed by Thomas Asman, with
+ biographical sketches. Fol. Edinburgh. No date.
+
+ Exhibition of Portraits by Sir Henry Raeburn, "Art Journal," 1876, p.
+ 349.
+
+ Alexander Fraser: Henry Raeburn, "Portfolio," 1879, p. 200.
+
+ Andrew William Raeburn: Life of Sir Henry Raeburn. With 2 Portraits.
+ London, 1886.
+
+ Sir W. Armstrong: Sir Henry Raeburn, etc. London, 1901.
+
+George Morland:
+
+ John Hassell: Life of the late George Morland. London, 1804.
+
+ William Collins, Memoirs of George Morland. London, 1806.
+
+ F. W. Blagdon: Authentic Memoirs of the late George Morland. London,
+ 1806.
+
+ G. Dawe: The Life of George Morland. London, 1807.
+
+ Walter Armstrong: George Morland, "Portfolio," 1885, p. 1.
+
+ Some Notes on George Morland: From the Papers of James Ward, R. A.,
+ "Portfolio," 1886, p. 98.
+
+ Other Biographies by R. Richardson, 1895. J. T. Nettleship, 1898; and
+ Williamson, 1904.
+
+James Ward:
+
+ F. G. Stephens: "Portfolio," 1886, pp. 8, 32, 45.
+
+Landseer:
+
+ F. G. Stephens: The Early Works of Edwin Landseer. 16 Photographs.
+ London, 1869. New Edition under the title: Memoirs of Sir Edwin
+ Landseer. London, 1874.
+
+ F. G. Stephens: "Portfolio," 1871, p. 165.
+
+ James Dafforne: Pictures by Sir Edwin Landseer, R. A. With
+ descriptions and a biographical sketch of the painter. London, 1873.
+
+ James Dafforne: Studies and Sketches by Sir Edwin Landseer, "Art
+ Journal," 1875, passim.
+
+ Catalogue of the Works of Sir Edwin Landseer, "Art Journal," 1875, p.
+ 317.
+
+ J. Beavington-Atkinson: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1875, pp.
+ 129 and 163.
+
+ M. M. Heaton: "Academy," 1879, p. 378.
+
+ Edw. Leonidas: Sir Edwin Landseer, "Nederlandsche Kunstbode," 1881, p.
+ 50.
+
+ F. G. Stephens: Sir Edwin Landseer. London, 1881.
+
+ F. G. Stephens: Landseer, the Dog Painter, "Portfolio," 1885, p. 32.
+
+ J. A. Manson: Sir Edwin Landseer. London, 1902.
+
+ <f><b>On the English Genre Painters:</f></b>
+
+ Frederick Wedmore: The Masters of Genre Painting. With 16
+ Illustrations. London, 1880.
+
+Wilkie:
+
+ Allan Cunningham: Life of Wilkie. 3 vols. London, 1843.
+
+ Mrs. C. Heaton: The Great Works of Sir David Wilkie. 26 Photographs.
+ London and Cambridge, 1868.
+
+ A. L. Simpson: The Story of Sir David Wilkie. London, 1879.
+
+ J. W. Mollet: Sir David Wilkie. London, 1881.
+
+ Feuillet de Conches: Sir David Wilkie, "Artiste," August 1883.
+
+ F. Rabbe, in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+ E. Pinnington: Sir David Wilkie, etc. (Famous Scots Series). London,
+ 1900.
+
+ W. Bayne: Sir David Wilkie, etc. (Makers of British Art). London,
+ 1903.
+
+William Collins:
+
+ W. Wilkie Collins: Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq. 2
+ vols. London, 1848.
+
+William Powell Frith:
+
+ My Autobiography and Reminiscences. London, 1887.
+
+ Further Reminiscences. London, 1898.
+
+Mulready:
+
+ Sir Henry Cole: Biography of William Mulready, R. A. Notes of
+ Pictures, etc. No date.
+
+ F. G. Stephens: Memorials of Mulready. 14 Photographs. London, 1867.
+
+ James Dafforne: Pictures by Mulready. London, 1873.
+
+ F. G. Stephens: William Mulready, "Portfolio," 1887, pp. 85 and 119.
+
+ R. Liebreich: Turner and Mulready. London, 1888.
+
+Leslie:
+
+ James Dafforne: Pictures by Leslie. Plates. London, 1873.
+
+ Autobiographical recollections, edited by Tom Taylor. London, 1860.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+In General:
+
+ Arsène Alexandre: Histoire de la peinture militaire en France. Paris,
+ 1890.
+
+Horace Vernet:
+
+ L. Ruutz-Rees: Horace Vernet and Paul Delaroche. Illustrations.
+ London, 1879.
+
+ Amédée Durande: Josephe, Carle, et Horace Vernet, Correspondence et
+ Biographies. Paris, 1865.
+
+ Theophile Silvestre: Les artistes français, p. 355.
+
+ Jules Claretie: Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains. Paris, 1873, p.
+ 65.
+
+ A. Dayot: Les Vernet. Paris, 1898.
+
+Charlet:
+
+ De la Combe: Charlet, sa vie et ses lettres. Paris, 1856.
+
+ Eugène Veron: "L'Art," 1875, i 193, 217.
+
+ F. L'homme, in "Les artistes célèbres." Paris, 1893.
+
+Raffet:
+
+ Auguste Bry: Raffet, sa vie et ses oeuvres. Paris, 1874.
+
+ Georges Duplessis: "L'Art," 1879, i 76.
+
+ Notes et croquis de Raffet, mis en ordre et publiés par Auguste Raffet
+ fils. Paris, Amand-Durand, 1879.
+
+ Henri Béraldi: Raffet, Peintre National. Paris, 1891.
+
+ F. L'homme, in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+ A. Dayot: Raffet et son oeuvre, etc. Paris, 1892.
+
+ <f><b><b>On the Young Military Painters:</b></f>
+
+ Eugène Montrosier: Les Peintres militaires, contenant les biographies
+ de Neuville, Detaille, Berne-Bellecour, Protais, etc. Paris, 1881.
+
+ Jules Richard: En campagne. Tableaux et dessins de Meissonier,
+ Detaille, Neuville, etc. 2 vols. Paris, 1889.
+
+Bellangé:
+
+ Francis Wey: Exposition des oeuvres d'Hippolyte Bellangé, Étude
+ biographique. Paris, 1867.
+
+ Jules Adeline: Hippolyte Bellangé et son oeuvre. Paris, 1880.
+
+Protais:
+
+ Jules Claretie: Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains. Paris, 1873, p.
+ 150.
+
+Pils:
+
+ L. Becq de Fouquières: Isidore Pils, sa vie et ses oeuvres. Paris,
+ 1876.
+
+ Roger-Ballu: L'oeuvre de Pils, "L'Art," 1876, i 232-258.
+
+Neuville:
+
+ Alfred de Lostalot: "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1885, ii 164.
+
+Detaille:
+
+ Jules Claretie: L'Art et les artistes français contemporains. Paris,
+ 1876, p. 56.
+
+ Jules Claretie: Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, II Série. Paris,
+ 1884, p. 249.
+
+ G. Goetschy: Les jeunes peintres militaires. Paris, 1878.
+
+Régamey:
+
+ E. Chesneau: Notice sur G. Régamey. Paris, 1870.
+
+ Eugène Montrosier: "L'Art," 1879, ii 25.
+
+Albrecht Adam:
+
+ Albrecht Adam: Autobiography, 1786-1862. Edited by H. Holland.
+ Stuttgart, 1886.
+
+ Das Werk der Münchener Künstlerfamilie Adam. Reproductions after
+ originals by the painters Albrecht, Benno, Emil, Eugen, Franz and
+ Julius Adam. Text by H. Holland. Nuremberg, Soldan, 1890.
+
+P. Hess:
+
+ H. Holland: P. v. Hess. München, 1871. Originally in "Oberbayerisches
+ Archiv," vol. xxxi.
+
+F. Krüger:
+
+ A. Rosenberg: Aus dem alten Berlin, Franz Krüger-Ausstellung,
+ "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1881, xvi 337.
+
+ H. Mackowski, in "Das Museum," vi 41. See Vor 50 Jahren,
+ Porträtskizzen berühmter und bekannter Persönlickkeiten von F. Krüger.
+ Berlin, 1883.
+
+Franz Adam:
+
+ Friedrich Pecht: Franz Adam, "Kunst für Alle," 1887, ii 120.
+
+Théodor Horschelt:
+
+ Ed. Ille: Zur Erinnerung an den Schlachtenmaler Théodor Horschelt.
+ München, 1871.
+
+ H. Holland: Théodor Horschelt, sein Leben und seine Werke. München,
+ 1889.
+
+Heinrich Lang:
+
+ H. E. von Berlepsch: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1892.
+
+On the more recent Düsseldorf Painters:
+
+ Adolf Rosenberg: Düsseldorfer Kriegs- und Militärmaler, "Zeitschrift
+ für bildende Kunst," 1889, xxiv 228.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+Leopold Robert:
+
+ E. J. Delécluze: Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de Leopold Robert.
+ Paris, 1838.
+
+ Feuillet de Conches: Leopold Robert, sa vie, ses oeuvres, et sa
+ correspondance. Paris, 1848.
+
+ Charles Clement: Leopold Robert d'après sa correspondance inédite.
+ Paris, 1875.
+
+Riedel:
+
+ H. Holland, in the "Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie," 1889, and books
+ which are there cited.
+
+On the Painters of the East in General:
+
+ Charles Gindriez: L'Algérie et les artistes, "L'Art," 1875, iii 396;
+ 1876, i 133.
+
+ Hermann Helferich: Moderne Orientmaler, "Freie Bühne," 1892.
+
+Decamps:
+
+ Marius Chaumelin: Decamps, sa vie et son oeuvre. Marseilles, 1861.
+
+ Ernest Chesneau: Mouvement moderne en peinture: Decamps. Paris, 1861.
+
+ Ad. Moreau: Decamps et son oeuvre, avec des gravures en facsimilé des
+ planches originales les plus rares. Paris, 1869.
+
+ M. E. Im-Thurn: Scheffer et Decamps. Nîmes, 1876. (Extr. des Mém. de
+ l'Académie du Gard, année 1875.)
+
+ Charles Clement, in "Les artistes célèbres." Paris, 1886.
+
+Marilhat:
+
+ G. Gonnot: Marilhat et son oeuvre. Clermont, 1884.
+
+Fromentin:
+
+ Jean Rousseau: "L'Art," 1877, i 11, 25.
+
+ L. Gonse: "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1878-1880. Published separately
+ under the title "Eugène Fromentin peintre et écrivain. Ouvrage
+ augmenté d'un Voyage en Egypte et d'autres notes et morçeaux inédits
+ de Fromentin, et illustré de 16 gravures hors texte et 45 dans le
+ texte." Paris, Quantin, 1881.
+
+Guillaumet:
+
+ Paul Leroi: "L'Art," 1882, iii 228.
+
+ Exposition des oeuvres de Guillaumet. Préface par Roger-Ballu. Paris,
+ 1888.
+
+ Gustave Guillaumet: Tableaux algériens. Précédé d'une notice sur la
+ vie et les oeuvres de Guillaumet. Paris, 1888.
+
+ Adolphe Badin: "L'Art," 1888, i 3, 39, 53.
+
+ Ary Renan: "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1887, i 404.
+
+Wilhelm Gentz:
+
+ L. v. Donop: Ausstellung der Werke von Gentz in der Berliner
+ Nationalgalerie. Berlin, Mittler, 1890.
+
+ Obituary in "Chronique des Arts," 1890, 29.
+
+ Adolf Rosenberg: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1891, p. 8.
+
+Adolf Schreyer:
+
+ Richard Graul: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1888, xxiii 153.
+
+ Richard Graul, in "Graphische Künste," 1889, xii 121, and in "Velhagen
+ und Klasings Monatshefte," 1893.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+H. Bürkel:
+
+ C. A. R.: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1870, v 161.
+
+ Alfred Lichtwark: Hermann Kauffmann und die Kunst in Hamburg. München,
+ 1893.
+
+Spitzweg:
+
+ C. A. Regnet: "Münchener Künstler," 1871, ii 268-276.
+
+ Graf Schack: "Meine Gemäldegalerie," 1881, pp. 189-191.
+
+ O. Berggruen: "Graphische Künste," 1883, v.
+
+ F. Pecht, Supplement "Allgemeine Zeitung," October 1885, and
+ "Geschichte der Münchener Kunst," 1888, p. 154.
+
+ "Münchener Kunstvereinsbericht," 1885, p. 69.
+
+ C. A. Regnet: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1886, xxi 77.
+
+ Spitzweg-Album. München, Hanfstaengl, 1890.
+
+ Spitzweg-Mappe, with preface by F. Pecht. München, Braun & Schneider,
+ 1890.
+
+ H. Holland: Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, 1893.
+
+Hermann Kauffmann:
+
+ Alfred Lichtwark: Hermann Kauffmann und die Kunst in Hamburg,
+ 1800-1850. München, 1893.
+
+Eduard Meyerheim:
+
+ Autobiography, supplemented by P. Meyerheim. Introduction by L.
+ Pietsch. With preface by B. Auerbach and the likeness of Eduard
+ Meyerheim. Berlin, Stilke, 1880.
+
+ A. Rosenberg: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1881, xvi 1.
+
+ Ludwig Pietsch: Die Künstlerfamilie Meyerheim, "Westermanns
+ Monatshefte," 1889, p. 397.
+
+Enhuber:
+
+ Friedrich Pecht: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1868, iii 53
+
+On the Viennese Genre Picture:
+
+ C. v. Lützow: Geschichte der k. k. Akademie der bildenden Künste.
+ Vienna, 1877.
+
+ R. v. Eitelberger: Das Wiener Genrebild vor dem Jahre 1848,
+ "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1877, xii 106. Also in his collected
+ studies on the history of art, i 66.
+
+ Dr. Cyriak Bodenstein: Hundert Jahre Kunstgeschichte Wiens, 1788-1888.
+ Wien, 1888.
+
+ Albert Ilg: Kunstgeschichtliche Charakterbilder aus Oesterreich-Ungarn
+ (The Nineteenth Century, by A. Nossig). Wien, 1893.
+
+ Ludwig Hevesi: Die österreichische Kunst im 19 Jahrhundert. Leipzig,
+ 1902.
+
+Danhauser:
+
+ Albert Ilg: Raimund und Danhauser, in Kabdebo's
+ "Osterreichisch-ungarische Kunstchronik." Vienna, 1880, iii 161.
+
+Waldmüller:
+
+ "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1866, i 33.
+
+ Oskar Berggruen: "Graphische Künste," x 57.
+
+ R. v. Eitelberger: J. Danhauser und Ferdinand Waldmüller, in "Kunst
+ und Künstler Wiens," p. 73. (Vol. i of his works on the history of
+ art. Vienna, 1879.)
+
+Gauermann:
+
+ R. v. Eitelberger: Friedrich Gauermann, in "Kunst und Künstler Wiens,"
+ 1878, p. 92. (Vol. i of his works on the history of art. Vienna,
+ 1879.)
+
+Schrödter:
+
+ Obituary by Kaulen in the "Deutsches Kunstblatt," 1884, 11 and 12.
+
+ M. G. Zimmermann, in the "Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie."
+
+Hasenclever:
+
+ A. Fahne: Hasenclevers Illustrationen zur Jobsiade. Bonn, 1852.
+
+Rudolf Jordan:
+
+ Friedrich Pecht: "Kunst für Alle," 1887, ii 241.
+
+Tidemand:
+
+ C. Dietrichson: Adolf Tidemand, hans Liv og hans Vaerker. 2 vols.
+ Christiania, 1878-79.
+
+ Adolf Tidemand, utvalgte Vaerker. 24 etchings by L. H. Fischer.
+ Christiania, 1878.
+
+Madou:
+
+ Camille Lemonnier: "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1870, i 385.
+
+Ferdinand de Braekeleer:
+
+ L. v. Keymeulen: Ferdinand de Braekeleer, "Revue artistique," 1883,
+ pp. 170, 171.
+
+Biard:
+
+ L. Boivin: Notice sur M. Biard, ses aventures, son voyage en Japonie
+ avec Mme. Biard, Examen critique de ses tableaux. Paris, 1842.
+
+ Obituary in the "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," ix 1874.
+ Supplementary Sheet, p. 769.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+In General:
+
+ Emil Reich: Die bürgerliche Kunst und die besitzlosen Klassen.
+ Leipzig, 1892.
+
+Tassaert:
+
+ Bernard Prost: "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1886, i 28.
+
+Carl Hübner:
+
+ M. Blanckarts: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," xv 1312.
+
+Wiertz:
+
+ Louis Labarre: Antoine Wiertz, étude biographique. Brussels, 1866.
+
+ Ed. F.: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1866, i 273.
+
+ H. Grimm: Der Maler Wiertz, in "15 Essays," New Series, Berlin, 1875,
+ p. 1.
+
+ J. Beavington-Atkinson: "Portfolio," 1875, pp. 124, 133, 152.
+
+ C. E. Clement: Antoine Jos. Wiertz, "American Art Review," 1881, 13.
+
+ Catalogue du Musée Wiertz, précédé d'une notice biographique par Em.
+ de Laveleye. Brussels, 1882.
+
+ L. Schulze Waldhausen: Anton Wiertz, "Deutsches Kunstblatt," 1882, 5;
+ 1883, 12.
+
+ W. Claessens: Wiertz. Brussels, L. Hochsteyn, 1883.
+
+ L. Dietrichson: En abnorm Kunstner. Fra Kunstverden, Kopenhagen, 1885,
+ p. 209.
+
+ Max Nordau: Vom Kreml bis zur Alhambra. Leipzig, 1886, pp. 201-250.
+
+ Robert Mielke: Antoine Wiertz, "Das Atelier," 1893, No. 66.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Knaus:
+
+ Alfred de Lostalot: Louis Knaus, "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1882, i
+ 269, 316.
+
+ V. K. Schembera: Louis Knaus, "Die Heimath," vii 40.
+
+ L. Pietsch: Ludwig Knaus. Photographs after originals by the master.
+ Berlin Photographische Gesellschaft.
+
+ Friedrich Pecht: Zu Knaus 60 Geburtstag, "Kunst für Alle," 1890, v 65.
+
+ G. Voss: "Tägliche Rundschau," 1889, p. 233.
+
+ L. Pietsch, Louis Knaus in the "Künstlermonographien," ed. by
+ Knackfuss. Bielefeld, 1896.
+
+Vautier:
+
+ Friedrich Pecht: Deutsche Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts. Third Series.
+ Nördlingen, 1881, p. 351.
+
+ E. Heilbuth: Knaus und Vautier. Text to Behrens' work upon the
+ gallery, reprinted in "Kunst für Alle," 1892, 2.
+
+ Adolf Rosenberg, Vautier in the "Künstlermonographien," ed. by
+ Knackfuss. Bd. 23. Bielefeld, 1897.
+
+Defregger:
+
+ P. K. Rosegger: Wie Defregger Maler wurde. "Oesterr.-ungarische
+ Kunstchronik," 1879, iii 2.
+
+ Friedrich Pecht: Franz Defregger, sein Leben und Wirken, "Vom Fels zum
+ Meer," iii 1.
+
+ K. Raupp: Franz Defregger und seine Schule, "Wartburg," viii 4, 5.
+
+ Ludwig Pietsch: Franz Defregger, "Westermanns Monatshefte," February
+ 1889.
+
+ F. Pecht: Deutsche Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts. München, 1888.
+
+ Adolf Rosenberg, in the "Künstlermonographien," ed. by Knackfuss. Bd.
+ 18. Bielefeld, 1893.
+
+ Franz Hermann Meissner in the "Kunstlerbuch." Berlin, 1901.
+
+ See also Karl Stieler und F. Defregger, Von Dahoam. München, 1888.
+
+Riefstahl:
+
+ H. Holland: Wilhelm Riefstahl. Altenburg, 1889.
+
+ M. Haushofer: "Kunst für Alle," 1889, iv 97.
+
+ W. Lübke: "Nord und Süd," 1890, 163.
+
+ H. E. v. Berlepsch: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1890, 8.
+
+Grützner:
+
+ G. Ramberg: "Vom Fels zum Meer," 1890, 2.
+
+ Friedrich Pecht: "Kunst für Alle," 1890, 12.
+
+ J. Janitsch: "Nord und Süd," 1892, 182.
+
+ Fritz von Ostini, in the "Künstlermonographien," ed. by Knackfuss. Bd.
+ 58. Leipzig, 1902.
+
+Bokelmann:
+
+ Adolf Rosenberg: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1892.
+
+Gustave Brion:
+
+ Paul Leroi: "L'Art," 1878, i 10.
+
+Jules Breton:
+
+ Autobiography. Vie d'un artiste. Paris, 1891.
+
+The Swedish Genre Painters:
+
+ Georg Nordensvan: Svensk Konst och Svenska Konstnärer i 19^de
+ Arhundradet. Stockholm, 1892. (German Translation:) Die schwedische
+ Kunst im 19 Jahrhundert. Leipzig, 1903.
+
+The Hungarian Genre Painters:
+
+ A. Ipolyi: Die bildende Kunst in Ungarn, "Ungarische Revue," 1882, 5.
+
+ Szana Tamáz: Magyar Müvészek. Budapest, 1887.
+
+ Heinrich Glücksmann: Die ungarische Kunst der Gegenwart, "Kunst für
+ Alle," 1892, vii 129, 145.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+J. A. Koch:
+
+ David Friedrich Strauss: Kleine Schriften biographischen,
+ literarischen, und kunstgeschichtlichen Inhalts. Leipzig, 1862, p.
+ 303.
+
+ Th. Frimmel, in Dohmes Kunst und Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts, No. 9.
+ Leipzig, 1884.
+
+ C. v. Lützow: Aus Kochs Jugendzeit, "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst,"
+ 1874, ix 65.
+
+ See also J. A. Koch: Moderne Kunstchronik. Briefe zweier Freunde in
+ Rom und in der Tartarei über das moderne Kunstleben. Karlsruhe, 1834.
+
+Reinhart:
+
+ Otto Baisch: Johann Christian Reinhart und seine Kreise, ein Lebens-
+ und Kulturbild. Leipzig, 1882.
+
+ Friedrich Schiller und der Maler Johann Christian Reinhart. Supplement
+ to the "Leipziger Zeitung," 1883, 89, 90.
+
+Rottmann:
+
+ A. Teichlein: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1869, iv 7, 72.
+
+ A. Bayersdorfer: Karl Rottmann. München, 1871. Reprinted in A.
+ Bayersdorfer's Leben und Schriften. München, 1902.
+
+ O. Berggruen: Die Galerie Schack, "Graphische Künste," v 1.
+
+ Friedrich Pecht: Deutsche Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts. Nördlingen,
+ 1879, ii pp. 1-26.
+
+ C. A. Regnet, in Dohmes Kunst und Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts, No.
+ 10.
+
+ See also Rottmann's Italienische Landschaften. After the Frescoes in
+ the Arcades of the Royal Garden in Munich, carried out by Steinbock.
+ München, Bruckmann, 1876.
+
+Preller:
+
+ R. Schöne: Fr. Preller's Odysseelandschaften. Leipzig, 1863.
+
+ L. v. Donop: Der Genelli-Fries von Fr. Preller. "Zeitschrift für
+ bildende Kunst," 1874, ix 321.
+
+ Friedrich Pecht: Deutsche Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts. Nördlingen,
+ 1877, vol. i pp. 271-289.
+
+ C. Ruland: Zur Erinnerung an Friedrich Preller. Weimar, 1878.
+
+ Obituary in "Unsere Zeit," 1879, 8.
+
+ M. Jordan: Katalog der Preller Ausstellung in der Berliner
+ Nationalgalerie, 1879.
+
+ A. Dürr: Preller und Goethe, "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1881,
+ xvi 357-365.
+
+ J. Beavington-Atkinson: Frederick Preller, "Art Journal," 1881, 9.
+
+ W. Lübke: Friedrich Preller, "Allgemeine Zeitung," 1882, No. 117.
+
+ Preller und Goethe, "Allgemeine Zeitung," 1882, No. 342.
+
+ O. Roquette: Preller und Goethe, "Gegenwart," 1883, 42.
+
+ Friedrich J. Frommann: Zur Charakteristik Friedrich Prellers,
+ "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1884, No. 31.
+
+ See also Homer's Odyssee mit 40 Original compositionen von Friedrich
+ Preller. Leipzig, 1872. Popular edition with biography, Leipzig, 1881.
+ Italienisches Landschaftsbuch, zehn Originalzeichnungen von Friedrich
+ Preller. Carried out in wood-cut by H. Kaeseberg and K. Oertel, with
+ Text by Max Jordan. Leipzig, 1875. Friedrich Prellers Figurenfries zur
+ Odyssee. 16 Compositions reproduced in 24 coloured lithographs.
+ Leipzig, 1875.
+
+K. F. Lessing:
+
+ Karl Koberstein: Karl Friedrich Lessing, "Nord und Süd," 14, 1880, p.
+ 312.
+
+ K. F. Lessing's Briefe mitgetheilt von Th. Frimmel, "Zeitschrift für
+ bildende Kunst," 1881, 6.
+
+ Rudolf Redtenbacher: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1881, xvi 2.
+
+ M. Schasler: "Unsere Zeit," 1880, 10.
+
+ W. Dohme: "Westermanns illustrierte Monatshefte," 1880, ix 729.
+
+ A. Rosenberg: Lessing-Ausstellung in der Berliner Nationalgalerie,
+ "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1880, No. 5.
+
+ Friedrich Pecht: Deutsche Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts, iii.
+ Nördlingen, 1881, p. 294.
+
+Blechen:
+
+ Robert Dohme, in "Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie," 1875.
+
+ Ludwig Pietsch: Wie ich Schriftsteller wurde. Berlin, 1893, _passim_.
+
+ H. Mackowsky, in the "Museum," viii. Berlin, Spemann.
+
+Schirmer:
+
+ Johann Wilhelm Schirmer: Düsseldorfer Lehrjahre, "Deutsche Rundschau,"
+ 1878.
+
+ Alfred Woltmann, in "Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie." Works cited in
+ it.
+
+Dahl:
+
+ Andreas Aubert: Maleren Professor Dahl 1788-1857, et Stykke av
+ aarhundredets Kunst- og Kulturhistorie. Kristiania, Aschehoug, 1893.
+
+Morgenstern:
+
+ Obituary by Pecht: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1867, ii 80.
+
+ Alfred Lichtwark: Hermann Kauffmann und die Kunst in Hamburg von 1800
+ _bis_ 1850. München, 1893.
+
+Andreas Achenbach:
+
+ Ludwig Pietsch: "Nord und Süd," 1880, xv 381.
+
+ Friedrich Pecht: Deutsche Künstler des 19 Jahrhunderts. Third Series.
+ Nördlingen, 1881, p. 328.
+
+ Theodor Levin: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1886, xxi, No. 1.
+
+Eduard Schleich:
+
+ C. A. Regnet: Zu Eduard Schleichs Gedächtniss, "Zeitschrift für
+ bildende Kunst," 1874, ix 161.
+
+ O. Berggruen: Die Galerie Schack, "Graphische Künste," v 1.
+
+Alexander Calame:
+
+ E. H. Gaullier: Alexander Calame. Genève, 1854. (Le Musée Suisse, vol.
+ i.)
+
+ H. Delaborde: La peinture de paysage en Suisse; Alexander Calame:
+ "Revue des Deux Mondes," Février, 1865.
+
+ J. M. Ziegler: Mittheilungen über den Landschaftsmaler Alexander
+ Calame. Zurich, 1866.
+
+ C. Meyer: Alexander Calame, "Dioskuren." Stuttgart, 1866.
+
+ A. Bachelin: Alexander Calame. Lausanne, 1880.
+
+ Wilhelm Rossmann, in the text to work of engravings from the Dresden
+ Gallery. 1881, etc.
+
+ E. Rambert: Alexander Calame, sa vie et son oeuvre d'après les sources
+ originales. Paris, 1884.
+
+ Adolf Rosenberg: "Grenzboten," 1884, ii 371.
+
+Gude:
+
+ A. Rosenberg: Die Düsseldorfer Schule. "Grenzboten," 1881, 35.
+
+ Af. Dietrichson: H. Gude liv og voerker. Kristiania, 1899.
+
+Eduard Hildebrandt:
+
+ Bruno Meyer: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1869, iv 261, 336.
+
+ F. Arndt: Eduard Hildebrandt, der Maler des Kosmos, Sein Leben und
+ seine Werke. Second Edition. Berlin, 1869.
+
+ Ada Pinelli: Hildebrandt und Schirmer. Berlin, 1871.
+
+Louis Douzette:
+
+ Adolf Rosenberg: "Graphische Künste," 1891, xiv 13.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+In General:
+
+ Victor de Laprade: Le sentiment de la nature chez les modernes. Second
+ Edition. Paris, 1870.
+
+Aligny:
+
+ Aligny et la paysage historique, "L'Art," 1882, i 251; ii 33.
+
+ See also the etchings Vues des Sites les plus célèbres de la Grèce
+ antique. Paris, 1845.
+
+Victor Hugo:
+
+ Les dessins de Victor Hugo, "L'Art," 1877, i 50.
+
+ H. Helferich: Malende Dichter, "Kunst für Alle," 1891, 21.
+
+Paul Huet:
+
+ Philippe Burty: Paul Huet, Notice biographique. Paris, 1869.
+
+ E. Legouvé: Notice sur Paul Huet. Paris, 1878.
+
+ Ernest Chesneau: Peintres et statuaires romantiques. Paris, 1880.
+
+ Léon Mancino: Un précurseur, "L'Art," 1883, i 49.
+
+On the English:
+
+ William Bell Scott: Our British Landscape-Painters, from Samuel Scott
+ to D. Cox. With 16 Engravings. London, 1876.
+
+ J. Comyns Carr: Modern Landscape. With Illustrations. Paris and
+ London, 1883.
+
+Turner:
+
+ Alice Watts: J. M. W. Turner. London, 1851.
+
+ John Burnet and Peter Cunningham: Turner and his Works. London, 1852.
+ Edition of Henry Murray. London, 1859.
+
+ John Ruskin: Notes on the Turner Collection. London, 1857.
+
+ Walter Thornbury: J. M. W. Turner. 2 vols. London, 1862. New Edition,
+ 1897.
+
+ Philip G. Hamerton: Turner et Claude Lorrain, "L'Art," 1876, iv pp.
+ 270, 289.
+
+ Philip G. Hamerton: Turner, "Portfolio," 1876, pp. 28-188; 1877, pp.
+ 44-145; 1878, pp. 2-178.
+
+ A. Brunet-Desbaines: The Life of Turner. London, 1878.
+
+ John Ruskin: Notes on his Collection of Drawings by the late J. M. W.
+ Turner, also a list of the engraved works of that master. London. Fine
+ Art Society, 1878.
+
+ F. Wedmore: Turner's Liber Studiorum, "Academy," 1879, Nos. 377, 389,
+ 399, and in "L'Art," 1879, 232-234.
+
+ Philip G. Hamerton: J. M. W. Turner. London, 1879.
+
+ Cosmo Monkhouse: J. M. W. Turner. London, 1879.
+
+ Hart: Turner, the Dream-Painter. London, 1879.
+
+ A. W. Hunt: Turner in Yorkshire, "Art Journal," 1881, New Series, 1,
+ 2.
+
+ W. G. Rawlinson: Turner's Liber Studiorum, "Art Journal," 1881, New
+ Series, 4.
+
+ James Dafforne: The Works of J. M. W. Turner. With a biographical
+ sketch. London, 1883.
+
+ G. Radford: Turner in Wharfedale, "Portfolio," May, 1884.
+
+ Philip G. Hamerton: J. M. W. Turner, in "Les artistes célèbres."
+ Paris, 1889.
+
+ Robert de la Sizeranne: Deux heures à la Turner Gallery. Paris, 1890.
+
+ F. Wedmore: Turner and Ruskin. 2 vols. London, 1900.
+
+_Reproductions:_
+
+ The Harbours of England. London, 1856.
+
+ Liber Studiorum, illustrative of Landscape Composition. London,
+ 1858-59.
+
+ The Turner Gallery. London, 1862.
+
+ Turner's Celebrated Landscapes. Reproduced by the Autotype Process.
+ London, 1870.
+
+A. W. Callcott:
+
+ Sir A. W. Callcott's Italian and English Landscapes. Lithographed by
+ T. C. Dibdin. London, 1847.
+
+ James Dafforne: Pictures by Sir A. W. Callcott, R. A. With
+ descriptions and a biographical sketch of the painter. London. No
+ date.
+
+John Crome:
+
+ Etchings of Views in Norfolk. With a biographical memoir by Dawson
+ Turner. Norwich, 1838.
+
+ J. Wodderspoon: John Crome and his Works. Norwich, 1858.
+
+ Frederick Wedmore: John Crome, "L'Art," 1876, iii 288.
+
+ Mary M. Heaton: John Crome, "Portfolio," 1879, pp. 33 and 48.
+
+ R. L. Binyon: John Crome and John Sell Colman. London, 1897.
+
+On English Water-Colour Painting:
+
+ Cosmo Monkhouse: The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters. London,
+ Seeley & Co., 1890.
+
+ John Lewis Roget: A History of the "Old Water-Colour Society." 2 vols.
+ London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1891.
+
+Samuel Palmer:
+
+ The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, Painter and Etcher. Edited by
+ A. H. Palmer. With Illustrations. 1891.
+
+Constable:
+
+ Charles Robert Leslie: The Memoirs of John Constable. London, 1845.
+
+ H. Perrier: De Hugo v. d. Goes à Constable, "Gazette des Beaux-Arts,"
+ March, 1873.
+
+ Frederick Wedmore, "L'Art," 1878, ii 169.
+
+ G. M. Brock-Arnold: Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable, in
+ "Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists." London, Low, 1881.
+
+ P. G. Hamerton: Constable's Sketches, "Portfolio," 1890, p. 162.
+
+ Robert Hobart: in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+_Reproductions:_
+
+ Various subjects of Landscape, characteristic of English Scenery, from
+ pictures painted by John Constable. 22 Plates. London, 1830. Second
+ Edition, London, 1833.
+
+ English Landscape, from pictures painted by John Constable. 20 Plates
+ engraved by D. Lucas. London. No date.
+
+ English Landscape Scenery: 40 mezzotinto engravings from pictures
+ painted by John Constable. Fol. London, 1855.
+
+David Cox:
+
+ N. Neal Solly: Memoir of the Life of David Cox. London, 1873.
+
+ Basil Champneys: David Cox, "Portfolio," 1873, p. 89.
+
+ J. Beavington-Atkinson, "Portfolio," 1876, p. 9.
+
+ Frederick Wedmore: "Gentleman's Magazine," March, 1878.
+
+ W. Hall: David Cox. London, 1881.
+
+William J. Muller:
+
+ N. Neal Solly: Memoir of the Life of William James Muller. London,
+ 1875.
+
+ J. Beavington-Atkinson: William Muller, "Portfolio," 1875, pp. 164,
+ 185.
+
+ Frederick Wedmore: W. Muller and his Sketches, "Portfolio," 1882, p.
+ 7.
+
+Peter de Wint:
+
+ Walter Armstrong: Memoir of Peter de Wint. Illustrated by 24
+ Photogravures. London, Macmillan & Co., 1888.
+
+Henry Dawson:
+
+ Alfred Dawson: The Life of Henry Dawson, Landscape Painter, 1811-1878.
+ London, 1891.
+
+John Linnell:
+
+ F. G. Stephens: "Portfolio," 1872, p. 45.
+
+Bonington:
+
+ Al. Bouvenne: Catalogue de l'oeuvre gravé et lithographié de R. P.
+ Bonington. Paris, 1873.
+
+ Paul Mantz: "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1876, ii 288.
+
+ Edmond Saint-Raymond: Bonington et les côtes normandes de Saint Jouin,
+ "L'Art," 1879, i 197.
+
+ P. G. Hamerton: A Sketchbook of Bonington at the British Museum,
+ "Portfolio," 1881, p. 68.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+In General:
+
+ Roger-Ballu: Le paysage français au XIX siècle, "Nouvelle Revue,"
+ 1881.
+
+ John W. Mollet: The Painters of Barbizon. (1. Corot, Daubigny, Dupré;
+ 2. Millet, Rousseau, Diaz.) In "Illustrated Biographies of the Great
+ Artists." London, Low, 1890.
+
+ David Croal Thomson: The Barbizon School of Painters: Corot, Rousseau,
+ Diaz, Millet, Daubigny, etc. With One Hundred and Thirty
+ Illustrations. London, 1891.
+
+ See also the articles by G. Gurlitt in "Die Gegenwart," 1891, the Text
+ of H. Helferich to Behrens' work on the gallery, etc.
+
+Théodore Rousseau:
+
+ A. Teichlein: Théodore Rousseau und die Anfänge des Paysage intime,
+ "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1868, iii 281.
+
+ Alfred Sensier: Souvenirs sur Théodore Rousseau, suivis d'une
+ conférence sur le Paysage et orné du portrait du maître. Paris, 1872.
+
+ Philippe Burty: Théodore Rousseau, paysagiste, "L'Art," 1881, p. 374.
+
+ Emile Michel, in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+ Walter Gensel: Millet und Rousseau, Bd. 57 in the
+ "Künstlermonographien" ed. by Knackfuss. Bielefeld, 1902.
+
+Corot:
+
+ Edmond About: Voyage à travers L'Exposition des Beaux-Arts. Paris,
+ 1855.
+
+ Henri Dumesnil: Corot, souvenirs intimes: avec un portrait dessiné par
+ Aimé Millet, gravé par Alphonse Leroy. Paris, Rapilly, 1875.
+
+ Charles Blanc: Les Artistes de mon temps. Paris, 1879.
+
+ Leleux: Corot à Montreux, "Bibliothèque universelle et Revue suisse,"
+ September 1883.
+
+ Alfred Robaut: Corot, peintures décoratives, "L'Art," 1883, p. 407.
+
+ Jean Rousseau: Camille Corot: avec gravures. Paris, 1884.
+
+ Armand Silvestre: Galerie Durand-Ruel: avec 28 gravures à l'eauforte
+ d'après des tableaux de Corot. Paris. No date.
+
+ Albert Wolff: La capitale de l'Art. Paris, 1886.
+
+ Charles Bigot: Peintres contemporains. Paris, 1888.
+
+ L. Roger-Milès: Corot, in "Les artistes célèbres." Paris, 1891.
+
+ Album classique des chefs d'oeuvre de Corot. Paris, 1896.
+
+ Julius Meier-Gräfe: Corot und Courbet. Stuttgart, 1906.
+
+Dupré:
+
+ Les hommes du jour: M. Jules Dupré, 1811-1879, par un critique d'art.
+ Paris, 1879.
+
+ R. Ménard: "L'Art," 1879, iii 311; iv 241.
+
+ A. Michel: "L'Art," 1883, p. 460.
+
+ Jules Claretie: Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, II Série. Paris,
+ 1884, p. 177.
+
+ A. Hustin, in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+Diaz:
+
+ Jules Claretie: Narcisse Diaz, "L'Art," 1875, iii 204.
+
+ Exposition des oeuvres de Narcisse Diaz à l'école des Beaux-Arts.
+ Notice biographique par M. Jules Claretie. Paris, 1877.
+
+ Roger-Ballu: "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1877, i 290.
+
+ Jean Rousseau: "L'Art," 1877, i 49.
+
+ T. Chasrel: L'exposition de Narcisse Diaz, "L'Art," 1877, ii 189.
+
+ Hermann Billung: Narcisse Virgilio Diaz, ein Lebensbild, "Zeitschrift
+ für bildende Kunst," 1879, xiv 97.
+
+ A. Hustin, in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+Daubigny:
+
+ Karl Daubigny: Ch. Daubigny et son oeuvre. Paris, 1875.
+
+ Frédéric Henriet: Charles Daubigny et son oeuvre. Paris, 1878.
+
+ Frédéric Henriet, in "L'Art," 1881, p. 330.
+
+ A. Hustin, in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+ Robert J. Wickenden: Charles François Daubigny, "Century Magazine,"
+ July 1892.
+
+Chintreuil:
+
+ Frédéric Henriet: Chintreuil: Esquisse biographique. Paris, 1858.
+
+ A. de la Fisèliere, Champfleury, et F. Henriet: La vie et l'oeuvre de
+ Chintreuil. Paris, 1874.
+
+ "Portfolio," 1874, p. 99.
+
+Harpignies:
+
+ Charles Tardieu: Henry Harpignies, "L'Art," 1879, xvi 269, 281.
+
+Français:
+
+ J. G. Prat: François Louis Français, "L'Art," 1882, i 48, 81, 368.
+
+Brascassat:
+
+ M. Cabat: Notice sur Brascassat. Paris, 1862.
+
+ Charles Marionneau: R. Brascassat, sa vie et son oeuvre. Paris, 1872.
+
+Troyon:
+
+ Henri Dumesnil: Constant Troyon, Souvenirs intimes. Paris, 1888.
+
+ A. Hustin: "L'Art," 1889, i 77; ii 85.
+
+ A. Hustin, in "Les artistes célèbres." Paris, 1893.
+
+Rosa Bonheur:
+
+ Laruelle: Rosa Bonheur, sa vie, ses oeuvres. Paris, 1885.
+
+ René Peyrol: Rosa Bonheur, her Life and Work. With three engraved
+ Plates and Illustrations, "The Art Annual." London, 1889.
+
+ Roger-Milès: Rosa Bonheur. Paris, 1901.
+
+Emile van Marcke:
+
+ Emile Michel: "L'Art," 1891, i 145.
+
+Eugène Lambert:
+
+ Chiens et chats, Text by G. de Cherville. Paris, 1888.
+
+Lancon:
+
+ Alfred de Lostalot: Un peintre animalier, "Gazette des Beaux-Arts,"
+ 1887, ii 319.
+
+Charles Jacque:
+
+ Jules Claretie: Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, II Série. Paris,
+ 1884, p. 297.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+ Ernest Chesneau: Jean François Millet, "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1875,
+ i 429.
+
+ Ph. L. Couturier: Millet et Corot. Saint-Quentin, 1876.
+
+ A. Piedagnel: Jean François Millet. Souvenirs de Barbizon. Avec 1
+ portrait, 9 Eaux-fortes, et un facsimilé d'autographe. Paris, 1876.
+
+ A. Sensier: La vie et l'oeuvre de Jean François Millet. Manuscrit
+ publié par P. Mantz, avec de nombreux fascimilés, 12 heliographies
+ hors texte, et 48 gravures. Paris, Quantin, 1881.
+
+ W. E. H.: Millet as an Art-Critic, "Magazine of Art," 1883, p. 27.
+
+ Charles Yriarte: Jean François Millet. Portrait et 24 Gravures. Paris,
+ 1885.
+
+ André Michel: Jean François Millet et l'exposition de ses oeuvres a
+ l'école des Beaux-Arts, "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1887, ii 5.
+
+ Charles Bigot: Peintres contemporains. Paris, 1888.
+
+ R. Graul: Jean François Millet, "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," New
+ Series, ii 29.
+
+ Le livre d'or de Jean François Millet. Illustré de 17 Eaux-fortes par
+ Frédéric Jacque. Paris, 1892.
+
+ Emile Michel, in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+ H. Naegely: Millet and Rustic Art. London, 1897.
+
+ W. Gensel: Millet und Rousseau. Leipzig, 1902.
+
+ Julia Cartwright: Jean François Millet, His Life and Letters. London,
+ 1901. German Edition. Leipzig, 1902.
+
+ Arthur Thomson: Jean-François Millet and the Barbizon School. London,
+ 1903.
+
+ Richard Muther in his series "Die Kunst." Berlin, 1904.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+Courbet:
+
+ Champfleury: Grandes figures d'hier et d'aujourd'hui. (Balzac, Wagner,
+ Courbet.) Paris, Poulet-Malassis, 1861.
+
+ Th. Silvestre: Les artistes français, p. 109. Paris, 1878.
+
+ P. d'Abrest: Artistische Wanderungen durch Paris, "Zeitschrift für
+ bildende Kunst," 1876, xi 183, 209.
+
+ Comte H. d'Jdeville: Gustave Courbet: Notes et documents sur sa vie et
+ son oeuvre. Paris, 1878.
+
+ T. Chasrel: "L'Art," 1878, i 145.
+
+ Paul Mantz: Gustave Courbet, "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1878, i 514; ii
+ 17, 371.
+
+ Émile Zola: Mes Haines. Proudhon et Courbet. Paris, 1879, p. 21.
+
+ Gros-Kost: Courbet, Souvenirs intimes. Paris, 1880.
+
+ H. Billung: Supplement to the "Allgemeine Zeitung," 1880, p. 240.
+
+ Eug. Véron: G. Courbet, Un enterrement à Ornans, "L'Art," 1882, i 363,
+ 390; ii 226.
+
+ A. de Lostalot: L'exposition des oeuvres de Courbet, "Gazette des
+ Beaux-Arts," 1882, i 572.
+
+ Carl v. Lützow: "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1889.
+
+ Camille Lemonnier: Les peintres de la vie. Cap. I, Courbet et son
+ oeuvre. Paris, 1888.
+
+ Abel Patoux, in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+ Julius Meier-Gräfe: Corot und Courbet. Stuttgart, 1906.
+
+Stevens:
+
+ Paul d'Abrest: Artistische Wanderungen durch Paris. Ein Besuch bei
+ Alfred Stevens, "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst," 1875, x 310.
+
+ L. Cardon: Les modernistes: Alfred Stevens, "La fédération
+ artistique," 23-26.
+
+ Camille Lemonnier: Alfred Stevens, "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1878, i
+ 160, 335.
+
+ Camille Lemonnier: Les peintres de la vie. Cap. II, Alfred Stevens.
+ Paris, 1888.
+
+Ricard:
+
+ Moriz Hartmann: Büsten und Bilder. Frankfurt-a-M., 1860.
+
+ Paul de Musset: Notice sur la vie de Gustave Ricard. Paris, 1873.
+
+ Louis Brés: Gustave Ricard et son oeuvre. Paris, 1873.
+
+Bonvin:
+
+ L. Gauchez, "L'Art," 1888, i 249, ii 41, 61.
+
+ Paul Lefort: Philippe Rousseau et François Bonvin, "Gazette des
+ Beaux-Arts," 1888, i 132.
+
+Charles Chaplin:
+
+ Paul Lefort: "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1891, i 246.
+
+Gaillard:
+
+ G. Dargenty: "L'Art," 1887, i 149, 179.
+
+ L. Gonse: "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1887, i 221.
+
+ V. Guillemin: F. Gaillard, graveur et peinture, originaire de la
+ Franche-Comté, 1834-1887. Notice sur sa vie et son oeuvre. Besançon,
+ 1891.
+
+ Georges Duplessis, in "Les artistes célèbres."
+
+Bonnat:
+
+ Roger Ballu: Les peintures de M. Bonnat, "L'Art," 1876, iii p. 122.
+
+ B. Day: L'atelier Bonnat, "Magazine of Art," 1881, p. 6.
+
+ Jules Claretie, Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, II Série. Paris,
+ 1884, p. 129.
+
+Carolus Duran:
+
+ Jules Claretie: Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, II Série. Paris,
+ 1884, p. 153.
+
+Vollon:
+
+ Jules Claretie: Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, II Série. Paris,
+ 1884, p. 201.
+
+Philippe Rousseau:
+
+ Paul Lefort: "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1888, i 132.
+
+Paul Dubois:
+
+ Jules Claretie: Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, II Série. Paris,
+ 1884, p. 321.
+
+Delaunay:
+
+ Georges Lafenestre: Elie Delaunay, "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1891, ii
+ 353, 484.
+
+Ribot:
+
+ E. Véron: Théodule Ribot, Exposition générale de ses oeuvres, "L'Art,"
+ 1880, p. 281.
+
+ Firmin Javel: Théodule Ribot, "Revue des Musées," 1890, iii 55.
+
+ L. Fourcaud: Maîtres modernes: Théodule Ribot, sa vie et ses oeuvres.
+ With Illustrations. Paris, 1890.
+
+ Paul Lefort: Théodule Ribot, "Gazette des Beaux-Arts," 1891, ii 298.
+
+
+
+
+ _Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, _Edinburgh_
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The History of Modern Painting, Volume
+2 (of 4), by Richard Muther
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43894 ***
generated by cgit v1.2.3 (git 2.25.1) at 2026-02-15 16:22:28 +0000