GEORGE HOLMES HOWISON 
 
SIX PORTRAITS 
 
 BELLA ROBBIA, CORREGGIO, BLAKE, 
 
 COROT, GEORGE FULLER, 
 
 WINSLOW HOMER 
 
 MRS. SCHUYLER VAN RENSSELAER 
 
 Ce que nous appelons le talent reside dans le je ne sais quoi 
 d'indefinissable qui est la personne meme. La preuve en 
 est que cette personne une fois disparue, cette nuance de talent 
 aura, elle aussi, disparu pour toujours. PAUL BOURGET. 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
V 
 
 * 
 
 
 Copyright, 1889,! 
 BY M. G. VAN RENSSELAER. 
 
 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Rivertide Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Company. 
 
To 
 CANDACE WHEELER 
 
 IN LOVE AND GRATITUDE. 
 
 849343 
 
THESE Essays are reprinted by the kind 
 permission of the publishers of the Century 
 Magazine, the American Architect and 
 Building News, and the American Art Re- 
 view. One of them has been entirely re- 
 written from a different point of view, two 
 have been considerably enlarged, and all 
 have been carefully corrected. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION . . . . . .1 
 
 LUCA DELIA ROBBIA 5 
 
 CORREGGIO 77 
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 113 
 
 COROT 139 
 
 GEORGE FULLER 190 
 
 WINSLOW HOMER ..237 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IN associating six artists so far apart in 
 time and character, I have tried to bind 
 them together by a tangible connecting 
 thread. Indeed, two such threads have 
 guided me in writing. 
 
 First of all, I wanted to show the mean- 
 ing of individuality in art ; to illustrate 
 what Emerson implied when he said Art 
 is Nature " passed through the alembic of 
 man." The main thing for an artist is to 
 express himself to clarify his sensations, 
 and develop some adequate form of speech. 
 He is not a mere recorder. He is an inter- 
 preter. He neither copies nor falsifies the 
 facts of nature. He transmutes them, giv- 
 ing them new beauties and a new meaning 
 drawn from the essence of his own soulJ( If 
 I have made this fact at all clear with re- 
 gard to the six artists whom I have tried to 
 explain, the great difference between them 
 should but accent its significance. 
 
2 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 _But if it is the part of the artist to " in- 
 sist on himself," it is the part of the student 
 to put himself in perfect sympathy now with 
 one artist and now with another ; and this 
 is the second general truth I have wished 
 to illustrate The main thing for an ar- 
 tist is to learn to express himself; the main 
 thing for an intelligent observer is to learn 
 to appreciate all forms of speech and all 
 ideas that are well expressed. No kind of 
 art is better than all others. No painter or 
 sculptor who has ever lived can be called 
 greater than all his fellows. Every one who 
 has deserved the name has been right in his 
 own way ; and the more ways we can un- 
 derstand and value, the higher and truer^ 
 will be our love for each. ; A catholic creed 
 in art is the only creed that is honorable to 
 the worshipped and wholesome for the wor- 
 shipper. 
 
 There is another word of explanation 
 that should perhaps be said.l vMany quali-^ 
 ties in a work of art are absolute and fixed, 
 but many are more indeterminate. These 
 largely reside in the eye of the spectator. 
 He has a right to explain them as he sees 
 them, but no right to impose them upon 
 the eyes of others. He may speak with 
 
IN TROD U CTION. 8 
 
 assurance of a picture as having purity of 
 line, richness of color, or dignity in compo- 
 sition ; or as being, in a general way, poetic 
 or prosaic, individual or commonplace. But 
 when he attempts to define a poetic flavor, 
 to explain an emotional meaning, or to as- 
 sert the presence of compelling charm or 
 its reverse, then it behooves him to speak 
 cautiously, for then the qualities which he 
 perceives may be born of his own mental 
 attitude rather than the painter's. When 
 he tries to record such impressions as these 
 his only device can be Comme je Ventends, 
 and it should be displayed as an apology, 
 not as a challenge. Thus I quote it here, 
 meaning that I have sincerely tried to un- 
 derstand the artists of whom I write, yet 
 am ready to confess that the understanding 
 of others, in some important points, may be 
 different from my own. 
 
 M. G. VAN RENSSELAER. 
 
 9 WEST NINTH STREET, NEW YORK. 
 
SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 t 
 I. 
 
 LUCA BELLA BOBBIA. 
 1400?-! 482. 
 
 AMONG all the sculptors of the early 
 Italian Renaissance none is better known 
 by name than Luca della Robbia. Nor are 
 tourists apt to realize that they may have 
 failed to understand and appreciate his art. 
 They are more prone to think that in the 
 vast panorama of Florentine delights it 
 made an especially clear and adequate im- 
 pression. Nevertheless, there are few great 
 artists to whom fuller justice has not been 
 done. There are few who have been so 
 carelessly studied, whose best work is so 
 often overlooked in favor of that which is 
 less good, whose reputation rests on such 
 superficial grounds. Luca is popularly 
 known not in the essence of his art, but 
 
O SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 merely as the ib vector of a novel, striking, 
 and attractive technical process. Not the 
 intrinsic character of his work, but the fact 
 that most of it was executed in enamelled 
 colored terra-cotta this is what the world 
 at large remembers. 
 
 I do not know whether to call Luca for- 
 tunate or unfortunate in the invention of 
 the process which he made so famous. Its 
 results have a peculiar charm and a marked 
 utility of their own. Their durability fitted 
 them well for exterior architectural decora- 
 tion, and into this they brought a note of 
 clear pure color not otherwise to be ob- 
 tained in combination with admirable form 
 and the relief that gives admirable light 
 and shade ; and they were just as well 
 adapted to an almost pictorial use inside 
 the palace or the church. If we consider 
 the legacy of the Delia Robbia family as 
 a whole, and remember what a unique yet 
 lavish and varied gift it is, we cannot re- 
 gret that Luca left bronze and marble and 
 turned to clay instead. But his own art 
 suffered by the exchange. In any state 
 clay is a less delightful material than bronze 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBS I A. 1 
 
 or marble ; and when it is covered with a 
 smooth enamel, the very quality that makes 
 it so useful and so tempting the brilliant 
 hardness of its surface joins with the con- 
 ditions of its making to put its results, con- 
 sidered from the purely artistic point of 
 view, below the results of metal and stone. 
 We see this very clearly when we contrast 
 Luca's early works in these materials with 
 even the best among his terra-cottas. Yet 
 his terra-cottas are so much more "strik- 
 ing," so much more conspicuous in the sum 
 of Renaissance sculpture, that the others 
 are half-forgotten by the world in its esti- 
 mating of his art. 
 
 This would matter less, however, were no 
 terra-cottas called his but those which are 
 his own. But a peculiar confusion has 
 been the result of peculiar circumstances. 
 Luca was only one among many sculptors 
 who made enamelled statues and reliefs ; 
 yet the process by which enamelled colors 
 could be successfully applied to such broad 
 and varied surfaces was for long a secret. 
 For many years it was exercised only in 
 ateliers directed by men who bore Luca's 
 name, who were inspired by his ideals, and 
 whose results kept a strong family likeness 
 
8 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 to his own. All the other Delia Robbias 
 were his inferiors, yet even the connoisseur 
 is often puzzled to decide which works are 
 his and which are theirs, and the superficial 
 eye can hardly understand that there is any 
 difference between them. In Italy every 
 enamelled terra-cotta is, popularly, a Delia 
 Robbia, and almost every Delia Robbia is 
 a Luca. Even when there is evidence to 
 the contrary no one cares to cite it. Who 
 wants to remember, for example, that the 
 famous bambini on the Hospital of the In- 
 nocents in Florence are the children not of 
 Luca but of Andrea ? And how often have 
 we not heard Luca named even in connec- 
 tion with the great frieze at Pistoja, a work 
 of much later date, which has absolutely no 
 affinity with the subject-matter or with the 
 spirit of his art ? 
 
 It is always thus with artists who have 
 forcibly impressed a school ; but it is thus 
 with Luca, I should say, much more con- 
 spicuously than with any other, for his 
 school long kept uncommonly close to his 
 mood and manner, employed a process not 
 employed by others, and was not merely a 
 school but a family too. Had he employed 
 only stone and bronze he would not have 
 
LUC A DELIA ROBBIA. 9 
 
 been so closely copied or so long repeated. 
 His popularity would have been diminished 
 by the fact, and by the substitution of a 
 usual for an unusual material. The world 
 would not know his name any better than 
 it knows the name of a still greater sculp- 
 tor Donatello ; it would probably not 
 know it any better than the name of Delia 
 Quercia or of Mino da Fiesole. But his 
 work would all have been of his very best ; 
 and when his name was mentioned, it 
 would always have been as that of a. great 
 sculptor, not, as too commonly to-day, 
 though most unjustly even when his terra- 
 cottas are in question, as that of a clever 
 decorator, a skilful, pleasing artist of a kind 
 below the best. 
 
 A great sculptor he was indeed, inferior 
 to few even in the race to which he be- 
 longed, the greatest race of sculptors that 
 has lived since the Greek. We will not 
 speak of Michael Angelo ; there is no term 
 of comparison between him and any other. 
 But we may compare Luca with all the rest 
 of Italy and at least be rational in the act. 
 He is not by many degrees so noble as 
 Ghiberti, for example, or so superb as 
 Andrea Sansovino, or so strong as Dona- 
 
10 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 tello ; but he is more charming, more lov- 
 able than either. Perhaps, too, he is not 
 to be called as " original " as was Ghiberti 
 in his idealism, or Donatello in his realism ; 
 but he was extremely original in the way 
 he combined these two qualities. In his 
 exquisite poise between their two extremes 
 a poise which is not cold neutrality, but 
 a vital hold on either side he is as in- 
 dividual as any of his fellows. Does the 
 world which "knows" him so well quite 
 realize all this ? Has he not paid perhaps 
 too great a price for his somewhat shallow 
 popularity, and for the gratitude he gets as 
 the creator of a distinct genre in sculptured 
 work? 
 
 Fortunately the critics are beginning to 
 tell the world what he really was. In 
 1855 M. Barbet de Joui wrote a good book 
 about the family ; and two years earlier, 
 M. Delaborde, while considering specially 
 the latest Delia Robbias, in his " Chateau 
 du Bois de Boulogne," had given an admi- 
 rable introductory sketch of their great an- 
 cestor. In 1878 Herr Bode published a 
 large volume of the studious German sort, 
 entitled " Die Kiinstler Familie Delia Rob- 
 bia." But there was still great need of 
 
LUCA DELLA ROBBIA. 11 
 
 another work which should have a more 
 popular interest, and should unite thorough 
 historical research with keen artistic criti- 
 cism. This work we have in the shape of 
 a fully illustrated quarto, " Les Delia Rob- 
 bia," written by Emile Molinier, one of the 
 conservateurs of the Louvre collections, and 
 J. Cavalucci, Professor in the Fine - Arts 
 Academy at Florence, and published in 
 1884. In its preparation many unedited 
 documents were consulted, some of which 
 are given in an appendix, together with a 
 long catalogue raisonne wherein hundreds 
 of works attributed to the family are clearly 
 described and, so far as possible, attributed 
 to their real creators. The many wood- 
 cuts are not of such excellence as we in 
 America should demand ; but they are as- 
 sisted by a few sympathetic etchings, and 
 make up in number for what they lack in 
 individual perfection. They give the reader 
 a good idea if not of the quality at least of 
 the general character of the art discussed. 
 They will help him to know a Luca or an 
 Andrea when he sees it, though they do 
 not suggest a tithe of the beauty he will 
 find in either. 
 
 Taking this book as a guide in all matters 
 
12 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 of disputed fact, consulting the others I have 
 named, and not forgetting Mr. Pater's de- 
 lightful essay, 1 it is no hard task to tell the 
 story of Luca della Robbia and his descend- 
 ants. Yet it is a long and varied tale, be- 
 ginning with an organ-loft in Florence, end- 
 ing with a statue of Catherine de Medici in 
 Paris, and covering a period of a century 
 and a half. 
 
 IL 
 
 Luca della Robbia was born in Florence, 
 as appears from an authentic document, 
 some twelve years later than Vasari says 
 in 1399 or 1400. Like many contempo- 
 rary artists he was apprenticed to a gold- 
 smith, but soon exchanged his craft for 
 work in bronze and marble. Again like 
 many others, his youthful industry seems 
 to have been prodigious. Most of Vasari's 
 anecdotes must be abandoned, and with 
 them, perhaps, the statement of Baldinucci 
 that he studied with Ghiberti. His work 
 certainly exhibits traces of Ghiberti' s influ- 
 ence, but not more strongly than of Dona- 
 tello's. It is probable that in his early 
 years he travelled, but dates and destina- 
 
 1 In Studies in.the History of the Italian Renaissance. 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBBIA. 13 
 
 tions are alike uncertain. He never mar- 
 ried, was intensely devoted to his art, and 
 almost equally so to the education of his 
 nephews, especially of Andrea, who was to 
 be the inheritor of his talent and the par- 
 ticipator in his fame. One realizes the 
 great contrasts of Renaissance life when 
 one compares, for instance, the story of 
 Benvenuto Cellini with the story, if so it 
 can be called, of Luca della Robbia. Luca 
 has, indeed, no history save the history of 
 his work. Until his death in 1482 he led 
 with his nephews, in a little house on the 
 Via Guelfa, a uniform, peaceful, almost 
 austere existence. 
 
 His character is undoubtedly reflected 
 in a clear and faithful manner in his art ; 
 and we may thence affirm that no one can 
 have been more serene, more tender, more 
 cheerful, or more pure. In a very prosaic 
 place, in his last testament, we find an al- 
 most poetic touch that helps to paint his 
 household for us. It is well known that 
 Andrea, as but natural, was his best be- 
 loved. Yet to Simone, Andrea's brother, 
 he leaves all his worldly goods, and to An- 
 drea only (Tie does not say "only"), his 
 fame and the art which he had taught him. 
 
14 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 We must needs rank Andrea a space below 
 his uncle as an artist; yet how rare a 
 chance it was that such a fame should find 
 so true a guardian, such an art so good a 
 pupil. It was not, in truth, an art of his 
 own that Andrea practised ; it was merely 
 the sequel of his uncle's; and if no one's 
 work but Andrea's had been confounded 
 with that of the great master, there would 
 be far less to complain of than there is to- 
 day. 
 
 Luca's reputation was very great with his 
 contemporaries ; Vasari tells this plainly, 
 and it is still more plainly told by the fact 
 that in 1471 he was obliged by his age and 
 weakness to decline the greatest honor in 
 the power of his fellow-craftsmen to bestow 
 the presidency of the Corporation of 
 Florentine Artists. He was thirty years 
 old when Florence first gave him an im- 
 portant work to do, though doubtless he 
 had already labored with a score of others 
 on the exterior of the cathedral. This 
 work, his masterpiece, I should say, con- 
 sidering execution and conception both, was 
 a tribune for the organ in the cathedral. 
 Its ten marble reliefs, representing children 
 and symbolizing " Music," are now to- 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBBIA. 15 
 
 gether with a corresponding series, wrought 
 by Donatello for the other tribune in the 
 National Museum at Florence. We may 
 regret on principle that they are not placed 
 in their true position ; yet we gain by the 
 possibility of close inspection. 
 
 In 1447, these reliefs being still unfin- 
 ished, Luca received another important 
 commission, to complete the sculptures on 
 the Campanile begun by Giotto and Andrea 
 Pisano. Three years later both undertak- 
 ings had been accomplished. A charming 
 work, dating from 1442, is a tabernacle, 
 built for the Chapel of St. Luke in the 
 Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, but now in 
 the church of Santa Maria at Peretola. It 
 is a rich little architectural structure of 
 marble with a Pietd in its pediment ; but 
 its frieze is ornamented with heads of cher- 
 ubim wrought in white enamelled clay. A 
 similar combination of materials the en- 
 amel being in this case colored is to be 
 seen in the tomb of Benozzi Federhigi, 
 Bishop of Fiesole, which also has been 
 moved from its original station from Fie- 
 sole to the Church of San Francesco di 
 Paola near Bellosguardo. Sumptuous ar- 
 chitectural sepulchres were among the most 
 
16 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 frequent works of the Renaissance. Many 
 others have been attributed to Luca, but 
 with regard to only one other can we be 
 quite sure, and this, cited by Vasari, has 
 unfortunately disappeared. 
 
 Among Luca's works in bronze the chief 
 still survives. It is the door to the sacristy 
 of the Florentine cathedral, which he began 
 in collaboration with Michelozzo and Maso 
 di Bartolomeo, but completed by himself 
 after having had it in hand no less than 
 thirty years. 
 
 Vasari tells us that Luca was discouraged 
 at the slowness of his processes and the 
 consequent paucity of his rewards ; that he 
 perceived the greater facility with which 
 clay might be fashioned, and set himself, 
 therefore, to the discovery of some coating 
 by means of which it might be made as 
 durable as stone. One is tempted to be- 
 lieve, rather, that it was the desire for color 
 which prompted his investigations, or more 
 exactly, the desire to combine color and 
 durability. After many essays, Vasari 
 adds, he did in truth "discover" an im- 
 pervious enamel, and by its " invention " 
 won great renown. From these words 
 many have inferred that Luca was literally 
 
LUC A DELL A ROB B I A. 17 
 
 the first in Italy to use stanniferous enamel 
 in any way, and thus the real parent of all 
 the Italian majolicas. But there is docu- 
 mentary evidence enough to prove that 
 enamelled faience had long been known 
 in the peninsula, probably for more than 
 two centuries before Luca worked with it. 
 Nor was he by any means the first to use 
 terra-cotta for architectural decoration ; nor 
 again, to color statues this had been done 
 all through the Middle Ages and in the an- 
 cient world as well. Yet he was a real 
 discoverer and inventor in another way, in 
 his combination of these different practices. 
 He was the first to apply color by means of 
 enamel to sculpture in relief and this to 
 monumental decoration. Such is the sum 
 of his originality, and I think it is great 
 
 enough. 
 
 III. 
 
 It is a common idea that at first Luca 
 used only blue and white in his enamels. 
 He always used them, of course, much more 
 largely than any other colors, but from the 
 very beginning he seems to have introduced 
 other tints in carrying out his details. We 
 find, for example, green, violet, and yellow 
 in the tympanum representing the " Eesur- 
 
18 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 rection" which he placed in 1443 above 
 the entrance for which his bronze door was 
 wrought ; and this is his earliest dated 
 terra-cotta, though probably not his first 
 attempt, since the difficult technical process 
 is already used with perfect success. Next 
 among dated examples comes the corre- 
 sponding tympanum over the other door of 
 the sacristy, which represents the " Ascen- 
 sion." Here too we find all the colors I 
 have named and brown besides. And we 
 find them all again in the cupola of the 
 Chapel of the Pazzi family in Santa Croce, 
 which is evidently one of his earlier works 
 and certainly one of his finest essays in 
 decoration. 
 
 It is another common belief that Luca 
 very often used white enamel without any 
 color. But this is also questioned by his 
 latest biographers, who think that it was 
 exceptional for him to omit color, and at- 
 tribute almost all the many existing white 
 Delia Robbias to a time as late as the six- 
 teenth century, the last and weakest period 
 of the school. 
 
 Vasari speaks of two beautiful nude an- 
 gels of gilded bronze, which Luca wrought 
 " in the round," and placed above his or- 
 
LUC A BELLA ROBE I A. 19 
 
 gan-gallery in the cathedral ; but they have 
 disappeared, and the only detached fig- 
 ures we know to be his are terra-cottas 
 the two kneeling angels with candelabra in 
 the sacristy. They are far superior to the 
 many analogous statues produced by his 
 successors, yet they do not take their place 
 among his very best creations. 
 
 Two of Luca's beautiful medallions on 
 the outside of 'Or San Michele in Florence 
 the two which represent armorial bear- 
 ings are not in relief but merely colored 
 flat, and are therefore properly to be called 
 majolicas. Similar works have been at- 
 tributed to him in great numbers, but the 
 authenticity of almost all is very doubtful. 
 Conspicuous among them are the twelve 
 large circular plaques, which the authori- 
 ties of the South Kensington Museum be- 
 lieve were part of the ceiling of a room in 
 the Medici Palace. Such a room, we know, 
 was decorated throughout by Luca, even to 
 its flooring ; and in the work he used 
 enamels both flat and in relief. But there 
 is no evidence, either extrinsic or intrinsic, 
 to prove that these illustrations of the 
 " Months " were ever a part of it ; and I 
 may add that their beauty is not so very 
 
20 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 great that we need wish to insist upon 
 Luca's authorship. 
 
 Certain terra-cottas that are not enam- 
 elled, and that yet apparently are Luca's, 
 were most likely studies or models for his 
 other works. There is one in the Berlin 
 Museum, for instance, which must have 
 served in the execution of his bronze door. 
 
 I cannot here repeat even the short list 
 of terra-cottas which may with certainty or 
 with good likelihood be given Luca's name. 
 I can only cite one or two of the most im- 
 portant. One of his finest tympana crowns 
 a door on the Via dell' Agnolo in Florence, 
 and shows the Virgin and Child between 
 lily-bearing angels. Very remarkable, too, 
 and in a very different way, is the vault of 
 the Chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal in 
 San Miniato. It is entirely faced with 
 colored enamels, a chequered surface of yel- 
 low, green, and black forming the back- 
 ground for five great blue and white medal- 
 lions in relief. The central one bears the 
 Holy Dove surrounded by gilded rays ; the 
 rest, half-figures of young angels symbolic 
 of the cardinal virtues. These last reveal 
 perhaps a stronger idealism than any of 
 Luca's other enamels. His last authentic 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBBIA. 21 
 
 and dated terra-cottas ornament the fagade 
 of San Domenico at Urbino. In the tym- 
 panum of the entrance, the bronze door for 
 which was made by Maso di Bartolomeo, 
 Luca has placed a Madonna and Child with 
 two saints on either hand ; and in the pedi- 
 ment above he has set a circular relief 
 with a half-length of God the Father, sur- 
 rounded by angels and in an attitude of 
 benediction. Maso's diary tells that he 
 asked these works at Luca's hand (the only 
 ones, it would seem, that Luca ever sent 
 across the Apennines), and gives their date 
 as well. Since it is so early a date as 1452, 
 one feels sure that many another creation 
 followed whose time cannot be fixed with 
 such decision ; but we learn that during 
 the last ten years of his life Luca was too 
 feeble to do more than rejoice in Andrea's 
 labors. 
 
 Among the many Delia Robbias in non- 
 Italian museums there is but one, it seems, 
 which is indisputably a Luca. This is the 
 huge polychrome relief with the arms of 
 Rend of Anjou in the South Kensington 
 collection. There are four others, however, 
 and of greater importance, which one is 
 tempted to ascribe to him, the "Monk 
 
22 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 Writing," also at South Kensington, and 
 the three great circular reliefs in the Cluny 
 Museum at Paris, two with allegoric figures 
 of " Temperance " and " Faith," one with a 
 Virgin and Child. The retable in the Met- 
 ropolitan Museum at New York is called, of 
 course, a Luca but, as we shall see, it is an 
 Andrea. 
 
 Let me add now that Luca did not repeat 
 his terra-cottas did not mould one in the 
 pattern of another, but produced in each 
 instance a wholly new creation ; and I be- 
 lieve I may say as much for his immediate 
 successors, though in later days replicas be- 
 came all too common. 
 
 IV. 
 
 To make clear the value of Luca della 
 Robbia's artistic personality, I must begin 
 a long way back. I must note the influ- 
 ences that had been at work before his 
 day as well as the contrasting individualities 
 which stood next his own. 
 
 Between the seventh and eleventh cen- 
 turies Italian sculpture was very poor in 
 quality and by no means rich in quantity. 
 In style it varied between a barbaric rude- 
 ness and a stiff Byzantine conventionality ; 
 
LUC A DELIA ROBBIA. 23 
 
 and monumental work in stone was almost 
 abandoned for decorative work in metal. 
 The development of Romanesque architec- 
 ture brought about a revival, but a revival 
 which had less originality and vigor than 
 we find in contemporary work beyond the 
 Alps. Architecture, the nursing mother of 
 all the other arts, caused them to vary with 
 her own varying desires. The southern 
 architect loved breadth and repose where 
 the northern loved animation and multitu- 
 dinous detail ; and he loved color more 
 than form in decoration. Northern Roman- 
 esque depends more for its decorative 
 beauty upon form in sculptured figures and 
 architectural details ; Tuscan more upon the 
 hues of inlaid marbles and pictorial mosaics. 
 The chisel's rSle was primary in the north; 
 it was only accessory at the south. Of 
 architectural detail proper we find com- 
 paratively little, and such figure-sculpture 
 as there is takes the form of reliefs very 
 much more often than the form of in- 
 dependent figures. At the beginning of 
 the thirteenth century when Niccola Pisano 
 was born, Italian sculpture could in no 
 sense take rank with the Romanesque sculp- 
 ture of the north, just beginning, as it was, 
 
24 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 to develop into its still more admirable 
 Gothic phase. 
 
 Color, I have said, was the chief love of 
 the southern artist and the field in which his 
 greatest triumphs were achieved. And the 
 remark is true not only of those early days 
 when sculpture was actually neglected in 
 its favor, but of the period of full develop- 
 ment as well of the period when the sun 
 of the Renaissance, expanding the many- 
 petalled flower of art, produced sculpture 
 which stands second only to the Greek ; for 
 the painting then produced, unless reason- 
 ing from analogies, leads us very far astray, 
 was even greater than the painting of the 
 Greeks. Wonderful as was the bloom of 
 Italian art beneath the chisel, it was still 
 more wonderful, and much more prolific, 
 beneath the brush. Yet, strangely enough, 
 the art of Italy made each of its onward 
 steps under the guidance of the sculptor. 
 The very first step of all was made by 
 Niccola Pisano, and all along the later line 
 we find his followers ever in advance of the 
 painters of their time. Strangely enough, 
 I say, but only to the superficial eye, the 
 eye which judges by ultimate results and 
 not by their first causes. For the breath 
 
LUC A DELIA ROBBJA. 25 
 
 of inspiration came in the beginning from 
 the relics of antiquity, and as these relics 
 were carved, not painted, it is but natural 
 that their lesson should first have been 
 learned by the sculptor, and by him trans- 
 mitted to the painter. 
 
 Niccola Pisano is indeed the father of all 
 Italian art. It is true that a distinct re- 
 action followed upon his work and that his 
 tendencies, his ideals, afterwards to become 
 all-powerful, seemed to fade for a time in 
 face of other tendencies, of ideals of another 
 kind. He was a Classicist and his imme- 
 diate successors were Gothicists. He cared 
 most for beauty. They cared most for life 
 and energy, for dramatic passion and emo- 
 tional meaning. But though a knowledge 
 of this fact is very necessary to our under- 
 standing of Italian sculpture, it is neverthe- 
 less a fact of secondary importance. The 
 fact of prime importance is that Niccola 
 burst the chrysalis of art ; that he freed 
 sculpture on the one hand from the tram- 
 mels of Byzantine convention, and saved it 
 on the other from the license of undirected 
 effort. The main points are that he taught 
 men both that they might see with their 
 own eyes, and that they ought to choose 
 
26 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 what things they would look at ; and that 
 the lesson was sympathetically received 
 and fruitfully put in practice. It is but a 
 secondary point, I repeat, that the master 
 should have chosen to see the ancients, and 
 his first followers should have chosen to see 
 the body and soul of Christian man. His- 
 tory offers no more striking picture of 
 an artist at once vitally influential and 
 virtually isolated. Every chisel in Italy 
 showed the effect of Niccola's work, and 
 yet in its character that work stood by it- 
 self. A few men before him seem indeed 
 to have aspired as he, but none had been 
 able really to express their aspirations ; 
 and a few of his scholars tried to persist in 
 his path, but their work is of almost no 
 importance compared with the work of 
 those who struck into another road, led by 
 his own son Giovanni. 
 
 In his ideals and his tendencies Niccola 
 was, in fact, before his time. The field 
 was not yet ploughed for that classic seed 
 which later should find such fruitful soil. 
 For one thing, the age was still too Chris- 
 tian. A thoroughly Christian art of neces- 
 sity cared most for story -tell ing, for dra- 
 matic expression, for the rendering of varied 
 
LUC A DELLA ROBBIA. 27 
 
 personal emotions; it could care but very 
 little for pure physical beauty, for the pure 
 delighting of the eye. The great French 
 Gothic school, for instance, cared vastly for 
 expression, and vastly also for architectural 
 beauty, but comparatively little for sculp- 
 tural beauty as the Greeks, as Niccola, as 
 the fifteenth-century Italians understood the 
 term. The age was still too Christian, and 
 it was also, on the other hand, still too 
 much excited and unsettled by the new life 
 that was throbbing in its veins, by the new 
 views of man and the world, of the indi- 
 vidual in his many-sided powers and pos- 
 sibilities, that were opening out before it. 
 Until this new life had somewhat crys- 
 tallized until the veils and motes and 
 beams of mediaeval prejudice, the fetters of 
 mediaeval asceticism had been swept away, 
 until the modern man had learned to under- 
 stand himself a little better the proper 
 balance between truth and beauty, between 
 expression and form, which art demands 
 could not be achieved. And until the 
 classic spirit in its general essence had 
 been somewhat digested, the artist could 
 not assimilate its qualities he might try 
 to copy the results of the antique, but he 
 
28 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 could not translate its spirit into modern 
 idioms of line and color. It was not strange 
 that Giovanni Pisano and all his fellows of 
 the fourteenth century should be dramatic 
 in their treatment of their themes, natural- 
 istic in their way of rendering Christian 
 sentiment through moods and situations of 
 intense emotion ; the marvel was that Nic- 
 cola before them should have had so classic 
 a love for beauty of form and for unemo- 
 tional repose. It was inevitable that a 
 reaction should come when he departed 
 inevitable and also most desirable. For 
 had it been possible that a classicizing 
 Renaissance should base itself immediately 
 on the Italian art of the thirteenth century, 
 with its scant knowledge of inferior ancient 
 relics and its scanter technical ability, had 
 it not been prefaced by a long period when 
 nature was the teacher, it would have been 
 something very different from the Renais- 
 sance that we know. With the teaching of 
 nature alone Italian sculpture might never 
 have risen even to the height attained by 
 the northern Gothic school, for it would 
 have had less help from architecture. But 
 with the teaching of the antique alone it 
 could never have been more than a most 
 
LUC A DELLA ROBBIA. 29 
 
 imperfect copy of pagan art. The joining 
 of both streams of influence was needed to 
 make it what it was. 
 
 V. 
 
 It is interesting to see how both these 
 streams of influence flow together through 
 the centuries that divide Niccola Pisano 
 from Michael Angelo, nay, from the latest 
 of Venetians. Neither is ever wholly lost, 
 though now one and now the other predom- 
 inates in the work of an individual, now 
 one and now the other in the work of an 
 entire school or epoch. And it is as inter- 
 esting to trace them back and find that 
 each starts in the work of one of the Pisani. 
 We cannot but compare the two, father and 
 son, and mark their differences. We cannot 
 but contrast the classic, passionless, sculp- 
 turesque beauty of Niccola's reliefs with the 
 intense, energetic, expressive naturalism of 
 Giovanni's. But we like still better to think 
 of them together as " the great twin breth- 
 ren " who were the forerunners, the proph- 
 ets, the teachers, in very truth the fathers, of 
 all that Italian art was ever to accomplish. 
 
 We must not forget that there was a 
 direct special influence, which, in combina- 
 
30 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 tion with the general spirit of the age, 
 worked to turn Giovanni away from his 
 father's path. This was the influence of 
 the Gothic of the north, absorbed, perhaps, 
 during a journey beyond the Alps, but more 
 likely from certain German sculptors who, 
 we know, worked in Italy when Giovanni 
 was young. They were employed, for ex- 
 ample, with many Italians, upon the facade 
 of the Orvieto cathedral ; and this building 
 well marks the epoch, since it is the first 
 in Tuscany where sculpture figure-sculp- 
 ture and architectural carving plays at 
 least an equal decorative r61e with color. 
 The fourteenth century was the Gothic age 
 of Italy, and the greater use of monumen- 
 tal sculpture was a natural consequence of 
 northern influence. It is almost impossible 
 to say how large was the part directly 
 played by the Pisani in its development. 
 As architects their influence was very 
 great, and extended over the whole length 
 and breadth of Italy; and had not Niccola 
 been the first to show his countrymen what 
 the chisel might accomplish ? 
 
 The stream of classic influence seems 
 weak throughout the fourteenth century, 
 but we must not conceive of it as dry or 
 
LUC A DELIA ROBBIA. 31 
 
 stagnant. The claims of pure sculptural 
 beauty were never quite forgotten or de- 
 nied. The time is perfectly expressed in 
 Dante's writings. Dante, too, is chiefly 
 Christian in sentiment, chiefly dramatic in 
 treatment, but the growing importance of 
 the human individual speaks from every 
 page, and the place which he gives to 
 Virgil in his scheme tells the strength of 
 the classic influence very clearly. It was 
 the classic influence transmitted from the 
 Romans, greatly reinforced by Niccola, 
 which made Italian sculptors always prefer 
 the relief, until the later Renaissance time. 1 
 Through the classic influence they learned 
 to use the relief in an infinitely more artistic 
 way than any northern school ; learned to 
 recognize the demands of its field and adapt 
 to it their most complicated groups; and 
 learned to master all its different levels 
 from the highest to the very lowest. Yet 
 nevertheless all the great men of the four- 
 teenth century seem chiefly Christian and 
 naturalistic in their aims Andrea and the 
 
 1 And then, by the way, it was the influence of the 
 newly discovered free statues of antiquity which turned 
 them away from the models they had earlier found in 
 Roman sarcophagi. 
 
32 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 lesser so-called Pisani, Orcagna, Arnolfo del 
 Cambio (greater as an architect than as a 
 sculptor), Giotto, and the rest. The last 
 name is the most important, not as being 
 that of the greatest sculptor who followed 
 Giovanni, Andrea Pisano claiming this 
 place, but as being that of him by whom 
 the new vital art passed over from the 
 chisel to the brush. 
 
 With the incoming of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury we note a change. The Gothic sculp- 
 tors had studied their subject humanity 
 from many sides ; for sculptural beauty 
 somewhat, for physical truth still more, but 
 most of all for spiritual force. The early 
 Renaissance sculptors persisted in all three 
 of these efforts, but gave a more prominent 
 place than before to sculptural beauty, a 
 lesser place than before to spiritual force, 
 and the most important place of all to 
 physical truth. They are not only natu- 
 ralistic but realistic in their aims. 1 A por- 
 trait-like rendering of the individual body 
 seems to have attracted them beyond all 
 else. Among the great fifteenth century 
 
 1 This realistic tendency shows not merely in figure 
 sculpture, but in all the ornament of early Renaissance 
 architecture. 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBBIA. 33 
 
 names Ghiberti, Delia Quercia, Dona- 
 tello, Luca della Robbia, Verrocchio, Mino 
 da Fiesole, Desiderio, Matteo Civitali, Bene- 
 detto da Majano (the list is endless) 
 Donatello's stands out as the most charac- 
 teristic, the most typical; and Donatello 
 was the greatest "realist" of all. But 
 Italian art was so well-balanced and har- 
 moniously rounded a development that we 
 must not push too far the significance of 
 defining epithets. It is easy and it is in a 
 way correct to say, for instance, that Dona- 
 tello is a realist, and, by comparison, Ghi- 
 berti an imaginative idealist. But in such 
 a decision we really note not radical con- 
 trasts implying narrow, strictly-marked lim- 
 itations, but delicate contrasts implying a 
 slight preponderance of one quality over 
 others which are just as truly present. It 
 is better to say that each and all of the 
 great fifteenth century artists are many- 
 sided, that each and every one resumes 
 within himself, in spite of his leaning a 
 little to the one side or the other, what all 
 resume together the three-streamed tend- 
 ency of the time toward a perfect art com- 
 bining beauty, truth, and spiritual feeling. 
 If Donatello were absent who would not 
 
34 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 call Ghiberti a great realist? Looking 
 only at such among Donatello's works as 
 the "St. George," the " St. Cecilia," the 
 " Annunciation," the " Triumph of Bac- 
 chus " in Florence, or the bronze patera in 
 the South Kensington Museum, who would 
 not call him a true disciple of antique art, 
 a true classicist in his love for pure sculp- 
 tural beauty ? If we turn to the opposite 
 extreme which shows in his art we find, I 
 confess, some examples of positive ugliness, 
 untinged by ideal feeling. But they seem 
 very few even when his most realistic works 
 are alone considered. And all contempo- 
 rary artists show the same good taste and 
 self-restraint, no matter how realistic may 
 be their impulse. In portraiture itself, 
 when the least beautiful of sitters has been 
 rendered with a fidelity and force unap- 
 proached in any other age, a subtile charm 
 has been diffused which makes the result 
 most beautiful as art. 1 Thoroughly real- 
 istic as was the portrait-sculpture of Italy 
 at this time, it was not crudely, baldly real- 
 
 1 For suggestive criticism on the technique of Italian 
 sculptors, I may point my readers to Mr. Pater's essay, 
 and to an article by Mr. Kenyon Cox in the Century 
 Magazine for November, 1884. 
 
LUC A DELLA ROBBIA. 35 
 
 istic like so much Gothic art, like so much 
 of the art of to-day. And for this virtue 
 Italian sculptors were indebted to the un- 
 interrupted persistence of the classic in- 
 fluence. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Yet, to return to our two great masters, 
 it is nevertheless true that when the work 
 of each is considered as a whole, realism 
 predominates in that of Donatello, the love 
 of beauty in that of Ghiberti. Luca della 
 Robbia was not so great a man as either 
 not so powerful, not so versatile, not nearly 
 so imaginative or profound ; and, coming 
 after them, he had learned from each that 
 which each had developed for himself. 
 All the same, he stands very high and his 
 station is unique. It is unique just be- 
 cause with him we cannot say which ten- 
 dency predominates whether the love of 
 individual truth or the love of beauty; just 
 because when taken as a whole his work 
 seems perfectly balanced between the two 
 extremes. And there is even more to be 
 said of him than this. These two great 
 aims, great tendencies, had not yet extin- 
 guished in Italy the third that I have 
 
36 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 named. There was still something desired 
 in the way of artistic expression beyond 
 the rendering of beauty and of personal 
 idiosyncrasies ; the artist still desired to 
 voice a great general sentiment, and this 
 sentiment still meant Christian feeling. 
 But the desire was gradually fading ; it is 
 not very conspicuous even with Ghiberti or 
 Donatello. With Luca, however, it is so 
 conspicuous that we must rank it with his 
 love of beauty and his love of physical 
 truth, and say again that it is impossible 
 to decide which shows most clearly in his 
 perfectly balanced art. Not merely now 
 and then like Donatello, not merely here 
 and there and chiefly in his earlier work like 
 Ghiberti, but always and everywhere Luca 
 is distinctly, typically, a Christian sculptor. 
 He is as Christian in his feeling as were 
 the fourteenth-century Gothicists. But lie 
 expresses himself in a very different way. 
 It is not only that his technical resources 
 are perfect while theirs are imperfect ; it is 
 not only that he cares much more than they 
 for beauty and for physical accuracy ; his 
 main ideal is quite different from theirs. 
 He does not desire as they do to tell stories, 
 to point morals, to be dramatic and emo- 
 
LUC A BELLA ROBBIA. 37 
 
 tional, mystical and supersensual ; he wishes 
 simply to put the pure sentiment of Chris- 
 tianity, of faith and hope and gentle char- 
 ity, into all his work. He does it perfectly, 
 and yet that work is almost Greek in 
 its beauty of form, almost Donatellesque in 
 its simplicity. It seems to me that there 
 is no Italian artist who equals him in this 
 perfect combination of many qualities. One 
 or two sculptors came after him who at 
 times were exquisitely Christian too, and 
 who possessed their art with equal mastery 
 of hand. But there is much in the fact 
 that they did come after him, and we can- 
 not help seeing, moreover, that they lack 
 something of his beautiful simplicity, his 
 utter freedom from affectation, pose, self- 
 consciousness. Compare, for instance, Mat- 
 teo Civitali's well-known figure of " Faith " 
 with one of Luca's figures, I care not which. 
 You will feel, I am sure, the difference I 
 have marked; and the very name of the 
 " Faith " points the beginning of a change 
 a change in ideals and aims as great as 
 that other which separates Luca from the 
 dramatic, mystical Gothic age. His art is 
 as frank and simple as it is real. He gives 
 us madonnas, saints, and angels that are 
 
38 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 realized as distinct human individualities ; 
 but sixteenth - century sculptors show us 
 typified abstractions, impersonal allegoric 
 idealizations, which soon give place to half- 
 pagan nullities, as meaningless to the spec- 
 tator as artificial to their creators. 
 
 Nor do I think that there is any one in 
 painting who is exactly what Luca is in 
 sculpture. The development of painting 
 was so much slower that when the brush 
 had become as skilful and free as was 
 Luca's chisel, Christian feeling had all but 
 disappeared, or preserved a merely official 
 and unvital life. A comparison of dates is 
 interesting and instructive. Ghiberti and 
 Donatello were twenty years older than 
 Luca, yet their art had reached technical 
 perfection. But Luca's contemporaries of 
 the brush were Paolo Ucello, Masaccio, 
 Squarcione, and Giacomo the eldest of the 
 Bellinis. Filippo Lippi was twelve, Be- 
 nozzo Gozzoli was twenty, Giovanni Bellini 
 was twenty-six, and Mantegna was thirty 
 years his junior; and fifty years later 
 than he were still born painters whom we 
 call " early " Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi, 
 Ghirlandajo, Signorelli, Francia, Carpaccio. 
 Such dates tell strongly when we remem- 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBBIA. 39 
 
 ber how quickly Christian feeling was 
 fading before in differ en tisni or pagan sen- 
 timent. We may prefer these painters, 
 perhaps, to those who came in or after 
 Raphael's time. We may find a greater 
 charm in the earlier work, and we cannot 
 deny that even technically it is very noble. 
 But technically it is not perfect. It does 
 not show that entire freedom and complete- 
 ness in the use of its resources which marks 
 the apogee of a development. This freedom 
 Ghiberti and Donatello and Luca did pos- 
 sess. If we consider the Renaissance move- 
 ment as a whole, or if we consider it merely 
 for its mood and temper, these sculptors 
 belong to its earlier portion. But as sculp- 
 ture their work is not "early ; " it is tech- 
 nically complete. Their generation is the 
 great typical generation of Renaissance 
 sculpture ; for the Sansovini and their fel- 
 lows are already beginning the decline, are 
 far less spontaneous, far less individual, far 
 less Italian ; they give at last an overween- 
 ing importance to the classic influence, and 
 I do not think that their technique can be 
 called more admirable ; and Michael Angelo 
 is an abnormal, isolated giant, typical of 
 nothing whatever but himself. Luca's gen- 
 
40 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 eration is the typical generation of Italian 
 sculpture ; Raphael's and Titian's are the 
 typical generations of Italian painting ; and 
 therefore it is not strange if in painting 
 we find no such pure and powerful Chris- 
 tian sentiment as Luca's, expressed by a 
 hand so entirely skilled as his. 
 
 vn. 
 
 I have tried to explain the essential qual- 
 ity of Luca della Robbia's art, and now 
 must speak as briefly as possible of its tech- 
 nical character as shown in one or two rep- 
 resentative examples. 
 
 More even than other sculptors of his 
 time Luca preferred the relief to the statue 
 in the round ; but while they usually loved 
 all its varieties with equal affection, he 
 seems to have confined himself within nar- 
 rower limits. We can imagine no kind of 
 relief that was not brought to technical per- 
 fection early in the fifteenth century 
 none from the very highest to the very low- 
 est. l For low-relief the Italian Renaissance 
 
 1 " High-relief," I may explain, implies that certain 
 portions of the figures are entirely freed from the ground, 
 are in fact worked " in the round." When this is not the 
 case, but when the most prominent portions are shown in 
 more than half their thickness, then we speak of " middle- 
 relief," and anything flatter than this is " low relief." 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBBIA. 41 
 
 sculptors had a peculiar liking, and that 
 extreme variety which is called bassissimo- 
 relievo was an invention of their own. This 
 variety has so slight a projection that the 
 work hardly seems to be carved out of the 
 material ; it seems an efflorescence, nay, an 
 exhalation from the surface ; yet within its 
 delicate salience all the necessary modelling 
 is done with exquisite perfection. Neither 
 Greek nor medievalist had used this bas- 
 sissimo-relievo ; no one but the Assyrian had 
 employed it in its pure form, uncombined 
 with any more prominent passages, and un- 
 helped (as was the low-relief of Egypt) by 
 deeply incised outlines or a sunken field ; 
 and from Assyria had come, of course, no 
 lesson to the Italians of the Renaissance. 
 If we look at the cella-frieze of the Parthe- 
 non, we see middle-relief ; if at its metopes, 
 high-relief ; and we find that in each case 
 the chosen plane is used by itself and with- 
 out admixture. But if we look at Italian 
 reliefs, we find very often that more than 
 one plane is used in a single composition. 
 When we speak of the use of a single plane, 
 be it understood, we do not mean that all 
 the figures represented are of necessity 
 given an equal degree of salience ; but we 
 
42 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 do mean that there is only a very small 
 difference in their relative distances from 
 our eye; that the background of stone or 
 bronze is confessed as such ; that no per- 
 spective effect is desired; in a word, that 
 the group is conceived as a piece of sculp- 
 ture, partly disengaged from the block, in- 
 stead of wholly disengaged as in work ex- 
 ecuted in the round. By the use of more 
 than one plane we mean, on the other hand, 
 that some conspicuous degree of distance 
 separates the nearest from the remoter fig- 
 ures ; that all do not form a single group ; 
 that the material is nowhere left as a mere 
 untouched background ; that perspective 
 effects are aimed at throughout ; in a word, 
 that the relief is conceived not as a true 
 piece of sculpture, but as a more or less 
 fully developed picture. Its figures de- 
 crease in size with their recession from the 
 eye, as is the case on canvas ; landscape or 
 architectural details fill up the background 
 and explain the composition ; while for the 
 ever-lessening intensity of color and sharp- 
 ness of outline with which a painter com- 
 pletes his perspective illusion are substi- 
 tuted different planes of relief and different 
 degrees of definiteness in modelling. This 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBBIA. 43 
 
 is the system so largely employed by Re- 
 naissance sculptors, a system some tentative 
 approach toward which had been made by 
 the Assyrians and by the Romans, but 
 which had never before been carried to its 
 furthest limits. We hardly wonder that it 
 tempted these fifteenth - century Italians, 
 their love of realism was so strong, and 
 their genius, as compared with the purely 
 plastic genius of the Greeks, was so essen- 
 tially pictorial. To see the utmost limits to 
 which it might be pushed, we have only to 
 look at Ghiberti's later and more famous 
 Baptistery doors. We cannot even try to 
 count and distinguish the planes of his relief, 
 for they pass one into another by too many 
 insensible gradations. We almost forget, 
 indeed, that we are looking at sculptured 
 work, so truly pictorial is the aim and the 
 result. Yet almost in spite of himself, as 
 it were, Ghiberti remains a great sculptor 
 through it all so great a sc.ulptor that we 
 can hardly bring ourselves to think that he 
 overpassed the true limits of his art ; so 
 great that he tempts us to throw all theo- 
 ries to the wind and say : Let each artist be 
 a law unto himself. But it is only artists 
 as great as he who may permit themselves 
 
44 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 such liberty, and then, superb though their 
 own results may be, their example is sure 
 to be pernicious: a truth which is just as 
 applicable to Ghiberti as to Michael Angelo. 
 When lesser men work after the pattern he 
 had set, then we begin to note its faults. 
 Then we begin to see how difficult it is, ex- 
 cept for a Ghiberti, to realize any high ar- 
 tistic excellence when trying in sculpture 
 for those qualities which are the province of 
 the brush. Then we understand that only 
 a great genius can preserve charm of line 
 and modelling, clearness of meaning, bal- 
 ance, coherence, and harmony of parts, and 
 unity of effect, while securing the charms 
 of varied grouping and the illusions of per- 
 spective. 
 
 It must be counted as great praise for 
 Luca della Robbia when I say that, 
 strongly though he felt Ghiberti's influence 
 in other ways, he was never tempted by 
 his example beyond a truly sculpturesque 
 treatment of his reliefs. I think I am right 
 in believing that he never used more than 
 one plane at once, and I know I am right 
 in affirming as much of all his most charac- 
 teristic and most famous works. He always 
 had a plastic, not a pictorial, ideal in view, 
 
LUC A BELLA ROBBIA. 45 
 
 and, moreover, almost always that sort of a 
 plastic ideal which is peculiarly the ideal of 
 the relief. I mean that he always reckoned 
 upon the help of light and shadow for an 
 important part of the beauty of his result. 
 Strangely enough, Messrs. Molinier and 
 Cavallucci speak throughout of his work as 
 being in bas-relief. His chosen style was 
 high-relief, and, so far as I have seen, he 
 never used a really low variety. 
 
 The famous organ-tribune is in very high- 
 relief, admirably managed for charm of line, 
 for balance of parts, for clearness of form, 
 for play of light and shadow, and for all the 
 variety in composition which can possibly 
 be wrought with the use of a single plane ; 
 and it is finished throughout with an ex- 
 quisite nicety which yet does not injure 
 breadth and unity of effect. Placed near 
 the eye as its slabs now are in the Floren- 
 tine Museum, and considered, so to say, in- 
 trinsically, their handling delights us much 
 more than the bolder, sketchier treatment 
 of Donatello's corresponding series. If 
 they were all in their true position, in a 
 darker place and well above our heads, it is 
 probable that Donatello's would prove him 
 to have been the wiser workman ; but there 
 
46 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 is no other comparison to be made between 
 the two series which does not redound to 
 Luca's credit. Their themes are quite 
 alike: groups of children varying in age 
 from infancy to adolescence, who are sing- 
 ing and playing on many instruments, and 
 sometimes dancing to the sound. Donatel- 
 lo's are admirably faithful, vigorous, and 
 spirited transcripts from nature, but they 
 are little else. Luca's are just as faithful ; 
 his figures are just as simply childlike, just 
 as spontaneous in movement, just as di- 
 versely individual ; but the realism is more 
 reticent in expression, and is joined to great 
 plastic beauty and to a strong, genuine, and 
 appropriate sentiment. There is small token 
 in Donatello's children that they are making 
 sacred music, but no one can look at Luca's 
 and mistake the fact. Devotional feeling is 
 clearly expressed throughout, though varied 
 with exquisite subtilty in accordance with 
 the age, the occupation, and the individual- 
 ity of each little figure. Its highest expres- 
 sion is in the group of older boys who are 
 singing, quietly absorbed in their task, as 
 they look over each other's shoulders at 
 their book. But it is not lacking even in 
 those groups which are in strongest contrast 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBBIA. 47 
 
 with this those where little children are 
 dancing in a joyful, almost thoughtless 
 mood. 
 
 The first-named group shows, perhaps, 
 some slight lingering trace of the Gothic 
 manner of the preceding century. It is a 
 little monotonous, although very noble in 
 line, and the delightfully naive realism of 
 its faces is gained by some slight sacrifice 
 of beauty. But in many of the other 
 groups we find the purest beauty : a truly 
 classic freedom and grace of movement, 
 and a truly classic charm of physical type. 
 Great is the difference, I think, between 
 them and the reliefs of Donatello, which, 
 despite their freshness, truth, and charm do 
 not show us complete purity of line, perfec- 
 tion of form, or a finely-balanced harmony 
 in composition. In Luca's there are many 
 passages which no Greek need have dis- 
 avowed. 
 
 Of course we must remember that we are 
 judging Luca by his best work and Dona- 
 tello by a work which is far from his best 
 which could not have been his best since 
 its theme was not in accord with the most 
 strongly marked side of his talent. And 
 yet something of what we must say in com- 
 
48 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 paring these special works, we may say in 
 comparing the two sculptors in all their 
 works. It is true that Luca falls far be- 
 hind Donatello in many ways ; but it is 
 also true that he is more sure to delight us 
 with pure plastic beauty, and much more 
 certain to move us with a clear spiritual 
 meaning. 
 
 Luca's bronze door to the Sacristy of the 
 Florentine cathedral is undoubtedly one of 
 his finest works ; yet it is, I think, one of 
 the least well-known, possibly because it 
 has been somewhat overshadowed by the 
 greater size and prominence of those Bap- 
 tistery doors near by which were wrought 
 by Andrea Pisano and Ghiberti. When I 
 say that each of its ten panels shows a 
 single seated figure with an angel on either 
 hand, I say, of course, that the whole re- 
 veals far less of inventiveness, of bold im- 
 agination, than Ghiberti's and Pisano's 
 portals ; but the quiet harmony, the essen- 
 tial unity thus secured are not qualities to 
 be despised; and when we examine the 
 different panels and see the real unlikeness 
 that underlies their similarity, we perceive 
 that, though very reticent, artistic imagina- 
 tion is by no means lacking. Nothing 
 
LUCA DELLA ROBBIA. 49 
 
 could surpass the delicate, all but excessive 
 care with which the reliefs themselves and 
 the heads in the medallions of the border 
 are carried out ; Luca's training with a 
 goldsmith here shows very plainly. Yet 
 even among Renaissance reliefs few equal 
 his in their harmony of line, in their truly 
 sculpturesque conception, in their dignity 
 and serenity ; and still fewer in their depth 
 of Christian sentiment. No one who stud- 
 ies this door will again call Luca a merely 
 graceful, amiable, charming artist; no one 
 will deny him a high place among those 
 sculptors whom we recognize as lofty, noble, 
 great. 
 
 When he turns from bronze and marble 
 to enamelled clay, Luca's sentiment and his 
 strong plastic instinct remain the same, but 
 we must no longer look for so acute a real- 
 ism or so refined a technical language. 
 Everything had to be broadened and sim- 
 plified in view of the necessities of the new 
 material of that covering enamel which, 
 supple though it was, could permit no such 
 sharp precision of line, no such subtile deli- 
 cacy of modelling, as could bronze or mar- 
 ble. And therefore I said that from one 
 point of view it seems a pity he should 
 
50 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 have discovered his new process. Beauti- 
 ful as is such a work, for instance, as the 
 tympanum of the church-door at Urbino, 
 with its half-lengths of the Madonna and 
 four adoring monks, and its full-length of 
 the Child who stands before his mother on 
 the frame of the relief, it would have been 
 still more beautiful had marble been the 
 medium ; and the color, which adds such a 
 value from the decorative or architectural 
 standpoint, adds nothing, it seems to me, 
 from the purely plastic. 
 
 I think I was justified in saying above 
 that Luca always and everywhere renders 
 a distinctly Christian sentiment in a dis- 
 tinctly legible way ; for the instances are 
 so few as to be very unimportant where 
 he falls into a merely gracious realism. 
 A realism which is hardly even gracious 
 marks, indeed, his five reliefs on the Flo- 
 rentine Campanile; but in these Luca 
 worked either from the actual designs of 
 his forerunners in the task, or under con- 
 straint to make his results match in theme 
 and character with theirs. Again, there is, 
 perhaps, one of his Madonnas that in the 
 tympanum of the Via del Agnolo in Flor- 
 ence which, by contrast with his typical 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBBIA. 51 
 
 examples, we may call nothing more than 
 a beautiful human mother. But I know of 
 no other exceptions ; for the only portrait- 
 statue which he has left us (on the tomb of 
 the Bishop of Fiesole), while it is an ad- 
 mirably clear and personal transcript no 
 likeness of the time could well be other- 
 wise is yet imbued with the artist's own 
 characteristic sentiment. Compare it with 
 contemporary sepulchral figures, and we 
 shall not call it, as we do most others, a 
 piece of merely faithful or merely artistic 
 likeness-making. It is very faithful, and 
 consummately artistic, yet full of religious 
 feeling too. It is a piece of truly Christian 
 idealism. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 At the time of Luca's death, his nephew 
 Andrea had already long been famous ; but 
 his activity was to last much longer still, 
 and was to result in an infinitude of works 
 among which it is not always possible to 
 distinguish those that were his own from 
 those that were due to sons and scholars 
 laboring with him in one of the great busy 
 ateliers so characteristic of the age. His 
 legacy in other materials than enamelled 
 
52 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 clay is so small that it need not detain us 
 here ; much more rightly than his uncle 
 he may be identified with the new pro- 
 cess. Technically he seems to have made 
 no effort to develop its possibilities ; he 
 was satisfied with blue and white for his 
 main effects, employing only in minor de- 
 tails and in his borders that fuller poly- 
 chromy of which later so wide a use was 
 made. But he adapted the art to an ever- 
 lengthening list of objects, and made it in- 
 deed a helpful handmaid to the architect. 
 Luca modelled reliefs for tombs and taber- 
 nacles; tympana, rosettes, medallions, and 
 tiles for wall and ceiling; and at least once 
 a pair of figures in the round. But from 
 Andrea's atelier came not only all of these 
 in abundance, but whole tabernacles, great 
 pictorial retables, vases, candelabra, friezes, 
 pulpits, fonts, and fountains. His work is 
 also more ambitious in its use of many 
 figures and of much, diversity in action and 
 arrangement ; but he is an inferior artist 
 to Luca, and not only because he worked 
 from Luca's inspiration rather than from 
 his own. 
 
 To begin with he is much less strong. 
 The original ideal still persists, the original 
 
LUCA DELLA ROBBIA. 53 
 
 sentiment is still preserved, but with a less 
 elevated accent on the one hand, and on 
 the other a less forceful realism. Some- 
 times, indeed, we have no fault to find. 
 Sometimes, when the theme is simply ten- 
 der, it is hard to see much difference be- 
 tween Luca's art and his; but very often 
 and more and more as the years passed 
 on Luca's delicate feeling got a touch of 
 sentimentality; his grace of line lost a lit- 
 tle of its nobility ; his simplicity became 
 almost self-conscious. The early sweetness 
 remained; much of the early force and 
 frankness had evaporated. And so we care 
 most for those among Andrea's works where 
 strength was least required. He has left 
 us nothing better, I should say, than his 
 many simple figures of the Madonna with 
 her child, or than the famous medallions on 
 the outside of the Hospital of the Innocents 
 in Florence those dozen delicious babes in 
 swaddling clothes, each so perfect in beauty 
 and truth, yet each with a distinct little in- 
 dividuality of his own, quite different from 
 that of his tiny brothers. Yet, after all, 
 such art as this, naive and delightful though 
 it be, is not art of the height and meaning 
 that Luca produced when he carved the 
 children of his organ gallery. 
 
54 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 Andrea's art, again, became more deco- 
 rative, less purely sculptural, through the 
 greater prominence he gave to the border- 
 ing of his reliefs. Luca's are commonly set 
 in a very simple frame composed of deli- 
 cately-designed mouldings, the classic style 
 of which strikingly proclaims the death of 
 mediaeval art. He occasionally added a 
 second border, as, for example, of foliage; 
 but Andrea increased the frequency and 
 the importance of this, modelling it in very 
 high relief and in very realistic forms of 
 growing plants or garlanded fruits and 
 flowers. When such a border is made so 
 conspicuous as somewhat to overshadow the 
 relief itself, or when it is used without any 
 architectural motives at all and by itself 
 builds the frame, then we recognize, I 
 think, a decline in taste. In necessarily 
 architectural examples, however, as in his 
 great altar-pieces, Andrea's framework is 
 often most charmingly proportioned and 
 designed. But here too certain elements 
 occur at times which, while they aid the 
 richness, detract from the purity of the re- 
 sult. For example, he often adorns his 
 architecture with rows of detached cherub- 
 heads, intrinsically delightful but architec- 
 turally rather out of place. 
 
LUCA BELLA ROBBIA. 55 
 
 From all of this it may be understood 
 why the beautiful reredos at the Metro- 
 politan Museum 1 in New York should be 
 attributed to Andrea, not to Luca della 
 Robbia. Neither historical nor critical evi- 
 dence can assign a similar work to the ear- 
 
 1 Quoting Dr. Oscar Berggruen of Vienna, MM. 
 Molinier and Cavallucci describe the Metropolitan Mu- 
 seum reredos in the following terms : " Large retable. 
 1 The Assumption/ In the centre the Virgin, seated on 
 clouds, her hands joined, rises to heaven amid a glory of 
 cherubim, while to the right and left float four groups of 
 angels sounding on trumpets. Below is the sarcophagus 
 of the Virgin ornamented with rosettes and filled with 
 flowers. On the left, stand in ecstasy St. Augustine and 
 St. Francis; on the right, St. Bernard of Sienna, and 
 another monkish saint. Two pilasters, decorated with 
 graceful candelabra, support a frieze ornamented with 
 seven heads of cherubim. The tympanum, in the shape 
 of a depressed arch, contains two floating angels bearing 
 a crown. Figures enamelled in white on a blue ground, 
 which is of a lighter tint in the mandorla around the 
 Virgin. The style of this beautiful retable recalls the 
 ' Coronation of the Virgin ' in the Osservanza Convent 
 at Sienna; the bas-reliefs at La Verna (especially the 
 ' Madonna of the Girdle ') ; and the ' Coronation of the 
 Virgin' in the Academy of the Fine Arts at Genoa. 
 With every probability, therefore, one may attribute it 
 to Andrea della Robbia. It comes from Piombino where 
 it adorned the main altar of the church. It was taken 
 to Florence in 1830, and purchased a few years ago by 
 an American, who generously presented it to the New 
 York Museum." 
 
56 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 lier master. But there are many rStables 
 which are known to be Andrea's, and among 
 them two or three with the strongest like- 
 ness to our own. Every characteristic 
 speaks for Andrea the nature of the work 
 itself, the design of the architectural set- 
 ting in which cherub-heads are introduced, 
 the many figures and diversified action, and 
 the slight lack of strength in expression 
 and form that appears when we compare it 
 with Luca's work. But it is a very fine, 
 pure, and characteristic example of An- 
 drea's art that is to say, of the Delia 
 Robbia school when it was in its fullest 
 development, and ere the period of its real 
 decline had begun. There is no possible 
 reason why we should attribute it to a later 
 hand than Andrea's ; but there is every 
 reason if criticism in art means anything 
 at all why we should not attribute it to 
 Luca's. Judging from a photograph MM. 
 Molinier and Cavallucci call it a "precious" 
 possession. Such it is in truth. It would 
 be a treasure to any European museum ; 
 but for this reason there is all the less need 
 to claim for it any interest or value not 
 properly its own. 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBBIA. 57 
 
 IX. 
 
 One more word about Andrea della Rob- 
 bia ere we pass to his sons and successors. 
 
 Andrea further innovated upon Luca's 
 practice by using at times more than one 
 plane in his reliefs. When this is very dis- 
 creetly done, as when in some of his smaller 
 works he puts the Virgin and Child in high 
 relief in the foreground, and a group of 
 angels in lower relief above that is to 
 say, when there is no attempt at illusory, 
 material perspective, but merely what we 
 may call a sort of imaginative, ideal per- 
 spective then indeed the art is pure and 
 the result enchanting. But occasionally he 
 essays the utmost pictorial diversity, as in a 
 reredos representing the " Nativity " which 
 is now at South Kensington. Such efforts 
 were far less justifiable in his glazed clay 
 than they were in Ghiberti's bronze which 
 could be much more delicately wrought; 
 and the help he had from polychromy and 
 from details that were merely painted with- 
 out modelling did not suffice to win his 
 battle. 
 
 Portraiture in enamelled clay he seems 
 to have rarely attempted. When he de- 
 
58 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 sired its effect, he wisely left at least his 
 faces uncolored and unglazed ; and then 
 he showed himself possessed of his full share 
 of the current gift for realistic yet artistic 
 likeness-making. Nothing could be more 
 living, more full of character, than the 
 heads in the " Meeting of St. Francis and 
 St. Domenic " in the tympanum of the 
 loggia of St. Paul's Hospital in Florence ; 
 and the work has also a tender beauty of 
 sentiment and a noble simplicity of line 
 which faithfully echo Luca's mood. 
 
 It is not wonderful that the works at- 
 tributed to Andrea della Robbia should be 
 so numerous, or that their actual author- 
 ship should so often be in doubt ; for he 
 lived to be ninety years old (dying in 1524), 
 and had five sons, as well as numerous 
 other followers, working in his studio. Of 
 these five sons two became monks under 
 the preaching of Savonarola, but did not 
 quite abandon the practice of their craft. 
 Another, named Luca, journeyed to Rome 
 and is known to have laid in the Vatican 
 many enamelled pavements of which but 
 the scantiest traces now exist. Among 
 them was the flooring of the Loggie, exe- 
 cuted under Raphael's direction and after 
 
LUC A BELLA ROBBIA. 59 
 
 designs from his hand or his scholars'. But 
 these pavements, and certain vases and 
 other objects which are believed to be 
 Luca's, are merely painted, not modelled in 
 relief, and so he may with justice be called 
 a potter rather than a sculptor like his 
 brethren. 
 
 Girolamo della Robbia's name is chiefly 
 identified with his work in Paris, whither 
 we shall follow him in a moment. But the 
 greatest sculptor among Andrea's five sons 
 was Giovanni the greatest and most fa- 
 mous, though he died but four years later 
 than his father, at the age of sixty which 
 may be counted young for one of these 
 patriarchal Della Robbias. Many of his 
 works are signed, an innovation which 
 doubtless proves that the enamelling pro- 
 cess was no longer a family secret. The 
 time was past when a Della Robbia needed 
 no certificate of authenticity. 
 
 MM. Molinier and Cavallucci believe 
 that they can trace a gradual but radical 
 change of style in Giovanni's work. In the 
 first period of his life he was entirely under 
 his father's influence, that is, under the 
 transmitted influence of Luca. Nothing, 
 therefore, need be said of his earlier produc- 
 
60 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 tions, for which a beautiful fountain in the 
 sacristy of the Florentine Cathedral may 
 serve as a type. As we might expect, it is 
 often attributed to Andrea and even to 
 Luca himself. 
 
 But in his second period Giovanni breaks 
 with those Delia Robbia traditions of plas- 
 tic simplicity and sweet Christian sentiment 
 which had already persisted so marvellously 
 long, embalmed, as it were, in the family 
 process. The work of this period varies 
 much, Giovanni's desire for independent 
 expression leading him now to success and 
 again to failure. Great haste is sometimes 
 evident, as, for example, in the admixture 
 of merely painted motives with those that 
 are enamelled. Often the conception is 
 cold and constrained, and the full poly- 
 chromy that characterizes Giovanni's later 
 period adds a touch of confusion instead of 
 clearness. 
 
 As a striking example of this period I 
 may note a great polychrome tabernacle 
 which stands in the Via Nazionale in Flor- 
 ence, almost concealed by barriers of wire 
 netting and grimy glass. The central relief 
 shows a Madonna and Child, with saints on 
 either hand, and above, angels bearing a 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBBIA. 61 
 
 crown ; but this relief is no longer of para- 
 mount importance ; it is almost crushed by 
 the elaborateness of the borders. The 
 inner border contains, at the bottom, life- 
 size figures which are neither quite com- 
 bined with the middle group nor entirely 
 disassociated from it ; above these it shows 
 half-lengths of angels, and the God-Father 
 bends from the crown of the arch. Out- 
 side is a second border with statuettes and 
 floral motives and heads of ecclesiastics in 
 the most prominent possible relief. The 
 whole effect, florid and overladen, cannot 
 be called successful, whether we judge it 
 from a strictly sculptural or from a decora- 
 tive point of view. There is no clearness, 
 no unity in the conception, and but little 
 artistic feeling in the execution or in the 
 application of the color; and incoherence 
 is increased by the suppression of architec- 
 tural factors. We realize the errors of its 
 treatment when we compare this tabernacle 
 on the one hand with those where Andrea 
 della Robbia sets a well-composed relief in 
 a purely architectural framework, or on the 
 other hand with those of Gothic origin, 
 which are nearly akin to it in scheme yet 
 in the borders of which the artist always 
 
62 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 supports and unites his figures by the help 
 of architectural motives. 
 
 But Giovanni gradually worked himself 
 free from his period of embarrassment and 
 confusion, and finally showed himself an 
 artist consummately clear in conception 
 and definite in aim, though an artist of a 
 very different stamp from the earlier Delia 
 Robbias. That is, we may affirm as much 
 if he really was the author of the famous 
 frieze on the Ceppo Hospital at Pistoja. 
 No documents exist which directly confirm 
 or deny the fact. All we can say is that 
 popular tradition assigns the work to the 
 Delia Robbias, and that Giovanni was cer- 
 tainly in Pistoja in the year 1525, while 
 the foundations of the hospital were laid in 
 1519, and the date 1525 occurs on one of 
 the spandrel medallions and again on the 
 corner of the building itself. Liibke and 
 many other writers speak of Andrea as its 
 maker, a manifest impossibility when we 
 collate our dates. Others deny it to be the 
 work of any Delia Robbia. It seems im- 
 possible, however, that so vast an under- 
 taking should have been so successfully 
 carried out elsewhere than in the atelier of 
 our great dynasty of enamellers. Nor does 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBBIA. 63 
 
 it seem as though Giovanni could at just 
 this time have been in Pistoja for any other 
 purpose. MM. Molinier and Cavallucci, 
 after careful research, deem Giovanni's 
 authorship all but certain, granting, of 
 course, that he must have been largely 
 helped in the matter of execution. 
 
 The front of the hospital consists of a 
 deep recessed loggia or porch, scarcely raised 
 above the level of the street and enclosed by 
 a row of slender columns supporting wide 
 round arches, in each spandrel being set a 
 large circular enamelled medallion. Above 
 these, along the whole facade, runs a frieze 
 of almost life-size figures. This is divided 
 into six compartments by pairs of pilasters, 
 very slight in projection, between each pair 
 standing a single figure in high relief, em- 
 blematic of one of the cardinal virtues. 
 These figures are idealistically treated, and 
 though we may find in them some slight 
 touch of self-consciousness, yet they have 
 much dignity and feeling, showing once 
 again, I think, the perennial influence of 
 Luca. It is not in them, however, nor in 
 the spandrel medallions which are evi- 
 dently scholars' work and good only in 
 their borders of heavy fruit and foliage 
 
64 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 but in the six reliefs of the frieze itself, that 
 our interest centres ; and here there is in- 
 deed no trace of Luca, unless we see it 
 in the strict adherence to a single plane of 
 relief. Luca's grace of line, his feeling for 
 " style " in composition, his idealism in sen- 
 timent all these have disappeared in fa- 
 vor of the most direct and simple realism. 
 If we look for pure plastic beauty we shall 
 find it only in one or two isolated figures. 
 But if we look for an unflinching portrayal 
 of individual truths, then indeed we have 
 come to the right place. The theme is the 
 " Seven Acts of Mercy," personified by the 
 ministrations of ecclesiastics to the sick and 
 needy, a subject in which realism certainly 
 had a sympathetic field prepared for it. The 
 simple, unadorned truthfulness of its ex- 
 pression can hardly be described, and the 
 diverse and marvellously expressive figures 
 strike one as being the directest portraiture. 
 The realistic effect is heightened, moreover, 
 by the use of full polychromy in all portions 
 save those which represent flesh, and just 
 as much by the fact that such portions are 
 left in that unglazed clay which comes very 
 near to the hue of nature and permits a 
 very complete and incisive kind of execu- 
 
LUC A DELIA ROBBIA. 65 
 
 tion. It is, indeed, a wonderful piece of 
 work, not alone or chiefly in the triumph- 
 ant use of the difficult material, but still 
 more in the way an unadulterated, almost 
 homely, realism in conception has been 
 joined to a purely sculpturesque way of 
 treating the oft-misunderstood and much- 
 abused relief. 
 
 When we consider all these qualities ; 
 when we remember too that no decorative 
 accessories are introduced to assist the effect 
 of the figures, but that the dividing pilas- 
 ters are extremely simple and the mould- 
 ings at top and bottom so severe as to be 
 actually bald ; and when we think of Gio- 
 vanni della Robbia's other works, we do 
 not marvel that his authorship of this has 
 seemed to many critics doubtful. Nor does 
 later work of his exist to help us read the 
 riddle ; he must have died before this one 
 was complete. 
 
 MM. Molinier and Cavallucci say that 
 the implied total revolution in his art was a 
 thing to be expected. They think it an in- 
 evitable result of the influences of his time. 
 But such an opinion hardly seems borne out 
 by history. It is true that the spirit which 
 Luca personified was quite extinct, and that 
 
66 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 some radical change of aim and manner 
 might long since have been looked for in 
 his descendants. It is likewise true that 
 through the whole fifteenth century Dona- 
 tello had more followers than Ghiberti, and 
 that the general trend of art was towards 
 realism. But this period too had passed 
 away. One contemporary of Giovanni 
 della Robbia's was, indeed, Mazzano, who 
 carried an exaggerated realism to its ut- 
 most possible extreme very far outside 
 the limits of good art. But another con- 
 temporary was Andrea Sansovino; and he 
 not by any means such an eccentric as 
 Mazzano really typifies the spirit of Ital- 
 ian art in the first quarter of the sixteenth 
 century. As we read this spirit in Andrea 
 Sansovino's works and in those of the ma- 
 jority of his fellow sculptors, it seems the 
 reverse of realistic. His work is distinctly 
 ideal although in a very different way from 
 Ghiberti's. Ghiberti merely drew inspira- 
 tion from the antique love of beauty; but 
 now we find a deliberate revival of the an- 
 tique in aim and manner a return with 
 enormously increased knowledge and skill 
 to the stand-point of Niccola Pisano three 
 centuries before. With Andrea Sansovino 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBB1A. 67 
 
 the antique forms of sculpture were more 
 perfectly resuscitated than they have ever 
 been at an earlier or a later day, while the 
 decline into servile imitation had not yet 
 begun. 1 
 
 It is hard indeed in such a period to find 
 an influence which could have led to the 
 making of the Pistoja frieze. It stands as 
 far as the poles from Andrea Sansovino's art 
 and from Cellini's ; nor has it the least kin- 
 ship with Mazzano's. The pilaster figures 
 show a strong classic influence and their al- 
 legorical intent seems almost ahead of the 
 time. But these figures are unconnected 
 with the panels themselves and utterly un- 
 like them ; and, on the other hand, the real- 
 ism of the panels is admirably artistic while 
 Mazzano's realism is brutally theatric. It 
 is purely natural, almost naive, yet self-re- 
 strained, while Mazzano's is vulgar, affected, 
 and offensive, an attempt to outvie nature 
 in its most exaggerated moods. 
 
 In Giovanni della Robbia's middle period 
 we can trace an impulse to throw off the 
 
 1 This decline is marked by the substitution of alien 
 classic for national and Christian subject-matter ; it be- 
 gins with Cellini and Jacopo, the younger Sansovino ; it 
 continues in John of Bologna, and ends in the heavy and 
 affected nullities of Bernini. 
 
68 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 family character and become an idealist of 
 the new classicizing type. Such an impulse 
 shows, for instance, in the large saints' fig- 
 ures of Santa Maria at Ripa, and in certain 
 medallions which are now in Florence and at 
 South Kensington. So it is all the more 
 surprising if, in his latest years, he turned 
 about once more and became so downright 
 a realist as the artist of Pistoja. Yet the 
 character of the frieze would seem just as 
 exceptional did we credit it to another 
 hand ; and the skill of its execution would 
 in such a case be an added marvel. To no 
 other man whose name is remembered can 
 it be assigned with so much probability ; 
 and it seems impossible that it should have 
 been the work of a sculptor otherwise un- 
 known. 
 
 X. 
 
 Long before as well as after Giovanni 
 della Robbia's death, the art of enamelling 
 terra-cotta statuary was very widespread in 
 Italy. It was so widespread and so diverse 
 in its manifestations that we cannot criti- 
 cise more definitely than by saying, This 
 is a good work and this is a bad one. Who 
 may have been the author of the one or of 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBBIA. 69 
 
 the other can scarcely ever be ascertained, 
 though we are naturally inclined to give the 
 best to the Delia Robbia studio. Those 
 works in unbroken white which are so of- 
 ten called Luca's really belong almost al- 
 together to this latest time ; and now the 
 practice became common of copying former 
 works or of reproducing them by means of 
 casts, a practice very alien to the spirit 
 of those good old days when each of Luca's 
 and of Andrea's works was a fresh creation. 
 Now, too, enamellers began to copy the 
 bronze or marble works of other sculptors, 
 and even to imitate in their reliefs scenes 
 which the painter had made beautiful on 
 canvas ; and, as we know positively in one 
 or two cases and may assume in very many 
 more, other sculptors now modelled their 
 clay and sent it to the Delia Robbias to be 
 colored with enamel. Is it wonderful that 
 we have no longer a clue to guide us in our 
 nomenclature, or that what was once so 
 pure and beautiful an art should have de- 
 clined into a mere prolific trade some- 
 times into a process which degrades the 
 name of a respectable handicraft ? 
 
 After Giovanni della Robbia's death, the 
 only real point of interest is to be found 
 
70 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 in France. Thither, about 1527, went the 
 brother Girolamo of whom I have already 
 spoken, better known by the French version 
 of his name, Jerome. He too, like so many 
 other Italians before and after, like Leo- 
 nardo, Andrea del Sarto, Cellini, Rosso, and 
 Primaticcio, was tempted away from the 
 distracted peninsula by the peace and the 
 munificent royal patronage of Paris. In- 
 deed, it seems probable that he was directly 
 invited by Francis I., as immediately upon 
 his arrival an important work was com- 
 mitted to his hands. This was nothing less 
 than the construction and adornment of 
 the famous Chateau du Bois de Boulogne, 
 commonly and most mysteriously called le 
 Chdteau de Madrid. 1 It was one of the 
 wonders of its age, but to us, alas, heirs of 
 the Reign of Terror, is only known by 
 tradition and by Du Cerceau's drawings. 
 
 1 It seems as though, of all places in the world, Ma- 
 drid must have been the last, except Pavia, which Fran- 
 cis I. would desire to remember or to honor. And in- 
 deed the name stands always " Chateau de Boulogne " 
 in his official documents. Yet " Madrid " soon became 
 the common appellation, as we see from Du Cerceau's 
 drawings. Some writers believe it must have been given 
 on account of a supposed resemblance between Delia Rob- 
 bia's decoration and the azuleios or colored enamelled 
 tiles that were characteristic of certain parts of Spain. 
 
LUC A DELLA ROBBIA. 71 
 
 Nothing of the sort had been built before, 
 and nothing of the sort has been built again. 
 
 The north fa$ade was twenty-four metres 
 in length, and was broken into three divi- 
 sions, which were separated from each other 
 and flanked at the corners of the building by 
 narrow, projecting pavilions. These were 
 quite plain save for small square windows 
 and the string-courses which bound the 
 whole structure together. The richness of 
 the main portions was thus brought into 
 full relief, and very rich they look to be. 
 Their two lower stories show arcades with 
 round arches, and above are two more sto- 
 ries where the rectangular windows are 
 framed, apparently, by pilasters and elabo- 
 rate mouldings. 
 
 Every one knows the splendid skill shown 
 by French Renaissance architects, ere the 
 advent of Francois Mansart with his inno- 
 vations, in designing their great groups of 
 high, pointed roofs and lofty chimneys. 
 They proved themselves the masters of the 
 world in the art of roofing secular construc- 
 tions, and it is therefore no slight praise 
 to say that even for its own generation the 
 roofing of " Madrid " seems peculiarly fine. 
 It is impossible to know how much credit 
 
72 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 for the strictly architectural part of the 
 work should be given to Jerome della Rob- 
 bia, and how much to the obscure " master- 
 mason," Pierre Godier, whose name is as- 
 sociated with his in the commission. Nor 
 is it easy to decide how much enamelled 
 terra-cotta was used in the decoration, Du 
 Cerceau's text helping but little to eluci- 
 date his prints. He leads us to believe 
 that the fine interior features, the pilasters 
 and great chimney-pieces which he drew, 
 were in terra-cotta; and of the facade he 
 says : " The largest part of the enrichment 
 of the first and second stories outside is 
 of terra-cotta. The mass is very brilliant 
 (esclatante) to the eye ... all the more 
 that even the chimneys and dormers are 
 filled with work." But this last phrase 
 does not mean terra-cotta work. Jerome was 
 not allowed to finish " Madrid " in peace. 
 His name disappeared from the records in 
 1553, and according to Vasari, he then re- 
 turned to Florence. His brother Luca, the 
 potter, whom he had called from Rome to 
 help him, had already, it would seem, ended 
 his life in Paris. At the death of Francis 
 L, in fact, Philibert Delorme had been made 
 Surintendent des Bdtiments, and his book l 
 
 i Treatise on Architecture. 
 
LUC A DELLA ROBBIA. 73 
 
 tells us of his disapproval of the decorative 
 system adopted for " Madrid," and of the 
 care he took not to continue it in the up- 
 per stories. In 1559 Primaticcio succeeded 
 Delorme, and called in to aid him at " Mad- 
 rid " the Limoges enameller Pierre Courtois. 
 We know that at least the decorations of 
 the chimneys were executed by Courtois in 
 his own material, and some remains of them 
 are still to be seen at the H6tel Cluny 
 great colored figures on a blue background, 
 enamelled on copper and curiously ham- 
 mered up from the back so that they stand 
 out in considerable relief. This last fact 
 tends to prove that Courtois strove to bring 
 his own enamels into harmony with the 
 terra-cottas which Jerome della Robbia had 
 placed below. In 1560 Jerome returned 
 once more to Paris, and when he died, six 
 years later, the Chateau stood entire ; but 
 we do not know" what part he may have 
 taken in its completion. It is only certain 
 that he stood well at court, receiving com- 
 missions of other kinds and lodging in one 
 of the royal palaces. 
 
 Returning now to the Chateau, we find 
 that the spandrels of the arcades were filled 
 by circular medallions, and that elaborate 
 
74 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 friezes ran above them, richer in the first 
 story than in the second. The medallions 
 were undoubtedly of terra-cotta, but about 
 the other details there is more question. 
 Vasari tells us that Jerome worked in stone 
 for the decoration of the building, but from 
 the way in which contemporary and later 
 writers (always speaking casually, alas ! 
 and never descriptively) dwell upon the 
 effect of the enamelled color, it seems 
 as though it could not have been confined 
 to the medallions. Nothing exists to-day 
 which with any likelihood can be considered 
 a part of Jerome's work upon the Chateau 
 except four medallions colored in white and 
 dull red now in the Cluny Museum, and a 
 few others, colored in white and violet, 
 which are in the collection at Sevres. 
 These alone seem to have survived when, a 
 hundred years ago, the paviors of Paris, for 
 the mending of their roads, bought the 
 heaps of terra-cotta which lay around the 
 shattered palace. 
 
 The other commissions which Jerome re- 
 ceived during his second stay in Paris in- 
 cluded terra-cotta decorations for the palace 
 at Fontainebleau, which have long since per- 
 ished; two marble figures, lost again, for 
 
LUC A DELL A ROBBIA. 75 
 
 the monument which was to hold the heart 
 of Francis II. at Orleans ; and a figure for 
 the mausoleum which Catherine de Medici 
 had planned for Henry II. The queen de- 
 sired that even during her lifetime her re- 
 cumbent effigy should be placed beside her 
 husband's on the tomb. The general de- 
 sign of the monument was Primaticcio's, 
 and the execution was distributed among a 
 number of sculptors, to Jerome della Rob- 
 bia's share falling Catherine's figure. It is 
 certain that he received for it a payment on 
 account, but eventually both the recumbent 
 statues were executed by Germain Pilon, 
 doubtless because Jerome died before his 
 had been completed. A partly finished 
 marble figure of the dead Catherine still ex- 
 ists which in former years received different 
 appellations, and was often supposed to be 
 Pilon 's first essay for his work. But to-day 
 it is generally conceded that it is the figure 
 which Jerome della Robbia seems to have 
 left unfinished at his demise. Those among 
 my readers to whom the Museum of the 
 Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris is a familiar 
 memory, will doubtless recollect the strange, 
 ghastly, realistic-looking nude figure which 
 is an imaginative picture of Catherine as a 
 
76 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 corpse, designed many years before she left 
 the world. It is interesting in itself, and 
 doubly interesting as being the last work of 
 the last artist of " the great dynasty of the 
 Delia Robbias." 
 
 But, I may add, the Delia Robbia family 
 by no means died out with the death of its 
 art. Jerome's many children all married 
 well in France, and his descendants find 
 occasional mention in history. One of his 
 daughters became the wife of Ascanio di 
 Mari, goldsmith to the king, who was rec- 
 ognized even by the irascible Cellini as the 
 best among his pupils. In Italy also honors 
 were in store for the Delia Robbias. A 
 certain Luigi, for example, a descendant in 
 the fourth generation of Andrea's brother 
 Simone, was the father of three bishops, and 
 his sister married into the noble family of 
 the Viviani. One of her descendants of to- 
 day has shown himself an intelligent ad- 
 mirer of his forefathers' art, and all are 
 proud to recognize their origin by calling 
 themselves the Marchese Viviani della 
 Robbia. 
 
II. 
 
 CORKEGGIO. 
 1494-1534. 
 
 A GEEAT deal has been written about 
 Correggio yet one important fact with re- 
 gard to him has seldom been remarked. 
 This is the fact that he was singularly 
 separated alike from the stirring life of his 
 time and from the artistic currents which 
 ran through it. He is almost the only great 
 artist of whom history tells who stood aloof 
 from all the " schools " of his day, and was 
 neither swayed by the example nor spurred 
 by the rivalry of fellow-craftsmen. Such 
 isolation would seem strange in any age 
 joined to so complete and uneccentric a 
 development; but when we think where 
 Correggio stood as to time and place, in 
 the centre of Lombardy in the height of 
 the Renaissance, it seems a phenomenon 
 indeed. 
 
78 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 Born in 1494 and dying in 1534, Correg- 
 gio's life just spans the time when the great 
 wave we call the Renaissance was at its 
 fullest height, pausing, crested with a mar- 
 vellous foam of beauty, between its slow 
 upheaval and its quicker dissolution. His 
 birth almost marks the finding of America 
 when a new world was thrown open; his 
 death, the sack of Rome when the centre of 
 the old world was shattered, never, in spite 
 of piecing and patching and the outward 
 semblance of renewal, to regain the vital- 
 ity or the prestige it had lost. Lorenzo de 
 Medici, who had trained the flowers of art 
 to their most sumptuous unfolding, died in 
 1492 ; and Clement VII., who saw them 
 blasted and half killed, fled to St. Angelo 
 in 1527. Between Lorenzo and Clement 
 lay the pontificates of Julius and of Leo 
 which marked the high -water limits of 
 princely patronage, popular comprehension, 
 and inspired production. Correggio's years 
 come in contact with those of almost all the 
 great painters of this greatest time, and run 
 quite parallel with some. When he was 
 born Mantegna was near the close of his 
 
CORREGGIO. 79 
 
 career ; Titian and Giorgione were in the 
 bloom of youth ; Leonardo da Vinci was in 
 his prime ; Diirer was beginning his work 
 at the north ; Raphael was in Perugino's 
 workshop, Michael Angelo in Ghirlandajo's ; 
 and Holbein's birth, like Giulio Romano's, 
 fell within a few years of his own. By the 
 time he had closed his forty years of life 
 Mantegna had long been dead, Giorgione 
 had followed, and also Diirer, Leonardo, and 
 Raphael. Michael Angelo and Titian were 
 left alone, in their gray hairs, amid the 
 graves of their generation ; and only in 
 Venice, with Veronese and Tintoretto, did 
 the coming men show signs of equalling the 
 old. 
 
 Never, except in the Athens of Pericles, 
 has the Zeitgeist the spirit of the age 
 worked so forcibly in aesthetic things as in 
 this Italy of the High or Middle Renaissance. 
 In previous generations each man's influ- 
 ence had been more distinct. Each great 
 mind from Gerbert, the first true scholar of 
 the modern world, down through the waken- 
 ing centuries to the Pisani who marked the 
 dawn, and to Petrarch who saw the sunrise 
 of the new day ; then from Petrarch down 
 through the artists, humanists, and patron- 
 
80 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 princes of the early Renaissance, down past 
 Alberti and past Cosmo to Lorenzo's day, 
 each great mind had worked to a large ex- 
 tent in independence of the others. Each 
 had contributed a separate and very indi- 
 vidual share towards the forming of a Zeit- 
 geist which now was all pervading. The 
 mood of art was now homogeneous in this 
 full-grown modern world in the Florence 
 of Lorenzo, in the Rome of Leo, in the Ur- 
 bino of Federigo, in the Milan of Ludovico 
 il Moro, in the countless little cities with 
 each its local Maecenas, its local meed of 
 fame, its local school and style and flavor. 
 In spite of all these subordinate diversities 
 there was but one Art for Italy. Each 
 great man's work expressed universal rather 
 than personal ideas and feelings, typified 
 the spirit of the age more even than the 
 soul of its creator. I do not imply, of 
 course, a uniformity like that of Egypt, 
 where all voices sing at the same pitch in 
 one vast national chorus. Each Italian has 
 his own peculiar sweetness, strength, or rar- 
 ity of tone ; each makes this distinctly 
 heard, yet all unite in a general harmony 
 which breathes of the nation and the time. 
 The ceaseless voyaging of artists as well 
 
CORREGGIO. 81 
 
 as humanists, their endless correspondence, 
 their desire to know all that was to be 
 known from Antwerp to Naples, the flux 
 of students from studio to studio, of masters 
 from court to court, the ramifications and 
 relationships of the greater and the lesser 
 schools all these go to prove how great, 
 in spite of the wonderful personality of each 
 worker, was his indebtedness to his fellow- 
 workers, how much he owed to the spirit of 
 the age. 
 
 It was just the time when a scantily in- 
 fluenced career in art might seem most im- 
 possible. Was not even Diirer drawn to 
 Venice and Bologna as well as northward 
 to the Netherlands ? How could an Italian, 
 born close to the greatest schools and pa- 
 trons, at a time when restlessness was the 
 rule and incessant change the most constant 
 factor in all productive lives how could 
 an Italian stay quietly on one side and beat 
 his music out by and for himself ? Yet this 
 is what Correggio did. He was isolated, 
 self-developed, self-sufficient in the height 
 and centre of the Italian Renaissance. No 
 one seems to have felt more powerfully than 
 he the spirit of the age. Never was one 
 important side of it more clearly expressed 
 
82 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 than by his brush. Yet it seems to have 
 been absorbed from the heavy laden air, 
 not drunk through definite contact. Day 
 by day in his seclusion he must have heard 
 more plainly the applause that the world 
 was giving to other men of genius ; but he 
 did not even touch the hem of their gar- 
 ments afar off much less lay hold of them 
 for instruction or for combat. 
 
 Not only history but lack of history 
 gives proof of Correggio's isolation. The 
 scantiness of his biographers' statements is 
 as convincing as their disputed truth. He 
 was all but unknown to his contemporaries. 
 Ariosto does not mention him when, in 
 the " Orlando Furioso," he names the paint- 
 ers of the day. A delightful legend tells 
 of a visit paid by Titian to Parma when 
 the monks who exhibited Correggio's fres- 
 coes slighted them as poor things which 
 they were about to have replaced, and of 
 Titian's superb reply : " Have a care what 
 you do ; if I were not Titian I should wish 
 to be Allegri." Alas for so pretty a tale ! 
 we cannot believe that Titian ever saw 
 a fresco of Correggio's. But it is a sig- 
 nificant tale none the less, proving the 
 slight renown which the myth-makers of a 
 
CORREGGIO. 83 
 
 little later day believed that Correggio had 
 gained while living. Raphael and Michael 
 Angelo doubtless never heard his name ; 
 and though critics anxious to find some 
 influence strong enough to explain his per- 
 fect skill have argued that he may have 
 gone to Milan, that he may have seen 
 Leonardo's pictures, and may have visited 
 Bologna, studied Francia, and cried " AncK 
 io sono pittore ! " in face of Raphael's " St. 
 Cecilia," yet all these facts are definitely 
 denied by the more thorough investigations 
 of to-day. 
 
 It would be tedious to detail how grad- 
 ually Correggio's reputation spread. In 
 that age of quick success to effort and in- 
 stant fame for all success, his art remained 
 so long unknown that when it was dis- 
 covered the memory of his personality had 
 quite decayed. Lodovico Dolce gave him 
 barren mention. Aretino in 1557 ranked 
 him among the " good painters " some- 
 where below Giulio Romano. Vasari's 
 book is almost devoid of facts and more 
 than usually unreliable. Annibale Caracci 
 is the first who appreciates him ; and he 
 says that in Parma itself nothing could be 
 gleaned about him even a few years after 
 
Si SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 his death ; he seemed to have been at once 
 forgotten, or, rather, never to have been 
 remarked. Italian commentaries and dis- 
 cussions have been numerous in the pres- 
 ent century but more for confusion than 
 enlightenment. Resuming and sifting them 
 all, however, and including in the process 
 the criticisms of Raphael Mengs as well, we 
 have an excellent German biography writ- 
 ten by Julius Meyer. 1 From this sufficient 
 data can be gathered for an outline of Cor- 
 reggio's life. 
 
 II. 
 
 Antonio Allegri was born at the little 
 village of Correggio, near Modena, from 
 which he takes his artist-name. His par- 
 ents were burghers in decent circumstances. 
 The town was the seat of a miniature court, 
 and, like all its neighbors, boasted local 
 talent and patronized art in a tiny way. 
 It is nevertheless uncertain from whom 
 Antonio got his first lessons ; probably it 
 was from an uncle whom tradition repre- 
 sents as the worst of bunglers. In his boy- 
 hood he went to Modena and learned of 
 painters there. The chief among them was 
 
 1 Correggio. Leipzig, 1871. 
 
CORREGGIO. 85 
 
 Bianchi Ferrari, or Frari, a scholar of 
 Francia's, imbued with traditions of Urbino 
 and its school. He died when his pupil 
 was sixteen. Before his scanty schooling 
 was complete Antonio went to Mantua 
 also, where Mantegna had been the head 
 and front of the Lombard school. His in- 
 fluence is easily read in Correggio's early 
 work, especially in the " St. Francis " of 
 the Dresden gallery. This was his first 
 important picture, painted at seventeen ; 
 and it was modelled, evidently, upon Man- 
 tegna's " Vierge de la Victoire " now in the 
 Louvre. Yet the influence was not per- 
 sonal, for the great Lombard had died when 
 Correggio was only twelve yeai*s old ; 1 from 
 his pictures or his scholars, not from him- 
 self, the boy must have learned his marvel- 
 lous perspective and his fashion of fore- 
 shortening from the point of view of the 
 spectator. 
 
 Leonardo's influence seems almost as vis- 
 ible in our master's work as Mantegna's, 
 showing especially -in his wonderful chiaros- 
 curo. Yet it is difficult to imagine how it 
 can have been exerted. No one has shown, 
 even to the point of probability, that can- 
 1 In 1506, not in 1517 as formerly believed. 
 
86 SJX PORTRAITS. 
 
 vases of Leonardo's had found their way to 
 Mantua or Modena; and it is still more 
 improbable that Correggio ever visited 
 Milan. Again, there is strong evidence to 
 disprove the fact, which was long asserted, 
 that Correggio learned perspective of Me- 
 lozzo da Forli ; and it is conclusively shown 
 that he never travelled to Bologna or to 
 Rome. 
 
 If we come down to facts we find that 
 Antonio's youth was spent between Cor- 
 reggio, Mantua, and Modena, and was in- 
 fluenced only by the forces that these towns 
 could bring to bear. General culture, in- 
 cluding a knowledge of anatomy, he is said 
 to have imbibed from Giambattista Lom- 
 bardi, a physician who has been supposed 
 the original of the Dresden portrait called 
 "Le Medecin du Correge." 1 From Man- 
 tegna's pictures he learned some of the 
 magic methods of his craft, and possibly 
 from Leonardo's, though we cannot imagine 
 how. 
 
 1 Lombardi may have taught Correggio, and this pic- 
 ture may represent Lombardi ; but Correggio did not 
 paint it. Modern criticism is decisive on this point, 
 and, I may say in parenthesis, it is decisive too, in deny- 
 ing the authenticity of that " Reading Magdalene," also in 
 the Dresden gallery, which for so many generations has 
 been the most popular " Correggio " in the world. 
 
CORREGGIO. 87 
 
 While still in his teens he was back at 
 Correggio, his education finished, his con- 
 tact with art and artists forever at an end. 
 Now he painted the Dresden " St. Fran- 
 cis," with its clear echo of Mantegna yet 
 unmistakable personal accent. All the pic- 
 tures credited to the next few years are of 
 doubtful authenticity. But the year 1517 
 bequeathed us the famous "Marriage of 
 St. Catherine" which hangs in the Louvre. 
 No teacher had given the lad further coun- 
 sel, no other great man's work a further 
 inspiration. Yet from the " St. Cather- 
 ine" all traces of Mantegna have disap- 
 peared. Here, at the age of twenty-three, 
 Correggio is as exclusively and as fully him- 
 self as when he paints the Dresden "Night" 
 a few years before his death ; and through 
 the intervening period runs the current of 
 his lovely work, untroubled by outward 
 influences or by mutations in the man him- 
 self. There is no narrowness in Correggio's 
 art, no mannerism, no limitation to one 
 kind of subject-matter ; but sentiment and 
 technical style are always the same vary- 
 ing in their manifestations but consistent 
 with themselves throughout. 
 
 In 1518 Correggio left his village for a 
 
88 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 somewhat wider field at Parma, probably 
 in answer to a direct invitation as impor- 
 tant orders were at once forthcoming. Be- 
 tween this year and 1524 he painted his 
 frescoes in the cloisters of San Paolo, in the 
 church of San Giovanni, and in the dome of 
 the cathedral. Near the latter date also be- 
 long his most famous easel-pictures. Once he 
 almost came in contact with the great outer 
 world. Through some channel unknown to 
 us, Federigo, Duke of Mantua, ordered two 
 mythological pictures of him as a gift for 
 the Emperor Charles. But it is proved as 
 clearly as proof is possible that Correggio 
 himself was not called to Mantua ; and the 
 fact is a measure of his obscurity, for Fe- 
 derigo stood in close friendship with many 
 other artists. The commission was doubt- 
 less given in a half-careless way as proper 
 patronage for " local talent." It is impos- 
 sible to say, moreover, for whom Correggio 
 painted the other pictures in that series of 
 the " Loves of Jupiter " to which the two 
 designed for Charles V. belong. 
 
 Correggio married in 1519 during a visit 
 home ; but his wife seems to have followed 
 him back to Parma only after an interval 
 of several years. She died, most probably, 
 
CORREGGIO. 89 
 
 in 1528; and in 1530 Correggio returned 
 to his native town, where he spent the 
 remaining four years of his life. 
 
 In this last change of residence we have 
 a forcible proof of his unlikeness to the 
 other great painters of his day. It is true 
 that at Parma he had no equals in his art, 
 no rivals, and scarcely any fellow-workers. 
 Even there he was out of the main current 
 of influence, competition, and reward. But 
 he had at least a public of some size which 
 had given him commissions for noble work; 
 and his foot was on the threshold of the 
 rich outer world. A return to Correggio 
 was a deliberate retreat, in the very prime 
 of early manhood, to the obscure monotony 
 of village life and the limitations of easel- 
 painting. Such a move stands indeed in 
 contrast to the wish for full existence, the 
 search for grand opportunities, the love of 
 conflict, fame, and favor that so essentially 
 characterized the artists of the Renaissance. 
 
 There is nothing further to tell about 
 Correggio. He died at the age of forty, 
 apparently in full possession of his powers. 
 It was a short life, yet three years longer 
 than Raphael's ; and Raphael had found 
 time and strength for a cycle of work still 
 
90 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 wider than Correggio's, for the occupations 
 of a courtier first, and later of a veritable 
 prince, and for the labors of an architect, 
 an antiquary, and a teacher of the whole 
 artist-generation just below him. Raphael's 
 full, ambitious life may seem exceptional in 
 the eyes of to-day ; but it was the natural, 
 typical life of an artist in his time. And 
 Raphael's funeral, Raphael's tomb, were 
 but the necessary tribute of his age to the 
 endowments that it valued most. The 
 real place to be surprised is when we find 
 Correggio's grave covered by a wooden slab 
 with merely " Antonius de Allegris, Pic- 
 tor" carved upon it, and, looking further 
 on history's page, discover that it was a 
 hundred years before even a few words cut 
 in stone replaced this first curt record. 
 
 If Correggio's life was isolated, so, too, 
 is the art which it produced. We have 
 seen how he learned all the skill of hand 
 that he did not teach himself. But the 
 men who instructed him had nothing in 
 common with the style, the spirit, the char- 
 acter the soul, in a word of his mature 
 performance. After the age of twenty- 
 three his work is as alien from Mantegna's 
 sculpturesque gravity as from the subtile, 
 
CORREGGIO. 91 
 
 serious intellectuality of Leonardo. Two 
 men have painted the smile of women 
 Leonardo and Correggio; but in the smil- 
 ing of the " Mona Lisa " on the one hand, 
 and of Correggio's Madonnas on the other, 
 we see only a proof of antipodal contrast 
 between the minds that wrought them. 
 
 Nor does Correggio stand closer in his 
 art to his contemporaries than to his fore- 
 runners. His work is not included in any 
 school, but must be studied by and in itself. 
 Can this be said of any of his equals ? The 
 four great Venetians Giorgione and Ti- 
 tian, Veronese and Tintoretto are blos- 
 soms of the same stock, and we must see 
 them side by side and in the company of 
 all their teachers before we can appreciate 
 their similarity in nature and diversities 
 in development. So the Tuscans must be 
 looked at in groups if the outline of each 
 is to be clearly traced ; but in Parma no 
 juxtaposition helps us, no comparison serves 
 as a test of style or spirit. We find a dis- 
 tinct and very important phase of art, but 
 it is contained in this one man alone. He 
 has no father among earlier great men ; no 
 rival stands beside him ; no pupils carry on 
 his work. Parmegianino's is the only name 
 
92 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 that can be cited, and Parmegianino was 
 not so much a scholar whom Correggio 
 influenced as a tool whom he employed. 
 When he did more than help his master 
 paint, he painted weak dilutions of his mas- 
 ter's pictures. It is true that Correggio 
 exerted an immense influence upon paint- 
 ing an influence wider than that of any 
 other man except Michael Angelo. But it 
 was a posthumous, a long posthumous, in- 
 fluence. It started from his pictures, not 
 from himself ; and from his pictures only 
 when time had slowly brought them out 
 from the obscurity which was their first 
 estate. The so-called " school of Parma " 
 means Correggio alone, the scale of his own 
 perfections, the test of all possible achieve- 
 ments in his own line. 
 
 III. 
 
 Among the qualities which may exist in 
 a work of art is a voice that reveals the 
 temperament of its creator. This quality is 
 often an item in the highest general perfec- 
 tion, but it sometimes goes far to redeem an 
 art that is deficient on other sides. Perhaps 
 we scarcely find a trace of it in the whole 
 achievement of some mighty painter ; per- 
 
CORREGGIO. 93 
 
 haps it will disclose itself in the single hasty 
 sketch of a man whom no one could call 
 great. Every painting, of course, reveals to 
 some extent the man who painted it. It 
 tells us what he could do, what he preferred 
 to see, and how he thought and felt while 
 he was at work ; and, each picture telling 
 thus of one moment and its mood, all a 
 man's work collectively judged must give 
 us in some sense the average of his soul. 
 But by the quality to which I have referred 
 I mean more than such testimony as this. 
 There is more to be said of a man some- 
 times than that he saw and felt and thought 
 and did. There is such a thing as being in 
 an individual way that imparts a particu- 
 lar flavor to everything seen and felt and 
 thought and done. This quality is not 
 character ; it is not strength, whether of 
 mind or hand or inner vision. It is tem- 
 perament a sort of individual, peculiar 
 atmosphere that pervades all sides of life, 
 mental, moral, physical, emotional. It is a 
 quality that we recognize at once in our in- 
 tercourse with men, though we might find 
 it difficult to put a finger on the special 
 words or acts through which it shows ; and 
 we recognize it just as readily in art, al- 
 
94 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 though it is just as difficult of explanation 
 there. Is there not a personal voice that 
 speaks to us when Leonardo or Memling 
 paints, when Michael Angelo uses brush or 
 chisel, when Luca della Robbia moulds his 
 clay, when Rembrandt or Diirer or Whistler 
 etches a line, when Rubens or Hals, Tinto- 
 retto or Turner lays a color ? Do we hear 
 this voice from Titian, even, or from Vero- 
 nese, from Holbein, or from Reynolds, or 
 from Raphael himself ? It is a voice that 
 joins, we see, names quite incongruous in 
 all else, and separates with a bold division 
 gifts and methods otherwise close akin. It 
 is independent of all other powers. It does 
 not exist in uniformity of mood, medium, 
 or manner who is more various in all of 
 these than Rembrandt ? It does not need a 
 wide cycle of work to reveal it who is so 
 fragmentary as Leonardo ? It does not lack 
 through any deficiency we can name who 
 is so scholarly as Raphael, who so equably 
 endowed as Titian ? Nor can we say, on 
 the other hand, that it exists because of 
 some deficiency some shadow or limit in 
 one direction which brings out other quali- 
 ties in a clearer light. Less than anything, 
 however, can this quality be called deliber- 
 
CORREGGIO. 95 
 
 ate, self-conscious. No one could be more 
 naive than Memling, for instance, no one 
 more spontaneous than Frans Hals. 
 
 There are critics, I know, who profess to 
 look upon this subtilely obtruded personality 
 of the artist as superfluous, if not imperti- 
 nent, in a work of art. Ruskin, in the more 
 didactic of his many moods, is a good exam- 
 ple. He tells us then that the artist should 
 sink himself entirely in the things he ren- 
 ders, being no more than nature's humble, 
 faithful copyist. Certain painters, likewise, 
 devotees of the so - called " realistic " 
 schools, have expressed the utmost disgust 
 at the idea of putting anything of them- 
 selves into the work in hand. But the first 
 froth of Ruskin's influence has blown away ; 
 and all the declarations of the realists can- 
 not longer blind us to the fact that their 
 practice contradicts their precepts ; no 
 one declaimed in louder words against per- 
 sonality in art than Courbet, yet few pain- 
 ters have ever put themselves more plainly 
 upon canvas. So I think I shall hardly pro- 
 voke discussion when I affirm that the sug- 
 gested temperament of the artist is one of 
 the most precious qualities that a work of 
 art can have. It is not the noblest, but 
 
96 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 surely ifc is the most attractive ; and I 
 know every student of art will agree with 
 me when I say that no other painted work 
 is richer in this quality than Correggio's. 
 
 It is Correggio's temperament that first 
 appeals to us in his pictures, full though 
 they are of all other kinds of interest. It is 
 this that makes them so passionately be- 
 loved by some, so heartily disliked by others. 
 No observer can be indifferent to Correggio 
 as he may be to even greater artists. If we 
 care for his pictures, we almost forget the 
 design which we incessantly think of with 
 Raphael ; we do not dwell upon the render- 
 ing as we do with Titian ; nor do we rest 
 in the simple ocular delight which suffices 
 us with Veronese, or prize the dramatic 
 meaning as with Tintoretto. We care for 
 them first of all because Correggio painted 
 them because he put his soul into them, 
 and because that soul is one that pleases 
 ours. If, on the other hand, we dislike his 
 pictures, it must be in Ruskin's way find- 
 ing no fault with them as pictures but pro- 
 testing against the soul behind. In short, 
 the power of a mighty painter is almost out- 
 voiced on Correggio's canvas by the power 
 of an individual artistic temperament. Its 
 
CORREGGIO. 97 
 
 greatest value is that it radiates the glamour 
 of an imagined world distinct from all imag- 
 inings of other men a world into which 
 Correggio alone was born, and into which 
 we cannot penetrate except when he swings 
 the door. Leonardo is the only painter, I 
 think, who has so strong a personal voice 
 as he, and how much fuller and more varied 
 is his legacy than Leonardo's ! 
 
 All this has been said of Correggio many 
 times before. Even Vasari felt the indi- 
 viduality of his charm. " Near them," he 
 writes, " is a boy representing a little angel, 
 who is smiling so naturally that all who 
 look on him are moved to smile also ; nor 
 is there any one, however melancholy his 
 temperament, who can behold him without 
 feeling a sensation of pleasure ; " and in 
 modern times many writers have tried their 
 best, through endless florid periods, to define 
 what they are forced at last to call u the 
 Correggiosity of Correggio." 
 
 All agree that no one can behold his fig- 
 ures " without a sensation of pleasure ; " but 
 some of them protest that it is an immoral 
 sensation. There was once a pietistic prince 
 who cut the head out of a copy of Correggio's 
 " Leda " because he thought it " abomina- 
 
98 BIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 ble " in expression. And Mr. Ruskin, per- 
 haps, would not have condemned his act, for 
 he calls the " Antiope " of the Louvre an 
 example of the " highest seventh circle " in 
 " that whole vast false heaven of sensual 
 passion, full of nymphs, graces, goddesses, 
 and I know not what." Bluntness of per- 
 ception speaks in these words. One of the 
 first things a man should learn if he does 
 not feel it by instinct when he addresses 
 himself to the study of art is that sensuous- 
 ness is not sensuality. Mr. Symonds is a 
 juster critic. 1 He says that it would be 
 ridiculous to accuse Correggio of " conscious 
 immorality, or of what is stigmatized as 
 sensuality." Yet when he compares Cor- 
 reggio's treatment of grave subjects with 
 Rossini's treatment of solemn themes, and 
 refers to the " Stabat Mater " in illustra- 
 tion, he underrates the painter or gives the 
 composer too much praise. Correggio's work 
 is never solemn or profound in a moral way ; 
 but it never shows a trace of the frivolity, 
 the meretricious glitter, that we find in 
 Rossini's sacred music. Were the compari- 
 son a just one it would embody an even dead- 
 lier charge than Ruskin brings. Sensual art 
 
 1 Sketches in Italy and Greece, Parma. 
 
CORREGGIO. 99 
 
 may be noble and perfect as art though 
 blameworthy from the moralist's point of 
 view if conceived with dignity, sincerity, 
 and strength ; but an insincere or trivial ac- 
 cent means instant degradation even from 
 the most purely artistic stand-point. Correg- 
 glo was in earnest when he painted, whether 
 his earnestness resembles what ours would 
 be or not. His figures are not divine, but 
 though mundane they are never worldly. 
 The spirit of his art is not of heaven, but it 
 dwells in Arcadia, and when we say Arcadia 
 we say sensuous, but healthy and sincere. If 
 his pictures are found unwholesome for our 
 eyes, the fault is less theirs than ours. We 
 have Puritan blood in our veins and can 
 never forget that Adam fell. When we find 
 ourselves in Arcady we try to believe that it 
 is Eden, and when we see that it is not we 
 decide it must be Babylon of the prophets. 
 The key-note of Correggio's art is a vivid, 
 intense, yet tender and voluptuous delight 
 in the mere fact of physical existence. All 
 his beings, says Mr. Symonds, "are created 
 for pleasure, not for thought or passion or 
 activity or heroism. The uses of their 
 brains, their limbs, their every feature, end 
 in enjoyment ; innocent and radiant wan- 
 
100 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 tonness is the condition of their whole ex- 
 istence. Correggio conceived the universe 
 under the one mood of sensuous joy ; his 
 world was bathed in luxuriant light; its 
 inhabitants were capable of little beyond a 
 soft voluptuousness." But, once again, his 
 phrases are too strong when he says, " Leo- 
 nardo painted souls whereof the features and 
 limbs are but an index. The charm of Mi- 
 chael Angelo's ideal is like a flower upon a 
 tree of rugged strength. Raphael aims at the 
 loveliness which cannot be disjoined from 
 goodness. But Correggio is contented with 
 bodies ' delicate and desirable.' " Not quite, 
 I think. There are souls behind his tender 
 bodies and smiling faces, and souls, we feel, 
 that are delicate and sweet-natured, that are 
 joyous and innocent in their very essence, 
 and not merely at the one pictured moment. 
 We have never seen just such beings as he 
 paints, but we wish we could; and we 
 should not say as much of creatures that 
 were sensual on the one hand or entirely soul- 
 less on the other. Correggio is never so 
 completely himself as when he paints little 
 children and half-grown boys ; the beauty 
 of youth was what he loved best, and he 
 makes it as innocent as the beauty of flowers, 
 
CORREGGfO. 101 
 
 yet full of meaning and affection as well as 
 
 joy- 
 
 The strain that runs through all Correg- 
 gio's themes from his adorations of the 
 Holy Infant to his amours of Jupiter is 
 sensuousness, not sensuality. His satyr is 
 not coarse if his Christ-child is not divine. 
 Antiope, Leda, lo, Danae, are not brutal- 
 ized and consciously transgressing; they are 
 merely natural, unsophisticated, living near 
 Olympus for the day and its delights. And 
 when he paints the madonna we see a sim- 
 ilar nature to theirs although in a soberer 
 mood. In Correggio's madonnas is struck 
 the lowest note in that long scale where the 
 highest is struck by the holy presence of 
 Raphael's " Sistina." I do not mean the 
 lowest possible note or the lowest that has 
 actually been struck, but the lowest that is 
 compatible with artistic harmony between 
 idea and expression. Correggio's madonnas 
 are not, as some have been, bacchantes, 
 Phrynes, or dull Italian peasants ; nor are 
 they absolutely earthly and uninspired ; but 
 they are inspired by the airs of Arcady, by 
 love of pleasurable life, and affection for 
 an infant which might be a tiny pagan god. 
 They are far below the divinity of Raphael's 
 
102, SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 greatest conception ; but the antique hero- 
 ines who call them sister are far above the 
 conscious sensuality we find in those of Giu- 
 lio Romano and of many recent painters 
 whom I need not name. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Few painters have worshipped pure 
 beauty as Correggio did. Not one, I think, 
 has approached it in so passionate yet ten- 
 der a way. Symonds gives us the right term 
 he paints in a " dithyrambic ecstasy." 
 Take the "St. Catherine" at Paris. We 
 could scarcely realize a mood of such over- 
 flowing yet childlike, touching joy had not 
 Correggio made it plain to us such a ra- 
 diance of physical life free from all accents 
 of exaggeration or affectation. And how 
 tender it is, how sure we are that the pain- 
 ter loved what he painted, and was content 
 with himself and his work and the world 
 that he lived in ! 
 
 Here the critics may point us back to 
 Vasari and say we are mistaken. Accord- 
 ing to his account Correggio " could not 
 even persuade himself that he knew any- 
 thing satisfactorily with regard to his art ; " 
 he was morbid and unhappy if not misan- 
 
CORREGGIO. 103 
 
 tbropical, often in dire straits for money, 
 and miserly when he got it. His death, 
 we are bidden to believe, was a result of 
 his penuriousness. A large payment had 
 been made him in coppers ; he insisted upon 
 carrying it home on his back, and fell ill of 
 the over-exertion. These fables are denied, 
 however, by modern inquirers ; and if we 
 have any faith in the language of art we 
 should deny them on its single witness. 
 No one could have painted as Correggio 
 did and been the man whom Vasari repre- 
 sents. 
 
 Yet even if we make the best that we 
 can of Correggio's life, it may still seem 
 strange, at first sight, that it produced the 
 art we see. It was an uneventful, unam- 
 bitious life, passed in a monotony of con- 
 stant labor away from all the sumptuous 
 public pleasure - making of the time, and 
 from all artistic inspiration. We cannot 
 think of the case as one when fate refused 
 an artist the existence he would have liked. 
 It was not a century of casts and grooves 
 and scanty opportunities ; Correggio's nar- 
 row life must have been deliberately chosen, 
 or borne through lack of will to break a 
 very feeble chain. Nor, again, was it an 
 
104 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 age when artists masqueraded and showed 
 one face in their life, another in their work. 
 Intellectual freedom was absolute, freedom 
 of conduct almost as great. The influence 
 of the spirit of the age did not tend to choke 
 originality in any direction. It was not a 
 dogmatic spirit trying to regulate action of 
 any kind. It was a spirit of wide and gen- 
 erous appreciation. It meant hearty en- 
 couragement to every man to develop what 
 was in him whether for moral good or 
 evil did not matter much so long as there 
 was sesthetic gain. Criticism spoke in 
 every breath of air, but for incitement, not 
 constraint. The pictures painted in Cor- 
 reggio's time were kept within the bounds 
 of the strictly legitimate in art; painting 
 was not distorted, as it so often has been 
 since, to render literary tales or didactic 
 meanings. Yet the lines within which it 
 flourished were extremely wide. No picto- 
 rial idea of any sort was denied expression. 
 There were no rules for choice of theme or 
 manner of treatment except such as any one 
 who was born an artist would mark out for 
 himself. Therefore there was no tempta- 
 tion for an artist to make his pictures con- 
 form to a stricter code or a looser code than 
 
CORREGGIO. 105 
 
 the one which guided his daily life. Cor- 
 reggio chose to paint the sensuous side of 
 the Renaissance ; but it had a purely intel- 
 lectual side which often attracted Raphael, 
 and a fiercely moral side which Michael 
 Angelo shows. Correggio painted as he did 
 simply because his temperament so pre- 
 scribed. 
 
 Nor, on the other hand, was there any- 
 thing in public opinion to bid an artist make 
 his existence more ascetic and "respecta- 
 ble " than the dreams he put on canvas. 
 All men of bold, consistent lives then com- 
 manded admiration Vittorio da Feltre, 
 Federigo of Urbino, Michael Angelo, Ben- 
 venuto Cellini, Leo X., good or bad it does 
 not seem to have mattered much. No one 
 would have blamed Correggio had he de- 
 voted his life to pleasure, sought the sun- 
 shine of court favor, and tried his best to 
 make a place for his pictures on the walls 
 of the Vatican. Why then does there seem 
 such a contrast between his life and his 
 work ? Why are they not alike as they 
 are with a Titian, a Raphael, a Luca, a Fra 
 Angelico, a Diirer, a Van Dyck ? Even 
 Paul Veronese's pictures scarcely show so 
 passionate a love for physical and emotional 
 
106 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 pleasures ; why did lie not live like Vero- 
 nese ? Or, choosing such a life as he led, 
 why did he not paint like Fra Angelico or 
 Claude or Salvator Rosa gentle saints 
 and placid madonnas, or quiet landscapes 
 full of contemplative feeling, or wild ones 
 torn as though with misanthropic passion? 
 
 We may feel pretty sure, however, that 
 when a man's work speaks with so personal 
 a voice as Correggio's it records no paradox. 
 Its witness must be true. If we do not see 
 the truth it is because we misunderstand the 
 man or misread the art. Look a little more 
 closely at Correggio's work and the para- 
 dox it seems to speak of disappears. It is 
 passionately sensuous work, and so is Paul 
 Veronese's. But what a difference between 
 them ! Veronese paints the sensuous con- 
 temporary life of Venice; Correggio, the 
 sensuous, time-unfettered life of an imagi- 
 nary paradise. One got his inspiration from 
 without, the other from within. One paints 
 even his Holy Families in Italian palaces 
 and his Kings of the East from Venetian 
 senators and Arab nobles. The scenes of 
 the other are nowhere but in cloud-land, his 
 figures have no prototypes but in his own im- 
 agination. The same may be said, of course, 
 
CORREGGIO. 107 
 
 of Michael Angelo, of Raphael in his higher 
 moods, and of many other artists of the 
 time. But, Correggio stands alone among 
 the idealists of his day in being so frankly, 
 entirely sensuous. When the pure intel- 
 lect worked, then the painter looked inward 
 for inspiration ; but when the love of phys- 
 ical beauty worked, then, except in Correg- 
 gio's case, he turned his eyes on the world 
 about him, studied local types, current cos- 
 tumes, visible architectural facts, and neigh- 
 boring landscapes ; and, whatever he called 
 his pictures, he made them transcripts of 
 the life of the day. There is nothing of 
 all this in Correggio's work. When he 
 paints the Holy Family, in the famous 
 u Night" at Dresden, he shows us a simple 
 stable ; his costumes are merely draperies ; 
 his accessories are but wreaths of flowers 
 and fruit ; his faces belong to no special 
 land or time. We rarely see their living 
 reflection, but are as apt to see it in America 
 as in the streets of Parma. There was no 
 real reason, therefore, why he should have 
 sought the pleasures of the world. There 
 was every reason, indeed, why he could 
 content himself with a narrow form of ex- 
 istence, and find all the delight he craved 
 
108 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 in solitude or domestic life. Some have be- 
 lieved that he abandoned Parma for his na- 
 tive village because he was heart-broken at 
 the death of his wife. I should be glad to 
 feel sure of this. A passionate love for one 
 woman, beautiful, perhaps, but born amid 
 humble surroundings, would go far to ex- 
 plain both the peculiar joyousness which 
 speaks from his art and that willingness to 
 live in retirement which seems so foreign 
 to the general temper of his time. 
 
 V. 
 
 But the most important fact to remem- 
 ber is that Correggio felt and expressed 
 this temper in a way peculiar to himself. 
 We can reconcile the quiet monotony of 
 his life with the tender sensuousness of his 
 art. But taking the life and the art to- 
 gether, his figure stands out strongly from 
 the background of his period. Yet, I may 
 protest once more, the witness of art is never 
 untrue. Read deeply enough, and we shall 
 see something of the man in his work and 
 something of the time in the man. Cor- 
 reggio's temperament would have been an 
 exceptional one in any age. Idyllic poets 
 of his calibre and quality are never com- 
 
CORREGGIO. 109 
 
 mon ; bat, born as he was and where he 
 was, it is not unnatural that he should have 
 developed as he did. And the very fact that 
 his temperament was exceptional gives his 
 work a peculiar historic value. It shows 
 us a side of the Renaissance that nowhere 
 else is shown so clearly. We cannot 
 really compare him with any one else, but 
 we can contrast him with earlier men who 
 were idyllic poets too. One of them is 
 Luca della Robbia; upon the character of 
 his work I need not insist again. Another 
 is Botticelli, who comes later than Luca, 
 earlier than Correggio. Admirable in its 
 way from the point of view of expression, 
 Botticelli's art is tentative, transitional in 
 spirit. Christian feeling has not wholly 
 disappeared, but it is mixed with the resus- 
 citated sentiment of paganism. Neither 
 the soul nor the body reigns supreme ; 
 neither this life nor the life to come is 
 frankly celebrated ; we are conscious that a 
 battle is waging between the mediaeval and 
 the classic influence, and that the painter 
 loves them both and surrenders himself to 
 neither. But in Correggio's day, Christian- 
 ity as a vital force in art no longer exists ; 
 paganism reigns. Correggio never saw a 
 
110 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 touch of Praxiteles's chisel, yet, he came 
 closer to its spirit than to that which speaks 
 from the tool of any other artist. There is 
 nothing so like a young saint of Correggio's 
 as the " Faun of the Capitol " or the recently 
 discovered " Hermes " at Oly mpia. Of course 
 the similarity is not identity ; in the one 
 case we have a sculptor's ideal, in the other 
 a painter's, and no painter is less sculptur- 
 esque in style than Correggio ; but this 
 very fact makes the distinct analogy in feel- 
 ing all the more remarkable. 
 
 If, now, we compare Correggio's work 
 with that of frankly sensuous artists who 
 belong to later generations, we see that its 
 artistic balance and repose, its purity of 
 taste and tender sincerity, are replaced by 
 qualities of a truly sensual sort. His work 
 is not more different from Luca della Rob- 
 bia's than it is from the impure, attitudiniz- 
 ing, over-blown work of Bernini. And thus 
 he is as typical of the middle bloom of Re- 
 naissance art as is Botticelli of its earlier 
 and Bernini of its later flowering. He ex- 
 presses, from the point of view of an idyllic 
 poet, the full-grown life of Italy when all 
 the influences upon which it fed had been 
 digested, and before the new energy they 
 
CORREGGIO. Ill 
 
 produced had begun to fail. His work is 
 t-he very essence of this life, seen by a 
 poet from its physical not its intellectual 
 side ; and it is especially valuable to stu- 
 dents of history because it gives this sensu- 
 ous side without any support from higher 
 things. We learn from Correggio better 
 than from any one else that the sensuous- 
 ness of the Middle Renaissance, wide and 
 deep though it was, irresponsible and un- 
 moral as it frankly professed itself to be, 
 was yet a very different thing from the sen- 
 suality of an Asian court or of pagan Rome 
 in her decadent days. In such a soil as that 
 no idyllic poet could have sung with a voice 
 like Correggio's. Later, when the soil of 
 Italy had degenerated, Correggio's language 
 was widely copied and used to express 
 thoughts less innocent and sincere than his ; 
 and to this fact may be laid much of the 
 condemnation that has fallen upon his head. 
 It is not difficult, perhaps, to read into a 
 genuine Correggio the spirit of the false 
 Correggios which his imitators painted ; 
 but if we look at the real ones with unprej- 
 udiced eyes, we shall see sensuousness in- 
 deed but no sensuality. 
 
 Only one more question remains to be 
 
112 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 asked : Educated as he was and living as he 
 did, how could Correggio develop a tech- 
 nical manner so scientific, so well balanced, 
 so complete so personal to himself yet so 
 uneccentric? To this question I can give 
 no answer. He accomplished in isolation 
 quite as much as any one accomplished who 
 was helped by the most prolific schools and 
 the noblest rivalry ; and, in certain direc- 
 tions, more than any one else has ever ac- 
 complished. The only solution is to ac- 
 knowledge that he had an exceptional share 
 of the genius which was then a commoner 
 commodity than it seems to-day. 
 
III. 
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE. 
 1757-1827. 
 
 FOR reasons which are inherent in his 
 work William Blake will doubtless never 
 be well known to the general public. But 
 to students and true lovers of art he is no 
 longer pictor ignotus, as, with justice, his 
 biographer called him not very long ago. 
 During the past few years he has often 
 been written about, clearly described, sym- 
 pathetically explained. Indeed, it would 
 seem almost impertinent should I profess to 
 speak about him here in the belief that I 
 had found anything in his work hitherto 
 undiscovered or unrevealed. Gilchrist, in 
 his "Life," 1 gives an all-sufficient account 
 of Blake's person and experiences; and if, 
 as I think, he sometimes overrates Blake's 
 ability, the fact weighs nothing in com- 
 parison with the lucid way in which he in- 
 
 1 Life of William Blake ; with Selections from his Poems 
 and other Writings. By Alexander Gilchrist. 
 
114 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 terprets his work as a whole, entering into 
 its spirit and seizing its essence while see- 
 ing most of its defects and emphasizing 
 most of its limitations. But as the judg- 
 ment of almost all Americans must be 
 founded upon the words and illustrations 
 of this book, I am tempted to recall an ex- 
 hibition held a few years ago at the Boston 
 Museum of Fine Arts, and note in how far 
 its contents seemed to protest against some 
 of Gilchrist's conclusions. 
 
 His pages should be studied, however, by 
 all who desire to understand Blake. There 
 never was a talent more personal than his, 
 and therefore the better one knows the 
 man the clearer becomes the value of his 
 work. Here it must suffice to say that he 
 had little external history except such as 
 lay in a constant struggle against poverty 
 and want of appreciation. He lived a curi- 
 ous, secluded life, working many hours of 
 every day in a cramped little bed-chamber, 
 visited by visions and comforted by a most 
 sympathetic wife. He was scarcely a den- 
 izen of the world at all. He lived in his 
 own dreams and fantasies, and in the effort 
 to express them with pencil and pen. Some 
 thought him a crazy man ; one or two seem 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE. 115 
 
 to Lave believed almost as firmly as himself 
 in the supernatural character of his imagin- 
 ings ; but all recognized a singularly pure 
 and unworldly spirit, and to-day his fame 
 as an artist is secure within a circle which, 
 though narrow, includes some almost idola- 
 trous enthusiasts. 
 
 A large number of the prints and draw- 
 ings in the Boston exhibition had been bor- 
 rowed from the collection of Mrs. Gilchrist, 
 and could therefore be accepted as the most 
 excellent examples which it had been pos- 
 sible to find during a search that lasted 
 over many years. There were also a num- 
 ber of water-colors belonging to Mr. E. W. 
 Hooper of Cambridge, an enthusiastic col- 
 lector of Blakes, and a few contributions 
 from other sources, among them the artist's 
 masterpiece, the " Book of Job," loaned by 
 Mr. Scudder. In the same category with 
 this last, showing Blake's talent as an en- 
 graver of his own designs, was the large 
 plate of Chaucer's " Canterbury Pilgrims." 
 Twelve of the plates for Blair's " Grave " 
 showed how his designs looked when trans- 
 lated by another. The water-colors were, 
 
116 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 to all appearance, sufficient in number and 
 quality to give a fair notion of his work in 
 that direction, and were supplemented by 
 a number of what Blake called " fresco " 
 paintings. Additional books, single printed 
 plates, some with color added by hand, 
 and engravings after the designs of others, 
 were also included, so that the list was 
 practically complete of all the kinds of art 
 which Blake cultivated side by side during 
 his earnest and laborious life. It will be 
 seen that here were data enough from which 
 to judge the artist and the estimates of his 
 biographer. 
 
 The first point upon which one was im- 
 pelled to disagree with Gilchrist was, I 
 think, his eulogy of Blake as a colorist. 
 No doubt the hand-applied color adds a 
 great deal to the design in such plates as 
 those of the " Songs of Innocence ; " with- 
 out it they are but rough and incomplete, 
 though they show, indeed, marks of power 
 and hints of beauty. Of course I do not 
 mean that, uncolored, they are " unfinished " 
 in that popular acceptation of the word 
 which, as every artist knows, is so often 
 used with regard to work that is entirely 
 finished in the best and truest way. I 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE. 117 
 
 mean that they are evidently incomplete 
 to the artist's eye as well as to that of his 
 critic. This may readily be seen in the 
 four or five uncolored plates from the 
 " Songs " which are given in Gilchrist's 
 "Life." But even when completed they 
 do not bear out his estimate of Blake's gift 
 for color. They convince one, rather, that 
 he is being judged by a false standard if 
 judged as a painter in the full sense of the 
 term. Blake was certainly an artist by 
 endowment, and a draughtsman of great 
 force and often of singular skill ; but a 
 painter not at all neither in aim, by cul- 
 tivation, nor, seemingly, by nature. His 
 theories were those of a draughtsman 
 simply. We are told of his enthusiasm for 
 the hard-and-fast line, his contempt for 
 " melting tints " and atmospheric grada- 
 tions, his condemnation utter and fero- 
 cious of the Venetian school and the 
 Flemish, of Sir Joshua's methods, of every- 
 thing and everybody identified with paint- 
 ing properly so named. It may, of course, 
 be argued that a man's theories, however 
 distinctly held and forcibly expressed, are 
 not always in accordance with his practice. 
 We have only to look, however, at the first 
 
118 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 colored cut or " fresco " of Blake's that 
 meets our eye to perceive that his theories 
 were actually emphasized in his practice. 
 In truth, we ought not, most often, even to 
 call his system of color painting. It is 
 usually mere illumination of a peculiar sort 
 sometimes hopelessly puerile, sometimes 
 very effective and attractive, but rarely 
 even simulating true painter's work. His 
 colors, as Gilchrist says, are often beau- 
 tiful in themselves and an immense addi- 
 tion to the clearness of his design. But 
 they are not employed as are a painter's 
 hues. They are meant primarily to give a 
 decorative effect to the page, and do not 
 attempt to translate nature, either real- 
 istically or ideally. In proof we have Gil- 
 christ's own mention of a sheet where a 
 tiger is painted with every color, almost, 
 save tiger-colors, while these appear on a 
 tree in his vicinity. 
 
 The process which Blake called ? fresco " 
 consisted in a curious manner of painting 
 with water -colors on a plastered ground 
 which had been applied to board, canvas, or 
 linen. It more nearly resembled tempera 
 than any other recognized way of working ; 
 and one can readily imagine that whether it 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE. 119 
 
 constituted the whole picture or was super- 
 added to a drawn or printed outline, it did 
 not result in a very satisfactory kind of 
 color the tints as a rule being heavy and 
 opaque without the least hint of brilliancy 
 or depth. It had all the limitations of both 
 oil and water-color, and few of the virtues 
 of either. 
 
 Even apart from the question of color 
 Blake's technical performance is extremely 
 variable : at times he draws like a clever 
 child, at times he draws so that not the 
 greatest master could surpass him. But one 
 should not, in justice, approach his work 
 from the technical side. What one should 
 notice first is its imaginative, creative side. 
 Of all the artists who have ever lived he 
 is the one with whom conception goes for 
 most, technical expression for least. It has 
 often been said that Blake was a poet not a 
 painter, that he strove to realize in graphic 
 art ideas and conceptions suited only to 
 expression in words or even, as some 
 have held, in music. That he had a poet's 
 inspiration no one who reads his verse can 
 doubt. But his handling of words was even 
 less accomplished than his handling of the 
 pencil. He had mastered the art of verse 
 
120 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 less thoroughly than the art of lines and col- 
 ors, for there are instances where he shows 
 perfect control of line at least, but very few, 
 and those of the simplest sort, where he has 
 sufficient control over metrical forms to 
 carry him with success through a single 
 poem. More works of Blake's in the do- 
 main of art are admirably rendered than in 
 the domain of poetry. A few almost per- 
 fect little lyrics may be named, but what is 
 to match the " Job " ? I do not think that 
 the ideas Blake attempted to put on paper 
 were unpictorial. On the contrary, they 
 are remarkable for just that coherence, de- 
 finiteness, and precision which are the es- 
 sential characteristics of things pictorially 
 conceived in contrast to those which are 
 poetically conceived. The things which ap- 
 pealed to his imagination, I confess, were 
 such as a painter rarely loves, a poet often ; 
 and this fact has led superficial critics to 
 declare that he strove to paint unpictorial 
 themes. But it is not the theme itself, it is 
 the way it presents itself to the imagination 
 that renders it fit or unfit for translation by 
 the graphic arts. When Blake's imagina- 
 tion worked with a view to pictorial expres- 
 sion it worked in a truly pictorial manner; 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE. 121 
 
 and if he sometimes failed to translate it 
 through a successful picture, it was simply 
 because his technical resources were insuffi- 
 cient, or because he erred in the way that 
 he applied them. 
 
 This is proved, I think, by even the most 
 superficial study of Blake's imperfectly ex- 
 ecuted works. A non - pictorial idea may 
 have a certain worth or interest, if cleverly 
 expressed. But a non - pictorial idea half 
 expressed in a rude or stumbling way can 
 have no value whatsoever. Both artistic 
 factors being cancelled, the result must 
 surely be null and void. Now, as some of 
 Blake's designs which are almost ludicrously 
 inefficient in treatment are both interesting 
 and impressive, their fundamental concep- 
 tion must be pictorially fine. A great po- 
 tential picture must exist beneath the im- 
 perfect one we see. Take, for example, 
 "Elijah in the Fiery Chariot." Even in 
 the fine woodcut which reproduced it some 
 years ago in " Scribner's Magazine " it 
 seemed, from a technical point of view, very 
 imperfect ; and in the large hand-finished 
 print we saw at Boston the rudeness of its 
 execution was still more clearly seen. The 
 color was extremely conventional without 
 
122 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 possessing any intrinsic charm heavy, 
 crude, and disagreeable ; and even the draw- 
 ing was far from perfect. At first glance one 
 was repelled by the almost childish ineffi- 
 ciency of the treatment ; but after a moment 
 the eye accepted this, penetrated below it, 
 seized the spirit of Blake's conception, saw 
 the supernatural grandeur he had seen, and 
 felt the solemn inspiration that had swayed 
 him. And as with this, so it is with all 
 Blake's compositions. They appeal to us 
 with force and clearness in spite of his im- 
 perfect command over the resources of his 
 craft. Surely it must be because he always 
 had a strong grasp upon his subject, saw it 
 clearly himself, conceived it with exactness. 
 Surely no subject can be thus seen by an ar- 
 tist unless it is pictorial in its essence ; and 
 surely no man can thus see and feel any 
 subject unless he is an artist born. A mere 
 thinker who tries to paint his thoughts 
 could never speak so strongly, even were 
 his forms of speech less stammering than 
 Blake's very often were. 
 
 The same truth is taught by a study of 
 Blake's verse. Its vagueness, formlessness, 
 incoherence, and obscurity prove that he was 
 constantly possessed by visions of the wild- 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE. 123 
 
 est, dimmest, and most fluctuating kind. 
 Yet he used his pencil only to express such 
 things as he conceived in a definite and 
 vivid way. Other things non - pictorial 
 ideas he kept for interpretation by his 
 pen. The strangest inventions of his pro- 
 lific pencil wear the most clear and graphic 
 shapes. There is nothing vague about the 
 " Visionary Heads," for instance. Look at 
 the " Personified Flea " the fantastic im- 
 possibility yet the logical precision of the 
 idea. It is terrible, almost, in its convin- 
 cing reality. Or, if we turn to more impor- 
 tant things, who, we might ask, could imag- 
 ine the exit of a soul from the body and 
 show it to us with clearness, representing 
 both soul and body in seemingly prosaic hu- 
 man shapes, with no cloud of mystery, no 
 atmosphere of the supernatural about them, 
 yet characterizing each with lucidness and 
 power? An Orcagna might do it, or a 
 sculptor of mediaeval France. But I doubt 
 whether any one but a Michael Angelo could 
 have done it quite so well as William Blake. 
 It is natural that a person who reads a cat- 
 alogue of Blake's designs should deem their 
 subjects scarcely suited to interpretation 
 in graphic art. His imagination, as Gil- 
 
124 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 christ says, is different in kind from that of 
 any other great artist who ever lived ; and 
 this difference I cannot better explain than 
 by saying, once more, it is of the kind that 
 poets most often own. But if we look at 
 the drawings themselves instead of their ti- 
 tles we see that his imagination did not mis- 
 take the limits which, for him, marked the 
 confines of art's true realm. It had simply 
 been so much clearer and intenser than that 
 of other painters that he was able to use 
 materials well which would infallibly have 
 led them on to utter shipwreck. His wild- 
 est, most supersensual themes were not, I 
 repeat, imagined as a poet would have 
 dreamed them, but were seen with the lucid 
 vision which meant definite outline, detail, 
 and expression. No one but an artist can 
 see things thus with the mental eye ; and 
 an artist must always see them thus 
 whether they be things in the realm of sense 
 or far above it if he would adequately rep- 
 resent them by means of pictorial art. 
 
 II. 
 
 But the extraordinary impress! ven ess of 
 Blake's conceptions means something more 
 than that he must have seen them very 
 
WILLIAM SLAKE. 125 
 
 clearly in his own mind. He must have felt 
 them intensely, and must passionately have 
 believed in them. From this point of view 
 it is interesting to compare his work with 
 Gustav Dora's where subjects of a similar 
 sort are frequent angels and devils, scenes 
 of mystery and awe, visions of the night and 
 waking dreams, embodiments of the un- 
 known, in a light that never was on sea or 
 land. It would be impossible for the de- 
 signs of any two men to impress us more 
 differently. There is a note of insincerity 
 through all of Dora's work ; it seems the 
 work of a man who had taken an interest, 
 of course, in what he was about, but not a 
 very vital interest, and who had not believed 
 in it for an hour. Blake's illustrations of 
 Dante I do not know save through the tiny 
 fragments given in his " Life." But without 
 knowing them at all we might be sure that 
 he could not have drawn a line to match 
 a word of Dante's which would not make 
 us feel that he had believed, as firmly as the 
 poet himself believed, in the truth of the 
 idea expressed. If he had not thus believed, 
 he simply would not and could not have 
 touched the subject at all. This we know 
 from the record of his life. But we might 
 
126 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 tell it just as surely from the sign-manual of 
 sincerity and intense absorption that rests on 
 every line he drew. Dora's pictures excite 
 our interest, curiosity were perhaps the 
 better word, and show an inexhaustible 
 fancy. But they never rise to the heights 
 where Dante dwells. They terrify or sicken 
 our sense, perhaps; they never stir our 
 imagination or move our heart as truly im- 
 aginative work must do as Blake's work 
 does in the hastiest and simplest and sketch- 
 iest examples. Had Blake illustrated Dante 
 with the fulness that Dore essayed, each of 
 his designs would have been as distinct and 
 firm, as coherent and expressive, as the 
 poet's verse, because he would have believed 
 in the poet's visions as entirely and seen 
 them as distinctly as the poet did himself. 
 But Dore is clear and exact only when he 
 has scenes to depict which can be composed 
 with common human factors scenes of 
 grotesque torture or mere physical transfor- 
 mation, wherein small appeal is made to the 
 higher fancy ; and this is true, we feel, be- 
 cause these were the only scenes he even at- 
 tempted to believe in. Even here he fails in 
 the one point where true imaginative power 
 was still required. In facial expression his 
 
WILLIAM SLAKE. 127 
 
 figures are always disappointing. They are 
 not tragic or pathetic, however agonized they 
 may be. They do not move us with " pity 
 and terror" no matter how much we may 
 shrink from the horror of their fate. They 
 affect the nerves alone without stirring the 
 emotions. In the whole of Dore's " Infer- 
 no" and "Purgatorio" there is not as much 
 tragic power as in Blake's one little print 
 called " The Death of the Strong Wicked 
 Man." 
 
 When we turn from tragedies to visions 
 of beauty and wonder the difference is 
 wider still. In Dora's views of heaven 
 there is a wonderful sense of space and 
 multitude. I know of no art whatsoever 
 in which these two things are so well ex- 
 pressed. But they are not the most im- 
 portant things, and the very fact that Dore* 
 realized them takes all value from his in- 
 dividual figures they are lost in the 
 vagueness which expresses their multitude 
 so well. Dore*'s innumerable companies of 
 angels are mere winged things things 
 which fill all space, it is true, but in them- 
 selves are nothing. There is not one among 
 them all that expresses adoration, purity, 
 strength, intelligence, or even beauty. There 
 
128 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 is not one which expresses any attribute of 
 angelhood as all such attributes are ex- 
 pressed by many of Blake's figures even in 
 his frames and borders. 
 
 Even here, where they are not an inch in 
 length and are made with two or three tiny 
 touches of the point, Blake's angels are as 
 definite, individual, and angelic to our eyes 
 as they must have been to the inner eye of 
 the man who could draw them thus. What 
 shall we say, then, of those in the four- 
 teenth plate of the " Job " of those mag- 
 nificent " Sons of God " who " shouted for 
 joy " ? What, except that they are surely 
 the most perfect, tremendous, and dramatic 
 types of angelhood that art has ever given 
 to the world wrapped in no penumbra 
 of vague mystery like Dora's, but as accu- 
 rately and distinctly shown as though they 
 had stood in Blake's little chamber while 
 he drew. 
 
 In beauty, which is another indispensable 
 element in imaginative design, Blake sur- 
 passes Dore* just as much as in verity and 
 decision. There is not a beautiful face in 
 all Dore's work, and not a beautiful line of 
 any sort except in the most formal arrange- 
 ments. With Blake beauty is the rule. 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE. 129 
 
 When he has a happy theme as when he 
 portrays the daughters of Job on the last 
 plate of the series nothing could exceed 
 the beauty of his result in line and type ; 
 and even when he pursues effects of 
 tragedy and terror his instinct keeps him 
 well within the bounds of grace. I have 
 already compared his imagination to that of 
 the Gothic sculptor with whom he had, 
 indeed, very much in common. But in this 
 matter of beauty a sharp line divides them. 
 In vividness and strength of conception 
 Blake was the Gothic sculptor's peer. In 
 artistic symmetry of concrete invention he 
 was immeasurably ahead. 
 
 III. 
 
 In referring to the " Book of Job " I 
 have touched upon the most perfect pro- 
 duct of Blake's long and busy life. The 
 designs for Blair's " Grave " are wonder- 
 fully fine, and the way in which Schiavo- 
 netti etched them has charm if not great 
 strength to recommend it. But in the 
 " Job " Blake wisely was his own engraver. 
 He chose a technical method in which he 
 was especially competent, carried it through 
 with wonderful success, and rendered his 
 
130 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 thoughts as no other man could have done. 
 Any one plate taken alone seems a master- 
 piece, and the whole series together so 
 well-sustained, so equal in merit, so level, I 
 had almost said, with the work of the poet it 
 interprets is one of the finest, completest 
 products of imaginative art that the world 
 has seen. Whatever may be Blake's tech- 
 nical shortcomings elsewhere, this "Book 
 of Job " is absolutely perfect. Everything 
 is done in pure line with a sharpness, defi- 
 niteness, and vigor of touch that are mar- 
 vellous to behold. The use of line to ex- 
 press variety and depth of chiaroscuro, and 
 such intangible things as flame and vapor 
 and whirling winds, is audacious past all 
 precedent, yet its own complete excuse ; for 
 if there are one or two lapses from con- 
 ventionally correct drawing, we feel that 
 they have been deliberately made for the 
 purpose of emphasizing the dominant idea. 
 The imaginative power which has incar- 
 nated the Chaldaean's tremendous words 
 shows almost equally in every plate of the 
 series ; and the bold naivete of the means 
 employed in its expression recalls the early 
 days of some great school. There seems no 
 sign of an artist who was heir to all the 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE. 131 
 
 ages and whose mind was impregnated with 
 the manners and the mannerisms of a dozen 
 generations. 
 
 It is difficult, indeed, to realize that Blake 
 lived when and where he did. It is difficult 
 to realize that England, whose painters 
 have been poorer, perhaps, in deep imagina- 
 tive power than those of any other land, 
 can claim him for her son ; that his birth 
 should have fallen in the later eighteenth 
 century ; that Stothard, with his graceful 
 shallowness, should have been the most 
 popular of his brethren, and Flaxman the 
 greatest artist of the day ; difficult indeed, 
 for there is nothing in modern art to com- 
 pare, for original, daring, unreflective en- 
 ergy, with the gesture of the Almighty 
 where he says, " Behold now Behemoth 
 which I made," nothing to equal the 
 rhythmic grace of composition in the group 
 of Job amid his daughters, and nothing to 
 exceed the beauty of the principal figure 
 in " I am young and ye are old." And I 
 think there is no representation of the 
 Omnipotent in any art whatsoever which 
 matches in definiteness joined to super- 
 natural grandeur that vision of Job where 
 he is saying " Then a spirit passed before 
 
132 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 my face." It is almost insulting even to 
 contrast a man who could thus feel and 
 speak with a journeyman of art like Dore* ; 
 but if I do so it is merely to emphasize 
 Blake's peculiar kind of power by setting 
 him against, not those who have been near- 
 est him in ability but the most popular and 
 best-known of those who have worked with 
 subjects similar to his. 
 
 I should add, perhaps, that the most re- 
 markable trait in all Blake's art is its entire 
 originality. Of course this has already 
 been implied ; but it shows no more in his 
 compositions as such and in the ideas that 
 they express than in the human types he 
 uses. Beautiful as are his figures, they 
 have no flavor of the beauty we can find in 
 any of the schools of earlier days. There 
 is no plagiarism, conscious or unconscious, 
 in his art, and no eclecticism. If any art 
 has ever been the characteristic, uninflu- 
 enced outcome of the artist's self, it is 
 surely William Blake's. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The most interesting question that a 
 study of Blake suggests is the old, old ques- 
 tion of the relative importance in graphic 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE. 133 
 
 art of matter and manner imagination 
 and execution conception and rendering. 
 After reading any sympathetic estimate of 
 Blake it may seem as though imagination 
 were the one important thing. Here is a 
 man who could not paint at all in the true 
 sense of the word and never even attempted 
 it except on the simplest scale. Some of the 
 results we count his best are ugly in color, 
 rude in execution, and even incorrect in 
 line; and his masterpiece is contained on 
 some twenty sheets a few inches square, 
 done in line, and printed in black-and-white. 
 Yet when we speak of the essence of his 
 art and the way it moves us, we quote 
 Michael Angelo's name as the only term of 
 illustration. With such a record as this, 
 what need of technical accomplishment to 
 climb among the high ones of the earth ? 
 Is it not a record that upsets all those 
 theories which preach of technical accom- 
 plishment as the first and main thing 
 needed for the making of great art ? 
 
 Yet if we think a moment the conclusion 
 to which we must come will be just the 
 reverse of this. The study of Blake must 
 prove and prove more forcibly than the 
 study of any other artist good or bad that 
 
134 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 technique, after all, is very nearly the one 
 thing needful, the one thing without which 
 the highest mental gifts are of small profit 
 to the world, small glory to art, small use 
 to other artists. Our first thought, when 
 we see such a work as the " Job " or such 
 single plates as " Death's Door " or the 
 " Glad New Day," is a thought of gratitude 
 that an artist with so great a mind, so 
 strong a gift for pictorial speech, was born. 
 But more and more as we get to know him, 
 to appreciate his marvellous depth of mean- 
 ing, power of insight, and control of beauty, 
 more and more the thought assails us : 
 What if this great imaginative artist had 
 been a great painter too? And forever 
 after the regret consumes us that he was 
 not given the brush of a Velasquez or a 
 Tintoretto, nay, of a Giulio Romano, even, 
 or a later Bolognese. Even a partially com- 
 plete training in the use of the brush, even 
 a skill such as those display who stand as 
 third-rate painters, would have made Blake 
 widely famous for all time ; while if he had 
 possessed the noblest kind of executive skill 
 it is difficult to say how high he would be 
 placed. It is impossible, to be sure, that 
 any of the names we now rank as first and 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE. 135 
 
 greatest would then have outranked his 
 own. I have said that there is nothing 
 extant in art which for power and fitness 
 of conception surpasses the " Job." I have 
 also said that its execution is excellent in 
 its way. But consider a moment what the 
 world would own had it been executed in 
 another way. " Such designs," writes Gil- 
 christ of the pictures for Blair's " Grave/' 
 " are in motive, spirit, and manner of em- 
 bodiment without parallel, and enlarge the 
 boundaries of art. Such art ranks with 
 that of the greatest eras, is of the same 
 sublime reach and pure quality. What 
 signifies it that these drawings cover but a 
 few inches and are executed in water-colors 
 instead of oils or frescoes ? " The praise is 
 not a whit too strong, but surely that sig- 
 nifies much which the biographer asserts 
 can signify not at all. The designs are 
 great and wonderful as we have them, but 
 let us fancy them differently displayed. 
 Let us imagine " Death's Door," or the 
 wonderfully beautiful " Meeting of a Family 
 in Heaven," spread before us in great fres- 
 coes on a sanctuary wall, or the finest of all 
 the " Job " designs, " The Sons of God 
 shouted for Joy." We can easily thus 
 
136 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 imagine them without a change in line or 
 feature, and no fact could more strongly 
 prove their unsurpassable rightness as pic- 
 torial compositions. The " Sons of God " 
 is an absolutely perfect composition in the 
 grandest of all " grand styles." Raphael 
 himself could not improve it in beauty, nor 
 Michael Angelo in expression. Imagine it 
 painted with a Raphael's perfection or with 
 the perfection of some one who in color was 
 still greater than a Raphael. Shall we say 
 with Gilchrist that it matters not how Blake 
 has bequeathed it to us ? 
 
 Having once become possessed by this 
 idea it is difficult to look at the " Job " or 
 at any of Blake's best works and believe 
 that we are seeing the true originals. We 
 have the same sensation we get when 
 studying small prints which are known to 
 be from larger colored originals. We are 
 convinced that we see but a hint of the 
 actual first work ; we are eagerly dissatis- 
 fied that we cannot see what the artist must 
 have wrought vast frescoes, cool, clear, 
 stately, and splendid, or great canvases, 
 deep, rich, and glowing, with all the gran- 
 deur of tremendous lines and all the force 
 of intensest color. Look once more at the 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE. 137 
 
 " Sons of God." The arrangement is on 
 so grand a scale, is, indeed, so architectural, 
 that it seems ludicrous to say it was origi- 
 nally intended for just this little square of 
 paper; and in some of the other designs 
 the chiaroscuro is so sublime that we deny 
 it could have been thus rendered first of all 
 in tiny rigid lines of black-and-white ; 
 we declare these must be merely an en- 
 graver's clever transcript from some com- 
 prehensive and successful coloristic scheme. 
 Put Blake's prints beside a set from the 
 Sistine ceiling. Imagine these last to be 
 their own originals; think whether the 
 world would be no loser if they were ; and 
 then say whether it does not " signify " 
 that Blake was merely an artist of magnifi- 
 cent thought and not likewise a magnifi- 
 cently skilful painter. It signifies just in 
 so far that instead of ranking as he should 
 with Michael Angelo and Signorelli, with 
 Orcagna and Tintoretto, instead of being 
 one of the great glories of the whole world, 
 he is the beloved of a few connoisseurs, the 
 delight of a few students who are willing 
 to go into the byways of art for treasure 
 a king among artists but a king without a 
 throne, defrauded forever of his birthright 
 
138 
 
 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 of influence and fame. It is of no avail to 
 preach about Blake and praise him and call 
 the world blind and stupid because it sees 
 him not. He could have swayed it at his 
 will had he possessed the language of his 
 art. Not possessing it he can only speak, 
 now or ever, to those who so thoroughly un- 
 derstand the artistic tongue, and so keenly 
 love its every syllable, that they will bend 
 their ear to his still small voice, and gather 
 from its often stammering accents the 
 mighty meanings he intends. 
 
 JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE COKOT. 
 
IV. 
 
 COEOT. 
 
 1796-1875. 
 
 WHAT do we understand by the interest 
 that attaches to an artist's work ? First, I 
 think, the interest that may lie in any one 
 of his creations separately judged in its 
 peculiarities as a piece of beauty, as an in- 
 terpretation of some aspect of nature or 
 mood of the mind. Then, the larger inter- 
 est we find when his work is considered as 
 a whole and its revelation of his gifts and 
 methods is thoroughly understood. And 
 finally the interest of the work and the man 
 together as factors in the history of art as 
 proofs of the development of antecedent 
 tendencies, or types of the general temper of 
 art in their time, or prophets or leaders of 
 the future course of things. 
 
 Sometimes an artist who is not very im- 
 portant in himself is extremely important 
 from the historical point of view; but when 
 
140 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 one who has produced very fine and indi- 
 vidual work has likewise been a potent in- 
 fluence in art at large then, indeed, his 
 claim upon us is insistent. This is the 
 case with Corot. He was one of the great- 
 est landscape painters who has ever lived, 
 and one of the most influential leaders and 
 teachers that our century has seen. 
 
 Jean Baptiste Camille Corot was born in 
 Paris in the year 1796. His father, a na- 
 tive of Rouen, had been a hair-dresser, but, 
 marrying a milliner, transferred his talents 
 to her service, and, in their little shop on 
 the Rue du Bac, gradually amassed a snug 
 bit of a fortune. An artist in his way was 
 this elder Corot, and not deprived of such 
 fame as the Muse of Fashion can bestow 
 advertised in a popular comedy which held 
 the stage of the Franpais for years. "I 
 have just come from Corot's," cries one of 
 the actors, "but I could not see him. He 
 had retired to his cabinet to compose a Ion- 
 net a la Sicilienne" 
 
 Meanwhile Camille was at school in 
 Rouen, where he remained seven years and 
 gained the whole of his education. From 
 
COROT. 141 
 
 school be went to a cloth-merchant's shop 
 in the Rue de Richelieu, and here eight 
 years were passed. Then his love for art 
 broke through the uncongenial tie. While 
 at Rouen his holidays had been spent with 
 an old friend of his father's in long walks be- 
 side the borders of the Seine ; and later the 
 unwilling " dry goods clerk " found solace 
 in summer days at Ville d'Avray where his 
 people had a little country home. A love 
 for nature was thus gradually fostered in a 
 soul which by birth was peculiarly recep- 
 tive ; and we read of long night-watches at 
 his bedroom window filled with vague poetic 
 musings, visions of nymphs, and aspirations 
 towards some more congenial tool than the 
 yard-stick. Indeed, the brush was soon the 
 yard-stick's rival. An easel was set up in 
 the humble bedroom ; a sketch-book was 
 always in hand out - of - doors ; and litho- 
 graphic stones and sheets of scribbled paper 
 strewed the merchant's counter, underneath 
 which they retired with Corot during the 
 pause between one customer and the next. 
 
 A casual acquaintance with the young 
 painter Michallon brought about the crisis 
 long deferred by Camille's sweet and docile 
 temper. The tale is the old one of loud 
 
142 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 parental opposition, but it is not followed 
 by the usual sequel of lasting bitterness. 
 When once convinced that there was noth- 
 ing else to do, Corot pere made a rather 
 sharp bargain with his son, but stuck to it 
 ever after in good faith if for many years 
 with no slightest mitigation of its sharpness. 
 " Your sisters' dowries have been promptly 
 paid, and I meant soon to set you at the 
 head of a respectable shop. But if you in- 
 sist upon painting you will have no capital 
 to dispose of as long as I live. I will make 
 you a pension of fifteen hundred francs. 
 Don't count upon ever having more, but see 
 whether you can pull yourself through with 
 that." And Camille, u much moved," fell 
 upon the neck of the artist in Sicilian caps : 
 " A thousand thanks ! It is all I need, and 
 you make me very happy." He too kept 
 his word. For thirty years he lived on his 
 three hundred annual dollars, pulled himself 
 very well through, and was one of the hap- 
 piest mortals in Paris. 
 
 The first day he was free he took easel 
 and brush and set himself down before the 
 first thing he saw, a view of the Cite from 
 a spot near the Pont Royal. " The girls 
 from my father's shop," he said in later life, 
 
COROT. 143 
 
 " used to run down to the quai to see how 
 Monsieur Camille was getting on. There 
 was a Mademoiselle Rose, for instance, who 
 came most often. She is still alive, and is 
 still Miss Rose, and still comes to see me 
 now and then. Last week she was here, and 
 oh, my friends, what a change and what re- 
 flections it gave birth to ! My picture has 
 not budged. It is as young as ever, and 
 keeps still the hour and the weather when 
 it was done. But Mademoiselle Rose? 
 But I? What are we?" 
 
 Michallon taught Corot at first and gave 
 him counsel good for a youngster : To put 
 himself face to face with nature, to try to 
 render it exactly, to paint what he saw, 
 and translate the impression he received. 
 But soon he died, and Corot, seeking help 
 elsewhere, chose Victor Bertin, who had 
 been Michallon's own master. Bertin was 
 a landscape painter of the classic school, 
 worshipping Poussin's mastery of form, but 
 in his own execution cold, measured, me- 
 chanical, and hard. He might have taught 
 Corot more and hurt him more had he not 
 been forestalled by the long apprenticeship 
 to nature and an inborn gift. As it was, he 
 taught him two things of priceless value, 
 
144 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 accurate drawing and a sense for " style " in 
 composition. 
 
 In 1825 Corot went to Rome, where most 
 of his fellow-artists laughed at his work, but 
 where all of them loved the worker, gay in 
 spirit as he was, with a good voice for a 
 song, and a modest, patient ear for the 
 spoken words of others. Encouragement 
 first came from Aligny who, surprising him 
 at work on a study of the Colosseum, de- 
 clared that it had qualities of the first 
 value : exactness, skilful treatment, and an 
 air of style. Corot smiled as at the chaffing 
 of a friend ; but the friend was an authority 
 in the artist circle at the Cafe Grec, and, 
 repeating there what he had said in private, 
 protesting that Corot might some day be 
 the master of them all, the bashful mer- 
 chant's clerk soon found that his art was re- 
 spected and his future believed in. Fifty 
 years later, when Aligny's body was brought 
 from Lyons to be re-interred in Paris, Corot 
 was one of the very few who followed it ; a 
 "sacred duty," as he said, the duty of 
 gratitude to his first champion, bringing 
 him forth in his white hairs under the swirl- 
 ing snow of a bitter winter dawn. 
 
 Naples as well as Rome was visited at 
 
COROT. 145 
 
 this time, and perhaps Venice too. In 1827 
 Corot returned to France and sent his first 
 picture to the Salon exhibition ; and there- 
 after, until his death in 1875, he was never 
 once absent from its walls. In 1834 he 
 went again to Italy, but got no further than 
 Venice, coming promptly home when his 
 father wrote how much he missed him. In 
 1842 it was Italy again for some five or six 
 months. In 1847 his father died. During 
 all his later years Corot travelled much in 
 Switzerland and various parts of France, 
 and once he went to England and the Neth- 
 erlands. In 1874 the widowed sister died 
 with whom he had lived for many years, 
 and his own health broke down. And on 
 the 23d of February, 1875, his spirit passed 
 away. 
 
 This is not much to tell of a life which 
 lasted seventy-nine years, but it is all there 
 is to be said about Corot's, except as it was 
 bound up with his art. He never married, 
 for, he said, he had a wife already a little 
 fairy called Imagination, who came at his 
 call and vanished when he did not need her. 
 He lived chiefly at Ville d'Avray with al- 
 ways a pied-a-terre, and studio in Paris, and 
 mixed in no society but that of his brother- 
 artists. 
 
146 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 H. 
 
 In 1833 Corot got a minor medal for one 
 of his exhibited pictures; but almost the 
 first mention of his name that can be traced 
 in print is where Alfred de Musset, writing 
 of the Salon of 1836 in the " Revue des Deux 
 Mondes," speaks of " Corot, whose ' Roman 
 Campagna ' has its admirers." The next 
 year Gustav Planche praised a u St. Jerome " 
 which now hangs (the gift of Corot) in the 
 little church at Ville d'Avray. In 1846 he 
 was decorated for a " Scene in the Forest of 
 Fontainebleau." In 1855 he received a 
 first-class medal, and in 1867, oddly enough, 
 one of the second class, but accompanied 
 by the higher decoration of the Legion of 
 Honor ; and year by year artists and critics 
 were louder in his praise. But the public 
 was long in learning the fact that he even 
 existed, and his father was quite as long in 
 believing that his art was really art. When 
 the first decoration came, "Tell me," he 
 said to one of Corot's comrades, " has Ca- 
 mille actually any talent ? " Nothing 
 would convince him that he was " the best 
 of us all ; " nevertheless he doubled his 
 pension. 
 
COROT. 147 
 
 Fifty years old when he thus achieved an 
 income of six hundred dollars, Corot was 
 sixty before any one bought his pictures, 
 save now and then a brother-artist. When 
 the first customer departed with his pur- 
 chase, "Alas!" he cried in humorous de- 
 spair, " my collection has been so long com- 
 plete, and now it is broken ! " And when 
 others followed he could hardly believe 
 them serious, or be induced to set prices on 
 his work. " It is worth such and such a 
 sum, but no one will give that, and I will 
 not sell it for less. I can give my things 
 away if I see fit, but I cannot degrade my 
 art by selling them below their value." 
 When he actually dared to price one at ten 
 thousand francs, and heard it had been sold, 
 he was sure he had dropped a zero in mark- 
 ing the figures, and wrote to the Salon sec- 
 retary repeating the sum in written-out 
 words. When a sale of his works was held 
 at the Hotel Drouot in 1858 he accused his 
 friends of friendly cheating because it 
 brought him $2,846 ; yet there were thirty- 
 eight pictures, and among them five of great 
 importance. 
 
 Fortunately, Corot lived long enough to 
 see the prices he thought no one would pay 
 
148 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 increased twenty - fold at public sales. A 
 picture he had sold for 700 francs went 
 many years later in the auction-room for 
 12,000, and Corot "swam in happiness," 
 for, he felt, " it is not I that have changed, 
 but the constancy of my principles that has 
 triumphed." Never, indeed, did artist pur- 
 sue his own path with a steadier disregard 
 of public praise ; and rarely has an artist 
 so persistently neglected lived to enjoy his 
 fame so long. It is a record to set against 
 Millet's for the reviving of faith in the jus- 
 tice of Heaven. 
 
 Yet even had Corot died at seventy-nine 
 without seeing a ray of the coming aureole, 
 we can fancy no despairing exit. Material 
 cares never weighed upon him in his bach- 
 elorhood, and he had the merry heart that 
 gangs all the way with less discomfort than 
 a sombre spirit finds in the first mile or two. 
 The fact of living and the act of painting 
 were almost enough, for him, and the appre- 
 ciation of a few brother-artists filled his cup. 
 We read of seasons of brief discouragement, 
 and there were tears in his eyes sometimes 
 when he came home from a Salon where 
 his pictures were obscurely placed and he 
 had overheard a scoffing phrase. But a look 
 
COROT. 149 
 
 at his easel soon brought comfort, and the 
 darling children of his hand were there in a 
 " complete collection " to assure him that 
 he had not lived in vain. " It must be con- 
 fessed," he once exclaimed, u that if paint- 
 ing is a folly it is a sweet one one that 
 should excite envy, not forgiveness. Study 
 ray looks and my health, and I defy any 
 one to find a trace of those cares, ambitions, 
 and remorseful thoughts which ravage the 
 features of so many unfortunate folk. 
 Ought one riot to love the art which pro- 
 cures peace and contentment, and even 
 health, to him who knows how to regulate 
 his life ? " But just here was Corot's talis- 
 man shared, alas, with how few ! He knew 
 how to regulate his life, and knew that it 
 meant to live for his painting and to paint 
 for himself. 
 
 In his young days he was the liveliest 
 among the lively. Tall of stature and her- 
 culean in build, possessed of perfect health, 
 high spirits, and a gentle temper, student 
 balls and studio suppers were his delight, 
 and he was the delight of their frequenters. 
 Yet wherever he was he never failed to dis- 
 appear for a while at nine o'clock, when la 
 belle dame, as he called his mother, awaited 
 
150 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 him for a hand at cards. In his old age 
 he was " Papa Corot " to the whole artist 
 world of Paris no one more respected, 
 more beloved and cherished ; no one so 
 ready with a helping hand full of money, a 
 helping tongue full of cheer, and wise advice. 
 Of book-learning he had little, and his 
 interest in the world outside his art was 
 never very great. He often bought books 
 from the stalls along the quais, but merely 
 for the sake of their shape and color. He 
 had an odd superstition that he ought to 
 read " Polyeucte " through, and began it 
 perhaps a score of times ; but he never got 
 to the end, and we find no record of at- 
 tempts with other works. Music, however, 
 he loved with passion and rare intelligence, 
 and nature he adored, understood, and ex- 
 plained with singular felicity of speech. In 
 his walks abroad he wore a long black coat 
 and a high satin stock ; in his studio, a 
 blouse, a gay striped cotton night-cap, and 
 invariably a long clay pipe ; and with his 
 shock of white hair and smooth-shaven face 
 where the very wrinkles did but define a 
 smile around the vigorous mouth we can 
 well believe that he looked at first sight less 
 like a poetical painter than a roi $ Yvetot or 
 
COROT. 151 
 
 a jolly Norman carter. We smile back with 
 pleasure even at his printed portrait, and 
 wish ourselves among the students of Paris 
 as they clustered, charmed, about the clever, 
 wise, benevolent, and brave old man. 
 
 There seems to have been no serious 
 cloud upon his life until the fatal year 
 when France was slaughtered. Then he 
 said he should have gone mad had he not 
 had the refuge of his easel. It was not 
 only wrong but stupid bete I must write, 
 the French word means so much more to 
 kill people and destroy the face of nature 
 and the works of man. " Compare the 
 savage hate of war with art, which at the 
 bottom means simply love ! " Yet with 
 the instinct of a patriot he came back to 
 Paris when the siege seemed certain, and 
 gave with a very generous hand not only 
 to relieve the sick but " to drive the Prus- 
 sians out of the woods of Ville d'Avray." 
 His brush and his summer memories filled 
 part of his time, and the rest was spent 
 among the poor and suffering. During the 
 whole siege he ministered and worked, and 
 some of his loveliest pictures date from 
 these dreary weeks. 
 
 When they were shown in 1874 he nar- 
 
152 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 rowly missed, for the second time, the 
 grand medal of honor. But a better re- 
 ward came to him in a letter from a group 
 of artists saying that after all "the great- 
 est honor is to be called Corot." And soon 
 after the same impulse found still more 
 emphatic expression. A gold medal was 
 subscribed for by a long list of artists and 
 amateurs and presented to the venerable 
 master. The state never had a chance to 
 retrieve its error. This was the year when 
 Corot's sister died, and when her death 
 proved the beginning of his own. The day 
 when the medal was given him at a big 
 banquet in the Grand Hotel, when he read 
 its inscription, "To Corot, his brethren and 
 admirers," and could only whisper through 
 deep emotion, " It makes one very happy to 
 be loved like this " (loved, let me emphasize 
 the characteristic word) this was the last 
 day he was seen in public, and even then 
 he was nervous, ill, and feeble. 
 
 Dropsy was the final stage of his disease 
 and he foresaw the fatal end. " I am almost 
 resigned," he said to his pupil FranQais, 
 watching by his bed, " but it is not easy, 
 and I have been a long time getting to the 
 point. Yet I have no reason to complain 
 
COROT. 153 
 
 of my fate far otherwise. I have had 
 good health for seventy - eight years, and 
 have been able to do nothing but paint for 
 fifty. My family were honest folk. I have 
 had good friends, and think I never did 
 harm to any one. My lot in life has been 
 excellent. Far from reproaching fate I can 
 only be grateful. I must go I know it; 
 but don't want to believe it. In spite of 
 myself there is a little bit of hope left in 
 me." The next day he asked for a priest, 
 saying his father had done so, and he wished 
 to die like his father. But his last thought 
 was for his art. His feeble fingers believed 
 they held a brush, and he exclaimed, " See 
 how beautiful it is ! I have never seen sucli 
 beautiful landscapes." And then he died. 
 
 At his funeral the great church was more 
 than full, and the crowd spread through the 
 streets outside. Faure sang his requiem to 
 an air Corot had himself selected the 
 slow movement from Beethoven's seventh 
 symphony. And by the open grave M. de 
 Chennevieres, Director of the Beaux Arts, 
 spoke about him in touching words: "All 
 the youth of Paris loved him, for he loved 
 youth, and his talent was youth eternally 
 new. . . . And in his immortal works he 
 
154 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 praised God in His skies and birds and 
 trees." 
 
 As the last phrase was spoken, we are 
 told, a linnet perched on a branch near by 
 and burst into a gush of song ; and when 
 in 1880 a monument to the beloved great 
 painter who talked so often of "mesfeuilles 
 et mes petits oiseaux" was set up by his 
 brethren on the border of the little lake at 
 Ville d'Avray, the sculptor carved upon it 
 the branch and the singing bird. 
 
 III. 
 
 Every one knows that Corot was a land- 
 scape painter with an especial love for the 
 neighborhoods of Ville d'Avray and for ef- 
 fects of springtime foliage and early morn- 
 ing or evening light. But it is a great mis- 
 take to think of him as confined to such 
 effects or even as narrowly devoted to land- 
 scape painting. He painted all hours of 
 the day, and now and then moonlight too ; 
 and all seasons of the year save those when 
 snow lies on the ground. Figures enliven 
 nearly all his landscapes. Sometimes they 
 are peasants laboring in wood or field ; 
 more often classic nymphs or dancers in 
 surroundings that reveal his memories of 
 
COROT. 155 
 
 southern scenes ; ^nd occasionally the char- 
 acters of some antique fable. Twice, for 
 instance, Corot painted Orpheus, and once 
 Silenus, Diana at the bath, Homer with a 
 group of shepherds, Democritus, Daphne 
 and Chloe, Biblis, and Virgil serving as a 
 guide to Dante. Sacred history likewise 
 attracted him. Nothing he produced is 
 more remarkable than the " St. Sebastian " 
 now in Baltimore ; and he often drew upon 
 the life of Christ and the stories of the Old 
 Testament. He also painted flowers, and 
 still-life subjects and interiors ; many streets 
 and distant city views ; animals ; large 
 draped figures and studies of the nude, and 
 no less than forty portraits. Mural decora- 
 tion he essayed whenever he got the chance 
 which was by no means so often as he 
 wished. In his later years he etched some 
 delightfully characteristic plates ; and who- 
 ever glanced through his sketch-book or his 
 letters saw that nothing which had met his 
 eye had appealed to his hand in vain. 
 
 But the grossest misconception with re- 
 gard to Corot is not the one which ignores 
 his width of range. It is a much more 
 serious mistake to believe that because he 
 "idealized" Nature he did not represent her 
 
156 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 faithfully, because he suppressed details he 
 did not see or could not render them, be- 
 cause his maturer work looks " very free " 
 he had not studied conscientiously. Noth- 
 ing so afflicts a real student of Corot as to 
 hear him called an exponent of superficial- 
 ity or " dash." 
 
 If ever a man worked hard at his art it 
 was Corot. The number of his preparatory 
 studies was immense, and they were made 
 in his latest as well as his earliest years. 
 "Conscience" was his watchword, the nick- 
 name his scholars gave him, the one re- 
 cipe he gave them when they asked him 
 how to learn to paint. The first things to 
 produce, he said, were " studies in submis- 
 sion ; " later came the time for studies in 
 picture-making. He did not approve of 
 academies and schools, and deemed it 
 enough to study the old masters with the 
 eye, without much attempt at actual copy- 
 ing. He thought the great school of Nature 
 might suffice to form soul and sight and 
 hand ; but this school one should never de- 
 sert and could not frequent too diligently. 
 It is true, as a friend once said, that what 
 Corot wanted to paint was " not so much 
 Nature as his love for her." But to love 
 
COROT. 157 
 
 her meant to peruse her with patient care, 
 to know her well and fully; and to paint 
 his love meant not to alter her charm but 
 to bring into clear relief those elements 
 therein which most appealed to him. In- 
 dividuality in art no man prized more 
 highly; but he defined it as "the indi- 
 vidual expression of a truth," and said 
 that to develop it one must work " with an 
 ardor that knows no concessions." His 
 whole life was given up to work, and his 
 whole work was an effort to see Nature 
 with more and more distinctness, and to 
 render her with more and more fidelity. 
 A gray-haired man, a master among his 
 fellows, a poet before the world, he was to 
 the end a child at the Great Mother's 
 knee ; and to the end a conscientious, often 
 a despairing, aspirant when he had a brush 
 in hand. 
 
 No one can doubt Corot's accurate vision 
 and patient labor who has seen his earlier 
 pictures. Certain of his noblest qualities 
 appear in them all his care for harmony 
 in composition and for dignity and grace of 
 line, his belief that the whole is of more im- 
 portance than any one part, and his desire 
 to speak from a personal point of view. But 
 
158 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 there is none of the breadth, freedom, syn- 
 thesis, which characterize his later works. 
 Conscientiousness is apparent as well as real ; 
 details are carefully expressed, and the touch 
 is dry, slow, and not a little heavy. Even 
 the splendid " Forest of Fontainebleau," 
 which was painted in 1846 and won the 
 cross of the Legion of Honor, might not be 
 recognized as a Corot by superficial students 
 of those later pictures with which in this 
 country we are more familiar. But a wiser 
 critic would feel sure that an " early Corot " 
 must be pretty much what we find it : he 
 would know that truth cannot be based on 
 ignorance, and that knowledge cannot be 
 acquired except through patient labor. 
 
 Corot's aim was always to simplify ex- 
 pression, to disengage the thing he wished 
 to say the main idea and meaning, the 
 picture he had in mind from the thou- 
 sand minor pictures and ideas that had been 
 wound up with it in Nature. As he lived 
 and labored his power to do this increased. 
 When he retouched an early canvas he 
 never added anything ; improvement always 
 meant suppression some broadening, sim- 
 plifying touch. But the fact is a proof of 
 growing knowledge, not of waning interest 
 
CO ROT. 159 
 
 in truth. What he wanted to repeat were 
 not Nature's statistics, but their sum total ; 
 not her minutiae, but the result she had 
 wrought with them ; not the elements with 
 which she had built up a landscape, but the 
 landscape itself as his eye had embraced 
 and his soul had felt it. This he wanted 
 to paint, and this he did paint with extraor- 
 dinary truth as well as charm and individ- 
 uality. But can any superficial brush do 
 this? Can any one know the things to say 
 without knowing the things to omit, build 
 up broad truths in ignorance of the minor 
 truths which compose them, reproduce an 
 impression without remembering what ele- 
 ments had worked together to create it, and 
 which had been of preponderant, controlling 
 yalue ? 
 
 No ; the real lesson taught by Corot's 
 pictures and Corot's life is that breadth in 
 painting (if it is not meaningless and empty) 
 must repose on accurate knowledge ; that 
 freedom (if it is not mere idle license) must 
 have its basis in fidelity to facts ; that feel- 
 ing must be guided by reason and self-re- 
 straint. Corot's knowledge of natural facts 
 within the cycle of such scenes as he pre- 
 ferred to paint was greater probably than 
 
160 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 that of any painter who has ever lived ex- 
 cept Theodore Rousseau ; and the loving 
 patience of his efforts to express it has 
 never been surpassed. These are the rea- 
 sons why he could permit himself to be the 
 most free and personal and poetic of all 
 landscape painters. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Truth," said Corot, " is the first thing 
 in art and the second and the third." But 
 the whole truth cannot be told at once. A 
 selection from the mass of Nature's truths 
 is what the artist shows a few things at a 
 time, and with sufficient emphasis to make 
 them clearly felt. You cannot paint sum- 
 mer and winter on a single canvas. No 
 two successive hours of a summer's day are 
 just alike, and you cannot paint them both. 
 Nor, as certainly, can you paint everything 
 you see at the chosen moment. Crowd in 
 too much and you spoil the picture, weaken 
 the impression, conceal your meaning, falsify 
 everything in the attempt to be too true. 
 
 This was Corot's creed. What now were 
 the truths that he interpreted at the neces- 
 sary sacrifice of others which were less im- 
 portant in his eyes ? They are implied, I 
 think, in the words I have already written. 
 
COROT. 161 
 
 Corot prized effects rather than what the 
 non - artistic world calls solid facts. But 
 effects are as truly facts as are the individ- 
 ual features and details which make them. 
 Indeed, they are the most essential as well 
 as interesting of all facts. It is effects that 
 we see first when we ave in Nature's pres- 
 ence, that impress us most, and dwell the 
 longest in our minds. Outlines, modelling, 
 local colors, minor details these shift, ap- 
 pear and disappear, or alter vastly as light 
 and shadow change ; and most of them we 
 never really see at all until we take time 
 to analyze. Look at the same scene on a 
 sunny morning or by cloudy sunset light. 
 It is not the same scene. The features are 
 the same, but their effect has changed, and 
 this means a new landscape, a novel picture. 
 The mistake of too many modern painters, 
 especially in England, is that they paint 
 from analysis, not from sight. They paint 
 the things they know are there, not the 
 things they perceive just as they perceive 
 them. This Corot never did. He studied 
 analytically and learned all he could about 
 solid facts ; but he painted synthetically 
 omitting many things that he knew 
 about, and even many that he saw at the 
 
162 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 moment, in order to portray more clearly 
 the general result. And this general re- 
 sult he found in the main lines of the scene 
 before him ; in its dominant tone ; in the 
 broad relationships of one mass of color to 
 all others; in the aspect of the sky, the 
 character of the atmosphere, and the play 
 of light ; and in the palpitating incessant 
 movement of sky and air and leaf. 
 
 Look at one of Corot's foregrounds and 
 you will see whether it is soft or hard, wet 
 with dew or dry in the sun ; you will see 
 its color, its mobility. Look at his trees 
 and you will see their mass, their diversi- 
 ties in denseness, their pliability and vital 
 freshness. Look at his sky and you will 
 see its shimmering, pulsating quality : it 
 has the softness of a blue which means 
 vast depths of distance, or of a gray which 
 means layer upon layer of imponderable 
 mist, and the whiteness of clouds which 
 shine as bright as pearls but would dissi- 
 pate at a touch. And everywhere, over all, 
 behind all, in all, you will see the envelop- 
 ing air and the light which infiltrates this 
 thing and transfigures that ; the air and the 
 light which make all things what they are, 
 which create the landscape by creating its 
 
COROT. 163 
 
 color, its expression, its effect ; the air and 
 the light which are the movement, the 
 spirit, the very essence of nature. No man 
 had ever perfectly painted the atmosphere 
 till Corot did it, or the diffused, pervading 
 quality of light ; and for this reason no one 
 had painted such delicate, infinite distances, 
 such deep, luminous, palpitating skies. 
 
 See now how Corot managed to paint 
 like this to interpret the life, mood, and 
 meaning of the scene he drew. It was just 
 through that process of omission and sup- 
 pression which the superficial misread as 
 proof that he did not really " render " na- 
 ture at all. Even the smallest, simplest, 
 natural fact cannot be " rendered " in the 
 sense of being literally reproduced ; and to 
 attempt the literal imitation of large fea- 
 tures is merely to sacrifice the whole in 
 favor of what must remain but a partial 
 rendering of a part. A leaf can be painted, 
 but not a myriad leaves at once ; we are 
 soon forced to generalize, condense, sup- 
 press ; and to try to paint too many leaves 
 is to lose the tree, for the tree is not a 
 congregation of countless individual leaves 
 distinctly seen it is a mass of leaves 
 which are shot through and through with 
 
164 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 light and air, and always more or less 
 merged together and moving. It is an 
 entity, and a live one ; and which is the 
 more important that we should see the 
 living thing or the items that compose it ? 
 What we ask the painter is not just how 
 his tree was constructed, but just how it 
 looked as a feature in the beauty and alive- 
 ness of the scene. What we want is its 
 general effect and the way it harmonized 
 with the effect of its surroundings. 
 
 Does it matter, then, if he omits many 
 things, or even if he alters some things, to 
 get this right result? Such altering is not 
 falsifying. It is merely emphasis a stress 
 laid here and a blank left there that (since 
 all facts cannot possibly be given) the ac- 
 cented fact shall at least be plain. The 
 generalized structure of Corot's trees, their 
 blurred contours and flying, feathery spray 
 these are not untruths. They are merely 
 compromises with the stern necessities of 
 paint, devices he employed, not because he 
 was unable to draw trees with precision, 
 but because, had he done this, his foliage 
 would have been too solid and inert for 
 truth. A twig is never long in one position. 
 It cannot be painted in two positions at 
 
COROT. 165 
 
 once. But a twig that is blurred to the 
 eye because it is passing from one position 
 to another this can be painted, and this 
 Corot preferred to paint rather than rami- 
 fications with exactness or leaf-outlines with 
 a narrow cave. So his trees are alive, and, 
 as he loved to say, the light can reach their 
 inmost leaves, and the little birds can fly 
 among their branches. 
 
 It is the same thing with color. The 
 color schemes to which Corot kept were 
 never as strong and vivid as those we find 
 with some of his contemporaries and many 
 of his successors. Browns and grays and 
 pale greens predominate on his canvas with 
 rarely an acuter accent, a louder note. But 
 he fitted his themes to his brush, so that 
 we feel no lack ; or, in better words, he 
 chose his color schemes in accordance with 
 the character of the natural effects that he 
 loved most. And within the scale he chose 
 his coloring is perfect. His tone (the har- 
 mony, or, as used to be said, the "keeping" 
 of his result) is admirable beyond praise. 
 Yet it is gained at no sacrifice of truth in 
 local color. There are cheap processes for 
 securing tone, which are indeed falsifica- 
 tions of nature, ways of carrying over 
 
166 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 into one object the color of another, throw- 
 ing things out of their right relationships, 
 harmonizing with some universal gauze of 
 brown or gray. But Corot's was not a 
 process like any of these. His power to 
 harmonize and unify his colors sprang from 
 the fact that he studied colors with a more 
 careful and penetrating eye than ever be- 
 fore had been brought to bear, and never 
 forgot their mutual relationships. Look at 
 one of his pictures where the general effect, 
 perhaps, is of soft delicious greens. Every- 
 thing in it is not greenish. The sky is pure 
 blue and the clouds are purest white. The 
 water is rightly related to the sky, and 
 where things were gray in nature, or brown, 
 or even black, they are so on canvas. Har- 
 mony does not mean monotony, tone does 
 not mean untruth ; and this Corot could 
 accomplish because he studied u values " as 
 no painter before him had studied them. 
 
 This word new in our language but 
 indispensable has been a little hard of 
 comprehension to those who know nothing 
 of the painter's problems and devices. But 
 it means, as simply as I can say it, the dif- 
 ference between given colors as severally 
 compared with the highest note in the 
 
COROT. 167 
 
 scale white, and the lowest black ; the 
 difference between them as containing, so 
 to speak, more light or more dark. This 
 does not mean the same thing as the rela- 
 tive degrees of illumination and shadow 
 which may fall upon them. The one qual- 
 ity may be involved in or dependent upon 
 the other, but the two are distinct to the 
 painter's eye. 
 
 It is not easy even to perceive differences 
 in value. Given two shades of the same 
 tint, as of a blue-green or a yellow-green, it 
 is easy enough to say which is the darker ; 
 but it is more difficult when a yellow-green 
 is compared with a blue-green, and still 
 more when we set a brown beside a green, 
 or a blue beside a yellow. Yet the painter 
 must not only learn to see values in nature 
 but to transpose them correctly on canvas 
 for color can never be exactly copied on 
 canvas; from the nature of paint, there 
 must always be transposition, adaptation, 
 compromise. Corot mastered the difficulty 
 as no one else had done ; and this mastery 
 has made him the guide and teacher of all 
 the landscape painters who have since been 
 born. 1 
 
 1 A conspicuous example of what is meant by the falsi- 
 
168 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 V. 
 
 "There are four things for a painter," 
 Corot was wont to say. " These are : form, 
 which he gets through drawing ; color, 
 which results from truth to values ; senti- 
 ment, which is born of the received impres- 
 sion ; and finally the execution, the render- 
 ing of the whole. As to myself, I think I 
 have sentiment ; that is, a little poetry in 
 the soul which leads me to see, or to com- 
 plete what I see, in a certain way. But I 
 have not always color, and I possess only 
 imperfect elements of the power to draw. 
 In execution I also fail sometimes which 
 is the reason why I labor harder than ever, 
 little though some people may imagine it." 
 
 In accepting these words about himself, 
 we must make allowance for that spirit of 
 aspiration which always leads a true artist 
 
 fication of values may be seen in photographs taken by 
 any of the usual processes. Chemical action deals dif- 
 ferently with different colors, so that a light yellow, for 
 instance, comes out darker than a dark blue. The 
 trouble has been obviated in some of the newer photo- 
 graphic methods. But it is easy to see that the ques- 
 tion of values is of vast importance in all translations 
 from color into black and white. In nothing has the 
 success of American wood-engravers been more remark- 
 able than in their dealing with values. 
 
COROT. 169 
 
 to remember his ideal as better than the 
 best possible rendering. It is natural that 
 Corot should have thought he often failed 
 to get his values right, although the world 
 gradually saw that he had at least come 
 nearer right than any one before him ; and 
 of course he knew that he had not even at- 
 tempted many schemes and scales of color 
 which he perceived in the actual world. 
 As regards his power to draw he spoke with 
 stricter verity. A lifetime of study in the 
 woods and fields had enabled him to draw 
 landscapes fully and exactly when he chose, 
 and some of his portrait-heads are wonder- 
 fully true. But in our modern world schools 
 alone can give scientific knowledge of the 
 figure ; and for the lack of this, Corot's 
 figures are weak in anatomy and loose in 
 modelling, though often most delightful in 
 color and sentiment. 
 
 It is the same with his execution. Born 
 at a time when few painters painted really 
 well, and trained almost wholly by his own 
 efforts, he is not one of the supreme masters 
 of the brush one of those whose every 
 line and touch delights the connoisseur in 
 handling. But he painted well enough to 
 express with charm as well as clearness the 
 
170 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 impressions he received ; and as these were 
 the impressions of a very great and indi- 
 vidual artist, the verdict is still a high one. 
 Had his growth been assisted by stronger 
 outside influences he would doubtless have 
 reached technical skill more quickly, and, 
 perhaps, conquered it more completely ; but 
 something of the personality of his manner 
 might have perished. So we are content 
 with his technical shortcomings, and, after 
 all, they are far from serious. Although a 
 few men have painted landscapes still more 
 beautifully, Corot's surely satisfy the eye 
 while delighting and moving the soul. 
 
 If but a single phrase of Corot's had been 
 recorded, I should wish it the one which 
 says that sentiment in art is a poetic power 
 to see things or to complete them in some 
 personal way. Here the whole import of 
 idealism in art lies crystallized in a word. 
 Not to depart from Nature, but to complete 
 her is the true idealization ; not to conceive 
 an ideal foreign to her own, but to perceive 
 her own with so much sympathy that it can 
 be more perfectly revealed than, on this im- 
 perfect earth, she herself is often able to 
 reveal it ; not to be untrue to fact, but to 
 choose and arrange particular facts so that 
 
COROT. 171 
 
 the type, the ideal, toward which they tend 
 shall be most clearly shown. 
 
 The whole world prizes such work as this 
 when it is the poet's or even the figure- 
 painter's. Why is it so often disallowed 
 when the landscape painter brings it? A 
 drama of Shakespeare's never happened, 
 yet we feel it is truer than any literally re- 
 ported drama of the police-court, or " real- 
 istic " stage-play or novel. The character 
 of a man, we know, is a higher fact than 
 any of his daily deeds ; why, then, is not 
 the aspect of a landscape a higher fact than 
 any of its details ? More significant than 
 any individual character, again, is the es- 
 sence of human nature ; why, then, does 
 not the essence of some kind or type of 
 natural beauty mean more and purer truth 
 than the aspect of any one actual spot ? 
 Must not an artist see broadly, synthetic- 
 ally, if he is to show us general aspects? 
 and must he not see imaginatively, poetic- 
 ally must he not " complete " what he 
 sees if he is to search out and render the 
 ideal therein suggested? All his interpre- 
 tations must be based on facts which he has 
 observed in this place or that ; but to make 
 a good picture and a true one he need not 
 
172 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 confine himself to facts which he has 
 chanced to see together. Very likely Corot 
 never painted a scene without omitting 
 some features and adding others ; and in 
 more than one of his works there are ele- 
 ments both of French and of Italian origin. 
 But there is never disharmony in the result, 
 for his knowledge was too great and his im- 
 agination too artistic which means too 
 logical and too sympathetic. He made no 
 mere patchwork pictures. He created land- 
 scapes of his own out of the elements with 
 which, in Nature's presence, he had stored 
 his sketch - books and his memory. He 
 might alter a scene he did not alter Na- 
 ture. He but completed the beautiful mes- 
 sage she had been suggesting here and half- 
 revealing there. 
 
 It is easy to prove that Corot's painted 
 poetry was true much truer than the 
 realist's painted prose. We have only to 
 consult our own experience with him as an 
 interpreter of nature. Here and there, at 
 home or abroad, we may recognize some 
 scene which some realist has faithfully por- 
 trayed ; but Corot's scenes are everywhere 
 by the little lakes and brooks of France, 
 in the forest glens of Italy, in the misty 
 
COROT. 173 
 
 glades of England, and along the river bor- 
 ders of our own far western world. What 
 he painted were not items from nature but 
 certain broad beauties and moods of nature ; 
 and though we may rarely be able to put 
 a finger on documentary proof of his verac- 
 ity, we carry it about with us in a new 
 sensitiveness of eye, a new receptiveness 
 of mood. Everywhere, I say, we see from 
 time to time some beautiful living Corot; 
 but should we see it so quickly or would it 
 seem so beautiful had he not taught us how 
 to value it ? The commonplace painter 
 shows us things that we had seen and felt 
 in the same way ourselves. The true 
 artist selects more delicate yet more gen- 
 eral facts, explains them with poetic stress, 
 shows us things which probably we had not 
 remarked before, and makes them forever 
 ours. We may never possess a picture by 
 Corot, but how immeasurably poorer we 
 should be had he painted none ! His mes- 
 sage is our own if his canvases are not; 
 and who shall say this of a painter unless 
 he is as true as truth, yet personal, poetical, 
 in that creative way which alone means the 
 highest art ? 
 
 The special character of Corot's idealism 
 
174 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 shows first of all in his choice of subject- 
 matter. He was most attracted by the 
 most idyllic scenes and inoods of nature. 
 Grandeur, force, terror, sadness, did not ap- 
 peal to him. He had no taste for storms 
 and rugged wildness; he loved high noon 
 less than the glinting tender prophecies of 
 I morn or the mysterious grace of twilight ; 
 and if it was high noon he painted, still it 
 was not prosaic clearness, but noon in a 
 day of soft veiling mists and passing gleams 
 and shadows. The peculiar broad softness 
 of his touch a softness which lacks nei- 
 ther delicacy nor nerve fits well with the 
 sentiment of these favorite themes. But 
 to keep feeling and execution of this sort 
 above mere sentimentality and vagueness, 
 a painter needs the great gift of style. 
 This gift Corot had in a very high degree 
 the power to give his pictures a qual- 
 ity which every one will understand when 
 I call it classic. No one could be more 
 thoroughly modern, more thoroughly Gallic, 
 than Corot ; but no one in modern art has 
 been more classic in the fundamental mean- 
 ing of the word. It was not because he 
 often painted classic subjects how many 
 have done this and given us a breath from 
 
COROT. 176 
 
 English firesides, a blast from the Parisian 
 boulevard, in pictures, which have, perhaps, 
 all other virtues but are conspicuously de- 
 void of style ! It was because he felt things 
 with Greek simplicity, joy, and freshness, 
 and saw them in a way which meant Greek 
 dignity, harmony, and repose, and a real 
 yet ideal grace. If his figures are often 
 dreams of Hellas it was simply because he 
 saw the landscape he was painting in such 
 a way that it could be most fittingly peo- 
 pled thus. The idyllic, classic note was in 
 the voice of the man, and would have rung 
 out in his work whatever the themes he 
 chose. It must have been his by birth, 
 though it was happily fostered by the 
 course of his student years. From Bertin 
 and Aligny he imbibed sobriety in taste, 
 and that love for ha.rmonious composition 
 which more than any other single element 
 means style in painting; and his long 
 Italian months had enforced the lesson, 
 showing him broad reposeful tones as well 
 as lines. Yet had he not already dreamed 
 of nymphs and fountains in his boyhood by 
 the window at Ville d' Avray ? 
 
176 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 r 
 
 VI. 
 
 If we can fix upon any one of Corot's 
 pictures as the most famous it must be, I 
 think, the " St. Sebastian " owned by Mr. 
 Walters in Baltimore. Painted in 1851 it 
 admirably represents Corot's art in that 
 middle period which French critics have 
 held to be his very best. His individuality 
 had then fully developed, both his poetry 
 in conception and his freedom in treatment ; 
 the difference from the " Forest of Fontaine- 
 bleau," which he had painted only five 
 years earlier, is immense. Yet a little of his 
 early reserve of manner still clings about 
 the " St. Sebastian," giving it more mas- 
 siveness and grandeur than we find in pic- 
 tures of a much later date. It seems to 
 have been Corot's favorite work. He 
 would never sell it, but in 1871 gave it to the 
 lottery held for the benefit of the wounded 
 defenders of France. Delacroix called it 
 the most truly religious picture of modern 
 times ; and, indeed, to great external charm 
 and purest poetry it adds a marvellous 
 depth and solemnity of mood. It is the 
 least idyllic, the most epic in sentiment, of 
 all Corot's great works, yet instinct with a 
 
COROT. 177 
 
 pathetic tenderness. The dying saint lies 
 on the ground, cared for by two holy women, 
 in a shadowy forest glen. On either side 
 rise enormous trees, and, between them, in 
 far perspective, a little hill with horsemen 
 silhouetted against the sky. Two baby an- 
 gels float high above the saint bearing the 
 palms of martyrdom. The hour is twilight, 
 and the shadows are dense beneath the 
 trees ; but there is a glad radiance still in 
 the wonderful sky and the very breath of 
 living nature in the atmosphere. 
 
 Not so grand, not so impressive, but still 
 more beautiful, perhaps, is another work of 
 this middle period, the " Orpheus Greet- 
 ing the Morn," owned by Mr. Cottier in 
 New York, another famous Corot and 
 another that well deserves its fame. The 
 upright shape of the large canvas (seen 
 likewise in the " St. Sebastian ") is charac- 
 teristic of Corot, who loved a composition 
 in which the dignity of vertical lines might 
 be emphasized. In no picture is the very 
 essence of morning more truthfully, exquis- 
 itely, portrayed : we are bathed in its air, 
 steeped in its light ; our ears are filled with 
 the soft rustle of its wakening leaves ; our 
 souls are thrilled with its fresh and tender 
 
178 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 promise; and the infinite lovely distance 
 draws us till we share the passionate po- 
 etic yearning of Orpheus himself. And in 
 the execution what breadth combined with 
 delicacy, what soft yet radiant color, what 
 a sense of freedom, sincerity, inspiration ! 
 and what a delicious golden tone to com- 
 pare with the darker yet silvery tone of 
 the " St. Sebastian " ! This, indeed, is the 
 poetry of art nature's poetry truthfully 
 reported, yet accented, explained, "com- 
 pleted" by a great artist's soul and sight 
 and touch. 
 
 The "Orpheus" was painted in 1861, 
 and in 1866 the splendid " Danse des 
 Amours," which is also in New York, 
 owned by Mr. Charles A. Dana, a sur- 
 passingly fine example of one of Corot's 
 most characteristic themes. We need not 
 ask whether this wood is of France or Italy, 
 whether this little temple and these gra- 
 cious, buoyant figures were painted from fact 
 or fancy. It is the true ideal world the 
 world of actual nature but ceen in one of its 
 most beautiful aspects, peopled by joyous 
 figures, and with all its fair suggestions am- 
 plified and fulfilled. 
 
 The "Dante and Virgil" in the Boston 
 
COROT. 179 
 
 Museum of Fine Arts is much less complete 
 and magnificent than these, and it shows too 
 clearly Corot's shortcomings as a draughts- 
 man ; the tigers crouching at the poet's 
 feet were sketched in by Barye, but his out- 
 lines were lost in the painting. Neverthe- 
 less, the work is admirable as a whole and 
 most interesting in sentiment more 
 strongly dramatic than any other Corot I 
 have seen. Seldom has Dante been shown 
 so nearly as he must have looked when, as 
 the Florentine children said, he went down 
 into hell. 
 
 The " Wood- Gatherers " of the Corcoran 
 Gallery in Washington is one of Corot's 
 very latest works, shown at the last Salon 
 held before his death. The tone is brown 
 and rather dark and the handling very sum- 
 mary ; but it has great strength and dignity, 
 and impressive sentiment. In default of an 
 " Orpheus," it is an excellent Corot for the 
 American public to possess. 
 
 Thus, it appears, there are Corots in 
 America of the very highest quality ; and, 
 indeed, this list of them might be greatly 
 lengthened. Mr. Jay Gould in New York 
 owns a " Danse des Nymphes " only less ad- 
 mirable than the " Danse des Amours." In 
 
180 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 the collection of Mr. Quincy Shaw at Brook- 
 line, Massachusetts, are several perfect ex- 
 amples, representing different epochs from 
 almost the very earliest ; and in a hundred 
 other American galleries hang Corots of 
 more or less distinction. With the best, 
 of course, there are many not so good, and 
 others, alas, which are Corots only in name. 
 A superficial eye is easily deceived by imi- 
 tations of Corot's slighter works, and such 
 have been foisted on the public, abroad as 
 well as here, in considerable numbers. But 
 a really fine Corot has qualities beyond the 
 reach of any plagiarist qualities of truth 
 on the one hand, of feeling on the other. 
 We run no risk of seeing a fictitious " St. 
 Sebastian," or a " Danse des Amours " 
 which shall deceive a true lover of Corot. 
 
 VII. 
 
 To understand Corot's influence on art 
 and artists we must recall the times when 
 his work began. 
 
 The formalizing, pseudo-classic tendencies 
 of the school of David had just lost their 
 sovereignty. The " romantic " reaction was 
 in its lusty youth under the leadership of 
 
COROT. 181 
 
 Ge*ricault and Delacroix. The fetters of 
 academic tradition were loosened ; freedom 
 in thought and practice was proclaimed for 
 every painter ; the modern spirit of inquiry 
 and inventiveness, the modern gospel of 
 individuality, were daily winning new dis- 
 ciples. Oddly enough, as it now seems to 
 us, the first fresh impulse in the field of 
 landscape came from across the Channel 
 certain pictures by Constable and Boning- 
 ton, exhibited in Paris, gave the first hint 
 that landscape, too, might be painted in free 
 and varied fashions, and made the medium 
 for expressing simple local beauties and 
 personal ideas. But the fact is easily ex- 
 plained : in France landscape painting had 
 meant for generations nothing but a mem- 
 ory of Claude and Poussin, while in Eng- 
 land the old Dutch masters so much 
 more simple, naive, yet modern in their 
 feeling had never been lost to sight. 
 Now the hint from England led Frenchmen 
 back to the art of Holland, and its fructify- 
 ing influence soon showed in France as it 
 has never yet shown in England. Almost 
 instantly a new school was born, a new 
 development began a school and a de- 
 velopment which we must call the noblest 
 and completest that modern painting counts. 
 
182 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 Georges Michel was one of the very first 
 to feel the new impulse. But he seems a 
 survivor of the old Dutch school rather than 
 a leader in the school of France, a weaker 
 brother of Ruysdael, not his modernized 
 descendant, a forerunner, not a fellow, of 
 Rousseau, Co rot, Troyon, Millet, and Dupre. 
 Paul Huet was another innovator, but he 
 is better known to us by the influence he 
 had in his time than by his actual work. 
 Rousseau was the first of the really com- 
 plete new masters in landscape, and almost 
 on a line with Rousseau stands Corot. 
 
 It is difficult to say just in how far Corot 
 was formed by this influence or by that. 
 Bonington's spirit seems very near akin to 
 his Mr. Henry Adams in Washington 
 owns a little Bonington which might almost 
 pass for a comparatively early Corot. But 
 there can be no question as of teacher and 
 scholar in the case. Corot can have had no 
 more than a mere glimpse of Bonington's 
 work, and his own was at once immeasur- 
 ably wider, deeper, and more subtile. For 
 Rousseau he had an immense admiration ; 
 but their natures were wholly unlike, and 
 the longer they lived the further apart grew 
 the lines on which they labored. We can 
 
COROT. 183 
 
 say no more of Corot than that the hint 
 of naturalism he got from England, the 
 draught of classicism he imbibed from his 
 first teachers and from the air of Italy, and 
 the Dutch lesson of simplicity and sobriety, 
 germinated and grew together in his soul 
 while eye and hand were training them- 
 selves outdoors. 
 
 It is impossible, again, to attempt any 
 weighing of the intrinsic merits of Corot 
 and his great contemporaries. Odious in 
 most connections, a process of definite com- 
 parison is nowhere so detestable as when 
 applied to mighty artists. It is a sin against 
 the first law of computation we were taught 
 at school it is an effort to reckon with 
 unrelated quantities. It is as though we 
 took an apple from a pile of peaches and 
 declared the number of peaches less, or com- 
 pared an apple with a fig to explain its rank 
 among apples, or gauged the breadth of 
 one stream by the depth of another. We 
 may like best the peach or the fig or the 
 apple, and confidently declare our liking. 
 But when it comes to comparisons, they 
 should be of figs with figs, of Corots with 
 Corots. To be an artist means to be in- 
 dividual ; and individuality can be tested 
 
184 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 only by its own standard. A Corot is none 
 the worse whatever Rousseau or Troyon 
 may have painted ; and it would be none 
 the better had its creator been the only 
 man who ever painted landscapes. 
 
 But from the historical stand-point the 
 case is different. If we may not rightly 
 ask of two great contemporaries which was 
 the greater, we may very rightly ask which 
 was the more typical of his time, the more 
 influential upon the world of art. From 
 this point of view Corot seems to me the 
 most significant figure in his generation. 
 Personal, individual, as were all his breth- 
 ren, boldly, beautifully, as they all preached 
 the gospel of freedom and freshness in art, 
 none except Millet was quite so personal, 
 none quite so fresh, as Corot ; and to an in- 
 dividuality as strong as Millet's he added 
 other qualities all his own. No art of the 
 time is so complex as Corot's, and its com- 
 plexity gives it peculiar value to those who 
 look deeper than the surface of paint. No 
 one departed further from that mock clas- 
 sicism which means academic formality, 
 bloodless self-suppression ; yet no one then 
 alive or now alive has done so much to 
 prove the persistent value of true classicism. 
 
COJROT. 185 
 
 David tried for the form of ancient art and 
 missed its spirit. Corot, the great apostle 
 of modernness and personality, caught its 
 spirit while casting utterly away its form. 
 A Greek of the time of Pericles might 
 easily prefer his paintings to any others 
 we could show him : yet how thoroughly 
 French they are ; and yet, again, how close 
 they lie to the heart of the American of 
 to-day. 
 
 There is still another point in Corot's 
 supremacy. The profound and accurate 
 study of values the knowledge how to 
 keep tone perfect and yet keep color com- 
 plete and true is the greatest technical 
 achievement of modern times. Here Corot 
 led all his rivals, and therefore he has be- 
 come the leader and teacher of all younger 
 painters. In many ways they have carried 
 his lesson further than he went himself. 
 To paint things truthfully in the open air 
 means to-day tasks of a variety and diffi- 
 culty which Corot never essayed, results of 
 a vividness and splendor he never achieved. 
 But the whole development rests on his 
 own. He was the first great " impres- 
 sionist," and the modern impressionists are 
 but his more daring sons. Sometimes we 
 
186 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 and perhaps they themselves forget 
 the fact ; for there is one great point of 
 difference between him and most of his 
 sons in art. He was a poet on canvas, and 
 most of them are speakers of prose. It is 
 their fashion to rave about " realism," to 
 despise idealism to exalt the mere facts 
 they chance to see above the greater fact 
 which Corot divined and gave. But do 
 what they will, the best among them are 
 more idealistic than they think ; and, say 
 what they will, the world will never agree 
 to rank the reporter above the poet. For 
 the great body of lovers and students of 
 art Corot's highest merit is that he was the 
 most poetic soul among those who have 
 ever painted landscapes ; and his chief value 
 as a teacher is that he showed so well what 
 poetry in painting means. Too many have 
 thought it meant the effort to do with color 
 the same thing that a writer does with 
 words, and have lost the picture in the 
 effort to paint a poem. But with Corot 
 the picture is the first consideration : beau- 
 tiful forms, beautiful tones, beautiful ex- 
 pression with the brush. The poetry is 
 an infusion merely, an intangible essence 
 breathed from the soul of the maker. Per- 
 
COROT. 187 
 
 haps the time will come when Corot's 
 teaching as regards this point will be more 
 generally heeded than it is to-day. But, of 
 course, conscious effort cannot determine 
 the fact. Any painter can learn much from 
 Corot in the way of technical secrets ; no 
 one can learn from him how to idealize 
 nature except a man who, like himself, 
 chances to be born with a poet's heart. 
 We can do no more than hope that all 
 new poets who may be born to paint shall 
 be souls of Corot's sort. But we must 
 indeed hope this ; for what the world needs 
 just now are not mournful temperaments, 
 reading into nature the sorrow of the hu- 
 man race, but apostles of the joy and peace 
 which those who seek can always find in 
 her ; valiant yet tender singers like Corot, 
 like Luca and Correggio, and like Blake 
 when at his best happy singers of a " glad 
 new day." 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The more we study Corot's art tlie more 
 we love the man who stands behind it ; and 
 I have dwelt at some length on the record 
 of his life because it completes the revela- 
 
188 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 tion of a strong and serious will, of perse- 
 verance, modesty, and self-reliance, of noble 
 desires, unfailing courage, sincerity, and 
 loving-kindness. 
 
 It is a little the fashion nowadays to think 
 of artists as excusing themselves, on the 
 strength of being artists, from the duties 
 and virtues we demand of commoner clay. 
 It is too much our way to think of them as 
 eccentric, egotistic, nervously excitable or 
 morbidly sensitive, at odds with a prosaic 
 world and often at odds with themselves 
 pushed one way by the artistic impulse, 
 pulled another by mere human loves and 
 obligations. We think too often of them 
 thus, to pardon or condemn them according 
 as we value art or care little for it as a fac- 
 tor in the progress and aspiration of the 
 world. 
 
 Corot's story is of priceless value as prov- 
 ing how far wrong are these ideas ; and all 
 the more because it is not nn exceptional 
 story. Men like Corot, in all the essentials 
 of what even a pharisaical world would call 
 good conduct, have never been rare among 
 artists and are not rare to-day ; nor men as 
 courageous and persevering in disappoint- 
 ment, as simple, modest, and laborious in 
 
COROT. 189 
 
 success. As was Corot, so, in a more or 
 less marked degree, were almost all the 
 great painters and sculptors of his great 
 time. Not all of them could be so cheery 
 and happy, but most of them were as single- 
 minded in their devotion to art, as generous 
 and sincere in their dealings with their fel- 
 lows. 
 
 Let me make a good ending now with a 
 few more words from Corot's lips : " Do we 
 know how to render the sky, a tree, or 
 water ? No ; we can only try to give its 
 appearance, try to translate it by an artifice 
 which we must always seek to perfect. 
 For this reason, although I do not know my 
 craft so very badly, I am always trying to 
 go further. Sometimes some one says: 
 ' You know your business and don't need to 
 study more.' But none of that, I say; we 
 always need to learn. . . . Try to conquer 
 the qualities you do not possess, but above 
 all obey your own instinct, your own way of 
 seeing. This is what I call conscience and 
 sincerity. Do not trouble yourself about 
 anything else, and you will have a good 
 chance of being happy and of doing well." 
 
V. 
 
 GEOEGE FULLER. 
 1822-1884. 
 
 ON the walls of the National Academy 
 of Design in the spring of 1878 there hung 
 a small picture called " A Turkey Pasture 
 in Kentucky." Simple in theme, sober in 
 tone, telling no story, and making no dar- 
 ing technical appeal to notice, it was yet 
 remarked by the popular eye and was called 
 by all sensitive observers the most interest- 
 ing picture of the year. Who, we very 
 soon began to ask, is this Mr. Fuller whose 
 name is so unfamiliar, whose work is so 
 original and charming who seems to be 
 making his first appearance yet is already 
 a master in his way ? If he is a new- 
 comer from abroad he bears the trade-mark 
 neither of Paris nor of Munich ; and if he 
 is a product of home education he shows 
 even less affinity with the traditions of our 
 elder schools. Where does he come from 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 191 
 
 that he has learned to paint in so peculiar 
 yet so fine a way ? 
 
 Glancing at the Catalogue we found that 
 George Fuller was in no sense a " new man," 
 but an artist past middle age, who since 
 1857 had stood on the Associate list of the 
 Academy itself. Then we asked, Where 
 has he kept himself aloof during so many 
 years that he comes back now a stranger 
 where, and why, and how employed ? The 
 answer which may be read in a brief sketch 
 of his life is doubly interesting, because it 
 reveals a temper that is exceptional in the 
 history of art, whether the records we search 
 are those of our own land or another. 
 
 George Fuller was born of Puritan stock 
 at Deerfield, Massachusetts, in the year 1822. 
 An instinct for art had already shown itself 
 in several members of his family, and from 
 childhood his own tastes led him towards a 
 painter's brush and palette. At the age of 
 fourteen he went to Illinois with a party of 
 railroad builders, and remained two years, 
 being much in the company of the sculptor 
 Henry Kirke Brown. Between the ages of 
 
192 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 sixteen and twenty he was again at Deer- 
 field, following a school course but making 
 constant essays in painting, chiefly in the 
 way of portraiture. In 1842 he wrote for 
 counsel to Mr. Brown, then established in 
 Albany, and gladly accepted the sculptor's 
 invitation to go there and study under his 
 tuition. At Albany he remained nearly a 
 year when Mr. Brown went to Europe and 
 Fuller to Boston, where, painting portraits 
 as before, he devoted himself also to the 
 study of such works of art as the city then 
 contained especially the pictures of Stu- 
 art, Allston, and Alexander. A few years 
 later he removed to New York, and, at an 
 age when most painters have finished their 
 student course, went diligently to work in 
 the life-class of the Academy. His first 
 public success seems to have been gained in 
 1857, when he was already thirty-five years 
 old. He then exhibited a portrait of his 
 earliest friend in art, Mr. Brown, and on 
 the strength of its good qualities was 
 elected an Associate of the National Acad- 
 emy. 
 
 It is curious to read the names of those 
 who were at this time Mr. Fuller's friends 
 and fellow-workers, and to remember that 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 193 
 
 now we think of him as standing side by 
 side with the most successful of our younger 
 painters. H. K. Brown, the two Cheneys, 
 Henry Peters Gray, Quincy Ward, Sand- 
 ford Gifford, Daniel Huntington these 
 were among his most constant companions ; 
 yet after 1878 the fact that his name was 
 followed by the letters A. N. A. seemed 
 less characteristic than that it should stand 
 on the member-list of the young " Society 
 of American Artists." 
 
 Soon after his removal to New York 
 Fuller spent three winters at the south, 
 making studies of negro life, some of which 
 were utilized in his later work. Then he 
 passed a year in Philadelphia, and then went 
 for the first time to Europe, not to study in 
 any academy, but to learn from nature and 
 from the treasures of earlier days in London, 
 Paris, Amsterdam, Florence, Rome, and 
 Sicily. In 1860 he returned to America but 
 not to the public practice of his art. Dis- 
 satisfied with his efforts and filled with vis- 
 ions and ideals peculiar to himself, he seems 
 to have felt that if he was ever to work his 
 way to right performance it would be 
 through his own strength and not through 
 help from patron, school, or fellow-craftsman. 
 
194 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 He shut himself up in his Deerfield home, 
 took seriously to farming, and abandoned 
 the world of exhibitions, of artists, and of 
 critics. He was invisible for many years, 
 almost forgotten, save by a few old asso- 
 ciates in whose minds still lingered the 
 promise of his early work. The proof that 
 he had not ceased to cultivate art while com- 
 pelling nature to his needs with the plough 
 was not shown until 1876, when some friends 
 who had penetrated the Deerfield studio per- 
 suaded him to exhibit in Boston fourteen 
 pictures of various kinds. These at once 
 gained him local fame and favor ; and two 
 years later he appeared again on the walls 
 of the New York Academy after so long an 
 absence that he came as a stranger and an 
 aspirant, his place to be won afresh, his 
 success dependent on the suffrages of a new 
 generation of artists and lovers of art ; not 
 a beginner but a veteran, yet a debutant 
 once more. And in how different an artis- 
 tic circle from the one he had known in 
 years gone by ! The great exodus of stu- 
 dents to Parisian and Bavarian schools, of 
 amateurs to foreign studios and galleries, 
 had begun a few years before. Its results 
 were just returning to us in the shape of a 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 195 
 
 more cultivated and critical public used to 
 the best foreign work, and of a throng of 
 vigorous, eager, cosmopolitan young paint- 
 ers, all alike disregardful of older Ameri- 
 can traditions and filled with new ideas on 
 every subject from the definition of the ab- 
 stract term " art " down to the most con- 
 crete professional questions of the studio. 
 But in this new world George Fuller's voice 
 sounded a consonant note. The artists I 
 mean the younger brood and not his brother 
 academicians who " skied" his pictures 
 were the first and most enthusiastic in his 
 praise. Their estimate of his talent and 
 their feeling that it was akin in these his 
 later efforts to their own ideas rather than 
 to those of his actual contemporaries were 
 before long shown by his election into the 
 new " Society of American Artists." It is 
 a pity, not for Fuller's sake but for its own, 
 that the Academy's action was less appreci- 
 ative. Who had so long held its lower ti- 
 tle ? Who so well deserved the higher? 
 Yet when he died in 1884 Fuller had not 
 yet been named Academician. 
 
 In 1879 Fuller showed at the Academy 
 the large " Romany Girl " and a wonder- 
 ful little canvas called " And She Was a 
 
196 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 Witch;" in 1880 the "Quadroon" and a 
 boy's portrait ; and in 1881 the loveliest of 
 all his works the " Winifred Dysart." 
 To the Society's exhibitions he also con- 
 tributed year by year, chiefly portraits or 
 landscapes, until in 1882 he sent two large 
 figures, conceived in the same mood as the 
 " Winifred," called " Lorette " and " Pris- 
 cilla Fauntleroy," and in 1883 another, not 
 dissimilar, called " Nydia," which the Met- 
 ropolitan Museum now owns. Among other 
 pictures shown from time to time were the 
 " Herb Gatherers," a " Dandelion Girl," a 
 " Psyche," a cupid-like " Boy and Bird," a 
 " Girl with a Calf," and the " Arethusa" 
 his latest work and his most ambitious, a 
 life-size nude figure, which after his death 
 was given to the Boston Museum of Fine 
 Arts. 
 
 II. 
 
 Fuller kept to the last his summer home 
 and studio at Deerfield, but for several win- 
 ters lived in Boston. Some German philos- 
 opher once said that a true artist can do his 
 work contentedly either in rooms filled with 
 beauty or in rooms denuded of everything ; 
 either surrounded by objects with which his 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 197 
 
 tastes are in unison and his art in keep- 
 ing, or isolated as far as possible from all 
 things whatsoever; which of these two en- 
 vironments he may prefer depends upon 
 his temperament, but no really artistic tem- 
 perament can content itself with half-way 
 surroundings, with an environment of com- 
 monplace, distracting, Philistine ugliness. 
 Whether Fuller consciously objected to the 
 artistic litter which surrounds most modern 
 painters, or whether he neglected it because 
 bare walls and his own ideals were all he 
 really needed this I cannot say. But his 
 Boston studio fulfilled with almost literal 
 exactness the German's second postulate. 
 If it was not " artistic " it certainly was not 
 " Philistine." It was simply a place to work 
 in a large square room with one great win- 
 dow overlooking Boston Common, two or 
 three chairs and easels, a platform for the 
 model, and a triple line of unfinished pictures 
 turned against the wall. There was only 
 one thing more when I first saw the studio, 
 but that thing was significant. Hung on 
 the empty wall was a single little canvas, a 
 gorgeous, vague, entrancing bit of Monti- 
 celli's color, shining like a star from the 
 surrounding void. Here was the one rest- 
 
198 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 ing-place, apparently, that the artist's eye 
 demanded a keynote, a terra of compari- 
 son, an inspiring draught to which he could 
 turn at will. 
 
 In person Fuller, like Camille Corot, of- 
 fered a strong contrast to the spirituality 
 of his art tall, massively built, with a 
 large head, strong blunt features, and a 
 patriarchal beard of white. A theorist in 
 physiognomy might have expected from 
 such a form and face some sort of vigorous 
 " realism " instead of the delicate idealiz- 
 ing art we know. But the dissonance was 
 in first superficial seeming only. Fuller's 
 words and manner were not only interest- 
 ing and attractive in themselves, but valu- 
 able as giving an insight into the meaning 
 and sentiment of his art. 
 
 No one, old or young, was a greater fa- 
 vorite with his brother artists, and no one 
 more deservedly. There will be many of 
 them to remember with me his unfailing 
 good humor and courtesy, his lack of self- 
 assertion, his genial spirit, his cordial appre- 
 ciation for every good work whether or no 
 it was in harmony with his own ideas and 
 tastes, his hearty encouragement of young 
 painters, his interest in everything that 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 199 
 
 tended to the advance of American art and 
 artists. I knew of no more delightful place 
 than his studio, where one forgot the art, al- 
 most, in one's interest in the man or felt 
 it to be merely a part, a fragment, an in- 
 complete revelation of a most attractive 
 personality, a most intelligent mind, a most 
 warm and honest heart. He loved his art 
 as few men love it even among artists ; and 
 he seemed to love humanity as do few of 
 us, I fear, in any walk of life. A talk with 
 him was one of the best spurs to effort, to 
 energy, to enthusiasm of a clear-sighted 
 and not a maudlin kind, that an artist or a 
 critic could receive. No one could be care- 
 less or apathetic, unreasoning or hypercrit- 
 ical, in George Fuller's company no one 
 could forget the pleasure and responsibility 
 of his work whether that work were paint- 
 ing or mere commentary. It was a lesson 
 in temper to hear him speak of others, to 
 note the self-reliance yet unfeigned humil- 
 ity with which he thought of his own per- 
 formance. He was sensitive to criticism, 
 as every earnest soul must be ; but sensitive 
 in the nobler way in proportion always 
 to the source from which it came rather 
 than the verdict that it gave. If he re- 
 
200 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 spected the critic he listened carefully and 
 sweetly, whether the words were praise or 
 blame ; if he did not respect him he was 
 not greatly touched in either case. To one 
 who had praised him much I heard him say, 
 " You have made my work all the harder 
 for me. Your approval is undeserved ; now 
 I must try to come up with it." And to 
 one who had written in dispraise I also 
 heard him say, " I was a little hurt at first 
 but that is over. You did quite right ; 
 every man must see with his own eyes and 
 speak quite honestly, you as well as I. I 
 do not see and feel as -you do, but I will 
 think it over ; perhaps your way is better, 
 though as long as I don't agree with you 
 and I don't think I ever shall I must go 
 on as I have been going." No one who had 
 ever spoken with Fuller could doubt that in 
 both cases he meant exactly what he said. 
 
 The charge of affectation has sometimes 
 been brought against his work, but never, I 
 think, by a man who knew him. A more 
 evidently honest and unaffected artist never 
 lived. What he strove for was merely to 
 express himself as clearly as he could. It 
 seems grotesque to us, his friends, that he 
 could ever have been accused of seeking 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 201 
 
 originality for its own sake, or of posturing 
 to attract the public eye. Popular success 
 was pleasant to him. It cannot be indiffer- 
 ent to any man who thinks he has a mes- 
 sage to deliver he must be glad when the 
 public eye comes to understand and value 
 it. But how did Fuller seek success ? By 
 seventeen years of steady toil, added to all 
 the toil of his long student years, with no 
 thought of blame or praise from others. 
 Himself was the one he aimed to satisfy 
 the endorsement of others was a welcome 
 but a secondary thing ; and even when his 
 countrymen were satisfied, he lamented 
 what he called his failure to say his say in 
 the manner he could wish. A true artistic 
 temper in this respect, but, I fear, an excep- 
 tional one in others in its " sweet reason- 
 ableness," its patience, its calmness, its gen- 
 tle dignity, its respect for genuine criticism, 
 its indifference to mere idle babble. 
 
 I have heard many artists speak well 
 upon art in general but few so well as Ful- 
 ler. His intelligence was acute and culti- 
 vated, his sympathies were wide, and his 
 tongue a ready interpreter. He could give 
 a reason for the faith that was in him in 
 clear, forcible, and inspiring words. His 
 
202 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 letters were full of phrases that were epi- 
 grammatic, almost, in their incisive truth. 
 They were more like Millet's letters than 
 any I have read, save for Millet's tone of 
 sad despondency. I remember well an ani- 
 mated discussion in his studio when he ex- 
 plained Corot to one who, as he thought, 
 traduced him. I had never heard so sug- 
 gestive an analysis of Corot's power, and 
 Fuller gayly promised me his help in an 
 article I wished to write about him. This 
 help alas for my readers to-day is one 
 of the "might-have-been's." More than 
 once I wished Fuller would use the pen in 
 addition to the brush. Perhaps the charm 
 would have evaporated as it so often has 
 before. Couture, doubtless, talked very 
 well, but no one wants another book like 
 his. Yet I do not think that if Fuller had 
 written we should have been disappointed ; 
 and at all events we must regret that no 
 one did for him what Miss Knowlton did 
 for Hunt that there is no record left, ex- 
 cept in a few minds that knew him and a 
 few hasty letters, of the charm and the 
 acuteness of his words about the art he 
 loved so well. 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 203 
 
 III. 
 
 To mark now the chief characteristic of 
 George Fuller's work I may say that it is 
 distinctly ideal in its essence opposed in 
 its aims and in its technical methods to 
 what we know as u realistic " painting. 
 All paintings belong in one of these two 
 classes, though the limits of the two meet, 
 of course, and some few may stand on the 
 wavering boundary line that parts them. 
 The distinction between the one kind of 
 work and the other is never to be based 
 on choice of subject. Neither does it rest 
 primarily on technical manner, though, in- 
 deed, a painter's manner is most apt to con- 
 form to the nature of his aims and concep- 
 tions, since it is but his means for express- 
 ing these. The true difference, however, is 
 between the nature of one painter and 
 another. Every artist, like every philoso- 
 pher, is born a Platonist or an Aristotelian. 
 It is not the thing he chooses to paint, but 
 the way in which he sees and feels that 
 thing, which marks him an idealist or a 
 realist. Michael Angelo was an idealist 
 while painting divine creative power and 
 the wrath of judgment-days ; Millet, while 
 
204 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 depicting peasants at their toil. Diirer was 
 a realist when painting the Madonna, as is 
 Verestchagin when he draws the dead on 
 the field of battle. Even in simple portrait- 
 ure the same difference between dispositions 
 makes itself clearly felt Rembrandt on the 
 one hand, Holbein on the other ; Holbein 
 a realist though limning philosophers and 
 queens, Rembrandt an idealist though por- 
 traying the tawdry patriarchs of the Grhetto. 
 In drawing this distinction I would not, 
 of course, have it for a moment believed 
 that I call any art realistic in the sense of 
 being a mere copy of external facts. All 
 art, of whatever kind, however denuded, 
 apparently, of imagination or poetic senti- 
 ment, the art of Holbein or Jordaens or 
 Metsu, even the so nearly literal and there- 
 fore so inartistic art of Denner, as well as 
 the art of a Raphael or a Corot, is, as 
 Emerson has put it, " nature passed through 
 the alembic of man." The difference be- 
 tween Denner and the idealist still more 
 between a really great artist like Holbein 
 and the idealist is a difference of quan- 
 tity only. It lies merely in the degree to 
 which he has modified, transmuted, trans- 
 figured, the theme he took from nature. 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 205 
 
 But this difference in degree may be so 
 immensely wide that we are quite justified 
 in drawing a distinction as between two 
 opposing camps. Indeed, to draw this dis- 
 tinction clearly and assign a place within 
 this camp or that, and near or far from 
 their dividing lines, is the most important 
 of tasks when we would estimate any paint- 
 er's art. 
 
 Fuller's art not only belongs to the ideal- 
 istic camp, but, considering his land and 
 time, is peculiarly marked in this respect. 
 The near-as-may-be reproduction of nature 
 was a thing absolutely alien to his aims. 
 To take Nature as his basis (as every artist 
 must) ; to keep true to some of her general 
 facts and through these facts to her soul 
 (as every artist should) ; but to make the 
 chosen things speak with a stronger, clearer, 
 more poetic voice, coming from the paint- 
 er's own feelings and ideas when in nature's 
 presence this, perhaps, roughly defines 
 George Fuller's theory of art. To-day and 
 in this new world, such an artistic tempera- 
 ment is uncommon. It is so rare, indeed, 
 that many prophets who are hopeful of our 
 artistic future yet believe that it will be a 
 future devoid of idealism to a most marked 
 
206 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 degree. For myself, I do not think this. 
 But it is the worst of futilities to argue over 
 the hidden things to come. I will there- 
 fore only plead that in the mere existence 
 among us of one such individuality as Ful- 
 ler's we have some ground for wider hope. 
 
 In subject most of Fuller's pictures are 
 extremely simple ; and without exception 
 they are all conceived in a purely pictorial 
 spirit, not depending for their interest on 
 any " literary " or other extrinsic element. 
 Many of them are large single figures, 
 simple in pose, denuded of all accessories, 
 connected with no incident upon the can- 
 vas, and still less with any that a name 
 might suggest to the beholder. In the 
 " Winifred Dysart," for example, we see 
 against a shadowy landscape background 
 with a very high horizon-line and a glimpse 
 of cloud - streaked sunset sky above, the 
 three-quarter-length figure of a young girl 
 dressed in a pale grayish - lilac gown, her 
 arms and neck uncovered, holding in one 
 hand a small empty jug, and looking out 
 of the canvas with a straight though veiled 
 and dreamy gaze. Nothing could be more 
 simple and unstudied than her pose, with 
 both arms hanging loosely by her side, but 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 207 
 
 nothing could be more naively graceful. It 
 is full of pure poetry, this picture not 
 poetry of a literary sort as the factor is too 
 often introduced in art, but of a truly pic- 
 torial kind. We are told nothing of the 
 girl ; there is no " motive " used, no " an- 
 ecdote" suggested. It is herself that in- 
 terests and fascinates us, and less by actual 
 beauty, though this exists in a high degree, 
 than by psychical charm by a spiritual 
 emanation which shines from her face and 
 form and from the artist's every touch. He 
 has made us see not only what he saw in 
 the model before hinv but what he im- 
 agined, divined, or added her inner as 
 well as her outer nature. And as this was 
 a poetical nature, and as it is expressed 
 in a consonant technical style, the result 
 is painted poetry. No more fascinating, 
 haunting, individual figure has come from a 
 contemporary hand ; and it preserves its in- 
 dividuality in presence of the art of past 
 days also it had no prototype or inspira- 
 tion in the work of any other brush. 
 
 In the " Romany Girl " a rather more 
 forceful note is struck, but with almost as 
 elusive a charm and quite as much indi- 
 viduality and beauty. The wild-eyed, half- 
 
208 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 bold yet tender face, the supple action ex- 
 pressed in the quiescent figure, the passion- 
 ate soul that speaks to ours as distinctly as 
 does the gentle soul of the " Winifred " 
 these are the elements which place the 
 canvas amid really creative works. The 
 " Quadroon " has a similar impressiveness. 
 Sitting in the cornfield with her arms rest- 
 ing on her knees, her great despairing eyes 
 turned to ours, she reveals the mystery and 
 suffering of her race. No pictured scene of 
 slave-life, with action, accessories, and story, 
 could be more expressive, more pathetic. 
 These simple single figures, as Fuller has 
 created them, are so full of meaning and 
 individuality as well as of poetic charm that 
 each becomes to us an actual being, remem- 
 bered not as a mere pictured form but as a 
 clear poetical identity. 
 
 The two pictures shown in 1882 seemed 
 to me less perfect than the others, not quite 
 so beautiful or so characteristic. They were 
 transcripts, apparently, of visions that had 
 been less compelling clear in the painter's 
 own mind. The " Priscilla Fauntleroy," 
 however, was only a degree less charming 
 than the " Winifred." It seemed captious 
 to criticise her even in the only way one 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 209 
 
 could by comparing her with her elder 
 sister. Fuller was his own severest critic. 
 If his finest works made us hypercritical he 
 had but himself to blame. 
 
 In the " Priscilla," by the way, and the 
 " Romany Girl " and the " Nydia " we have 
 what may seem to be subjects of literary 
 interest subjects emanating to some de- 
 gree from an author's creative power, not 
 altogether from the painter's. But these ex- 
 ceptions among Fuller's pictures only prove 
 the rule with regard to his intellectual in- 
 dependence. If Hawthorne's ideal in the 
 " Blithedale Romance " inspired the " Pris- 
 cilla," for example, it served merely as a 
 point of departure for the working of Ful- 
 ler's own imagination. The picture is not 
 illustrative in the popular sense, nor does 
 it depend for its interest to any calculable 
 degree upon adherence to its ostensible 
 theme. We may or may not find Haw- 
 thorne's Priscilla in this shy, startled girl 
 with one hand raised in a gentle, half -be- 
 wildered gesture to her face. But in either 
 case we recognize a successful picture, and 
 one that suggests a definite personality 
 filled with delicacy and grace ; and surely 
 this should be true of every creation of the 
 
210 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 sort. Whether or no it affords a complete 
 realization of its extrinsic theme its chief 
 value should be intrinsic. Its pictorial 
 quality should have been first in the artist's 
 mind and should be first to the spectator's 
 sense. The artist should have clearly real- 
 ized an inward ideal of his own whether or 
 not in strict accordance with his author's. 
 We need not concern ourselves very much 
 with the titles a true painter gives his pic- 
 tures. If Fuller's " Priscilla " is not very 
 like Priscilla, and if his " Nydia " is not 
 Nydia at all, it does not matter in the least. 
 The name is the mistake and not the pic- 
 ture. What we are looking for is the illus- 
 tration of some ideal, not of Hawthorne's 
 or of Bulwer's but of Fuller's own. This 
 we get in every case, and if by chance poet 
 and painter are in complete accord if, for 
 instance, Emerson's "Romany Girl" and 
 Fuller's are indeed one and the same 
 the fact hardly increases our pleasure in the 
 picture. We scarcely remember whether 
 Emerson wrote or Fuller painted first, the 
 work of each is so truly a creation of his 
 own. 
 
 The pictorial quality of Fuller's art was 
 strongly shown when he came to actual 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 211 
 
 portraiture. It must have been, I think, a 
 very " paintable " face which could tempt 
 his brush, and a face that might be trans- 
 muted into some kind of beauty. With 
 ugliness, even of a characteristic, expressive 
 sort, his idyllic impulse had no concern. 
 Children and young girls and half-grown 
 blooming boys these are the models he 
 most often chose ; though I remember a 
 portrait of a very old lady which proved 
 him sensible to the beauty of gray hairs 
 too, and able to express it with force as 
 well as poetry. Given sympathetic models, 
 Fuller's portraits have much psychological 
 interest ; and his sympathetic models, being 
 of the sort I have just noted, were those 
 with which this kind of interest is most 
 difficult to attain, since it must be revealed 
 through the smooth unmarked flesh of 
 youth and without strong accentuations of 
 any sort. Yet we cannot but feel that 
 strictly pictorial were of quite as much in- 
 terest to the painter as psychologic possi- 
 bilities. Indeed I once heard him say to a 
 would-be sitter: "Don't expect too much. 
 I shall try to make it something of a por- 
 trait and a good deal of a picture." His 
 portraits, in a word, like his other works, 
 
212 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 belong to the idealizing, not the realistic 
 school ; and about them he most often threw 
 the same vague misty glamour he gave to 
 his purely imaginative pictures an atmos- 
 phere that resulted partly from his way of 
 seeing nature, partly from the technical 
 method which that way of seeing had in- 
 duced. 
 
 Of his landscapes the same words may 
 be used. They are not so much definite 
 picturings of definite localities as idealized 
 studies of foliage, color, and light. The 
 most remarkable, perhaps, is the " Turkey 
 Pasture in Kentucky," the lovely pastoral 
 with which he reappeared at the Academy 
 of Design in 1878. It is wonderful in its 
 strongly poetic yet truthful expression of 
 light, of sun and shadow, and of color, yet 
 almost equally remarkable in grace of com- 
 position, and in the suggested life, motion, 
 and individuality of the figures. 
 
 Such pictures as the " Herb Gatherer " 
 and the "And She Was a Witch" resemble 
 the " Turkey Pasture " in giving us small 
 figures in beautiful landscape settings. But 
 they differ through the presence of a dra- 
 matic, even tragic, element we have not 
 yet encountered. The " Herb Gatherer " 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 213 
 
 shows us the bent and shrunken figure of 
 an aged crone making her painful way 
 through a weedy pasture, carrying the sim- 
 ples she has found. An uncanny, witch- 
 like atmosphere pervades the picture. The 
 face of the woman suggests pasfc beauty, 
 perhaps, but present converse with bitter 
 thoughts ; and the burden she bears seems 
 to speak less of healing draughts than of 
 strange forbidden conjurings and charms. 
 The picture casts a spell about us a spell 
 such as Hawthorne's writing casts, though 
 in the one case as in the other it is hard to 
 explain just how the subtile magic works. 
 In the " Witch " picture the same effect is 
 wrought with more distinctly tragic factors 
 and with even more intensity. The scene 
 is a wooded landscape with tall thin tree- 
 trunks ; in the distance a woman led away 
 to the dread tribunal, in the foreground a 
 girl fleeing in terror to the door of her 
 humble home. Beautiful in its externals, it 
 is weirdly impressive in its import, though 
 here again the sentiment is suggested with- 
 out the aid of any definite incident or story, 
 much being left to the observer's own im- 
 agination. 
 
214 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 IV. 
 
 George Fuller was one of the most con- 
 scientious, or, I might better say, one of 
 the most loving of workmen. No time, no 
 effort, no thought or pains seemed to him 
 too much to bestow on his creations. He 
 worked on them sometimes for years before 
 he allowed the world to see them, in the 
 effort (always, I suppose, appearing fruit- 
 less to the true artist) to make the outward 
 form tally with the inner vision. One 
 could hardly venture to describe any pic- 
 ture still in his hands, knowing his way of 
 suddenly blotting out, after they had stood 
 for many years, perhaps, things which to 
 others seemed entirely good. Even the 
 " Witch" he recast just before he died, and 
 it may no longer be at all as I have writ- 
 ten. A collector who now buys one of Ful- 
 ler's pictures often has, if he could only 
 profit by the fact, a whole little gallery be- 
 neath the outer and visible composition. 
 
 With regard to the aims and ideas with 
 which Fuller approached his work I may 
 quote a few words of his own words, it is 
 but fair to say, that were not written for 
 the public eye : " I have long since learned 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 215 
 
 to look on the painter's stubborn means as 
 a lion in the path to be overcome without 
 leaving evidence of the struggle. What 
 sad days those were twenty years ago or 
 more when every tyro noted down care- 
 fully the palettes of Rembrandt, Rubens, 
 Reynolds, and Stuart thinking thereby to 
 gain some notion of their power; and, if 
 this was not enough, turned to the ' Hand- 
 book of Oil Painting ' by Walker wherein 
 were laid down thirty tints of red, blue, and 
 yellow for the painting of the human head. 
 Experience teaches one, in time, to throw 
 such rubbish aside ; to realize that one must 
 see for himself ; that all rules fail to guide 
 him in color ; that the great painters were 
 not alike in their ways of working, but that 
 all were true to their perceptions of the 
 pervading truth, to their sense of gradation, 
 to their control of their subject (common 
 ground whereon Holbein is a colorist with 
 Titian), and that the attainment of grada- 
 tion is utterly above and regardless of any 
 means used. To make one part keep its 
 place or relation to the whole comes more 
 through our feeling than our seeing. For 
 myself, I am much controlled by the work 
 before me, being greatly influenced by sug- 
 
216 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 gestions which come through much scrap- 
 ing off, glazing, scumbling, etc., in trying 
 to extricate myself from difficulties which 
 my way of working entails upon me al- 
 ways striving for general truth. Indeed, 
 the object to be attained must always be 
 reached through our own methods. The 
 great painters tell us this and leave us to 
 fight it out. They only insist upon grada- 
 tion, the law of which governs values, tones, 
 and harmony, so no detail must interfere 
 with its truth. The main thing is to ex- 
 press broadly and simply, hiding our doing, 
 realizing representation, not reproduction, 
 to get ourselves above our matter. A 
 picture is a world in itself. The great 
 thing is first to have an idea to eliminate 
 and to clear away the obstructions that sur- 
 round it. It is more what is left out than 
 what is put in. The manipulation admired 
 by some the true painter seeks to hide. 
 The question must be, What is below the 
 surface ? Color is intuitive. It belongs to 
 the imagination. It affects the mind like 
 the tones in music, and lives only in the 
 minor key." Of his own picture, the " Girl 
 and Calf," he says: " What shall I make of 
 it? I don't yet know. The subject is all 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 217 
 
 there of course ; but what is subject in a 
 picture ? Nothing. It is the treatment 
 that makes or mars." By treatment we 
 must understand, of course, the personal 
 sentiment as well as the technical manner 
 an artist can bring to bear. " A girl and a 
 calf what is that ? We have all seen 
 such figures a thousand times and taken no 
 interest. It is my business to bring out 
 something the casual eye does not perceive 
 to accentuate, to interpret. Just how I 
 shall do it must come to me as I work or 
 the picture will be nothing." 
 
 These are the words of a pronounced 
 idealist, yet words which, more or less in 
 their entirety, will be echoed by all true 
 artists, of whatever school. No phrase but 
 this one : " Color lives only in the minor 
 key " has so narrow a personal accent that 
 it reveals simply George Fuller instead of 
 the wise artist in the abstract. The dis- 
 ciples of modern dash and brilliancy, how- 
 ever, will see no virtue in the advice to 
 "hide their doing," since this very "doing," 
 independently of what is done, is too often 
 to-day a picture's and an artist's highest 
 claim to honor. That it is a very high 
 claim when well sustained I do not ques- 
 
218 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 tion ; nevertheless, if there were more sig- 
 nificance and individuality of matter be- 
 hind some of the current ease and grace 
 and strength of manner, modern art would 
 greatly be the gainer. 
 
 V. 
 
 Fuller's technical manner has been the 
 subject of much discussion and disagree- 
 ment a sure proof of its individuality if 
 of nothing more. To some observers it 
 seems not only original but very beautiful, 
 with its subdued and misty yet glowing 
 color, its somewhat wilful chiaroscuro, its 
 synthetized drawing, its almost diaphanous 
 textures, and its vague, involved, half-hesi- 
 tating touches, where the handle of the 
 brush seems as often to have been at work 
 as its proper end. To others his manner 
 has seemed a drawback, an imperfection, or 
 even an affectation a mannerism that 
 clouds the better elements of his art. To 
 me, however, it always seemed impossible 
 thus to separate Fuller's matter from his 
 manner. His soft rich color in its " minor 
 key," his vague backgrounds, his shadowy 
 outlines, his broadened details, his misty 
 touch, seemed a very part and parcel of his 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 219 
 
 conceptions and his aims. This impression 
 was confirmed when I saw one of his earlier 
 works a portrait painted long ago, before 
 the European trip and the Deerfield her- 
 mit life, the head of a young man with a 
 fair complexion and a brown beard. It was 
 fine in color though without the harmony 
 of tone Fuller mastered later on ; perfectly 
 simple in execution; much more definite, 
 more detailed, more "realistic" and more 
 commonplace than we might believe had 
 ever been possible to his brush. Only in 
 some intangibly suggested quality of feel- 
 ing could one see any trace of the later 
 Fuller ; and this quality, we felt, was but 
 clumsily expressed. The painter's poetic 
 meaning seemed out of harmony with his 
 prosaic speech. We longed to see the same 
 face copied in the language he taught him- 
 self long after it was painted a language 
 much more delicate, abstract, dreamy, and 
 therefore much better fitted to translate an 
 idealist's conception. 
 
 If we look instead at the records he has 
 left us in this later language our belief in 
 its Tightness (for him) steadily grows upon 
 us. If it is not " clear " in the popular 
 sense, it is supremely clear in the true sense 
 
220 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 iii its ability to reveal precisely what 
 Fuller wanted to say. Look at the "Wini- 
 fred," which may be called the pearl in his 
 treasury. Could there be a greater com- 
 pleteness in rendering, given just this idea 
 to render? Could conception and expres- 
 sion be more closely bound together? Can 
 we, indeed, separate the one from the other? 
 Idea, sentiment, color, line, tone, handling 
 
 all are at one, all are one. The picture 
 is an entity which we may take or leave, 
 like or dislike, but cannot pick apart and 
 praise for this, condemn for that. " Wini- 
 fred," the " Romany Girl," the " Herb 
 Gatherer," the " Turkey Pasture," painted 
 by some clear and rapid Parisian hand 
 would have been as obscured and lost as a 
 dashing Parisian beauty, or a stretch of 
 turbulent sunlit boulevard, had it fallen 
 under Fuller's mist-enwrapped and poetiz- 
 ing brush. 
 
 As a colorist Fuller's charm is to me very 
 great. His range is called narrow but there 
 is an essential difference, I think, between 
 the cool green scale he adopted in some of 
 his landscapes, the delicate grayish harmony 
 of the " Winifred," the deeper, browner tone 
 of the "Romany Girl," the rosy glow of the 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 221 
 
 "Nydia," and the soft golden hue of many 
 of his portraits. It is probable that his 
 ever-present mistiness of touch, and the fact 
 that with all his modulations he always 
 holds to his " minor key," make his color 
 seem to careless observers more unvarying 
 than it really is. Sometimes it is perfect 
 in its beauty, and it is always entirely in- 
 dividual. Its excellence never consists in 
 brilliancy, but in harmony, in complete 
 tone, in the way things are made to keep 
 in place, and to reveal their forms and re- 
 lationships, without recourse to the least 
 violence of contrast. There is no accen- 
 tuation in Fuller's work, never a vivid hue, 
 a really high light, or a really low dark. 
 There is no emphasis whatever, either in 
 the color or in its application, but always 
 delicacy, self-restraint, suavity, mellowness, 
 low, soft-toned, misty harmony. Yet there 
 is no lack of strength in his best examples, 
 and certainly no deficiency in the expres- 
 sion of those broad facts which he wished 
 to show. The " Turkey Pasture " is the 
 most radiant and sunshiny of all his pic- 
 tures ; the " Winifred Dysart " perhaps the 
 most delicately and rarely colored. But 
 one of the most delightful of all in color 
 
222 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 was a portrait I saw in his studio not long 
 before he died the three-quarter length 
 figure of a young girl standing against a 
 background of russet-hued landscape, fine 
 in its suggestion of breeze and life. The 
 dress was white, but the word gives little 
 notion of the subtile tone by which the art- 
 ist had subdued its crudeness and brought 
 it into keeping with the glowing back- 
 ground. As usual, there was little insist- 
 ence upon textures except as regards the 
 flesh. All was broadened, simplified, poet- 
 ized taken out of the world of detailed 
 imitation into a realm of somewhat ethereal 
 yet clearly realized imaginings. 
 
 VI. 
 
 There are idealists as well as realists 
 who might have been born in any land. 
 But there are others who could have sprung 
 up and developed only in the soil which ac- 
 tually bore them ; and among these last is 
 Fuller. He is as American in his art as 
 the most thorough -going young realist who 
 paints New York streets by the electric 
 light, or negro boys eating watermelons. 
 Yes, far more American than most of these ; 
 for, I say again, the spirit, the quality, of a 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 223 
 
 man's art do not depend upon his subject- 
 matter, and it so happens that many of our 
 young painters approach local subjects with 
 a sort of cold cosmopolitan vision, while 
 Fuller felt his more subtilely characteristic 
 themes with a characteristically American 
 soul. No one, it seems to me, but an 
 American could have painted the " Wini- 
 fred Dysart," that etherealization of our 
 own native type of beauty. No one else 
 could have preserved the elusive yet dis- 
 tinct American look of all Fuller's por- 
 trait sitters, though veiling their features 
 in the haze of vaporous methods. And his 
 "Romany Girl" would be an American 
 gypsy even to those who knew nothing of 
 Emerson's verse a wild creature of our 
 own wild woods. It is the same with the 
 " Nydia." It is not so interesting in char- 
 acter as most of its companions, for the 
 face is seen in something less than profile ; 
 but in refinement and delicacy of feeling, 
 in perception of the peculiar beauty of early 
 youth, of freshness, innocence, and shy 
 grace, it is akin, as I heard one careful 
 critic say, " to the creations of a Reynolds 
 or a Greuze." But just as clearly as Sir 
 Joshua's young girls are English, just so 
 
224 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 distinctly is this little so-called Nydia an 
 American, though a poetized, etherealized 
 American. The evidence thereof is intan- 
 gible, elusive, inexplicable in words, of 
 course, lying, perhaps, just in the poise of 
 the head and outline of the nose and cheek. 
 Yet it is so clear that the title seems indeed 
 ill-chosen. No one could divine Bulwer's 
 blind Thessalian in this dainty rosy little 
 maid, not even by the help of the shadowy 
 volcanic suggestions which the background 
 shows. It was a mistake, perhaps, for an 
 artist of this temper ever to essay illustra- 
 tion even in the vaguest and most general 
 way. The effort must have hampered his 
 brush a little, although such a brush could 
 not very seriously try to bend itself to ex- 
 trinsic requirements. And while no title 
 troubles those who care for pictures as pic- 
 tures, an artist had better not forget the 
 fact that there are many persons who think 
 the suggestions of a name are the chief 
 things to be looked for in a painting, and 
 resent their non-fulfilment as they would 
 the breaking of a solemn contract. 
 
 Of course with such subjects as he chose 
 and such methods as he used, the national 
 accent of George Fuller's art is never sharp, 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 225 
 
 much less aggressive. He was not the man 
 to realize Walt Whitman's ideal of our 
 painters' duty : 
 
 " To formulate the modern ; 
 
 To limn with absolute faith the mighty, living present ; 
 To exalt the present and the real ; 
 
 To teach the average man the glory of his daily walk 
 and trade." 
 
 It was nothing so definite as this with Ful- 
 ler. He has more the sort of brush that 
 
 " An odor I 'd bring as of forests of pine in March." 
 
 It is a flavor, not a message, from the na- 
 tional life that we recognize in his crea- 
 tions. But it is a flavor both acute and all- 
 pervading. So at least it seems to me ; for 
 criticism of this kind cannot be dogmatic 
 it must be the mere putting on record of 
 personal impressions. 
 
 But if I may trust such impressions still a 
 little further I will add that to me Fuller's 
 art is not only American but distinctly local. 
 It has an aroma I will not say of Boston 
 but perhaps of Concord. It is a painter's 
 version of the delicate " transcendental " 
 New England poesy that is fast dying out 
 of this generation, but the essence of which 
 is preserved to us in the writings of the 
 
226 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 last. Hawthorne's name has occurred more 
 than once already to my pen, and it well 
 suggests the quality of Fuller's art. Such 
 a canvas as the " Witch " recalls Haw- 
 thorne's mood even to dull perceptions 
 not more by its choice of subject than by 
 its subtilely artistic, dreamy, individual 
 methods of expression. But more convin- 
 cing still is the fact that when the " Wini- 
 fred Dysart " was first exhibited and people 
 were speculating about its name, almost 
 every one said : " I am sure she must be 
 some character of Hawthorne's, though I 
 cannot fix her place," while in truth the 
 name was invented by Fuller, merely be- 
 cause he thought a canvas ought to have 
 some title to identify it in the public mind. 
 
 VII. 
 
 A few weeks after George Fuller's death 
 in April, 1884, one hundred and seventy- 
 five of his pictures were collected for exhi- 
 bition in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. 
 I shall aways count it a great misfortune 
 that I did not see them there ; but so many 
 of them were well known to me that I 
 could guess the effect they made upon those 
 who judged them all together embracing 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 227 
 
 as they did almost all his more important 
 works, and showing him at his best while 
 at his weakest too. 
 
 If I try now to explain this effect it is 
 for the sake of saying a word on those vexed 
 questions of originality, versatility, and man- 
 nerism in art which are important because 
 so often wrongly envisaged by the layman's 
 mind. 
 
 A glance at the collection undoubtedly 
 revealed at once, as the prime characteristic 
 of George Fuller's art, an intense individ- 
 uality, a distinct unlikeness to the art of 
 any other man. But there was very likely 
 disagreement with regard to the value of 
 this characteristic, since it involved a cer- 
 tain narrowness of range. Very likely, 
 there were not a few observers who would 
 have preferred to find, in so large an ex- 
 hibition, a wider range of subject-matter, 
 more variety in composition, a greater vari- 
 ability in feeling and less constancy in tech- 
 nical directions. A charge often brought 
 before against Fuller the charge of mo- 
 notony as regards not only his color but the 
 essence of his work as a whole was prob- 
 ably repeated with no little insistence. 
 
 It should, however, be remembered in the 
 
228 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 first place that no artist paints to fill a gal- 
 lery with his pictures. He paints in the 
 hope that they will be scattered far and 
 wide, each to bring his artistic message 
 into a new home and before a new group of 
 eyes. Why then should he strive to make 
 each quite unlike its fellows? Why, too, 
 in any case, should he strive for great un- 
 likeness since there will almost certainly be 
 but one direction in which he can do his 
 very best? We can count upon the fin- 
 gers of a sigle hand those greatest men 
 of genius who could be themselves, in the 
 truest, fullest sense of the term, no matter 
 what subject they might choose, what man- 
 ner they might put on. Their versatility 
 multiplies their crowns of glory, but does 
 not increase the radiance of any single one. 
 And the average man of genius if I may 
 use such a phrase must content himself 
 with one crown, and merely strive to 
 make it shine as brightly as he can. The 
 man who could paint the "Winifred" and 
 the "Turkey Pasture" was a true crea- 
 tive artist. We go outside the legitimate 
 bounds of criticism when we cavil because 
 he could not also give us other and quite 
 different things ; and he would have gone 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 229 
 
 outside the path of wisdom had he tried to 
 do so. 
 
 Variety we want in art, I know ; but the 
 best way to get it is not for one man to try 
 for very varied things. It is a fallacy, I 
 am sure, to think so ; but a fallacy by the 
 light of which much modern criticism is 
 penned, and much modern painting is, alas, 
 accomplished. A truer recipe would pre- 
 scribe, as the best way of securing vital and 
 valuable variety, the best way of rescuing 
 art from that slough of imitation, repetition, 
 conventionality, and formality, into which 
 ever and anon it seems like to sink and 
 flounder, a truer recipe would prescribe 
 that each artist should set himself first of 
 all to find some one artistic message which 
 he can deliver better than all others. If he 
 cannot discover such a message, or if, when 
 discovered, it is not one which no other 
 brush can tell in just his fashion, he is not 
 a great artist. The divine gift of per- 
 sonal insight is denied him. He is forever 
 shut out from the divine mission of being 
 an interpreter between Nature and man- 
 kind. He must content himself with being 
 a mere copyist of Nature's superficial face 
 or of the work of her true interpreters. A 
 
230 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 clever painter he may learn to be, but 
 of clever painters the world has perhaps 
 enough. What it needs, what it will al- 
 ways need and welcome, is the original 
 artist, the born seer and demonstrator. If, 
 then, I repeat, a man can find some one 
 way in which this mission is possible to 
 him, let him cultivate and keep to it, 
 broadening it as far as possible, but not 
 stepping out of its limits into alien paths. 
 Let him tell his own story in his own voice, 
 and not trouble heart and hand with the 
 idea that " novelties " are asked of him. 
 Thus and thus only can art as a whole 
 secure that variety, that versatility, that 
 width of range and depth of insight, that 
 truth and force and flexibility, which make 
 it the delight and glory of a nation instead 
 of a mere skin-deep accomplishment, coldly 
 practised and but lightly prized. 
 
 There is, I know, a danger connected 
 with this manner of conceiving one's work 
 the danger of falling into routine and 
 mere self - repetition, of giving, instead of 
 ever-new readings of the same artistic mes- 
 sage, mere reechoes of readings already laid 
 before the world ; the danger, in a word, of 
 cultivating mannerism in thought, senti- 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 231 
 
 ment, and treatment. The risk is real and 
 deadly. Mannerism is an easy thing to 
 yield to, and a thing which must vitiate all 
 power since it implies a deadening of the 
 perceptive faculties as regards both the 
 world of nature and the products of the 
 brush. But as it does imply this, it will be 
 seen that a really earnest and enthusiastic 
 temperament may well escape it. And 
 with all its dangers mannerism, I think, is 
 less to be dreaded than that dissipation of 
 force, that weakening of insight, that dilu- 
 tion of feeling, that lapsing into mere ex- 
 periment (never to be pushed to valuable 
 outcome), which so often follow upon the 
 desire to avoid its risks. 
 
 This is the mood in which George Fuller 
 lived and worked. He had a peculiar way 
 of seeing and feeling nature, and he culti- 
 vated that way and strove to make his tech- 
 nical manner truthfully express it. He did 
 not try to see like any other man alive or 
 dead, or to paint like any other, or to paint 
 such things as appealed to others. He tried 
 to be himself, and to show himself to us as 
 clearly and completely as he could. 
 
 The charge of mannerism is one that 
 could not fail to be brought against any 
 
232 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 work so single in its aim, so uniform in its 
 feeling and its processes ; and I do not deny 
 that certain of his pictures give color to the 
 charge : they are dilutions or repetitions of 
 happier creations rather than true creations 
 in themselves. But this is merely to say 
 that no man is always at his best. Weak 
 essays we can always find in the legacy of a 
 prolific painter. Sometimes we may be jus- 
 tified in feeling that they would have been 
 fewer if he had gone differently about his 
 work ; if, for example, in the case of a very 
 "individual" painter, he had tried to widen 
 his range a little. But oftener these lapses 
 are but due to the fact that there are times 
 when even the most earnest and able worker 
 will fall below himself and be less clear of 
 eye, less sensitive in feeling, less happy in 
 conception and eloquent in speech, than in 
 his strongest hours. So it was with Fuller. 
 When we think of his work as a whole, we 
 do not feel that he was mistaken in limiting 
 his efforts within a comparatively narrow 
 range. On the contrary, we feel that his 
 fine works are finer than they would have 
 been had he diffused himself more widely, 
 and that his weaker ones would probably 
 not have gained in such a case. I do not 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 233 
 
 think the vice of mannerism often or deeply 
 affected his art ; and I am sure it would not 
 have been well replaced by the opposite sin 
 of uncongenial effort. 
 
 Even if we use a milder word than man- 
 nerism and say monotony, again I think it 
 is less applicable to his work than some 
 would have us grant. There is indeed, 
 great diversity between his pictures, if we 
 look a little deeper than the surface of the 
 paint. It is true that he who has seen one 
 Fuller will never mistake another; but it 
 is not true, as I have heard it bluntly put, 
 that he who has seen one has seen them all. 
 The character of Fuller's handling is per- 
 sistent, and has been the more remarked on 
 account of its strong personality. But in 
 their meaning, their conception, their inner 
 essence as apart from the language which re- 
 veals it, I am sure there is a vital difference 
 between such pictures as the " Priscilla " 
 and the "Witch," the "Winifred," the 
 "Quadroon," and the " Herb Gatherer;" 
 and in addition to these have we not a 
 long list of portraits and of landscapes 
 which vary much among themselves ? 
 
 If a man can create for the meeting of 
 his own needs a novel, personal, and charm- 
 
234 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 ing form of pictorial expression, he is a mas- 
 ter among painters as distinguished from an 
 accomplished, even consummately accom- 
 plished scholar ; and if he possesses imag- 
 ination power of individual vision and of 
 fresh conception he is an artist as distin- 
 guished from even a masterly painter. In 
 this sense George Fuller was both an artist 
 and a master. His imagination was not of 
 a powerful kind. His poetry is seductive 
 not compelling, idyllic not passionate ; it 
 marks him a dreamer not a seer ; but it is 
 true poetry and proper to himself alone. 
 On the other hand, his workmanship is not 
 brilliant, not audacious, not the marvellous 
 legerdemain with which the hand of some 
 lesser artist may often dazzle our eye ; but 
 it is very artistic, very expressive, when at 
 its best extremely beautiful, and always all 
 his own learned from no forerunner and 
 to be learned by no successor. Original 
 and delightful conceptions told in an origi- 
 nal and charming tongue : this is the sum- 
 ming-up, and it puts George Fuller in a 
 high place. It puts him with the best of 
 his guild, although not of necessity with the 
 very first among them. His long retire- 
 ment from the world was a dangerous ex- 
 
GEORGE FULLER. 235 
 
 periment. Given a lower nature, a duller 
 conscience, a less thoroughly artistic soul, 
 he would probably have developed weak- 
 nesses of many kinds rigid mannerisms, 
 self-conceit, want of mental and technical 
 balance, loss of insight into his own work 
 and the work of others. But to Fuller this 
 seclusion meant fifteen years of patient, 
 humble, enthusiastic, self-reliant yet self- 
 criticising toil, in wise disregard of popular 
 advisings. It meant the persistence of his 
 own ideal and the development of his ex- 
 pressional means along a parallel line. And 
 it resulted in art of an ideal kind, personal, 
 lovely, pure, and true. 
 
 Another word I must add, not so much 
 with reference to Fuller as to myself and 
 those whose work, like mine, is to write of 
 art and artists. It is often said, when we 
 confess to knowing and admiring an artist 
 as well as his art, that we confuse the one 
 sentiment with the other. We are told 
 that we praise him either with conscious 
 friendly falsehood or with unconscious 
 friendly bias. It is presumed that the per- 
 sonal had preceded the critical estimate, 
 whereas, in truth, it more often follows as a 
 consequence. I would not dwell upon such 
 
236 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 a point did I not know how widespread a 
 feeling this is, and how constantly it mili- 
 tates against the acceptance of the most 
 well-considered and impartial verdicts. Of 
 course there is danger of bias (either for or 
 against, be it said), when a writer comes in 
 personal contact with an artist ; bat it must 
 be incurred, for the greater risk of misappre- 
 hension and partial insight threatens if one 
 knows the work alone and not the worker 
 too. Of a single picture one may judge by 
 its own witness only ; but not of all the 
 work of a painter's life. To do this one 
 must know aims, intentions, moods, and 
 methods, as well as mere results. My ear- 
 nest admiration for George Fuller's art first 
 put me in the way of knowing him ; and it 
 was a piece of good fortune, to be treasured 
 in this contradictory world, that I found 
 him so exactly what a lover of his pictures 
 would have wished. 
 
VI. 
 
 WINSLOW HOMER. 
 1836. 
 
 WINSLOW HOMER holds an intermediate 
 place between our elder and our younger 
 painters. Like a few others of great dis- 
 tinction like George Fuller, George In- 
 ness, William Hunt, and John La Farge 
 he cannot be classed with those who repre- 
 sent the ante-bellum period of American 
 art, or with that very different band who 
 began their work about the time of our 
 centennial celebration. Alike in the date 
 and in the nature of his success he stands 
 apart from both these well-defined groups. 
 In aim, spirit, and result his art is as rad- 
 ically modern as the most recent which 
 reveals the effect of foreign training on 
 American minds and hands; yet he is as 
 distinctively an American product as were 
 those painters of the old " Hudson River 
 school " whose work shows no point of 
 affinity with his own. 
 
238 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 Winslow Homer was born in Boston in 
 1836. When he was six years old his 
 family removed to Cambridge, where coun- 
 try life fostered the tastes and feelings 
 he has revealed so clearly in his work. 
 Never was any painter more rurally-minded. 
 Never did any dweller in cities more com- 
 pletely ignore on canvas not their existence 
 only but also the existence of the human 
 types they foster. Of course this would not 
 be remarkable were he simply a landscape 
 painter ; but while landscape elements are 
 very prominent in his work, humanity is 
 rarely absent and is usually his chief con- 
 cern. But it is rustic humanity always, or 
 of late years, humanity which goes down 
 to the sea in fishing - boats. The rural 
 American of his earlier pictures is shown 
 with a persistency, a sympathy, and a 
 simple directness of speech quite unequalled 
 in our art. We get the very quintessence 
 of New England forms and faces, and of 
 New England fields and hillsides, in this 
 early work, and just as truly the quintes- 
 sence of negro life and its surroundings. 
 No man could mistake the home and peo- 
 
WINSLOW HOMER. 239 
 
 pie of this painter. No man could doubt 
 his being a Yankee by birth and nature. 
 It was this national flavor that caused his 
 work to be so much noticed at the Paris 
 Exhibition of 1878, and so much praised 
 by critics who saw its technical shortcom- 
 ings but forgave them because of the gen- 
 uine transatlantic sentiment that was ex- 
 pressed in their despite. 
 
 Homer's taste for art seems to have de- 
 veloped very early, for we are told that by 
 the time he was twelve he had accumulated 
 a large stock of crayon drawings. His 
 efforts were encouraged by his father, a 
 fact in refreshing contrast to the common 
 course of artistic true - love, and at the 
 age of nineteen he was apprenticed to Buf- 
 ford, a lithographer in Boston. The first 
 work of his apprenticeship was in the shape 
 of title - pages for sheet music ; the most 
 important, perhaps, was a series of portraits 
 of all the members of the Massachusetts 
 Senate. When he came of age he aban- 
 doned the lithographer's craft, both the 
 mechanical and the business requirements 
 of which had galled him, and set up a 
 studio in Boston. He designed much for 
 the Messrs. Harpers' wood-engravers, and 
 
240 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 the firm soon offered him a permanent en- 
 gagement. But he refused to bind himself 
 in any way again, and worked on inde- 
 pendently, studying all the while. In 1859 
 he removed to New York, and entered the 
 night-schools of the Academy. In 1861 he 
 began for the first time to use color, going 
 directly to nature for models and to his 
 own instinct for methods. With the out- 
 break of the war he went to Washington, 
 and thence to the front with the army of 
 the Potomac, at first as artist-correspondent 
 for the Harpers and later to serve his pri- 
 vate aims. His first oil paintings were 
 war scenes among them the well-known 
 " Prisoners from the Front." 
 
 After the war the young artist made his 
 home for many years in New York. Now 
 he lives winter and summer in an isolated 
 cottage not far from Scarboro' on the coast 
 of Maine, and pays but brief visits to the 
 city. He has been prolific in oil, in water- 
 color, and in black-and-white. Most of his 
 work has been in the line of out-door genre, 
 though he sometimes gives us landscape by 
 itself, sometimes interiors, and occasionally 
 figures whose surroundings are of slight 
 importance. Every one remembers the small 
 
W1NSLOW HOMER. 241 
 
 water-colors he used to send by the dozen 
 to each annual exhibition the barefoot, 
 sun -bonneted little girls; the flocks of 
 ragged sheep with a half-grown shepherd- 
 ess, perhaps, in pink or lilac calico ; the 
 Yankee boys playing marbles by the gaunt 
 old school -house or lolling under apple- 
 boughs through which the sun was sifting ; 
 the negro urchins eating water-melons ; the 
 tall haymakers in shirt-sleeves and coarse 
 hide boots ; the thousand and one rustic 
 scenes mere pictorial scenes without in- 
 cident or story that were recorded with 
 so much freshness, truth, and force if with 
 so little beauty. And we remember just 
 as well his more elaborate early works in 
 oil interiors of negro-huts or New Eng- 
 land farm-houses characteristically peopled, 
 and groups of blue-coats which came fre- 
 quently in war-times. Here, too, Homer 
 was a painter of simple incident and pic- 
 torial effect, never of stories or dramatic 
 meanings. His soldier-boys were painted 
 for their own sake, not for the sake of the 
 actions they performed ; so far as I recol- 
 lect, he never portrayed a scene of actual 
 conflict. 
 
 With all these things every visitor to 
 
242 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 our galleries soon became familiar, for it 
 is a noteworthy point about Homer's work 
 that it always makes itself felt, no matter 
 what its surroundings may chance to be. 
 Every passer-by marks it at once, and gives 
 it a decided verdict of approval or dis- 
 praise. No one can be blind to it in the 
 first place or indifferent in the second, as 
 one may be to most of the things by which 
 it is encompassed on the average exhibition 
 wall things probably more pretty and 
 possibly more polished, but in almost every 
 case much weaker and more conventional, 
 less original and at the same time less 
 truthful. An instance in point is the way 
 in which it affected my own childish eyes 
 in days when I dared to hold very few posi- 
 tive opinions about works of art. As a 
 youthful student of exhibitions and picture- 
 papers, I remember to have hated Winslow 
 Homer in quite vehement and peculiar 
 fashion, acknowledging thereby his personal 
 quality and his strength, and also his free- 
 dom from those neat little waxy prettinesses 
 of idea and expression which are so alien 
 to true art but always so attractive to the 
 childish mind, whether it be lodged in a 
 body childish or adult. 
 
WIN SLOW HOMER. 243 
 
 Looking back to-day at these early pic- 
 tures they seem most remarkable for their 
 revelation of a bold, unguided effort to 
 paint outdoor nature as it actually appears, 
 and to translate its broad effect rather than 
 its details. Crude, harsh, and awkward 
 though they were, there was the true breath 
 of life in them all the glint of actual 
 sunshine, the smell of mother - earth, an 
 accent in every line and tone which proved 
 that they had been painted face to face with 
 facts, and that no fact had been hard 
 eneugh or new enough to daunt the 'pren- 
 tice hand which wrought them. To-day 
 such characteristics might not seem remark- 
 able. The plein air gospel and the gospel 
 of " breadth " are commonplaces now. 
 Every tyro thinks of his " personal impres- 
 sions," scorns studio receipts and conven- 
 tional ideals, tries, at least, to use his own 
 eyes, and feels bound to wrestle with the 
 outdoor world in all its vividness of bold 
 blues and greens and its brilliancy of full 
 sunlight. But in New York at that time 
 even a picture which was painted out of 
 doors was painted with reference to studio 
 formulas, and with far more thought for 
 truth to minor facts than for the " first im- 
 
244 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 pression " or the " general effect." Not 
 only were the special problems of what we 
 now call modern art neglected the fact 
 that nature presented them was scarcely 
 felt. What we now call modern landscape 
 painting had not even been foreseen. I * 
 think we must place Winslow Homer first 
 in time among the many real outdoor paint- 
 ers of landscape whom we have to-day, and 
 certainly he was first among our outdoor 
 painters of the figure. He was a follower 
 of Corot in spirit though by no means in 
 mood or manner - before he can ever have 
 seen a Corot, a " realist " before the real- 
 istic school was recognized, an " impres- 
 sionist" before the name had been in- 
 vented. 
 
 n. 
 
 Eight or nine years ago Winslow Homer 
 astonished many who, knowing his work 
 very well, thought they had gauged his 
 talent and understood its preferences and 
 its range ; for he then exhibited a series of 
 water-colors conceived in an entirely novel 
 vein. No one could have guessed that he 
 might attempt such things ; yet the mo- 
 ment they were shown no one could doubt 
 whose hand had been at work so strong 
 
WINSLOW HOMER. 245 
 
 were they, so fresh and free and native. 
 They were marine studies of inconsidera- 
 ble size, done at Gloucester, Massachusetts. 
 Never before had Homer made color his 
 chief aim or chief means of expression. 
 In his paintings his scheme had usually 
 been cold and unattractive. In his aqua- 
 relles he had often used very vivid hues, but 
 rather, it seemed, for the purpose of portray- 
 ing the effect of strong sunlight than with 
 an eye to color for its own sake ; and the 
 result had been vigor not unmixed with 
 crudeness. But in these marine studies 
 color had been his chief concern, and there 
 was much less crudeness, much more beauty 
 in the result. Most of them were stormy 
 sunset views, broadly indicated, strongly 
 emphasized. A sweep of red-barred black 
 water, a stretch of black-barred red sky, 
 and the great black sails of a fishing-boat 
 set against them, with no detail, and the 
 fewest of rough brush-strokes, gave us the 
 color-scheme of nature intensified, and na- 
 ture's movement too the slow rise and 
 fall of the billows, the lurch of the boat, the 
 heavy pulsation of the air. The hues were 
 a palpable exaggeration of the hues of na- 
 ture ; but all color that is homogeneous and 
 
246 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 good on canvas must be an exaggeration in 
 one way or another. No one can paint na- 
 ture's color just as it appears; and if one 
 could, the result would not be clear and ex- 
 pressive art. " Art is a state of compro- 
 mises, of sacrifices " we have seen it in 
 studying Corot much omitted or altered 
 for the sake of the clear showing and accent- 
 ing of a little. Most artists accomplish this 
 end by the weakening process by conceiv- 
 ing the scene before them in a lower, duller, 
 less positive key than nature's, and subdu- 
 ing all the notes in such a manner that the 
 chief ones may seem strong enough by con- 
 trast. To use a familiar phrase, they tone 
 things down. But Homer had gone the 
 other way to work in these little marines 
 and had toned things up. He had boldly 
 omitted all tones which could not serve his 
 purpose, which was to show the demo- 
 niac splendor of stormy sunset skies and 
 waters, and then had keyed the chosen 
 tones to deeper force, made them doubly 
 powerful, the reds stronger and the blacks 
 blacker, emphasizing a theme which might 
 well have been thought already too pro- 
 nounced for artistic use. That he could do 
 this and keep balance in his work is a pa- 
 
WINSLOW HOMER. 247 
 
 tent proof of his artistic power. For though 
 over-statement is not more non-natural or 
 unallowable in art than under-statement, 
 yet under-statement is, of course, the easier, 
 safer kind of adaptation. If this is unsuc- 
 cessful the result is merely weak; but 
 unsuccessful over -statement is atrocious. 
 Homer, however, was so clear and sane and 
 well-poised in his exaggerations that he did 
 more than satisfy the eye. He opened it 
 to the full force and beauty of the natural 
 effects he had translated, and filled for us 
 every future stormy sunset sea with memo- 
 ries of how he had portrayed one like it. 
 
 Nevertheless I would not be understood 
 to mean that even in these pictures he had 
 won himself the right to be called a colorist 
 in the highest sense. His color was good in 
 its way and most impressive. But the finest 
 color, no matter how great its simplicity 
 and strength, must always preserve an ele- 
 ment of suavity ; and suavity, sensuous 
 charm of any kind, was wholly absent from 
 these pictures. There was grandeur in 
 them all despite their extreme simplicity ; 
 but they were rude, violent, almost brutal. 
 Those who remember them will remember 
 also how they divided the honors of the ex- 
 
248 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 hibition with certain water-colors sent from 
 Munich by Frank Currier these likewise 
 being color-studies of stormy sunset skies 
 though over moorland instead of water. In 
 comparing them one saw the difference be- 
 tween a natural colorist like Currier and a 
 vigorous artist like Homer, who, although he 
 could make himself felt through color, did 
 not handle it as though born to this sole 
 end. Currier's drawings, in spite of their 
 great breadth and hurrying dash of method, 
 were far more suave in tone, more subtile in 
 suggestion, more harmonious, more beauti- 
 ful ; and they were also more skilful and re- 
 fined in execution. But they were no more 
 artistic in conception than Homer's, no 
 stronger, no more valuable, as fresh, frank 
 records of personal sensations felt in the 
 face of nature ; and they lacked the native 
 American accent which Homer had put 
 into even his waves and boats. 
 
 HL 
 
 At the Water-color Exhibition of 1883 
 Homer again surprised us by a series of 
 drawings with novel claims to admiration. 
 These were pictures of English fisher-girls, 
 set, as usual with him, in landscape sur- 
 
WIN SLOW HOMER. 249 
 
 roun dings almost as important as the fig- 
 ures themselves, and were by far the finest 
 works he had yet shown in any medium. 
 It is true they lacked one quality which we 
 had prized in his earlier art the distinc- 
 tively American accent. But we could not 
 resent the fact since, if an artist chooses a 
 foreign theme he must see it, of course, in 
 its own proper light or do neutral work 
 without salt or savor. To paint English 
 girls as though they were New Englanders 
 would have been as great an artistic weak- 
 ness as the much more common one of 
 painting Yankees to look like Brittany 
 peasants. Homer had clearly understood 
 and expressed the American type during 
 many years of labor. Yet he now freed 
 himself so wholly from its influence that 
 these English girls were as typically Eng- 
 lish as any which had ever come from a 
 British hand. Surely the fact is but an- 
 other proof of his artistic individuality, his 
 freedom from conventionalism in thought or 
 method. 
 
 Three or four of these pictures the 
 " Voice from the Cliffs," for instance, " In- 
 side the Bar," " Teignmouth," and the 
 "Coming Storm" soon became widely 
 
250 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 known through reproductions in the " Cen- 
 tury Magazine " and other periodicals ; and 
 the strong impression they made was deep- 
 ened when a large collection of similar 
 water-colors was separately exhibited in 
 New York and Boston. Then we saw how 
 great indeed had been the painter's progress. 
 He had improved his color while losing 
 nothing of its personality. The dark gray 
 tone of " Inside the Bar " a fish - wife 
 fighting against the wind, with swirling 
 waves and clouds beyond her and two boats 
 in the middle distance was admirably 
 kept and modulated, and gave as fine a sky 
 as I remember to have seen in water-color 
 work from any brush ; and though the 
 flesh-tones were too purplish for truth or 
 beauty, they worked in well with the gen- 
 eral scheme. In the " Voice from the 
 Cliffs," where there were three figures, the 
 same fault in the flesh-tones appeared. Yet 
 one could not say the picture was disagree- 
 able in color. It was pitched in a peculiar 
 and rather crude though powerful key, but 
 it held well together within that key ; and 
 need I affirm it? harmony, unity, is 
 the first thing for which we ask in color. 
 Moreover, among the less famous pictures 
 
WINSLOW HOMER. 251 
 
 of this English series there were some that 
 were really beautiful in color frank, bril- 
 liant, pure, and even charming. In hand- 
 ling there was likewise great improvement 
 more skill, more refinement, more deli- 
 cacy, while no decrease in strength. 
 
 But the most interesting thing about all 
 these pictures was their beauty of line. 
 Linear beauty is a rare quality in modern 
 art a quality, indeed, for which a modern 
 artist scarcely ever strives without a lapse 
 into conventionality and pseudo-classic life- 
 lessness. And it is a quality which, from 
 early signs, we might have thought the last 
 that Winslow Homer could achieve. He 
 had never even seemed to think of it before. 
 In his paintings composition had been pretty 
 good but not remarkably good, and in his 
 aquarelles it had been quite neglected. So 
 far as I remember his early work, he had 
 never shown a care for really effective, well 
 balanced composition, and still less any 
 trace of feeling for the charm and value of 
 pure linear beauty. Compare the carelessly 
 chosen attitudes, the angular contours, the 
 awkwardly truthful gestures of his New 
 England figures with the sculptural grace of 
 these fisher-girls, and no contrast could be 
 greater. 
 
252 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 Novelty in choice of subject does not ex- 
 plain the improvement. Had Homer seen 
 with the same eyes as before and worked 
 with the same ends in view, he would not 
 have perceived and emphasized the splendid 
 linear suggestions of his new models, more 
 patent though they were than those of his 
 fellow -countryfolk. For, although more 
 patent, they had still been suggestions only, 
 not plain, persistent characteristics of every 
 figure and attitude he may have chanced to 
 see. They had been no more than possibili- 
 ties awaiting discovery and development at 
 the eye of artistic selection. Look at the 
 woman in " Inside the Bar." No figure 
 could be more genuine and veracious; but 
 it is very beautiful too, even in the almost 
 over-bold line of the apron twisted and in- 
 flated by the wind. Can we think that 
 every English fish-wife walking through the 
 wind is so superb in form, so magnificent in 
 pose ? 
 
 The "Voice from the Cliffs" is still 
 more remarkable for linear charm. The 
 three girls stand close together looking up 
 and listening with parted lips, relieved 
 against a high wall of chalk with a glimpse 
 of blue sea and a distant boat. Two of 
 
WINSLO W HOMER. 253 
 
 them hold large baskets against their hips 
 while the third, who stands a little back, 
 grasps a bundle of nets that hangs from her 
 shoulder. The lines throughout are so har- 
 monious, dignified, and graceful at once so 
 lovely and so strong that they might well 
 be transferred intact to a relief in marble. 
 Yet they have none of the cold academicism 
 with which a statuesque effect on canvas 
 is usually associated. They are statuesque, 
 these girls, but they are living, moving, 
 breathing women and not statues, and as 
 realistic and unconventional as the most 
 awkward Yankee boys that Homer had ever 
 painted. 
 
 It is interesting to note one device 
 through which this rare, fine quality of lin- 
 ear grace is rendered. It is not a novel de- 
 vice though we see it more often in marble 
 than in paint ; but it is one which only a 
 master hand can manage rightly. It is the 
 device which both accents and harmonizes 
 lines by reiterating them. Some of 
 course not all of the corresponding lines 
 in each of the three figures reecho some of 
 those in each of the others. For example, 
 the left arm of the central girl, which is 
 stretched out to hold the basket, is almost 
 
254 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 identical in pose with the left arm of one of 
 her companions, while her bent right arm 
 reflects the lines of the right arm of the 
 third figure. Of course there is no literal 
 repetition ; but similitude, symmetry, is suf- 
 ficiently well marked to result in a forceful, 
 rhythmical grace, which is perhaps the 
 rarest of all qualities in modern art. The 
 same bold analogy in certain leading lines 
 kept from monotony by delicate minor dif- 
 ferences, constantly recurs in these Eng- 
 lish water-colors with the finest effect. One 
 I remember especially where a long line of 
 women come over the brow of a hill, bear- 
 ing great bundles of nets on their backs ; 
 no procession of Greek canephoroi can have 
 been more noble and stately, yet not the 
 women themselves can have been more 
 modern, more English, more alive. In the 
 " Voice from the Cliffs," again, the same 
 principle of delicately varied repetition 
 shows even in the faces. Instead of the 
 contrasted types which most artists would 
 have chosen the fear of monotony guid- 
 ing their hand there is but a single type. 
 We see three girls of similar age, build, 
 cast of features, and emotional nature. But 
 there is no sameness. Each face is dis- 
 
WINSLOW HOMER. 255 
 
 tinctly individualized. Each girl is herself 
 though the others are her sisters. 
 
 Nor was Homer's new power over linear 
 beauty shown merely in his figures. The 
 composition of the " Teignmouth " with 
 its waves and drifting smoke-wreaths and 
 the group of figures in the foreground boat 
 was marvellously fine ; and in " Inside 
 the Bar " and all the other coast scenes, the 
 lines of cloud and shore were arranged with 
 consummate skill perfectly true to nature, 
 yet, so to say, framing the figures, giving 
 them additional importance, and bringing 
 them into vital union with the landscapes 
 where they stood. Always the result had 
 been so simply and perfectly achieved that 
 it looked like the outcome of mere instinct. 
 It looked as though the painter had found, 
 not posed, his figures thus. But when a 
 result in art looks instinctive and looks 
 well we may be sure that it has been the 
 outcome of artistic reasoning and effort. 
 These pictures, I must say again, gave us 
 no right to believe that Homer had always, 
 or often, seen his fisher-girls in such fine 
 harmonious groups, with such fitting accom- 
 paniments of line in shore and sky ; they 
 gave us every right to feel most certain 
 
256 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 that he had merely seen how splendidly 
 they might be posed and placed, and then 
 had found out the right way to do it not 
 altering, but, in Corot's phrase, " complet- 
 ing" nature. 
 
 But, after all, the prime excellence of 
 these pictures lay not in one quality or an- 
 other which appeared upon analysis, but in 
 the fact that all qualities held so well to- 
 gether in a result pictorially so complete. 
 The impression was vivid and individual, 
 though details had been carried further 
 than in Homer's early essays. Out- door 
 nature had been given the true out-door 
 look. Facts of atmosphere and light had 
 been translated with wonderful force, and 
 linear beauty was vitalized by great strength 
 in the suggestion of character. Although 
 they were but water -colors and pictured 
 toiling peasants merely, they were serious 
 works of " high art ; " and by this I mean 
 that they had an ideal cast which placed 
 them far above mere prosaic records of com- 
 mon facts. One can hardly call Winslow 
 Homer a poetical painter, and perhaps he 
 would himself disclaim the title of idealist, 
 saying that he only tries to show us certain 
 interesting facts under the aspects which 
 
WINSLOW HOMER. 257 
 
 seem to him the best for pictorial use. But 
 this is just the point I wish to make. In- 
 teresting facts are what he wants, and the 
 best possible aspects for pictorial use. Wise 
 choice, not chance, directs his brush, and 
 personal feeling shows in its creations. To 
 say this is to imply some sort of "complet- 
 ing" process; and such a process always 
 implies some sort of idealism in the result. 
 A poetical painter might have dwelt more 
 on the spiritual suggestions of these rude 
 sea-faring folk and their surroundings a 
 Millet would have shown us more of the 
 pain and pathos of the fisher's life, more of 
 the cruelty and terror of the waves from 
 which he wrings his bread. But Homer, 
 merely emphasizing physical suggestions, 
 showing us the dignity and beauty which 
 may reside in humble bodies and in waves 
 and skies, is he not an idealist too al- 
 though perhaps no poet ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 Despite the proverb, a change of sky does 
 mean a change of mood to some men, and 
 among them is the sensitive, clear -eyed 
 artist. Soon after Homer's return from 
 England he went to Florida and the West 
 
258 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 Indies, and again brought back rich, booty 
 of a novel sort. The very essence of the 
 tropics breathed in these new aquarelles, 
 bold, dashing, vivid studies of turquoise sea 
 and blinding sun, of bright-hued plastered 
 houses gaudy with vines and flowers, of 
 negro fishers for sharks and divers for 
 sponges, of impenetrable, luscious jungles 
 and wild, wind -tossed palms. Brighter 
 colors than any Impressionist has found in 
 the south of France he had found in these 
 western isles ignored of art, a stronger 
 light, a more palpitating, scintillating at- 
 mosphere, and a race of swart and naked 
 men of incomparable artistic value. And 
 with what unshrinking truth to vividness 
 of light and hue he had painted a color- 
 ist now to rank with the boldest and fresh- 
 est of our time. How wonderfully he had 
 placed in these shimmering scenes his 
 bronzed and dusky figures, eagerly at work 
 on the sea or half beneath it, true, local, 
 individual in type yet beautiful in outline 
 and arrangement. There was one group 
 leaning over a vessel's side to watch for a 
 diver's reappearance three almost naked 
 figures, the first crouching, the second lean- 
 ing, the third standing erect where the 
 
WINSLOW HOMER. 259 
 
 lines built themselves up with extraordi- 
 nary grandeur yet with as much simplicity 
 and naturalness as though no negro in the 
 world had ever taken an awkward pose. 
 There was an " Approaching Tornado " in 
 which a whole tragedy lay latent just in 
 the way the atmosphere was painted; and 
 a "Norther Key West" that was tragedy 
 made palpable through three bending, ago- 
 nizing palm-trees, splendid in line, and as 
 vital and passionate as though they had 
 been human creatures. 
 
 These too, you may say, were "fortu- 
 nate" subjects for an artist; could Homer 
 have done as well had he observed and 
 worked at home ? Happily the answer has 
 come from himself. Since his West Indian 
 voyage he has lived on the coast of Maine, 
 where, if anywhere, we might anticipate a 
 dearth of fortunate themes in so far at least 
 as humanity is concerned. Yet he has not 
 dwelt there in communion with his memo- 
 ries of the Fortunate Isles. He has let his 
 portfolios lie with all their luxuriant sug- 
 gestions, has painted what he found close 
 at hand, and has given us the best work of 
 his life. I cannot speak of his latest water- 
 colors, with their magnificent rendering of 
 
260 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 waves on rock - bound shores ; or of his 
 " Eight Bells " with its two finely charac- 
 terized figures relieved against the see tiling 
 waters and flying clouds which follow after 
 tempest ; or of that slow tragedy so quietly 
 yet forcibly suggested in his " Lost in the 
 Fog off the Banks." I can give but a word 
 to the two pictures which exhibit him at 
 his very best, showing us the full measure 
 of a man who is at once a realist in aim 
 and an idealist in feeling, a painter with a 
 personal style and an artist with an indi- 
 vidual message to deliver. 
 
 One of these is the " Life Buoy," where, 
 in a yawning hollow between two watery 
 mountains, swings a slender rope, and, made 
 fast to it, a sturdy sailor bearing across his 
 knees the unconscious figure of a girl. No 
 one could have painted a scene like this 
 with such convincing strength who had not 
 lived among the breakers and the tragedies 
 they work ; but no one, on the other hand, 
 who lacked that constructive imagination 
 which the thorough-going realist professes 
 to despise. The theme, in its essentials, 
 was the saving of a woman's life. To ex- 
 press it the painter gave prominence to her 
 blanched face and half-clothed form ; and 
 
WINSLOW HOMER. 261 
 
 he clearly showed, in contrast, the vigor of 
 the sinews which upheld her and the tre- 
 mendous rage of the sea. These he had 
 shown, and all else he had omitted. There 
 is nothing unusual here, you may say any 
 artist would have gone about his task in 
 just this manner. But how many would 
 have known what Homer knew that 
 among the things to omit was the sailor's 
 face ? How many would have felt that to 
 paint it as it must be painted, if at all, 
 would be to distract attention from the 
 principal figure, to create two centres of 
 interest, to weaken, not enhance, the im- 
 pressiveness of the whole ? And how many 
 could have effected the omission so simply 
 yet significantly ? the sailor's scarf had 
 blown across his face and thus we saw that 
 fierce winds as well as waters warred 
 against him. These were the elements of 
 strength in the " Life Buoy ; " its beauty 
 sprang from its bold color, and especially 
 from the admirable pose and contour of 
 the woman's form beneath the scanty cling- 
 ing dress. 
 
 The second picture I have in mind is 
 " Undertow " again a wrestle of man 
 with the water. Two half-drowned young 
 
262 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 bathers, locked in one another's arms, lie 
 prone between two sturdy beach-men who 
 are dragging them ashore with a rope, a 
 lofty blue-green wave curving close behind. 
 Until we saw this picture we had not 
 known the whole of what linear beauty 
 might mean under Homer's brush. He 
 had never so triumphantly proved that to 
 secure it one need not lapse into mere deco- 
 rative grace, need not sacrifice the expres- 
 sion of intense activity or the strictest truth 
 to e very-day facts. These men with their 
 half-bare bodies were New-Englanders in 
 form and feature, and were honestly intent 
 upon the difficult work in hand ; and the 
 one bather whose face was shown was as 
 clearly American in type. Yet it was a 
 very beautiful face, and the lines of all the 
 figures not arranged in a conventional 
 group but boldly placed in sequence side 
 by side had that harmony and dignity 
 which we call Greek, for no better reason 
 than that so few of us know how to see 
 and appreciate them when by some happy 
 chance actual existence sets them before 
 our eyes. Nothing was lacking to the 
 beauty of this group neither force nor 
 suavity, neither unity nor variety, neither 
 
WINSLOW HOMER. 263 
 
 repose of effect nor the suggestion of tre- 
 mendous effort ; and the strong lines of 
 the overarching wave bound the whole to- 
 gether as the lines of a pediment bind some 
 antique sculptured composition. Yet how 
 true it all was, how American, how local 
 at once realistic and heroic, powerful 
 and simple, natural and almost majestic. 
 
 As regards color there were some who 
 called this picture too bold and vivid, too 
 crude and hard. But the timidity of their 
 eyes was more in fault, I think, than the 
 painter's vigor. Poor house -bound folk 
 that we are, we have never really learned 
 to see. We know so well how things look 
 in a mellow indoor atmosphere and a light 
 which falls aslant from one or two points, 
 and thus means shadow as much as light, 
 that when we get outdoors we cannot re- 
 ceive the new impression. Few of us ever 
 really see what light means when, in clear 
 metallic air, it falls from above, equally 
 diffused on every side and overpoweringly 
 strong; or what colors mean when such 
 light creates them and sends forth each 
 vivid tint to be reflected from the others. 
 Thus we called unnatural many of those 
 effects which were revealed to us, a few 
 
264 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 years ago, by the French Impressionists 
 effects which had been carefully studied out 
 of doors by eyes made sensitive through 
 years of practice, and unflinchingly por- 
 trayed by clever hands. When the Im- 
 pressionists surprised us it would have been 
 well had we gone out under the sky and 
 tried to discover whether things do not 
 sometimes really look thus impossibly vivid 
 thus oddly blue, singularly green, unbe- 
 lievably purple or white or yellow. And 
 when we saw Homer's " Undertow " we 
 might well have asked ourselves whether he 
 was not likely to know more about nature's 
 facts than we this serious, studious artist 
 who is also one of the best endowed that 
 has been born among us ; this artist who 
 lives his life on the shores of the ocean, and 
 whose life means simply to observe effects 
 with wise, keen eyes, and to paint them 
 with a trained and capable brush. If we 
 ever really see wet flesh under strong sum- 
 mer light with the reflections of blue-green 
 water upon it, we shall surely note colors 
 as bright and strong and hard as Homer 
 painted. 
 
 Of course, truth in art is one thing, 
 beauty is another; and to insist upon the 
 
WIN SLOW HOMER. 265 
 
 veracity of a painter is not to insist that he 
 paints beautiful pictures. Moreover, in the 
 matter of color at least, we may possibly 
 feel that it is better to have beauty with- 
 out complete truth than truth alone. But 
 the perception of beauty as well as of truth 
 is largely a matter of education, and here 
 again our eyes are still too timid, our creed 
 is still too narrow, the practice of the old 
 masters and the traditions of the studio 
 still hamper our taste and limit our powers 
 of enjoyment. The beauty of Homer's 
 coloring may be left for individual taste to 
 pronounce upon ; but I think a growth in 
 the power to appreciate its veracity will 
 mean increasing pleasure in its vividness 
 and force. 
 
 V. 
 
 I began this chapter by saying that Homer 
 holds a separate and peculiar place in Ameri- 
 can art. He was born with a different nature 
 from most painters of his day, and with so 
 strong a nature that he took no impress 
 from their practice or ideas ; and he was 
 born too soon to be drawn into the current 
 which, some fifteen years ago, set strongly 
 towards the studios of France. From be- 
 
266 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 ginning to end, and as regards alike essence 
 and form, he has worked out his art for 
 himself. 
 
 In all the underlying essentials which go 
 to make a man an artist as distinguished 
 from a painter merely, his success has been 
 complete. There are few men alive who 
 can be counted his peers in vigor of idea 
 or clearness of conception, or in the applica- 
 tion of these powers to truly painter-like 
 ends. He knows what things one may put 
 on canvas and what things should be left to 
 other forms of art ; and those he chooses he 
 reports upon as a painter should without 
 reliance on titles or printed explanations. 
 He can impress the mind, move the heart, 
 stir the imagination, by his pictures ; and at 
 the same time can satisfy the eye with their 
 veracity, and delight it with their magnifi- 
 cent effects of line. There is more ques- 
 tion, I have just confessed, as regards his 
 success with color ; and as regards his exe- 
 cution even his profoundest admirers must 
 admit a lack of charm although no lack of 
 competence. Forced to invent his technical 
 language for himself, even yet, after all 
 these years of constant improvement, it is 
 not polished, deft, or graceful. We could 
 
WINSLOW HOMER. 267 
 
 never care for his brush work in and for it- 
 self, apart from the message it interprets, 
 as we do care for the most beautiful kinds 
 ' of painting. Our chief concern, as we ap- 
 proach his work, is not to see how he has 
 painted but what he has painted. Never- 
 theless his brushwork is good, strong, ade- 
 quate, and satisfactory. It is sure of itself, 
 without hesitations, confusions, or blunders. 
 It always reaches its end it always says 
 what he wants it to say ; and this we can 
 never affirm of painting that is less than 
 very good. It is blunt, perhaps, and rug- 
 ged, uncompromising, and naive ; but so is 
 the language of some great provincial Burns 
 which for worlds we would not see softened, 
 sweetened, and polished into likeness with 
 a Tennyson's or Rossetti's. Had Homer 
 been born a little later and taken his youth- 
 ful way to Paris, he might very well have 
 conquered " the painter's stubborn means " 
 with a more graceful hand. But I think it 
 is an open question whether, in such a case, 
 he would not have lost something of that 
 strong, brusque, determined quality of touch 
 which seems to suit so well his salty seas 
 and sunburned mariners. And his handi- 
 work has, moreover, one conspicuous point 
 
268 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 of excellence which it might easily have 
 lost in the schools. It is never self-con- 
 scious. In every brush-stroke, as in every 
 conception. Homer is simply and sincerely ' 
 himself. We can never fancy that he has 
 wanted to convince us either that he could 
 paint like some one else or that no one 
 else could paint as he does. And this is a 
 refreshing fact in days when almost all men 
 go about their work as though they knew 
 that centuries of great forerunners were 
 watching them from the pyramid of fine 
 accomplishment. 
 
 But the lesson which young Americans 
 should learn from Winslow Homer is not 
 that they may become artists without the 
 training of the schools. He may seem to 
 supply a good text for such a lesson, but it 
 is a dangerous one to preach. For most 
 men the safest, surest road to success must 
 lie through the wisest, strictest teaching 
 they can get. The real lesson which 
 Homer teaches is that, once an American 
 has learned how to paint, the best place for 
 him is at home. Should we care as much 
 for Homer's pictures had he persistently 
 dwelt among the peasants of Barbizon or 
 the throngs of Parisian streets ? Would he 
 
WINSLOW HOMER. 269 
 
 have cared as much for them himself put 
 as much of his own nature into them ? 
 Could a foreigner have put his own nature 
 into such themes as his and preserved their 
 Americanism? And lacking either the per- 
 sonal quality or the national quality which 
 they now reveal, could they have been as 
 valuable an addition to the sum of the 
 world's work in art? 
 
 Of course if a painter has no thoughts, 
 no imagination, no soul or individuality of 
 any kind- nothing but two eyes trained 
 to see what other men have seen and five 
 clever fingers then indeed it matters little 
 where he lives or what he paints. A charm- 
 ing touch and a delicate perception of skin- 
 deep facts can show themselves equally well 
 with almost any subject ; and, unassisted 
 by deeper gifts, they cannot greatly differ- 
 entiate one subject from another. But 
 given a painter with a brain and a heart, 
 a man who sees for himself and puts some- 
 thing of himself into all he does, then his 
 sight will surely be clearer and his doing 
 stronger if he lives where he was born and 
 bred. His work will have more individual- 
 ity, and without individuality no art can 
 rank very high. 
 
270 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 This is true, I think, even of artists whose 
 impulse leads them in what are called ideal- 
 istic paths. I have tried to explain that ifc 
 was true of George Fuller ; and even such 
 nobly ideal work as John La Farge's owes 
 much of its value to the American flavor 
 which no keen palate fails to find in it. 
 But with the born realist the case is far 
 clearer. A transplanted La Farge would 
 not have lost so much as a transplanted 
 Homer ; and it is new Homers rather than 
 new La Farges that we may anticipate, 
 for, whether the fact be counted a happy 
 one or not, most men are born realists in 
 these modern days. 
 
 Thus I think that an artist in any coun- 
 try should strive to belong to his own land 
 and people. But there is an added reason 
 why Americans should try to be American. 
 Personality is the great essential in every 
 kind of art ; and the farther time advances 
 the fuller becomes the world's store of 
 inherited treasures the more difficult it 
 grows, of course, for an artist to preserve 
 himself from the undue influence of others. 
 One mine after another is opened and ex- 
 ploited. One line after another is pursued 
 to its furthest limit. One kind of truth, 
 
WINSLOW HOMER. 
 
 one form of beauty, follows another into 
 the category of the things which have been 
 done so well that few men can hope to do 
 them better or even to do them differently. 
 Of course there can never come a time 
 when a great genius will not turn to the 
 exhausted mine and pick up a novel jewel, 
 will not show us hackneyed things in ways 
 that make them seem as fresh and new as 
 the flowers in Eden. But how many young 
 Americans who hope to be artists expect to 
 be men of great genius ? And for all others 
 at least, and perhaps for the great genius 
 too, there is value in the intrinsic freshness 
 of a theme that no one yet has touched. 
 Of course it is more difficult to paint such 
 a theme. He who portrays a thing first 
 has to begin by learning how to look at it 
 from the point of view of art to estimate 
 its artistic capability, to create the artistic 
 type it may assume, to discover every major 
 and minor fact with regard to its right ren- 
 dering. Before Millet painted laboring 
 peasants, the world thought they could not 
 possibly be painted; and he was Millet just 
 because he saw they could and found out 
 the way to do it. Pygmies can stand on 
 the giant's shoulders now. To-day a hun- 
 
272 SIX PORTRAITS. 
 
 dred men can make good pictures of peas- 
 ants who, fifty years ago, could not have im- 
 agined how the task might be approached. 
 But how much do we care for the whole 
 hundred in comparison with one Millet ? 
 
 It is not merely because he was the first 
 that he still seems the best ; the phrase 
 must be turned around : because he was 
 the best, he was the one who did a new 
 thing first. If any of his hundred follow- 
 ers had his power, they too would do some- 
 thing that neither he nor others had accom- 
 plished. The great value of America to 
 the painter is that it is full of new things to 
 be done. Many of them are not beautiful, 
 or charming, or picturesque, or even possi- 
 ble, according to our accepted standards. 
 But the accepted standards of to-day mean 
 merely the codified triumphs of earlier ar- 
 tists over difficulties which once seemed in- 
 superable. The peasants of contemporary 
 France, the types and colors of oriental 
 lands, the hooped and be-ribboned beauties 
 of the eighteenth century, the misshapen 
 jesters of Philip IV., the boors and Jews of 
 Holland, even the padded and brocaded 
 ladies of Venice all these were novelties 
 in their day, difficult subjects, impossible 
 
WINSLOW HOMER. 273 
 
 subjects according to the canons of preced- 
 ing times. But each in its turn was 
 brought victoriously within the realm of 
 art, and now all are classics of the studio, 
 easy things to treat, things that can be 
 painted reasonably well without a shimmer 
 of genius or a trace of individual thought, 
 merely by studying the recipes which lie in 
 a thousand canvases. Who shall say that 
 American landscapes, American types, char- 
 acters, incidents, and deeds, are more diffi- 
 cult than all others, or that painters and 
 sculptors who are genuine artists cannot 
 bring them in their turn within the bound- 
 aries of art ? 
 
 If there is any one to say so, names enough 
 can already be cited to prove him mistaken. 
 Think of La Farge, St. Gaudens, Inness, 
 Chase, Cox, Weir, Twachtnaan, Fuller, and 
 Win slow Homer the list is unjustly brief 
 but it suffices, and can it be maintained 
 that expatriation in body or soul is the 
 American artist's better course ? Some of 
 these men are Winslow Homer's superiors 
 if the whole sum of their achievement, 
 mental, spiritual, and technical, is counted 
 up. But none of them is better able to 
 teach American artists that they should be 
 
274: SJ X PORTRAITS. 
 
 Americans ; for none has been so persis- 
 tently and emphatically national, so freshly, 
 frankly local and realistic in choice of 
 theme; and none of them except George 
 Fuller who with all his charm was by no 
 means so remarkable an artist as Homer 
 has leaned so little on the Old World for 
 counsel or correction. 
 
INDEX TO ARTISTS' NAMES. 
 
 ALEXANDER, Francis, 192. 
 
 Aligny, 144, 175. 
 
 Allegri, Antonio. See Cor- 
 reggio. 
 
 Allston, Washington, 192. 
 
 Angelico, Fra. See Fra An- 
 gelico. 
 
 Angelo, Michael. See Mi- 
 chael Angelo. 
 
 Ascanio di Mari, 76. 
 
 Bartolomeo, Maso di. See 
 Maso di Bartolomeo. 
 
 Barye, 179. 
 
 Bellini, Giacomo, 38. 
 
 Bellini, Giovanni, 38. 
 
 Bernini, 67 (note), 110. 
 
 Bertin, Victor, 143, 175. 
 
 Blake, William, 113-138, 
 187. 
 
 Bonington, 181, 182. 
 
 Botticelli, 38, 109, 110. 
 
 Brown, Henry Kirke, 191- 
 193. 
 
 Cambio, Arnolfo del. See 
 
 Del Cambio. 
 Carpaccio, 38. 
 Caracci, Annibale, 83. 
 Cellini, Benvenuto, 13, 67, 
 
 70, 76. 
 Cerceau, Du. See Du Cer- 
 
 ceau. 
 
 Chase, William, 273. 
 Cheney, the brothers, 193. 
 Civitali, Matteo, 33, 37. 
 Claude Lorraine, 106, 181. 
 
 Constable, 181. 
 
 Corot, 139-189, 198, 202, 204, 
 
 244, 246, 256. 
 Correggio, 77-112, 187. 
 Courbet, 94. 
 Courtois, Pierre, 73. 
 Couture, 202. 
 Cox, Kenyon, 273. 
 Credi, Lorenzo di, 38. 
 Currier, Frank, 248. 
 
 Da Fiesole, Mino. See Mino 
 
 da Fiesole. 
 Da Forli, Melozzo. See Me- 
 
 lozzo da Forli. 
 Da Majano, Benedetto. See 
 
 Majano. 
 Da Settignano, Desiderio. 
 
 See Desiderio. 
 David, 180, 184. 
 Da Vinci, Leonardo. See 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci. 
 Delacroix, 176, 181. 
 Del Cambio, Arnolfo, 32. 
 Delia Quercia, 9, 33. 
 Delia Robbia. See Rob- 
 
 bia. 
 
 Delorme, Philibert, 72, 73. 
 Del Sarto, Andrea, 70. 
 Denner, 204. 
 
 Desiderio da Settignano, 33. 
 Di Bartolomeo, Maso. See 
 
 Maso di Bartolomeo. 
 Di Credi, Lorenzo. See 
 
 Credi. 
 
 Di Mari, Ascanio. See As- 
 canio di Mari. 
 
276 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Donatello, 9, 10, 12, 15, 33- 
 
 Luca della Robbia. See 
 
 36,. 38, 39, 45-48, 66. 
 
 Robbia. 
 
 Dore*, Gustave, 125-128, 132. 
 
 
 Du Cerceau, 70, 72. 
 
 Majano, Benedetto da, 33. 
 
 Dupre*, Jules, 182. 
 
 Mansart, Frangois, 71. 
 
 Diirer, 79, 81, 94, 105, 204. 
 
 Mantegna, 38, 78, 79, 85, 87, 
 
 
 90. 
 
 Ferrari, Bianchi, 85. 
 
 Mari, Ascanio di. See As- 
 
 Fiesole, Mino da. See Mino 
 
 canio di Mari. 
 
 da Fiesole. 
 
 Masaccio, 38. 
 
 Flaxman, 131. 
 
 Maso di Bartolomeo, 15. 
 
 Forli, Melozzo da. See Me- 
 
 21. 
 
 lozzo da Forli. 
 
 Mazzano, 66, 67. 
 
 Fra Angelico, 105, 106. 
 
 Melozzo da Forli, 86. 
 
 Francais, 152. 
 Francia, 38, 83, 85. 
 
 Memling, 94, 95. 
 Mengs, Raphael, 84. 
 
 Frari. See Ferrari. 
 
 Metsu, 204. 
 
 Fuller, George, 190-236, 237, 
 
 Michael Angelo, 9, 29, 39, 
 
 270, 273, 274. 
 
 44, 79, 83, 92, 100, 105, 
 
 
 107, 123, 133, 136, 137, 203. 
 
 Ge*ricault, 181. 
 
 Michallon, 141, 143. 
 
 Ghiberti, 9, 10, 12, 33-36, 38, 
 
 Michel, Georges, 182. 
 
 39, 43, 44, 48, 57, 66. 
 Ghirlandajo, 38, 79. 
 
 Michelozzo, 15. 
 Millet, 148, 182, 184, 202, 
 
 Gifford, Sandf ord, 193. 
 Giorgione, 79, 91. 
 
 203, 257, 271, 272. 
 Mino da Fiesole, 9, 33. 
 
 Giotto, 15, 32. 
 
 Monticelli, 197. 
 
 Godier, Pierre, 72. 
 
 
 Gozzoli, Benozzo, 38. 
 
 Nicolla Pisano. See Pisano, 
 
 Gray, Henry Peters, 193. 
 
 Nicolla. 
 
 Greuze, 223. 
 
 
 
 Orcagna, 32, 123, 137. 
 
 Hals, Frans, 94, 95. 
 
 
 Holbein, 79, 94, 204, 215. 
 Homer, Winslow, 237-274. 
 Huet, Paul, 182. 
 
 Parmegianino, 91, 92. 
 Perugino, 79. 
 Pilon, Germain, 75. 
 
 Hunt, William, 202, 237. 
 
 Pisani, the, 79. 
 
 Huntington, Daniel, 193. 
 
 Pisano, Andrea, 15, 32, 48. 
 
 
 Pisano, Giovanni, 26, 28-32. 
 
 Inness, George, 237, 273. 
 
 Pisano, Niccola, 23-31, 66. 
 
 
 Poussin, Nicholas, 143, 181. 
 
 Jordaens, 204. 
 Joshua Reynolds, Sir. See 
 
 Primaticcio, 70, 73, 75. 
 
 Reynolds. 
 
 Quercia, Delia. See DeUa 
 
 
 Quercia. 
 
 La Farge, John, 237, 270, 
 
 
 273. 
 
 Raphael, 39, 40, 79, 83, 89, 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci, 70, 79, 
 
 90, 94, 96, 100, 101, 105, 
 
 83,^85,86,91,94,97,100. 
 
 107, 136. 204. 
 
 Lippi, Filippo, 38. 
 
 Rembrandt, 94, 204, 215. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 277 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 94, 
 
 117, 215, 223. 
 Robbia, Andrea della, 8, 13, 
 
 14, 22, 51-58, 60, 61, 69. 
 Robbia. Giovanni della, 59- 
 
 69. 
 Robbia, Girolamo della, 59, 
 
 70-76. 
 Robbia, Luca della, 5-76, 
 
 94, 105, 109, 110, 187. 
 Robbia, Luca della, the 
 
 Younger, 58, 59, 72. 
 Robbia, Simone della, 13, 
 
 76. 
 Romano, Giulio, 79, 83, 102, 
 
 134. 
 Rosa, Salvator. See Salvator 
 
 Rosa. 
 Rosso, 70. 
 
 Rousseau, 160, 182, 184. 
 Rubens, 94, 215. 
 Ruysdael, 182. 
 
 Salvator Rosa, 106. 
 Sansovini, the, 39. 
 Sansovino, Andrea, 9, 66, 
 
 67. 
 
 Sansovino, Jacopo, 67 (note). 
 Sarto, Andrea del. See Del 
 
 Sarto. 
 Schiavonetti, 129. 
 
 Settignano, Desiderio da. 
 
 See Desiderio. 
 Signorelli, 38, 137. 
 Squarcione, 38. 
 St. Gaudens, Augustus, 273. 
 Stothard, 131. 
 Stuart, Gilbert, 192, 215. 
 
 Tintoretto, 79, 91, 94, 96, 
 
 134, 137. 
 Titian, 79, 82, 91, 94, 96, 
 
 105, 215. 
 
 Troyon, 182, 184. 
 Turner, 94. 
 Twachtman, 273. 
 
 UceUo, Paolo, 38. 
 
 Van Dyck, 105. 
 Velasquez, 134. 
 Verestchagin, 204. 
 Veronese, Paul, 91, 94, 96, 
 
 105, 106. 
 Verrpchio, 33. 
 Vinci. See Leonardo da 
 
 Vinci. 
 
 Ward, John Quincy Adams, 
 
 193. 
 
 Weir, Alden, 273. 
 Whistler, 94. 
 
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