NOVEMBER, 1908 ND MILLAIS PRICE, 20 cent; ICIJ W3 UC-NRLF B M 5fi7 Efib J§sudilftpTitl)lu^ 3ateiianDLA'iK II PHOTOGRAPH BY MANSELL & CO. [4-7] :millais teomax ok the guaed natioxaii gallery, lo:>jdok MASTEKS IX AKT 1>1.ATK Til PHOTOGRAPH BY MANSELL 4, CO. [4-..I] THE OlilJKK Of RKLEASE PKOPEHTY OF MR. JAMES KENBO MASTEHS IX AHT in.ATK IV PHOTOGRAPH BY MANSEIL i CO. MILLAIS POHTHAIT OF KUSKIX PROPKIMY OK SIK IIKXKl' ACL.AND MASTEKS IX ART PLATE V [4;w] MILLAIS POHTRAIT OF W. E. GLADSTONE OWXKI) KY SIH CHARLES TENNANT s s MASTt:KS IX AKT PHOTOGRAPH BY MA. PLATE VIII SELL & CO. [4.-,.,] MILLAIS AITTUMX I^KAVES (IWXKI) J!Y COHPIIKATIOX OF MAXCHESTER H O w - MASTEKS IN AltT PLATK X PHOTOGRAPH [44.!] Ml 1. 1, A IS Till': jtLiAi) (;iKi, OWNKI) HV COKPOKATIOX OK BIKMIXUIIAM l'(.)l{Tl{.\ir Ol' Mil. I.. MS IIY lll.MSl:i.h' IKhlZI GALLKUV, JXOKKKCK Millais's portrait of himself", which hangs in the Uffizi, is an interesting doc- ument. It portrays him as he would have liked himself to appear — as a handsome, clever, healthy-looking English country gentleman. There is noth- ing of the lean and hungry look which many artists wear. On the other hand, evervthing is full and rounded. It must be admitted that one has a suspicion that the picture is a trifle sweetened, if not deliberately flattered. The bust of Millais by Onslow-Ford has a grimmer look, and, at the same time, it is really more attractive because more virile. [ 444 ] MASTERS IN ART 3Joftn ISbetett 0iillui^ BORN 1829 : DIED 1896 ENGLISH SCHOOL JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS was born June 8, 1829, at Southampton. His father was a well-to-do man, yet by no means rich. He came of a Jer- sey family. Indeed, Millais's blood was more French than English; though no one could be more English in aspect and in sentiment than he. It is said that he could trace his descent to the family whose ancestor was also forebear to Jean Francois Millet, the famous French peasant painter. Very early in his life he showed talent. He entered the Royal Academy Schools when only eleven years old, and at once began to do remarkable work. There are in existence sketches by him, made when he was only nine, which are astonishing things for a child of that age to have done. In short, as far as England could afford him training, he had learned all he could learn in schools while yet a lad. None the less, the compositions and paintings of this early period are en- tirely without interest except to the historian. He had not ''found himself," and what he did was simply an indifferent echo, or reflection, of what he had learned. The titles of his pictures of this time remind one of those pictures which Clive Newcome found in the atelier of Mr. Gandish. One of these pic- tures was * Pizzaro seizing the Inca of Peru,' another, ' Elgivia seized by Order of Archbishop Odo.' At about the same time he made a huge design, four- teen feet by ten, 'The Widow bestowing Her Mite,' which he sent in to the Westminster Hall competition. All these pictures, it should be noted, were painted before he was nineteen years of age. About that time he began really to think; and also at that time he made the acquaintance of two very remarkable young men, — Dante Ga- briel Rossetti and Holman Hunt. There has been a good deal of discussion about who really suggested the idea of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Ap- parently it was not Millais. Some say Holman Hunt fathered it. Others say that the first idea came from Rossetti. It does not at all matter; the idea, such as it was, was eagerly grasped at by all three, and in a very short time they were each painting remarkable pictures. The underlying idea of Pre-Raphaelitism was to restore or regain some- thing of the sincerity, truth, and earnestness of the men who worked before [445] 24 MASTERSINART Raphael's time. Millals and Hunt felt, with some reason, that the men of their day painted by formula; that, instead of trying to render nature, they painted conventional types. So they set themselves to do work which should be absolutely sincere and true. One interesting result of their effort was that they made work which was far more sincere in intention and truer in result than what the Italian Primitives or Pre-Raphaelites had done; for these latter had their conventions just as much as the later men, only it was not the con- vention of Raphael. On the other hand, the best Pre-Raphaelite work of Millais is almost absolutely unconventional, without prejudice. And, again, Millais's work, to use a word very popular just now, was objective, while the Italian Primitives were always subjective. The Italian Pre-Raphaelites worked from a series of receipts taught by the masters in their bottegas; while Millais, shaking off all tradition, invented his own formulas. So, curiously enough, it happened that English Pre-Raphaelitism became a very different thing from the work of the Italian Primitives. Millais's first picture in the new period was 'Lorenzo and Isabella' (Plate ix). Its exhibition in conjunction with Rossetti's 'Annunciation' and Hunt's 'Rienzi' provoked the usual storm of scorn and disapprobation which very original work is apt to produce; for, whatever else it was, the 'Lorenzo and Isabella' was certainly original. Naif to the verge of grotesqueness, it marked a distinct break from Millais's childish, eclectic manner. Indeed, it is not a little remarkable that a youth, who had already learned an exces sively mannered style, should at the first effort have been able to break awa)' from all that had gone before and achieve at once a perfectly personal, orig- inal, and natf style. But so he did; and, more, he kept at this highlv intense and individual style for ten years, without wavering. His second picture made in this way was 'Christ in the House of His Parents.' This provoked an outcry even louder than had been that of the year before. Every effort was made to laugh the young innovators out of court; but all three of them, each in varying degree, were made of obstinate stuff, and they kept on producing serious and interesting work made as they thought fit. Millais produced year by year 'Ferdinand lured by Ariel,' 'Mariana in the Moated Grange,' and 'The Return of the Dove to the Ark' — only to meet with more of the same sort of scorn and abuse that his earlier pictures had provoked. It should be pointed out here that while the young Pre-Raphaelites were undoubtedly sincere, and had a part of truth on their side, they were not wholly right. It often happens that a work of genius is severely criticized from perfectly sound reasons. The fault is apt to be that sufficient sympathy is not shown for the good qualities of the innovating work. The Pre-Raphael- ites, with all their admirable qualities, produced some decidedly queer, not to say grotesque, work. It must be added, too, that of the three, Millais was the only thoroughly endowed artist. Rossetti was a poet who painted, and Holman Hunt was a doctrinaire who expressed his convictions in paint. It is rather curious that Millais, who of the three was least moved by the tenets of the Brotherhood, was the only one who had the technical endowment to [446] MILLAIS 25 thoroughly carry out their ideas. Hunt's work, rather interesting at first, grew steadily more and more terrible, Rossetti had not the application and training to develop his genuine gifts. But Millais had the power to carry out their theories, and In the ten years of his Pre-Raphaelitism he did some remarkable work. His Pre-Raphaelite work was indeed better than his later painting; for this reason: that, being much as other men, only better endowed, the Pre-Raphaelite style came to him more naturally than did his later manner. The Pre-Raphaelite technique is much as any layman would paint without stopping to think. Its very naivete, which is its charm, is the reason why it could never have been great art. And it is the reason why it suited Millais so well. Later, his intelligence told him that the best painting required a more synthetic rendering. He was not in- telligent enough to analyze the different problems that make true synthetic rendering the most difficult thing in art. Millais's two comrades in this movement deserve each their word. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was one of the most interesting characters of the last century. Poets may think him most an artist. Artists will always think him most a poet. Some of his writings must always rank among the finest English po- ems. As to art, he had great natural talent; or, rather, he had an instinctive perception of what was beautiful and ability enough to make it, if he had been properly trained. In entering this movement he was really more inter- ested in the naif charm of the Primitives than in their charming naivete. He really was not interested in truth in art, but rather in beauty. Holman Hunt was the exact opposite in almost every way. When one looks at his pictures, so sincere, so tortured, so ugly, one wonders whether he really ever saw a beautiful thing. Interesting as much of his work is, he really demonstrated in his painting the necessity and merit of an academy to teach students the virtues of simplicity and breadth. In fact, his work has been a laborious and painful way of proving its own futility. Some of his early paint- ings, where, consciously or unconsciously, he was a good deal under the influ- ence of Millais, like the 'Hireling Shepherd' or 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' are better than much of his later work. Almost all the members of the Pre-Raphaelite group were very interesting characters; and, though it is generally assumed that, apart from Millais, Hunt, and Rossetti, their work was negligible, none the less certain others of this group did remarkable things. Walter Deverell was one who, among other things, "discovered" Eleanor Siddal, the beautiful milliner who posed for Millais's 'Ophelia' (Plate vii) and who later became the wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Deverell died at twenty-eight, but had already done enough to show that he had a future before him if he could only live. Some of Arthur Hughes's paintings have charming qualities of delicate perception and re- fined execution; and even Collinson, probably the weakest of the original seven, did work which was not bad when compared to much that was at that time being done in England. By a strange paradox, though Millais was at heart the least Pre-Raphaelite of the seven, it was his lot to make pictures which should popularize these ideas. Rossetti at that period was rather in- [447] 26 MASTERS IN ART competent technically; Hunt, while skilful enough, was enmeshed in a net of detail. Millais alone had the technical skill and sense of effect sufficient to state these ideas in paint in the way they should be done. Just how Millais ever happened to go into this movement is hard to guess. His own instinct was for popularity. He had the gift of pleasing in every way, in person as well as by his art. He was not by nature suited for companion- ship with either Hunt or Rossetti. Indeed, chance had, with its usual irony, flung together three of the most marked, yet opposed, English characteristics: decadent poetry, as represented by Rossetti; the Nonconformist conscience, as represented by Hunt; and the bourgeois instinct of enjoyment, as personified b}- Millais. Certain writers tell us that a man may have two or even three separate consciousnesses; and it sometimes seems as if Millais had two na- tures : one, perhaps the highest one, which suffered him to do the Pre-Raphael- ite pictures, and another, more commonplace, which encouraged him to do the work of his later years. In these early days there were times when Millais was pretty hard put to it. There were times when he was glad to do a portrait for two pounds. Even when he began to sell pictures he was obliged to sell for rather small prices. 'Christ in the House of His Parents,' for instance, sold for one hun- dred and fifty pounds. This does not seem a very large price when one con- siders the number of figures, and the care and time spent on its painting. 'Ferdinand lured by Ariel,' another of the pictures of this time, was to have sold for one hundred pounds, but the disgruntled buyer subsequently threw the picture back on the artist's hands. 'The Huguenots,' which is perhaps the most popular and well-known of all Millais's pictures, sold for two hun- dred pounds, which must be called a small sum when one thinks of the prices which Millais's work subsequently received. Some of the pictures he painted during his ten years of Pre-Raphaelitism are, and always will be, among the fine things of English art. The 'Ophelia' (Plate vii) is a very remarkable picture, and, while it has defects inseparable from its manner of painting, it will always remain a fine production. Again, 'The Blind Girl' (Plate x) is an admirable performance and, strangely enough, suggests in certain ways the work of Bastien-Lepage. Indeed, the Pre-Raphaelite movement was, in a certain sense, a forerunner of the French realistic movement, though it apparently had no connection with it, direct or indirect. Still later, the 'Apple-blossoms' was a lovely imagining, and is, perhaps, the most purely beautiful picture that Millais ever painted. The idea, the compo- sition, with its working out, and the separate figures are each and all charming and delightful. Yet again, 'Sir Isombras at the Ford' (Plate i) is one of the finest things that Millais ever did. It is artfully rzaif in composition, and the pieces are well worked out. There is a pathetic interest attaching to this and the 'Apple-blossoms,' as they were among the last fine things that Millais did; and they seem, too, to be among the best. Millais was gaining in skill and ability every year. If he had only let himself change slowly all might yet have been well. [448] MILLAIS 27 Millais's volte face from Pre-Raphaelitism to a broader, more modern style of painting is one of the most surprising things in the history of art. When one begins to look over the matter carefully one finds that various signs were not wanting for quite a long time beforehand. The change itself came suddenly enough, but the premonitions appeared, here or there, for some years beforehand. For instance: 'The Huguenots,' though painted in the Pre-Raphaelite period, has little except technique to connect it with the other pictures of that period. It is distinctly commonplace in idea. It has none of the subtlety of imagination of the 'Ophelia,' nor, on the other hand, is it a beautiful thing seen in nature, like the 'Apple-blossoms.' Many have felt that Millais's violent change from his first style, so sincere and severe, to his later popular manner, so loose and luxuriant, was made purely with the intention of producing popular work that would sell well. But there are others, more fair-minded perhaps, who think that he had come to see that the Pre-Raphaelite manner, with all its charm of sincerity, was not the logical method for a man of the nineteenth century, a man of intelligence and thoughtfulness; for the Pre-Raphaelite method, as far as technique is concerned, presupposed a childlike, naif, unreasoning nature, which was more characteristic of the fourteenth century than of the nineteenth. Millais probably felt that if he meant to paint a picture that would "carry" well he ought to stand up to it and paint it across the room. The Pre-Raphaelite method almost demanded that one should sit down to one's work, and sit, too, very near the model. Perhaps, then, the great trouble with Millais's change was not that he made it at all, but that he made it so quickly. Velasquez made something the same sort of change, from tight severity to loosely rendered work, as Millais did. Only Velasquez spent his whole life doing it. One can trace his gradu- ally broadening manner, step by step, from picture to picture. Velasquez, with all his intelligence and progressiveness, seems to have had immense conserva- tism. He tested each step carefully, considered it thoughtfully, and then, the step once taken, never went back. Millais, like so many moderns, made the step violently, petulantly. Instead of keeping, as Velasquez did, all the es- sential and important merits of his old style when he acquired the new, he, on the other hand, threw away all his old qualities of charm, distinction, and rarity in his eagerness to catch at the new manner. While the change of tech- nique very possibly was induced by more or less logical reasons, one cannot help feeling that he changed in other ways than that. His art lost its dis- tinction. Compositions like the 'Ophelia,' the 'Apple-blossoms,' 'Sir Isom- bras at the Ford,' are among the most distinguished, the least commonplace, in English art. After the famous break one can hardly find one composition by Millais that is not cheap and commonplace. It is not merely that the tech- nique has changed; one feels that the whole nature of the man has changed. In looking at some of these early compositions one feels that a rare and ex- quisite spirit designed them. When one looks at the mere arrangement of the later pictures one feels that any one from the staff of the London Graphic could have managed them. [449] 28 MASTERS IN ART The end of Millals's life Is indeed pathetic. He had been elected to the Presidency of the Royal Academy on the death of his old friend Lord Leigh- ton. This must have been one of the ambitions of his ambitious life, and no doubt made him very happy. But, unfortunately, he had only a short time in which to enjoy his honor. A terrible disease overtook him, which proved to be cancer of the throat. After much suffering, he died, on August 13, 1896, having been in office for less than six months. Whatever one may think of his later painting, he was evidently the logical candidate for this position, and it is a pleasure to know that his ambition was gratified before his death. Millais was immensely successful at this period. After winning all sorts of honors with his subject-pictures, he went into portrait-painting and won new honors there, at least in the estimation of the public. Frank HoU and Her- komer, who till then had been the popular portrait-painters, had to take a somewhat secondary position. Carriages blocked up Millais's door. The rich and great crowded his studio, desiring that their portraits should be taken. His prices were enormous. He had from fifteen hundred pounds to two thou- sand pounds, but people paid them willingly, conceiving that he was the greatest living painter. These prices are not so remarkable now, but at that time were considered colossal. Millais's portraits were good as likenesses, and at times he was very success- ful in this respect. His 'Portrait of Thomas Carlyle' was very famous, though it is a little overshadowed at present by the one which Whistler painted of the same man. Again, his 'Portrait of Gladstone' (Plate v) brought him immense reputation. It is effective without being very subtle. It is by less well-known portraits that he will in future make his claim as a great portrait- painter. His * Portrait of Mrs. Heugh,' while violent and exaggerated, is, all the same, a very strong conception, and is strongly worked out. Again, his 'Portrait of Ruskin' (Plate iv), while almost grotesque, is so merely through its intense honesty and grip of character, and will always be one of the inter- esting things in English art. On the other hand, his 'Portrait of Himself in the famous Autograph Portrait Collection of the Uffizi Gallery, is a rather tiresome performance. It is hard to believe that the man who attained to the intensity of the 'Ruskin' should have made this rather vapid portrait. Millais, beside putting landscape backgrounds into many of his pictures, was fond of painting pure landscape on his summer or autumn holidays. Of these, 'Chill October' is the most celebrated. It is in some ways a remarkable performance, and shows great skill in handling detail. The trouble with it is that there seems to be no focusing-point. Millais had forgotten an idea very well expressed in the first volume of 'Modern Painters'; to \vit, that when painting landscape one must make up his mind just where the focusing-point is to come, and then paint the edges of masses round about somewhat softer than the central part. In trying to sum up what Millais's most remarkable qualities were one is confronted by a difficulty; for those qualities which made his early work re- markable ceased entirely in the work of his latter years. If one were speaking of his Pre-Raphaelite days one might say that poignancy and intensity were [450] MI LLAIS 29 his two marked characteristics. There is in these early works a grim determi- nation to give the exact aspect of the thing seen, albeit at times in a rather meticulous way. Later, these qualities entirely disappear. Whatever else Millais's later works may have been, they certainly were neither poignant or intense. Indeed, for the most part, they are not very good painting; but if they have a quality it is a certain largeness of statement — often diffuse, sloppy, or sleazy, but still bigly and generously handled. As to composition, Millais's work divides itself, as in every other respect, into the first and second periods. The composition of his first period is some- times very queer, as in the 'Lorenzo and Isabella,' but it is always studied and considered, and in some instances, as in the 'Ophelia,' the 'Apple-blossoms,' and the 'Isombras,' it is admirable. That is, it is personal, original, well arranged, and yet the arrangement is to a great extent concealed. The com- position of the later work, on the other hand, is rather tiresome — never ex- actly bad, but always rather obvious. 'The Children with Goldfish' is rather pretty. 'Hearts Are Trumps' is quite a good arrangement; but, on the whole, the compositions of this period are rather commonplace. His drawing was usually pretty good. Sometimes it was admirable; again, at times, it was really pretty bad. He was never in any sense a draftsman, like Da Vinci or Ingres. Indeed, in his day in England there were no means of learning to draw like that. But besides that, Millais, even in his Pre- Raphaelite days, felt things more as a painter. There exist careful pencil-stud- ies for some of his pictures — as, for instance, certain studies for 'Apple- blossoms.' Yet even these are not conceived from the draftsman's point of view. There is no particular research of pure line or construction. Rather, they are studies to find about where things would come in the painting. In color, some of the early Pre-Raphaelite things may be a little crude and raw, yet they have about them a quality that is hard to match in any of the later work. Perhaps the culminating point of Millais's Pre-Raphaelite work is the 'Ophelia.' In this the color is handsome throughout. There is nothing disagreeable in it. Indeed, as one remembers it, it is rather particularly agree- able. The roses on the river-bank and the color of the leaves are well ren- dered. Millais's method of work was perfectly simple. He put the canvas by the side of the model and then built up his effect in patches, stepping back between each stroke to judge of the effect on the canvas, painting it in pretty directly. In his earlier Pre-Raphaelite work he made the pieces dc premier coup, bring- ing them into relation as best he might, though he did very little in the way of glazing. In his later work he proceeded more as many modern painters do now; that is, he indicated the general effect rather broadly, and then by suc- cessive repainting brought the thing to a point of finish he desired or thought necessary. When he was painting landscape he had built a little hut with a glass front and roof. In this way he got the quiet of the studio — and the con- stant rattling of the canvas from the wind is not the least of the landscape- painter's troubles — and at the same time got his outdoor effect. In the matter of gesture, Millais's art was often remarkable. Sometimes [451] 30 MASTERS IN ART his feeling about this was so intense that the gesture became almost grotesque, but often he found a movement that was at the same time poignant and beau- tiful. Particularly is this true of some of his illustrations. The action of the enemy in the illustration of 'Sowing Tares,' of the woman in the 'Moated Grange,' of the man and woman in 'Love,' is at least poignant and expres- sive. Sometimes his desire to be expressive leads him to something almost ridiculous, as in the man kicking a dog in the 'Lorenzo and Isabella.' Some- times, again, the action is at the same time almost funny and yet really fine, as in the 'Escaped Heretic' " 'T is but a step from the sublime to the ridic- ous. Millais's illustrations, by the way, are hardly so good as one would expect after seeing his paintings of the same period. They are, as a rule, rather slightly indicated and not so well drawn as one might hope. The drawings are, no doubt, somewhat injured by the rather unsympathetic engraving of those days; yet men who drew in a method suited to this engraving, as, for instance, Frederic Sandys, achieved some remarkable results. The fact is that Millais was first and always a painter. He conceived his illustrations in that way, and as a result they often suffered from the graver. One or two of his illustrations are delightful; others are rather slight and diffuse. Millais's technique was, from the first, remarkable. In the earliest things, as the 'Lorenzo and Isabella,' it is a little dry; although some of the pieces in this picture are painted with a skill that reminds one of Van Eyck. By the time the 'Ophelia' was painted he had come to his best expression. It may be that he never painted a better thing, as far as technique is concerned. In his later work the technique is easy and free, and yet one feels that it is unsat- isfactory. The fact is, broad handling requires a special training, and one cannot at once jump from highly finished work to a broad and suggestive technique. Technically, too, the 'Ophelia' is about the high-water mark of Millais's talent. Everything is made with the utmost scrupulousness, and yet there is no sense of tired or timid workmanship. In the later works there is, of course, much more freedom. Some of these later things, like the 'Yeo- man of the Guard' (Plate ii) or the 'Portrait of Mrs. Bishoffsheim,' have certain good qualities, but it cannot be said that any of them have the same intense interest that is afforded by the early work. Millais was of a certain type marked for success, — Rubens was another, — handsome, able, brilliant, to whom art was a joy and a pleasure rather than a suffering. He was a hard worker, and in his Pre-Raphaelite days must have made some deep researches. But he worked easily; things came easily; life passed by pleasantly. He had a splendid house, a beautiful wife, hand- some children; he was a baronet; he had a good position in society; — and he enjoyed all these things. He liked hunting; he was a good horseman, a good salmon-fisher, and a good shot. In fact, he did everything well. He would have made a good architect or a good stock broker, if he had not been an artist. At the same time, he had a distinct vocation as an artist; and though his later years were materially successful, they are a pathetic instance of how easily an artist may be spoiled. They show how steadily the divine flame must be fed and kept from adverse influence. [4.'32] MILLAIS 31 He had in him the instinct of popularity, of making things that people would like. And this instinct, in itself a normal and healthy thing, did not prevent him in his Pre-Raphaelite days from making noble, serious, and touch- ing pictures. Later it ran riot, and, together with the desire for riches and position, helped to destroy his art. One of Millais's most remarkable qualities, indeed, was this prescience of what people would be apt to like. Many popular artists have had this quality to some degree. With him it was intensified and strengthened to the point of genius. Not only in his later work, but in much of his early paintings, he produced pictures that have become part of the every-day life of the English nation. Not only such inanities as the ' Pear's Soap Boy 'or 'Little Miss Muffet' were popular, but serious compositions like 'The Huguenot' or 'The Proscribed Royalist,' painted in his most intense Pre-Raphaelite manner, have become immensely popular. Engravings of these works have sold by the thousand. This popularity came because Mil- lais was like every one else. He was a "superman" in the truest meaning of the term; that is, he was as other men, only handsomer, stronger, more clever. Millais did not found a school; he had no followers. The Hon. John Collier was his scholar, and paints more or less in his manner, with more o{ modern he. Yet Millais did not form a tradition in the sense that Rossetti, a much less skilful man, did. This is partly because Rossetti was a mannerist, while Mil- lais was too much of a realist to have any particular manner. Also, — and it is really saying the same thing in different words, — Millais's technical skill in the making of little things was so remarkable that only a man equally en- dowed could follow him. In summing up, one feels that Millais was one of the men most richly en- dowed by nature for art. It seems that he could, under the right conditions, have done anything. The ability was not lacking, and in his Pre-Raphaelite work he seemed to be on the way to great things. He had the eye; he had the feeling; at first, he seemed to have the intelligence. He did enough in this manner always to be one of the glories of England; then the change came. The change came, and his later work is really hardly worth discussion. One regrets it; that is all. Here was this overman, clever among wise men, but content to dwell in honor among the fools at the last. Millais's place in art, or even in English art, is a diflScult one to place. One feels that Gainsborough, Constable, and Turner were greater men, and yet Millais could do, and do simply and easily, things that were quite beyond them; that were, indeed, undreamed of in their philosophy. He has produced inanities like the 'Pear's Soap Boy,' 'Yes,' and 'No,' that were not merely silly, but thoroughly bad work. Yet he produced work like the 'Ophelia,' the 'Sir Isombras,' and 'The Blind Girl,' that will always be among the great things of English art. It seems as if a Daemon possessed him when he did those things. They seem beyond him — not only in technique, but in scope and grasp. Millais himself once spoke of the "vulgarity" of some of his earlier work. Really, it was quite the other way. His early works, even the failures, were almost always distinguished. Some of his later pictures make one wince and writhe at their utter vulgarity. All that there is of cheap, sentimental, [453] 32 MASTERS IN ART vulgar in modern England is concentrated in some of these visions. Then one goes back and looks at the three pictures before mentioned, and one's wonder grows. At the last one comes to this : at his worst Millais was simply a mediocre painter, with a curious instinct for what would prove popular; at his best he was one of the greatest artists, and quite the most original, that England has produced. %i)t art of iHillais JOHN RUSKIN «PRE-RAPHAELIT1SM' IT has to be remembered that no one mind is like another, either in its pow- ers or perceptions; and while the main principles of training must be the same for all, the result of each will be as various as the kinds of truth which each will apprehend; therefore, also, the modes of effort, even in men whose inner principles and final aims are exactly the same. Suppose, for instance, two men, equally honest, equally industrious, equally impressed with the humble desire to render some part of what they saw in nature faithfully; and, other- wise, trained in convictions such as I have endeavored to induce. But one of them is quiet in temperament, has a feeble memory, no invention, and ex- cessively keen sight. The other is impatient in temperament, has a memory which nothing escapes, an invention which never rests, and is comparatively near-sighted. Set them both free in the same field in a mountain valley. One sees every- thing, small and large, with almost the same clearness: mountains and grass- hoppers alike; the leaves on the branches; the veins in the pebbles; the bub- bles in the stream; but he can remember nothing, and invent nothing. Pa- tiently he sets himself to his mighty task; abandoning at once all thoughts of seizing transient effects or giving general impressions of that which his eyes present to him in microscopical dissection, he chooses some small portion out of the infinite scene, and calculates with courage the number of weeks which must elapse before he can do justice to the intensity of his perceptions, or the fulness of matter in his subject. Meantime, the other has been watching the change of the clouds and the march of the light along the mountain-sides; he beholds the entire scene in broad, soft masses of the true gradation, and the very feebleness of his sight is in some sort an advantage to him, in making him more sensible of the aerial mystery of distance, and hiding from him the multitudes of circum- stances which it would have been impossible for him to represent. But there is not one change in the casting of the jagged shadows along the hollows of the hills but it is fixed on his mind for ever; not a flake of spray has broken from the sea of cloud about their bases but he has watched it as it melts away, and could recall it to its lost place in heaven by the slightest effort of his thoughts. Not only so, but thousands and thousands of such images, of older scenes, remain congregated in his mind, each mingling in new associations [454] MI LLAIS 33 with those now visibly passing before him; and these again confused with other images of his own ceaseless, sleepless imagination, flashing by in sudden troops. Fancy how his paper will be covered with stray symbols and blots, and undecipherable shorthand. As for his sitting down to" draw from nature," there was not one of the things which he wished to represent that stayed for so much as five seconds together; but none of them escaped, for all that: they are sealed up in that strange storehouse of his; he may take one of them out perhaps, this day twenty years, and paint it in his dark room, far away. Now, observe, you may tell of both these men, when they are young, that they are to be honest, that they have an important function, and that they are not to care what Raphael did. This you may wholesomely impress on them both. But fancy the exquisite absurdity of expecting one of them to possess any of the qualities of the other. I have supposed the feebleness of sight in the last, and of invention in the first painter, that the contrasts between them might be more striking; but, with very slight modification, both the characters are real. Grant to the first considerable inventive power, with exquisite sense of color; and give to the second, in addition to all his other faculties, the eye of an eagle; and the first is John Everett Millais and the second Joseph Mallard William Turner. R. DE LA SIZERANNE 'ENGLISH CONTEMPORARY ART' SOME years ago Millais was walking with a friend in Kensington Gardens; he suddenly stood still by the small Round Pond and said, "How extraor- dinary it is to think that I once fished for sticklebacks in this very pond, and now here I am a great man, a baronet, with a fine house, plenty of money, and everything my heart could desire." And he walked on gaily. This speech describes Millais — his history, his character, even his art, for they all belong to a happy man. An infant prodigy, at five years old he drew the officers in garri- son at Dinan with such mastery that they refused to believe he had done it. A bet was laid, and the sceptics lost for a champagne dinner. At nine he was introduced to the president of the Royal Academy, old Sir Martin Archer Shee, who prophesied that he would conquer a kingdom in art, and he at once began to draw from the round. At eleven he entered the Academy Schools, an unparalleled feat which has never been repeated; and at seventeen he ex- hibited his first historical picture. Of him it cannot be said in the words of Gloucester (Richard iii): "Short summers lightly have a forward spring," for he belied the proverb. His enthusiastic parents swept all difficulties from his path; the highest authorities looked favorably upon him; his companions stood in a row to applaud him. Handsome, graceful, and well made, full of health and fire and energy, he speedily became popular. Rossetti likened him to an angel with hands outstretched to help his friends (notably Hunt) in the outset of their career, the outset which is so difficult. At twenty he was already, in a way, the head master of Pre-Raphaelitism, and his 'Isabella's Banquet,' if it brought him no glory, gave him at least the reputation and the halo of persecution. At twenty-three his 'Huguenot' com- [455] 34 MASTERS IN ART pletely reinstated him in public opinion. Fame, indeed, this time, stretched over him her protecting hand, and held it over his head for forty-five years as unweariedly as the Muse of Cherubini in M. Ingres's extraordinary picture. Fame was in love with him. The English loved him for his talent, it is true, but also for his handsome English face and frank, adventurous, manly bear- ing; for his skill in sports, for he was a good shot, a good rider, and an excel- lent salmon-fisher. Such qualities might do anything. As a Pre-Raphaelite he was welcomed by the multitude. When he deserted Pre-Raphaelitism to paint sentiment and expression he was followed by a larger crowd. He gave up emotional subjects for portraiture, and the crowd increased and lauded him to the skies. His success would not have been less had he adopted any sort of art theories and rejected all his former opinions. Like the tyrant of Samos, he might cast his ring into the sea and he would find it again inside a fish. He revealed himself as a portrait-painter in the picture of Mr. Arm- strong's daughters, and HoU and Herkomer were of no account beside him. The handsomest carriages in London stood at his door in Palace Gate. Offi- cial honors were showered upon him. He was made a baronet, and he would have been the Artist Laureate if there were one. And this is not all: he knew the deepest joys of popularity. The reproductions of his sentimental pictures made him the guest and the friend of the humblest homes, and the same man who had won the plaudits of Swinburne and Ruskin and the most finely cul- tured men of his day for his interpretation of a tale from Boccaccio has seen, at the end of his career, his 'Bubbles' placarded on the walls of the United Kingdom by a famous soapmaker. He knew of this, and openly rejoiced over it; he owned it without false modesty, and with the gay, hearty frankness with which he exclaimed in the studio of Munro the sculptor, when some one re- marked upon the red mark above his eye, "There are spots in the sun, you know!" Let us consider these spots in the sun. The man who excited such enthu- siasm in England was, aesthetically, the least English of the artists of his coun- try. Across the Channel the most popular painter is he who approaches most nearly the French ideas of art. His whole career could be thus defined, his- torically and aesthetically: "From Ruskin to Pear's Soap; or. The Stages of a Perversion;" and this alienates him from the English ideal as it is set forth in books. He said that the first duty of a painter is to paint, and it is a strange saying from English lips. He said again, "A fool may be a great artist." He did not choose subjects specially for their morality; he did not strain after exact truth of detail; and he openly allowed that the corners, the accessories, the edges of the picture, should all be sacrificed to the center. More than that, he painted the fact rather than the idea, and tried to please the eye rather than to touch the soul, in an avowed effort to please the upper classes. And he succeeded, although he expressed less than any other artist the individuality of the English character. Let the partisans of the theory which makes art an emanation of life explain his success as they may, it will be easy enough for us to do so. Millais's art responds to a taste which is no more Latin that it is Anglo- [450] MILLAIS 35 Saxon; it responds to a taste common to certain minds among all nations. He satisfies the world in general — the lovers of illustrations, who go straight to the sentimental or amusing pictures at an exhibition and pass by aesthetic thought or moral meaning. He charms all the superficial sight of the English mind, as Burne- Jones will charm all refined minds in France when he is better known there. Therefore another boundary must be found for aesthetic pref- erences than a frontier line, and another origin than that of atmosphere or soil. What are the characteristics, then, of this much admired art.? In the first place, its subjects. Millais devotes himself to such touching scenes as have made Paul Delaroche and M. d'Ennery famous amongst us. He tells the story of a fireman placing the children he has saved in the arms of their mother; of a prisoner's wife, who comes to set her husband free, handing the order of release to the gaoler; and he has not forgotten the dog, who leaps round his master's legs to show his joy. He shows us the 'Return from the Crimea:' a wounded soldier, resting after the war, with his wife and children; the children are playing with toys, amongst which are a bear, a cock, and a lion; the whole Eastern Question is in your grasp. Then all the famous couples pass before us for whom a tragic fate is in store: 'The Huguenot,' 'EflRe Deans,' 'Lucy of Lammermoor,' 'The Black Brunswicker.' There is 'The Proscribed Royalist' concealed in the hollow of a tree, and kissing the hand of his Puritan lady, who has brought him food. There is a Spaniard, disguised as a monk, rescuing his lady-love from prison and from the stake. Then he enlivens himself with a domestic incident, 'My First Sermon,' or an historical incident, 'The Boyhood of Raleigh.' To make such every-day sub- jects acceptable, they must be treated with genius, and Millais does not so treat them. His imagination was neither very great nor very wide. It is evi- dent that he has not looked long for his subject, but it could be wished that he had looked longer, or at least that he had found it. Whenever he paints a lover's duet he places his heroes standing, exactly in the same position, face to face, — 'The Huguenot,' 'The Black Brunswicker,' 'The Wandering Knight,' 'Yes,' and 'No,' 'Eflfte Deans;' they are all in the same attitude. And he does not atone for this uniformity by any great energy of action. The attitudes are correct, the masses well balanced, the parallel lines are well broken, and there is nothing to find fault with. But there is nothing new in them. Looking at 'Effie Deans, 'or 'Lucy of Lammermoor,' as far as originality goes we might regret Paul Delaroche; in the finish of his stone backgrounds and his foliage he equals M. Robinet, and M. Bouguereau in his truthful coloring. But these details are painted with the same prominence as the principal figure; they come as far forward, and thus all aerial perspective is destroyed. Composi- tions like the child with the soap-bubbles call for no criticism excepting in the drawing; they are lacking in all that makes a work of art great; and in their conception, as in their subject, the dolls M. Muller used to show us filling their papa's watch with cream were as pleasing. This is genre-painting in all its foolish and triumphant conceit; the style, that is, which apes great art; the upstart from the genre-pictures which imagines itself to be more full of [457] 36 MASTERS IN ART life than the Academy and more noble than the mere study, which is jealous of the one and contemptuous of the other, and is beneath them both. This genre, the mediocrity of art, was Millais's first characteristic. The second was exactness. Once his portrait or his scene is composed he drew the gesture of his model exactly and without exaggeration. His historical and legendary personages look so simple, so well defined, so like, that they might be people you know. They really are portraits. Most of these tragic lovers were painted from well-known people, from relations or good-natured friends. His famous 'Huguenot' represents General Lempriere; the young lady in 'The Black Brunswicker' is the portrait of Charles Dickens's second daughter, Mrs. Perugini. In * The Boyhood of Raleigh ' he painted his own sons ; in the famous 'Northwest Passage,' Trelawney, the intrepid explorer, sat for the head of the old sailor. These pieces are generally well painted, with a bright coloring that is not overstrained, and in harmony which does not quite rise to refine- ment. Millais's portraits show us his temperament and his art at their best. Re- stricted to a portrait, his composition, which is commonplace in historical and genre subjects, becomes interesting and almost original. His 'Fresh Eggs,' simply the portrait of his charming daughter, in a Pompadour costume, look- ing for eggs in a hen-house, shows admirable arrangement. Still better is the portrait of the Misses Armstrong sitting round a table at whist, under an enormous mass of azaleas, where the skill of the composition can be unre- servedly admired. Everything in this picture, even the rather affected title, 'Hearts is Trumps!' adds to the charm of the three faces — one full face, the others in profile or three-quarters. His portrait of the 'Yeoman of the Guard' is almost a masterpiece. His model is ugly, but there he stands. His har- monies are violent, but they stop short of becoming discordant. Millais had a theory of his own to excuse his brilliant coloring: he said that these were the original tones in the pictures of the masters which we now admire, when we see them toned down by the other great masters called Time and Varnish. Without going into an examination of this hypothesis, the painter's violences of color in the 'Yeoman of the Guard' and in 'Chill October' may be for- given him for the harmonies into which they melt. Of Millais's three manners, the Pre-Raphaelite applied to historical scenes; the romantic applied to genre-painting; and portraiture, the last, was his hap- piest inspiration. But his reputation has been made, not by his portraits, but by his genre-pictures. Therefore, when the whole of his work is passed in re- view for definition. Sir J. E. Millais would appear as a librettist in painting. Like libretto-writers of opera, he did not create his subjects; he chose well- known, rather hackneyed, themes. He expressed himself in a sonorous and intelligible language; he did not display such faculty of invention that he could be said to reshape them, nor such mystery of form that he could be said to enrich them; and he accepted the applause of the boxes and of the pit with- out a distinct understanding whether it was bestowed on the subject or its author, on the story or its narrator, on the book or the music. [458] M ILLAIS 37 Cfje iS^orfes of iHiUais DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PLATES jr^p" O All single numbers are 20 cents each, post-paid in the United States; Canadian postage, i cents extra ; foreign j)ostagc, .5 cents extra. No reduction for complete sets. Bound voliiiiics are $3.75 each for cloth; $4.25 each for half-morocco, express ])repaid. Bates & Guild Co. 42 chaimcy st. Boston, Mass. In answering advertisements, please mention Masters in Art 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. Renewed books are subject to immediate recaU. LD 2lA-60m-3,'65 (F23368l0)476B General Library _ University of California Berkeley YD 3?fe33 U.C BERKELEY LIBRARIES 0051366710 r 5 5 ^7 f ^ UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA UBRARY THE MADONNA By Philip L. Hale A CRITICAL analysis of the way the master painters have pictured the Madonna, together with a short historical sketch of the devel- opment of this great religious art subject. The author, Mr. Philip L. Hale, himself a painter, is one of the ablest writers on art in this country. The text is illustrated by twenty full-page plates, a list of which is given below. These plates are of the highest quality, and in point of depth and richness of color and clearness of detail are not surpassed by any reproductions of the same size. The page measures 8 x 11 inches. No pains have been spared to make this a desirable acquisition to eveiy art lover's library ; as a gift-book it is especially appropriate. LIST OF PLATES The SismrE Madoxva Raphael Maoonha with the Cherries .... TmAir Royal QaMtry^ Dretden Imperial OaUery^ Vienna Madonva of the Chair Raphael Madokxa of the Pesabo Family ... Trxav Pitti Palac«t Fhrencs Church of the Frari, Venice Madokna op the House of Alba . Raphael The Natititv (" The Night*') . . . CoBmBoeio The Hertnitaffe, St. Petershivrg Royal Gallery, Dretden ViBoiw OF the Rocks . . Leokabdo da Vixci The Meteb Madokna Holbeih the Yovtmoer Louvre, Paris Grand-Ducal Palace, Darmstadt The AflscMpnoN of the VmoEH . . . TmAV The Madokka o*' Castelfbanco . . Gioboione The Academy, Venice Castelfranco Cathedral St. Anne, the Viboik, akd the Christ* The Madonka of the Two Tbeeb . . . Beluki Child Leonardo da Vikci Aoadenw, Venice Louvre, Paris The Vow op Louis XIII Inobeb The Viboik Adobivo THE CHBisr-CHiLD Cathedral, Montauban CORBEOOIO CoBOKAHOW of THE ViBOIK .... BoTTICELU Ujizi Gallery^ Florence UJud Gallery, Florence Madokva of THE Sack Del Sabto Madohva and Child with Two Anoeis, Church of the AnnunsiaUif Florence Fra Filippo Lifpi The Ihmacitiate CovcEpnoy . . . Mubillo Uffizi Gallery, Florence Louvre, Paris The Madonna and Three Dominican Saints, ViBoiN AND Child Cbivelu TtnoLo Brera Gallery, Milan Church of the Gesuati, Veniee Price, boated and ea^press prepaid, $1,00 BATES & GUILD COMPANY Publishers 42 CHAUNCY STREET, BOSTON, MASS. In aniwering advertisements, please mention Masters in Art