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Title: Pictures Every Child Should Know

Author: Dolores Bacon

Release Date: November, 2004  [EBook #6932]
[This file was first posted on February 12, 2003]

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, PICTURES EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW ***




Arno Peters, Branko Collin, Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo, Charles

Franks,  and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team



PICTURES EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW


A SELECTION OF THE WORLD'S ART MASTERPIECES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE


BY DOLORES BACON

Illustrated from Great Paintings



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Besides making acknowledgments to the many authoritative writers upon
artists and pictures, here quoted, thanks are due to such excellent
compilers of books on art subjects as Sadakichi Hartmann, Muther,
C. H. Caffin, Ida Prentice Whitcomb, Russell Sturgis and others.



INTRODUCTION


Man's inclination to decorate his belongings has always been one of
the earliest signs of civilisation. Art had its beginning in the lines
indented in clay, perhaps, or hollowed in the wood of family utensils;
after that came crude colouring and drawing.

Among the first serious efforts to draw were the Egyptian square and
pointed things, animals and men. The most that artists of that day
succeeded in doing was to preserve the fashions of the time. Their
drawings tell us that men wore their beards in bags. They show us,
also, many peculiar head-dresses and strange agricultural
implements. Artists of that day put down what they saw, and they saw
with an untrained eye and made the record with an untrained hand; but
they did not put in false details for the sake of glorifying the
subject. One can distinguish a man from a mountain in their work, but
the arms and legs embroidered upon Mathilde's tapestry, or the figures
representing family history on an Oriental rug, are quite as correct
in drawing and as little of a puzzle. As men became more intelligent,
hence spiritualised, they began to express themselves in ideal ways;
to glorify the commonplace; and thus they passed from Egyptian
geometry to gracious lines and beautiful colouring.

Indian pottery was the first development of art in America and it led
to the working of metals, followed by drawing and portraiture. Among
the Americans, as soon as that term ceased to mean Indians, art took a
most distracting turn. Europe was old in pictures, great and
beautiful, when America was worshipping at the shrine of the chromo;
but the chromo served a good turn, bad as it was. It was a link
between the black and white of the admirable wood-cut and the true
colour picture.

Some of the Colonists brought over here the portraits of their
ancestors, but those paintings could not be considered "American" art,
nor were those early settlers Americans; but the generation that
followed gave to the world Benjamin West. He left his Mother Country
for England, where he found a knighthood and honours of every kind
awaiting him.

The earliest artists of America had to go away to do their work,
because there was no place here for any men but those engaged in
clearing land, planting corn, and fighting Indians. Sir Benjamin West
was President of the Royal Academy while America was still revelling
in chromos. The artists who remained chose such objects as Davy
Crockett in the trackless forest, or made pictures of the Continental
Congress.

After the chromo in America came the picture known as the "buckeye,"
painted by relays of artists. Great canvases were stretched and
blocked off into lengths. The scene was drawn in by one man, who was
followed by "artists," each in turn painting sky, water, foliage,
figures, according to his specialty. Thus whole yards of canvas could
be painted in a day, with more artists to the square inch than are now
employed to paint advertisements on a barn.

The Centennial Exhibition of 1876 came as a glorious flashlight. For
the first time real art was seen by a large part of our nation. Every
farmer took home with him a new idea of the possibilities of drawing
and colour. The change that instantly followed could have occurred in
no other country than the United States, because no other people would
have travelled from the four points of the compass to see such an
exhibition. Thus it was the American's _penchant_ for travel which
first opened to him the art world, for he was conscious even then of
the educational advantages to be found somewhere, although there
seemed to be few of them in the United States.

After the Centennial arose a taste for the painting of "plaques," upon
which were the heads of ladies with strange-coloured hair; of
leather-covered flatirons bearing flowers of unnatural colour, or of
shovels decorated with "snow scenes." The whole nation began to revel
in "art." It was a low variety, yet it started toward a goal which
left the chromo at the rear end of the course, and it was a better
effort than the mottoes worked in worsted, which had till then been
the chief decoration in most homes. If the "buckeye" was
hand-painting, this was "single-hand" painting, and it did not take a
generation to bring the change about, only a season. After the
Philadelphia exhibition the daughter of the household "painted a
little" just as she played the piano "a little." To-day, much less
than a man's lifetime since then, there is in America a universal love
for refined art and a fair technical appreciation of pictures, while
already the nation has worthily contributed to the world of
artists. Sir Benjamin West, Sully, and Sargent are ours: Inness,
Inman, and Trumbull.

The curator of the Metropolitan Museum in New York has declared that
portrait-painting must be the means which shall save the modern
artists from their sins. To quote him: "An artist may paint a bright
green cow, if he is so minded: the cow has no redress, the cow must
suffer and be silent; but human beings who sit for portraits seem to
lean toward portraits in which they can recognise their own features
when they have commissioned an artist to paint them. A man _will_
insist upon even the most brilliant artist painting him in trousers,
for instance, instead of in petticoats, however the artist-whim may
direct otherwise; and a woman is likely to insist that the artist who
paints her portrait shall maintain some recognised shade of brown or
blue or gray when he paints her eye, instead of indulging in a burnt
orange or maybe pink! These personal preferences certainly put a limit
to an artist's genius and keep him from writing himself down a
madman. Thus, in portrait-painting, with the exactions of truth upon
it, lies the hope of art-lovers!"

It is the same authority who calls attention to the danger that lies
in extremes; either in finding no value in art outside the "old
masters," or in admiring pictures so impressionistic that the objects
in them need to be labelled before they can be recognised.

The true art-lover has a catholic taste, is interested in all forms of
art; but he finds beauty where it truly exists and does not allow the
nightmare of imagination to mislead him. That which is not beautiful
from one point of view or another is not art, but decadence. That
which is technical to the exclusion of other elements remains
technique pure and simple, workmanship--the bare bones of art. A thing
is not art simply because it is fantastic. It may be interesting as
showing to what degree some imaginations can become diseased, but it
is not pleasing nor is it art. There are fully a thousand pictures
that every child should know, since he can hardly know too much of a
good thing; but there is room in this volume only to acquaint him with
forty-eight and possibly inspire him with the wish to look up the
neglected nine hundred and fifty-two.



CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION

I. Andrea del Sarto, Florentine School, 1486-1531

II. Michael Angelo (Buonarroti), Florentine School, 1475-1564

III. Arnold B”cklin, Modern German School, 1827-1901

IV. Marie-Rosa Bonheur, French School, 1822-1899

V. Alessandro Botticelli, Florentine School, 1447-1510

VI. William Adolphe Bouguereau, French (Genre) School 1825-1905

VII. Sir Edward Burne-Jones, English (Pre-Raphaelite) School, 1833-1898

VIII. John Constable, English School, 1776-1837

IX. John Singleton Copley, English School, 1737-1815

X. Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, Fontainebleau-Barbizon School, 1796-1875

XI. Correggio (Antonio Allegri), School of Parma, 1494(?)--1534

XII. Paul Gustave Dor‚, French School, 1833-1883

XIII. Albrecht Drer, Nuremberg School, 1471-1528

XIV. Mariano Fortuny, Spanish School, 1838-1874

XV. Thomas Gainsborough, English School, 1727-1788

XVI. Jean L‚on G‚r“me, French Semi-classical School, 1824-1904

XVII. Ghirlandajo, Florentine School, 1449-1494

XVIII. Giotto (di Bordone), Florentine School, 1276-1337

XIX. Franz Hals, Dutch School, 1580-84-1666

XX. Meyndert Hobbema, Dutch School, 1637-1709

XXI. William Hogarth, School of Hogarth (English), 1697-1764

XXII. Hans Holbein, the Younger, German School, 1497-1543

XXIII. William Holman Hunt, English (Pre-Raphaelite) School, 1827-

XXIV. George Inness, American, 1825-1897

XXV. Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, English School, 1802-1873

XXVI. Claude Lorrain (Gell‚e), Classical French School, 1600-1682

XXVII. Masaccio (Tommaso Guidi), Florentine School, 1401-1428

XXVIII. Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier, French School, 1815-1891

XXIX. Jean Fran‡ois Millet, Fontainebleau-Barbizon School, 1814-1875

XXX. Claude Monet, Impressionist School of France, 1840-

XXXI. Murillo (Bartolom‚ Est‚ban), Andalusian School, 1617-1682

XXXII. Raphael (Sanzio), Umbrian, Florentine, and Roman Schools,
1483-1520

XXXIII. Rembrandt (Van Rijn), Dutch School, 1606-1669

XXXIV. Sir Joshua Reynolds, English School, 1723-1792

XXXV. Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish School, 1577-1640

XXXVI. John Singer Sargent, American and Foreign Schools, 1856-

XXXVII. Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti), Venetian School, 1518-1594

XXXVIII. Titian (Tiziano Vecelli), Venetian School, 1489-1576

XXXIX. Joseph Mallord William Turner, English, 1775-1831

XL. Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Flemish School, 1599-1641

XLI. Velasquez (Diego Rodriguez de Silva), Castilian School, 1599-1660

XLII. Paul Veronese (Paolo Cagliari), Venetian School, 1528-1588.

XLIII. Leonardo da Vinci, Florentine School, 1452-1519.

XLIV. Jean Antoine Watteau, French (Genre) School, 1684-1721

XLV. Sir Benjamin West, American, 1738-1820

Index



ILLUSTRATIONS


FRONTISPIECE

The Avenue, Middleharnis, Holland--_Hobbema_

Madonna of the Sack--_Andrea del Sarto_

Daniel--_Michael Angelo (Buonarroti)_

The Isle of the Dead--_Arnold B”cklin_

The Horse Fair--_Rosa Bonheur_

Spring--_Alessandro Botticelli_

The Hay Wain--_John Constable_

A Family Picture--_John Singleton Copley_

The Holy Night--_Correggio (Antonio Allegri)_

Dance of the Nymphs--_Jean Baptiste Camille Corot_

The Virgin as Consoler--_Wm. Adolphe Bouguereau_

The Love Song--_Sir Edward Burne-Jones_

The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine--_Correggio_

Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law--_Paul Gustave Dor‚_

The Nativity--_Albrecht Drer_

The Spanish Marriage--_Mariana Fortuny_

Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan--_Thomas Gainsborough_

The Sword Dance--_Jean L‚on G‚r“me_

Portrait of Giovanna degli Albizi--_Ghirlandajo (Domenico Bigordi)_

The Nurse and the Child--_Franz Hals_

The Meeting of St. John and St. Anna at Jerusalem--_Giotto (Di
Bordone)_

The Avenue--_Meyndert Hobbema_

The Marriage Contract--_Wm. Hogarth_

The Light of the World--_William Holman Hunt_

Robert Cheseman with his Falcon--_Hans Holbein, the Younger_

The Berkshire Hills--_George Inness_

The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner--_Sir Edwin Henry Landseer_

The Artist's Portrait--_Tommaso Masaccio_

Acis and Galatea--_Claude Lorrain_

Retreat from Moscow--_Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier_

The Angelus--_Jean Fran‡ois Millet_

The Immaculate Conception--_Murillo (Bartolom‚ Est‚ban)_

Haystack in Sunshine--_Claude Monet_

The Sistine Madonna--_Raphael (Sanzio)_

The Night Watch--_Rembrandt (Van Rijn)_

The Duchess of Devonshire and Her Daughter--_Sir Joshua Reynolds_

The Infant Jesus and St. John--_Peter Paul Rubens_

Carmencita--_John Singer Sargent_

The Miracle of St. Mark--_Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti)_

The Artist's Daughter, Lavinia--_Titian (Tiziano Vecelli)_

The Fighting T‚m‚raire--_Joseph Mallord William Turner_

The Children of Charles the First--_Sir Anthony Van Dyck_

Equestrian Portrait of Don Balthasar Carlos--_Velasquez (Diego
Rodriguez de Silva)_

The Marriage at Cana--_Paul Veronese_

The Death of Wolfe--_Sir Benjamin West_

The Artist's Two Sons--_Peter Paul Rubens_

The Last Supper--_Leonardo da Vinci_

Fˆte Champˆtre--_Jean Antoine Watteau_



I

ANDREA DEL SARTO


  (Pronounced Ahn'dray-ah del Sar'to)
  _Florentine School_
  1486-1531
  _Pupil of Piero di Cosimo_

Italian painters received their names in peculiar ways. This man's
father was a tailor; and the artist was named after his father's
profession. He was in fact "the Tailor's Andrea," and his father's
name was Angelo.

One story of this brilliant painter which reads from first to last
like a romance has been told by the poet, Browning, who dresses up
fact so as to smother it a little, but there is truth at the bottom.

Andrea married a wife whom he loved tenderly. She had a beautiful face
that seemed full of spirituality and feeling, and Andrea painted it
over and over again. The artist loved his work and dreamed always of
the great things that he should do; but he was so much in love with
his wife that he was dependent on her smile for all that he did which
was well done, and her frown plunged him into despair.

Andrea's wife cared nothing for his genius, painting did not interest
her, and she had no worthy ambition for her husband, but she loved
fine clothes and good living, and so encouraged him enough to keep him
earning these things for her. As soon as some money was made she would
persuade him to work no more till it was spent; and even when he had
made agreements to paint certain pictures for which he was paid in
advance she would torment him till he gave all of his time to her
whims, neglected his duty and spent the money for which he had
rendered no service. Thus in time he became actually dishonest, as we
shall see. It is a sad sort of story to tell of so brilliant a young
man.

Andrea was born in the Gualfonda quarter of Florence, and there is
some record of his ancestors for a hundred years before that, although
their lives were quite unimportant. Andrea was one of four children,
and as usual with Italians of artistic temperament, he was set to work
under the eye of a goldsmith. This craftsmanship of a fine order was
as near to art as a man could get with any certainty of making his
living. It was a time when the Italian world bedecked itself with rare
golden trinkets, wreaths for women's hair, girdles, brooches, and the
like, and the finest skill was needed to satisfy the taste. Thus it
required talent of no mean order for a man to become a successful
goldsmith.

Andrea did not like the work, and instead of fashioning ornaments from
his master's models he made original drawings which did not do at all
in a shop where an apprentice was expected to earn his salt. Certain
fashions had to be followed and people did not welcome fantastic or
new designs. Because of this, Andrea was early put out of his master's
shop and set to learn the only business that he could be got to learn,
painting. This meant for him a very different teacher from the
goldsmith.

The artist may be said to have been his own master, because, even when
he was apprenticed to a painter he was taught less than he already
knew.

That first teacher was Barile, a coarse and unpleasing man, as well as
an incapable one; but he was fair minded, after a fashion, and put
Andrea into the way of finding better help. After a few years under
the direction of Piero di Cosimo, Andrea and a friend, Francia Bigio,
decided to set up shop for themselves.

The two devoted friends pitched their tent in the Piazza del Grano,
and made a meagre beginning out of which great things were to
grow. They began a series of pictures which was to lead at least one
of them to fame. It was in the little Piazza, del Grano studio that
the "Baptism of Christ" was painted, a partnership work that had been
planned in the Campagnia dello Scalzo.

"The Baptism" was not much of a picture as great pictures go, but it
was a beginning and it was looked at and talked about, which was
something at a time when Titian and Leonardo had set the standard of
great work. In the Piazza del Grano, Andrea and his friend lived in
the stables of the Tuscan Grand Dukes, with a host of other fine
artists, and they had gay times together.

Andrea was a shy youth, a little timid, and by no means vain of his
own work, but he painted with surprising swiftness and sureness, and
had a very brilliant imagination. Its was his main trouble that he had
more imagination than true manhood; he sacrificed everything good to
his imagination.

After the partnership with his friend, he undertook to paint some
frescoes independently, and that work earned for him the name of
"Andrea senza Errori"--Andrea the Unerring. Then, as now, each artist
had his own way of working, and Andrea's was perhaps the most
difficult of all, yet the most genius-like. There were those, Michael
Angelo for example, who laid in backgrounds for their paintings; but
Andrea painted his subject upon the wet plaster, precisely as he meant
it to be when finished.

He was unlike the moody Michael Angelo; unlike the gentle Raphael;
unlike the fastidious Van Dyck who came long afterward; he was
hail-fellow-well-met among his associates, though often given over to
dreaminess. He belonged to a jolly club named the "Kettle Club,"
literally, the Company of the Kettle; and to another called "The
Trowel," both suggesting an all around good time and much good
fellowship The members of these clubs were expected to contribute to
their wonderful suppers, and Andrea on one occasion made a great
temple, in imitation of the Baptistry, of jelly with columns of
sausages, white birds and pigeons represented the choir and
priests. Besides being "Andrew the Unerring," and a "Merry Andrew," he
was also the "Tailor's Andrew," a man in short upon whom a nickname
sat comfortably. He helped to make the history of the "Company of the
Kettle," for he recited and probably composed a touching ballad called
"The Battle of the Mice and the Frogs," which doubtless had its origin
in a poem of Homer's. But all at once, in the midst of his gay
careless life came his tragedy; he fell in love with a hatter's
wife. This was quite bad enough, but worse was to come, for the hatter
shortly died, and the widow was free to marry Andrea.

After his marriage Andrea began painting a series of Madonnas,
seemingly for no better purpose than to exhibit his wife's beauty over
and over again. He lost his ambition and forgot everything but his
love for this unworthy woman. She was entirely commonplace, incapable
of inspiring true genius or honesty of purpose.

A great art critic, Vasari, who was Andrea's pupil during this time,
has written that the wife, Lucretia, was abominable in every way. A
vixen, she tormented Andrea from morning till night with her bitter
tongue. She did not love him in the least, but only what his money
could buy for her, for she was extravagant, and drove the sensitive
artist to his grave while she outlived him forty years.

About the time of the artist's marriage he painted one fresco, "The
Procession of the Magi," in which he placed a very splendid substitute
for his wife, namely himself. Afterward he painted the Dead Christ
which found its way to France and it laid the foundation for Andrea's
wrongdoing. This picture was greatly admired by the King of France who
above all else was a lover of art. Francis I. asked Andrea to go to
his court, as he had commissions for him. He made Andrea a money offer
and to court he went.

He took a pupil with him, but he left his wife at home. At the court
of Francis I. he was received with great honours, and amid those new
and gracious surroundings, away from the tantalising charms of his
wife and her shrewish tongue, he began to have an honest ambition to
do great things. His work for France was undertaken with enthusiasm,
but no sooner was he settled and at peace, than the irrepressible wife
began to torment him with letters to return. Each letter distracted
him more and more, till he told the King in his despair, that he must
return home, but that he would come back to France and continue his
work, almost at once. Francis I., little suspecting the cause of
Andrea's uneasiness, gave him permission to go, and also a large sum
of money to spend upon certain fine works of art which he was to bring
back to France.

We can well believe that Andrea started back to his home with every
good intention; that he meant to appease his wife and also his own
longing to see her; to buy the King his pictures with the money
entrusted to him, and to return to France and finish his work; but,
alas, he no sooner got back to his wife than his virtuous purpose
fled. She wanted this; she wanted that--and especially she wanted a
fine house which could just about be built for the sum of money which
the King of France had entrusted to Andrea.

Andrea is a pitiable figure, but he was also a vagabond, if we are to
believe Vasari. He took the King's money, built his wretched wife a
mansion, and never again dared return to France, where his dishonesty
made him forever despised.

Afterward he was overwhelmed with despair for what he had done, and he
tried to make his peace with Francis; but while that monarch did not
punish him directly for his knavery; he would have no more to do with
him, and this was the worst punishment the artist could have
had. However, his genius was so great that other than French people
forgot his dishonesty and he began life anew in his native place.

Almost all his pictures were on sacred subjects; and finally, when
driven from Florence to Luco by the plague, taking with him his wife
and stepdaughter, he began a picture called the "Madonna del Sacco"
(the Madonna of the Sack).

This fresco was to adorn the convent of the Servi, and the sketches
for it were probably made in Luco. When the plague passed and the
artist was able to return to Florence, he began to paint it upon the
cloister walls.

Andrea, like Leonardo, painted a famous "Last Supper," although the
two pictures cannot be compared. In Andrea's picture it is said that
all the faces are portraits.

Just before the plague sent him and his family from Florence a most
remarkable incident took place. Raphael had painted a celebrated
portrait of Pope Leo X. in a group, and the picture belonged to
Ottaviano de Medici. Duke Frederick II., of Mantua, longed to own this
picture, and at last requested the Medici to give it to him. The Duke
could not well be refused, but Ottaviano wanted to keep so great a
work for himself. What was to be done? He was in great trouble over
the affair. The situation seemed hopeless. It seemed certain that he
must part with his beloved picture to the Duke of Mantua; but one day
Andrea del Sarto declared that he could make a copy of it that even
Raphael himself could not tell from his original. Ottaviano could
scarcely believe this, but he begged Andrea to set about it, hoping
that it might be true.

Going at the work in good earnest, Andrea painted a copy so exact that
the pupil of Raphael, who had more or less to do with the original
picture, could not tell which was which when he was asked to
choose. This pupil, Giulio Romano, was so familiar with every stroke
of Raphael's that if he were deceived surely any one might be; so the
replica was given to the Duke of Mantua, who never found out the
difference.

Years afterward Giulio Romano showed the picture to Vasari, believing
it to be the original Raphael, neither Andrea nor the Medici having
told Romano the truth. But Vasari, who knew the whole story, declared
to Romano that what he showed him was but a copy. Romano would not
believe it, but Vasari told him that he would find upon the canvas a
certain mark, known to be Andrea's. Romano looked, and behold, the
original Raphael became a del Sarto! The original picture hangs in the
Pitti Palace, while the copy made by Andrea is in the Naples Gallery.

The introduction of Andrea to Vasari was one of the few gracious
things, that Michael Angelo ever did. About Andrea he said to Raphael
at the time: "There is a little fellow in Florence who will bring
sweat to your brows if ever he is engaged in great works." Raphael,
would certainly have agreed, with him had he known what was to happen
in regard to the Leo X. picture.

Notwithstanding Andrea's unfortunate temperament, which caused him to
be guided mostly by circumstances instead of guiding them, he was said
to be improving all the time in his art. He had a great many pupils,
but none of them could tolerate his wife for long, so they were always
changing.

Throughout his life the artist longed for tenderness and encouragement
from his wife, and finally, without ever receiving it, he died in a
desolate way, untended even by her. After the siege of Florence there
came a pestilence, and Andrea was overtaken by it. His wife, afraid
that she too would become ill, would have nothing to do with him. She
kept away and he died quite alone, few caring that he was dead and no
one taking the trouble to follow him to his grave. Thus one of the
greatest of Florentine painters lived and died. Years after his death,
the artist Jacopo da Empoli, was copying Andrea's "Birth of the
Virgin" when an old woman of about eighty years on her way to mass
stopped to speak with him. She pointed to the beautiful Virgin's face
in the picture and said: "I am that woman." And so she was--the widow
of the great Andrea. Though she had treated him so cruelly, she was
glad to have it known that she was the widow of the dead genius.

  PLATE--THE MADONNA DEL SACCO
  _(Madonna of the Sack)_

This picture is a fresco in the cloister of the Annunziata at
Florence, and it is called "of the sack" because Joseph is posed
leaning against a sack, a book open upon his knees.

Doubtless the model for this Madonna is Andrea del Sarto's abominable
wife, but she looks very sweet and simple in the picture. The folds of
Mary's garments are beautifully painted, so is the poise of her head,
and all the details of the picture except the figure of the
child. There is a line of stiffness there and it lacks the softness of
many other pictures of the Infant Jesus.

  PLATE--THE HOLY FAMILY

In this picture in the Pitti Palace, Florence, Andrea del Sarto
represents all the characters in a serious mood. There are St. John
and Elizabeth, Mary and the Infant Jesus, and there is no touch of
playfulness such as may be found in similar groups by other artists of
the time. Attention is concentrated upon Jesus who seems to be
learning from his young cousin. The left hand, resting upon Mary's arm
is badly drawn and in character does not seem to belong to the figure
of the child. A full, overhanging upper lip is a dominant feature in
each face.

Other works of Andrea del Sarto are "Charity," which is in the Louvre;
"Madonna dell' Arpie," "A Head of Christ," "The Dead Christ," "Four
Saints," "Joseph in Egypt," his own portrait, and "Joseph's Dream."





II

MICHAEL ANGELO (BUONARROTI)


  (Pronounced Meek-el-ahn-jel-o (Bwone-ar-ro'tee))
  _Florentine School_
  1475-1564
  _Pupil of Ghirlandajo_

This wonderful man did more kinds of things, at a time when almost all
artists were versatile, than any other but one. Probably Leonardo da
Vinci was gifted in as many different ways as Michael Angelo, and in
his own lines was as powerful. This Florentine's life was as tragic as
it was restless.

There is a tablet in a room of a castle which stands high upon a rocky
mount, near the village of Caprese, which tells that Michael Angelo
was born in that place. The great castle is now in ruins, and more
than four hundred years of fame have passed since the little child was
born therein.

The unhappy existence of the artist seems to have been foreshadowed by
an accident which happened to his mother before he was born. She was
on horseback, riding with her husband to his official post at Chiusi,
for he was governor of Chiusi and Caprese. Her horse stumbled, fell,
and badly hurt her. This was two months before Michael Angelo was
born, and misfortune ever pursued him.

The father of Angelo was descended from an aristocratic house--the
Counts of Canossa were his ancestors--and in that day the profession
of an artist was not thought to be dignified. Hence the father had
quite different plans for the boy; but the son persisted and at last
had his way. When he was still a little child his father finished his
work as an official at Caprese and returned to Florence; but he left
the little Angelo behind with his nurse. That nurse was the wife of a
stonemason, and almost as soon as the boy could toddle he used to
wander about the quarries where the stonecutters worked, and doubtless
the baby joy of Angelo was to play at chiseling as it is the pleasure
of modern babies to play at peg-top. After a time he was sent for to
go to Florence to begin his education.

In Florence he fell in with a young chap who, like himself, loved art,
but who was fortunate enough already to be apprenticed to the great
painter of his time--Ghirlandajo. One happy day this young Granacci
volunteered to take Michael Angelo to his master's studio, and there
Angelo made such an impression on Ghirlandajo that he was urged by the
artist to become his pupil.

All the world began to seem rose coloured to the ambitious boy, and he
started his life-work with enthusiasm. At that time he was thirteen
years old, full of hope and of love for his kind; but his good fortune
did not last long. He had hardly settled to work in Ghirlandajo's
studio than his genius, which should have made him beloved, made him
hated by his master. Angelo drew superior designs, created new
art-ideas, was more clever in all his undertakings than any other
pupil--even ahead of his master; and almost at once Ghirlandajo became
furiously jealous. This enmity between pupil and master was the
beginning of Angelo's many misfortunes.

One day he got into a dispute with a fellow student, Torregiano, who
broke his nose. This deformity alone was a tragedy to one like Michael
Angelo who loved everything beautiful, yet must go through life
knowing himself to be ill-favoured.

In height he was a little man, topped by an abnormally large head
which was part of the penalty he had to pay for his talents. He had a
great, broad forehead, and an eye that did not gleam nor express the
beauty of his creative mind, but was dull, and lustreless, matching
his broken, flattened nose. Indeed he was a tragedy to himself. In the
"History of Painting" Muther describes his unhappy disposition:

"In his youthful years he never learned what love meant. 'If thou
wishest to conquer me,' in old age he addresses love, 'give me back my
features, from which nature has removed all beauty.' Whenever in his
sonnets he speaks of passion, it is always of pain and tears, of
sadness and unrequited longing, never of the fulfilment of his
wishes."

Then, too, Michael Angelo had a quarrelsome disposition, and he was
harsh in his criticism of others. He hated Leonardo da Vinci more for
his great physical beauty than for his genius. He quarreled with most
of his contemporaries, never joined the assemblies of his brother
artists, but dwelt altogether apart. His was a gloomy and melancholy
disposition and he never found relief outside his work.

He was all kinds of an artist--poet, sculptor, architect, painter--and
although he worked with the irregularity of true genius, he worked
indefatigably when once he began. It is said that when he was making
his "David" he never removed his clothing the whole time he was
employed upon the work, but dropped down when too exhausted to work
more, and slept wherever he fell.

His first flight from the workshop of Ghirlandajo was to the gardens
of the great Florentine prince, Lorenzo de' Medici, who had sent to
Ghirlandajo for two of his best pupils. He wished them to come to his
gardens and study the beautiful Greek statues which ornamented
them. The choice fell to Angelo and Granacci. Probably those statues
in Lorenzo's garden were the first glimpses of really great art that
Michael Angelo ever had. Certain it is that he was overwhelmed with
happiness when he was given permission to copy what he would, and at
once he fell to work with his chisel. His first work in that garden
was upon the head of an old faun; and Lorenzo, walking by, curious to
know to what use the lad was putting his opportunity, made a
criticism:

"You have made your faun old," he said, "yet you have left all the
teeth; at such an age, generally the teeth are wanting."

Angelo had nothing to say and the prince walked on, but when next he
came that way, he found that Angelo had broken off two of the faun's
teeth; and this recognition of his criticism pleased Lorenzo so much
that he invited Angelo to live with him. At first his father
objected. He felt himself to be an aristocrat, and sculpture and
painting were indeed low occupations for his son, who he had resolved
should be nothing less than a silk merchant. Nevertheless, the
prince's command, united with the son's pleading, compelled the father
to give up his cherished dream of making a merchant of him, and Angelo
went to live in the palace.

Then indeed what seemed a beautiful life opened out. He was dressed in
fine clothing, dined with princes, and possibly he was grateful to his
patron. Some historians say so, and add that when Lorenzo died Angelo
wept, and returned sadly to his father's house to mourn, but this tale
seems at odds with what else we know of Angelo's unangelic, envious
and bitter disposition. It is quite certain, however, that with the
death of Lorenzo, Angelo's, fortunes became greatly changed. Another
prince followed in line--Pietro de' Medici--but he was a poor thing,
who brought little good to anybody. He had small use for Michael
Angelo's genius, but it is said that he did give him one
commission. After a great storm one day, he asked him to make a
snow-man for him, and Angelo obligingly complied. It was doubtless a
very beautiful snow-man, but although it was Angelo's it melted in the
night, even as if it had been Johnny's or Tommy's snow-man, and left
no trace behind.

In Rome there was a high and haughty pope on the throne--Julius
II.--who had probably not his match for obstinacy and haughtiness,
excepting in the great painter and sculptor. When Angelo went to Rome,
he was bound to come in conflict with Julius for it was popes and
princes who gave art any reason for being in those days, and the
Church prescribed what kind of art should be cultivated. Michael was
to come directly under the command of the pope and such a combination
promised trouble. Kings themselves had to remove their crowns and hats
to Julius, and why not Michael Angelo? Yet there he stood, covered,
before the pope, opposing his greatness to that of the pope. Soderini
says that Angelo treated the pope as the king of France never would
have dared treat him; but Angelo may have known that kings of France
might be born and die, times without number, while there would never
be born another Michael Angelo. There could be nothing but antagonism
between Angelo and Julius, and soon after the artist returned to
Florence; but the necessity for following his profession enabled
Julius to tame him after all, and it is said that the pope led him
back to Rome, later, "with a halter about his neck." This must have
been agony to Angelo.

Back in Rome, he was commissioned to make a tomb for the pope. He had
no sooner set about the preliminaries--the getting of suitable marble
for his work--than he began to quarrel with the men who were to hew
it. When that difficulty was settled, and the marble was got out, he
had a set-to with the shipowners who were to transport the stone, and
that row became so serious that the sculptor was besieged in his own
house.

At another and later time, when he was engaged upon the frescoes of
the Sistine Chapel, he was made to work by force. He accused the man
who had built the scaffolding upon which he must stand, or lie, to
paint, of planning his destruction. He suspected the very assistants
whom he, himself, had chosen to go from Florence, of having designs
upon his life. He locked the chapel against them, and they had to turn
away when they went to begin work. Because of his insane suspicion he
did alone the enormous work of the frescoes. Doubtless he was half
mad, just as he was wholly a genius.

By the time he had finished those frescoes he was so exhausted and
overworked that he wrote piteously to his people at home, "I have not
a friend in Rome, neither do I wish nor have use for any." This of
course was not true; or he would not have made the statement. "I
hardly find time to take nourishment. Not an ounce more can I bear
than already rests upon my shoulders." Even when the work was done he
felt no happiness because of it, but complained about everything and
everybody.

If Angelo thought this an unhappy day, worse was in store for
him. Julius II. died and in his place there came to reign upon the
papal throne, Leo X. If Michael Angelo had been restricted in his work
before, he was almost jailed under Leo X. Julius had been a virile,
forceful man, and Michael Angelo was the same. Since he must be
restrained and dictated to, it was possible for the artist to listen
to a man who was in certain respects strong like himself, but to be
under the thumb of a weak, effeminate person like Leo, was the tragedy
of tragedies to Angelo. That was a marvellous time in Rome. All its
citizens had become so pleasure-loving that the world, stood still to
wonder. When the pope banqueted, he had the golden plates from which
fair women had eaten hurled into the Tiber, that they might never be
profaned by a less noble use than they had known. From all this riot
and madness of pleasure, Michael Angelo stood aside with frowning brow
and scornful mien. He approved of nothing and of nobody--despising
even Raphael, the gentle and loving man whom the pleasure-crazed
people of Rome paused to smile upon and love. The pope said that
Angelo was "terrible," and that he filled everybody with fear.

Finally, Rome so resented his frowning looks and his surly ways that
work was provided for him at a distance. He was sent to Florence again
to build a facade. While there, the city was conquered, and Angelo was
one who fought for its freedom, but even so, he fled just at the
crisis. Thus he ever did the wrong thing--excepting when he worked. In
Florence he had planned to do mighty things, but he never accomplished
any one of them. He planned to make a wonderful colossal statue on a
cliff near Carrara, and also he resolved to make the tomb of Julius
the nucleus of a "forest of statues."

Michael Angelo never married, but he was burdened with a family and
all its cares. He supported his brothers and even his nephews, and
took care of his father. All of those people came to him with their
difficulties and with their demands for money. He chided, quarreled,
repelled, yet met every obligation. He would sit beside the sick-bed
of a servant the night through, but growl at the demands of his near
relatives--and it is not unlikely that he had good reason.

At last he withdrew himself from all human society but that of little
children, whom he cared to speak with and to please. He would have
naught to do with men of genius like himself; and when he fell from a
scaffolding and injured himself, the physician had to force his way
through a barred window, in order to get into the sick man's presence
to serve him.

An illustration of his determined solitude is given in the "Young
People's Story of Art:"

"There had long been lying idle in Florence an immense block of
marble. One hundred years before a sculptor had tried to carve
something from it, but had failed. This was now given to Michael
Angelo. He was to be paid twelve dollars a month, and to be allowed
two years in which to carve a statue. He made his design in wax; and
then built a tower around the block, so that he might work inside
without being seen."

Everything Angelo undertook bore the marks of gigantic
enterprise. Although he never succeeded in making the tomb of Julius
II. the central piece in his forest of statues, the undertaking was
marvellous enough. His original plan was to make the tomb three
stories high and to ornament it with forty statues, and if St. Peter's
Church was large enough to hold it, the work was to be placed therein;
but if not, a church was to be built specially to hold the tomb. When
at last, in spite of his difficulties with workmen and shipowners, the
marbles were deposited in the great square before St. Peter's, they
filled the whole place; and the pope, wishing to watch the progress of
the work and not himself to be observed, had a covered way built from
the Vatican to the workshop of Angelo in the square, by which he might
come and go as he chose, while an order was issued that the sculptor
was to be admitted at all times to the Vatican. No sooner was this
arrangement completed than Angelo's enemies frightened the pope by
telling him there was danger in making his tomb before his death; and
with these superstitions haunting him Julius II. stopped the work,
leaving Angelo without the means to pay for his marbles. With the
doors of the Vatican closed to him, Angelo withdrew, post haste to
Florence--and who can blame him? Nevertheless, the work was resumed
after infinite trouble on the pope's part. He had to send again and
again for Angelo and after forty years, the work was finished. There
the sequel of the sculptor's forty-years war with self and the world
stands to-day in "Moses," the wonderful, commanding central figure
which seems to reflect all the fierce power which Angelo had to keep
in check during a life-time.

The command of Julius that he should paint the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel aroused all his fierce resistance. He did it under protest, all
the while accusing those about him of having designs upon his life.

"I am not a painter, but a sculptor," he said.

"Such a man as thou is everything that he wishes to be," the pope
replied.

"But this is an affair of Raphael. Give him this room to paint and let
me carve a mountain!" But no, he must paint the ceiling; but to render
it easier for him the pope told him he might fill in the spaces with
saints, and charge a certain amount for each. This Angelo, who was
first of all an artist, refused to do. He would do the work rightly or
not at all. So he made his own plans and cut himself a cardboard
helmet, into the front of which he thrust a candle, as if it were a
Davy lamp, and he lay upon his back to work day and night at the hated
task. During those months he was compelled to look up so continually,
that never afterward was he able to look down without difficulty. When
he had finished the work Julius had some criticisms to make.

"Those dresses on your saints are such poor things," he said. "Not
rich enough--such very poor things!"

"Well, they were poor things," was Angelo's answer. "The saints did
not wear golden ornaments, nor gold on their garments."

After Julius II. and Leo X. came Pope Paul III., and he, like the
other two, determined to have Angelo for his workman. Indeed all his
life, Michael Angelo's gifts were commanded by the Church of Rome. It
was for Paul III. he painted the "Last Judgment." His former work upon
the Sistine Chapel had been the story of the creation. All his work
was of a mighty and allegorical nature; tremendous shoulders, mighty
limbs, herculean muscles that seemed fit to support the
universe. These allegories are made of hundreds of figures. To-day
they are still there, though dimmed by the smoke of centuries of
incense, and dismembered by the cracking of plaster and disintegration
of materials.

Angelo's methods of work, as well as their results, were
oppressive. In his youth, while trying to perfect himself in his study
of the human form, he drew or modelled, from nude corpses. He had
these conveyed by stealth from the hospital into the convent of Santo
Spirito, where he had a cell and there he worked, alone.

He was concentrated, mentally and emotionally, upon himself. The only
remark he made after the blow from Torregiano was, "You will be
remembered only as the man who broke my nose!" This proved nearly
true, since Torregiano was banished, and murdered by the Spanish
Inquisition.

All sorts of anecdotes have floated through the centuries concerning
this man and his work. For example, he made a statue of a sleeping
cupid, which was buried in the ground for a time that it might assume
the appearance of age, and pass for an antique. Afterward it was sold
to the Cardinal San Giorgio for two hundred ducats, though Michael
Angelo received only thirty. Nevertheless, he died a rich man, after
having cared for a numerous family, while he himself lived like a man
without means. All the tranquillity he ever knew he enjoyed in his old
age.

It was characteristic of his perversity that he left his name upon
nothing that he made, with one exception. Vasari relates the story of
that exception:

"The love and care which Michael Angelo had given to this group, 'In
Paradise,' were such that he there left his name--a thing he never did
again for any work--on the cincture which girdles the robe of Our
Lady; for it happened one day that Michael Angelo, entering the place
where it was erected, found a large assemblage of strangers from
Lombardy there, who were praising it highly; one of them asking who
had done it, was told, 'our Hunchback of Milan'; hearing which Michael
Angelo remained silent, although surprised that his work should be
attributed to another. But one night he repaired to St. Peter's with a
light and his chisels, to engrave his name on the figure, which seems
to breathe a spirit as perfect as her form and countenance."

If his youth had been given to sculpture, his maturity to the painting
of wondrous frescoes, so his old age was devoted to architecture, and
as architect he rebuilt the decaying St. Peter's. In this work he felt
that he partly realised his ideal. Sculpture meant more to him, "did
more for the glory of God," than any other form of art. When he had
finished his work on St. Peter's, he is said to have looked upon it
and exclaimed: "I have hung the Pantheon in the air!"

This colossal genius died in Rome, and was carried by the light of
torches from that city back to his better loved Florence, where he was
buried. His tomb was made in the Santa Croce, and upon it are three
female figures representing Michael Angelo's three wonderful arts:
Architecture, sculpture and painting. No artist was greater than he.

His will committed "his soul to God, his body to the earth, and his
property to his nearest relatives."

  PLATE--DANIEL

This wonderful painting is a part of the decoration of the Sistine
Chapel in Rome. The picture of the prophet tells so much in itself,
that a description seems absurd. It is enough to call attention to the
powerful muscles in the arm, the fall of the hand, and then to speak
of the main characteristics of the artist's pictures.

It is extraordinary that there is no blade of grass to be found in any
painting by Michael Angelo. He loved to paint but one thing, and that
was the naked man, the powerful muscles, or the twisted limbs of those
in great agony. He loved only to work upon vast spaces of ceiling or
wall. Look at this picture of Daniel and see how like sculpture the
pose and modelling appear to be. First of all, Michael Angelo was a
sculptor, and most of the painting which fate forced him to do has the
characteristics of sculpture.

One critic has remarked that he loves to think of this strange man
sitting before the marble quarry of Pietra Santa and thinking upon all
the beings hidden in the cliff--beings which he should fashion from
the marble.

It was said that in Michael Angelo's hands the Holy Family became a
race of Titans, and where others would have put plants or foliage,
Angelo placed men and naked limbs to fill the space. When his subject
made some sort of herbage necessary, he invented a kind of medi‘val
fern in place of grass and familiar leaves. Everything appears brazen
and hard and mighty, suggestive of Angelo's own throbbing spirit and
maddened soul. Most of his work, when illustrated, must be shown not
as a whole but in sections, but one can best mention them as entire
picture themes. On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are nine frescoes
describing "The Creation of The World," "The Fall of Man" and "The
Deluge." "The Last Judgment" occupies the entire altar wall in the
same chapel of the Vatican. "The Holy Family" is in the Uffizi
Gallery, Florence.




III

ARNOLD B™CKLIN


  (Pronounced Bek'-lin)
  _Modern German School (Dsseldorf)_
  1827-1901

This splendid artist is so lately dead that it does not seem proper
yet to discuss his personal history, but we can speak understandingly
of his art, for we already know it to be great art, which will stand
the test of time. His imagination turned toward subjects of solemn
grandeur and his work is very impressive and beautiful.

He was born in Basel, "one of the most prosaic towns in Europe." His
father was a Swiss merchant, and not poor; thus the son had ordinarily
good chances to make an artist of himself. He was born at a time when
to be an artist had long ceased to be a reproach, and men no longer
discouraged their sons who felt themselves inspired to paint great
pictures.

When B”cklin was nineteen years old he took himself to Dsseldorf,
with his merchant father's permission, and settled down to learn his
art, but in that city he found mostly "sentimental and anecdotal"
pictures being painted, which did not suit him at all. Then he took
himself off to Brussels, where again he was not satisfied, and so went
to Paris. But while in Brussels he had copied many old masters, and
had advanced himself very much, so that he did not present himself in
Paris raw and untried in art.

At first he studied in the Louvre, then went to Rome, seeking ever the
best, and being hard to satisfy. He found rest and tranquillity in
Zrich, a city in his native country, but it was Italy that had most
influenced his work.

He loved the Campagna of Rome with its ruins and the sad grandeur of
the crumbling tombs lining its way, and therefore a certain
mysterious, grand, and solemn character made his pictures unlike those
of any other artist. He loved to paint in vertical (up-and-down)
fines, rather than with the conventional horizontal outlines that we
find in most paintings. This method gives his pictures a different
quality from any others in the world.

He loved best of all to paint landscape, and it is said of him that
"as the Greeks peopled their streams and woods and waves with
creatures of their imagination, so B”cklin makes the waterfall take
shape as a nymph, or the mists which rise above the water source
wreathe into forms of merry children; or in some wild spot hurls
centaurs together in fierce combat, or makes the slippery, moving wave
give birth to Nereids and Tritons."

Muther, art-critic and biographer, calls our attention to the
similarity between Wagner's music and B”cklin's painting. While Wagner
was "luring the colours of sound from music," B”cklin's "symphonies of
colour streamed forth like a crashing orchestra," and he calls him the
greatest colour-poet of the time.

In appearance B”cklin was fine of form, healthy and wholesome in all
his thoughts and way of living. In 1848 he took part in revolutionary
politics and later this did him great harm. Only the influence of his
friends kept him from ruin. After the Franco-Prussian war he was made
Minister of Fine Arts. In this office he rendered great service; but
because he had to witness the wrecking of the Column Vend“me in order
to save the Louvre and the Luxembourg from the mob, he was censured;
indeed so heavy a fine was imposed that it took his whole fortune to
pay it; and he was banished into the bargain. From 1892 to 1901 he
lived in or near Florence, and he died at Fiesole, January 16th, 1901.

  PLATE--THE ISLE OF THE DEAD

This picture is perhaps the greatest of the many great Arnold B”cklin
paintings, and it is both fascinating and awe-inspiring.

It best shows his liking for vertical lines in art. The Isle of the
Dead is of a rocky, shaft-like formation in which we may see hewn-out
tombs; and there, tall cypress trees are growing.

The traces of man's work in the midst of this sombre, ideal, and
mystic scene add to the impressiveness of the picture. The isle stands
high and lonely in the midst of a sea.

The water seems silently to lap the base of the rocks and the trees
are in black shadow, massed in the centre. It looks very mysterious
and still. There is a stone gateway touched with the light of a dying
day. It is sunset and the dead is being brought to its resting place
in a tiny boat, all the smaller for its relation to the gloomy
grandeur of the isle which it is approaching. One figure is standing
in the boat, facing the island, and the sunlight falls full upon his
back and touches the boat, making that spot stand out brilliantly from
all the rest of the picture.

Among B”cklin's paintings are "Naiads at Play," which hangs in the
Museum at Basel, "A Villa by the Sea," "The Sport of the Waves,"
"Regions of Joy," "Flora," and "Venus Dispatching Cupid."




IV

MARIE-ROSA BONHEUR


  (Pronounced Rosa Bon-er)
  _French School_
  1822-1895
  _Pupil of Raymond B. Bonheur_

Rosa Bonheur, Landseer, and Murillo maybe called "Children's Painters"
in this book because they painted things that children, as well as
grown-ups, certainly can enjoy. To be sure, Murillo was a very
different sort of artist from Rosa Bonheur or Landseer, but if the two
latter painted the most beautiful, animals--dogs, sheep, and
horses--Murillo painted the loveliest little children.

Rosa was the best pupil of her father; Raymond B. Bonheur. In Bordeaux
they lived together the peaceful life of artists, the father being
already a well known painter when his daughter was born. She became,
as Mr. Hamerton, who knew her, said, "the most accomplished female
painter who ever lived ... a pure, generous woman as well and can
hardly be too much admired ... as a woman or an artist. She is simple
in her tastes and habits of life and many stories are told of her
generosity to others."

After a time the Bonheurs moved to Paris where young Rosa could have
better opportunities; and there she put on man's clothing, which she
wore all her life thereafter. She wore a workingman's blouse and
trousers, and tramped about looking more like a man than a woman with
her short hair. This, made everybody stare at her and think her very
queer, but people no longer believe that she dressed herself thus in
order to advertise herself and attract attention; but because it was
the most convenient costume for her to get about in. She went to all
sorts of places; the stockyards, slaughter houses, all about the
streets of Paris, to learn of things and people, especially of
animals, which she wished most to paint. She could hardly have gone
about thus if she had worn women's clothing.

Rosa Bonheur exhibited her first painting at the _Salon_ in 1841, and
this was twelve years before her beloved father died; thus he had the
happiness of knowing that the daughter whom he had taught so lovingly
was on the road to success and fortune. He knew that when fortune
should come to her she would use it well. The year that she exhibited
her work in the _Salon_ she painted only two little pictures--one of
rabbits, the other of sheep and goats--but they were so splendidly
done that all the critics knew a great woman artist had arrived.

It was then that her enemies, those who were becoming jealous of her
work, said that she was wearing men's clothing in order to attract
attention to herself.

Soon her work began to be bought by the French Government, which was a
sure sign of her power. She was already much beloved by the people. In
the meantime we in America and others in England had heard of
Mademoiselle Bonheur, but we heard far less about her painting than we
did about her masculine garb. We thought of her mostly as an eccentric
woman; but one day came "The Horse Fair," and all the world heard of
that, so the artist was to be no longer judged by the clothes she wore
but by her art. Finally, she received the cross of the Legion of
Honour, and also was made a member of the Institute of Antwerp.

She lived near Fontainebleau; her studio a peaceful retired home, till
the Franco-Prussian war came about. Then she and others began to fear
that her studio and pictures would be destroyed, so the artist was
forced to stop her work and prepared to go elsewhere. But the Crown
Prince of Prussia himself ordered that Mademoiselle Bonheur should not
even be disturbed. Her work had made her belong to all the world and
all the world was to protect her if need be.

Rosa Bonheur had a brother who, some critics said, was the better
artist, but if that were true it is likely that his popularity would
in some degree have approached that of his sister. Rosa Bonheur did
not paint many large canvases, but mostly small ones, or only
moderately large; but when she painted sheep it seems that one might
shear the wool, it stands so fleecy and full; while her horses rampage
and curvet, showing themselves off as if they were alive.

  PLATE--THE HORSE FAIR

This picture was exhibited all over the world very nearly. It was
carried to England and to America, and won admiration wherever it was
seen. Finally it was sold in America. It was first exhibited in 1853,
the year in which the artist's father died. Mr. Ernest Gambart was the
first who bought the picture, and he wrote of it to his friend,
Mr. S.P. Avery: "I will give you the real history of 'The Horse Fair,'
now in New York. It was painted in 1852, by Rosa Bonheur, then in her
thirtieth year, and exhibited in the next _Salon_. Though much admired
it did not find a purchaser. It was soon after exhibited in Ghent,
meeting again with much appreciation, but was not sold, as art did not
flourish at the time. In 1855 the picture was sent by Rosa Bonheur to
her native town of Bordeaux and exhibited there. She offered to sell
it to the town at the very low price 12,000 francs ($2,400). While
there, I asked her if she would sell it to me, and allow me to take it
to England and have it engraved. She said: 'I wish to have my picture
remain in France. I will once more impress on my countrymen, my wish
to sell it to them for 12,000 francs. If they refuse, you can have it,
but if you take it abroad, you must pay me 40,000 francs.' The town
failing to make the purchase, I at once accepted these terms, and Rosa
Bonheur then placed the picture at my disposal. I tendered her the
40,000 francs and she said: 'I am much gratified at your giving me
such a noble price, but I do not like to feel that I have taken
advantage of your liberality; let us see how we can combine in the
matter. You will not be able to have an engraving made from so large a
canvas. Suppose I paint you a small one from the same subject, of
which I will make you a present.' Of course I accepted the gift, and
thus it happened that the large work went travelling over the kingdom
on exhibition, while Thomas Landseer was making an engraving from the
quarter-size replica.

"After some time (in 1857 I think), I sold the original picture to
Mr. William P. Wright, New York (whose picture gallery and residence
were at Weehawken, N.J.), for the sum of 30,000 francs, but later I
understood that Mr. Stewart paid a much larger price for it on the
breaking up of Mr. Wright's gallery. The quarter size replica, from
which the engraving was made, I finally sold to Mr. Jacob Bell, who
gave it in 1859 to the nation, and it is now in the National Gallery,
London. A second, still smaller replica, was painted a few years
later, and was resold some time ago in London for œ4,000
($20,000). There is also a smaller water-colour drawing which was sold
to Mr. Bolckow for 2,500 guineas ($12,000), and is now an heirloom
belonging to the town of Middlesbrough. That is the whole history of
this grand work. The Stewart canvas is the real and true original, and
only large size 'Horse-Fair.'

"Once in Mr. Stewart's collection, it never left his gallery until the
auction sale of his collection, March 25th, 1887, when it was
purchased by Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt for the sum of $55,000, and
presented to the Metropolitan Museum of Art."

And thus we have the whole story of the "Horse-Fair." The picture is
93-1/2 inches high, and 197 inches wide, and it contains a great
number of horses, some of which are ridden, while others are led, and
all are crowding with wild gaiety toward the fair where it is quite
plain they know they are about to be admired and their beauty shown to
the best advantage. Other well-known Rosa Bonheurs are "Ploughing,"
"Shepherd Guarding Sheep," "Highland Sheep," "Scotch Deer," "American
Mustangs," and "The Study of a Lioness."




V

ALESSANDRO BOTTICELLI


  (Pronounced Ah-lays-sahn'dro Bo't-te-chel'lee)
  _Florentine School,_
  1447-1510 (Vasari's dates)
  _Pupil of Filippo Lippi and Verrocchio_

Botticelli took his name from his first master, as was the fashion in
those days. The relation of master and apprentice was very close, not
at all like the relation of pupil and teacher to-day.

Botticelli's father was a Florentine citizen, Mariano Filipepi, and he
wished his son to become a goldsmith; hence the lad was soon
apprenticed to Botticelli, the goldsmith. As a scholar, the little
goldsmith had not distinguished himself. Indeed it is said that as a
boy he would not "take to any sort of schooling in reading, writing,
or arithmetic." It cannot be said that this failure distinguished him
as a genius, or the world would be full of genius-boys; but the result
was that he early began to learn his trade.

Fortunately for him and us, Botticelli, the smith, was a man of some
wisdom and when he saw that the lad originated beautiful designs and
had creative genius he did not treat the matter with scorn, as the
master of Andrea del Sarto had done, but sent him instead to Fra
Filippo (Lippo Lippi) to be taught the art of painting. So kind a deed
might well establish a feeling of devotion on little Alessandro's part
and make him wish to take his master's name.

Fra Filippo was a Carmelite monk, merry and kindly; simple, good, and
gifted, but his temperament did not seem to influence his young
pupil. Of all unhappy, morbid men, Botticelli seems to have been the
most so, unless we are to except Michael Angelo.

After studying with the monk, Botticelli was summoned by Pope Sixtus
IV. to Rome to decorate a new chapel in the Vatican. Before that time
his whole life had been greatly influenced by the teachings of
Savonarola who had preached both passionately and learnedly in
Florence, advocating liberty. From the time he fell under Savonarola's
wonderful power, the artist grew more and more mystic and morbid. In
Rome it was the custom to have the portraits of conspirators, or
persons of high degree who were revolutionary or otherwise
objectionable to the state, hung outside the Public Palace, and in
Botticelli's time there was a famous disturbance among the aristocrats
of the state. In 1478 the powerful Pazzi family conspired against the
Medici family, which then actually had control. It was Botticelli who
was engaged to paint the portraits of the Pazzi family, which to their
shame and humiliation were to be displayed upon the palace walls.

One peculiarity of this artist's pictures was that he used actual
goldleaf to make the high lights upon hair, leaves, and draperies. The
effect of the use of this gold was very beautiful, if unusual, and it
may have been that his apprenticeship as a goldsmith suggested to him
such a device.

Also it was he who created certain characteristics of painting that
have since been thought original with Burne-Jones. This was the use of
long stiff lily-stalks or other upright details in his compositions.
Examples of this idea, which produced so weird an effect, will be
found in his allegory of "Spring," where stiff tree-trunks form a part
of the background. In the "Madonna of the Palms" upright lily-stalks
are held in pale and trembling hands. Like Michael Angelo, who came
years afterward, Botticelli was a guest of the great Lorenzo the
"Magnificent," in Florence. It was by Botticelli's hand that the
greater painter sent a letter to Lorenzo from a duchess friend who was
also his patron. This was in Angelo's youth; in Botticelli's old age.

All his life was a drama of morbid seeking after the unattainable, and
finally he became so poor and helpless that in his old age he would
have starved had Lorenzo de' Medici not taken care of him. Lorenzo and
other friends who in spite of his gloominess admired his real piety,
gathered about him and kept him from starvation.

On his "Nativity," Botticelli wrote: "This picture I, Alessandro,
painted at the end of the year 1500 in the troubles of Italy, in the
halftime after the time, during the fulfilment of the eleventh of
John, in the second woe of the Apocalypse, in the loosing the devil
for three and a half years. Afterward he shall be chained according to
the twelfth of John, and see him trodden down as in this picture." All
of this is interesting because Botticelli himself wrote it, but it is
not very easily understood by any child, nor by many grown people.

Botticelli did some very extraordinary things, but whether they are
beautiful or not one must decide for himself. They are paintings so
characteristic that one must think them very beautiful or else not at
all so.

  PLATE--LA PRIMAVERA
  _(Spring)_

In this picture we have the forerunner of a modern painter, because we
see in it certain, qualities that we find in B”cklin. Look at the
effect of vertical lines; the tree trunks, and the poses of the
slender women. Over all hovers a cupid who is sending love-shafts into
the hearts of all in springtime.

Notice the lacy effect of the flowers that bestar the wind-blown gown
of "La Primavera," the fern-like leaves that fleck the background; the
draperies that do not conceal the forms of the nymphs of the lovely
springtime.

The very spirit of spring is seen in all the half-floating,
half-dancing, gliding, diaphanous figures of the forest. The flowers
of "La Primavera's" crown are blue and white cornflowers and
primroses. She scatters over the earth tulips, anemones, and
narcissus. The painting is allegorical and unique. Never were such
fluttering odds and ends of draperies painted before, nor such
fascinating effects had from canvas, paint, or brush. The picture
hangs in Florence in the Uffizi Gallery. A German critic tells us that
the "Realm of Venus," is a better title for this picture, and that it
was painted after a poem of that name.

Other pictures by this artist are: "The Birth of Venus," "Pallas,"
"Judith," "Holofernes," "St. Augustine," "Adoration of the Magi," and
"St. Sebastian."




VI

WILLIAM ADOLPHE BOUGUEREAU


  (Pronounced W. A'dolf Bou-gair-roh)
  _French (Genre) School_
  1825-1905
  _Pupil of Picot and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts_

Bouguereau's business-like father meant his son also to be
business-like, but he made the mistake of permitting him to go to a
drawing school in Bordeaux and there, to his father's chagrin, the
youngster took the annual prize. After that there seemed nothing for
the father to do but grin and bear it, because the son decided to be
an artist and had fairly won his right to be one.

Young Bouguereau had no money, and therefore he went to live with an
uncle at Saintonge, a priest, who had much sympathy with the boy's
wish to paint, and he left him free to do the best he could for
himself in art. He got a chance to paint some portraits, and when he
and his uncle talked the matter over It was decided that he should
take the money got for them, and go to Paris. It was there that he
sought Picot, his first truly helpful teacher; and there, for the
first time he learned more than he already knew about art.

All Bouguereau's opportunities in life were made by himself, by his
own genius. No one gave him anything; he earned all. He longed to go
to Italy, and in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts he won the Prix de Rome,
which made possible a journey to the land of great artists. The French
Government began to buy his work, and he began to receive commissions
to decorate walls in great buildings; thus, gradually, he made for
himself fame and fortune.

When this artist undertook to paint sacred subjects, of great dignity,
he was not at his best; but when he chose children and mothers and
everyday folk engaged about their everyday business, he painted
beautifully. Americans have bought many of his pictures and he has had
more popularity in this country than anywhere outside of France.

Some authorities give the birthplace of Bouguereau as La Rochelle; at
any rate he died there at midnight, on the nineteenth of August, 1905.

  PLATE--THE VIRGIN AS CONSOLER

The main distinction about this artist's pictured faces is the
peculiarly earnest expression he has given to the eyes. In this
picture of the Virgin there is great genius in the pose and death-look
of the little child whose mother has flung herself across the lap of
Mary, abandoned to her agony. This painting is hung in the
Luxembourg. Others by the same master are called "Psyche and Cupid"
"Birth of Venus," "Innocence," and "At the Well."




VII

SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES


  _English (Pre-Raphaelite) School_
  1833-1898
  _Pupil of Rossetti_

This artist has been called the most original of all contemporaneous
artists. He has also been called the "lyric painter"; meaning that he
is to painting what the lyric poet is to literature. His work once
known can almost always be recognised wherever seen afterward. He did
not slavishly follow the Pre-Raphaelite school, yet he drew most of
his ideas from its methods. He was, in the use of stiff lines, a
follower of Botticelli, and not original in that detail, as some have
seemed to think.

  PLATE--CHANT D'AMOUR
  _(The Love-Song)_

This is a picture in the true Burne-Jones style: a beautiful woman in
billowy draperies, playing upon a harp forms the central figure of the
group of three--a listener on either side of her. There is the
attractiveness of the Burne-Jones method about this picture, but after
all there seems to be no very good reason for its having been
painted. The subject thus treated has only a negative value, and
little suggestion of thought or dramatic idea.

Another picture of this artist, in which his use of stiff draperies is
specially shown, is that of the women at the tomb of Christ, when they
find the stone rolled away and, looking around, see the Saviour's
figure before them. The scene is low and cavern-like, with a brilliant
light surrounding the tomb. This artist also painted "The Vestal
Virgin," "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," "Pan and Psyche," "The
Golden Stairs," and "Love Among the Ruins."




VIII

JOHN CONSTABLE


  _English School_
  1776-1837
  _Pupil of the Royal Academy_

John Constable was the son of a "yeoman farmer" who meant to make him
also a yeoman farmer. Mostly we find that the fathers of our artists
had no higher expectations for their sons than to have them take up
their own business; to begin as they had, and to end as they expected
to. But in John Constable's case, as with all the others, the father's
methods of living did not at all please the son, and having most of
all a liking for picture-making; young John set himself to planning
his own affairs.

Nevertheless, the foundation of John's art was laid right there in the
Suffolk farmer's home and conditions. He was born in East Bergholt,
and the father seems to have believed in windmills, for early in life
the signs of wind and weather became a part of the son's education. He
learned a deal more of atmospheric conditions there on his father's
windmill planted farm than he could possibly have learned shut up in a
studio, French fashion. As a little boy he came to know all the signs
of the heavens; the clouds gathering for storm or shine; the bending
of the trees in the blast; all of these he loved, and later on made
the principal subjects of his art. He learned to observe these things
as a matter of business and at his father's command; thus we may say
that he studied his life-work from his very infancy. All about him
were beautiful hedgerows, picturesque cottages with high pitched roofs
covered with thatch, and it was these beauties which bred one other
great landscape painter besides Constable, of whom we shall presently
speak, Gainsborough.

At last, graduating from windmills, John went to London. He had a
vacation from the work set him by his father, and for two years he
painted "cottages, studied anatomy," and did the drudgery of his art;
but there was little money in it for him, and soon he had to go into
his father's counting house, for windmills seemed to have paid the
elder Constable, considerably better than painting promised to pay
young John.

John doubtless liked counting-house work even less than he had done
the study of windmills and weather in his father's fields. He was a
most persistent fellow, however, and finally he returned to London, to
study again the art he loved, this time in the Royal Academy, which
meant that he had made some progress.

His father gave him very little aid to do the things he longed to do,
but after his father's death he found that a little money was coming
to him from the estate--œ4,000. He had already triumphed over his
difficulties by painting his first fine pictures; he now knew that he
was to become a successful artist, and be able to take care of himself
and a wife. Though in love, he had hitherto been too poor to
marry. His first splendid work was "Dedham Vale."

Though things were going very well with him, it was not until Paris
discovered him that he achieved great success. In 1824 he painted two
large pictures which he took to Paris, and there he found fame. The
best landscape painting in France dates from the time when Constable's
works were hung in the Louvre, to become the delight of all
art-lovers.

He received a gold medal from Charles X., and became more honoured
abroad than he had ever been at home.

Constable had many enemies, and made many more after he became an
Academician. Some artists, who would have liked that honour and who
could not gain it for themselves, declared that Constable painted
"with a palette knife," though it certainly would not have mattered if
he had, since he made great pictures.

He painted things exactly as he saw them, and was not a popular
artist. Most of all, he loved to paint the scenes that he had known so
well in his youth, and he did them over and over again, as if the
subject was one in which he wished to reach perfection.

When he died he left a picture, "Arundel Castle and Mill," standing
with its paint wet upon his easel for he passed away very suddenly, on
April 1st, leaving behind him many unsold paintings.

He was a sensitive chap, and throughout his youth was greatly
distressed by the differences of opinion between himself and his
father. He was torn asunder between a sense of duty and his own wish
to be an artist; and his greatest consolation in this situation was in
the friendship he had formed for a plumber, who, like himself, dearly
loved art. The plumber's name was John Dunthorne, and the two men
wandered about the country, when not employed at their regular work,
and together, by streams and in fields, painted the same scenes. At
one time they hired a little room in the neighbouring village which
they made into a studio. Constable was a handsome fellow in his youth
and was known to all as the "handsome miller." His father, the yeoman
farmer with the windmills, was also a miller.

In London he became acquainted with one John Smith, known as
"Antiquity Smith," who taught him something of etching. After he was
recalled to his father's business, his mother wrote to "Antiquity
Smith," that she hoped John "would now attend to business, by which he
will please me and his father, and ensure his own respectability and
comfort"--a complete expression of the middle-class British mind. Her
satisfaction was short-lived, for her son soon returned to London.

When his first pictures were rejected by the Royal Academy he showed
one of them to Sir Benjamin West, who said hopefully: "Don't be
disheartened, young man, we shall hear of you again; you must have
loved nature very much before you could have painted this."

About that time he tried to paint many kinds of pictures, such as
portraits and sacred subjects, but he did not seem to succeed in
anything except the scenes of his boyhood, which he truly loved. Hence
he gave up attempting that which he could do only passably, and kept
to what he could do supremely well.

When his friends wished him to continue portrait painting, the only
thing that was well paid at that time, Constable wrote: "You know I
have always succeeded best with my native scenes. They have always
charmed me, and I hope they always will. I have now a path marked out
very distinctly for myself, and I am desirous of pursuing it
uninterruptedly."

About the time he fell in love and before his father's death, his
health began to fail, and the young woman's mother would have none of
him. Her father was in favour of Constable, but he could not hold out
against the chance of his daughter losing her grandfather's fortune by
marrying the wrong man.

The lady was not so distractingly in love as young Constable was, and
she did not entirely like the idea of poverty, even with John, so she
held off, and with so much anxiety Constable became downright ill. For
five years the pair lived apart, and then the artist and the young
woman, whose name was Maria Bicknell, lost their mothers about the
same time, This drew them very closely together; and to help the
matter on, John's attendance upon his father in his last illness
brought him to the same town as Miss Bicknell. After his father's
death, he urged the young lady so strongly to be his wife that she
consented They were married and her father soon forgave her, but not
so her grandfather, who declared that he never would forgive her, but
he really must have done so from the first, for when he died it was
found that he had left her a little fortune of œ4,000. This was about
the same amount the artist had received from his father, so that they
were able to get on very well.

After Constable's marriage he went on a visit to Sir George Beaumont,
and there an amusing incident occurred which is known to-day as the
story of Sir George's "brown tree." It seems that Constable's ideas of
colour for his landscapes were so true to nature that a good many
people did not approve of them, and one day while painting, Sir George
declared that the colour of an old Cremona fiddle was the best model
of colour tone that a landscape could have. Constable's only answer
was to place the fiddle on the green lawn in front of the house. At
another time his host asked the artist, "Do you not find it very
difficult to determine where to place your brown tree?" "Not at all,"
was Constable's reply, "for I never put such a thing into a picture in
my life."

In painting one picture many times he declared, "Its light cannot be
put out because it is the light of nature." A Frenchman called
attention to one of his pictures thus: "Look at these landscapes by an
Englishman. The ground appears to be covered with dew."

Notwithstanding the little fortune of his wife and himself, Constable
was not quite carefree, because he had to raise a good sized family of
six children so that when his wife's father died and left his daughter
œ20,000 he said to a friend: "Now I shall stand before a six-foot
canvas with a mind at ease, thank God!" In the very midst of this
happiness, his beloved wife became ill with consumption, and was
certain to die. He no longer cared very much for life and wrote very
sadly:

"I have been ill, but am endeavouring to get work again, and could I
get afloat upon a canvas of six feet, I might have a chance of being
carried from myself." When he became a member of the Royal Academy, he
said: "It has been delayed until I am solitary and cannot impart it,"
meaning that without his dear wife to share his good fortune, it
seemed an empty honour to him.

Strange things are told which show how little his work was valued by
his countrymen. After he had become a member of the Academy one of his
small pictures was entered but rejected; nobody knowing anything about
it. It was put on one side among the "outsiders." Finally, one of his
fellow members glancing at it was attracted.

"Stop a bit! I rather like that. Why not say 'doubtful'?" Later
Constable acknowledged the picture as his, and then they wished to
hang it, but he refused to let them. Another Academy story is about
his picture "Hadleigh Castle." On Varnishing Day, Chartney, a
brilliant critic, told Constable that the foreground of the picture
was "too cold," and so he undertook to "warm it," by giving it a
strong glaze with asphaltum with Constable's brush which he snatched
from the artist's hand. Constable gazed at him in horror. "Oh! there
goes all my dew," he cried, and when Chartney's back was turned he
hurriedly wiped the "warmth" all away and got back his "dew."

Even the amusing things that happened to him, seem to have a little
sadness about them. He wrote to a friend: "Beechey was here yesterday,
and said: 'Why d--n it Constable, what a d--n fine picture you are
making; but you look d--n ill, and you've got a d--n bad cold!' so,"
added Constable, "you have evidence on oath of my being about a fine
picture and that I am looking ill."

An illustration of his painstaking and truthfulness to nature is that
he once took home with him from a visit bottles of coloured sand and
fragments of stone which he meant to introduce into a picture; and on
passing some slimy posts near a mill, he said to his host, "I wish you
could cut those off and send their tops to me."

Constable was a loyal friend, the most persistent of men, and several
anecdotes are told of his characteristics. His friend Fisher said to
him:

"Where real business is to be done, you are the most energetic and
punctual of men. In smaller matters, such as putting on your breeches,
you are apt to lose time in deciding which leg shall go in first."

  PLATE--THE HAY WAIN

This picture was first called "Landscape," and it was painted in
1821. In his letters about it, however, Constable also called it
"Noon," and others wrote of it as "Midsummer Noon." This tells us what
a wealth of hot sunlight is suggested by the painting.

It shows a little farmhouse upon the bank of a stream, a spot well
known as "Willy Lott's Cottage." The owner had been born there and he
died there eighty-eight years later, without ever having left his
cottage for four whole days in all those years. Upon the tombstone of
Lott, which is in the Bergholt burial ground, his epitaph calls the
house "Gibeon Farm." It was a favourite scene with Constable, and he
painted it many times from every side. It is the same house we see in
the "Mill Stream," another Constable painting, and again in "Valley
Farm." In this last picture he painted the side opposite to the one
shown in the "Hay Wain."

The stream near which the house stands spreads out into a ford, and in
the picture the hay cart, with two men upon it, is passing through the
ford. The horses are decked out with red tassels. On the right of the
stream there is a broad meadow, golden green in the sunlight, "with
groups of trees casting cool shadows on the grass, and backed by a
distant belt of woodland of rich blues and greens." On the right is a
fisherman, half hidden by a bush, standing near his punt.

Constable wrote to his friend, Fisher, "My picture goes to the Academy
on the tenth." This was written on April 1st, 1821. "It is not so
grand as Tinney's." This shows us, that Constable had not vanity
enough to interfere with his self-criticism. Again in a letter written
to him by a friend: "How does the 'Hay Wain' look now it has got into
your own room again?" adding that he wished to see it there, away from
the Academy which to him was always "like a great pot of boiling
varnish."

Later Fisher wrote: "I have a great desire to possess your 'Wain,' but
I cannot now reach what it is worth;" and he begged Constable not to
sell it without giving him a chance to try once more to raise the
money to buy it. He wrote that the picture would become of greater
value to his children if the artist left it hanging upon the walls of
the Academy, "till you join the society of Ruysdael, Wilson, and
Claude. As praise and money will then be of no value to you, the world
will liberally bestow both."

Later a Frenchman wished to buy it for exhibition purposes, and when
Constable wrote to Fisher of this, his friend replied that he had
better sell it to the Frenchman "for the sake of the _‚clat_ it may
give you. The stupid English public, which has no judgment of its own,
will begin to think there is something in it if the French make your
works national property. You have long lain under a mistake; men do
not purchase pictures because they admire them, but because others
covet them."

Finally, the "Hay Wain" was sold to the French dealer for œ250, and
Constable threw in a picture of Yarmouth for good measure. Later a
friend declared that he had created a good deal of argument about
landscape painting, and that there had come to be two divisions, for
he had practically founded a new school. He received a gold medal for
the "Hay Wain," and the French nation tried to buy it. In the Louvre
are "The Cottage," "Weymouth Bay," and "The Glebe Farm." Elsewhere are
"Hampstead Heath," "Salisbury Cathedral," "The Lock on the Stour,"
"Dedham Mill," "The Valley Farm," "Gillingham Mill," "The Cornfield,"
"Boat-Building," "Flatford Mill on the River Stour," besides many
others.




IX

JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY


  _English School_
  1737-1815

A little boy with a squirrel was the first picture that pointed this
artist toward fame and that was painted in England and exhibited at
the Society of Arts.

This American-born Irishman had no family or ancestry of account, but
he himself was to become the father of Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, and
he did some truly fine things in art.

About the same time America had another painter, Benjamin West, marked
out for fame, but he got his start in Europe while Copley had already
become a successful artist before he left Boston, his native place.

He liked best to paint "interiors"--rooms with fine furniture and
curtains, women in fine clothing and men in embroidered waistcoats and
bejewelled buckles.

In 1777 he got into the Royal Academy, and on the whole had
considerable influence on European art. If we study the portraits that
he painted while in Boston, we can get a very complete idea of the
surroundings of the "Royalists" at the time of our colonial history.

  PLATE--THE COPLEY FAMILY GROUP

In this picture there are seven figures with an open landscape forming
the background. The baby of the family plays, with uplifted arms, upon
grandfather's knee. The mother on the couch, surrounded by her three
other children, is kissing one while another clings to her. Before her
stands a prim little maid, gowned in the fashion of grown-folks of her
day. A little lock of hair falling upon her forehead suggests that
when she was good she was very, very good, and when she was bad she
was horrid! She wears a little cap. At the back is the artist himself
in a wig and other fashions of the time. A great column rises behind
him, forming a part of the architecture or the landscape, one hardly
knows which in so artificially constructed a picture.

Copley painted also John Hancock, Judge Graham, Jeremiah Lee, and
General Joseph Warren.




X

JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE COROT


  (Pronounced Zhahn Bah-teest' Cah-mee'yel Coh'roh)
  _Fontainebleau-Barbizon School_
  1796-1875
  _Pupil of Michallon_

About three hundred years before Corot's time there was a
Fontainebleau school of artists, made up of the pathetic Andrea del
Sarto, the wonderful Leonardo da Vinci, and Cellini. These painters
had been summoned from their Italian homes by Francis I., to decorate
the Palace of Fontainebleau. The second great group of painters who
had studios in the forest and beside the stream were Rousseau, Dupr‚,
Diaz, and Daubigny; Troyon, Van Marcke, Jacque; then Millet, the
painter of peasants.

Corot was born in Paris and received what education the ordinary
school at Rouen could give him. He was intended by his parents for
something besides art, as it would seem that every artist in the world
was intended. Corot was to grow up and become a respectable draper; at
any rate a draper.

The young chap did as his father wished, until he was twenty-six years
old, and dreary years those must have been to him. He did not get on
well with his master, nor did the world treat him very well. He found
neither riches nor the fame that was his due till he was an old man of
seventy. At that age he had become as rich a man as he might have been
had he remained a sensible draper.

Best of all, Corot loved to paint clouds and dewy nights, pale moons
and early day, and of all amusements in the world, he preferred the
theatre. There he would sit; gay or sad as the play might make him,
weeping or laughing and as interested as a little child.

After he had anything to give away, Corot was the most madly generous
of men. It was he who gave a pension to the widow of his brother
artist, Millet, on which she lived all the rest of her days. He gave
money to his brother painters and to all who went to him for aid; and
he always gave gaily, freely, as if giving were the greatest joy,
outside of the theatre, a man could have. Everyone who knew him loved
him, and there was no note of sadness in his daily life, though there
seems to be one in his poetical pictures. Because of his generous ways
he was known as "Pere Corot." He sang as he worked, and loved his
fellowmen all the time; but most of all, he loved his sister.

"Rousseau is an eagle," he used to say in speaking of his fellow
artist. "As for me, I am only a lark, putting forth some little songs
in my gray clouds."

It has been noted that most great landscape painters have been
city-bred, a remarkable fact. Constable and Gainsborough were born and
bred in the country, but they are exceptions to the rule. Corot's
parents were Parisians of the purest dye, having been court-dressmakers
to Napoleon I.; and when Corot finally determined to leave the
draper's shop and become a painter, his father said: "You shall
have a yearly allowance of 1,200 francs, and if you can live on that,
you can do as you please." When his son was made a member of the
Legion of Honour, after twenty-three years of earnest work, his father
thought the matter over, and presently doubled the allowance, "for
Camille seems to have some talent after all," he remarked as an excuse
for his generosity.

It is told that when he first went to study in Italy, Corot longed to
transfer the moving scenes before him to canvas; but people moved too
quickly for him, so he methodically set about learning how to do with
a few strokes what he would otherwise have laboured over. So he
reduced his sketching to such a science that he became able to sketch
a ballet in full movement; and it is remarked that this practice
trained him for presenting the tremulousness of leaves of trees, which
he did so exquisitely.

One learns something of this painter of early dawn and soft evening
from a letter he wrote to his friend Dupr‚:

One gets up at three in the morning, before the sun; one goes and sits
at the foot of a tree; one watches and waits. One sees nothing much at
first. Nature resembles a whitish canvas on which are sketched
scarcely the profiles of some masses; everything is perfumed, and
shines in the fresh breath of dawn. Bing! the sun grows bright but has
not yet torn aside the veil behind which lie concealed the meadows,
the dale, and hills of the horizon. The vapours of night still creep,
like silvery flakes over the numbed-green vegetation. Bing! bing!--a
first ray of sunlight--a second ray of sunlight--the little flowers
seem to wake up joyously. They all have their drop of dew which
trembles--the chilly leaves are stirred with the breath of morning--in
the foliage the birds sing unseen--all the flowers seem to be saying
their prayers. Loves on butterfly wings frolic over the meadows and
make the tall plants wave--one sees nothing--yet everything is
there--the landscape is entirely behind the veil of mist, which
mounts, mounts, sucked up by the sun; and as it rises, reveals the
river, plated with silver, the meadow, the trees, cottages, the
receding distance--one distinguishes at last everything that one had
divined at first.

In all the world there can hardly be a more exquisite story of
daybreak than this; and so beautiful was the mood into which Corot
fell at eventime, as he himself describes it, that it would be a
mistake to leave it out. This is his story of the night:

Nature drowses--the fresh air, however, sighs among the leaves--the
dew decks the velvety grass with pearls. The nymphs fly--hide
themselves--and desire to be seen. Bing! a star in the sky which
pricks its image on the pool. Charming star--whose brilliance is
increased by the quivering of the water, thou watchest me--thou
smilest to me with half-closed eye! Bing!--a second star appears in
the water, a second eye opens. Be the harbingers of welcome, fresh and
charming stars. Bing! Bing! Bing!--three, six, twenty stars. All the
stars in the sky are keeping tryst in this happy pool. Everything
darkens, the pool alone sparkles. There is a swarm of stars--all
yields to illusion. The sun being gone to bed, the inner sun of the
soul, the sun of art awakens. Bon! there is my picture done!

In writing those letters, Corot made literature as well as
pictures. That little word "bing!" appears also in his paintings, as
little leaves or bits of tree-trunk, some small detail which,
high-lightened, accents the whole.

  PLATE--DANCE OF THE NYMPHS

There could hardly be a more charming painting than this which hangs
in the Louvre. It is of a half-shut-in landscape of tall trees, their
branches mingling; and all the atmospheric effects that belong to
Corot's work can here be seen.

On the open greensward is a group of nymphs dancing gaily, while over
all the scene is the veil of fairy-land or of something quite
mysterious. At the back and side, satyrs can be seen watching the
nymphs. There is here less of the blur of leaves than that seen in
later pictures, but the same soft effect is found, and the little
"bings" are the accents of light placed upon a leaf, a nymph's
shoulder, or a tree-trunk.

This picture was painted in 1851, when Corot had not yet developed
that style which was to mark all his later work.

Besides this picture he painted "Paysage," "The Bathers" "Ville
d'Arvay," "Willows near Arras," "The Bent Tree," "A Gust of Wind," and
others.




XI

CORREGGIO (ANTONIO ALLEGRI)


  (Pronounced Cor-rage'jyo Ahl-lay'gree)
  _School of Parma_
  1494(?)-1534
  _Pupil of Mantegna_

When Correggio was a little boy, he lived in the odour of spices,
which were kept upon his father's shop-shelves. He was a highly-spiced
little boy and man, although the most timid and shrinking. His
imagination was the liveliest possible.

The spice merchant lived in the town of Correggio, and thus the artist
got his name. Correggio knew what should be inside the lovely flesh of
his painted figures before he began to paint them, because he studied
anatomy in a truly scientific manner before he studied painting.
Probably no other artist up to that time, had ever begun with the bare
bones of his models, but Correggio may be said to have worked from the
inside out. He learned about the structure of the human frame from
Dr. Giovanni Battista Lombardi, and showed his gratitude to his
teacher by painting a picture "Il Medico del Correggio" (Correggio's
Physician), and presenting it to Doctor Lombardi.

Now Correggio's childhood, or at least his early manhood, could not
have been spent in poverty, because it is known that he used the most
expensive colours to paint with, painted upon the finest of canvas,
while greater artists had often to be content with boards. He also
painted upon copper plates, and it is said that he hired Begarelli, a
sculptor of much fame, to make models in relief for him to copy for
the pictures he painted on the cupolas of the churches in Parma. That
sculptor's services must have been expensive.

On the lovely island of Capri, in the Franciscan convent, will be
found one of his first pictures, painted when Correggio was about
nineteen years old.

He was highly original in many ways. Although he had never seen the
work of any great artist, he painted the most extraordinary
fore-shortened pictures; and fore-shortening was a technicality in art
then uncommon. He also was the first to paint church cupolas.
Fore-shortening produces some peculiar as well as great results, and
being a feature of art with which people were not then familiar,
Correggio's work did not go uncriticised. Indeed one artist, gazing up
into one of the cupolas where Correggio's fore-shortened figures were
placed, remarked that to him it appeared a "hash of frogs."

But when Titian saw that cupola, he said: "Reverse the cupola, fill it
with gold, and even then that will not be its money's worth."

Correggio did not receive very large sums for his work, and since he
was married and took good care of his family, he must have had some
source of income besides his brush. He received some interesting
rewards for his paintings. For example, for "St. Jerome," called "Il
Giorno," he was given "400 gold imperials, some cartloads of faggots
and measures of wheat, and a fat pig." That picture is in the Parma
Gallery, and all the cupolas which he painted are in Parma churches.

Some of his pictures are signed; "Leito," a synonym for his name,
"Allegri." This indicates his style of art.

There is an interesting story told of how Correggio stood entranced
before a picture of Raphael's, and after long study of it he
exclaimed: "I too, am a painter!" showing at once his appreciation of
Raphael's greatness and satisfaction at his own genius.

Doubtless a good share of Correggio's comfortable living came from the
lady he married, since she was considered a rich woman for those times
and in that locality. Her name was Girolama Merlini, and she lived in
Mantua, the place where the Montagues and Capulets lived of whom
Shakespeare wrote the most wonderful love story ever imagined. This
young woman was only sixteen years old when Correggio met and loved
her, and very beautiful and later on he painted a picture,
"Zingarella," for which his wife is said to have been the model. It
seems to have been a stroke of economy and enterprise for painters to
marry, since we read of so many who made fame and fortune through the
beauty of their wives.

They were very happy together, Correggio and his wife, and they had
four children. Their happiness was not for long, because Correggio
seems to have been but thirty-four years old when she died, nor did he
live to be old. There is a most curious tale of his death which is
probably not true, but it is worth telling since many have believed
it. He is supposed to have died in Correggio, of pleurisy, but the
story is that he had made a picture for one who had some grudge
against him, and who in order to irritate him paid him in copper,
fifty scudi. This was a considerable burden, and in order to save
expense and time, it is said that Correggio undertook to carry it home
alone. It was a very hot day, and he became so overheated and
exhausted with his heavy load that he took ill and died, and he may be
said literally to have been killed by "too much money," if this were
true. Vasari, a biographer to be generally believed, says it is a
fact.

Correggio said that he always had his "thoughts at the end of his
pencil," and there are those who impudently declare that is the only
place he _did_ have them, but that is a carping criticism, because he
was a very great artist, his greatest power being the presentation of
soft blendings of light and shade. There seem to have been few unusual
events in Correggio's life; very little that helps us to judge the
man, but there is a general opinion that he was a kind and devoted
father and husband, as well as a good citizen. With little demand upon
his moral character, he did his work, did it well, and his work alone
gave him place and fame.

He became the head of a school of painting and had many imitators, but
we hear little of his pupils, except that one of them was his own son,
Pompino, who lived to be very old, and in his turn was successful as
an artist.

Correggio was buried with honours in the Arrivabene Chapel, in the
Franciscan church at Correggio.

  PLATE--THE HOLY NIGHT

This painting is not characteristic of Correggio's work, but
nevertheless it is very beautiful. The brilliant warm light which
comes from the Infant Jesus in His mother's arms is reflected upon the
faces of those gathered about, and even illuminates the angelic group
hovering above him. The slight landscape forming the background is
also suggestive, and the conditions of the birth are indicated by the
ass which may be seen in the middle distance. The faces of all are
joyous yet full of wonderment, the whole scene intimate and human.

The picture is also called the "Adoration of the Shepherds," and that
title best tells the story. See the shepherdess shading her face with
one hand and offering two turtle-doves with the other. The ass in the
distance is the one on which Mary rode to Bethlehem, and Joseph is
caring for it. Even the cold light of the dawning day is softened by
the beauty of the group below. This picture is in the Royal Gallery in
Dresden.

  PLATE--THE MYSTIC MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE

The Infant Jesus sits upon His mother's lap, and places the ring upon
St. Catherine's finger, while Mary's hand helps to guide that of her
Child. This action brings the three hands close together and adds to
the beauty of the composition. All of the faces are full of pleasure
and kindliness, while that of St. Sebastian fairly glows with happy
emotion. The light is concentrated upon the body of the Child and is
reflected upon the faces of the women. This painting hangs in the
Louvre.

Other great Correggio pictures are the "School of Cupid," which is
more characteristic of his work; "Antiope," "Leda," "Danae," and "Ecce
Homo."




XII

PAUL GUSTAVE DOR


  _French School_
  1833-1883

This artist died in Paris twenty-five years ago, but there is little
as yet to be told of his life history. He was educated in Paris at the
Lyc‚e Charlemagne, having gone there from Strasburg, where he was
born.

He was a painter of fantastic and grotesque subjects, and as far as we
know, he began his career when a boy. He made sketches before his
eighth year which attracted much attention, and he earned considerable
money while still at school. He was at that time engaged to illustrate
for journals, at a good round sum, and before he left the Lyc‚e he had
made hundreds of drawings, somewhat after the satirical fashion of
Hogarth.

His work is very characteristic and once seen is likely to be always
recognised.

He first worked for the _Journal Pour Rire_, but then he undertook to
illustrate the work of Rabelais, the great satirist, whose text just
suited Dor‚'s pencil. After Rabelais he illustrated Balzac, also the
"Wandering Jew," "Don Quixote," and Dante's "Divine Comedy."

He undertook to do things which he could not do well, simply for the
money there was in the commissions. He had but a poor idea of colour
and his work was coarse, but it had such marked peculiarities that it
became famous. He did a little sculpture as well, and even that showed
his eccentricities of thought.

  PLATE--MOSES BREAKING THE TABLETS OF THE LAW

This is one of the illustrations of the Dor‚ Bible, published in
1865-66. The story is well known of how Moses went up into the Mount
of the Lord to receive the laws for the Israelites, which were written
upon tables of stone. Upon his descent from the Mount he found that
his followers had set up a golden calf, which they were worshipping;
and in his wrath Moses broke the tablets on which the Law was
inscribed. The power shown in his attitude, the affrighted faces of
the cowering Jews, the thunder and lightning as an expression of the
wrath of the Almighty are all painted in Dor‚'s best manner.




XIII

ALBRECHT DšRER


  (Pronounced Dooer-rer')
  _Nuremberg School_
  1471-1528
  _Pupil of Wolgemuth and Schongauer_

Albrecht Drer by nationality was a Hungarian, but he was born in the
city of Nuremberg. His father had come from the little Hungarian town
of Eytas to Nuremberg that he might practise the craft of a
goldsmith. Notwithstanding his Hungarian origin, the name is German
and the family "bearing," or sign, is the open door. This device
suggests that the name was first formed from "Thurer," which means
"carpenter," maker of doors.

The father became the goldworker for a master goldsmith of Nuremberg
named Hieronymus Holper, and very soon the new employee had fallen in
love with his master's daughter. The daughter was very young and very
beautiful; her name was Barbara, and as Herr Drer was quite forty
years of age, while she was but fifteen, the match seemed most
unlikely, but they married and had eighteen children! The great
painter was one of them.

Albrecht loved his parents most tenderly, and from first to last we
hear no word of disagreement among any members of that immense
household. Young Albrecht was especially the companion of his father,
being brilliant, generous, and hard-working in a family where everyone
needed to do his best to help along. This love and companionship never
ceased until death, and after his parents died Albrecht wrote in a
touching manner of their death, describing his love for them, and
their many virtues. He was an author and a poet as well as a painter,
and only Leonardo da Vinci matched him for greatness and
versatility. We may know what Drer's father looked like, since the
son made two portraits of him; one is to be seen in the Uffizi Gallery
at Florence and the other belongs to the Duke of Northumberland's
collection. The latter portrait has been reproduced in an engraving,
so that it is familiar to most people.

In the days when the great artist was growing up, Nuremberg was the
centre of all intellectuality and art in the North. The city of
Augsburg also followed art fashions, but it was far less important
than Nuremberg, because in the latter city every sort of art-craft was
followed in sincerity and with great originality.

In those days, the craft of the goldsmith was closely allied with the
profession of the painter, because the smith had to create his own
designs, and that called for much talent. Thus it was but a step from
designing in precious metals to the use of colour, and to
engraving. In making wood engravings, however, the drudgery of it was
left almost entirely to workmen, not artists. Nuremberg was also the
seat of musical learning. Wagner makes this fact pathetic, comical,
and altogether charming in his "Mastersingers of Nuremberg."

Till Drer's time, however, there had been little painting that could
be regarded as art, and when he came to study it there was but little
opportunity in his own land, but Drer was destined to bring art to
Nuremberg. If he went elsewhere to study, it was only for a little
time, because he was above all things patriotic and dearly loved his
home.

With seventeen brothers and sisters, young Drer's problem was a
serious one. His father not only meant him to become a goldsmith like
himself--a craft in which there was much money to be made at a time
when people dressed with great ornamentation and used gold to decorate
with--it was highly necessary with so large a family that he should
learn to do that which could make him helpful to his father. Hence the
young boy entered his father's shop. If he had not been handicapped
with so many to help to maintain, he would have laid up a considerable
fortune, because from the very beginning he was master of all that he
undertook; doing the least thing better than any other did it, putting
conscience and painstaking into all.

"My father took special delight in me," the son said, "seeing that I
was industrious in working and learning, he put me to school; and when
I had learned to read and write, he took me home from my school and
taught me the goldsmith's trade."

The family were good and kind; excellent neighbours, deeply religious,
and little Albrecht certainly was comely. He was beautiful as a little
child, and as a man was very handsome, with long light hair sweeping
his shoulders, and gentle eyes. He was very tall, stately, and full of
dignity.

In his father's shop he made little clay figures which were afterward
moulded in metal; also he learned to carve wood and ivory, and he
added the touch of originality to all that he did. He was the Leonardo
da Vinci of Germany, an intellectual man, a poet, painter, sculptor,
engraver, and engineer. He approached everything that he did from an
intellectual point of view, looking for the reasons of things.

After a while in his father's shop, he found mere craftsmanship
irksome, and he begged to be allowed to enter a studio. This was a
great disappointment to the father, even a distress, because he could
see no very quick nor large returns in money for an artist, and he
sorely needed the help of his son; but being kind and reasonable, he
consented Albrecht was apprenticed to the only artist of any repute
then in Nuremberg, Wolgemuth.

To his studio Albrecht went, at the age of fifteen, and if he did not
learn much more of painting, under that artist's direction, than his
own genius had already taught him, he learned the drudgery of his
work; how to grind colours and to mix them, and he studied wood
engraving also.

In Wolgemuth's studio he remained for the three years of his
apprenticeship, and then he fled to better things. For a time he
followed the methods of another German artist, Schongauer, but finally
he went forth to try his luck alone. He wandered from place to place,
practising all his trades, goldsmithing, engraving, whatever would
support him, yet always and everywhere painting.

It is thought that he may have gone as far as Italy, but it is not
certain whether he went there in his first wanderings or later
on. However, he was soon recalled home, for his father had found a
suitable wife for him. She was the daughter of a rich citizen and her
name was Agnes Frey. She was pretty as well as rich, but had she been
neither Albrecht would have returned at his father's bidding. There
was never any resistance to the fine and proper things of life on
Albrecht Drer's part. He was the well balanced, reasonable man from
youth up.

There have been extraordinary tales told of the artist's wife. She has
been called hateful and spiteful as Xantippe, the wife of Socrates,
but we think this is calumny. The stories came about in this way:
Drer had a life-long friend, Wilibald Pirkheimer, who in his old age
became the most malicious and quarrelsome of old fellows. He lived
longer than Drer did, and Drer's wife also outlived her
husband. Pirkheimer wanted a set of antlers which had belonged to
Drer and which he thought the wife should give him after Drer was
dead, but Agnes thought otherwise and would not give them up. Then,
full of rage, the old man wrote the most outrageous letters about poor
Agnes, saying that she was a shrew and had compelled Drer to work
himself to death; that she was a miser and had led the artist an awful
dance through life. This is the only evidence against her, and that so
sane and sensible a man as the artist lived with her all his life and
cherished her, is evidence enough that Pirkheimer didn't tell the
truth. When Drer died he was in good circumstances and instead of
being overworked, he for many years had done no "pot-boiling," but had
followed investigations along lines that pleased him. After his death,
the widow treated his brothers and sisters generously, giving them
properties of Drer's and being of much help to them. During the
artist's life he and she had travelled everywhere together and had
appeared to love each other tenderly; hence we may conclude that the
old Pirkheimer was simply a disgruntled, gouty old man without a good
word for anybody.

If Drer's father and mother had eighteen children, Albrecht and Agnes
struck a balance, for they had none. Whether or not Drer went to
Italy before his marriage in 1494, certain it is that he was in
Venice, the home of Titian, in 1506. Titian was six years younger than
Drer, who was then about thirty-five years old. It is said that he
started for Italy in 1505 and that he went the whole of the way, over
the Alps, through forests and streams, on horseback. Who knows but it
was during that very journey, while travelling alone, often finding
himself in lonely ways, and full of the speculative thoughts that were
characteristic of him, that he did not think first of his subject,
"Knight, Death, and the Devil," which helped make his fame. In that
picture we have a knight, helmeted, carrying his lance, mounted upon
his horse, riding in a lonely forest, with death upon a "pale horse"
by his side, holding an hour glass to remind the knight of the
fleeting of time. Behind comes the devil, with trident and horn,
represented as a frightful and disgusting beast, which follows
hot-foot after the lonely knight, who looks neither to right nor left,
but persistently goes his way.

Titian's teacher, Bellini, was still living, and he was one of Drer's
greatest admirers. Especially did he believe that he could paint the
finest hair of any artist in the world. One day, while studying
Drer's work, and being especially fascinated by the hair of one of
his figures, the old man took Drer's brush and tried to reproduce as
beautiful a tress. Presently he put down the brush in despair, but the
younger artist took it up, still wet with the same colours, and in a
few brilliant strokes produced a lovely lock of woman's hair.

While luxuriating in Venetian heat, Drer wrote home to his friend
Pirkheimer: "Oh, how I shall freeze after this sunshine!" He was a
lover of warm, beautiful colour, gay and tender life. Most of all he
loved the fatherland, and all the honours paid him and all the
invitations pressed upon him could not keep him long from
Nuremberg. The journey homeward was not uneventful because he was
taken ill, and had to stop at a house on his way, where he was cared
for till he was strong enough to proceed. Before he went his way he
painted upon the wall of that house a fine picture, to show his
gratitude for the kind treatment he had received. Imagine a people so
settled in their homes that it would be worth while for an artist who
came along to leave a picture upon the walls to-day--we should have
moved to a new house or a new flat almost before Drer could have
washed his brushes and turned the corner.

Back in Nuremberg, he settled down into the life of a responsible
citizen, lived in a fine new house, in time became a member of the
council, and his studio was a veritable workshop. Studios were quite
different from those of to-day. Then the pupils turned to and ground
colours, did much of their own manufacturing, engaged at first in such
commonplace occupations, which were nevertheless teaching them the
foundation of their art, while they watched the work of the
master. Such a studio as Drer's must have been full of young men
coming and going, not all working at the art of painting, but
engraving, preparing materials for such work, designing, and executing
many other details of art work.

After this time Drer made his smallest picture, which is hardly more
than an inch in diameter. On that tiny surface he painted the whole
story of the crucifixion, and it is now in the Dresden Gallery. To
those of us who see little mentality in the faces of the Italian
subjects, the German art of Drer, often ugly in the choice of models,
and so exact as to bring out unpleasing details, is nevertheless the
greater; because in all cases, the faces have sincere expressions. They
exhibit human purposes and emotions which we can understand, and
despise or love as the case may be.

They say that his Madonna is generally a "much-dressed round-faced
German mother, holding a merry little German boy." That may be true;
but at any rate, she is every inch a mother and he a well-beloved
little boy, which is considerably more than can be said of some
Italian performances.

Drer made a painting of "Praying Hands," a queer subject for a
picture, but those hands are nothing _but_ praying hands. The story of
them is touching. It is said that for several years Drer had won a
prize for which a friend of his had also competed, and upon losing the
prize the last time he tried for it, the friend raised his hands and
prayed for the power to accept his failure with resignation and
humility. Drer, looking at him, was impressed with the eloquence of
the gesture; thus the "Praying Hands" was conceived.

Drer was also called the _Father of Picture Books_, because he
designed so many woodcuts that he first made possible the illustration
of stories.

He printed his own illustrations in his own house, and was well paid
for it. The Emperor Maximillian visited Nuremberg, and wishing to
honour Drer, commanded him to make a triumphal arch.

"It was not to be fashioned in stone like the arches given to the
victorious Roman Emperors; but instead it was to be composed of
engravings. Drer made for this purpose ninety-two separate blocks of
woodcuts. On these were represented Maximillian's genealogical tree
and the principal events of his life. All these were arranged in the
form of an arch, 9 feet wide and 10-1/2 feet high. It took Drer three
years to do this work, and he was never well paid," so says one who
has compiled many incidents of his life.

"While the artist worked, the Emperor often visited his studio; and as
Drer's pet cats often visited it at the same time, the expression
arose, 'a cat may look at a King!'"

On the occasion of one of these kingly visits, Maximillian tried to do
a little art-work on his own account. Taking a piece of charcoal he
tried to sketch, but the charcoal kept breaking and he asked Drer why
it did so.

"That is my sceptre; your Majesty has other and greater work to do,"
was the tactful reply. It is a question with us to-day whether the
King ever did a greater work than Albrecht Drer, king of painters,
was doing.

After this, Maximillian gave Drer a pension, but when the Emperor
died the artist found it necessary to apply to the monarch who came
after him, in order to have the gift confirmed. This was the occasion
for his journey to the Low Countries, and he took his wife Agnes with
him. In the Netherlands he was received with much honour and was
invited to become court painter; and what was more, his pension was
fixed upon him for life. The great work of his life was his
illustration of the Apocalypse. For this he made sixteen extraordinary
woodcuts, of great size.

On his journey to see Charles V., Maximillian's successor, Drer kept
a diary in which he noted the minutest details of all that happened to
him. He told of the coronation of Charles; of hearing about a whale
that had been cast upon the shore; of his disappointment that it had
been removed before he had reached the place. He wrote with great
indignation about the supposed kidnapping of Martin Luther, while he
was on his way home from the Diet of Worms.

While Drer was in the Low Countries, a fever came upon him, and when
he returned home, it still followed him. Indeed, although he lived for
seven years after his return, he was never well again. Among his
effects there was a sketch made to indicate to his physician the seat
of his illness.

Drer did not paint great frescoes upon walls as did Raphael, Michael
Angelo, and all great Italian artists; but instead he painted on wood,
canvas, and in oils.

In all the civilised world Drer was honoured equally with the great
Italian painters of his time. He was a man of much conscientiousness,
dignity, and tenderness. He was devoted to his home and country, and
regarded the problems of life intellectually. When he came to die, his
end was so unexpected that those dearest to him could not reach his
bedside. He was buried in St. John's cemetery in Nuremberg. After his
death, Martin Luther wrote as follows to their mutual friend, Eoban
Hesse:

"As for Drer; assuredly affection bids us mourn for one who was the
best of men, yet you may well hold him happy that he has made so good
an end, and that Christ has taken him from the midst of this time of
troubles, and from yet greater troubles in store, lest he, that
deserved to behold nothing but the best, should be compelled to behold
the worst. Therefore may he rest in peace with his fathers, Amen."

  PLATE--THE NATIVITY

Our description of this painting calls attention to the fact that the
columns and arches of the picturesque ruin belong to a much later
period in history than the birth of Christ. Drer was not acquainted
with any earlier style of architecture than the Romanesque and
therefore he used it here. "The ruin serves as a stable. A roof of
board is built out in front of the side-room which shelters the ox and
ass, and under this lean-to lies the new born babe surrounded by
angels who express their childish joy. Mary kneels and contemplates
her child with glad emotion. Joseph, also deeply moved, kneels down on
the other side of the child, outside the shelter of the roof. Some
shepherds to whom the angel, who is still seen hovering in the air,
has announced the tidings, are already entering from without the
walls." (Knackfuss). The picture is the central panel of an
altar-piece now in the Old Pinakothek at Munich. Drer's oil painting
of the four apostles--John, Peter, Mark, and Paul--is in the same
gallery. Other Drer pictures are: "The Knight, Death and the Devil,"
"The Adoration of the Magi," "Melancholy," and portraits of himself.




XIV

MARIANO FORTUNY


  (Pronounced Mah-ree-ah-no' For-tu'ne)
  _Spanish School_
  1838-1874
  _Pupil of Claudio Lorenzalez_

Fortuny won his own opportunities. He took a prize, while still very
young, which made it possible for him to go to Rome where he wished to
study art. He did not spend his time studying and copying the old
masters as did most artists who went there, but, instead, he studied
the life of the Roman streets.

He had already been at the Academy of Barcelona, but he did not follow
his first master; instead, he struck out a line of art for
himself. After a year in Rome the artist went to war; but he did not
go to fight men, he was still fighting fate, and his weapon was his
sketch book. He went with General Prim, and he filled his book with
warlike scenes and the brilliant skies of Morocco. From that time his
work was inspired by his Moorish experiences.

After going to war without becoming a soldier, Fortuny returned to
Paris and there he became fast friends with Meissonier, so that a good
deal of his work was influenced by that artist's genius. After a time
Fortuny's paintings came into great vogue and far-off Americans began
buying them, as well as Europeans. There was a certain rich dry-goods
merchant in the United States who had made a large fortune for those
days, and while he knew nothing about art, he wanted to spend his
money for fine things. So he employed people who did understand the
matter to buy for him many pictures whose excellence he, himself,
could not understand, but which were to become a fine possession for
succeeding generations. This was about 1860, and this man,
A.T. Stewart, bought two of Fortuny's pictures at high prices. "The
Serpent Charmer," and "A Fantasy of Morocco."

When Fortuny was thirty years old he married the daughter of a
Spaniard called Madrazo, director of the Royal Museum. His wife's
family had several well known artists in it, and the marriage was a
very happy one. Because of this, Fortuny was inspired to paint one of
the greatest of his pictures, "The Spanish Marriage." In it are to be
seen the portraits of his wife and his friend Regnault. After a time
he went to live in Granada; but he could never forget the beautiful,
barbaric scenes in Morocco, and so he returned there. Afterward he
went with his wife to live in Rome, and there they had a fine home and
everything exquisite about them, while fortune and favour showered
upon them; but he fell ill with Roman fever, because of working in the
open air, and he died while he was comparatively a young man.

  PLATE--THE SPANISH MARRIAGE

Fortuny is said to "split the light into a thousand particles, till
his pictures sparkle like jewels and are as brilliant as a
kaleidoscope.... He set the fashion for a class of pictures, filled
with silks and satins, bric-…-brac and elegant trifling."

Look at the brilliant scene in this picture! The priest rising from
his chair and leaning over the table is watching the bridegroom sign
his name. This chap is an old fop, bedecked in lilac satin, while the
bride is a dainty young woman, without much interest in her husband,
for she is fingering her beautiful fan and gossiping with one of her
girl friends. She wears orange-blossoms in her black hair and is in
full bridal array. One couple, two men, sit on an elegantly carved
seat and are looking at the goings-on with amusement, while an old
gentleman sits quite apart, disgusted with the whole unimpressive
scene. Everybody is trifling, and no one is serious for the
occasion. The furnishings of the room are beautiful, delicate, almost
frivolous. People are strewn about like flowers, and the whole effect
is airy and inconsequent. Fortuny painted also "The Praying Arab," "A
Fantasy of Morocco," "Snake Charmers," "Camels at Rest," etc.




XV

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH


  _English School_
  1727-1788
  _Pupil of Gravelot and of Hayman_

There seems to have been no artist, with the extraordinary exceptions
of Drer and Leonardo, who learned his lessons while at school. Little
painters have uniformly begun as bad spellers.

Gainsborough's father was in the business of woolen-crape making,
while his mother painted flowers, very nicely, and it was she who
taught the small Thomas. There were nine little Gainsboroughs and,
shocking to relate, the artist of the family was so ready with his
pencil that when he was ten years old he forged his father's name to a
note which he took to the schoolmaster, and thereby gained himself a
holiday. There is no account of any other wicked use to which he put
his talent. It is said that he could copy any writing that he saw, and
his ready pencil covered all his copy-books with sketches of his
schoolmasters. It was thought better for him finally to follow his own
ideas of education, namely, to roam the woodlands and make beautiful
pictures.

His father's heart was not softened till one day little Gainsborough
brought home a sketch of the orchard into which the head of a man had
thrust itself, painted with great ability. This man was a poacher, and
father Gainsborough recognised him by the portrait. There seemed to be
utility in art of this kind, and before long the boy found himself
apprenticed to a silversmith.

Through the silversmith the artist got admission to an art school and
began his studies; but his master was a dissolute fellow, and before
long the pupil left him.

Gainsborough was born in the town of Sudbury on the River Stour, the
same which inspired another great painter half a century
later. Gainsborough is best known by his portraits, in particular as
the inventor of "the Gainsborough hat," but he was first of all a
truly great landscape painter, and learned his art as Constable did
after him, along the beautiful shores of the river that flowed past
his native town.

The old Black Horse Inn is still to be seen, and it was in the orchard
behind it that he studied nature, the same in which he made the first
of his famous portraits, that of the poacher. It is known to this day
as the portrait of "Tom Pear-tree." That picture was copied on a piece
of wood cut into the shape of a man, and it is in the possession of
Mr. Jackson, who lent it for the exhibition of Gainsborough's work
held at the Grosvenor Gallery, in 1885.

While Thomas was with his first master, by no means a good companion
for a lad of fifteen, he lived a busy, self-respecting life, since he
was devoted to his home and to his parents. Only three years after he
set out to learn his art he married a young lady of Sudbury. The pair
were by no means rich, Gainsborough having only eighteen years of
experience in this world, besides his brush, and a maker of
woolen-crape shrouds for a father--who was not over pleased to have an
artist for a son. The lady had two hundred pounds but this did not
promise a very luxurious living, so they took a house for six pounds a
year, at Ipswich. Thus the two young lovers began their life
together. There was a good deal of romance in the story of his wife,
whose name was supposed to be Margaret Burr. The two hundred pounds
that helped to pay the Ipswich rent did not come from the man accepted
as her father, but from her real father, who was either the Duke of
Bedford, or an exiled prince. This would seem to be just the sort of
story that should surround a great painter and his affairs.

While he lived at Ipswich Gainsborough used to say of himself that he
was "chiefly in the face-way" meaning that for the most part he made
portraits. He loved best to paint the scenes of his boyhood, as
Constable afterward did, but he soon found there was more money in
portraits, and so he decided to go to live in Bath, the fashionable
resort of English people in that day, where he was likely to find rich
folk who wanted to see themselves on canvas. He settled down there
with his wife, whom he loved dearly, and his two daughters and at once
began to make money. It is said he painted five hours a day and all
the rest of the time studied music. As the theatre was Corot's
greatest happiness, so did music most delight Gainsborough, and he
could play well on nearly every known instrument; he became so
excellent a musician that he even gave concerts. He had the most
delightful people about him, people who loved art and who appreciated
him, and then there were the other people who paid for having
themselves painted. Altogether it was an ideal situation.

His studio was in the place known as the "Circus" at Bath, and people
came and went all day, for it became the fashionable resort for all
the fine folks.

From five guineas for half length portraits, he soon raised his price
to forty; he had charged eight for full length portraits, but now they
went for one hundred. He painted some famous men of the time. The very
thought is inspiring of such a company of geniuses with Gainsborough
in the centre of the group. He painted Laurence Sterne, who wrote "The
Sentimental Journey," and a few other delightful things; also Garrick,
the renowned actor.

Even the encyclop‘dia reads thrillingly upon this subject and one can
afford to quote it, with the feeling that the quotation will be read:
"His house harboured Italian, German, French and English musicians. He
haunted the green room of Palmer's Theatre, and painted gratuitously
the portraits of many of the actors. He gave away his sketches and
landscapes to any one who had taste or assurance enough to ask for
them." This sounds royal and exciting.

After that Gainsborough went up to London with plenty of money and
plenty of confidence and instead of six pounds a year for his house,
he paid three hundred pounds, which suggests much more comfort.

There were two other great painters of the time in London, Sir
Benjamin West--an American, by the way--and Sir Joshua Reynolds. West
was court favourite, but Gainsborough too was called upon to paint
royalty, and share West's honours. Reynolds was the favourite of the
town, but he too had to divide honours with Gainsborough when the
latter painted Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Edmund Burke and Sir William
Blackstone.

Notwithstanding, his landscapes, for which he should have been most
famous, did not sell. Everybody approved of them, but it is said they
were returned to him till they "stood ranged in long lines from his
hall to his painting room" Gainsborough was a member of the Royal
Academy and also a true Bohemian. He cared little for elegant society,
but made his friends among men of genius of all sorts. He was very
handsome and impulsive, tall and fair, and generous in his ways; but
he had much sorrow on account of one of his daughters, Mary, who
married Fischer, a hautboy player, against her father's wishes. The
girl became demented--at least she had spells of madness.

When Mary Gainsborough married, her father wrote the following letter
to his sister, which shows that he was a man of tender feeling for
those whom he truly loved:

" ... I had not the least suspicion of the attachment being so long
and deeply seated; and as it was too late for me to alter anything
without being the cause of total unhappiness on both sides, my
consent ... I needs must give ... and accordingly they were married
last Monday and settled for the present in a ready-furnished little
house in Curzon Street, Mayfair ... I can't say I have any reason to
doubt the man's honesty or goodness of heart, as I never heard anyone
speak anything amiss of him, and as to his oddities and temper, she
must learn to like them as she likes his person ... Peggy has been
very unhappy about it, but I endeavour to comfort her." Peggy was his
wife.

The abominable Fischer died twenty-years before Mary did--she lived to
be an old, old woman.

Among those whom Gainsborough loved best was the man called Wiltshire
who carried his pictures to and from London. He was a public "carrier"
but would never take any money for his services to the artist, because
he loved his work. All he asked was "a little picture"--and he got so
many of these, given in purest affection, that he might have gone out
of business as a carrier, had he chosen to sell them. Four of those
little pictures are now very great ones worth thousands of pounds and
known everywhere to fame. They are "The Parish Clerk," "Portrait of
Quin," "A Landscape with Cattle," and "The Harvest Waggon."

We have a good many stories of Gainsborough's bad manners. The artists
of his day tried to treat him with every consideration, but in return
he treated them very badly, especially Sir Joshua Reynolds. Reynolds,
who was then President of the Academy greatly admired Gainsborough but
the latter would not return Sir Joshua's call, and when Reynolds asked
him to paint his portrait for him, Gainsborough undertook it
thanklessly. Sir Joshua left town for Bath for a time, and when he
returned he tried to learn how soon the portrait would be finished,
but Gainsborough would not even reply to his inquiry. There seems to
have been no reason for this behaviour unless it was jealousy, but it
made a most uncomfortable situation between fellow artists.

Gainsborough has told some not very pleasing stories about himself,
but one of them shows us what a knack he had for seeing the comic side
of things, and perhaps for seeing comedy where it never existed. Upon
one occasion he was invited to a friend's house where the family were
in the habit of assembling for prayers, and he had no sooner got
inside, than he began to fear he should laugh, when prayer time came,
at the chaplain. In a rush of shyness he fled, leaving his host to
look for him, till he stumbled over a servant who said that
Mr. Gainsborough had charged him to say he had gone to breakfast at
Salisbury. Even respect for the customs of others could not make him
control himself.

It was through his intimacy with King George's family that his quarrel
with the Royal Academy came about. He had painted the three
princesses--the Princess Royal, Princesses Augusta and Elizabeth, and
these were to be hung at a certain height in Carlton House, but when
he sent the first to the Academy he asked it to be specially hung and
his request was refused. Then he sent a note as follows:

"He begs pardon for giving them so much trouble, but he has painted
the picture of the princesses in so tender a light that,
notwithstanding he approves very much of the established line for
strong effects, he cannot possibly consent to have it placed higher
than eight feet and a half, because the likeness and the work of the
picture will not be seen any higher, therefore at a word he will not
trouble the gentlemen against their inclination, but will beg the best
of his pictures back again." Immediately, the Academy returned his
pictures, although it would seem that they might better have
accommodated Gainsborough than have lost such a fine exhibition. He
never again would send anything to them.

He was inclined to be irritated by inartistic points in his sitters,
and is said to have muttered when he was painting the portrait of
Mrs. Siddons, the great actress: "Damn your nose madam; there is no
end to it." The nose in question must have been an "eyesore" to more
than Gainsborough, for a famous critic is said to have declared that
"Mrs. Siddons, with all her beauty was a kind of female Johnson ...
her nose was not too long for nothing."

Notwithstanding that his landscapes were not popular, he used to go
off into the country to indulge his taste for painting them, and once
he wrote to a friend that he meant to mount "all the Lakes at the next
Exhibition in the great style, and you know, if people don't like
them, it's only jumping into one of the deepest of them from off a
wooded island and my reputation will be fixed forever." An old lady,
whose guest he was, down in the country, told how he was "gay, very
gay, and good looking, creating a great sensation, in a rich suit of
drab with laced ruffles and cocked hat."

One of the boys he saw in the country he delighted to paint, and he
also grew so much attached to him that he took him to London and kept
him with him as his own son. That boy's name was Jack Hill and he did
not care for city life, nor maybe for Gainsborough's eccentricities,
so he ran away. He was found again and again, till one day he got away
for good, and never came back.

All his later life Gainsborough was happy. His daughter, who had
married Fischer, the hautboy-player, came back home to live, and her
disorder was not bad enough to prevent her being a cause of great
happiness to her father. The other daughter never married.
Gainsborough says that he spent a thousand pounds a year, but he also
gave to everybody who asked of him, and to many who asked nothing, so
that he must have made a great deal of money during his lifetime, by
his art. It is said that the "Boy at the Stile" was bestowed on
Colonel Hamilton for his fine playing of a solo on the violin. A lady
who had done the artist some trifling service received twenty drawings
as a reward, which she pasted on the walls of her rooms without the
slightest idea of their value.

Gainsborough got up early in the morning, but did not work more than
five hours. He liked his friends, his music, and his wife, and spent
much time with them. He was witty, and while he sketched pictures in
the evening, with his wife and daughters at his side, he kept them
laughing with his droll sayings.

The last days of Gainsborough showed him to be a hero. He died of
cancer, and some time before he knew what his disease was he must have
suffered a great deal. There is a story that is very pathetic of a
dinner with his friends, Beaumont and Sheridan. Usually, he was the
gayest of the gay, but of late all his friends had noticed that gaiety
came to him with effort. Upon the night of this dinner, Sheridan had
been his wittiest, and had tried his hardest to make Gainsborough
cheer up, till finally, the artist, finding it impossible to get out
of his sad mood, asked Sheridan if he would leave the table and speak
with him alone. The two friends went out together. "Now don't laugh,
but listen," Gainsborough said; "I shall soon die. I know it; I feel
it. I have less time to live than my looks infer, but I do not fear
death. What oppresses my mind is this: I have many acquaintances, few
friends; and as I wish to have one worthy man to accompany me to the
grave, I am desirous of bespeaking you. Will you come? Aye or no!" At
that Sheridan, who was greatly shocked, tried to cheer him, but
Gainsborough would not return to the table, till he got the promise,
which of course Sheridan made.

It was not very long after this that a famous trial took place--that
of Warren Hastings. It was in Westminster Hall, and Gainsborough went
to listen several times. On the last occasion, he became so interested
in what was happening that he did not notice a window open at his
back. After a little he said to a friend that he "felt something
inexpressibly cold" touch his neck. On his return home he told of the
strange feeling to his wife. Then he sent for a doctor, and there was
found a little swelling. The doctor said it was not serious and that
when the weather grew warmer it would disappear; but all the while
Gainsborough felt certain that it would mean his death. A short time
after that he told his sister that he knew himself to have a cancer,
and that was true.

When he felt that he must die, he fell to thinking of many things in
the past, and wished to right certain mistakes of his behaviour as far
as possible.

He sent to Sir Joshua Reynolds and asked him to come and see him,
since he could not go to see Sir Joshua. Reynolds went and then
Gainsborough told him of his regret that he had shown so much ill-will
and jealousy toward so great and worthy a rival. Reynolds was very
generous and tried to make Gainsborough understand that all was
forgiven and forgotten. He left his brother artist much relieved and
happier, and he afterward said: "The impression on my mind was that
his regret at losing life was principally the regret of leaving his
art." As Reynolds left the dying man's room, Gainsborough called after
him: "We are all going to heaven--and Van Dyck is of the company."

He was buried in Kew Churchyard and the ceremonies were followed by
Reynolds and five of the Royal Academicians, who forgot all
Gainsborough's eccentricities of conduct toward them in their honest
grief over his death. He was one of the first three dozen original
members of the Royal Academy.

  PLATE--PORTRAIT OF MRS. RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN

This picture is now in the collection of Lord Rothschild,
London. Mrs. Sheridan was the loveliest lady of her time. She was the
daughter of Thomas Linley, and a singer.

She came from a home which was called "a nest of nightingales,"
because all in it were musicians. The father had a large family and
made up his mind to become the best musician of his time in his
locality in order to support them. He was successful, and in turn most
of his children became musicians. His lovely daughter, Eliza
(Mrs. Sheridan), he bound to himself as an apprentice and taught her
till she was twenty-one, insisting that she "serve out her time" to
him, that she might become a perfect singer. The story of this
beautiful lady seems to belong to the story of Gainsborough's portrait
and shall be told here.

When she was a very little girl, no more than eight years old, she was
so beautiful that as she stood at the door of the pump room in Bath to
sell tickets for her father's concerts, everyone bought them from
her. When she was a very young woman her father engaged her to marry a
Mr. Long, sixty years old. She did not seem to mind what arrangements
her father made for her, but continued to sing and attend to her
business, till after the wedding gowns were all made and everything
ready for the marriage, when she happened to meet the brilliant
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, whose plays were so fashionable, and she
fell deeply in love with him. She told Mr. Long she would not marry
him, and without much objection he gave her up, but her father was
very angry and he threatened to sue Mr. Long for letting his daughter
go. Then the beautiful lady ran away to Calais and married
Mr. Sheridan without her father's permission; but she came home again
and said nothing of what she had done, kept on singing and helping her
father earn money for his family. One day, Mr. Sheridan was wounded in
a duel which he had fought with one of his wife's admirers, and when
she heard the news she screamed, "my husband, my husband," so that
everybody knew she was married to the fascinating playwright. Sheridan
for some reason did not at once come and get her, nor arrange for them
to have a home together. For a good while she continued to sing; and
once hearing her in oratorio, Sheridan fell in love with his wife all
over again. He took her from her home and would never let her sing
again in public. They remarried publicly and went to live in
London. He was not at all a rich and famous man at that time--only a
poor law-student--but he would not let his wife make the fortune she
might easily have made, by singing.

This must have made his beautiful wife very sad, but she made no
complaint at giving up her music and letting him silence her lovely
voice, but turned all her attention to advancing his fortunes. She
worked for him even harder than she had for her father, and that was
saying a great deal. When he became a great writer of plays his wife
took charge of all the accounts of his Drury Lane Theatre, and when he
was in the House of Commons she acted as his secretary. Sheridan died
in great poverty and wretchedness, and it is believed had his
self-sacrificing wife not died before him she would have looked after
his affairs so well that he would not have lost his fortune.
Gainsborough painted the portraits of Sheridan's father-in-law, and of
Samuel Linley; and it was said that this last portrait was painted in
forty-eight minutes. Among his other portraits are: eight of George
III., Sir John Skynner, Admiral Hood, Colonel St. Leger, and "The Blue
Boy"; but he was first and last a landscape painter of highest genius.




XVI

JEAN LEON GEROME


  (Pronounced Zhahn Lay'on Zhay-rome)
  _French, Semi-classical School_
  1824-1904
  _Pupil of Delaroche_

One cannot write much more than the date of birth and death of a man
who lived until three or four years of the time of writing, so we may
only say that G‚r“me was one of the most brilliant of modern French
painters. He was born at Vesoul and his father was a goldsmith. Thus
he probably had no very great difficulty in getting a start in his
work. The prejudice against having an artist in the family was dying
out, and as a prosperous goldsmith we may believe that his father had
means enough to give his son good opportunities.

G‚r“me, like Millet, studied under Delaroche, but became no such
characteristic painter as he. While studying with Delaroche he also
was taking the course in l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

His first exhibited picture was "The Cock Fight," and he won a third
class medal by it.

Almost always this painter has chosen his subjects from ancient or
classic life, and his pictures are not always decent, but he painted
with much care, the details of his work are very finely done and their
vivid colour is fascinating.

  PLATE--THE SWORD DANCE

This painting may be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York City. The scene is full of action and interest, but perhaps the
details of dress, mosaic decoration upon the walls, patterns of the
rugs, the coloured and jewelled lamps and windows are the most
splendidly painted of all.

The central figure is a dancing girl, only partly draped, balancing a
sword on her head, while a brilliant green veil flies from head and
face. Other Oriental women squat upon the floor watching her with a
half indolent expression, while their Oriental masters and their
friends sit in pomp at one side, absorbed in the dance and in the
girl. The expressions upon all the faces are excellent and, the
jewelled light that falls upon the group, the rich clothing, the grace
of the dancer--all make a fascinating picture of a genre type. Other
G‚r“mes are "Daphnis and Chloe," "Leda," and "The Duel after the
Masked Ball."




XVII

GHIRLANDAJO


  (Pronounced Geer-lan-da'yo)
  _Florentine School_
  1449-1494
  _Pupil of Fra Bartolommeo_

It is a good deal of a name--Domenico di Tommaso di Currado
Bigordi--and it would appear that the child who bore it was under
obligation to become a good deal of a something before he died.

Italian and Spanish painters generally had large names to live up to,
and the one known as Ghirlandajo did nobly.

His father was a goldsmith and a popular part of his work was the
making of golden garlands for the hair of rich Italian ladies. His
work was so beautiful that it gained for him the name of Ghirlandajo,
meaning the garland-twiner, a name that lived after him, in the great
art of his son. Domenico began as a worker in mosaic, a maker of
pictures or designs with many coloured pieces of glass or stone.

Ghirlandajo's art was no improvement on that of his teacher, but he in
turn became the teacher of Michael Angelo.

The Florentine school of painting, to which Ghirlandajo belonged, was
not so famous for colour as the Venetian school, but it had many other
elements to commend it. One cannot expect Ghirlandajo to rank with
Titian, Rubens, or other "colourists" of his own and later periods,
but he did the very best work of his day and school. He attained to
fame through his choice of types of faces for his models, and by his
excellent grouping of figures.

Until his day, the faces introduced into paintings were likely to be
unattractive, but he chose pleasing ones, and he painted the folds of
garments beautifully. He was not entirely original in his ideas, but
he carried out those which others had thus far failed to make
interesting.

Often, in his wish to paint exactly what he saw, he softened nothing
and therefore his figures were repulsive, but Fra Bartolommeo's pupil
gave promise of what Michael Angelo was to fulfill.

Ghirlandajo and Michael Angelo were a good deal alike in their
emotional natures. Both sought great spaces in which to paint, and
both chose to paint great frescoes. Indeed Ghirlandajo had the
extraordinary ambition to put frescoes on all the fortification walls
about Florence. It certainly would have made the city a great picture
gallery to have had its walls forever hung with the pictures of one
master. Had he painted them, inside and out, when such an enemy as
Napoleon came along, with his love of art, and his fashion of taking
all that he saw to Paris, he would likely enough have camped outside
the walls while he decided what part of the gallery he would transfer
to the Louvre.

One of the reasons that Ghirlandajo is famous is that he often chose
well known personages for his models, and as he painted just what he
saw, did not idealise his subject, he gave to the world amazing
portraits, as well as fine paintings. The same thing was done by
painters of a far different school, at another period. The Dutch and
Flemish painters were in the habit of using their neighbours as
models.

Ghirlandajo is classed among religious painters, but let us compare
some of his "religious" paintings with those of Raphael or Murillo,
and see the result.

He painted seven frescos on the walls of the Santa Maria Novella in
Florence, all scenes of Biblical history, as Ghirlandajo imagined
them. They show him to have been a fine artist, but to have had not
much idea of history, and to have had little sense of fitness.

Ghirlandajo's seven subjects are taken from legends of the Virgin, and
the greatest represents Mary's visit to Elizabeth; it is called "The
Visitation," and it is a fresco about eighteen feet long painted on
the choir wall.

Let us imagine the possible scene. The Virgin Mary came from Cana, a
little town in Galilee placed in the hills about nine miles from
Nazareth, the home of the lowliest and the poorest, of a kindly
pastoral people living in the open air, needing and wanting very
little, simple in their habits. Elizabeth, Mary's old cousin, lived in
Judea, and St. Luke writes thus: "Mary arose in those days and went
into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judea; and entered
into the house of Zacharias" (Elizabeth's husband) "and saluted
Elizabeth."

This record had been made at least eleven hundred years before
Ghirlandajo painted in the Santa Maria Novella, and from it one cannot
imagine that Mary made any preparation for her journey, nor does it
suggest that Elizabeth had any chance to arrange a reception for
her. Even had she done so, it must have been of the simplest
description, at that time among those people. One can imagine a lowly
home; an aged woman coming out to meet her young relative either at
her door or in the high road.

There may have been surroundings of fruit and flowers, a stretch of
highroad or a hospitable doorway; but the wildest imagination could
not picture what Ghirlandajo did.

He paints Elizabeth flanked with handmaidens, as if she were some
royal personage, instead of a priest's wife in fairly comfortable
circumstances where comfort was easily obtained. Mary appears to be
escorted by ladies-in-waiting, hardly a likely circumstance since she
was affianced to no richer or more important person than a carpenter
of Galilee. Possibly the three ladies that stand behind Mary in, the
picture are merely lookers-on, but in that case the visit of Mary
would seem to have been of public importance, especially as there are
youths near by who are also much interested in one woman's hasty visit
to another. The rich brocades worn by Elizabeth's waiting ladies are
splendid indeed and the landscape is fine--a rich Italian landscape
with architecture of the most up-to-date sort--showing, in short, that
the artist lacked historical imagination. He found some models, made a
purely decorative painting with an Italian setting and called it "The
Visitation." The doorway on the right is distinctly renaissance.

Such a painting as this is not "religious," nor is it historic, nor
does it suggest a subject; it is merely a fine picture better coloured
than most of those of the Florentine school. There is another painting
of this same subject by Ghirlandajo in the Louvre, but it is no nearer
truth than the one in the Santa Maria.

Ghirlandajo painted other than religious subjects, and one of them, at
least, is quite repulsive. It is the picture of an old man, with a
beautiful little child embracing him. The old man may have tenderness
and love in his face, but his heavy features, his warty nose, do not
make one think of pleasant things and one does not care to imagine the
dear little child kissing the grotesque old fellow.

It was before Ghirlandajo's time that another painter had discovered
the use of oil in mixing paints. Previously colours had been mixed in
water with some gelatinous substance, such as the white and yolk of an
egg, to give the paint a proper texture or consistency. This
preparation was called "distemper," and frescoes were made by using
this upon plaster while it was still wet. Plaster and colours dried
together, and the painting became a part of the wall, not to be
removed except by taking the plaster with it.

The different gluey substances used had often the effect of making the
colours lose their tone and they presented a glazed surface when used
upon wood, a favourite material with artists.

There are numberless anecdotes written of this artist and his brother,
and one of these shows he had a temper. The brothers were engaged in a
monastery at Passignano painting a picture of the "Last Supper." While
at work upon it, they lived in the house. The coarse fare did not suit
Ghirlandajo, and one night he could endure it no longer. Springing
from his seat in the refectory he flung the soup all over the monk who
had served it, and taking a great loaf of bread he beat him with it so
hard that the poor monk was carried to his cell, nearly dead. The
abbot had gone to bed, but hearing the rumpus he thought it was
nothing less than the roof falling in, and he hurried to the room
where he found the brothers still raging over their dinner. David
shouted out to him, when the abbot tried to reprove the artist, that
his brother was worth more than any "pig of an abbot who ever lived!"

It is recorded in the documents found in the Confraternity of St. Paul
that:

Domenico de Ghurrado Bighordi, painter, called del Grillandaio, died
on Saturday morning, on the 11th day of January, 1493 (o.s.), of a
pestilential fever, and the overseers allowed no one to see the dead
man, and would not have him buried by day. So he was buried, in Santa
Maria Novella, on Saturday night after sunset, and may God forgive
him! This was a very great loss for he was highly esteemed for his
many qualities, and is universally lamented.

The artist left nine children behind him.

Ghirlandajo's pictures may be found in the Louvre, the Berlin Museum,
the Dresden, Munich, and London galleries. Most children will find it
hard to see their beauty.

Great men are likely to come in groups, and with Ghirlandajo there are
associated Botticelli and Fra Filippo Lippi.

  PLATE--PORTRAIT OF GIOVANNA DEGLI ALBIZI

This lovely lady was the wife of one of the painter's patrons,
Giovanni Tornabuoni, through whom he received the commission for a
series of frescoes in the choir of the Santa Maria Novella,
Florence. The subjects chosen were sacred, but since Ghirlandajo, no
more than his neighbours, knew what the Virgin or her contemporaries
looked like, he saw no reason why he should not compliment some of the
great ones of his own city and his own time by painting them in to
represent the different characters of Holy Writ. So, as one of the
ladies attendant upon Elizabeth when Mary comes to visit her, we have
this signora of the fifteenth century. The artist made another picture
of her, the one here shown, but in the same dress and posed the same
as she had been for the church fresco. This accounts for its dignity
and simplicity. It would seem like a bas-relief cut out of marble were
it not for its wonderful colouring. It is in the Rudolf Kann
Collection, Paris. This artist's other pictures are "Adoration of the
Shepherds," "Adoration of the Magi," "Madonna and Child with Saints,"
"Three Saints and God the Father," "Coronation of the Virgin," and
"Portrait of Old Man and Boy."




XVIII

GIOTTO (DI BORDONE)


  (Pronounced Jot-to)
  _Florentine School_
  1276-1337
  _Pupil of Cimabue_

Giotto painted upon wood, and in "distemper"--the mixture of colour
with egg or some other jelly-like substance. We know nothing of his
childhood except that he was a shepherd, as we learn from a story told
of him and his teacher, Cimabue.

The story runs that one day while Giotto was watching his sheep, high
up on a mountain, Cimabue was walking abroad to study nature, and he
ran across a shepherd boy who was drawing the figure of a sheep, with
a piece of slate upon a stone. In those days we can imagine how rare
it was to find one who could draw anything, ever so rudely.
Immediately Cimabue saw a chance to make an artist and he asked the
little shepherd if he would like to be taught art in his studio.
Giotto was overjoyed at the opportunity, and at once he left the
mountains for the town, the shepherd's crook for the brush.

In those days the studio of one like Cimabue was really a workshop.
Artists had to grind their own colours, prepare their own panels upon
which to paint, and do a hundred other things of a workman rather than
an artist kind in connection with their painting. Such a studio was
crowded with apprentices--boys who did these jobs while learning from
the master. Their teaching consisted in watching the artist and now
and then receiving advice from him.

It was into such a shop as this, in Florence, that Giotto went, and
soon he was to become greater than his master. Even so, we cannot
think him great, excepting for his time, because his pictures,
compared with later art, are crude, stiff, and strange.

No pupil was permitted to use a brush till he had learned all the
craft of colour grinding and the like, and this was supposed to take
about six years. These workshops were likely to be dull, gloomy
places, and only a strong desire to do such things as they saw their
master doing, would induce a boy to persevere through the first
drudgery of the work. Giotto persevered, and not only became an
original painter, at a time when even Cimabue hardly made figures
appear human in outline, but he designed the great Campanile in
Florence, and he saw it partly finished before he died. The Campanile
is a wonder of architecture, but Giotto's Madonnas had to be improved
upon, as certainly as he had improved upon those of Cimabue.

There are many amusing stories of Giotto, mainly telling of his good
nature, and his ugly appearance, which everyone forgot in appreciation
of his truly kind heart. Once a visit was made to his studio by the
King of Naples, after the artist had become famous. Giotto was
painting busily, though the day was very hot. The King entered, and
bade Giotto not to be disturbed but to continue his work, adding:
"Still, if I were you, I should not paint in such hot weather." Giotto
looked up with a laugh in his eye: "Neither would I--if I were you,
Sire!" he answered.

There is a famous saying: "As round as Giotto's "O," and this is how
it came about. The pope wanted the best of the Florentine artists to
do some work in Rome for him and he sent out to them for examples of
their work. When the pope's messenger came to Giotto the artist was
very busy. When asked for some of his work to show the pope, he
paused, snatched a piece of paper and with the brush he had been
using, which was full of red paint, he hurriedly drew a circle and
gave it to the messenger who stared at him.

"But--is this _all_?" he asked.

"All--yes--and too much. Put it with the others." This perfect circle
and the account the messenger gave of his visit so delighted the pope
that Giotto was chosen from all the Florentine artists to decorate the
Roman buildings.

Thus Giotto worked till he was fifty-seven or eight years old when he
put aside his brush and turned to sculpture and architecture. Meantime
he had far outstripped his master in art. The arrangement of the
groups is about the same, but the figures look human and the draperies
are more natural, while he gives the appearance of length, breadth,
and thickness to his thrones and enclosures. We shall not choose a
Madonna for illustration, but another of Giotto's masterpieces,
remembering that good as he was in his time, he seems amazingly bad
compared with those who came after him.

  PLATE--THE MEETING OF ST. JOHN AND ST. ANNA AT JERUSALEM.

In 1303 a certain Enrico Scrovegno had a private chapel built in the
Arena at Padua and he sent for Giotto to come there and adorn the
whole of its walls and ceiling with frescoes. These remain, though the
chapel is now emptied of all else, and they suffice to bring scores of
art-lovers to Padua. The picture here reproduced represents the
meeting and reconciliation between the father and mother of the Virgin
before her birth. The peculiarly shaped eyes and eyebrows that Giotto
gives to all his characters are specially noteworthy here as in every
one of the thirty-eight frescoes. There are three rows of pictures,
one above the other and in them are portrayed the principal scenes in
the lives of Christ and the Virgin. The painter here reached his
high-water mark, showed the very best he could produce in sincere,
restrained art.




XIX

FRANZ HALS


  _Dutch School_
  1580-04-1666
  _Pupil of Karel Van Mander_

Franz Hals belonged to a family which for two hundred years had been
highly respected in Haarlem in the Netherlands. The father of the
painter left that town for political reasons in 1579, and it was at
Antwerp that Franz was born sometime between that date and 1585. His
parents took him back to Haarlem as an infant, and that is the town
with which his name and fame are most closely associated.

Little is known of his early life except that he began his studies
with Karel Van Mander and Cornelis Cornelissen. What we know of his
family life is not to his credit. In the parish register of 1611 is
recorded the birth of a son to Franz Hals and five years later he is
on the public records for abusing his wife, who died shortly
afterward. He married again within a year and the second wife bore him
many children and survived him ten years. Five of his seven sons
became painters.

Franz Hals drank too much and mixed too freely with the kind of
disreputable people he loved to paint, but he never became so degraded
that his hand lost its cunning, or his eye its keen vision for that
which he wished to portray. In 1644, he was made a director of the
Guild of St. Lucas, an institution for the protection of arts and
crafts in Haarlem, but from that time onward he sank in popular
esteem, deservedly. He fell into debt, then into pauperism, and when
he died, about the age of eighty-six, he was buried at public expense
in the choir of St. Bavon Church in Haarlem.

It was in the year 1616 that Hals first became known as a master of
his art by the painting of the St. Jovis Shooting Company, one of the
clubs composed of volunteers banded together for the defence of the
town should occasion arise. Such guilds were common throughout
Holland, and they became a favourite subject with Hals, as with other
painters of the time, who vied with one another in portraiture of the
different members. These groups were hung upon the walls of the
chambers where meetings were held for social purposes in times of
peace. The men of highest rank are always given the most conspicuous
places in the pictures. The flag is generally the one bit of gorgeous
colour in the scene; but Franz Hals seized the opportunity to show his
wonderful skill in detail while painting the cuffs and ruffs worn by
these grandees. In all his work there is an impression of strength
rather than of beauty; it is the charm of expressiveness he is aiming
at, rather than the charm of grace and colour to which the Italian
school was devoted. He differed from that school, also, in his choice
of subjects, for he was distinctly and almost entirely a portrait
painter, and within his own limited range he is unsurpassed. A
wonderful collection of his works is to be seen in the Haarlem Town
Hall.

  PLATE--THE NURSE AND THE CHILD

Considering the woeful life that Franz Hals led, it is amazing to
think that he of all artists is the best painter of good humour. He
puts a smile on the face of nearly every one of his "leading
characters," whether it be a modest young girl, a hideous old woman, a
strolling musician, or a riotous soldier, and in every case the laugh
suits the subject. It may have been his own easygoing shiftlessness,
his way of casting care aside with a jest that enabled him to live so
long and to accomplish so much in spite of his poverty and other
misfortunes.

The roguish look upon the face of this baby of the house of Ilpenstein
makes it appear older than the pleasant faced nurse. The dress of the
child is such as Hals delighted to spend his talents upon. The picture
is in the Berlin Gallery.

Among his best known paintings are "The Laughing Cavalier," "The
Fool," "The Man with the Sword," and "Hille Bobbe. the Witch of
Haarlem."




XX

MEYNDERT HOBBEMA


  _Dutch School_
  1637-1709
  _Pupil of Jacob van Ruisdael_

When a man becomes famous many people claim his acquaintance, and
often many places his birthplace. In Hobbema's case it has never been
decided whether he was born in the little town of Koeverdam, or in the
city of Haarlem or in Amsterdam. Nor is it quite certain when he was
born; but what he did afterward, we are all acquainted with.

No one knows much about the life of this artist, but his master was
doubtless his uncle, van Ruisdael. Hobbema was dead a hundred years
before the world acknowledged his genius, thus he reaped no reward for
hard work and ambition. He, like Rembrandt, died in great poverty, and
with nearly the same surroundings. Rembrandt died forsaken in
Roosegraft Street, Amsterdam, and Hobbema died in the same
locality. We must speak chiefly about his work, since we know little
of his personality or affairs.

If B”cklin's pictures seem to be composed of vertical lines, Hobbema's
are as startling in their positive vertical and horizontal lines
combined. We are not likely to find elevations or gentle, gradual
depressions in his landscapes, but straight horizons, long trunked,
straight limbed trees; and the landscape seems to be punctured here
and there by an upright house or a spire. It is startlingly beautiful,
and so characteristic that after seeing one or two of Hobbema's
pictures we are likely to know his work again wherever we may find it.

Hobbema got at the soul of a landscape. It was as if one painted a
face that was dear to one, and not only made it a good likeness but
also painted the person as one felt him to be--all the tenderness, or
maybe all the sternness.

It may be that Hobbema's failure to get money and honours, or at the
very least, kind recognition as a great artist, while he lived,
influenced his painting, and made him see mostly the sad side of
beauty, nor it is certain that his landscapes give one a strange
feeling of sadness and desolation, even when he paints a scene of
plenty and fulness.

The French have made a phrase for his kind of work, _paysage
intime_--meaning the beloved country--the one best known. It is a fine
phrase, and it was first used to describe Rousseau's and Corot's work;
but it especially applies to Hobbema's.

While this artist was not yet recognised, his uncle van Ruisdael was
known as a great artist. The family must have been rich in spirit that
gave so much genius to the world. Hobbema certainly loved his art
above all things, for he had no return during his lifetime, save what
was given by the joy of work. There are those who complain that
Hobbema was a poor colourist. True, he used little besides grays and a
peculiar green, which seemed especially to please him; but since that
colouring belonged to the subjects he chose, one cannot complain on
the ground that what he did was unsatisfying. For lack of knowledge
about him we can think of him as a man of moods, sad, desolate ones at
that; because his work is too extreme and uniform in its character for
us to believe his method was affected.

  PLATE--THE AVENUE, MIDDELHARNIS, HOLLAND

This perhaps is one of the most characteristic of Hobbema's
pictures. Note a strange hopelessness in the scene, as well as
beauty. The tall and solemn trees, the high light upon the road,
suggesting to us all sorts of joys struggling through the
cheerlessness of life. What other artist would have chosen such a
corner of nature for a subject to paint? To quote a fine description:

"He loved the country-side, studied it as a lover, and has depicted it
with such intimacy of truth that the road to Middelharnis seems as
real to-day as it did over a hundred years ago to the artist. We see
the poplars, with their lopped stems, lifting their bushy tops against
that wide, high sky which floats over a flat country, full of billowy
clouds as the sky near the North Sea is apt to be. Deep ditches skirt
the road, which drain and collect the water for purposes of
irrigation, and later on will join some deeper, wider canal, for
purposes of navigation. We get a glimpse on the right, of patient
perfection of gardening, where a man is pruning his grafted fruit
trees; farther on a group of substantial farm buildings. On the
opposite side of the road stretches a long, flat meadow, or "polder,"
up to the little village which nestles so snugly around its tall
church tower; the latter fulfilling also the purpose of a beacon, lit
by night, to guide the wayfarer on sea and land; scene of tireless
industry, comfortable prosperity, and smiling peace. ... Pride and
love of country breathe through the whole scene. To many of us the
picture smiles less than it thrills with sadness. Perhaps it speaks
thus only to those who find a kind of hurt in the revival of the
spring, which promises so much and may fulfill so little."

Hobbema's "Watermill" is very well-known and so are his "Wooded
Landscape," and "Haarlem's Little Forest."




XXI

WILLIAM HOGARTH


  _School of Hogarth (English)_
  1697-1764

William Hogarth, like Watteau, originated his own school; in short
there never was anybody like him. He was an editorial writer in
charcoal and paint, or in other words he had a story to tell every
time he made a picture, and there was an argument in it, a right and a
wrong, and he presented his point of view by making pictures.

English artists in literature and in painting have done some great
reformatory work. Charles Dickens overthrew some dreadful abuses by
writing certain novels. The one which has most interest for children
is the awful story of Dotheboys' Hall, which exposed the ill treatment
of pupils in a certain class of English schools. What Dickens and
Charles Reade did in literature, Hogarth undertook to do in
painting. He described social shams; painted things as they were, thus
making many people ashamed and possibly better.

Italians had always painted saints and Madonnas, but Hogarth pretended
to despise that sort of work, and painted only human beings. He did
not really despise Raphael, Titian, and their brother artists, but he
was so disgusted with the use that had been made of them and their
schools of art, to the entire exclusion of more familiar subjects,
that he turned satirist and ridiculed everything.

First of all, Hogarth was an engraver. He was born in London on the
10th December, 1697, and eighteen days later was baptised in the
church of St. Bartholemew the Great. His father was a school teacher
and a "literary hack," which means that in literature he did whatever
he could find to do, reporting, editing, and so on.

Hogarth must early have known something of vagabond life, for his
father's life during his own youth must have brought him into
association with all sorts of people. He knew how madhouses were run,
how kings dined, how beggars slept in goods boxes, and many other
useful items.

Hogarth said of himself: "Shows of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure
when an infant, and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in
me.... My exercises, when at school, were more remarkable for the
ornaments which adorned them, than for the exercises themselves." He
became an engraver or silver-plater, being apprenticed to Mr. Ellis
Gamble, at the sign of the "Golden Angel," Cranbourne Alley, Leicester
Fields.

Engraving on silver plate was all well enough, but Hogarth aspired to
become an engraver on copper, and he has said that this was about the
highest ambition he had while he was in Cranbourne Alley.

The shop-card which he engraved for Mr. Ellis Gamble may have been the
first significant piece of work he undertook. The card is still among
the Hogarth relics. He set up as an engraver on his own account,
though he did study a little in Sir James Thornhill's art school; but
whatever he learned he turned to characteristic account.

He continued to make shop-cards, shop-bills, and book-plates. Finally,
in 1727, a maker of tapestry engaged Hogarth to sketch him a design
end he set to work ambitiously He worked throughout that year upon the
design, but when he took it to the man it was refused. The truth was
that the man who had commissioned the work had heard that Hogarth was
"an engraver and no painter," and he had so little intelligence that
he did not intend to accept his design, however much it might have
pleased him. Hogarth sued the man for his refusal and he won the
suit. He next began to make what he called "conversation pieces,"
little paintings about a foot high of groups of people, the figures
being all portraits. These were very fashionable for a time and made
some money for the artist. Both he and Watteau were fond of the stage,
and both painted scenes from operas and plays.

In time he moved into lodgings at the "Golden Head," in Leicester
Fields, and there he made his home. He had already begun the great
paintings which were to make him famous among artists. These were a
series of pictures, telling stories of fashionable and other life. His
own story of how he came to think of the picture series was that he
had always wished to present dramatic stories--present them in scenes
as he saw them on the stage.

He had married the daughter of Sir James Thornhill, and had never been
thought of kindly by his father-in-law till he made so much stir with
his first series. Then Sir James approved of him, and Hogarth found
life more pleasing.

There are very few anecdotes to tell of the artist's life, and the
story of his pictures is much more amusing. One of his first satires
was made into a pantomime by Theophilus Gibber, and another person
made it into an opera. Many pamphlets and poems were written about it,
and finally china was painted with its scenes and figures. There was
as much to cry as to laugh over in Hogarth's pieces and that is what
made them so truly great. One of his great picture series was called
the "Rake's Progress" and it was a warning to all young men against
leading too gay a life. It showed the "Rake" at the beginning of his
misfortunes, gambling, and in the last reaping the reward of his
follies in a debtor's prison and the madhouse. There are eight
pictures in that set.

In this series, especially in the fifth picture, there are
extraordinary proofs of Hogarth's completeness of ideas. Upon the wall
in the room wherein the "Rake" marries an old woman for her money, the
Ten Commandments are hung, all cracked, and the Creed also is cracked
and nearly smudged out; while the poor-box is covered with
cobwebs. The eight pictures brought to Hogarth only seventy guineas.

One of his pictures was suggested to him by an incident which greatly
angered him. He had started for France on some errand of his own, and
was in the very act of sketching the old gate at Calais, when he was
arrested as a spy. Now Hogarth was a hard-headed Englishman, and when
he was hustled back to England without being given time for argument,
he was so enraged that he made his picture as grotesque as possible,
to the lasting chagrin of France. He painted the French soldiers as
the most absurd, thin little fellows imaginable, and that picture has
largely influenced people's idea of the French soldier all over the
English-speaking world.

As Hogarth grew old he grew also a little bitter and revengeful toward
his enemies, often taking his revenge in the ordinary way of
belittling the people he disliked, in his paintings.

Hogarth came before Reynolds or Gainsborough; in short, was the first
great English artist, and his chief power lay in being able instantly
to catch a fleeting expression, and to interpret it. An incident of
Hogarth's youth illustrates this. He had got into a row in a pot-house
with one of the hangers-on, and when someone struck the brawler over
the head with a pewter pot, there, in the midst of excitement and
rioting, Hogarth whipped out his pencil and hastily sketched the
expression of the chap who had been hit.

Hogarth was friends with most of the theatre managers, and one of his
souvenirs was a gold pass given him by Tyers, the director of Vauxhall
Gardens, which entitled Hogarth and his family to entrance during
their lives. This was in return for some "passes," which Hogarth had
engraved for Tyer.

Upon one occasion Hogarth set off with some companions for a trip to
the Isle of Sheppey. Incidentally Forest wrote a sketch of their
journey and Hogarth illustrated it. That work is to be found,
carefully preserved, in the British Museum. The repeated copying and
reproduction for sale of his pictures brought about the first effort
to protect his works of art by copyright. But it was not till he had
done the "Rake's Progress" that he was able to protect himself at all,
and even then not completely.

Just before his death he was staying at Chiswick, but the day before
he died he was removed to his house in Leicester Fields. He was buried
in the Chiswick churchyard; and in that suburb of London may still be
seen his old house and a mulberry tree where he often sat amusing
children for whom he cared very much. Garrick wrote the following
epitaph for his tomb:

  If Genius fire thee, Reader, stay;
  If Nature touch thee, drop a tear;
  If neither move thee, turn away,
  For Hogarth's honour'd dust lies here.

  Farewell, great Painter of Mankind!
  Who reached the noblest point of art,
  Whose pictured Morals charm the Mind
  And through the Eye correct the Heart.

  PLATE--THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT

The picture used in illustration here is part of probably the very
greatest art-sermon ever painted, called "Marriage … la Mode." The
story of it is worth telling:

"The first act is laid in the drawing-room of the Viscount
Squanderfield"--is not that a fine name for the character? "On the
left, his lordship is seated, pointing with complacent pride to his
family tree, which has its roots in William the Conqueror. But his
rent roll had been squandered, the gouty foot suggesting whither some
of it has gone; and to restore his fortunes he is about to marry his
heir to the daughter of a rich alderman. The latter is seated
awkwardly at the table, holding the marriage contract duly sealed,
signed and delivered; the price paid for it, being shown by the pile
of money on the table and the bunch of cancelled mortgages which the
lawyer is presenting to the nobleman, who refuses to soil his elegant
fingers with them. Over on the left is his weakling son, helping
himself at this critical turn of his affairs, to a pinch of snuff
while he gazes admiringly at his own figure in the mirror. The lady is
equally indifferent; she has strung the ring on to her finger and is
toying with it, while she listens to the compliments being paid to her
by Counsellor Silver-tongue. Through an open window another lawyer is
comparing his lordship's new house, that is in the course of building,
with the plan in his hand. A marriage so begun could only end in
misery." This is the first act, and the pictures that follow show all
the steps of unhappiness which the couple take. There are five more
acts to that painted drama, which is in the National Gallery, London.




XXII

HANS HOLBEIN, THE YOUNGER


  (Pronounced Hahntz Hol'bine)
  _German School_
  1497-1543
  _Pupil of Holbein, the Elder_

There were three generations of painters in the Holbein family, and
the Hans of whom we speak was of the third. His grandfather was called
"old Holbein," and when more painters of the same name and family came
along it became necessary to distinguish them from each other thus:
"old Holbein," the "elder Holbein," and "young Holbein." The first one
was not much of an artist; still, in a locality where at best there
was not much art he was good enough to be remembered.

"Young Holbein" was born in Augsburg, which is in Swabia, in southern
Germany; "elder Holbein" and his father, Michael, "old Holbein," had
moved there from Schonenfeld, a neighbouring village, about forty
three years before little Hans was born, the old Michael bringing his
family to the larger town where it was easier to make a living.

The "elder Holbein" was a really good artist and well thought of in
Augsburg, and when little Hans's turn came he had no teacher but his
father, unless indeed we were to call him also a pupil of his elder
brother, Ambrosius. His uncle Sigismund, too, taught him something of
art, for the whole Holbein family seem to have been artists. Young
Holbein was never regularly apprenticed to any outsider.

Art was not then taught as it is now. The work of a beginner was often
to paint for his master certain details which it was thought that he
might handle properly, while the master occupied himself with what he
thought to be some more important part of the picture. It is said that
Hans often painted the draperies of his father's figures when his
father was engaged upon the altar pieces so fashionable at the
time. The Holbeins one and all must have been bad managers or
improvident; at any rate, Hans did not turn out well as a man and we
read that his father was always in debt and difficulty although he
received much money for his work and was not handicapped, like Drer's
father, by a family of eighteen children.

The story of the Holbeins is quite unlike that of the Drers, and not
nearly so attractive.

Some time before Hans was twenty years of age, the entire family had
packed up and gone to live in Lucerne, while Hans and his brother,
Ambrosius, went travelling together, as most young Germans went at
that time before they settled down to the serious work of life. The
last we hear of Ambrosius he had joined the painters' guild in Basel,
and probably he died not long afterward, or at any rate while he was
still young. There was in Basel a certain Hans Bar, for whose wedding
occasion Hans Holbein designed a table, on which he pictured an
allegory of "St. Nobody." This was very likely such work as our
cartoonists do to-day, but being the work of Holbein, it had great
artistic value. Besides that, he painted a schoolmaster's sign to be
hung outside the door.

As an illustrator, Holbein made the acquaintance of several authors
about that time and started on the high road to fame. He was a man of
very little conscience or fine feeling, and there could hardly be a
greater contrast than that between the clean sweet life of Drer and
the brawling, unfeeling one that Hans Holbein led.

Drer married, had no children, but tenderly loved and cared for his
wife, taking her with him upon his journeys and making her happy.

Holbein married and beat his wife; had several children and took care
of none of them. His wife grew to look old and worn while he remained
a gay looking sport, quite tired of one whom he had had on his hands
for ten years. He wandered everywhere and left his family to shift for
itself. One writer in speaking of the two men says:

"Drer would never have deserted his wife whom he took with him even
on his journey to the Netherlands; and he was bound by the same
tenderness to his native town. However much he rejoiced to receive a
visit from Bellini at Venice, or when at Antwerp, the artists
instituted, a torch-light procession in his honour, nothing could have
moved him to leave Nuremberg." Drer loved his home; Holbein hated
his.

Holbein had a cold, light-blue eye; Drer a soft and tender
glance. While Drer lived he was the mainstay of his family--father
and brothers. Holbein's father died in misery and his brother's life
was disastrous, Hans doing nothing to serve them and looking on at
their sufferings indifferently.

There is a court document in existence which tells the particulars of
Hans Holbein's arrest for getting into a brawl with a lot of
goldsmiths' apprentices during a night of carousal. The court warned
him that he would be more severely punished if he did not cease his
lawless life and he was made to promise not to "jostle, pinch, nor
beat his lawful spouse." When he died he made no provision in his will
for his family. There is a picture of his wife, Elizabeth Schmidt, to
be seen in his "Madonna" at Solothurn Holbein used her for the
model. She then was young and blooming and the model for the child was
his own baby; at that time he found them useful.

His life of folly can hardly be excused by impulsiveness or emotion,
for his pictures show little of either. He was best at portrait
painting. At that time guilds and town councils wanted the portraits
of their members preserved in some way, and it was the habit of
painters like Holbein to form picturesque groups and give to such
dramatic groupings the features of townsmen. Rembrandt did this much
later than Holbein, when he painted the "Night Watch," or as it is
more properly called, "The Sortie."

Probably Holbein's first important work was to make title pages for
the second edition of Martin Luther's translation of the New
Testament. This MS. was made about the time that Holbein's work began
to be of interest to the public, and so the commission was given to
him.

After a time this artist went to England with letters of introduction
to Sir Thomas More, Chancellor to King Henry VIII. Sir Thomas treated
him very kindly and set him to work making portraits of his own
family. During the time he was living at More's home in Chelsea, the
King himself, used frequently to visit there, and on one occasion he
saw the brilliant portraits of the More family and inquired about the
artist. Sir Thomas offered the King any of the pictures he liked, but
Henry VIII. asked to see the artist. When brought before him,
Holbein's fortune seemed to be made for the King asked him to go to
court and paint for him, remarking that "now he had the artist he did
not care about the pictures."

Holbein seems to have been a favourite with Henry and many anecdotes
are told of his life at Whitehall, where he went to live. Once while
Holbein was engaged upon a portrait, a nobleman insisted upon entering
his studio, after the artist had told him that he was painting the
portrait of a lady, by order of the King. The nobleman insisted upon
seeing it, but Holbein seized him and threw him down the Stairs; then
he rushed to the King and told what had happened. He had no sooner
finished than the nobleman appeared and told his story. The King
blamed the nobleman for his rudeness.

"You have not to do with Holbein," he said, "but with me. I tell you,
of seven peasants I can make seven lords, but of seven lords I cannot
make one Holbein. Begone! and remember that if you ever attempt to
avenge yourself, I shall look upon any injury offered to the painter
as done to myself."

It was Holbein who, visiting a brother artist and finding a picture on
the easel, painted a fly upon it. When the artist returned he tried to
brush the fly off, then set about looking for the one who had deceived
him.

His portrait painting was so superb that he received many commissions.

Meantime, Sir Thomas More had fallen into disfavour with the King and
was to lose his head, but it is written that the artist's portraits
"betray nothing of this tragedy." He was as ready to climb to fame by
the favour of his generous patron's enemies as he had been to accept
the offices of Sir Thomas More. He painted the portraits of several of
the wives of Henry VIII., and it may be said that there was a good
deal of that monarch's temperament to be found in Holbein
himself. Take him all in all, Hans was as detestable as a man as he
was excellent as a painter.

In his adopted home in Lucerne, Holbein had painted frescoes, both on
the inside and the outside of a citizen's house, and this house stood
until 1824, when it was torn down to make way for street improvements,
but several artists hastily copied the frescoes so that they are not
entirely lost.

Before he left Germany for England, Holbein had been commissioned to
decorate the town hall in Basel, and a certain amount of money was
voted for the work, but after he had finished three walls, he decided
that the money was only enough to pay him for what he had already
done. The councillors agreed with him, but as money was a little
"close" in Basel at that time, they felt unable to give him more, and
so voted to "let the back wall alone, till further notice."

He painted one Madonna whom he surrounded with the entire family of
Burgomaster Meyer, including even the burgomaster's first wife, who
was dead. This work is called the "Meyer Madonna."

It is said that after Holbein's return to Basel he, with others, was
persecuted for his "religious principles," but if this were true, his
persecutors went to considerable pains for nothing, because Holbein
was never known to have any sort of principles, religious or
otherwise. He was neither a Protestant, nor a Catholic but a painter,
a man without convictions and without thought. He did not care for
family, country, friends, politics, religion, nor for anything else,
so far as any one knows.

When he was asked why he had not partaken of the Sacrament, he
answered that he wanted to understand the matter better before he did
so. Thus he escaped punishment, and when matters were explained to
him, he did whatever seemed safest and most convenient under the
circumstances.

On his return to England, he settled among the colony of German and
Netherland merchants, who were in the habit of meeting at a place
called "The Steelyard," as their home and warehouses were grouped in
that locality, with a guild hall and a wineshop they alone patronised.

While associated with his compatriots Holbein made portraits of many
of them, and these are magnificent works of art. He painted them
separately or in groups; in their offices and in their guild hall, as
the case might be. The men whom he thus painted were: Gorg Gisze, Hans
of Antwerp, Derich Berck, Geryck Tybis, Ambrose Fallen, and many
others. He designed the arch which the guild erected upon the occasion
of Anne Boleyn's coronation, and he painted Henry's next Queen, Jane
Seymour.

Holbein painted many portraits of Henry VIII. and probably all those
dated after 1537 were either copies or founded upon the portrait which
Holbein made and which was destroyed with Whitehall.

While he painted for Henry, Holbein received a sort of retainer's fee
of thirty pounds a year, but he may have received sums for outside
commissions which he undertook. On one occasion, when he took a
journey to Upper Burgundy to paint a portrait of the Duchess whom
Henry contemplated making his next wife, the King gave him ten pounds
out of his own purse. We have no record of vast sums such as Raphael
received.

Henry did not succeed in making the Duchess his wife, so Holbein was
sent to paint another--Anne of Cleves--that Henry might see what he
thought of her before he undertook to make her his queen. Holbein did
a disastrous deed, for he made Anne a very acceptable looking woman,
(the portrait hangs in the Louvre) and Henry negotiated for her on the
strength of that portrait. Later, when he saw her, he was utterly
disgusted and disappointed.

Holbein, notwithstanding this trick, was employed to paint the next
wife of Henry, and doubtless he also made the miniature of Catherine
Howard which is in Windsor Castle. Holbein finally died of the plague
and no one knows where he was buried. His wife died later, and it was
left for his son, Philip, who was said to be "a good well-behaved
lad," to bring honours to the family. He was apprenticed in Paris,
and, settling later in Augsburg, he founded a branch of the Holbein
family on which the Emperor Matthias conferred a patent of nobility,
making them the Holbeins of Holbeinsberg.

  PLATE--ROBERT CHESEMAN WITH HIS FALCON

This is one of the best of the many splendid portraits Holbein
painted. It hangs in The Hague gallery. The gentleman was forty-eight
years old and in the portrait he wears a purplish-red doublet of silk
and a black overcoat, which was the fashion of the day, all trimmed
with fur. He has curly hair, just turning gray. His left hand is
gloved and on it he holds his falcon, while with the other hand he
strokes its feathers.

Of all sports at that time, falconry was the most fashionable and
every fine gentleman had his sporting birds. Robert Cheseman lived in
Essex. He was rich and a leader in English politics. His father was
"keeper of the wardrobe to Henry VIII." and he himself served in many
public offices. He was one of the gentleman chosen to welcome Anne of
Cleves when she landed on English soil to marry Henry VIII. These
details were first published by Mr. Arthur Chamberlain and are taken
from his sketch of Holbein and his works.

Among Holbein's other famous pictures are: "The Ambassadors," "Hans of
Antwerp," "Christina of Denmark," "Jane Seymour," "Anne of Cleves,"
and "St. George and the Dragon."





XXIII

WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT


  _English (Pre-Raphaelite) School_
  1827--
  _Pupil of Academy School_

The story of the Pre-Raphaelites is all by itself a story of
art. Holman Hunt was one of three who formed this "brotherhood"; and
he, with one other, are the only ones whom some of us think worthy of
giving a place in art. This is to be the story of the brotherhood
rather than a story of one man.

The last great artist England had had before this extraordinary group,
was J. M. W. Turner, truly a wonderful man, but after him England's
painters became more and more commonplace, drawing further and further
away from truth, There was one, J. F. Lewis, who went away to Syria
and lived a lonely and studious life, trying to paint with fidelity
sacred scenes, but he was not great enough to do what his conscience
and desires demanded of him; and, finally, Constable declared that the
end of art in England had come. But it had not, for up in London, in
the very heart of the city, in Cheapside (Wood Street) there was born,
in April, 1827, a child destined to be a brilliant and wonderful man,
who was actually to rescue English art from death. Many do not think
thus, but enough of us do to warrant the statement.

The new artist was Holman Hunt. He was the son of a London
warehouseman, with no inclination whatever for learning, so that it
seemed simply a waste of time to send him to school. This continually
repeated history of artists who seem to know nothing outside their
brushes and colours, is astonishing, but it is true that artists for
the most part must be regarded as artists, pure and simple, and not as
men of even reasonably good intellectual attainments, and more or less
this accounts for their low estate centuries ago. One does not
associate "learning" and the artist. When we have such splendid
examples as Drer and two or three others we discuss their
intellectuality because they are so unusual.

Holman Hunt was like most of his brother artists in all but his
art. He hated school and at twelve years of age was taken from it. His
father wanted him to become a warehouse merchant like himself, and he
began life as clerk or apprentice to an auctioneer. He next went into
the employment of some calico-printers of Manchester. The designing of
calicoes can hardly be called art, even if the department of design
had fallen to Holman Hunt's lot and we have no evidence that it did,
but he started to be an artist nevertheless, there in the
print-shop. He found in his new place another clerk who cared for art;
and this sympathy encouraged him to fix his mind upon painting more
than ever. He used to draw such natural flies upon the window panes
that his employer tried one day to "shoo away a whole colony of flies
that seemed miraculously to have settled." This gave the clerks much
amusement, and also attracted attention to Holman Hunt's genius.

His very small salary was spent, not on his support, but in lessons
from a portrait painter of the city. His parents did not like this,
but they could not help themselves, and thus this greatest of the
Pre-Raphaelites began his work.

The Pre-Raphaelites were a little group of men who believed that
artists were drawing too much on their imaginations, not painting
things as they saw them, and that the painter had become incapable of
close observation. He worked in his studio, did not get near enough to
nature, and instead of trying to follow along this line, this group of
men, with their new and partly correct ideas, meant to go back further
than the great masters themselves and present an elemental art. This
was a part of their scheme and partly it was justified, but of all the
men who undertook to make a new school, Holman Hunt was the only one
who remained, and will remain forever, a representative. He alone
stuck to the original purpose of the group and developed it into a
truly great school; so that it is he alone we need to know.

After he began to take lessons of the portrait painter in London, he
developed so quickly that he found by painting portraits three days a
week, he could pay his own expenses, and the rest of the time he
devoted to study. He tried to be admitted to the Academy schools twice
and was twice refused before they would receive him.

It was there in the Academy the three original Pre-Raphaelites met for
the first time; they were Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and
Millais. After entering the school Hunt painted and sold four
excellent pictures, but they all seem to have been lost; nobody can
trace them. He was not yet a "Pre-Raphaelite."

All this time Hunt was half ill because he knew that he was grieving
his father of whom he was devotedly fond, and the strain of trying to
work while he was unhappy nearly destroyed him. The pictures that he
exhibited at the Royal Academy were so poor that the commission
declared they should not only be removed but that Hunt ought really to
be forbidden to exhibit any more. This must have been a great blow to
the young and struggling artist, and to add to this trouble, his
father was being jeered at for having such a good-for-nothing
son. Hunt's pictures in the Academy were so much despised that his
father was told his son was a disgrace to him, and we may be sure that
did not help the young fellow, who meantime was earning a living, not
by painting pictures, but by cleaning up those of another man. Dyce,
who had painted on the walls of Trinity House, engaged him to clean
and restore those paintings, and Hunt was doing this for his bread and
butter.

At that time he became so downhearted and discouraged that he almost
decided to leave England altogether and go to live in Canada away from
his friends who jeered, and his family who reproached him; but just
then Millais, one of the successful painters whom he had met in the
Academy school, who could afford to be generous, came to Hunt's aid
and gave him the means of living while he painted "The Hireling
Shepherd." This was destined to be the turning point in Hunt's luck,
for that painting was properly hung at the exhibition, and it received
recognition. After that he painted a picture which he sold on the
installment plan--being paid by the purchaser so much a month.

Meantime he owed his landlady a large sum, and he says himself that he
"suffered almost unbearable pain at passing her and her husband week
after week without being able to even talk of annulling his debts." In
time he not only settled that bill which distressed him, but paid back
his friend Millais the money loaned by him.

Hunt rarely took a commission, because to do so meant that he must
paint a picture after the manner his employer wished, and Hunt had
certain ideas of art in which he believed and therefore would not bind
himself to depart from them; but after a little success, which enabled
him to pay his bills, he did undertake a commission from Sir Thomas
Fairbairn, and it was called "The Awakened Conscience." He finished
this picture on a January day late in the afternoon, and that very
night he left England, setting out upon a longed-for journey to the
Holy Land, where he meant to study the country and people till he
believed himself able to paint a truthful picture of sacred scenes. He
refused to paint pictures of Eastern Jews who should look like
Parisians, with Venetian backgrounds. He meant to paint Oriental
scenes as nearly as he could, as they might have taken place.

He came back to his English home just two years and one month from the
time he had left it, and he brought back a picture of the goat upon
which the Jews loaded their sins and then turned loose in waste-places
to wander and die. "The Scapegoat" was a great picture, but before he
left England he had painted a greater--the one we see here--"The Light
of the World."

He had depended upon the sale of the "Scapegoat" to pay his way for a
time after his return home, and alas, it did not sell. More than that,
his beloved father died and this added to his sense of desolation, for
he had not been sufficiently successful before his death to justify
himself in his father's eyes. These things so overwhelmed his
sensitive mind with trouble, that his condition became very serious,
and if certain good friends had not stood by him loyally, he would
probably never have painted again.

He began at last another ambitious picture--"Finding of Christ in the
Temple"--but while he was engaged upon this, he had to paint mere
pot-boilers also in order to get on at all, and he says that half the
time the great picture "stood with its face to the wall" while he was
trying merely to earn bread and butter. The wonderful Louis Blanc
tried once to plan a way by which all deserving people should have in
this world equal opportunity to try. This has never been "worked out."
It never will be, but Holman Hunt reminds us how much the world loses
by not providing that "equal opportunity." No one deserves more than
his chance; but such struggles of genius tell us that all is not fair.

Hunt persevered with this Christ in the Temple and when finished he
sold it for 5,500 guineas--a larger sum than he had ever before been
given for a painting.

He no sooner received his money for this great picture than off he
went once more to the Holy Land. He was conscientious in everything he
did, and never before had an artist painted scenes of Christ that
carried such a sense of truth with them. The set haloes seen about the
heads of the saints and of holy people even in Raphael's pictures and
in those of the very greatest artists of his time, disappeared with
Holman Hunt's coming. In the "Light of the World," the halo is an
accident--the great white moon, happening to rise behind the Christ's
head--and there we have the halo, simple, natural, only suggestive,
not artificial. Then, too, in the "Shadow of Death," there is a
menacing shadow of the cross--made upon the wall by Christ's body, as
he naturally stretches out his arms, after his work in the carpenter
shop.

There is not one false note that shocks us, or makes us feel that
after all the story itself is affected and artificial. Everything that
is symbolical is brought about naturally. They are sincere, truthful
pictures that speak to the mind as well as to the eye.

Hunt's colouring and many other technical matters are often far from
perfect, but there is something besides technicality to be considered
in judging a picture.

For a time, while the three men, Hunt, Rossetti, and Millais, kept
together, their pictures were signed P. R. B., as a sign of their
league; but this did not last very long, and afterward Hunt signed his
pictures independently.

After the "Brotherhood" had worked against the greatest
discouragements for a long time, and felt nearly hopeless of success,
John Ruskin, one of the greatest of critics and most fearless of men,
who was so much respected that his words had great influence, suddenly
published a defence of these Pre-Raphaelites. He declared that they
were the greatest artists of the time, and while scorning their
critics he applauded those three young men, till he turned the tide,
and everybody began to know what truly brilliant work they were
doing. Ruskin's words came, Hunt said, "as thunder out of a clear
sky."

When the "Brotherhood" was formed the three young men thought they
should have a paper--a periodical of some sort, in which they might
tell of their purposes and express their ideas; and so Rossetti, who
wrote as well as painted, proposed that they print such a periodical
once a month, and call it the _Germ_; and the P. R. B's. were to be
joint proprietors. Rossetti had first thought of a different title,
_Thoughts Toward Nature_, and his brother, W. M. Rossetti, who was
going to take charge of the monthly, thought that expressed the
Pre-Raphaelites' idea; but it was finally agreed to call it the
_Germ_. Only two numbers could be published by the Pre-Raphaelites,
because nobody bought it and the young men's money gave out, but the
printers came to the rescue, and put up the money to issue two or
three more _Germs_.

Although that journal failed utterly, its four numbers were worth
publishing, and are to-day worth reading. They were truly valuable,
for they contained a story and poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, besides
work of the other P. R. B's.

Above all things Hunt was conscientious in his work, trying with all
his might to represent things as be believed them to be. When he made
his "Scapegoat," he went to the shores of the Dead Sea to paint,
accompanied only by Arab guides, and there he found the desolate, hard
landscape for his picture. The hardships he experienced were very
many. The wretched goat he took with him died in the desert of that
dreary place after it had been no more than sketched in, but back in
Jerusalem Hunt finished the goat. Ruskin's description of the picture
helps one to feel all the desolation of the subject: "The salt sand of
the wilderness of Ziph, where the weary goat is dying. The
neighbourhood is stagnant and pestiferous, polluted by the decaying
vegetables brought down by the Jordan in its floods, and the bones of
the beasts of burden that have died by the way of the sea, lie like
wrecks upon its edge, bared by the vultures and bleached by the salt
ooze."

Even the superstitious Arabs would not go near the spot which Hunt
chose as the scene of his picture, but Hunt endured all things,
believing it due to his art.

When he painted "Christ in the Temple," he needed Jewish models, and
it was almost impossible for him to get them. He could not let them
know what they were to represent, or they would not have sat for him
at all but he succeeded in painting the "first Semitic presentment of
the Semitic Scriptures." In Jerusalem the Jews heard that he had come
"to traffic with the souls of the faithful," and they forbade him to
have any Jews come into his studio; so that he could not finish the
picture there. Back in London he had to find his models in the Jewish
school. He left the figures of Christ and the Virgin till the last and
then painted them "from a lady of the ancient race, distinguished
alike for her amiability and beauty, and a lad in one of the Jewish
schools, to which the husband of the lady furnished a friendly
introduction."

Thus, step by step, through the greatest difficulties, Holman Hunt
established a new school of painting--allegory with a modern treatment
which all could understand.

  PLATE--THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD

This is the most popular picture of a sacred subject, ever painted;
and John Ruskin's description of it, here quoted, is the best ever
written or that can be written. "On the left of the picture is seen
the door of the human soul. It is fast barred, its bars and nails are
rusty; it is knitted and bound to its stanchions by creeping tendrils
of ivy, showing that it has never been opened. A bat hovers over it;
its threshold is overgrown with brambles, nettles and fruitless
corn.... Christ approaches in the night time, ... he wears the white
robe, representing the power of the Spirit upon Him; the jewelled robe
and breastplate, representing the sacredotal investitude; the rayed
crown of gold, interwoven with the crown of thorns; not dead thorns,
but now bearing soft leaves, for the healing of the nations.... The
lantern carried in Christ's left hand is the light of conscience....
Its fire is red and fierce; it falls only on the closed door, on the
weeds that encumber it, and on an apple shaken from one of the trees
of the orchard, thus marking that the entire awakening of the
conscience is not to one's own guilt alone, but to the guilt of the
world, or, 'hereditary guilt.'...

"This light is suspended by a chain, wrapt around the wrist of the
figure, showing that the light which reveals sin to the sinner appears
also to chain the hand of Christ. The light which proceeds from the
head of the figure--is that of the hope of salvation; it springs from
the crown of thorns, and, though itself sad, subdued and full of
softness, is yet so powerful, that it entirely melts into the glow of
it the forms of the leaves and boughs which it crosses, showing that
every earthly object must be hidden by this light, where its sphere
extends."

If you will study every detail of this reproduction, finding all the
objects--the apple, the rusty bolts--noting how the full risen moon
has formed a natural nimbus for the sacred head, and then re-read what
Ruskin has said, you will discover the rarest truths in Holman Hunt's
picture. The several pictures which he painted, but which cannot now
be found are: "Hark!" which was first exhibited in the Royal Academy;
"Scene from Woodstock," "The Eve of St. Agnes," "Jerusalem by
Moonlight," "The King of Hearts," "Moonlight at Salerno," "Interior of
the Mosque of Omar," "The Pathless Water," "Winter," "Afternoon,"
"Sussex Downs," "Penzance," "The Archipelago," "Will-o'-the-Wisp,"
"Ivybridge," "The Foal of an Ass," "Road over the Downs," "The Haunt
of the Gazelle," "'Oh, Pearl,' Quoth I," "Miss Flamborough," "The
School-girl's Hymn." Portraits: Mr. Martineau; Mr. J. B. Brice. Small
sketch of the "Scapegoat," "Sunset on the Sea," "Morning Prayer,"
"Bianca," "Past and Present," and "Dead Mallard."

Should you ever find one of these pictures bearing the initials
P. R. B. or those of Holman Hunt, you will have made an interesting
discovery and should make it known to others.




XXIV

GEORGE INNESS


  _American_
  1825-1897
  _Pupil of Regis Gignoux_

George Inness was destined to keep a grocery store as his father had
kept one before him, and had grown rich in it. When George was a young
man he was given a grocery store in Newark, New Jersey, a very small
store indeed, and it is not surprising that the young man preferred
art to butter and eggs. The Inness family had just moved from Newburg,
probably the elder Innes seeking in Newark a good location for his
son's beginning.

The first art-work Inness did was engraving; as he had been
apprenticed to that business, but afterward he studied with Gignoux, a
pupil of Delaroche.

At that time there was what is known as the Hudson River School. Its
ideas were set and formal, and not very inspiring, aside from the
subjects treated. Church was then a young man like Inness, and he was
studying in the Hudson River School, but the young grocer struck out a
line for himself.

He was forty years old before he got to Paris, but once there, he
turned to the men at Barbizon--Rousseau, Millet, Corot, and the
rest--for inspiration, and began to do beautiful things
indeed. Rousseau became his friend, and the art of Inness grew large
and rich through such influences.

Inness had inherited much religious feeling from his Scotch ancestors,
and all his work was conscientious, very carefully done.

When Inness returned from Paris he was not yet well known. He went to
Montclair, New Jersey, to live and it was there that he did his best
work. Finally, after he was fifty years old, he became known as a
truly splendid painter. He loved best to paint quiet scenes of
morning, evening sunset, and the like. His pictures began to gain
value, and one that he had sold for three hundred dollars jumped in
price to ten thousand and more. His work is not equally good, because
his moods greatly influenced him.

  PLATE--BERKSHIRE HILLS

This picture in the George A. Hearn collection is full of the sense of
restfulness that the works of this artist always convey. The trees are
as motionless as the distant hills, and if the oxen are moving at all
it is but slowly.

Some other Inness paintings are the "Georgia Pines," "Sunset on the
Passaic," "The Wood Gatherers" and "After a Summer Shower."




XXV

SIR EDWIN HENRY LANDSEER


  _English School_
  1802-1873
  _Pupil of his father, John Landseer_

It is pleasant to speak of one artist whose good work began in the
companionship of his father; the case of Edwin Landseer is most
unusual.

His father was a skilful engraver who loved art, and encouraged the
cultivation of it in his son, as other fathers of painters encouraged
them to become priests or haberdashers or bakers, as the case might
be. Little Landseer's beginning has been described by his father as he
and a friend stood looking upon one of the scenes of his childhood:

"These two fields were Edwin's first studio. Many a time have I lifted
him over this very stile. I then lived in Foley Street, and nearly all
the way between Marylebone and Hampstead was open fields. It was a
favourite walk with my boys; and one day when I had accompanied them,
Edwin stopped by this stile to admire some sheep and cows which were
quietly grazing. At his request I lifted him over, and finding a scrap
of paper and a pencil in my pocket, I made him sketch the cow. He was
very young indeed, then--not more than six or seven years old.

"After this we came on several occasions, and as he grew older this
was one of his favourite spots for sketching. He would start off
alone, or with John (Thomas?) or Charles, and remain till I fetched
him in the afternoon. I would then criticise his work, and make him
correct defects before we left the spot. Sometimes he would sketch in
one field, sometimes in the other, but generally in the one beyond the
old oak we see there, as it was more pleasant and sunny."

All the Landseer men were gifted, and the mother was the beautiful
woman whom Reynolds painted as a gleaner, carrying a bundle of wheat
upon her head.

There were seven little Landseers, the oldest of them being Thomas,
the famous engraver, whose reproduction of his brother's works will
preserve them to us always, even after the originals are gone. The
first of Edwin's drawings which seemed to his family worthy of
publishing was a great St. Bernard dog, such a wonderful performance
for a little fellow of thirteen that Thomas engraved it and
distributed it all over England. Little Edwin had seen this beautiful
dog one day in the streets of London in a servant's charge, and he was
so delighted with its beauty, that he followed the two home and asked
the dog's owner if he might sketch him. The St. Bernard was six feet
four inches long "and at the middle of his back, stood two feet seven
inches in height." A great critic said that this drawing was one of
the very finest that any master of art had ever made, though it was
done by a little child of thirteen years and it is also said that
Landseer himself never did anything better than that little-boy
work. A live dog who was let into the room with it--as critic,
maybe--proved to be the most flattering of such, because he bristled
instantly for a fight.

While the boy was still thirteen--which seems to have been a magic and
not a tragic number to him--he exhibited pictures in the Royal
Academy. These were a mule, and a dog with a puppy. In the stories of
"Famous Artists" we are told that he was a fine, manly little chap
with light curly hair and very well behaved. When he became a student
of the Academy the keeper, Fuseli, used to look about among the
students and cry: "Where is my little dog boy?" if Landseer was not in
his place. The little chap's favourite dog was his own Brutus, which
he painted lying at full length; and though the picture was small, it
sold for seventy guineas. This means an earning capacity indeed, for a
small boy.

When he was but seven years old he had made pictures of lions and
tigers, each with a different expression from the other and each with
a character of its own. Critics spoke specially of the tiger's
whiskers as "admirable in the rendering of foreshortened curves."
Tigers' whiskers were thought to be most difficult things to make, but
in Landseer's pictures, they were as "natural as life." The great
success of the artist's animal pictures was that he made them seem to
have human intelligence, and it was also said that if one only saw the
dog's collar, as Landseer painted it, he would know it to be the work
of a great artist, that a great dog-picture must be attached to it.

At least one of his pictures had a remarkable history. He had been
commissioned by the Hon. H. Pierrpont to paint a "white horse in a
stable." After the painting was ready for delivery it disappeared, and
for twenty-four years it could not be found. At last it was discovered
in a hay-loft! It had been stolen by a servant and hidden there. In
spite of the long years that had passed, Landseer sent it at once to
the man for whom it had been made, with the message that he had not
retouched it nor changed it in the least, "because," said he, "I
thought it better not to mingle the style of my youth with that of my
old age."

One of Landseer's early advisers had told him he must dissect animals
to get the proper effects in painting them, as it was necessary for
him to understand their construction. So, one time, when a famous old
lion died in the Exeter Exchange menagerie Landseer got its body and
dissected it, and immediately afterward he painted three great lion
pictures: "The Lion Disturbed at His Repast," "A Lion Enjoying His
Repast," and "A Prowling Lion."

Sir Walter Scott became so enchanted with Landseer's pictures that the
great novelist came to London to take the young artist to his home at
Abbotsford. "His dogs are the most magnificent things I ever saw,"
said Scott, "leaping and bounding and grinning all over the canvas."

Landseer lived in the centre of London till he was more than thirty
years old, and then, looking for more quiet and space he bought a very
small house and garden at No. 1, St. John's Wood. There was not much
room in the house but it had a stable attached which made a fine
studio, and there Landseer lived with a sister of his, for nearly
fifty years. When he first wished to rent the house, the landlord
asked him a hundred pounds premium which Landseer felt that he could
not pay and he was about to give it up, when a friend declared that if
the matter of money was all that prevented him, he was to rent it
immediately, and he could repay him as he chose. Landseer then took
the house, his friend paying down the premium, and Landseer returned
the money twenty-pounds at a time, till all the debt was paid.

Landseer made this a famous and hospitable house, and it is said that
more great people gathered under his roof than had ever gathered about
any other artist with the exception of Sir Joshua Reynolds. That was
the house in which Landseer's loving old father spent his last days
and finally died. A story is told of the witty D'Orsay, who would call
out at the door, when he went to visit the artist: "Landseer, keep de
dogs off me, I want to come in and some of dem will bite me--and dat
fellow in de corner is growling furiously."

On one of his several visits to Abbotsford, where he went many times
after his first invitation, to enjoy Scott's delightful hospitality,
he painted a famous dog of Sir Walter's called Maida, which died six
weeks afterward.

There are several such stories about dogs who died rather tragically
and were also painted by Landseer. The two King Charles spaniels which
he painted both died soon after sitting to the great painter. They had
been pets of Mr. Vernon, who commissioned the painting, and the white
Blenheim spaniel fell from a table and was killed, while the King
Charles fell through the railings of a staircase and was picked up
dead. The great bloodhound, Countess, belonging to Mr. Bell who gave
her picture to the Academy, was watching for her master's return one
dark night and when she heard the wheels of his carriage, then his
voice, she leaped from the balcony, but missed her footing and fell
nearly dead at Mr. Bell's feet. That gentleman loved the dog so much
that he was distracted, and taking her into his gig, knowing that she
must die, he raced in to London again that same night, and rousing Sir
Edwin, begged him to paint the dog before it was too late. Then and
there was the sketch of the dying animal made.

Sir Edwin Landseer was the most versatile and entertaining of
artists. He was a wit, and could also perform all sorts of sleight of
hand tricks, besides being so quick with his pencil that his doings
seemed miraculous. One evening, during a conversation with many
friends, someone declared that in point of time Sir Edwin could do a
record-sketch. One young woman spoke up and said: "There is one thing
that even he cannot do--he cannot make two different pictures at the
same time."

"Think not?" cried Sir Edwin. "Let us see!" Gaily taking two pencils,
he rapidly drew a stag's head with one hand and a horse's head with
the other.

Landseer became the guest of royalty, a favourite of Queen Victoria,
whose dog Dash was one of the many famous dogs painted by him. Dash
was the favourite spaniel of the Duchess of Kent, Victoria's mother;
and the Queen's biographer says that she too loved him very much. On
Coronation Day she had been away from him longer than usual, and when
the great state coach rolled up to the palace steps she could hear
Dash barking for her in the hall. "Oh," she exclaimed, "there's Dash,"
and throwing aside the ball and sceptre which she carried, she hurried
to change her fine robes, in order to wash the dog. This is a very
homelike and picturesque story, but it is possibly not true. Doubtless
the little Queen heard the dog bark--and was glad to see him.

At Windsor Landseer painted another royal dog, Islay, the pet terrier
of Victoria; also Dandie Dinmont, belonging to the Princess Alice;
then Eos, who was Prince Albert's--King Edward's--dog. All the last
years of Sir Edwin Landseer' life, the royal family were his devoted
and comforting friends. The painter suffered much and during his
visits to Balmoral he wrote to his sister how the Queen used to go
several times a day to his room, to look after his comfort and to
inquire about his condition. He wrote:

"The Queen kindly commands me to get well here. She has to-day been
twice to my room to show additions recently added to her already rich
collection of photographs. Why, I know not, but since I have been in
the High lands I have for the first time felt wretchedly weak, without
appetite. The easterly winds, and now again the unceasing cold rain,
may possibly account for my condition, but I can't get out. Drawing
tires me; however, I have done a little better to-day. The doctor
residing in the castle has taken me in hand, and gives me leave to
dine to-day with the Queen and the rest of the royal family....
Flogging would be mild compared with my sufferings. No sleep, fearful
cramp at night, accompanied by a feeling of faintness and distressful
feebleness."

When he was well, he was gay and cheerful; and Dickens, Thackeray, and
many other noted men were his friends. We are told that above all
things. Sir Edwin was a great mimic and that one night at dinner he
threw everybody into fits of laughter by imitating his friend the
sculptor Sir Francis Chantry. It was at the sculptor's table, where a
large party was assembled. Chantry called Sir Edwin's attention, when
the cloth was removed, to the reflection of light in the highly
polished table.

"Come here and sit in my place," said Chantry, "and see the
perspective you can get." Then he went and stood by the fire, while
Landseer sat in his place. Seated then in Chantry's chair, Landseer
called out in perfect imitation of his host: "Come, young man, you
think yourself ornamental; now make yourself useful, and ring the
bell." Chantry did so, and when the butler came in he was confused and
amazed to hear his master's voice from where Landseer sat in Chantry's
place at the table. The voice of his master from the head of the table
ordered claret, while his master really stood before the fire with his
hands under his coat-tails.

We are told that Landseer stood his pictures on their heads, or upon
one corner or looked at them from between his legs, any way, every
way, to get a complete view of them from all quarters. He went to bed
very late and got up very late, but in the mornings, while lying in
bed he mostly thought out the subjects of his pictures.

He was not much of a sportsman, preferring to paint animals rather
than to kill them, and one day when hunting, he saw a fine stag before
him. Instead of firing at it, he thrust his gun into a gillie's hands,
crying: "Hold that! hold that!" and whipping out his pencil and pad he
began to sketch the stag. Whereupon the gillies were disgusted that he
should miss so fine a shot, and they said something to each other in
Gaelic, which Sir Edwin must have understood, for he became very
angry.

"It was a pity," wrote one who knew all his qualities, "that Landseer,
who might have done so much for the good of the animal kind, never
wrote on the subject of their treatment. He had a strong feeling
against the way some dogs are tied up, only allowed their freedom now
and then. He used to say a man would fare better tied up than a dog,
because the former can take his coat off, but a dog lives in his
forever. He declared a tied-up dog, without daily exercise, goes mad,
or dies, in three years."

He had a wonderful power over dogs, and he told one lady it was
because he had "peeped into their hearts." A great mastiff rushed
delightedly upon him one day and someone remarked how the dog loved
him. "I never saw the dog before in my life," the artist said.

While teaching some horses tricks for Astley's, he showed his friends
some sugar in his hand and said: "Here is my whip." His studio was
full of pets, and one dog used as a model used to bring the master's
hat and lay it at his feet when he got tired of posing.

This charming man suffered a great deal before his death, and had
dreadful fits of depression. During one of these he wrote: "I have got
trouble enough; ten or twelve pictures about which I am tortured, and
a large national monument to complete." That monument was the one in
Trafalgar Square, for which he designed the lions at the base. "If I
am bothered about anything and everything, no matter what, I know my
head will not stand it much longer." Later he wrote: "My health (or
rather condition), is a mystery beyond human intelligence. I sleep
seven hours, and awake tired and jaded, and do not rally till after
luncheon. J. L. came down yesterday and did her best to cheer me... I
return to my own home in spite of kind invitations from Mr. and
Mrs. Gladstone to meet Princess Louise at breakfast." Of the many
anecdotes told of this great man, his introduction to the King of
Portugal furnishes the most amusing. "I am delighted to make your
acquaintance," the King said, "I am so fond of beasts."

Before he died he had made a large fortune from his work, and during
his illness he was tended most lovingly by his friends and sister. One
day, walking in his garden, much depressed, he said sadly: "I shall
never see the green leaves again," but he did live through other
seasons. He wished to die in his studio, and at one time when he was
much distracted the Queen wrote him not to fear, but to trust those
who were doing all they could for him, that her confidence in his
physicians and nurses was complete. At last with brother, sister,
friends and fortune about him the great animal painter died, and on
October 11, 1873, and was buried with great honours in St. Paul's
Cathedral.

  PLATE--THE OLD SHEPHERD'S CHIEF MOURNER

Of all the dogs Landseer loved to paint, the sheep collie has the most
character; and here he shows us one expressing in every line of his
face and form the most profound grief. The Glengarry bonnet on the
floor beside the shepherd's staff, the spectacles lying on the Bible,
the ram's horn, the vacant chair, the black and white shawl known as a
"Shepherd's plaid"--all these things have failed to comfort this
humble follower. We can imagine him, not bounding ahead with a joyous
bark, but walking staidly behind the coffin when it is borne away and
laying himself down upon his master's grave, perhaps to die of
starvation, as some of his kind have been known to do. The painting is
one of the Sheepshanks Collection in the South Kensington Museum.

Among Landseer's other famous dog pictures are "Low Life and High
Life," "Dignity and Impudence" and "The Sleeping Bloodhound," all in
the National Gallery.




XXVI

CLAUDE LORRAIN (GELLEE)


  _Classical French School_
  1600-1689
  _Pupil of Godfrey Wals_

Of all the contrasts between the early and later lives of great
artists, Claude Lorrain gives us the most complete.

He was born to make pastry. His family may have been all pastry cooks,
because people of Lorrain were famous for that work; anyway as a
little chap he was apprenticed to one. His parents were poor, lived in
the Duchy of Lorrain and from that political division the Artist was
named.

The town in which he was born was Chamagne, and his real name was
Gell‚e. As a pastry cook's apprentice he served his time, and then,
without any thought of becoming anything else in the world, he set off
with several other pastry cooks to go to Rome, where their talents
were to be well rewarded.

But how strangely things fall out! In Rome he was engaged to make
tarts for Agostine Tassi, a landscape painter. His work was not simply
to furnish his master with desserts, but to do general housekeeping,
and it fell to his lot to clean Tassi's paint brushes. So far as we
know, this was the first introduction of Claude Lorrain to art other
than culinary.

From cleaning brushes it was but a step to trying to use them upon
canvas, and Tassi being a good-natured man, began to give Lorrain
instruction, till the pastry cook became his master's assistant in the
studio. This led to a larger and larger life for the young Frenchman,
and he copied great masters, did original things, and finally in his
twenty-fifth year returned to France a full-fledged artist. He
remained there two years, and then went back to Italy, where he lived
till he died. The visit to France turned out fortunately because on
his way back he fell in with one of the original twelve members of the
French Academy, Charles Errard, who became the first director of the
Academy in Rome. A warm friendship sprang up between the men, and
Errard was very helpful to the young artist.

Nevertheless, Lorrain did not gain much fame till about his fortieth
year, when he was noticed by Cardinal Bentivoglio, and was given
certain commissions by him. He grew in Bentivoglio's favour so much
that the Cardinal introduced him to the pope. The Catholic Church set
the fashions in art, politics, and history of all sorts at that time,
so that Lorrain could not have had better luck than to become its
favourite. The pope was Urban VIII., whose main business was to hold
the power of the Church and make it stronger if he could, so that he
was continually building fortresses and other fortifications, and he
had use for artists and decorators. Lorrain's fame outlasted the life
of Urban VIII., and he became a favourite in turn with each of the
three succeeding popes. All this time he was doing fine work in Italy
and for Italy, besides receiving orders for pictures from France,
Holland, Germany, Spain, and England, for his fame had reached
throughout the world.

Besides leaving many paintings behind him when he died, he left half a
hundred etchings; also a more precise record of his work than most
artists have left. He executed two hundred sketches in pen or pencil,
washed in with brown or India ink, the high lights being brought out
with touches of white. On the backs of them the artist noted the date
on which the sketch was developed into a picture, and for whom the
latter was intended. The story is that his popularity produced many
imitators, and that he adopted this means to establish the identity of
his own work and distinguish it from the many copies made.

These sketches were collected in a volume by Lorrain and called "Liber
Veritatis," and for more than a hundred years the Dukes of Westminster
have owned this.

  PLATE--ACIS AND GALATEA

This picture in the Dresden Gallery is a scene from the mythical story
of a goddess who fell in love with the youthful son of a faun and a
naiad. Thus she excited the jealous fury of the cyclops, Polythemus,
who is seen in the picture herding his flock of sheep upon the high
cliff at the right. Soon he will rise and hurl a rock upon Acis,
crushing the life out of him, so that there will be nothing left for
Galatea to do but to turn him into the River Acis, but meanwhile the
lovers are unconscious and happy. Venus is reposing near them on the
waves and Cupid is closer still, while the sea in the background seems
to be stirred with a fresh morning breeze.

Some of the famous Lorrains in the Louvre are: "Seaport at Sunset,"
"Cleopatra Landing at Tarsus," and "The Village Festival."




XXVII

MASACCIO (TOMMASO GUIDI)


  (Pronounced Tome-mah'so Mah'sahch'cheeo)
  _Florentine School_
  1401-1428
  _Pupil of Ghibertio, Donatello, and Brunellesco_

This artist, who lived and died within the century that witnessed the
discovery of America, was famous for more than his painting. He was
the original inventor who first learned and taught the mixing of
colours with oils, thus making the peculiar "distemper" unnecessary.

The story of Italian artists includes a history of their names, for
the Italians seem to have had most remarkable reasons for naming
children. For example, this artist, Masaccio, was born on St. Thomas's
day, hence, his name of Tommaso. Presently, for short, or for love, he
was called Maso, and to cap all, being a careless lad, his friends
added the derogatory "accio," and there we have the artist completely
named. He owed nothing of this to his father, who was plain, or
ornamentally, Ser Giovanni di Simone Guidi, of Castello San Giovanni,
in the Valdamo.

As a very little boy, it was plain to be seen that slovenly Thomas was
going to be a great artist, and no time was lost in putting him to
work with the best of masters.

He was a veritable inventive genius. Until his time difficulties in
drawing had been overcome mostly by ignoring them. Since no artist had
been able to draw a foreshortened foot, it had been the fashion in art
to paint people standing upon their tiptoes, to make it possible for
an artist to paint the foot. The enterprising Thomas came along and he
decided that feet must be painted both flat and crossed, on tiptoe or
otherwise; in short he did not mean to lose by a foot.

He worked at this problem day and night, till at last the naturally
poised foot came into existence for the artist. Never after Masaccio's
time did an artist paint the foot stretched upon the toes. Moreover,
until his time flesh had never been painted of a remotely natural
colour, so Masaccio set about combining colours till he made one that
had the tint of real flesh. Thus he was the first to overcome the
difficulties of drawing and the first to discover a mixture that would
not leave a glazed, hard, unnatural appearance and be likely to crack
and destroy the finest effort of an artist.

He worked during his youth in Pisa, where the "leaning tower" stands;
then he worked in Florence, finally in Rome, but those early pictures
are long since gone. It was a century of adventure and discovery as
well as of art, and with so much change, so many wars and rumours of
wars, many great art works were lost. Besides, the horrible plague
swept Italy east, west, north, and south. Who was to concern himself
with saving works of art, when human life was going out wholesale all
over the land?

Masaccio was certainly very poor most of his life. He lived with his
mother and his brother Giovanni, an artist like himself, but not
nearly so brilliant. Masaccio could not spend his life in painting but
had to eke out the family fortunes by keeping a little shop near the
old Badia, and being pestered day and night by his creditors he was
forced again and again to go to the pawn shop.

Somewhere about 1422, careless Thomas painted his greatest picture
which was doomed to destruction too early for us to know much about
it; but it was named "San Paolo" and it was painted in the bell-room
of the Church of the Carmine in Florence. The figure for his model was
an illustrious personage, Bartoli d'Angiolini, who had held many
honourable offices in Florence for many years. A critic and friend of
artists tells us that the portrait was so great it lacked only the
power of speech.

In this picture Masaccio made his first great triumph in the
foreshortening of feet.

He undertook to celebrate the consecration Of the Church of the
Carmine, and for this he made many frescoes, among which was a correct
painting of the procession as it entered from the cloisters of the
church. "Among the citizens who followed in its wake, portraits are
introduced of Brunellesco, Donatello, Masolino, Felice Brancacci (the
founder of the chapel) Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, and others,
including the porter of the convent with the key of the door in his
hand."

This work was thought to be very wonderful because the figures grew
smaller in the distance, thereby giving "perspective" for the first
time. Imagine how crude a thing was painting in the day of careless
Thomas.

That fresco is long since gone, but drawings of it still exist which
tell us something of the people of Christopher Columbus's
day--previous to their appearance, and their conditions.

After Masaccio had finished the procession he went back to his
painting of the chapel and in the end covered three of its four walls
with his works. Many of those paintings are scenes from the life of
St. Peter, and several were worked at by other artists than Masaccio.

Masaccio was greater than Raphael, greater than Michael Angelo in so
far as he pointed the way that they were to go, having solved for them
all the problems that had kept artists from being great before
him. Sir Joshua Reynolds says that "he appeared to be the first who
discovered the path that leads to every excellence to which the art
afterward arrived; and may therefore be justly considered one of the
great fathers of modern art."

The artist lived but a little time, and was most likely
poisoned. Nobody knows, but it is said that other painters were so
wildly jealous of his original genius that they wished him out of the
way, and his death was at least mysterious. He drew very rapidly and
let the details go, caring only to represent motion and
action. Because he painted so many portraits into his pictures there
was great life and animation in them, and people said of him that he
painted not only the body but the soul.

  PLATE--ARTIST'S PORTRAIT [Footnote: Many artists have left us
  portraits of themselves, painted, no doubt, with the aid of a
  mirror, in a group or alone. This one of Masaccio in the Naples
  Museum, shows him to have been a picturesque model.]

Some of his known pictures are the frescoes in the church of
St. Clemente in Rome; the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel in the
Church of the Carmine, "St. Peter Baptising" and the "Madonna and
Child, with St. Anne," which is in the Accademia at Florence.




XXVIII

JEAN LOUIS ERNEST MEISSONIER


  (Pronounced May-sohn-yay)
  _French School_
  1815-1891
  _Pupil of L‚on Cogniet_

This artist was born at Lyons. His father was a salesman and an
art-training seemed impossible for the young man because the
Meissoniers were poor people. Nevertheless, he was so persevering that
while still a young man he got to Paris and began to paint in the
Louvre. He was but nineteen at that time, and his fate seemed so hard
and bitter that later in life he refused to talk of those days.

He sat for many days in the Louvre, by Daubigny's side, painting
pictures for which we are told he received a dollar a yard. We can
think of nothing more discouraging to a genius than having to paint by
the yard. It is said that his poverty permitted him to sleep only
every other night, because he must work unceasingly, and someone
declares that he lived at one time on ten cents a week. This is a
frightful picture of poverty and distress.

Meissonier's first paying enterprise was the painting of bon-bon boxes
and the decorating of fans, and he tried to sell illustrations for
children's stories, but for these he found no market. A brilliant
compiler of Meissonier's life has written that "his first
illustrations in some unknown journal were scenes from the life of
'The Old Bachelor.' In the first picture he is represented making his
toilet before the mirror, his wig spread out on the table; in the
second, dining with two friends; in the third, on his death-bed,
surrounded by greedy relations and in the fifth, the servants
ransacking the death chamber for the property." This was very likely a
vision of his own possible fate, for Meissonier must have been at that
time a lonely and unhappy man.

There are many stories of his first exhibited work, which Caffin
declares was the "Visit to the Burgomaster," but Mrs. Bolton, who is
almost always correct in her statements, tells us that it was called
"The Visitor," and that it sold for twenty dollars. At the end of a
six years struggle in Paris, his pictures were selling for no more.

Until this artist's time people had been used only to great canvases,
and had grown to look for fine work, only in much space, but here was
an artist who could paint exquisitely a whole interior on a space said
to be no "larger than his thumb nail." His work was called
"microscopic," which meant that he gave great attention to details,
painting very slowly.

During the Italian war of 1859, and in the German war of 1870, this
wonderful artist was on the staff of Napoleon III. During the siege of
Paris he held the rank of colonel, and he lost no chance to learn
details of battles which he might use later, in making great
pictures. Thus he gained the knowledge and inspiration to paint his
picture "Friedland," which was bought by A. T. Stewart and is now in
the Metropolitan Museum. He, himself, wrote of that picture: "I did
not intend to paint a battle--I wanted to paint Napoleon at the zenith
of his glory; I wanted to paint the love, the adoration of the
soldiers for the great captain in whom they had faith, and for whom
they were ready to die.... It seemed to me I did not have colours
sufficiently dazzling. No shade should be on the imperial face.... The
battle already commenced, was necessary to add to the enthusiasm of
the soldiers, and make the subject stand forth, but not to diminish it
by saddening details. All such shadows I have avoided, and presented
nothing but a dismounted cannon, and some growing wheat which should
never ripen.

"This was enough.

"The men and the Emperor are in the presence of each other. The
soldiers cry to him that they are his, and the impressive chief, whose
imperial will directs the masses that move around, salutes his devoted
army. He and they plainly comprehend each other and absolute
confidence is expressed in every face."

This great work was sold at auction for $66,000 and given to the
Metropolitan Museum.

It is said that when he painted the "Retreat from Russia," Meissonier
obtained the coat which Napoleon had worn at the time, and had it
copied, "crease for crease and button for button." He painted the
picture mostly out of doors in midwinter when the ground was covered
with snow, and he writes: "Sometimes I sat at my easel for five or six
hours together, endeavouring to seize the exact aspect of the winter
atmosphere. My servant placed a hot foot-stove under my feet, which he
renewed from time to time, but I used to get half-frozen and terribly
tired."

So attentive was he to truthfulness in detail that he had a wooden
horse made in imitation of the white charger of the Emperor; and
seating himself on this, he studied his own figure in a mirror.

At last this conscientious man was made an officer of the Legion of
Honour, having already become President of the Academy. Edmund About
writes that "to cover M. Meissonier's pictures with gold pieces simply
would be to buy them for nothing; and the practice has now been
established of covering them with bank-notes."

Meissonier seldom painted the figure of a woman in his pictures, but
all of his subjects were wholesome and fine.

One time an admirer said to him "I envy you; you can afford to own as
many Meissonier pictures as you please!"

"Oh no, I can't," the distinguished artist replied. "That would ruin
me. They are a good deal too dear for me."

In his maturity he became very rich, and his homes were dreams of
beauty, filled with rare possessions such as bridles of black leather
once owned by Murat, rare silver designed by the artist himself, great
pictures, and flowers of the rarest description besides valuable dogs
and horses. Yet it was said that "this man who lives in a palace is as
moderate as a soldier on the march. This artist, whose canvases are
valued by the half-million, is as generous as a nabob. He will give to
a charity sale a picture worth the price of a house. Praised as he is
by all he has less conceit in his nature than a wholesale painter."

On the 31st of January in his country house at Poissy, this great man,
whose life reads like a romance, died, after a short illness. His
funeral services were held in the Madeleine, and he was buried at
Poissy, near Versailles, a great military procession following him to
the grave.

  PLATE--RETREAT FROM MOSCOW

In the painting of this picture we have already told how every detail
was mastered by actual experience of most of them. Meissonier made
dozens of studies for it--"a horse's head, an uplifted leg, cuirasses,
helmets, models of horses in red wax, etc. He also prepared a
miniature landscape, strewn with white powder resembling snow, with
models of heavy wheels running through it, that he might study the
furrow made in that terrible march home from burning Moscow. All this
work--hard, patient, exacting work."

Some of his other pictures are "The Emperor at Solferino," "Moreau and
His Staff before Hohenlinden," "A Reading at Diderot's" and the "Chess
Players."




XXIX

JEAN FRAN€OIS MILLET


  _Fontainebleau-Barbizon School_
  1814-1875
  _Pupil of Delaroche_

Two great artists painted peasants and little else. One was the artist
of whom we shall speak, and the other was Jules Breton. One was
realistic, the other idealistic. Both did wonderful work, but Millet
painted the peasant, worn, patient steadfast, overwhelmed with toil;
Breton, a peasant full of energy, grace, vitality, and joy.

Millet painted peasants as he knew them, and hardly any one could have
known them better, for he was himself peasant-born. His youth was
hard, and the scenes of his childhood were such as in after life he
became famous by painting. Millet lived in the department of Manche,
in the village of Gruchy, near Cherbourg. Manche juts into the sea, at
the English Channel, and whichever way Millet looked he must have seen
the sea. His old grandmother looked after the household affairs, while
his father and mother worked in the fields and Millet must have seen
them hundreds of times, standing at evening, with bowed heads,
listening to the Angelus bell. He toiled, too, as did other lads in
his position. His grandmother was a religious old woman, and nearly
all the pictures he ever saw in his boyhood were those in the Bible,
which he copied again and again, drawing them upon the stone walls in
white chalk.

The old grandmother watched him, never doubting that her boy would
become an artist. It was she who had named him--Fran‡ois, after her
favourite saint, Francis, and it was she, who, beside the evening
fire, would tell him legends of St. Francis. It was she alone who had
time and strength left, after the day's work, to teach him the little
he learned as a boy and to fix in his mind pictures of home. His
father and mother were worn, like pack-horses, after their day in the
fields. The mother very likely had to hitch herself up with the
donkey, or the big dog, after the fashion of these people, as she
helped draw loads about the field. Who can look for Breton's ideal
stage peasants from Millet who knew the truth as he saw it every day?

Many years after his life in the Gruchy home, Millet painted the
portrait of the grandmother whom he had loved so much that he cried
out: "I wish to paint her soul!" No one could desire a better reward
than such a tribute.

Millet had an uncle who was a priest and he did what he could to give
the boy a start in learning. He taught him to read Virgil and the
Latin Testament; and all his life those two books were Millet's
favourites. Besides drawing pictures on the walls of his home, he drew
them on his sabots. Pity some one did not preserve those old wooden
shoes! He did his share of the farm work, doing his drawing on rainy
days.

When he was about eighteen years old, coming from mass one day, he was
impressed with the figure of an old man going along the road, and
taking some charcoal from his pocket he drew the picture of him on a
stone wall. The villagers passing, at once knew the likeness; they
were pleased and told Millet so. Old Millet, the father, also was
delighted for he, too, had wished to be an artist, but fate had been
against him. Seeing the wonderful things his son could do, he decided
that he should become what he himself had wished to be, and that he
should go to Cherbourg to study.

Fran‡ois set off with his father, carrying a lot of sketches to show,
and upon telling the master in Cherbourg what he wanted and showing
the sketches, he was encouraged to stay and begin study in earnest. So
back the old father went, with the news to the mother and grandmother
and the priest uncle, that Fran‡ois had begun his career. He stayed in
Cherbourg studying till his father died, when he thought it right to
go home and do the work his father had always done. He returned, but
the women-folk would not agree to him staying. "You go back at once,"
said the grandmother, "and stick to your art. We shall manage the
farm." She sewed up in his belt all the money she had saved, and
started him off again, for he had then been studying only two
months. Now he remained till he was twenty-three, a fine, strapping,
broad-shouldered country fellow. He had long fair hair and piercing
dark blue eyes. All the time he was with Delaroche he was dissatisfied
with his work--and with his master's, which seemed to Millet
artificial, untrue. He knew nothing of the classical figures the
master painted and wished him to paint, for his heart and mind were
back in Gruchy among the scenes that bore a meaning for him. He wished
to study elsewhere, and by this time he had done so well that one of
the artists with whom he had studied went to the mayor of Millet's
home town, and begged him to furnish through the town-council money
enough to send Millet to Paris. This was done, and Millet began to
hope.

He was very shy and afraid of seeming awkward and out of place. The
night he got to Paris was snowy, full of confusion and strange things
to him, and an awful loneliness overwhelmed him. The next morning he
set out to find the Louvre, but would not ask his way for fear of
seeming absurd to some one, so that he rambled about alone, looking
for the great gallery till he found it unaided. He spent most of the
days that followed gazing in ecstasy at the pictures.

He liked Angelo, Titian, and Rubens best. He had come to Paris to
enter a studio, but he put off his entrance from day to day, for his
shyness was painful and he feared above all things to be laughed at by
city students. At last one day, he got up enough courage to apply to
Delaroche, whose studio he had decided to enter if he could, as he
liked his work best. The students in that studio were full of
curiosity about the new chap, with his peasant air, his bushy hair and
great frame, so sturdy and awkward. They at once nicknamed him "the
man of the woods," and they nagged at him and laughed at the idea that
he could learn to paint, till one day, exasperated nearly to death, he
shook his fist at them. From that moment he heard no more from them,
for they were certain that if he could not paint he could use his
fists a good deal better than any of them. Delaroche liked the peasant
but did not understand him very well, and Millet was not too fond of
his painting, so after two years he and a friend withdrew from that
studio and set up one for themselves. Thus eight years passed, the
friends living from hand to mouth, doing all sorts of things:
sign-painting, advertisements, and the like; and Millet, in the midst
of his poverty, got married.

He went home, returning to Paris with his wife, and after starving
regularly, he became desperate enough to paint a single picture as he
wished. It seemed at the time the maddest kind of thing to do. Who
would see ugly, toil-worn peasants upon his _salon_ walls? Paris
wanted dainty, aesthetic art, and an Academy artist would have scoffed
at the idea; but the Millets were starving anyway, so why not starve
doing at least what one chose. So Millet painted his first wonderful
peasant picture "The Winnower," and just as the family were starving
he sold it--for $100. He had done at last the right thing, in doing as
he pleased. This was a sign to him that there was after all a place
for truth and emotion in art. But the Millets must change their place
of living, and go to some place where the money made would not at once
be eaten up. Jacque--the friend with whom Millet had set up shop, and
who also became famous, later--advised them to go to a little place he
knew about, which had a name ending in "zon." It was near the forest
of Fontainebleau, he said and they could live there very cheaply, and
it was quiet and decent. The Millets got into a rumbling old cart and
started in search of the place which ended in "zon" near the forest of
Fontainebleau. Jacque had also decided to take his family there and
they all went together. When they got to Fontainebleau they got down
from the car and went a-foot through the forest.

They arrived tired and hungry toward evening, and went to Ganne's Inn,
where there were Rousseau, Diaz, and other artists who like themselves
had come in search of a nice, clean, picturesque place in which to
starve, if they had to. Those who were just sitting down to supper
welcomed the newcomers, for they had been there long enough to form a
colony and fraternity ways. One of these was to take a certain great
pipe from the wall, and ask the newcomer to smoke; and according to
the way he blew his "rings" he was pronounced a "colourist" or
"classicist." The two friends blew the smoke, and at once the other
artists were able to place Jacque. He was a colourist; but what were
they to say about Millet who blew rings after his own fashion.

"Oh, well!" he cried. "Don't trouble about it. Just put me down in a
class of my own!"

"A good answer!" Diaz answered. "And he looks strong and big enough to
hold his own in it!" Thus the newcomers took their places in the life
of Barbizon--the place whose name ended in "zon," and Millet's real
work began. His first wife lived only two years, but he married
again. All this time he was following his conscience in the matter of
his work, and selling almost nothing. In a letter to a friend he tells
how dreadfully poor they are, although his new wife was the most
devoted helpful woman imaginable, known far and near as "MŠre Millet."
The artist wrote to Sensier, his friend, who aided him: "I have
received the hundred francs. They came just at the right time. Neither
my wife nor I had tasted food in twenty-four hours. It is a blessing
that the little ones, at any rate, have not been in want."

The revolution of 1848 had come before Millet went to Barbizon, and he
like other men had to go to war. Then the cholera appeared, and these
things interrupted his work; and after such troubles people did not
begin buying pictures at once. Rousseau was famous now, but Millet
lived by the hardest toil until one day he sold the "Woodcutter" to
Rousseau himself, for four hundred francs. Rousseau had been very
poor, and it grieved him to see the trials and want of his friend, so
he pretended that he was buying the picture for an American. That
picture was later sold at the Hartmann sale for 133,000 francs. Millet
was now forty years old, and had not yet been recognised as a
wonderful man by any but his brother artists. He was truly "in a class
of his own." He had learned to love Barbizon, and cried: "Better a
thatched cottage here than a palace in Paris!" and we have the picture
in our minds of Millet followed patiently and lovingly by "MŠre
Millet" in the peasant dress which she always wore, that she might be
ready at a moment's notice to pose for his figures. Then there were
his little children and his sunny, simple, fraternal surroundings,
which make his life the most picturesque of all artists.

His paintings had the simplest stories with seldom more than two or
three figures in them. It was said that he needed only a field and a
peasant to make a great picture. When he painted the "Man with the
Hoe," he did it so truthfully, in a way to make the story so well
understood by all who looked upon it, that he was called a
socialist. No one was so much surprised as Millet by that name. "I
never dreamed of being a leader in any cause," he said. "I am a
peasant--only a peasant."

Of his picture "The Reaper" a critic wrote, "He might have reaped the
whole earth." All his pictures were sermons, he called them "epics of
the fields." He pretended to nothing except to present things just as
they were, as he writes in a letter to a friend about "The Water
Carrier:"

In the woman coming from drawing water I have endeavoured that she
shall be neither a water-carrier nor a servant, but the woman who has
just drawn water for the house, the water for her husband's and her
children's soup; that she shall seem to be carrying neither more nor
less than the weight of the full buckets; that beneath the sort of
grimace which is natural on account of the strain on her arms, and the
blinking of her eyes caused by the light, one may see a look of rustic
kindliness on her face. I have always shunned with a kind of horror
everything approaching the sentimental. I have desired on the other
hand, that this woman should perform simply and good-naturedly,
without regarding it as irksome, an act which, like her other
household duties, is one she is accustomed to perform every day of her
life. Also I wanted to make people imagine the freshness of the
fountain, and that its antiquated appearance should make it clear that
many before her had come to draw water from it.

At forty he was in about the same condition as he had been on that
evening ten or twelve years before, when he had entered Barbizon
carrying his two little daughters upon his shoulders, his wife
following with the servant and a basket of food, to settle themselves
down to hardship made sweet by kind comradeship and hope. Now a change
came. Millet painted "The Angelus." He was dreadfully poor at that
time and sold the picture cheaply, but it laid the foundation of his
fame and fortune. He had worked upon the canvas till he said he could
hear the sound of the bell. Although its first purchaser paid very
little for it, it has since been sold for one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars.

At last, having struggled through his worst days, without recognition,
and with nine little children to feed and clothe, he was given the
white cross of the Legion of Honour; and as if to make up for the days
of his starvation, he was nearly feasted to death in Paris. He was
placed upon the hanging committee of the _Salon_, and took a dignified
place among artists. He and MŠre Millet travelled a little, but always
he returned to Barbizon, till the war came and he had to move to
Normandy to work. Afterward he returned to Barbizon, to the scenes and
the old friends he loved so well, and there he died. He had come back
ill and tired with the long struggle, and he instructed his friends to
give him a simple funeral. This was done. They carried his coffin,
while his wife and children walked beside him to the cemetery, and he
was buried near the little church of Chailly, whose spire is seen in
"The Angelas," and where Rousseau, whom he loved, had already been
laid.

There in Barbizon, to-day, may be seen Rousseau's cottage and Millet's
studio. "The peasants sow and reap and glean as in the days of Millet;
Troyon's oxen and sheep are still standing in the meadow; Jacque's
poultry are feeding in the barnyard. The leaves on Rousseau's grand
old trees are trembling in the forest; Corot's misty morning is as
fresh and soft as ever; while Diaz's ruddy sunsets still penetrate the
branches; and the peasant pauses daily as the Angelus from the Chailly
church calls him to silent prayer."

  PLATE--THE ANGELUS

In "The Angelus" you may see far-off the spire of the church at
Chailly, from which the bell sounds. The day's work is drawing to a
close. The peasant man and woman have been digging potatoes--the man
uncovering them, while his wife has been putting them in the
basket. As the Angelus floats across the fields, the two pause and bow
their heads in prayer. The man has dropped his fork and uncovered his
head, and his wife has clasped her hands devoutly before her.

All the air seems still and full of tender sound and colour, and we,
like Millet, seem "to hear the bell." This is the only picture he
painted which is full of the sentimentality he so much disliked. It is
a great picture, but we need to know the title in order to interpret
it.

Besides this one, Millet painted "The Gleaners," "The Woodcutters,"
"The Sower," "The Man with the Hoe;" "The Water Carrier," "The
Reaper," and many other stories of the peasant poor.




XXX

CLAUDE MONET


  (_Pronounced Claude Mo-nay_)
  _Impressionist School of France_
  1840--

Another--Manet--was the founder of this school among modern painters,
but Monet is always considered his most conspicuous follower.

Monet's remarkable method of putting his colours upon canvas does not
mean impressionism. He is an impressionist but also _Monet_--an artist
with a method entirely different from that of any other. He belongs to
what in France is called the _pointillistes_. The word means nothing
more nor less than an effort to accomplish the impossible. If you
stand a little way from a very hot stove you may be able to see a kind
of movement in the air, a quivering of particles or molecular motion,
and this is what the _pointillistes_ try to show in their
paintings--Monet most of all.

The theory is that by putting little dabs of primitive colours, close
together upon canvas, without mixing them, just separate dabs of red,
yellow, blue, etc., the effect of movement is produced. Needless to
say, none of them ever have produced such an effect, but they have
made such grotesque, ugly pictures that they have attracted attention
even as a humpbacked person does.

The first who painted thus was a Frenchman named Seurat, who tried it
after closely studying experiments made in light and colour by
Professor Rood, of Columbia University. After him came Pissarro, and
then Monet. America also has such a painter, Childe Hassam, but nobody
is so grotesque as Monet.

He was born in Paris but spent most of his youth in Havre, where he
met a painter of harbours and shipping scenes called Boudin. Through
his influence Monet studied out-of-door effects, and was beginning to
do fairly good work, when he was drawn as a conscript and sent to
Algeria. It is written that Monet discovered that "green, seen under
strong sunshine is not green, but yellow; that the shadows cast by
sunlight upon snow or upon brightly lighted surfaces are not black,
but blue; and that a white dress, seen under the shade of trees on a
bright day, has violet or lilac tones." This only means that these
things have been scientifically determined, not that the naked eye
ever perceives them, and it is for the natural, unscientific eye that
art exists. None of us see the separate colours of the spectrum, as we
look about in every-day fashion upon every-day objects.

Professor Rood managed to produce an intelligent effect by putting
separate colours on discs and whirling these round so that the colours
mingled. Monet tried to do the same by dotting his original colours
close together, and leaving the picture to its own destruction. It
ought to revolve, if the scientific idea is to be carried out.

Nothing desirable can be made out of his pictures even when viewed
from far off, while at close range they are simply grotesque, and
photographs of them give the impression that the entire landscape is
wabbling to the ground.

I wonder if anyone, small or grown up, can understand this: "It was
indeed a higher kind of impressionism that Monet originated, one that
reveals a vivid rendering, not of the natural and concrete facts, but
of their influence upon the spirit when they are wrapped in the
infinite diversities of that impalpable, immaterial, universal medium
which we call light, when the concrete loses itself in the abstract,
and what is of time and matter impinges on the eternal and the
universal." Monet's pictures look just as that explanation of them
sounds!

The same writer says that Monet was greater than Corot because he was
more sensitive to colour; but if Monet had been as sensitive to colour
as Corot, he could not have lived and looked at his own pictures.

  PLATE--HAYSTACK IN SUNSHINE

The main feature of this picture is such a hay stack as never existed
anywhere, of indescribable lurid colour, against a background of blue
such as never was seen. All about there are violet and rose-coloured
trees, and it is a picture that every child should know, because he is
likely never to have another such opportunity.

Monet has made two interesting pictures of churches, one at Vernon,
the other at Varangeville.




XXXI

MURILLO (BARTOLOME ESTEBAN)


  (Pronounced Moo-reel'oh Bar-tol-o-may' A-stay'bahn)
  _Andalusian School_
  1617-1682
  _Pupil of Juan del Castillo_

The story of Murillo has been delightfully told by Mrs. Sarah Bolton.

Like Velasquez, he was born in Seville, a city called "the glory of
the Spanish realms," and was baptised on New Year's day, 1618, in the
Church of the Magdalen.

Murillo's father paid his rent in work, instead of in money. He made a
bargain with the convent who owned his house that he would keep it in
repair if he might have it free of rent, so there Gaspar Est‚ban and
his wife, Maria Perez, settled. "Perez" was the family name of
Murillo's mother, who had very good connections; one of her brothers,
Juan del Castillo, being a man who encouraged all art and had an art
school of his own. Little Murillo therefore had encouragement from the
start, an unusual circumstance at a time when parents rarely wished to
think of their sons as painters. As a matter of fact, his mother would
have preferred that he should become a priest, but she was kind and
sensible, and put no difficulties in the way of the little Murillo
doing as he wished.

The story goes that the Perez family had been very rich, but, however
it may have been, that was not the case when the artist was born. One
day after his mother had gone to church, Murillo being left at home
alone, retouched a picture that hung upon the wall. It was a picture
of sacred subject--"Jesus and the Lamb." He thought he could make some
improvements in it, so he painted his own hat upon the head of Jesus
and changed the lamb into a little dog. His mother was a good deal
shocked at what seemed to her an irreligious act, though it showed the
family genius. After that the boy was found to be painting upon the
walls of his schoolroom, and making sketches upon the margins of his
books, though he did little else at school.

He had one sister, Therese, and they were left without father or
mother before the artist was eleven years old.

It was at that time that he received the name of "Murillo" by which he
is known.

It came about thus: After the death of his parents he went to live
with his mother's sister, the Do€a Anna Murillo, who had married a
surgeon called Juan Agustin Lagares, and since the little artist was
to live with his aunt, he soon became known by her family name. There,
in her home, he and his sister Therese, were brought up, but he was
not to become a surgeon like his uncle-in-law, but an artist like his
uncle Juan, the teacher in Seville. That uncle took him in hand,
taught the boy to draw, to mix colours, to stretch his canvas, and
soon Murillo's genius won the love of master and pupils.

In peace and reasonable comfort he served a nine years apprenticeship,
and painted his first important, if not especially great,
pictures. These were two Madonnas, one of them "The Story of the
Rosary." St. Dominic had instituted the rosary; using fifteen large
and one hundred and fifty small beads upon which to keep record of the
number of prayers he had said; the large beads representing the
_Paternosters and Glorias_ and the small ones, the _Aves_. This
practical way of indicating duties helped the heedless to concentrate
their attention, and did much to increase the number of prayers
offered. Indeed, it is said that "by this single expedient Dominic did
more to excite the devotion of the lower orders, especially of the
women, and made more converts, than by all his orthodoxy, learning,
arguments, and eloquence." It was this incident in the history of the
Catholic Church that Murillo commemorated.

When the artist was twenty-two years old, his uncle, Juan del
Castillo, broke up his home and went elsewhere to live, leaving the
artist without home or means, and with his little sister to take care
of. Without vanity or ambition, but with only the wish to care for his
sister and to get food, the marvellous painter took himself to the
market place, and there, wedged in between stalls, old clothes,
vegetables, all sorts of wares, like a wanderer and a gypsy, he began
his career.

At the weekly market--the _Feria_ or fair, opposite the Church of All
Saints--his brotherly, kindly feeling for the vagabonds he daily met
is shown in the treatment he gives them in his wonderful
pictures. During the two years that he worked in that open-air studio
he had flower-girls, muleteers, hucksters all about him, and he
painted dozens of rough pictures which found quick sale among the
patrons of the market. What Velasquez was doing in the court of
Madrid, Murillo was doing in the streets of Seville; the one painting
cardinals, kings, and courtiers; the other painting beggars, _gamins_,
and waifs. Between the two, the world has been shown the social
history of Spain as it then existed.

Through a peculiar happening, the American Indian saw the beauties of
Murillo's work before Europe was even conscious there was such a
man. In his old home, his uncle's studio, Murillo had had a dear
comrade, Moya. They had not met for two years or more, and when they
did come together again Moya told Murillo he had been travelling, that
he had been to Flanders with the Spanish army, and thence to London,
in both places seeing gorgeous paintings and other inspiring
things. He opened the eyes of Murillo to the splendours the world
contained, and the artist became wild with desire to go and see them
for himself, but he had no money. He was painting pictures in the
market place of Seville and getting so little for his hasty work that
he could barely support himself and little Therese. What must he do in
order to get to London and see the world?

What he did do was to buy a piece of linen, cut it into six pieces and
hide himself long enough to paint upon them "saints, flowers, fruit
and landscapes," and then he went forth to sell them.

He actually sold those pictures to a ship-owner who was sending his
ship to the West Indies. Eventually they were hung upon the walls of a
mission in wild, far off America. It is said that after this Murillo
made no little money by painting such pictures, destined to give the
American savage an idea of the Christian religion. One cannot but
wonder if there may not be, all unknown to us, Murillo pictures, made
in the market-place of Seville nearly three hundred years ago, hidden
away in the remains of those old Spanish missions, even to-day. Such a
picture would be more rare than the greatest that he ever painted.

After selling his six pictures Murillo started a-foot, not to London
but on a terrible journey across the Sierra Mountains, to Madrid--the
home of Velasquez. Murillo knew that this native of Seville had become
a famous artist. He was powerful and rich and at the court of Philip
II., while Murillo had no place to lay his head, and besides he had
left Therese behind in Seville in the care of friends. He had no claim
upon the kindness of Velasquez but he determined to see him; to
introduce himself and possibly to gain a friend. It was under these
forlorn circumstances he made himself known to the great Spanish court
painter.

The story of their meeting is a fine one. For Murillo Velasquez had a
warm embrace, a kind and hospitable word. The stranger told Velasquez
how he had crossed the mountains on foot, was penniless, but could use
his brush. Instead of jealousy and suspicion, the young man met with
nothing but the most cheerful encouragement, found the Velasquez home
open to him, took up his lodging there and established his workshop
with nothing around him but friendship and the sympathy his nature
craved.

From the market-place to the home of Velasquez and the Palace of
Philip II.! It was a beautiful dream to Murillo.

With what splendour of colour and mastery of design he illuminated the
annals of the poor! Coming forth from some dim chancel or palace-hall
in which he had been working on a majestic Madonna picture, he would
sketch in, with the brush still loaded with the colours of celestial
glory, the lineaments of the beggar crouching by the wall, or the
gypsy calmly reposing in the black shadow of an archway. Such
versatility had never before been seen west of the Mediterranean, and
it commanded the admiration of his countrymen.

All his beggarly little children, neglected and houseless, appeared
only to be full of cheer and merriment, with soft eyes and contented
faces. It was a happy, care-free, gay, and kindly beggardom that he
painted, with nothing in it to sadden the heart.

Thus he lived for three years; working in the galleries of the king,
making friends at court, painting beautiful women, gallant cavaliers
and fascinating little beggars.

In the course of time, however, he grew restless, and Velasquez wished
to give him letters of introduction to Roman artists and people of
quality, advising him to go to Rome to study the greatest art in the
world. This was an alluring plan to Murillo, but after all he longed
for his own home and chose to return there rather than go to
Rome. Besides, his sister Therese was still in Seville.

Once more in his home, at one stroke of his magic brush Murillo raised
himself and a monastic order from obscurity to greatness. In his
native city was the order of San Francisco. The monks had long wished
to have their convent decorated in a worthy manner by some artist of
repute; but they were poor and had never been able to engage such a
painter. When Murillo got back home, he was as badly in need of work
as the Franciscans were in want of an artist. The monks held a council
and finally agreed upon a price which they could pay and which Murillo
could live upon. Then he began a wonderful set of eleven large
paintings. Among them were many saints, dark and rich in colouring,
and no sooner was it known that the paintings were being made than all
the rich and powerful people of Seville flocked to the convent to see
the work. They gathered about the young artist, overwhelmed him with
honours and praise, and the monastery was crowded from morning till
night with those who wished to study his work. From that moment
Murillo's fame, if not his fortune, was made.

He married a rich and noble lady with the tremendous name of Do€a
Beatriz de Cabrera y Sotomayer. He had fallen in love with her while
painting her as an angel.

About that time he formed a strange partnership with a landscape
painter, who agreed to supply the backgrounds that his pictures
needed, if Murillo would paint figures into his landscapes. This plan
did very well for a little time, but it did not last long.

Murillo painted in three distinct styles, and these have come to be
known as the "warm," the "cold," and the "vaporous." He painted
pictures in the great cathedral of the Escorial and the "Guardian
Angel" was one of them. Also, he painted "St. Anthony of Padua," and
of this picture there is one of those absurd stories meant to
illustrate the perfection of art. It is said that the lilies in it are
so natural that the birds flew down the cathedral aisles to pluck at
them. Many artists have painted this saint, but Murillo's is the best
picture of all.

When the nephew of his first master, Murillo's cousin, saw that work
he said: "It is all over with Castillo! Is it possible that Murillo,
that servile imitator of my uncle, can be the author of all this grace
and beauty of colouring?"

The Duke of Wellington offered for this picture as many gold pieces
"as would cover its surface of fifteen square feet." This would have
been about two hundred and forty thousand dollars; but we need not
imagine that Murillo received any such sum for the work. This picture
has a further interesting history. The canvas was cut from the frame
by thieves in 1874, and later it was sold to Mr. Schaus, the
connoisseur and picture dealer of New York. He paid $250 for it, and
at once put it into the hands of the Spanish consul, who restored it
to the cathedral.

The story of the saint whom Murillo painted is as interesting as
Murillo's own. Among the many wonderful things said to have happened
to him was that a congregation of fishes hearing his voice as he
preached beside the sea, came to the top and lifted up their heads to
listen.

While Murillo was doing his work, he was living a happy, domestic
life. He had three children, and doubtless he used them as models for
his lively cherubs, as he used his wife's face for madonnas and
angels.

He founded an academy of painting in Seville, for the entrance to
which a student could not qualify unless he made the following
declaration: "Praised be the most Holy Sacrament and the pure
conception of Our Lady."

The most delightful stories are told of Murillo's kindness and
sweetness of disposition. He had a slave who loved him and who, one
day while Murillo was gone from the studio, painted in the head of the
Virgin which the master had left incomplete. When Murillo returned and
saw the excellent work he cried: "I am fortunate, Sebastian"--the
slave's name--"For I have not created only pictures but an artist!"
This slave was set free by Murillo and in the course of time he
painted many splendid pictures which are to-day highly prized in
Seville.

This is a description of Murillo's house which is still to be seen
near the Church of Santa Cruz: "The courtyard contains a marble
fountain, amidst flowering shrubs, and is surrounded on three sides by
an arcade upheld by marble pillars. At the rear is a pretty garden,
shaded by cypress and citron trees, and terminated by a wall whereon
are the remains of ancient frescoes which have been attributed to the
master himself. The studio is on the upper floor, and overlooks the
Moorish battlements, commanding a beautiful view to the eastward, over
orange groves and rich corn-lands, out to the gray highlands about
Alcala."

Murillo's fame brought fortune to his little sister, Therese. She
married a nobleman of Burgos, a knight of Santiago and judge of the
royal colonial court. He became the chief secretary of state for
Madrid.

Murillo made money, but gave almost all that he made to the poor,
though he did not make money in the service of the Church, as
Velasquez made it in the service of the king.

His work of more than twenty pictures in the Capuchin Church of
Seville occupied him for three years, and in that time he did not
leave the convent for a single day.

Of all the charming stories told of this glorious artist, one which is
connected with his work in that church is the most picturesque. It
seems that every one within the walls loved him, and among others a
lay brother who was cook. This man begged for some little personal
token from Murillo and since there was no canvas at hand, the artist
bade the cook leave the napkin which he had brought to cover his food,
and during the day he painted upon it a Madonna and child, so natural
that one of his biographers declares the child seems about to spring
from Mary's arms. This souvenir made for the cook of the Capuchin,
convent has been reproduced again and again, as one of the artist's
greatest performances.

Toward the close of his happy life, he became more and more devout,
spending many hours before an altar-piece in the Church of Santa Cruz
where was a picture of "The Descent from the Cross," by Pedro
Campana. "Why do you always tarry before 'The Descent from the
Cross?'" the sacristan once asked of him.

"I am waiting till those men have brought the body of our blessed Lord
down the ladder." Murillo answered. His wife had died, his daughter
had become a nun, and all that was left to him was his dear son
Gaspar, when in his sixty-third year he began his last work, "The
Marriage of St. Catherine." He had not finished this when he fell from
the scaffolding upon which he was working, and fatally hurt
himself. He died, with his son beside him. He was a much loved man,
and when he was buried, his bier was carried by "two marquises and
four knights and followed by a great concourse of people." He chose to
be buried beneath the picture he loved so much--"The Descent from the
Cross," and upon his grave was laid a stone carved with his name, a
skeleton and an inscription in Latin which means "Live as one who is
about to die."

The church has since been destroyed, and on its site is the Plaza
Santa Cruz, but Murillo's grave is marked by a tablet.

Each country seems to have had at least one man of beautiful heart and
mind, to represent its art. Raphael in Italy, Murillo in Spain, were
types of gentle and greatly beloved men. Leonardo in Italy and Drer
in Nuremberg, were types of forceful, intellectual men, highly
respected and of great benefit to the world.

Of all the painters who ever lived, Murillo was the one who painted
little children with the most loving and fascinating touch.

  PLATE--THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

Besides the little angels in this picture, we have a bewildering
choice among many other beauties.

Many pictures of this subject have been painted, and many were painted
by Murillo, but the one presented here is the greatest of all. It
hangs in the Louvre, Salle VI. Mary seems to be suspended in the
heavens, not standing upon clouds. Under the hem of her garments is
the circle of the moon, while there is the effect of hundreds of
little cherub children massed about her feet, in a little swarm at the
right, where the shadow falls heaviest, and still others, half lost in
the vapoury background at the left, where the heavenly light streams
upon them, and brilliantly lights up the Virgin's gown. In this
picture are all Murillo's beloved child figures, some carrying little
streamers, their tiny wings a-flutter and all crowding lovingly about
Mary. Far below this gorgeous group we can imagine the dark and weary
earth lost in shadow.

Among Murillo's most famous paintings are: "The Birth of the Virgin,"
"Two Beggar Boys," "The Madonna of the Rosary," "The Annunciation,"
"Adoration of the Shepherds," "Holy Family," "Education of Mary," "The
Dice Players," and "The Vision of St. Anthony."




XXXII

RAPHAEL (SANZIO)


  (Pronounced Rah'fay-el (Sahnt'syoh))
  1483-1590
  _Umbrian, Florentine, and Roman Schools_
  _Pupil of Perugino_

It was said of Raphael that "every evil humour vanished when his
comrades saw him, every low thought fled from their minds"; and this
was because they felt themselves vanquished by his pleasant ways and
sweet nature.

Imagine his beautiful face, with its sunny eyes, reflecting no shadow
of sadness or pain. Such a one was sure to be beloved by all.

The father of Raphael was Giovanni Santi, himself an able artist. Both
he and Raphael studied in many schools and took the best from
each. The son was brought up in an Italian court, that of Guidobaldo
of Urbino, where the father was a favourite poet and painter, so that
he had at least one generation of art-lovers behind him, at a time
when learning and art were much prized. Nothing ever entered into his
life that was sad or sorrowful; his whole existence was a triumph of
beautiful achievements. There were three great artists of that time,
the other two being Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci, both of whom
were absolutely unlike Raphael in their art and in their characters.

Raphael was born on April 6th at Contrada del Monte in the ducal city
of Urbino. His mother's name was Magia Ciarla, and she was the
daughter of an Urbino merchant. She had three children besides the
great painter, all of whom died young, and when Raphael was but eight
years old his mother died also. It is said that it was from her
Raphael inherited his beauty, goodness, mildness, and genius. His
father's patron, the Duke of Urbino, was a fine soldier, but he also
cherished scholarship and art, and kept at his court not less than
twenty or thirty persons at work copying Greek and Latin manuscript
which he wished to add to his library.

Raphael had a stepmother, Bernardina, the daughter of a goldsmith, a
good and forceful woman, but not gentle like the first wife; and when
Raphael was eleven years of age his father, too, died. By his father's
will Raphael became the charge of his uncle Bartolommeo, a priest, but
the property was left to the stepmother so long as she remained
unmarried. Almost at once the priest and the stepmother fell to
quarreling over the spoils, and thus Raphael was left pretty much to
his own devices, but just when life began to look dark and sad for
him, his mother's brother took a hand in the situation. He settled the
dispute between the priest and the second wife, and arranged that
Raphael should be placed in the studio of some great painter, for the
loving lad had already worked in his father's studio, and had given
promise of his wonderful gifts. So he became the pupil of Perugino, a
painter noted for his fine colouring and sympathetic handling of his
subjects. At that time, Italian schools were less wonderful in
colouring than in other matters of technique.

"Let him become my pupil," said Perugino, when Raphael was brought to
him and some of his work was exhibited; "soon he will be my master." A
very different attitude from that of Ghirlandajo toward Michael
Angelo.

Raphael and his master became friends and worked together for nine
years.

His first work was not conceived until Raphael was seventeen. It was
to be a surprise to his master who had gone to Florence. A banner was
wanted for the Church of S. Trinita at Citta di Castello, and Raphael
undertook it, painting the "Trinity," on one canvas and the "Creation
of Man" on another. Then he painted the "Crucifixion," which was
bought by Cardinal Fesch, who lived in Rome. That painting is now in a
collection of the Earl of Dudley. It was sold away from Rome in 1845,
for twelve thousand dollars--or a little more. No one will deny that
this is an unusual sum for an artist's first work, but about the same
time he did a much more wonderful thing.

He painted a little picture, six and three-quarter inches square. It
was of the Virgin walking in the springtime, before the leaves had
appeared upon the trees, and with snow-capped mountains behind
her. She holds the infant Jesus in her arms while she reads from a
small book, and the little child looks upon the page with her. This
six inches of beauty sold to the Emperor of Russia, in 1871, for sixty
thousand dollars.

Before Raphael was twenty-one, he had left his master's studio and had
gone into the splendid world of Rome, where Angelo was straining at
his bonds. But how differently each accepted his life! The gentle
Raphael, who took the best of the ideas of all great painters, and
gave to them his own exquisite characteristics, was beloved of all,
shed light upon art and friends alike. To such a one all life was
joyous. Michael Angelo, trying ever to do the impossible, betraying
his hatred of limitations in all that he did, doing always that which
aroused horror, distress, longing, elemental feelings, in those who
studied his wonderful work, and giving hope and satisfaction and peace
to none--to such as he life must ever have been hateful and
painful. These men lived at the same time, among the same people.

One of Raphael's greatest pictures came into the possession of a poor
widow, who being hard pressed by poverty, sold it to a bookseller for
twelve scudi. In time it was bought from the bookseller by Grand Duke
Ferdinand III. of Tuscany, who prayed before it night and morning,
taking it with him on his travels. That picture is now in the Pitti
Palace at Florence and it is called the "Madonna del Granduca." The
Berlin Museum purchased a Raphael Madonna for $34,000 which was
painted about the same time as these others, but after a little the
artist left Florence where he had been studying the methods of
Leonardo and Angelo and returned to Urbino, the home he loved, where
his conduct was such that all the world seems to have become his
lover. It is written that he was "the only very distinguished man of
whom we read, who lived and died without an enemy or detractor!" No
better can ever be said of any one.

While he dwelt in Perugia and Urbino he had painted the "Ansidei
Madonna," so called because that was the name of the family for which
it was painted. That Madonna was sold in 1884 to the National Gallery,
by the Duke of Marlborough for $350,000. A Madonna on a round
plaque-like canvas, 42-3/4 inches in diameter, was bought by the Duke
of Bridgewater for $60,000. It is the "Holy Family under a Palm Tree,"
painted originally for a friend, Taddeo Taddei, who was a Florentine
scholar. Many of the pictures which after many vicissitudes have
landed far from home and been bought for fabulous sums were painted
for love of some friend, or were paid for by modest sums at the time
the artist received the commissions. Lord Ellesmere in London now owns
the "Holy Family under a Palm Tree."

It is said of Raphael that whenever another painter, known to him or
not, requested any design or assistance of any kind at his hands, he
would invariably leave his work to perform the service. He continually
kept a large number of artists employed, all of whom he assisted and
instructed with an affection which was rather that of a father to his
children than merely of an artist to artists. From this it followed
that he was never seen to go to court, except surrounded and
accompanied, as he left his house, by some fifty painters, all men of
ability and distinction, who attended him, thus to give evidence of
the honour in which they held him. He did not, in short, live the life
of a painter, but that of a prince.

There is something wonderfully inspiring about such a life. We read of
emperors and the homage paid to them; of the esteem in which men who
accomplish deeds of universal value are held, but nowhere do we behold
the power of a beautiful and exquisite personality and character,
allied with a single art, so impressively exhibited.

He urged nothing, yet won all things by the force of his loving and
sympathetic mind. "How is it, dear Cesare that we live in such good
friendship, but that in the art of painting we show no deference to
each other?" he asked of Cesare da Sesto, who was Da Vinci's greatest
pupil.

In discussing the great ones of the earth, Herman Grimm, son of the
collector of fairy tales, says: "Can we mention a violent act of
Raphael's, Goethe's or Shakespeare's? No, it is restful only to recall
these wonderful men."

One of Raphael's most beautiful Virgins was modeled from a beautiful
flower-girl whom he loved, "La Belle JardiniŠre."

Raphael as well as Michael Angelo was summoned by Pope Julius II., but
how different were the two occasions! Michael Angelo had stood with
dogged, gloomy self-assertiveness before the pope, head covered, knee
unbent. Uncompromising, while yet no injury had been done him,
resentful before he had received a single cause for resentment, the
attitude was typical of his art and his unhappy life.

When Raphael appeared, his bent knee, his "chestnut locks falling upon
his shoulders, the pope exclaimed: 'He is an innocent angel. I will
give him Cardinal Bembo for a teacher, and he shall fill my walls with
historical pictures.'" The artist's behaviour was no sign of
servility, but the simple recognition of forms and customs which the
people themselves had made and by which they had decided they should
graciously be bound. The attitude of Angelo was not heroic but vulgar;
that of Raphael not servile, but in good taste, showing a reasonable
mind.

Pope Julius had summoned Raphael for a special reason. Alexander VI.,
his predecessor in the Vatican, had been a depraved man. The fair and
virile Julius had a healthy sentiment against occupying rooms which
must continually remind him of the notorious Alexander's mode of
life. Some one suggested that he have all the portraits of the former
pope removed, but Julius declared: "Even if the portraits were
destroyed, the walls themselves would remind me of that Simoniac, that
Jew!" The word 'Jew' was then execrated by all Christians, for the
world was not yet Christian enough to know better.

Raphael was summoned to decorate the Vatican, that Julius might have a
place which reminded him not at all of Alexander. It is said that when
Raphael had completed one of his masterpieces the pope threw himself
upon the ground and cried, "I thank Thee, God, that Thou hast sent me
so great a painter!"

While at work upon his first fresco at the Vatican--"La Disputa," the
dispute over the Holy Sacrament--Raphael met a woman with whom he fell
deeply in love. Her father was a soda manufacturer and her name was
Margherita. Missirini relates this incident in Raphael's career.

"She lived on the other side of the Tiber. A small house, No. 20, in
the street of Santa Dorothea, the windows of which are decorated with
a pretty frame work of earthenware, is pointed out as the house where
she was born.

"The beautiful girl was very frequently in a little garden adjoining
the house, where, the wall not being very high, it was easy to see her
from the outside. So the young men, especially artists--always
passionate admirers of beauty--did not fail to come and look at her,
by climbing up above the wall.

"Raphael is said to have seen her for the first time as she was
bathing her pretty feet in a little fountain in the garden. Struck by
her perfect beauty, he fell deeply in love with her, and after having
made acquaintance with her, and discovered that her mind was as
beautiful as her body, he became so much attached as to be unable to
live without her."

She is spoken of to-day as the "Fornarina," because at first she was
supposed to have been the daughter of a baker (_fornajo_).

Raphael made many rough studies for his picture "La Disputa," and upon
them he left three sonnets, written to the woman so dear to him. These
sonnets have been translated by the librarian of l'Ecole Nationale des
Beaux-Arts, as follows: "Love, thou hast bound me with the light of
two eyes which torment me, with a face like snow and roses, with sweet
words and tender manners. So great is my ardour that no river or sea
could extinguish my fire. But I do not complain, for my ardour makes
me happy.... How sweet was the chain, how light the yoke of her white
arms about my neck. When these bonds were loosed, I felt a mortal
grief. I will say no more; a great joy kills, and, though my thoughts
turn to thee, I will keep silence."

Although he had been a man of many loves, Raphael must have found in
the manufacturer's daughter his best love, because he remained
faithful and devoted to her for the twelve years of life that were
left to him. It was said some years later, while he was engaged upon a
commission for a rich banker, that "Raphael was so much occupied with
the love that he bore to the lady of his choice that he could not give
sufficient attention to his work. Agostino (the banker) therefore,
falling at length into despair of seeing it finished, made so many
efforts by means of friends and by his own care that after much
difficulty he at length prevailed on the lady to take up her abode in
his house, where she was accordingly installed, in apartments near
those which Raphael was painting; In this manner the work was
ultimately brought to a conclusion."

Raphael painted this beautiful lady-love many times, and in a picture
in which she wears a bracelet he has placed his name upon the
ornament.

After this time he painted the "Madonna della Casa d'Alba," which the
Duchess d'Alba gave to her physician for curing her of a grave
disorder. She died soon afterward, and the physician was arrested on
the charge of having poisoned her. In course of time the picture was
purchased for $70,000 by the Russian Emperor, and it is now in "The
Hermitage," St. Petersburg.

A writer telling of that time, relates the following anecdote:
"Raphael of Urbino had painted for Agostino Chigi (the rich banker
already mentioned) at Santa Maria della Pace, some prophets and
sibyls, on which he had received an advance of five hundred scudi. One
day he demanded of Agostino's cashier (Giulio Borghesi) the remainder
of the sum at which he estimated his work. The cashier, being
astounded at this demand, and thinking that the sum already paid was
sufficient, did not reply. 'Cause the work to be estimated by a judge
of painting,' replied Raphael, 'and you will see how moderate my
demand is.'

"Giulio Borghesi thought of Michael Angelo for this valuation, and
begged him to go to the church and estimate the figures of
Raphael. Possibly he imagined that self-love, rivalry, and jealousy
would lead the Florentine to lower the price of the pictures.

"Michael Angelo went, accompanied by the cashier, to Santa Maria della
Pace, and, as he was contemplating the fresco without uttering a word,
Borghesi questioned him. 'That head,' replied Michael Angelo, pointing
to one of the sibyls, 'that head is worth a hundred scudi.' ... 'and
the others?' asked the cashier. 'The others are not less.'

"Someone who witnessed this scene related it to Chigi. He heard every
particular and, offering in addition to the five hundred scudi for
five heads a hundred scudi to be paid for each of the others, he said
to his cashier, 'go and give that to Raphael in payment for his heads,
and behave very politely to him, so that he may be satisfied; for if
he insists on my paying also for the drapery, we should probably be
ruined!'"

By the time Raphael was thirty-one he was a rich man, and had built
himself a beautiful house near the Vatican, on the Via di Borgo
Nuova. Naught remains of that dwelling except an angle of the right
basement, which has been made a part of the Accoramboni Palace. His
friends wished him above all things to marry, but he was still true to
Margherita though he had become engaged to the daughter of his
nephew. He put the marriage off year after year, till finally the lady
he was to have married died, and was buried in Raphael's chapel in the
Pantheon.

Margherita was with him when he died, and it was to her that he left
much of his wealth.

In the time of Raphael excavations were being made about Rome, and
many beautiful statues uncovered, and he was charged with the
supervision of this work in order that no art treasure should be lost
or overlooked. The pope decreed that if the excavators failed to
acquaint Raphael with every stone and tablet that should he unearthed,
they should be fined from one to three hundred gold crowns.

Raphael had his many paintings copied under his own eye and engraved,
and then distributed broadcast, so that not only men of great wealth
but the common people might study them.

Henry VIII. invited him to visit England, and become court painter,
and Francis I. wished him to become the court painter of France.

He loved history, and wished to write certain historical works. He
loved poetry and wrote it. He loved philosophy and lived it--the
philosophy of generous feeling and kindly thought for all the
world. He kept poor artists in his own home and provided for them.

Raphael died on Good Friday night, April 6th, in his thirty-seventh
year, and all Rome wept. He lay in state in his beautiful home, with
his unfinished picture of the "Transfiguration," as background for his
catafalque. That painting with its colours still wet, was carried in
the procession to his burial place in the Pantheon. When his death was
announced, the pope, Leo X., wept and cried _"Ora pro nobis!"_ while
the Ambassador from Mantua wrote home that "nothing is talked of here
but the loss of the man who at the close of his six-and-thirtieth year
has now ended his first life; his second, that of his posthumous fame,
independent of death and transitory things, through his works, and in
what the learned will write in his praise, must continue forever."

Raphael painted two hundred and eighty-seven pictures in his
thirty-seven years of life.

  PLATE--THE SISTINE MADONNA

It is said that the "Sistine Madonna," while painted from an Italian
model--doubtless the lady whom Raphael so dearly loved--has universal
characteristics, so that she may "be understood by everyone."

He lived only three years after painting this picture and it was the
last "Holy Family" painted by him. The Madonna stands upon a curve of
the earth, which is scarcely to be seen, and looming mistily in front
of her is a mass of white vaporous clouds. On either side are figures,
St. Sixtus (for whom the picture was named) and St. Barbara. Beside
St. Sixtus we see a crown or tiara; and the little tower at
St. Barbara's side is a part of her story.

Barbara was the daughter of an Eastern nobleman who feared that her
great beauty might lead to her being carried off; therefore he caused
her to be shut up in a great tower. While thus imprisoned Barbara
became a Christian through the influence of a holy man, and she begged
her father to make three windows in her gloomy tower: one, to let the
light of the Father stream upon her, another to admit the light of the
Son, and the third that she might bathe in the light of the Holy
Ghost. Both St. Barbara and St. Sixtus were martyrs for their faith.

This Madonna is painted as if enclosed by green velvet curtains, which
have been drawn aside, letting the golden light of the picture blaze
upon the one who looks; then upon a little ledge below, looking out
from the heavens, are two little cherubs--known to all the world. They
look wistful, wise, roguish, and beautiful, with fat little arms
resting comfortably upon the ledge. Raphael is said to have found his
models for these little angels in the street, leaning wistfully upon
the ledge of a baker's window, looking at the good things to eat,
which were within. Raphael took them, put wings to them, placed them
at the feet of Mary, and made two little images which have brought
smiles and tears to a multitude of people. The "Sistine Madonna" hangs
alone in a room in the Dresden Gallery.

Among Raphael's greatest works are: The "Madonna della Sedia" (of the
chair), "La Belle JardiniŠre," "The School of Athens," "Saint Cecilia,"
"The Transfiguration," "Death of Ananias" (a cartoon for a series of
tapestries), "Madonna del Pesce," "La Disputa," "The Marriage of Mary
and Joseph," "St. George Slaying the Dragon," "St. Michael Attacking
Satan" and the "Coronation of the Virgin."




XXXIII

REMBRANDT (VAN RIJN)


  _Dutch School_
  1606-1669
  _Pupil of Van Swanenburch_

Here are a few of the titles that have been given to the greatest
Dutch painter that ever lived: The Shakespeare of Painting; the Prince
of Etchers; the King of Shadows; the Painter of Painters. Muther calls
him a "hero from cloudland," and not only does he alone wear these
titles of greatness, but he alone in his family had the name of
Rembrandt.

One writer has said that the great painter was born "in a windmill,"
but this is not true. He was born in Leyden for certain, though not a
great deal is known about his youth; and his father was a miller, his
mother a baker's daughter.

When the Pilgrim Fathers, who had sought safety in Leyden, were
starting for America, where they were going to oppress others as they
had been oppressed, Rembrandt was just beginning his apprenticeship in
art.

He was born at No. 3, Weddesteg, a house on the rampart looking out
upon the Rhine whose two arms meet there. In front of it whirled the
great arms of his father's windmill, though he was not born in it; and
of all the women Rembrandt ever knew, it is not likely that he ever
admired or loved one as passionately as he admired and loved his
mother. He painted and etched her again and again, with a touch so
tender that his deepest emotion is placed before us.

Rembrandt had brothers and sisters--five: Adriaen, Gerrit, Machteld,
Cornelis, and Willem. Of these, Adriaen became a miller like his
father, and presumably the old historic windmill fell to him; Willem
became a baker, but Rembrandt, the fourth child, it was determined
should be a learned man, and belong to one of the honoured
professions, such as the law. So he was sent to the Leyden Academy,
but here again we have an artist who decided he knew enough of all
else but art before he was twelve years old. He found himself at that
age in the studio of his first art-master, Jacob van Swanenburch, a
relative, who had studied art in Italy, and was a good master for the
lad; but Rembrandt became so brilliant a painter in three years' time,
that he was sent to Amsterdam to learn of abler men.

The lad could not in those days get far from his adored mother; so he
stayed only a little time, before he went back to Leyden where she
was. There was his heart, and, painting or no painting, he must be
near it.

Until the past thirty years no one has seemed to know a great deal of
Rembrandt's early history, but much was written of him as a boorish,
gross, vulgar fellow. Those stories were false. He was a devoted son,
handsome, studious in art, and earnest in all that he did, and after
he had made his first notable painting he was compelled by the demands
of his work to move to Amsterdam for good. He hired an apartment over
a shop on the Quay Bloemgracht; it is probable that his sister went
with him to keep his house, and that it is her face repeated so
frequently in the many pictures which he painted at that time. This
does not suggest coarse doings or a careless life, but permits us to
imagine a quiet, sober, unselfish existence for the young bachelor at
that time.

Soon, however, he fell in love. He saw one other woman to place in his
heart and memory beside his mother. His wife was Saskia van Ulenburg,
the daughter of an aristocrat, refined and rich. He met her through
her cousin, an art dealer, who had ordered Rembrandt to paint a
portrait of his dainty cousin. Rembrandt could have been nothing but
what was delightful and good, since he was loved by so charming a girl
as Saskia.

He painted her sitting upon his knee, and used her as model in many
pictures. First, last, and always he loved her tenderly.

In one portrait she is dressed in "red and gold-embroidered velvets";
the mantle she wore he had brought from Leyden. In another picture she
is at her toilet, having her hair arranged; again she is painted in a
great red velvet hat, and then as a Jewish bride, wearing pearls, and
holding a shepherd's staff in her hand. Again, Rembrandt painted
himself as a giant at the feet of a dainty woman, and in every way his
work showed his love for her. After he married her, in June 1634, he
painted the picture, "Samson's Wedding," "Saskia, dainty and serene,
sitting like a princess in a circle of her relatives, he himself
appearing as a crude plebeian, whose strange jokes frighten more than
they amuse the distinguished company. ... The early years of his
marriage were spent in joy and revelry. Surrounded by calculating
business men who kept a tight grasp on their money bags, he assumed
the r“le of an artist scattering money with a free hand; surrounded by
small townsmen most proper in demeanour, he revealed himself as the
bold lasquenet, frightening them by his cavalier manners. He brought
together all manner of Oriental arms, ancient fabrics, and gleaming
jewellery; and his house became one of the sights of Amsterdam." His
existence reads like a fairy tale.

It is said that Saskia strutted about decked in gold and diamonds,
till her relatives "shook their heads" in alarm and amazement at such
wild goings on.

Before he married Saskia he had painted a remarkable picture, named
the "School of Anatomy." It represents a great anatomist, the friend
of Rembrandt--Nicholaus Tulp,--and a group of physicians who were
members of the Guild of Surgeons of Amsterdam. It is so wonderful a
picture that even the dead man, who is being used as a subject by the
anatomist, does not too greatly disturb us as we look upon him. The
thoughtful, interested faces of the surgeons are so strong that we
half lose ourselves in their feeling, and forget to start in repulsion
at sight of the dead body. A fine description of this painting can be
found in Sarah K. Bolton's book "Famous Artists" and it includes the
description given by another excellent authority.

The artist was twenty-six years old when he painted the "School of
Anatomy." This picture is now at The Hague and two hundred years after
it was painted the Dutch Government gave 30,000 florins for it.

Rembrandt painted a good many "Samsons" first and last--himself
evidently being the strong man; and the pictures beyond doubt express
his own mood and his idea of his relation to things. After a little
son was born to the artist, he painted still another Samson--this time
menacing his father-in-law but as the artist had named his son after
his father-in-law,--Rombertus--we cannot believe that there was any
menace in the heart of Rembrandt--Samson. Soon his son died, and
Rembrandt thought he should never again know happiness, or that the
world could hold a greater grief, but one day he was to learn
otherwise. A little girl was born to the artist, named Cornelia, after
Rembrandt's mother, and he was again very happy.

Meantime his brothers and sisters had died, and there came some
trouble over Rembrandt's inheritance, but what angered him most of
all, was that Saskia's relatives said she "had squandered her heritage
in ornaments and ostentation." This made Rembrandt wild with rage, and
he sued her slanderers, for he himself had done the squandering,
buying every beautiful thing he could find or pay for, to deck Saskia
in, and he meant to go on doing so.

At this time he painted a picture of "The Feast of Ahasuerus" (or the
"Wedding of Samson") and he placed Saskia in the middle of the table
to represent Esther or Delilah as the case might be, dressed in a way
to horrify her critical relatives, for she looked like a veritable
princess laden with gorgeous jewels.

One of his pictures he wished to have hung in a strong light, for he
said: "Pictures are not made to be smelt. The odour of the colours is
unhealthy."

The first baby girl died and on the birth of another daughter she too
was named Cornelia, but that baby girl also died, and next came a son,
Titus, named for Saskia's sister, Titia, and then Saskia died. Thus
Rembrandt knew the deepest sorrow of his life.

He painted her portrait once again from memory, and that picture is
quite unlike the others for it is no longer full of glowing life, but
daintier, suggestive of a more spiritual life, as if she were growing
fragile.

It is written that "from this time, while he did much remarkable work,
he seemed like a man on a mountain top, looking on one side to sweet
meadows filled with flowers and sunlight, and on the other to a
desolate landscape over which a clouded sun is setting." With Saskia
died the best of Rembrandt. He made only one more portrait of
himself--before this he had made many; and in it he makes himself
appear a stern and fateful man. It was after Saskia's death that he
painted the "Night Watch," or more properly, "The Sortie."

Rembrandt's home, where he and Saskia were so happy, is still to be
seen on a quay of the River Amstel. It is a house of brick and cut
stone, four stories high. The vestibule used to have a flag-stone
pavement covered with fir-wood. There were also "black-cushioned,
Spanish chairs for those who wait," and all about were twenty-four
busts and paintings. There was an ante-chamber, very large, with seven
Spanish chairs covered with green velvet, and a walnut table covered
with "a Tournay cloth"; there was a mirror with an ebony frame, and
near by a marble wine-cooler. Upon the wall of this _salon_ were
thirty-nine pictures and most of them had beautiful frames. "There
were religious scenes, landscapes, architectural sketches, works of
Pinas, Brouwer, Lucas van Leyden, and other Dutch masters; sixteen
pictures by Rembrandt; and costly paintings by Palma Vecchio, Bassano,
and Raphael."

In the next room was a real art museum, containing splendid pictures,
an oaken press and other things which suggest that this was the
workroom where Rembrandt's etchings were made and printed.

In the drawing-room was a huge mirror, a great oaken table covered
with a rich embroidered cloth, "six chairs with blue coverings, a bed
with blue hangings, a cedar wardrobe, and a chest of the same wood."
The walls were literally covered with pictures, among which was a
Raphael.

Above was a sort of museum and Rembrandt's studio. There was rare
glass from Venice, busts, sketches, paintings, cloths, weapons,
armour, plants, stuffed birds and shells, fans, and books and
globes. In short, this was a most wonderful house and no other
interior can we reconstruct as we can this, because no other such
detailed inventory can be found of a great man's effects as that from
which these notes are taken: a legal inventory made in 1656, long
after Saskia had died and possibly at a time when Rembrandt wished to
close his doors forever and forget the scenes in which he had been so
happy.

Holland being truly a Protestant country, its artists have given us no
great Madonna pictures, although they painted loving, happy Dutch
mothers and little babes, but on the whole their subjects are quite
different from those of the painters of Italy, France, and Spain.

Rembrandt's studio was different from any other. When he first began
to work independently and to have pupils, he fitted it up with many
little cells, properly lighted, so that each student might work alone,
as he knew far better work could be done in that way. It is said that
his pictures of beggars would, by themselves, fill a gallery. He had a
kindly sympathy for the poor and unfortunate, and tramps knew this, so
that they swarmed about his studio doors, trying to get sittings.

There is a story which doubtless had for its germ a joke regarding the
slowness of an errand boy in a friend's household, but which at the
same time shows us how rapidly Rembrandt worked. The artist had been
carried off to the country to lunch with his friend Jan Six, and as
they sat down at the table, Six discovered there was no mustard. He
sent his boy, Hans, for it, and as the boy went out, Rembrandt wagered
that he could make an etching before the boy got back. Six took the
wager, and the artist pulled a copper plate from his pocket--he always
carried one--and on its waxed surface began to etch the landscape
before him. Just as Hans returned, Rembrandt gleefully handed Six the
completed picture.

He was a great portrait painter, but he loved certain effects of
shadow so well that he often sacrificed his subject's good looks to
his artistic purpose, and very naturally his sitters became
displeased, so that in time he had fewer commissions than if he had
been entirely accommodating.

His meals in working time were very simple, often just bread and
cheese, eaten while sitting at his easel, and after Saskia died he
became more and more careless of all domestic details.

Rembrandt finally married again, the second time choosing his
housekeeper, a good and helpful woman, who was properly bringing up
his little son, and making life better ordered for the artist, but he
had grown poor by this time for he was never a very good business
man. His beautiful house was at last sold to a rich shoemaker. Every
picture latterly reflected his condition and mood. He chose subjects
in which he imagined himself always to be the actor, and when his
second wife died he painted a picture of "Youth Surprised by Death";
he had not long to live. He became more and more melancholy; and
sleeping by day, would wander about the country at night, disconsolate
and sad. Finally, when he died, an inventory of his effects, showed
him to be possessed of only a few old woollen clothes and his brushes
The miracle in Rembrandt's painting is the deep, impenetrable shadow,
in which nevertheless one can see form and outline, punctuated with
wonderful explosions of light. Nothing like it has ever been seen. It
is the most dramatic work in the world, and the most powerful in its
effect. Other men have painted light and colour; Rembrandt makes gloom
and shadow living things.

This miracle-worker's funeral cost ten dollars; he died in Amsterdam
and was buried in the Wester Kirk.

  PLATE--THE SORTIE

This picture is generally known as "The Night Watch," but it is really
"The Sortie" of a company of musketeers under the command of a
standard bearer. Captain Frans Banning-Cock and all his company were
to pay Rembrandt for painting their portraits in a group and in
action, and they expected to see themselves in heroic and picturesque
dress, in the full blaze of day, but Rembrandt had found a magnificent
subject for his wonderful shadows, and the artist was not going to
sacrifice it to the vanity of the archers.

This picture was called the "Patrouille de Nuit," by the French and
the "Night Watch," by Sir Joshua Reynolds because upon its discovery
the picture was so dimmed and defaced by time that it was almost
indistinguishable and it looked quite like a night scene. After it was
cleaned up, it was discovered to represent broad day--a party of
archers stepping from a gloomy courtyard into the blinding
sunlight. "How this different light is painted, which encircles the
figures, here sunny, there gloomy!... Rembrandt runs through the
entire range of his colours, from the lightest yellow through all
shades of light and dark red to the gloomiest black." One writer
describes it thus: "It is more than a picture; it is a spectacle, and
an amazing one... A great crowd of human figures, a great light, a
great darkness--at the first glance this is what strikes you, and for
a moment you know not where to fix your eyes in order to comprehend
that grand and splendid confusion... There are officers, halberdiers,
boys running, arquebusiers loading and firing, youths beating drums,
people bowing talking, calling out, gesticulating--all dressed in
different costumes, with round hats, plumes, casques, morions, iron
corgets, linen collars, doublets embroidered with gold, great boots,
stockings of all colours, arms of every form; and all this tumultuous
and glittering throng start out from the dark background of the
picture and advance toward the spectator. The two first personages are
Frans Banning-Cock, Lord of Furmerland and Ilpendam, captain of the
company, and his lieutenant, Willem van Ruijtenberg, Lord of
Vlaardingen, the two marching side by side. The only figures that are
in full light are this lieutenant, dressed in a doublet of
buffalo-hide, with gold ornaments, scarf, gorget, and white plume,
with high boots, and a girl who comes behind, with blond hair
ornamented with pearls, and a yellow satin dress; all the other
figures are in deep shadow, excepting the heads, which are
illuminated. By what light? Here is the enigma. Is it the light of the
sun? or of the moon? or of the torches? There are gleams of gold and
silver, moonlight coloured reflections, fiery lights; personages
which, like the girl with blond tresses, seem to shine by a light of
their own.... The more you look at it, the more it is alive and
glowing; and, even seen only at a glance, it remains forever in the
memory, with all its mystery and splendour, like a stupendous vision."
Charles Blanc has said: "To tell the truth, this is only a dream of
night, and no one can decide what the light is that falls on the
groups of figures. It is neither the light of the sun or of the moon,
nor does it come from the torches; it is rather the light from the
genius of Rembrandt."

This wonderful picture was painted in 1642 and many of the archer's
guild who gave Rembrandt the commission would not pay their share
because their faces were not plainly seen. This picture which alone
was enough to make him immortal, was the very last commission that any
of the guilds were willing to give the artist, because he would not
make their portraits beautiful or fine looking to the disadvantage of
the whole picture. This work hangs in the Rijks Museum in
Amsterdam. He painted more than six hundred and twenty-five pictures
and some of them are: "The Anatomy Lesson," "The Syndics of the Cloth
Hall," "The Descent from the Cross," "Samson Threatening His Step
Father," "The Money Changer," "Holy Family," "The Presentation of
Christ in the Temple," "The Marriage of Samson," "The Rape of
Ganymede," "Susanna and the Elders," "Manoah's Sacrifice," "The
Storm," "The Good Samaritan," "Pilate Washing His Hands," "Ecce Home,"
and pictures of his wife, Saskia.




XXXIV

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS


  _English School_
  1723-1792
  _Pupil of Thomas Hudson_

When Reynolds was "little Josh," instead of "Sir Joshua" he grew tired
in church one day, and sketched upon the nail of his thumb the
portrait of the Rev. Mr. Smart who was preaching. After service he ran
to a boat-house near, and with ship's paint, upon an old piece of
sail, he painted in full and flowing colours that reverend gentleman's
portrait. After that there was not the least possible excuse for his
father to deny him the right to become an artist.

The father himself was a clergyman with a good education, and he had
meant that his son should also be well educated and become a
physician; but a lad who at eight years of age can draw the Plympton
school house--he was born at Plympton Earl, in Devonshire--has a right
to choose his own profession.

At twenty-three years of age Sir Joshua was painting the portraits of
great folk, and being well paid for it, as well as lavishly
praised. His first real sorrow came at a Christmas time when he was
summoned home from London where he was working, to his father's
deathbed.

After that the artist turned his thoughts toward Italy, but where was
the money to come from? Earning a living did not include travelling
expenses, but a good friend, Captain Keppel, was going out to treat
with the Dey of Algiers about his piracies, and learning that the
artist wished to go to Italy he invited him to go with him on his own
ship, the _Centurion._ So while the captain was discussing pirates
with the dey, Sir Joshua stopped with the Governor of Minorca and
painted many of the people of that locality. Thence on to Rome!

Strange to say, Raphael's pictures disappointed the English artist,
and he said so; but Michael Angelo was to Reynolds the most wonderful
of painters, and he said that his pictures influenced him all the rest
of his life. He wished his name to be the last upon his lips, and
while that was not so, yet it was the last he pronounced to his fellow
Academicians in his final address.

It was in Italy that a distressing misfortune came upon Sir Joshua. He
meant to learn all that a man could learn in a given time of the art
treasures there, and while he was working in a draughty corridor of
the Vatican, he caught a severe cold which rendered him deaf. He
continued deaf till the end of his life and had to use an ear-trumpet
when people talked with him.

When he got back to England, Hudson, his old master, said
discouragingly: "Reynolds, you don't paint as well as when you left
England." On the whole his reception at home, after his long absence,
was not all that he could have wished, but he took a place in
Leicester Square, settled down to live there for the rest of his life,
and went at painting in earnest.

Although artists criticised him more or less after his return, the
public appreciated him and very soon orders for portraits began to
pour in upon him, and the flow of wealth never ceased so long as he
lived. It was said that all the fashionables came to him that did not
go to Gainsborough, but those who were partial to Sir Joshua declared
that all who could not go to him went to Gainsborough. The two great
artists controlled the art world in their time, dividing honours about
equally. It was said that all those women and men sat to Sir Joshua
for portraits "who wished to be transmitted as angels... and who
wished to appear as heroes or philosophers."

Sir Joshua was a charming man, generous in feeling--as Gainsborough
was not--and his closest friend was Dr. Johnson, the most different
man from the artist imaginable, but Reynolds's art and Johnson's
philosophy made a fine combination, each giving the other great
pleasure. Besides Johnson, his friends were Goldsmith, Garrick, Bishop
Percy, and other famous men of the time. These and others formed the
"Literary Club" at Sir Joshua's suggestion. About that time there was
the first public exhibition of the work of English artists, and Sir
Benjamin West and Sir Joshua Reynolds built the Royal Academy for that
first exhibition, with the help of King George's patronage. Joshua
Reynolds was knighted when he was made the first president of that
great body.

Soon after the Academy was established, Reynolds began a series of
"discourses," which in time became famous for their splendid literary
quality, and some people, knowing his close friendship with Burke and
Dr. Johnson, declared that the artist got one of them to write his
"discourses" for him. This threw Johnson and Burke into a fury of
resentment for their friend, and the doctor declared indignantly that
"Sir Joshua would as soon get me to paint for him as to write for
him!" Burke denied the story no less emphatically. Besides these
speeches, which were a great advantage to the members of the Academy,
Sir Joshua instituted the annual banquet to the members, and King
George--who just before had given the commission of court painter to
one less talented than Sir Joshua--bade him paint his portrait and the
queen's, to hang in the Academy. This was a great thing for the new
society and advanced its fortunes very much.

Barry and Gainsborough were both churlish enough to envy Sir Joshua
and to quarrel with his good feeling for them, but both men had the
grace to be sorry for behaviour that had no excuse, and both made
friends with him before they died--Gainsborough on his death-bed.

Toward his last days the artist was attacked with paralysis, but grew
better and was able to paint again; then he began to go blind--he was
already deaf--and this affliction made painting impossible. Shortly
before his death, he undertook to raise funds for a monument to his
dead friend, Dr. Johnson, but he grew more and more ill, "and on the
23d February, 1792, this great artist and blameless gentleman passed
peacefully away."

That he was very painstaking in his work is shown by an anecdote about
his infant "Hercules." "How did you paint that part of the picture?"
some one asked him. "How can I tell! There are ten pictures below
this, some better, some worse"--showing that in his desire for
perfection he painted and repainted.

So untiring was he in seeking out the secrets of the old masters that
he bought works of Titian and Rubens, and scraped them, to learn their
methods, insisting that they had some secret underlying their work. So
anxious was he to get the most brilliant effects of colours that he
mixed his paints with asphaltum, egg, varnish, wax, and the like, till
one artist said: "The wonder is that the picture did not crack beneath
the brush." Many of these great pictures did go to pieces because of
the chances Sir Joshua took in mixing things that did not belong
together, in order to make wonderful results.

Sir George Beaumont recommended a friend to go to Reynolds for his
portrait and the friend demurred, because "his colours fade and his
pictures die before the man."

"Never mind that!" Sir George declared; "a faded portrait by Reynolds
is better than a fresh one by anybody else."

The same tender, sensitive and devoted nature which caused Sir
Joshua's mother to weep herself blind upon her husband's death,
belonged to the artist. All of his life he was surrounded by loving
friends, and his devotion to them was conspicuous. He, like Drer and
several other painters, was a seventh son, and his father's
disappointment was keen when he took to art instead of to medicine. So
little did his father realise what his future might be, that he wrote
under the sketch of a wall with a window in it, drawn upon a Latin
exercise book: "This is drawn by Joshua in school, out of pure
idleness."

But by the time Joshua was eight years old and had drawn a fine
"sketch of the grammar-school with its cloister... the astonished
father said: 'Now, this exemplifies what the author of "perspective"
says in his preface: "that, by observing the rules laid down in this
book, a man may do wonders"--for this is wonderful.'"

Sir Joshua laid down--even wrote out--a great many rules of conduct
for himself. Some of these were: "The great principle of being happy
in this world is not to mind or be affected with small things." Also:
"If you take too much care of yourself, nature will cease to take care
of you."

When Samuel Reynolds, Joshua's father, consulted with his friend
Mr. Craunch, as to whether a boy who made wonderful paintings at
twelve years of age, would be likely to be a successful apothecary, he
told Craunch that Joshua himself had declared that he would rather be
a good apothecary than a poor artist, but if he could be bound to a
good master of painting he would prefer that above everything in the
world. This was how he came to be apprenticed to Hudson, the
painter. Young Reynolds's sister paid for his instruction at first--or
for half of it, with the understanding that Reynolds was to pay her
back when he was earning. At that time Reynolds wrote to his father:
"While I am doing this I am the happiest creature alive."

One day, while in an art store, buying something for Hudson, Reynolds
saw Alexander Pope, the poet, come in, and every one bowed to him and
made way for him as if for a prince. Pope shook hands with young
Reynolds, and in writing home, describing the poet, the artist said
that he was "about four feet six inches high; very humpbacked and
deformed. He wore a black coat and according to the fashion of that
time, had on a little sword. He had a large and very fine eye, and a
long handsome nose; his mouth had those peculiar marks which are
always found in the mouths of crooked persons, and the muscles which
run across the cheeks were so strongly marked that they seemed like
small cords." This is a masterly description of one famous man by
another.

He finally was dismissed from his master's studio on the ground that
he had neglected to carry a picture to its owner at the time set by
Hudson, but the fact was the older artist had become jealous of the
work of his pupil, and would no longer have him in his studio.

Afterwards, while he was painting down in Devonshire--thirty portraits
of country squires for fifteen dollars apiece--he said: "Those who are
determined to excel must go to their work whether willing or
unwilling, morning, noon, and night, and they will find it to be no
play, but, on the contrary, very hard labour." This shows that
Reynolds's idea of genius was "an infinite capacity for hard work."

While Reynolds was on his memorable journey to Rome, he made several
volumes of notes about the pictures of great Italian artists--Raphael,
Titian, etc. And one of those volumes is in the Lenox Library, New
York City. He made a most characteristic and delightful remark in
regard to his disappointment in Raphael's pictures. "I did not for a
moment conceive or suppose that the name of Raphael, and those
admirable paintings in particular, owed their reputation to the
_ignorance_ ... of mankind; on the contrary, my not relishing them, as
I was conscious I ought to have done was one of the most humiliating
things that ever happened to me."

He loved home and country so much that while in Venice he heard a
familiar ballad sung in an opera, and it brought the tears to his eyes
because of its association with "home."

His young sister, was so undecided in her ways and opinions as to make
it impossible for Reynolds long to live with her, but she undertook to
be his housekeeper when he returned to London, and she also tried to
copy his pictures Reynolds said the results "made other people laugh,
but they made me cry."

Reynolds painted the portraits of two Irish sisters--the Countess of
Coventry and the Duchess of Hamilton--two of the most beautiful women
in all the British Empire. "Seven hundred people sat up all night, in
and about a Yorkshire inn, to see the Duchess of Hamilton get into her
postchaise in the morning, while a Worcester shoemaker made money by
showing the shoe he was making for the Countess of Coventry." Sir
Joshua declared that whenever a new sitter came to him, even till the
last years of his life, he always began his portrait with the
determination that that one should be the best he had ever
painted. Success was bound to attend that sort of man.

He painted every picture almost as an experiment; meaning to learn
something new with every work, and he spent more than he made in
perfecting his art. As he said: "He would be content to ruin himself"
in order to own one of the best works of Titian.

His deeds of kindness are beyond counting. He rescued his friend
Dr. Johnson from debt--thereby saving him from prison; and when a
young lad, "a son of Dr. Mudge," who was very anxious to visit his
father on the occasion of his sixteenth birthday, grew too ill to make
the journey. Reynolds said gaily: "No matter my boy. _I_ will send you
to your father." He painted a splendid portrait of the boy and sent it
to Dr. Mudge. This gift of a picture, however, was very unusual with
Reynolds, who, unlike Gainsborough who gave his by the bushel to
everyone, declared that his pictures were not valued unless paid
for. When Sir William Lowther, a gay and rich young man of London,
died, he left twenty-five thousand dollars to each of thirteen
friends, and each of the thirteen commissioned the painter to make a
portrait of Lowther, their benefactor. His work room was of interest:
"The chair for his sitters was raised eighteen inches from the floor,
and turned on casters. His palettes were those which are held by a
handle, not those held on the thumb. The stocks of his pencils were
long, measuring about nineteen inches. He painted in that part of the
room nearest to the window, and never sat down when he painted." The
chariot in which he drove about had the four seasons allegorically
painted upon its panels, and his liveries were "laced with silver";
while the wheels of his coach were carved with foliage and gilded.

Sir Joshua knew that it paid to advertise, and as he had no time to go
about in that gorgeous chariot he made his sister go, for he declared
that people seeing that magnificent coach would ask: "Whose chariot is
that?" and upon being told could not fail to be impressed with his
prestige. The comical inconsequence of this anecdote concerning a man
so important robs it of vulgarity.

The graceful anecdotes told of Reynolds are without number, but one
and all are to his advantage and show him to have been good and
gentle, a devoted and high-bred man.

  PLATE--THE DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE AND HER DAUGHTER

This is generally considered one of the finest of Sir Joshua's
pictures, if not the most beautiful of all. He was such a welcome
guest at the houses of grandees that perchance he had noticed the
lovely duchess playing with her still more lovely baby, and thought
what a charming picture the two would make. As a representation of the
artist's ability to portray grace and sweetness it can hardly be
surpassed. He painted it in 1786, half a dozen years before his death,
and it now hangs in Chatsworth, the home of the present Duke of
Devonshire.

Other well known Reynolds paintings are "The Hon. Ann Bingham," "The
Countess of Spencer," the "Nieces of Sir Horace Walpole," and the
"Angels' Heads" in the National Gallery.




XXXV

PETER PAUL RUBENS.


  _Flemish School_
  1577-1640
  _Pupil of Tobias Verhaecht_

The story of Peter Paul Rubens, whose birthday falling upon the saint
days of Peter and Paul gave to him his name, is hardly more
interesting than that of his parents, although it is quite
different. The story of Rubens's parents seems a part of the artist's
story, because it must have had something to do with influencing his
life, so let us begin with that.

John Rubens was Peter Paul's father, and he was a learned man, a
druggist, but he had also studied law, and had been town councillor
and alderman in the town where he was born. Life went easily enough
with him till the reformation wrought by Martin Luther began to change
John Rubens's way of thinking, and he turned from Catholic to
Lutheran.

From being a good Catholic John Rubens became a rabid reformer; and
when, under the new faith, the Antwerp churches were stripped of their
treasures, the magistrates were called to account for it. John Rubens,
as councillor, was among those summoned. The magistrates declared that
they were all good Catholics, but a list of the reformers fell into
the Duke of Alva's hands and Rubens's name was there. This meant death
unless he should succeed in flying from the country, which he
instantly did. That was in 1568, when he had four children, but Peter
Paul was not one of them--since he was a seventh son.

The Rubens family went to live in Cologne, where the father found his
learning of great use to him, and he was honoured by being made legal
adviser to Anne of Saxony who was William the Silent's second
queen. John Rubens's behaviour was not entirely honourable and before
long he was thrown into prison, but his good wife, Maria Pypelincx
undertook to free him. He had treated her very badly, but her devotion
to his cause was as great as if he had treated her well. Despite his
wife's efforts he was kept a prisoner in the dungeon at Dillenburg for
two years, and afterward he was removed to Siegen, the place where
Peter Paul was born.

In the sixteenth century there were no records of any sort kept in the
town of Siegen, and so we cannot be absolutely sure that Peter Paul
was born there, but his mother was certainly there just before and
after the date of his birth, which was the 29th of June 1577. After
his birth, his father was set free in Siegen and allowed to go back to
the city in which he had misbehaved himself. In Cologne he became once
more a Catholic, and he died in that faith. Meantime, ten years had
passed since Peter Paul's birth, and both his father and mother were
determined above all things their son should have a fine education,
quite unlike other artists, for the boy seemed capable of
learning. While he was still very small he could speak to his tutor in
French, to his mother in Flemish, and to his father in Latin. Besides
these languages he spoke also Italian and English. Before he was an
artist, Rubens, like Drer and Leonardo da Vinci, was a child of rare
intelligence. As a little chap he went to Antwerp with his
mother--this was after his father's death--and in Belgium he took for
the first time the r“le of courtier, in which he was to become so
successful later in life. The charming little fellow, dressed in
velvet and lace, took his place in the household of the Countess of
Lalaing, in Brussels.

Very soon after entering that household, Rubens was permitted by his
mother to leave it for the studio of the painter who was his first
master, though not the one who really taught him much. Rubens did not
stay there long, but went instead to the studio of Adam van Noort, an
excellent painter of the time. After that he studied under another
artist, who was both a scholar and a gentleman, Van Veen, and with him
Peter Paul was able to speak in Latin and in his many other languages,
while learning to paint at the same time.

Thus we find Rubens's lot was always cast, not among the rich, but
among the intelligent, the well bred, and the cultivated. This fact
alone would prepare us to anticipate pleasant things for him and from
him.

In those days of guilds, there were many rules and regulations. Van
Noort, Rubens's teacher, was dean of the painters' guild and through
his influence the guild recognised Rubens as "master," which meant
that he was qualified to take pupils; thus he was pupil and teacher at
the same time.

One is unable to think of Rubens as having low tastes, as being
morose, erratic, or anything but a refined, gracious, and brilliant
gentleman. He began well, lived well, and ended well.

None of his teachers really impressed their style of art upon him. He
was the model for others. Rubens became nothing but Rubens, but all
the art world wished to become "Rubenesque."

Rubens went to Mantua to see the art of Italy, and while there he met
the Duke of Mantua who was Vincenzo Gonzaga, the richest, most
powerful personage of that region and time. The duke engaged Rubens to
paint the portraits of many beautiful women--just the sort of
commission that Rubens's pupil, Van Dyck, would have loved; but
Rubens's art was of sterner stuff, and the work by no means delighted
him. He had great ideas, profound purposes, and wished to undertake
them, but just then it seemed best that he perform that which the Duke
of Mantua wanted him to do; hence he set about it.

Later Rubens went to the Spanish court, not as a painter, but as a
cavalier upon a diplomatic mission. Bearing many beautiful presents to
King Philip III., he went to Madrid, where his elegance, manly beauty,
dashing manner, and ability to speak several languages made him a
wonderful success. He remained for three years at the court and
studied the methods of Spanish painters. He also painted the members
of the Spanish court, as Velasquez had done, but they looked like
people of another world. The Spanish aristocracy had always been
painted with pallid faces, languid and elegant poses; but Rubens gave
them a touch of the life he loved--made them robust and apparently
healthy-minded. Of all great colourists, Rubens took the lead. Titian
with his golden hues and warm haired women was very great, but Rubens,
"the Fleming" as he was called, revelled in richness of colouring, and
flamed through art like a glorious comet.

Rubens had long been wanted in his own country. His sovereigns, Albert
and Isabella, wished him to return and become their painter, but they
were unable to free him from his engagements in Italy and Spain. At
last Rubens received word that his mother, whom he loved devotedly,
was likely to die, and what kings could not do his love for her
accomplished.

Although his patron, the Duke of Mantua, was absent, and his consent
could not be secured, Rubens set off post-haste to his mother's
home. He arrived in Antwerp too late to see Maria Pypelincx, who had
died before he reached her. Once more on his native soil, Albert and
Isabella determined to induce him to remain. He had intended to go
back to Mantua and continue his work under the duke, but since he was
now in Belgium he decided to stay there, and thus he became the court
painter in his own country, which after all he greatly preferred to
any other.

He was to have a salary of five hundred livres ($96) a year, also "the
rights, honours, privileges, exemptions, etc." that belonged to those
of the royal household; and he was given a gold chain. In this day of
large doings there is something about such details that seems
childish, but a "gold chain" was by no means a small affair at a time
when $96 was considered an ample money-provision for an artist.

That gorgeous gold chain, a mark of distinction rather than a reward,
is to be seen in all its glory in one of Rubens's great paintings. The
artist himself is mounted upon a horse, the chain about his neck,
while he is surrounded by "no fewer than eight-and-twenty life-size
figures, many in gorgeous attire, warriors in steel armour, horsemen,
slaves, camels, etc." This picture, "The Adoration of the Magi," was
twelve feet by seventeen, and was painted at the town's expense. It
was later sent to Spain and placed in the Madrid Gallery.

One of the greatest honours that could come to students of that day,
was to be admitted to Rubens's studio to paint under his direction,
and it is said that "hundreds of young men waited their turn, painting
meanwhile in the studios of inferior artists, till they should be
admitted to the studio of the great master."

Rubens was a king among painters, as well as a painter patronised by
kings.

He had two wives, and he married the first one in 1609. Her name was
Isabella Brant. Sir Joshua Reynolds said of her: "His wife is very
handsome and has an agreeable countenance, but the picture is rather
hard in manner"--by which he meant a picture which Rubens had painted
of her. One of his greatest privileges when he was engaged at the
court of Albert and Isabella, had been that he need obey none of the
exactions of the Guild of St. Luke, none of their rigid rules
concerning the employment of art students. Rubens could take into his
service whom he pleased, whether they had been admitted as members of
the guild or not, though to be a member of the guild was a testimony
to their qualifications. In the end, this did a good deal of harm, for
Rubens employed students to do the preliminary work of his pictures,
who had not been his pupils and who were not otherwise qualified. Thus
we read criticisms like that of Sir Joshua's; and many of Rubens's
pictures are marred in this manner.

A story is told of Van Dyck and other pupils of Rubens breaking into
the master's studio and smudging a picture which Van Dyck afterward
repaired by painting in the damaged portion most successfully. We are
also told in connection with Rubens's picture, "The Descent from the
Cross," that Van Dyck restored an arm and shoulder of Mary of Magdala,
but certainly Van Dyck did not become a pupil of Rubens till some time
after that picture was painted.

The work of a wonderful period in Rubens's art was completely
destroyed. In two years time he painted forty ceilings of churches in
Antwerp, all of which were burned, but there is a record of them in
the copies made by De Witt, in water colours from which etchings were
afterward made. This work of Rubens was the first example of
foreshortening done by a Flemish painter.

Above all things Rubens liked to paint big pictures, on very large
surfaces, as did Michael Angelo. "The large size of picture gives us
painters more courage to present our ideas with the utmost freedom and
semblance of reality. ... I confess myself to be, by a natural
instinct, better fitted to execute works of the largest size." He
wrote this to the English diplomat Trumbull in 1621.

In the midst of Rubens's greatest success as a painter came his
diplomatic services. It was desirable that Spain and England should be
friends, and Rubens always moving about because of his work, and being
so very clever, the Spanish powers thought him a good one to negotiate
with England. While on a professional visit to Paris, the English Duke
of Buckingham and the artist met, and this seemed to open a way for
business. The Infanta consented to have Rubens undertake this delicate
piece of statesmanship, but Philip of Spain did not like the idea of
an artist--a wandering fellow, as an artist was then thought to
be--entering into such a dignified affair. The real negotiator on the
English side, was Gerbier, by birth also a Fleming, and strange to
tell, he too had been an artist. The English engaged him to look after
their interests in the affair, and as soon as Philip learned that
their diplomat was also an artist, his prejudices against Rubens as a
statesman, disappeared. So it was decided that the two Flemings,
artists and diplomats, should meet in Holland to discuss
matters. About that time Sir Dudley Carleton wrote to Lord Conway:
"Rubens is come hither to Holland, where he now is, and Gerbier in his
company, walking from town to town, upon their pretence of taking
pictures, which may serve him for a few days if he dispatch and be
gone; but yf he entertayne tyme here long, he will infallibly be layd
hold of, or sent with disgrace out of the country ... this I have made
known to Rubens lest he should meet with a skorne what may in some
sort reflect upon others."

The two clever men got through with their talk, nothing unfortunate
happened, and Rubens got off to Spain where he laid the result of his
talk with Gerbier before the Spanish powers. He was given a studio in
Philip's palace, where he carried on his art and his diplomacy. The
king became delighted with him as a man and an artist, and as well as
attending to state business, he did some wonderful painting while in
Madrid. He was there nine months or more, and then started off for
England to tell Charles I. of Philip III.'s wishes. But upon his
arrival he learned that a peace had just been concluded between France
and England, and all was excitement.

He was received in England as a great artist; every honour was
showered upon him, and when he made Philip's request to Charles, that
he should not act in a manner hostile to Spain, Charles agreed, and
kept that agreement though France and Venice urged him to break it.

Charles knighted Rubens while he was in England, and the University of
Cambridge made him Master of Arts. The sword used by the king at the
time he gave the accolade is still kept by Rubens's descendants.

While he was in London Rubens was very nearly drowned in the Thames
going down to Greenwich in a boat.

When he first went from Italy to Spain on a mission of state, he
carried a note or passport bearing the following lines: "With these
presents" (he took magnificent gifts to Philip, among them a carriage
and six Neapolitan horses) "comes Peter Paul, a Fleming. Peter Paul
will say all that is proper, like the well informed man that he
is. Peter Paul is very successful in painting portraits. If any ladies
of quality wish their pictures, let them take advantage of his
presence." When he visited England there was no longer need of such
introduction; he went in all the magnificence that his genius had
earned for him.

Rubens was always a happy man, so far as history shows. He married the
first time, a woman who was beautiful and who loved him, as he loved
her. He was able to build for himself a beautiful house in Antwerp. In
the middle of it was a great _salon_, big enough to hold all his
collection of pictures, vases, bronzes, and beautiful jewels. There
was also a magnificent staircase, up which his largest pictures could
be easily carried, for it was built especially to accommodate the
requirements of his work.

Rubens's greatest picture was painted through a strange happening when
this beautiful house was being built. The land next to his belonged to
the Archers' Guild and when the workmen came to dig Rubens's cellar,
they went too far and invaded the adjoining property. The archers made
complaint, and there seemed no way to adjust the matter, till some one
suggested that Rubens make them a picture which should be accepted as
compensation for the harm done. This Rubens did, and the picture was
to be St. Christopher--the archers' patron saint; but when the work
was done "Rubens surprised them" by exhibiting a picture "of all who
could ever have been called 'Christ-bearers.'" This was "The Descent
from the Cross"--not a single picture but a picture within a picture,
for there were shutters folding in front of it, and on these was
painted the archers' patron, St. Christopher.

Rubens's daily life is described thus: "His life was very
methodical. He rose at four, attended mass, breakfasted, and painted
for hours; then he rested, dined, worked until late afternoon; then,
after riding for an hour or two one of his spirited horses, and later
supping, he would spend the evening with his friends.

"He was fond of books, and often a friend would read aloud to him
while he worked." This is a pleasant picture of a reasonable and
worthy life.

It is said that once he painted eighteen pictures in eighteen days,
and it is known that he valued his time at fifty dollars a day.

His pupil, Van Dyck, being pushed for money, turned alchemist and
tried to manufacture gold, but when Rubens was approached by a
visionary who wanted him to lend him money by which he might pursue
such a work, promising Rubens a fortune when he should have discovered
how to make his gold, the artist laughed and said: "You are twenty
years too late, friend. When I wield these," indicating his palette
and brush, "I turn all to gold."

Many are the delightful anecdotes told of Rubens. It is said that
while he was at the English court he was painting the ceiling of the
king's banqueting hall, and a courtier who stood watching, wished to
say something _pour passer le temps_, so he asked: "Does the
ambassador of his Catholic Majesty sometimes amuse himself with
painting?"

"No--but he sometimes amuses himself with being an ambassador," was
the witty retort, which showed how he valued his two commissions.

When King Charles I. knighted Rubens he gave him, beside the jewelled
sword, a golden chain to which his miniature was attached. If Rubens
had gone about with all the chains and decorations given him by kings
and other great ones of the earth he would have been weighted down,
and would have needed two pairs of shoulders on which to display them.

Rubens's first wife died; and when he married again, he was as fond of
painting pictures of the second wife as he had been of the first. The
name of the second was Helena Fourment, and she is called by one
author "a spicy blonde." Certainly she was very gay, big, and robust,
and only sixteen years old when she married Rubens who was then a man
of fifty-three. Of one picture, "The Straw Hat," for which he is
supposed to have used his wife's sister as model, he was so fond that
he would not sell it at any price.

Rubens had a rare mother, as shown in her letters to her husband,
John, when he was in prison for his wrongdoing. It would seem that
such a mother must have a strong, forceful son, and Rubens is less of
a surprise than many artists who had no such influence in their
childhood. The history of Rubens's mother is worthy of being told even
had she not had a famous son who painted a beautiful picture of her.

Rubens's "Holy Families" are like those of no other painter. The
Virgin, the Child, all the others in the picture, are quite different
from the Italian figures. These are human beings, good to look upon;
full of love and joy, softness and beauty.

It was his learning that first won favour for him in Italy. The Duke
of Mantua hearing him read from Virgil, spoke to him in Latin, and
being answered in that tongue was so charmed that the foundation of
their friendship and the duke's patronage was laid. In Italy he was
called "the antiquary and Apelles of our time."

His nephew-biographer writes of him: "He never gave himself the
pastime of going to parties where there was drinking and card-playing,
having always had a dislike for such."

As Rubens grew in fame, he found that many were jealous of him, and on
one occasion a rival proposed that he and Rubens each paint a picture
upon a certain subject and leave it to judges to decide which work was
the best--Rubens's or his own.

"No," said Rubens. "My attempts have been subjected to the scrutiny of
connoisseurs in Italy and Spain. They are to be found in public
collections and private galleries in those countries; gentlemen are at
liberty to place their works beside them, in order that comparison may
be made." This was a dignified way of disposing of the case.

Rubens loved to paint animals, and he had a great lion brought to his
home, that he might study its poses and movements.

The flesh of his figures was so lifelike that Guido declared he must
mix blood with his paints. He was called "the painter of life."

Rubens, a seventh child, had also seven children, two belonging to his
first wife, five to the second.

Many stories are told of his patience and his kindness. It is said
that at one time his old pupil, Van Dyck, returned to Antwerp after an
absence, greatly depressed and in need of money. Rubens bought all his
unsold pictures, and he did this charitable act more than once, and is
known to have done the same thing for a rival and enemy, out of sheer
goodness of heart.

Kings and queens came to the Rubens house, people of many nations did
him honour; and toward his closing days, when gout had disabled him,
ambassadors visited him, since he could not go to them.

In a description of his death and burial which took place at Antwerp
we read: "He was buried at night as was the custom, a great concourse
of citizens ... and sixty orphan children with torches followed the
body." He was placed in the vault of the Fourment family, and as he
had requested, "The Holy Family" was hung above him. In that picture,
we find the St. George to be Rubens himself; St. Jerome, his father;
an angel, his youngest son, while Martha and Mary are Isabella and
Helena, his two wives.

He left many sketches "to whichever of his sons became an artist, or
to the husband of his daughter who should marry an artist." But there
were none such to claim the bequest.

  PLATE--THE INFANT JESUS AND ST. JOHN

The little girl behind Jesus is supposed to represent his future
bride, the Christian Church. The thoughtful, far-seeing look upon the
face of the Christ-child, though it does not clash with His youthful
charm, is meant to suggest that He has a premonition of His work in
the world. The other joyous little figures also demonstrate the
artist's love for children. He brings them into his pictures, as
cherubs, wherever he can, and they are frequently just as well painted
and more universally appreciated than his stout women. In this picture
he has a good opportunity to show his adorable flesh tints, combined
with the movement and freedom naturally associated with child life.

The original painting is in the Court Museum at Vienna, but it has
always been so popular that many copies of it have been made, and one
of these is in the Berlin Gallery.

  PLATE--THE ARTIST'S TWO SONS
  _(See Frontispiece_)

This picture hangs in the Lichtenstein Gallery at Vienna; the two
boys, eleven and seven years of age, are the sons of Rubens by his
first wife, Isabella Brant; and Albert, the elder of the two, greatly
resembles his mother. He is evidently a student, for he wears the
dress of one and carries a book in one hand. The other is placed
affectionately upon the shoulder of his little brother, Nicolas, whose
face, figure, and attire are all much the more childish of the two.

Critics consider this painting to mark the Highest point which Rubens
reached in portraiture. It has all the colour, character, and vitality
of his best work. Some of his other pictures are: "Coronation of Marie
de Medicis," "The Kirmesse," "Slaughter of the Innocents," "Susanna's
Bath," "Capture of Samson," "A Lion Hunt" and "The Rape of the
Daughters of Leucippus."




XXXVI

JOHN SINGER SARGENT


  _American and Foreign Schools_
  1856-1926
  _Pupil of Carolus Durand_

This artist was born in Europe, of American parents; thus we may say
that he was "American," though he owed nothing but dollars to the
United States, since his instruction was obtained in Italy and France,
and all his associations in art and friendship were there. He was
probably the most brilliant of the artists termed American. His great
mural work in the Boston Public Library, is hardly to be surpassed.

Above all, Sargent's portraits are masterly. He was famous in that
branch of art before he was twenty-eight years old. Among his finest
portraits is that of "Carmencita," a Spanish dancer, who for a time
set the world wild with pleasure. The list of his famous portraits is
very long.

Sargent's father was a Philadelphia physician; who originally came
from New England, but the artist himself was born in Florence. He was
given a good education and grew up with the beauties of Florence all
about him, in a refined and charming home. He was the delight of his
master, Carolus Durand for he was modest and refined, yet full of
enthusiasm and energy. In his twenty-third year he painted a fine
picture of his master. Sargent was a musician as well as a painter; a
man of great versatility, as if the gods and all the muses had
presided at his birth.

  PLATE--CARMENCITA

In this picture of the famous Spanish dancer Sargent shows all the
life and character he can put into a portrait. The girl seems on the
point of springing into motion. She is poised, ready for flight and
the proud lift of her head makes one believe that she will accomplish
the most difficult steps she attempts. The painting is in the
Luxembourg, Paris.

Other noted Sargent portraits are "Mr. Marquand" in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, "Lady Elcho, Mrs. Arden, Mrs. Tennant," "Mrs. Meyer and
Children," "Homer St. Gaudens," "Henschel," and "Mr. Penrose."




XXXVII

TINTORETTO (JACOPO ROBUSTI)


  _Venetian School_
  1518-1594
  _Pupil of Titian_

Tintoretto was born with an ideal. As a young boy he wrote upon his
studio wall: "The drawing of Michael Angelo, the colouring of Titian,"
and that was the end he tried to reach. His father was a "tintore"--a
dyer of silk, a tinter--and it was from the character of that work the
artist took his name. He helped his father with the dyeing of silks,
while he was still a child, and was called "II tintoretto," little
dyer.

As the little tinter showed great genius for painting, his father
placed him in Titian's studio, but for some reason he only stayed
there a few days, long enough, however, to permit us to call him a
pupil of Titian; especially as he wrote that master's name upon his
wall and determined to imitate him. After his few days with Titian,
Tintoretto studied with Schiavone and afterward set up a studio for
himself.

As a determined lad in this studio of his, Tintoretto tried every
means of developing his art. He studied the figures upon Medicean
tombs made by Michael Angelo, taking plaster casts of them and copying
them in his studio. He used to hang little clay figures up by strings
attached to his ceiling, that he might get the effect of them high in
air. By looking at them thus from below he gained an idea of
foreshortening.

Although this artist nearly succeeded in getting into line with
Michael Angelo, he did not colour after the fashion of his master,
Titian. Tintoretto was about twenty-eight years old before he got any
very big commission, but at that age a chance came to him. In the
church of Santa Maria del Orto were two great bare spaces, unsightly
and vast, about fifty feet high and twenty broad. In that day anything
and everything was decorated with masterpieces, and it was almost
disgraceful for a church to let such a space as that go
unfrescoed. Tintoretto saw an opportunity, and finally offered to
paint pictures there for nothing if the church would agree to pay for
the materials he needed. The church certainly was not going to refuse
such an offer, even if Tintoretto was not thought to be much of an
artist at the time. If the work was poor, one day they could choose to
have it repainted. Thus Tintoretto got his first great opportunity. He
painted on those walls "The Last Judgment" and "The Golden Calf." They
made him famous, and gained him the commission to paint the picture
which is used as an illustration here.

The brothers of the Scuola di San Rocco asked him to compete with
Veronese, in painting the ceilings after he had done four pictures for
their walls.

Tintoretto consented, and Veronese and two others who were in the
competition set about making their sketches which they were to present
for the brothers' consideration. Finaly the day of decision came. All
were assembled, the artists armed with sketches of their plans.

"Where are yours, Tintoretto?" the others asked. "We expect a drawing
of your idea."

"Well, there it is," the artist answered, drawing a screen from the
ceiling. Behold! he had already painted it to suit himself. The work
was complete.

"That is the way I make my sketches," he said.

Though the work was magnificent it had not been done according to the
monks' ideas of business and order. They objected and objected.

"Very well," the artist cried; "I will make the ceiling a present to
you." As there was a rule of their order forbidding them to refuse a
present, they had to accept Tintoretto's. This did not promise very
good business at the time, but the work was so splendid and Tintoretto
so reasonable that they finally agreed to give him all the work of
their order--nearly enough to keep him employed during a
lifetime. After that he painted sixty great pictures upon their walls.

He painted so much and so fast that he did not always do good work,
and one critic declares that "while Tintoretto was the equal of
Titian, he was often inferior to Tintoretto"--which after all is a
very fine compliment.

His life was so tranquil and uneventful that there is little to say of
it; but there is much to say of his art. He lived mostly in his
studio, and when he died he was buried in the Santa Maria del
Orto--the church in which he had done his first work.

Veronese had given to Venice a brilliant, glowing, rich, ravishing
riot of colour and figures, but Tintoretto was said to rise up
"against the joyful Veronese as the black knight of the Middle Ages,
the sombre priest of a gloomy art." Tintoretto was of stormy
temperament, and upon one occasion he proved it by thrusting a pistol
under a critic's nose, after he had invited him to his studio; it is
this half savage spirit that may be seen in his paintings. He had
deep-set, staring eyes, it is said, a furrowed brow and hollow cheeks,
indicative of his passionate spirit. He painted very few female
figures, but mostly men. When he did paint a woman, she looked mannish
and not beautiful. When he painted gorgeous subjects, like doges and
senators, he gave to them gloomy backgrounds, awe-inspiring poses, and
he seldom painted a figure "full-face" but three-quarter, or half, so
that he did not give himself a chance to present human figures in
beautiful postures. He is said to have been the first who painted
groups of well-known men in pictures intended for the decoration of
public buildings. One great critic has written that "while the Dutch,
in order to unite figures, represented them at a banquet, Tintoretto's
_nobili_ (aristocrats) were far too proud to show themselves to the
people" in so gay and informal a situation. With the coming of
Tintoretto it was said "a dark cloud had overcast the bright heaven of
Venetian art. Instead of smiling women, bloody martyrs and pale
ascetics" were painted by him. He dissected the dead in order to learn
the structure of the human body. In his paintings "his women,
especially, with their pale livid features and encircled eyes,
strangely sparkling as if from black depths, have nothing in common
with the soft" painted flesh which he pictured in his youth while he
was following Titian as closely as he could. As he grew older and his
art more fixed, he followed Michael Angelo more and more. Titian's
colouring was that of "an autumn day" but Tintoretto's that of a
"dismal night." Yet these very qualities in Tintoretto's work made him
great.

  PLATE--THE MIRACLE OF ST. MARK

This painting in the Academy at Venice tells the story of how a
Christian slave who belonged to a pagan nobleman went to worship at
the shrine of St. Mark. That was unlawful. The nobleman had his slave
taken before the judge, who ordered him to be tortured. Just as the
executioner raised the hammer with which he was finally to kill the
slave, St. Mark himself came down from heaven, broke the weapon and
rescued the slave.

The figure of the patron saint of Venice is swooping down, head first,
above the group, his garments flying in the air. A bright light
touches the slave's naked body, as he lies upon his back, the
executioner having turned away and raised his hammer aloft, while
others have drawn back in fright at the appearance of the patron
saint. We may imagine that Tintoretto was trying to acquire this power
of painting wonderful figures hovering in the air when he hung his
little clay images from the ceiling of his studio years before. Other
pictures of his are: "The Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne," "Martyrdom
of St. Agnes," "St. Rocco Healing the Sick," "The Annunciation," "The
Crucifixion," and many others.




XXXVIII

TITIAN (TIZIANO VECELLI)


  (Pronounced Tit-zee-ah'no (Vay-chel'lee))
  _Venetian School_
  1477-1576
  _Pupil of Giovanni and Gentile Bellini_

Titian was a child of the Tirol Mountains, handsome, strong, full of
health and fine purposes, even as a boy. He was born in a little
cottage at Pieve, in the valley of Cadore, through which flows the
River Piave; and he wandered daily beside its banks, gathering flowers
from which he squeezed the juices to paint with. When he grew up he
became a wonderful colourist, and from his boyhood nothing so much
delighted him as the brilliant colours flaunted by the flowers of wood
and field.

Gathered about his good father's hearth were many children, Caterina,
Francesco, Orsa, and the rest, living in peace and happiness, closely
bound together by love. Titian had a gentle, loving mother named
Lucia, while his father was a soldier and an honoured man. In the
little town where they lived, he was councillor and also
superintendent of the castle and inspector of mines, no light honours
among those simple country people. Doubtless Titian inherited his
splendid bearing and his determined character from his soldier father.

Even while a little child, the man who was destined to become a great
artist began his work with the juices of the wild-flowers, which he
daubed upon the wall of the humble home in the Tirol valley, making a
Madonna with angels at her feet and a little Jesus upon her knee. But
if Titian was a great painter, he was never even a fair scholar. He
went to school, but would not, or could not, study. His father soon
saw that he was wasting his time and being made very unhappy through
being forced to do that for which he had no ability; so he was soon
released from book-learning and sent to Venice, seventy-five miles
from home, to learn art. In Venice, the Vecelli family had an uncle,
and it was with him that Titian lived, though he studied first with
Sebastian Zuccato, the head of the Venetian guild of mosaic workers,
and a pretty good teacher in his way. He was not able to teach Titian
very much, for the boy was an inspired artist and needed a good
master; so, after a little, the family held a consultation and it was
decided that Titian should become the pupil of Gentile Bellini, a very
clever artist indeed. There was an interesting story told about this
master which made the Vecellis feel that their boy would do well to be
under the influence of a kind-hearted man, as well as a genius. It
seems that Bellini's fame had become so great that the Sultan had sent
for him to paint the portraits of himself and the Sultana. Bellini
went gladly to Turkey to do this; but he took with him certain
pictures to show his patron. Among them was one of St. John the
Baptist having his head cut off. The Sultan looked at it, and cutting
heads off being a large part of his business, he saw that Bellini had
not scientifically painted it, and in order to show him the true way
to conduct such matters, he sent for a slave and ordered his head
chopped off in Bellini's presence. Bellini was so terrified and
sickened by the dreadful sight that he fled from Turkey and would not
paint its ruler, the Sultana nor anyone else who had to do with such
cruel things as he had witnessed.

It was into this man's studio that Titian went as a young boy, but
after a little he displeased Gentile Bellini, who complained that his
pupil worked too fast, and therefore could not expect to do great
work. He declared that picture painting was serious and careful work,
and that Titian was too careless and quick. As a matter of fact,
Titian was too wonderful for Bellini ever to do much for; and since he
could not get on with him, he went to another master--Gentile
Bellini's brother, Giovanni. One of Titian's chief troubles in the
studio of Gentile had been that he was not allowed to use the gorgeous
colouring he loved, but in the brother's studio he found to his joy
that colour was more valued, and he was given more freedom to use
it. Also there was a young peasant pupil with Giovanni, who, like
Titian, loved to use beautiful colours, and he and the newcomer became
fast friends.

The other artist's name was Giorgione, and he had the most delightful
ways about him, winning friends wherever he went, so it was no wonder
that the warm-hearted Titian sought his companionship. One day those
two young comrades left their master's studio, to have a good time off
by themselves. There was a stated hour for their return; but they had
spent all their money, and forgot that Giovanni Bellini was expecting
them home. When they did return the door was closed and locked. What
were they to do? They did the only thing they could. As comrades in
misfortune they joined forces, set up a studio of their own, and went
to work to earn their living as best they might. At first it was hard
sledding, but in time they got a good job, namely to decorate the
walls of a public building in Venice which was used by foreign
merchants for the transaction of their business, a sort of "exchange,"
as we understand it. This was the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, and it had two
great halls, eighty rooms, and twenty-six warehouses. It was indeed a
big undertaking for the two young men, and they divided the business
between them. Their joy was great, their cartoons successfully made
and the work well begun, when, alas, they fell to quarreling simply
because someone had declared that Titian's work upon the building was
a little better than Giorgione's.

This dispute parted the two friends, who had had good times together,
and it must have been Giorgione's fault, because Ludovico Dolce, one
who knew Titian well, said that "he was most modest ... he never spoke
reproachfully of other painters ... in his discourse he was ever ready
to give honour where honour was due ... he was, moreover, an eloquent
speaker, having an excellent wit and perfect judgment in all things;
of a most sweet and gentle nature, affable and most courteous in
manner; so that whoever once conversed with him could not choose but
love him henceforth forever." That is a most loving and splendid
tribute for one man to pay another. Not long after Giorgione died, and
Titian took up his unfinished work, doing it as well as his own.

There was a brilliant and mature artist called Palma Vecchio, in
Venice, and Titian painted in his studio, where he saw and loved
Vecchio's daughter, Violante. The young artist was not very well off
financially, and therefore could not marry; hence he was not specially
happy over his love affair. About that time he took to painting after
the manner of Vecchio, through being so much influenced by his soft
feelings for the older artist's daughter. He used the lovely Violante
again and again for his model, and many of the beautiful faces which
Titian painted at that time show the features of his lady-love. With
his new love Titian's serious work seemed to begin, and at twenty-one
he painted his first truly great picture, "Sacred and Profane Love."
To day this picture hangs upon the walls of the Borghese Palace, in
Rome.

Raphael painted a great many pictures, but Titian must have painted
more. At least one thousand have his signature.

Now came wars and troubles for Venice. The Turks, French, and
Venetians became at odds, and during the strife many fine works of art
were lost, among them many of Titian's pictures. He had painted
bishops, also the wicked Borgias, and many other great personages, but
all of these are gone and to this day, no one knows what became of
them.

At last Titian began one of his greatest paintings, "The Tribute
Money," and he set about it because he had been criticised. Some
German travellers in Venice visited Titian's studio, and though they
found his work very fine, one of them said that after all there was
only one master able to finish a painting as it should be finished,
and that was the great Drer. The German pointed out the differences
between Titian's method and Drer's, and declared that Venetian
painters never quite came up to the promise of their first
pictures. Drer's wonderful pictures were quite different from
Titian's, inasmuch as his work was fuller of detail and careful
finishing, but Titian was as great in another way. His effects were
broader, but quite as satisfying. However, the German criticism put
him on his mettle, and he answered that if he had thought the greatest
value of a painting lay in its fiddling little details of finishing,
he too would have painted them. To show that he could paint after
Drer's fashion, as well as his own, he undertook the "Tribute Money,"
and the result was a wonderful picture.

Soon Rome sent for Titian. The Florentines, Raphael and Michael
Angelo, were already there doing marvellous things, but the pope
wished to add the genius of Titian to theirs and made him a great
offer to go and live in Rome and do his future work for that
city. This was an honour, but amid all his fame and the homage paid
him, Titian had remembered the old home in the vale of Cadore. It was
there his heart was, and he determined to return to the home of his
boyhood to do his best work. So he sent his thanks and refusal to the
pope, and he wrote as follows to his home folks, through the council
of his town:

"I, Titian of Cadore, having studied painting from childhood upward,
and desirous of fame rather than profit, wish to serve the doge and
signorini, rather than his highness the pope and other signori, who in
past days, and even now, have urgently asked to employ me. I am
therefore anxious, if it should appear feasible to paint the hall of
council, beginning, if it pleases their sublimity, with the canvas of
the battle on the side toward the Piazza, which is so difficult that
no one as yet has had the courage to attempt it."

Then in stating his terms he asked for a very moderate sum of money
and a "brokerage" for life. The Government did not have to think over
the matter long. Titian's father had been honoured among them,
Titian's genius was well known, and the commission was gladly given
him. As soon as he got this business affair settled he moved into the
palace of the Duke of Milan "at San Samuele; on the Grand Canal, where
he remained for sixteen years," so says his biographer.

Titian's affairs were not yet entirely smooth, because both of the
Bellinis having painted for his patrons, they naturally considered
Titian an intruder, and thought that the work should have been given
to them. They did all they could to make trouble for the younger
artist, but after a time Titian came into his rights, receiving his
"brokerage" which gave to him a yearly sum of money 120 crowns,
$126.04. His taxes were taken off for the future, provided he would
agree to paint all the doges that should rule during his lifetime.

Titian undertook to do this, but he did not keep his word, for he
painted only five doges, though many more followed. He had no sooner
received his commission from the council of his native place than he
began to neglect it, and to paint for the husband of the wicked
poisoner--Lucretia Borgia--whose name was Alfonso d'Este, the Duke of
Ferrara. It was for him he painted the "Venus Worship," now in the
Museum of Madrid, also "The Three Ages," which belongs to Lord
Ellesmere, and the "Virgin's Rest near Bethlehem," now in the National
Gallery. Afterward he painted "Noli Me Tangere," which is in the same
London Gallery.

There is a picture of great size in the Academy of Arts in Venice,
which was first seen on a public holiday nearly four hundred years
ago. It is the "Assumption of the Virgin," first shown on
St. Bernardino's day, when all the public offices were closed by order
of the Senate, and the whole city had a gay time. This occasion made
Titian the most honoured artist of his time, but still the Venetians
had cause to complain; because now their painter took so much work in
hand that he nearly ceased doing the work on the council hall. The
council sent him word that unless he attended to business the
paintings should be finished by some one else and he would have to pay
the new artist out of his own pocket; but in waywardness he paid no
attention to this summons. Lucretia Borgia died, and her husband
having never loved her, fell at once in love with a girl of a lower
class, who was very good and worthy to be loved. The duke wanted
Titian to paint them both, and so once more the great painter
neglected his contract with the council. The girl's name was Laura,
and Titian painted her and the duke in one picture, which now hangs in
the Louvre.

At last, after seven years of his neglecting to do his promised work
the council became enraged and threatened to take the artist's
property away from him. That frightened Titian very much, and he began
frantically to work on the battle piece on the hall wall. It was about
this time that he married. He had probably forgotten Violante in the
passing of so many years; at any rate it was not she whom he married,
but a lady whose first name was Cecilia. Soon he had a little family
of children, but one of them was destined to make Titian very
unhappy. This was Pomponic who became a priest, but he was also a
wicked spendthrift, and kept his father forever in trouble, trying to
pay his debts and keep him out of scrapes. Another son became an
artist; not great like his father, but very helpful and a comfort to
him. Then his wife died, and Titian had loved her so dearly that for a
long time he had not the heart to paint much. His sister, Orsa, came
to live at his home and take care of his motherless children.

He left the palace on the Grand Canal and bought a home north of
Venice, with beautiful gardens attached, and there he lived and
worked, entertaining the most illustrious men. Titian's house and
gardens became the show place of the country, so many geniuses and
famous people visited there. It was there that he painted "The
Martyrdom of Saint Peter," and the picture was so loved by the
Venetians that the signori threatened with death any one who should
take the picture from the chapel where it hung. In spite of this
caution the picture was burned in the fire that destroyed the chapel
in 1867.

Titian was now getting to be old, but he was yet to do great work and
to have kingly patrons. Charles V. visited Bologna, and, seeing
Titian's great work, wanted him to paint his portrait. So the artist
went to Bologna and painted the portrait of the king, clothed in
armour, but without any head-covering, making Charles V. look so fine
a personage, that he was delighted. Charles said he had always been
painted to look so much uglier than he really was that when people who
had seen his portraits, actually saw himself they were pleasantly
disappointed. While Titian was painting his picture, Lombardi, the
sculptor, wished above all things to see Charles, so Titian said: "You
come with me to the sittings, and act as if you were some apprentice,
carrying my colours and brushes, and then you can watch the king as
easily as possible." Lombardi did as Titian suggested, but he hid in
his big and baggy sleeve a tablet of wax, on which to make a relief
picture of Charles. One day the king surprised the sculptor and
demanded to be shown what he was doing. Thereupon he was so much
pleased that he commissioned Lombardi to make the model in
marble. While the king was sitting for two portraits to Titian, the
artist one day dropped his brush. The king looked at the courtiers who
were lounging about watching the work, but none of them picked it up,
so the king himself did so. Titian was distressed over this and
apologised to the king. "There may be many kings," said Charles, "but
there will never be more than one Titian--and he deserves to be served
by Caesar himself." After that he would allow no other artist to paint
his portrait, declaring that Titian alone could do it properly, and
for the two pictures Titian received two thousand scudi in gold, was
made a Count of the Lateran Palace, of the Aulic Council and of the
Consistory; with the title of Count Palatine and all the advantages
attached to those dignities. His children were thereby raised to the
rank of nobles of the empire, with all the honours appertaining to
families with four generations of ancestors. He was also made Knight
of the Golden Spur, with the right of entrance to court. This was
great return for two portraits of a king, but it shows what a king
could do if he chose.

Titian had a brother who also became an artist, less famous than
himself, and it was that brother, who, when their father died in the
Cadore home, went back to care for the old place and to keep it in
readiness so that the famous Titian might return to it for rest and
peace. Foreign sovereigns had invited Titian to end his days with
them, but they could not tempt him from that vale of Cadore nor his
country home in Venice.

All this time he had been neglecting the work upon the hall of
council, and at last, the councillors gave the work to another, took
away Titian's "brokerage" and told him he must return to Venice all
the moneys they had given him for twenty years back. This finally
cured him of his neglect, and he went to work in earnest painting so
rapidly that he finished the work in two years.

Before he died Titian went to Rome, where he painted Pope Paul's
portrait, and the story is told that when the portrait was set to dry
upon the terrace--which it probably was not,--the people who passed
took off their hats to it, thinking it was the pope himself.

Besides his bad son and his good one, Titian had a beautiful daughter
whom he painted again and again. He went to Augsburg once more to
paint King Charles, who for that work added a pension of five hundred
scudi to what he had already done for him. This made the artist "as
rich as a prince, instead of poor as a painter." King Philip II. loved
art as his father had, and he took a painting of Titian's with him to
the convent of Yuste, where he went to die, wishing to have it near to
console him. In those days art had become a religion for high and
low. Great personages still went to Casa Grande, Titian's Venetian
home, where he entertained like a prince. No one knew better than he
how princes behaved, and when a cardinal came to dine with him, he
threw his purse to his servant, crying: "Prepare a feast, for all the
world is dining with me!" Henry III. of France visited Titian and
ordered sent to him every picture of which he had asked the price.

His friends stood by him all his life, but in his old age his
beautiful daughter, Lavinia, died, leaving behind her six children for
him to love as his own. The brother had died before that, in the old
home at Cadore, and at more than eighty years of age Titian was still
painting from morning till night. About this time he sent to King
Philip "The Last Supper," which was to be hung in the Escorial. The
monks found it too high to fill the space, and though the artist in
charge, Navarrette, begged them to let it be, they cut a piece off the
top, that it might be hung where they wanted it. Titian had so far had
to pay no taxes, but at that time an account of his property was
demanded and this is what he owned: "Several houses, pieces of land,
sawmills, and the like," and he was blamed because he did not state
the full value of his possessions. At ninety-one he painted a picture
which became the guide of Rubens and his brother artists, so wonderful
was it. Again, at ninety-nine he began a picture, which was to be
given to the monks of the Frari in return for a burial place for the
artist within the convent walls, but he never finished it. He died
during the time of the plague, but of old age alone, though his son,
Orzio, died of the disease. The alarm of the people was so great that
a law had been passed to bury all who died at that time, instantly and
without ceremony, but that law was waived for the painter. Titian, in
the midst of a nation's tragedy was borne to the convent of the Frari,
with honours. Two centuries later the Austrian Emperor commanded the
great sculptor, Canova, to make a mausoleum above the tomb.

It was said that shortly before he died Titian began to be less sure
in his use of colours, and would often daub on great masses, but his
students came in the night and rubbed them off, so that the master
never felt his failing.

As King Charles had said, there was never but one such artist in the
world.

Titian prepared his canvas by painting upon it a solid colour to serve
for the bed upon which the picture itself was to be painted. To quote
more exactly from a good description--some of these foundation colours
were laid on with resolute strokes of his brush which was heavily
laden with colour, while the half-tints were made with pure red earth,
the lights with pure white, softened into the rest of the foundation
painting with touches of the same brush dipped into red, black, and
yellow. In this way he could give the "promise" of a figure in four
strokes. After laying this foundation, he turned his picture toward
the wall and left it there for months at a time, frequently turning it
around that he might criticise it. If, during this time of waiting, he
thought any part of the work already done was poor, he made it right,
changing the shape of an arm, adding flesh where he thought it was
needed, reducing flesh where it seemed to him out of proportion, and
then he would again turn the canvas face to the wall. After months of
self-criticism and retouching he would have the first layer of flesh
painted upon his figures, and a good beginning made. "It was contrary
to his habit to finish at one painting, and he used to say that a poet
who improvises cannot hope to form pure verses." He would often
produce a half-light with a rub of his finger, "or with a touch of the
thumb he would dab a spot of dark pigment into some corner to
strengthen it; or throw in a reddish stroke--a tear of blood so to
speak--to break the parts ... in fact when finishing he painted more
with his fingers than with his brush." He used to say, "White, red,
and black, these are all the colours that a painter needs, but one
must know how to use them."

  PLATE--THE ARTIST'S DAUGHTER, LAVINIA.

Previous to the time of Titian, it had been the custom to paint
portraits of beautiful ladies merely to their waists, just far enough
to show their hands. He went further, and produced "knee portraits,"
which gave him an opportunity to paint their gorgeous gowns as
well. He has done so in making this picture of his daughter Lavinia,
probably just before her marriage to Cornelio Sarcinelli which took
place in 1555. She is attired in gold-coloured brocade with pearls
about her neck. Her dress, combined with the dish of fruit she holds
so high, gives Titian the colour effects he always sought. A yellow
lemon is specially striking, and the red curtain to the left
harmonises with the whole. The uplift of the arms and the turn of the
head give the desired amount of action. It is not Titian's customary
style of work; he seldom did anything so intimate and personal, and
the picture is the more interesting on that account. It is in the
Berlin Gallery.

Some of Titian's famous pictures are: his own portrait; "Flora," "Holy
Family and St. Bridget," "The Last Judgment," "The Entombment," "The
Magdalene," "Bacchanal," "St. Sebastian," "Bacchus and Ariadne," and
"The Sleeping Venus."




XXXIX

JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER


  _English_
  1775-1851
  _Pupil of the Royal Academy_

If the occupation of a shepherd produced a poet, no less did an artist
of the first water come out of a barber shop. Turner's father was a
jolly little fellow who dressed hair for English dandies and did all
of those things which in those days fell to men of his profession. It
was in this little shop that the great artist grew up. Father Turner
was ambitious for his son, who was anxious to study art. The less said
of the artist's mother the better, for she was a termagant and finally
went crazy, so that the father and his little boy were soon left
alone, to plan and work and strive to make each other happy. The pair
were never apart.

Turner's art beginning was at six years of age, on the occasion of a
visit his father paid to a goldsmith of whose hair curling and
peruquing he had charge. Perched upon a chair too high for a little
boy's comfort, and feeling that it took his father very long indeed to
satisfy the customer, Joseph's eye lighted upon a silver lion which
ornamented a silver tray. He studied every detail of that lion while
waiting for his father, and finally when they got home, he sat down
and drew it from memory. By tea time he had a lion in full action upon
the paper. This delighted his father above everything, and it was
settled then and there that the little fellow should have a chance to
learn art.

The father could not give much time to his upbringing, but he taught
him to be honest and kind-hearted and to save his money. His
playground was generally the bank of the Thames, and under London
Bridge where, roving with the sailors, he learned to love the ships,
the setting-suns and evening waters from a daily study of them.

He did not do much at school, because the other pupils at New
Brentford, learning that he could draw wonderful things upon the
schoolroom walls, used to do his "sums" for him, while he sketched for
them. After a while father Turner began to hang up some of his son's
sketches upon the walls of the barber shop, among the wigs and curls
and _toup‚es_, and he put little tags upon them, telling the
price. The extraordinary work of his little boy began to attract the
attention of the jolly barber's patrons, and by the time he was twelve
years old the child had a picture upon the walls of the Royal
Academy--a far-cry from barber shop to Academy!

One authority says that this first exhibition occurred in his
fourteenth year, but by that time he was a pupil of the Academy, and
it is not unlikely that he had shown his mettle before.

He now began to earn his own living, but he still dwelt in the barber
shop with his father. While in the Academy he coloured prints, made
backgrounds for other painters, drew architect's plans, and in that
way made money. He had been sent to a drawing master to study "the art
of perspective," but having no mathematical knowledge he had been
unable to learn it, and the teacher had advised his father to put
little Turner to cobbling or making clothes. However, William was to
learn perspective, and even to be made master of that branch of art in
the Academy itself.

In after years, when he had become a great artist, someone spoke
pityingly of the drudgery he had had to do to make money as a young
boy--referring to his painting of backgrounds and the like. "Well! and
what could be better practice?" Turner answered cheerfully.

He used to go to the house of Dr. Munro, who lived in fine style on
the Strand. This gentleman owned Rembrandts, Rubenses, Titians, and
other great masterpieces, and in that house the "little barber" had a
chance to see the best of art, and also to copy it. This was a great
opportunity for him and he made the most of it. Besides the chance for
study, he earned about half a crown an evening and his supper, for his
copying.

Turner was the first painter to make "warm moonlight." All other
artists had given cold, silvery effects to a moonlit atmosphere, but
Turner had seen a mellow, sympathetic moon, and he first showed it to
others. About this time he went travelling; for an engraver of the
_Copper Plate Magazine_ had engaged the young boy to go into Wales and
make sketches for his work. Turner set off on a pony which a friend
had lent him, with his baggage done up in a bundle--it did not make a
very big one--and thus he voyaged. It was a fine experience, and he
came home with many beautiful scenes on paper, which he in after years
made into complete pictures. Next he made the acquaintance of Thomas
Girtin, the first in his country of a fine school of water-colour
painters, and this acquaintance grew into a close friendship. The two
were devoted to each other and worked together at any sort of
mechanical art work that would bring them a living. When Girtin died
Turner said: "Had Tim Girtin lived, I should have starved," showing
how highly he valued Girtin's work.

Turner is said to have been "a stout, clumsy little fellow, who never
cared how he looked. He wore an ill-fitting suit, and his luggage tied
up in a handkerchief was slung over his shoulder on a cane. Sometimes
he carried a small valise and an old umbrella, the handle of which he
converted into a fishing rod, for Turner dearly loved both hunting and
fishing."

The hero travelled a great deal, because above every thing he loved
the fields and streams, and to tramp alone. It is said that it was his
habit to walk twenty-five miles a day, seeing everything on the way,
letting no peculiarity of nature escape him. His sketchbook was a
curiosity, because he not only made sketches in it, but jotted down
his travelling expenses, what he thought about things that he saw, and
all the gossip he heard in the towns through which he passed. Because
he liked best to travel alone he was called "the Great Hermit of
Nature."

One memorable day--of which he thought but little at the time--he
stopped on the road to make a sketch of Norham Castle. Later he
completed the picture, and it became famous, so successful that from
that hour he had all the work he could do. Years afterward, when
passing that way again in company with a friend, he was seen to take
off his hat to the castle.

"Why are you doing that?" his friend asked, in amazement.

"Well, that castle laid the foundation of my success," he answered,
"and I am pleased to salute it."

During his young manhood Turner had fallen in love with a girl, and
planned to marry, but after he returned from one of his country trips
he found she had married another, and from that moment the artist was
a changed man. He had been generous and gay before, now he began to
save his money, so that people thought him miserly--but he was
forgiven when it became known what he finally did with his
fortune. After the young woman deserted him he wandered more than
ever, and one of his fancies was to keep boys from robbing birds'
nests. He looked after the little birds so carefully that the boys
named him "old Blackbirdy." He had already begun those wonderful
pictures of ships and seas, and his house was ornamented with
full-rigged little ships and water plants, which he carefully raised
to put into his pictures. By that time he had bought a home of his own
in the country, and his father the barber went to live with him. The
old man's trade had fallen off, because the fashions had changed, wigs
were less worn, and hair was not so elaborately dressed. In the
country home the old man took charge of all the household affairs,
prepared his son's canvases for him, and after the pictures were
painted it was the ex-barber who varnished them, so that Turner said,
"Father begins and finishes all my pictures." There the father and son
lived, in perfect peace and affection, till Turner decided to sell the
place and move into town, "because," said he, "Dad is always working
in the garden and catching cold."

Meanwhile he had been made master of perspective in the Academy, and
it was expected that he would lecture to the students, but he was not
cut out for a lecturer. He was not elegant in his manners, nor
impressive in his speech. On one occasion, when he had risen to
deliver a speech, he looked helplessly about him and finally blurted
out: "Gentlemen! I've been and left my lecture in the hackney coach!"

During these years he had tried to establish a studio like other
masters and to have pupils and apprentices about him; but the stupid
ones he could not endure, having no patience with them, and he treated
all the fashionable ones so bluntly they would not stay; so the idea
had to be given up.

He became a visitor at Farnley Hall in Yorkshire, where a friend,
Mr. Hawksworth Fawkes lived, and in the course of his lifetime Fawkes
put fifty thousand dollars worth of Turner's pictures upon his
walls. The Fawkes family described Turner as a most delightful man:
"The fun, frolic, and shooting we enjoyed together, and which,
whatever may be said by others of his temper and disposition, have
proved to me that he was, in his hours of distraction from his
professional labours as kindly hearted a man and as capable of
enjoyment and fun of all kinds as any I ever knew."

Another friend writes: "Of all light-hearted, merry creatures I ever
knew, Turner was the most so; and the laughter and fun that abounded
when he was an inmate of our cottage was inconceivable, particularly
with the juvenile members of our family."

The story of his disappointment in marriage is an interesting one. It
is said that the young lady whom he loved was the sister of a
schoolmate. They had been engaged for some time, but while he was on
one of his travels his letters were stolen and kept from the young
woman. She believed he had forgotten her, and her stepmother, who had
taken the letters, persuaded the girl to engage herself to
another. Turner returned just a week before her marriage and tried to
win her back, but although she loved him, she felt herself then bound
to her new suitor and therefore married him. Her marriage was very
unhappy and her misery, as well as his own, distressed the artist till
his death. Almost all his life, in spite of his seeming gaiety, he
worked like a slave, rising at four o'clock in the morning and working
while light lasted. When remonstrated with about this he would sadly
say: "There are no holidays for me."

All his ways were honest and simple, and his election to the Academy
was very exceptional in the way it came about. Most Academicians had
graces and airs and good fellowship to commend them, as well as their
works, but Turner had none of these things. He had given no dinners,
nor played a social part in order to get the membership. When the news
was brought him that he was elected, some one advised him to go and
thank his fellow Academicians for the honour, as that was the custom;
but Turner saw no reason in it. "Since I am elected, it must have been
because they thought my pictures made me worthy. Why, then should I
thank them? Why thank a man for performing a simple duty." In half a
century Turner was absent only three times from the Academy
exhibitions, and his membership was of very great value to him.

At this time Turner had an idea for an art publication to be called
_Liber Studiorum_. He meant to issue this in dark blue covers and to
include in each number five plates. There was to be a series of five
hundred plates altogether, and these were to be divided, according to
subject, into historical, landscape, pastoral, mountainous, marine,
and architectural studies. After seventy plates had been, published,
the enterprise fell through, because no one bought the periodical, and
there was no money to keep it going. The engraver of the plates,
Charles Turner, became so disgusted with the failure that he even used
the proofs of these wonderful studies to kindle the fire with. Many
years later, a great print-dealer, Colnaghi, made Turner, the
engraver, hunt up all the proofs that he had not used for kindling
paper, and these he bought for œ1,500.

"Good God!" cried Charles Turner, "I have been burning banknotes all
my life."

Some years later still œ3,000 was paid for a single copy of the _Liber
Studiorum_.

Turner was a most conscientious man, and many stories are told of his
manner of teaching. He could not talk eloquently nor give very clear
instructions, talking not being his forte, but he would lean over a
student's shoulder, point out the defects in his work, and then on a
paper beside him make a few marks to illustrate what he had said. If
the artist had genius enough then to imitate him, well and good; if
not, Turner simply went away and left him. His own ways of working
were remarkable. He often painted with a sponge and used his thumbnail
to "tear up a sea." It mattered little to him how he produced his
effects so long as he did it. His impressionistic style confused many
of his critics, and it is told how a fine lord once looked at a
picture be had made, and snorted: "Nothing but daubs, nothing but
daubs!" Then catching the inspiration, he leaned close to the canvas,
and said: "No! Painting! so it is!"

"I find, Mr. Turner," said a lady, "that in copying your pictures,
touches of red, blue and yellow appear all through the work."

"Well, madam, don't you see that yourself, in nature? Because if you
don't, heaven help you!" was the reply.

"Once, after painting a summer evening, he thought that the picture
needed a dark spot in front by way of contrast; so he cut out a dog
from black paper and stuck it on. That dog still appears in the
picture."

Another time he painted "A Snow-storm at Sea," which some critics
called "Soap-suds and Whitewash." Turner, who had been for hours
lashed to the mast of a ship in order to catch the proper effect, was
naturally much hurt by the criticism. "What would they have!" he
exclaimed. "I wonder what they think a storm is like. I wish they'd
been in it."

Turner was conscientiously fond of his work, and when he sold a
picture he said that he had lost one of his children.

He grew rich, but he never was knighted, because his manners were not
fine enough to suit the king. He wished to become President of the
Royal Academy, but that was impossible because he was not polished
enough to carry the honour gracefully.

After selling his place in the country Turner bought a house in Harley
Street, where he lived a strange and lonely life. A gentleman has
written about this incident, which shows us his manner of living:

"Two ladies called upon Turner while he lived in Harley Street. On
sending in their names, after having ascertained that he was at home,
they were politely requested to walk in, and were shown into a large
sitting-room without a fire. This was in the depth of winter; and
lying about in various places were several cats without tails. In a
short time our talented friend made his appearance, asking the ladies
if they felt cold. The youngest replied in the negative; her
companion, more curious, wished she had stated otherwise, as she hoped
they might have been shown into his sanctum or studio. After a little
conversation he offered them biscuits, which they partook of for the
novelty--such an event being almost unprecedented in his house. One of
the ladies bestowing some notice upon the cats, he was induced to
remark that he had seven, and that they came from the Isle of Man."

Thus we learn that Turner's desolate house was full of Manx cats, and
of many other pets. When he had moved elsewhere--to 47 Queen Anne
Street--one of the pictures he cared most for, "Bligh Shore," was put
up as a covering to the window and a cat wishing to come in, scratched
it hopelessly. The housekeeper started to punish it for this but
Turner said indulgently, "Oh, never mind!" and saved the cat from
chastisement.

The place he lived in, where his "dad was always working in the garden
and catching cold," he called Solus Lodge, because he wished his
acquaintances to understand that he wanted to be alone. One picture
painted by him to order, was to have brought him $2,500; but when it
was finished the man was disappointed with it and would not take
it. Later, Turner was offered $8,000 for it, but would not sell it.

Turner again fell in love, but his bashfulness ruined his chances. He
wrote to the brother of the lady. "If she would only waive her
bashfulness, or, in other words, make an offer instead of expecting
one, the same (Solus Lodge) might change occupiers." Faint heart
certainly did not win fair lady in this case, for she married
another. Before he died Turner was offered $25,000 for two pictures
which he would not sell. "No" he said. "I have willed them and cannot
sell them." He disposed of several great works as legacies. One
picture of which he was very fond, "Carthage," was the occasion of an
amusing anecdote. "Chantry," he said to his friend the sculptor, "I
want you to promise that when I am dead you will see me rolled in that
canvas when I'm buried."

"All right," said Chantry, "I'll do it, but I'll promise to have you
taken up and unrolled, also."

A remarkable incident of generosity is told of Turner. In 1826 he hung
two exquisite pictures in the Academy. One, "Cologne," having a most
beautiful, golden effect. This was hung between two portraits by Sir
Thomas Lawrence. The golden colouring of Turner's picture entirely
destroyed the effect of the Lawrence pictures, and without a word,
Turner washed his lovely picture over with lampblack. This gave the
Lawrence, pictures their full colour value. A friend who had been
enthusiastic about the "Cologne" was provoked with Turner. "What in
the world did you do that for?" he demanded. "Well, poor Lawrence was
so unhappy. It will all wash off after the exhibition." Turner had his
reward in cash, for the picture sold for 2,000 guineas.

Above all things Turner hated engravings, or any process that
cheapened art, and one day he stated this to his friend Lawrence. "I
don't choose to be a basket engraver," he declared.

"What do you mean by that," Sir Thomas inquired.

"Why when I got off the coach t' other day at Hastings, a woman came
up with a basket of your 'Mrs. Peel,' and offered to sell me one for a
sixpence."

Turner dearly loved his friends, and the story of Chantry's death,
illustrates it. He was in his room when the sculptor breathed his
last, and just as he died, the artist turned to another friend, George
Jones, and with tears streaming down his face, wrung Jones's hand and
rushed from the room, unable to speak.

Again, when William Frederick Wells, another friend, died, Turner
rushed to the house of Clara Wells, his daughter, and cried: "Oh
Clara, Clara! these are iron tears. I have lost the best friend I ever
had in my life."

In his old age Turner suddenly disappeared from all his haunts, and
his friends could not find him. They were much troubled, but one day
his old housekeeper found a note in a pocket of an old coat, which
made her think he had gone to Chelsea. She looked there for him, and
found him very ill, in a little cottage on the Thames River. Everybody
about called him Admiral Booth, believing him to be a retired
admiral. He had felt his death near and had tried to meet it quite
alone. He died the very day after his friends found him, as he was
being wheeled by them to the window to look out upon the river for the
last time. He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral between Sir Joshua
Reynolds and James Barry. He left his drawings and pictures to a
"Turner Gallery," and $100,000 to the Royal Academy, to be used for a
medal to be struck every two years for the best exhibitor. The rest of
his fortune went to care for "poor and decayed male artists born in
England and of English parents only." This was to be known as Turner's
Gift, and that is why he had saved money all his life.

A few more of the numberless stories of his generosity should be
told. A picture had been sent to the Academy by a painter named Bird
It was very fine, and Turner was full of its praise, but when they
came to hang it no place could be found.

"It can't be hung," the others of the committee said.

"It must be hung," returned Turner, but nothing could be done about
it, for there was absolutely no place. Then Turner went aside with the
picture and sat studying it a long time. Finally he got up, took down
a picture of his own and hung Bird's in its place. "There!" he
said. "It is hung!"

Again, an old drawing-master died and Turner who had known the family
for a long time, was aware that they were destitute, so he gave the
widow a good sum of money with which to bury her husband and to meet
general expenses. After some time she came to him with the money; but
Turner put his hands in his pockets. "No," he said; "keep it. Use it
to send the children to school and to church."

On one occasion when he had irritably sent a beggar from his house, he
ran out and called her back, thrusting a œ5 note into her hand before
letting her go.

There was a man who in Turner's youth, while the little fellow was
making pictures in the cheerless barber shop bought all of these
drawings he could find. He often raised the price and in every way
tried to help Turner. In after years that old patron went
bankrupt. Turner heard that his steward had been instructed to cut
down some fine old trees on this man's estate, and sell them. Turner,
without letting himself be known in the matter, at once stopped the
cutting and put into his old patron's hands about œ20,000. The rescued
man, afterward, through the same channels that he had received the
money, paid it all back. Years passed, and the son of that same man
got into the same difficulties, and again, without being known in the
matter, Turner restored his fortune. That son, in his turn, honestly
paid back the full amount. This was the miser who saved all his
money--to do good deeds to his friends. Ruskin wrote that in all his
life he had never heard from Turner one unkind or blameful word for
others.

  PLATE--THE FIGHTING TMRAIRE

This was the picture which Turner loved best of all, the one he would
never sell; but at his death ho gave it to the English nation.

"Many years before he painted it, he had gone down to Portsmouth one
day to see Nelson's fleet come in after the glorious victory of
Trafalgar. The _T‚m‚raire_ was pointed out to him--a battle ship that
had very proudly borne the English flag, for during the battle it had
run in between two French frigates and captured them both.

"And now between thirty and forty years later, he lingered one
afternoon on the banks of the Thames. As he looked over the water he
saw the grand old hulk being towed down the river by a noisy little
tug to be broken up at Deptford. 'There's a fine subject!' he
exclaimed as he looked at the heroic ship that had known many glorious
years; and in his thought he compared it to 'a battle-scarred warrior
borne to the grave.'

"Then he painted the picture. The glow of the setting sun irradiates
the scene and bids farewell to the old ship. Twilight is coming on,
and the new moon has just risen in its pearly light. It is a pathetic
picture," and well illustrates how truly a "master of sunsets and
waves" the artist was.

Among his other paintings are several of Venice; "The Slave Ship" and
many other sea pieces.




XL

SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK


  _Flemish School_
  1599-1641
  _Pupil of Rubens_

Anthony Van Dyke's father was neither a gentleman nor an ill-born
person. He was "betwixt-and-between," being a silk merchant, who met
so many fine folk that he seemed to be "fine folk" himself; and by the
time Anthony had grown up, he actually believed himself to be one of
them. If manners stand for fineness Sir Anthony must have been
superfine, because he was almost overburdened with "manners."

He became a wonderful, be-laced, perfumed, shiny gentleman who never
stooped to paint anything less than royalty and its associates, nor in
anything less than velvets and laces. Like Rembrandt and Gainsborough,
he set a fashion--or rather the style in which he painted came to be
known after his name. We are all familiar with the kind of
ornamentation on clothes called Van Dyck--pointed lace, or
trimmings--and pointed beards.

As a very young lad he was almost too dainty to be liked by healthy
boys; and the worst of it was he did not care whether healthy, robust
chaps liked him or not; certainly he did not care for them. He liked
to sit in his father's shop and be smiled upon by the great ladies who
came to buy, and in turn to smile shyly at them; this tendency became
stronger as he grew to be a man.

Anthony's mother made the most exquisite embroideries, and this may
mean that some part of his art was inherited. She handled lovely
colours, and tried to fashion beautiful flower shapes for
customers. She was a fragile, tender sort of woman, while the father
was doubtless a dapper, over-nice little fellow.

Anthony was born in Antwerp, and the facts concerning his education,
as in the case of most artists, are lost to our knowledge. He probably
had a little of some sort outside of painting, but it certainly was
not enough to hurt him, nor to make a fine healthy man of him. He was
very beautiful, in a lady-like, faint-coloured way, not in the least
resembling the handsome, gorgeous, elegant, robust Rubens, a true
cavalier, of a dashing sort.

He was apprenticed to a painter when he was ten years old, and later
on became the pupil of Rubens. He painted a whole series of Apostles'
heads, about which a lawsuit took place. The papers relating to this
were found about twenty years ago, though the lawsuit occurred as far
back as 1615. Several of the Apostles' heads that brought about the
suit are to-day to be seen in the gallery at Dresden.

Everything in those days--especially in Germany and Holland--was
represented by a "guild." In reading about the Mastersingers of
Nuremberg we are told that on the day when the trial of singers was to
take place, dozens of "guilds" assembled in the meadow--guilds of
bakers, of shoemakers--of which Hans Sachs was the head--guilds of
goldsmiths, etc. Van Dyck was a member of the painters' guild when he
was no more than nineteen. His work at that time showed so much
strength that there is a picture of his, an old gentleman and lady, in
the Dresden gallery, which for a long time was supposed to have been
painted by his master, Rubens.

An intimate friend of Van Dyck, Kenelm Digby, says that Van Dyck's
first relations with Rubens came about by Van Dyck being employed to
make engravings for the reproduction of Rubens's great works. After
that he studied painting with him.

One of his friends of that time wrote that at twenty Van Dyck was
nearly as great as Rubens, though this is hardly substantiated by the
verdict of time, and that being a man with very rich family
connections, he could hardly be expected to leave home. On every hand
we have signs of the artist's affected feeling about himself and other
people.

However, an annual pension from the King of England seems to have made
travelling possible to this fine gentleman of lace ruffles, pale face,
and lady-like ways.

There is an entry about him on the royal account book of "Special
service ... performed for His Majesty." Also "Antonio Van Dyck, gent.,
_His Majesty's servant_, is allowed to travaile 8 months, he havinge
obtayneid his Majesty's leave in that behalf, as was signified to the
E. of Arundel." Certainly by that time Van Dyck had become a truly
great portrait painter; not the greatest, because every picture showed
the same characteristics in its subject--elegance, fine clothes,
languid manners, without force of great truth or any excellent moral
quality to distinguish one from another. Nevertheless, the kind of
painting that he did, he did better than anyone else had ever done, or
probably ever will do.

While in England he painted all the royalties and many aristocrats,
and wherever he went he was always painting pictures of himself.

He travelled about a good deal, always painting people of the same
class--kings and queens and fine folk, and painting them pretty nearly
all alike.

When he went to Italy he was everywhere received as a great painter,
but while artists agreed that his work was excellent he was not much
liked by them, and many tales are told about that journey which are
interesting, if not entirely true. Van Dyck was the sort of man about
whom tales would be made up. One, however, sounds true. It is said
that he fell in love--which of course he was always doing--with a
beautiful country girl, and that for love of her he painted an altar
piece into which he put himself, seated on the great gray horse which
Rubens had given him. That picture is in St. Martin's Church at
Saventhem, near Brussels, but although one is inclined to believe this
story because it was quite the sort of thing which might be expected
of Van Dyck, even this is not true, because the painting was done long
after the artist had made his Italian journey, and it was commissioned
by a gentleman living at Saventhem, whose daughter Van Dyck
undoubtedly liked pretty well; but he made the picture for money, not
for love.

While he was in Italy he lived with a cardinal, and painted languid
pictures of sacred subjects, which were far from being his best
work. The best that he did was in portraiture. Distinguished though he
was, he did not have a very good time in Italy, because he would not
join the artists who worked there, nor associate with them in the
least, and naturally this made him disliked.

We see a good many portraits painted by Van Dyck, of persons mounted
upon or standing beside the gray horse, and these were painted about
the time of that Italian journey. He used the Rubens horse in many
paintings.

Of all the people with whom he painted, he most valued the knowledge
he got from a blind woman painter of Sicily, called Sofonisba
Anguisciola, and he often said that he had learned more from a blind
woman than from all the open-eyed men he ever knew. This woman artist
was over ninety years old at the time he learned from her.

While he was in Italy the plague broke out, and Van Dyck fled for his
life, leaving an unfinished picture behind him, one ordered by the
English king, the subject being Rinaldo and Armida, which had gained
for the artist his knighthood pension.

It is said that during his first year in England he painted the king
and queen twelve times. He had an extraordinary record for industry,
and painted very quickly, as he had need to do, because it took a
great deal of money to buy the sort of things Van Dyck liked--fine
laces and velvets, perfumes and satins. His plan was to sketch his
subject first on gray paper with black and white chalk, and after that
he gave the sketch to an assistant who increased it to the size he
wished to paint. The next step was to set his painter to work upon the
clothing of his figures. This was painted in roughly, together with
background and any architectural effect Van Dyck wanted. After this
the artist himself sat down and in three or four sittings, of not more
than an hour each, he was able to finish a picture worth to-day
thousands of dollars.

He painted hands specially well, and kept certain models for them
alone.

Van Dyck had eleven brothers and sisters, whom he always kept in
mind. Some of his sisters had become nuns while some of his brothers
were priests, and Van Dyck's influence got a monkish brother called to
the Dutch court to act as chaplain to the queen.

By this time every royal personage in the world, nearly, had sent for
Van Dyck to paint his portrait, for he could make one look handsomer
than could any other painter in existence. If the king was very ugly,
Van Dyck painted such beautiful clothes upon him that nobody noticed
the plainness of the features.

When Van Dyck was about thirty-six years old he married a great lady,
the Lady Mary Ruthven, granddaughter of the Earl of Gowrie, but before
that he had had a lady-love, Margaret Lemon, whom he painted as the
Virgin and in several other pictures. When he married Lady Mary,
Margaret Lemon was so furiously jealous that she tried to injure Van
Dyck's right hand so that he could paint no more.

About this time Rubens died in Flanders, leaving behind him an
unfinished series of pictures which had been commissioned by the king
of Spain. Van Dyck was asked to finish these, but declined until he
was asked to make an independent picture, to complete the series, and
this he was delighted to do. Ferdinand of Austria wrote to the king of
Spain that Van Dyck had returned in great haste to London to arrange
for his change of home, in order to do the work. "Possibly he may
still change his mind," he added, "for he is stark mad." This shows
how Van Dyck's erratic ways appeared to some people.

He had a sister, Justiniana, who was also something of an artist and
she married a nobleman when she was about twelve years old.

When Van Dyck died he was buried in St. Paul's, London, and Charles
I. placed an inscription on his tomb.

In the "Young People's Story of Art," is the following anecdote: "A
visit was once paid by a courtly looking stranger passing through
Haarlem, to Franz Hals, the distinguished Dutch painter.

"Hals was not at home but he was sent for to the tavern and hastily
returned. The stranger told him that he had heard of his
reputation--had just two hours to spare--and wished to have his
portrait painted. Hals, seizing canvas and brushes fell vigorously to
work; and before the given time had elapsed, he said, 'Have the
goodness to rise, sir, and examine your portrait!' The stranger looked
at it, expressed his satisfaction, and then said, 'Painting seems such
a very easy thing, suppose we change places and see what I can do!'

"Hals assented, and took his position as the sitter. The unknown
began, and as Hals watched him, he saw that he wielded the brush so
quickly, he must be a painter. His work, too, was rapidly finished,
and as Hals looked at it he exclaimed, 'You must be Van Dyck! No one
else could paint such a portrait!'

"No two portraits could have been more unlike. The story adds that the
famous Dutch and Flemish masters heartily embraced each other."

The stories of Van Dyck's youth are interesting, and probably true. It
is said that he drew so well when he was a pupil of Rubens that the
great master often allowed him to retouch his own works. Once in
Rubens's studio, some of the students got the key and went in to see
what the master was doing, when he was absent. Rubens had left a
painting fresh upon the easel, and in looking about them one of the
boys rubbed against it. This frightened them all. What should they do?
Rubens would find his picture ruined and know that they had broken in.

After consultation they decided there was no one with them who could
repair the damage as well as Van Dyck, who set about it, and soon he
had painted in the smudged part so perfectly that when Rubens saw it,
he did not for some time know that anything had happened to his
picture. Later he suspected something, and when he learned of the
prank and its outcome, he was so delighted with Van Dyck's work that
he praised him instead of blaming him for it.

Van Dyck had a very precise method of working. When sitters came to
him he would paint for just one hour. Then he would politely dismiss
them, and his servant would wash his brushes, and clear the way for
the next sitter. He dined with his sitters often that he might
surprise in them the expression which he wanted to paint. Also, he had
their clothing sent to his studio, that it might be exactly imitated
by himself or by those assistants who painted in the foundation for
his finished work.

While attached to King Charles I.'s court, Van Dyck was given a fine
house at Blackfriars, on the Thames, and he had a private landing
place made for boats, so that the royal family might visit him at
their convenience. Charles I. used often to go to Van Dyck's studio to
escape his many troubles, and thus the artist's home became as
fashionable a gathering place, as Gainsborough's studio was in
Bath. He painted Queen Henrietta not less than twenty-five times. He
often furnished concerts for his sitters, for he himself was
passionately fond of music, and moreover he believed that music often
brought to the faces of his sitters, an expression that he loved to
paint.

He painted so many pictures of a certain kind of little dog, in the
pictures of King Charles I. that ever since that breed has been known
as the King Charles spaniel.

After a while Van Dyck got heavily into debt. King Charles himself was
in great trouble, and he had no money with which to pay his painter's
pension. The artist had lived so extravagantly that he did not know at
last which way to turn, so in desperation he thought to try alchemy
and maybe to learn the secret of making gold. He wasted much time at
this, as cleverer men have done, but at last he became too ill for
that or for his own proper work, and badly off though Charles was
himself, he offered his court physician a large sum if he could cure
his court painter. But Van Dyck had enjoyed life too well, and nothing
could be done for him.

He was the seventh child of his parents--which some have thought had
something to do with his genius and success; he lived gaily all the
years of his life, going restlessly from place to place, and having
many acquaintances but probably few friends, outside of his old
master, Rubens, who loved him for his genius.

  PLATE--CHILDREN OF CHARLES THE FIRST

Van Dyck painted the family of the unfortunate king of England four
times. There are five children in the Windsor Castle picture, and this
one, which hangs in the Turin Gallery, was probably painted before the
birth of the fourth child in 1636. It is celebrated for its colouring
as well as for its great artistic merit. The children are surely
childlike enough, despite their stately attire, and they little dream
of the sad fate awaiting the whole of the Stuart family to which they
belong.

Other Van Dycks are: "The Blessed Herman Joseph," "Lords Digby and
Russell," "Lord Wharton," "Countess Folkestone," and "William Prince
of Orange."




XLI

VELASQUEZ (DIEGO RODRIGUEZ DE SILVA)


  (Pronounced Vay-lahs'keth)
  _Castilian School_
  1599-1669
  _Pupil of Herrera_

It is pretty difficult to find out why a man was named so-and-so in
the days of the early Italian and Spanish painters. More likely than
not they would be called after the master to whom they had been first
apprenticed; or after their trade; after the town from which they
came, and rarely because their father had had the name before them. In
Velasquez's case, he was named after his mother.

No one seemed to be certain what to call him, but he generally wrote
his name "Diego de Silva Velasquez." His father was Rodriguez de
Silva, a lawyer, but in calling the boy Velasquez the family followed
a universal Spanish custom of naming children after their mothers.

Little Velasquez was well taught in his childhood; he studied many
languages and philosophy, for he was intended to be a lawyer or
something learned, anything but a painter. The disappointment of
parents in those days, when they found a child was likely to become an
artist is touching.

Despite his equipment for a useful life, according to the ideas of his
parents, this little chap was bound to become nothing but a maker of
pictures.

Herrera was a bad-tempered master and little Velasquez could not get
on with him, so after a year of harsh treatment, he went to another
master, Pacheco, but by that time he had learned a secret that was to
help make his work great. Herrera had taught him to use a brush with
very long bristles, which had the effect of spreading the paint,
making it look as if his "colours had floated upon the canvas," in a
way that was the "despair of those who came after him."

Velasquez was born in Seville at a time when about all the art of the
world was Italian or German; thus he became the creator of a new
school of painting.

He stayed five years in Pacheco's studio and pupil and master became
very fond of each other. Pacheco was not a great master--not so good
as Herrera--but he was easy to get on with, and knew a good deal about
painting, so that as Velasquez had the genius, he was as well placed
as he needed to be.

In Pacheco's studio there was a peasant boy whose face was very
mobile, showed every passing feeling; and Velasquez used to make him
laugh and weep, till, surprising some good expression, he would
quickly sketch him. With this excellent model, Velasquez did a
surprising amount of good work.

Spain had just then conquered the far-off provinces of Mexico and
Peru, and was continually receiving from its newly got lands much
valuable merchandise. Rapidly growing rich, this Latin country loved
art and all things beautiful, so its money was bound to be spent
freely in such ways. Madrid had been made its capital, and at that
time there were few fine pictures to be found there. The Moors who had
conquered Spain had forbidden picture making, because it was contrary
to their religion to represent the human figure, or even the figures
of birds and beasts. Then the Inquisition had hindered art by its
rules, one of which was that the Virgin Mary should always be painted
with her feet covered; another, that all saints should be
beardless. There were many more exactions.

While cathedrals were being built elsewhere, the Moors had been in
control of Spanish lands, so that no cathedral had been built there,
and when Velasquez came upon the scene the time of great cathedral
building was past. It had ceased to be the fashion. Although there had
been such painters as Beneguette, Morales, Navarrette, and Ribera, all
Spanish and of considerable genius, they had been too badly
handicapped to make painting a great art in Spain. When Madrid became
the capital of Spain, it had no unusual buildings, unless it was an
old fortress of the Moors, the Alcazar, Caesar's house, but the nation
was buying paintings from Italy, and it began to beautify Madrid,
which had the advantage of the former Moorish luxury and art, very
beautiful, though not pictorial.

In Madrid, then, there seemed to be great opportunity for a fine
artist like Velasquez, and his master urged him to go there and try
his fortune. So he set out on mule-back, attended by his slave, but
unless he could get the ear of the king, it was useless for him to
seek advancement in Madrid. Without the king as patron at that time,
an artist could not accomplish much. After trying again and again,
Velasquez had to return to his old master, without having seen the
king; but after a time a picture of his was seen by Philip IV., and he
was so much pleased with it that he summoned the artist. Through his
minister, Olivares, he offered him $113.40 in gold (fifty ducats) to
pay his return expenses. The next year he gave him $680.40 to move his
family to Madrid.

At last the artist had found a place in the rich city, and he went to
live at the court where the warmest friendship grew between him and
the king. The latter was an author and something of a painter, so that
they loved the same things. This friendship lasted all their lives,
and they were together most of the time, the king always being found,
in Velasquez's studio in the palace when his duties did not call him
elsewhere. During the many many years--nearly thirty-seven--that
Velasquez lived with Philip IV. he employed himself in painting the
scenes at court. Thus he became the pictorial historian of the Spanish
capital. He was a man of good disposition, kindly and generous in
conduct and in feeling, so that he was always in the midst of friends
and well-wishers.

Philip IV. was indeed a noble companion, but he was not a gay one,
being known as the king who never laughed--or at least whose laughter
was so rare, the few times he did laugh became historic. One would
expect this serious and depressing atmosphere to have had an effect
upon a painter's art; but it chanced that Rubens visited Spain, and
there, Velasquez being the one famous artist, it was natural they
should become interested in each other. Rubens told Velasquez of the
wonders of Italian painting, till the Spaniard could think of nothing
else, and finally he begged Philip to let him journey to Italy that he
might see some of those wonders for himself. The request made the king
unhappy at first, but at last he gave his consent and Velasquez set
out for Italy. The king gave him money and letters of introduction,
and he went in company with the Marquis of Spinola.

After Velasquez had stayed eighteen months in Italy, Philip began to
long for his friend and sent for him to return. He came back full of
the stories of brilliant Italy, and charmed the king completely.

There is as absurd a story of Velasquez's perfection in painting as
that of Raphael's, whose portrait of the pope, left upon the terrace
to dry, imposed upon passers by. It is said of Velasquez's work that
when he had painted an admiral whom the king had ordered to sea, and
left it exposed in his studio, the king, entering, thought it was the
admiral himself, and angrily inquired why he had not put to sea
according to orders. On the face of them these stories are false, but
they serve to suggest the perfection of these artists' paintings.

Philip, being a melancholy man, had his court full of jesters, poor
misshapen creatures--dwarfs and hunchbacks--who were supposed to
appear "funny," and Velasquez, as court painter, painted those whom he
continually saw about him, who formed the court family. Thus we have
pictures of strange groups--dwarfs, little princesses, dressed
precisely as the elders were dressed, favourite dogs, and Velasquez
himself at his easel.

In 1618, while still with his master, Pacheco, he had married the
master's daughter, a big, portly woman. Before he left Seville he bad
two daughters.

These were all the children he had, although he painted a picture of
"Velasquez's Family" which includes a great number of people. The
figures in that painting are the children of his daughter, not his
own; and this may account for one biographer's statement that the
artist had "seven children." He was devoted to and happy in his family
of children and grandchildren.

He did not grow rich, but received regularly during his life in
Madrid, twenty gold ducats ($45.36) a month to live upon, and besides
this his medical attendance, lodging, and additional payment for every
picture. The one which brought him this good fortune was an equestrian
portrait of Philip; first uncovered on the steps of San
Felipe. Everywhere the people were delighted with it, poets sung of
it, and the king declared no other should ever paint his
portrait. This picture has long since disappeared.

In 1627 Velasquez won the prize for a picture representing the
expulsion of the Moors from Spain and was rewarded by "being appointed
gentleman usher. To this was shortly afterward added a daily allowance
of twelve reals--the same amount which was allowed to court
barbers--and ninety gold ducats ($204.12) a year for dress, which was
also paid to the dwarfs, buffoons, and players about the king's
person--truly a curious estimate of talent at the court of Spain."

The record of Philip IV. with unpleasing, even degenerate characters,
about him, is brightened by the thought of his loyalty to his court
painter and life-long friend. When the king's favourites fell, those
who had been the friends of Velasquez, the artist loyally remained
their friend in adversity as he had been while they were
powerful. This constancy, even to the royal enemies, was never
resented by Philip. He honoured the faithfulness of his artist, even
as he himself was faithful in this friendship. Philip's court was such
that there was little to paint that was ennobling, and so Velasquez
lacked the inspiration of such surroundings as the Italian painters
had.

Philip IV. was hail-fellow-well-met with his stablemen, his huntsmen,
his cooks, and yet he seems to have had no sense of humour, was long
faced and forbidding to look at, and despite his strange habits
considered himself the most mighty and haughty man in the world. He
felt himself free to behave as he chose, because he was Philip of
Spain; and he chose to do a great many absurd and outrageous
things. In all Philip's portraits, painted by Velasquez, he wears a
stiff white linen collar of his own invention, and he was so proud of
this that he celebrated it by a festival. He went in procession to
church to thank God for the wonderful blessing of the _Golilla_--the
name of his collar. This unsightly thing became the fashion, and all
portraits of men of that time were painted with it. "In regard to the
wonderful structure of Philip's moustaches it is said, that, to
preserve their form they were encased during the night in perfumed
leather covers called _bigoteras_." Such absurdities in a king, who
had the responsibilities of a nation upon him, seem incredible.

Velasquez made in all three journeys to Italy, and the last one was on
a mission for the king, which was much to the latter's credit. Philip
had determined to have a fine art gallery in Madrid, for Spain had by
this time many pictures, but no statuary; so he commissioned his
painter to buy whatever he thought well of and _could_ buy, in
Italy. Hence the artist set off again with his slave--the same one
with whom he had journeyed to Madrid so long before. His name was
Pareja, and his master had already made an excellent artist of him.

They went to Genoa, thence to the great art-centres of Italy, were
received everywhere with honour, and the artist bought wisely.
Velasquez did not care for Raphael's paintings as much as for
Titian's, and he said so to Salvator Rosa, an honoured painter in
Italy.

While in Rome Velasquez painted the pope, also his own slave, Pareja.

When he returned to Spain he took with him three hundred statues, but
a large number of them were nude, and the Spanish court, not over
particular about most things, was very particular about naked statues,
so that after Philip's death, they nearly all disappeared. After his
return, and after the queen had died and Philip had married again,
Velasquez was made quartermaster-general, no easy post but not without
honour, though it interfered with his picture painting a good deal. He
had to look after the comfort of all the court, and to see that the
apartments it occupied, at home or when it visited, were suitable.

"Even the powerful king of Spain could not make his favourite a belted
knight without a commission to inquire into the purity of his lineage
on both sides of the house. Fortunately, the pedigree could bear
scrutiny, as for generations the family was found free from all taint
of heresy, from all trace of Jewish or Moorish blood, and from
contamination from trade or commerce. The difficulty connected with
the fact that he was a painter was got over by his being painter to
the king and by the declaration that he did not sell his pictures."

The red Cross of Santiago conferred upon him by Philip, made Velasquez
a knight and freed him also from the rulings of the Inquisition, which
directed so largely what artists could and could not do. Thus it is
that we come to have certain great pictures from Velasquez's brush
which could not otherwise have been painted.

This action of the king, setting free the artist, made two schools of
art, of which the court painter represented one; and Murillo the
other, under the command of the Church. Although not so rich perhaps
as Raphael, Velasquez lived and died in plenty, while Murillo, the
artist of the Church of Rome, was a poverty-stricken man.

Finally, while in the midst of honours, and fulfilling his official
duty to the court of Spain, Velasquez contracted the disease which
killed him. The Infanta, Maria Theresa, was to wed Louis XIV., and the
ceremony was to take place on a swampy little island called the Island
of Pheasants. There he went to decorate a pavilion and other places of
display. He became ill with a fever and died soon after he returned to
Madrid.

He made his wife, his old master Pacheco's daughter, his executor, and
was buried in the church of San Juan, in the vault of Fuensalida; but
within a week his devoted wife was dead, and in eight days' time she
was buried beside him.

He left his affairs--accounts between him and the court--badly
entangled, and it was many years before they were straightened
out. His many deeds of kindness lived after him. He made of his slave
a good artist and a devoted friend, and by his efforts the slave
became a freedman. The story of his kindly help to Murillo when that
exquisite painter came, unknown and friendless to Madrid, has already
been told.

The Church where Velasquez was buried was destroyed by the French in
1811, and all trace of the resting place of the great Spanish artist
is forever lost to us.

He is called not only "painter to the king," but "king of painters."

  PLATE--EQUESTRIAN PORTRAIT OF DON BALTHASAR CARLOS.

Philip of Spain had long prayed for a son and when at last one was
granted him his pride in his young heir was unbounded. The little Don
Carlos was not unworthy, for he was a cheerful, hearty boy, trained to
horsemanship, from his fourth year, for his father was a noted rider
and had the best instructors for his son. The prince was a brave
hunter too and we are told that he shot a wild boar when he was but
nine years of age. In this portrait which is in the Museo del Prado he
is six years old, and it was neither the first nor the last that
Velasquez made of him. It was one of the court painter's chief duties
to see that the heir to the throne was placed upon canvas at every
stage of his career, and he painted him from two years of age till his
lamented death at sixteen.

The young prince wears in this picture a green velvet jacket with
white sleeves and his scarf is crimson embroidered with gold. The
lively pony is a light chestnut and the foreshortening of its body
must be noticed. The steady grave eyes of the lad are gazing far ahead
as they would naturally be if he were riding rapidly, but his princely
dignity is shown in his firm seat in the saddle and his manner of
holding his marshal's bat“n.

The great art of the painter is also shown in the way he subordinates
the landscape to the figure. He will not allow even a tree to come
near the young horseman, but brings his young activity into vivid
contrast with the calm peacefulness of the distant view.

With the death of Don Carlos the downfall of his father's dynasty was
assured, though for a time his little sister, the Infanta Maria
Theresa, was upheld as the heiress. She married Louis XIV. and had a
weary time of it in France. Velasquez painted her picture too, in the
grown up dress of the children of that day. It is in the Vienna
Gallery. Among his best known pictures are "The Surrender of Breda,"
"Alessandro del Borro," and "Philip IV."




XLII

PAUL VERONESE (PAOLO CAGLIARI)


  (Pronounced Vay-ro-nay'zay and pah'o-lah cal-ee-ah'ree)
  _Venetian School_
  1528-1588
  _Pupil of Titian_

"One has never done well enough, when one can do better; one never
knows enough when he can learn more!"

This was the motto of Paul Veronese. This artist was born in
Verona--whence he took his name--and spent much of his life with the
monks in the monastery of St. Sebastian.

His father was a sculptor, and taught his son. Veronese himself was a
lovable fellow, had a kind feeling for all, and in return received the
good will of most people. When he first went to Venice to study he
took letters of introduction to the monks of St. Sebastian, and
finally went to live with them, for his uncle was prior of the
monastery, and it was upon its walls that he did his first work in
Venice. His subject was the story of Esther, which he illustrated
completely.

He became known in time as "the most magnificent of magnificent
painters." He loved the gaieties of Venice; the lords and ladies; the
exquisite colouring; the feasting and laughter, and everything he
painted, showed this taste. When he chose great religious subjects he
dressed all his figures in elegant Venetian costumes, in the midst of
elegant Venetian scenes. His Virgins, or other Biblical people, were
not Jews of Palestine, but Venetians of Venice, but so beautiful were
they and so inspiring, that nobody cared to criticise them on that
score. He loved to paint festival scenes such as, "The Marriage at
Cana," "Banquet in Levi's House," or "Feast in the House of Simon." He
painted nothing as it could possibly have been, but everything as he
would have liked it to be.

Into the "Wedding Feast at Cana," where Jesus was said to have turned
the water into wine, he introduced a great host of his friends, people
then living. Titian is there, and several reigning kings and queens,
including Francis I. of France and his bride, for whom the picture was
made. This treatment of the Bible story startles the mind, but
delights the eye.

It was said that his "red recurred like a joyful trumpet blast among
the silver gray harmonies of his paintings."

Muther, one who has written brilliantly about him, tells us that
"Veronese seems to have come into the world to prove that the painter
need have neither head nor heart, but only a hand, a brush, and a pot
of paint in order to clothe all the walls of the world with oil
paintings" and that "if he paints Mary, she is not the handmaid of the
Lord or even the Queen of Heaven, but a woman of the world, listening
with approving smile to the homage of a cavalier. In light red silk
morning dress, she receives the Angel of the Annunciation and hears
without surprise--for she has already heard it--what he has to say;
and at the Entombment she only weeps in order to keep up appearances."

Such criticism raises a smile, but it is quite just, and what is more,
the Veronese pictures are so beautiful that one is not likely to
quarrel with the painter for having more good feeling than
understanding. His joyous temperament came near to doing him harm, for
he was summoned before the Inquisition for the manner in which he had
painted "The Last Supper."

After the Esther pictures in St. Sebastian, the artist painted there
the "Martyrdom of St. Sebastian," and there is a tradition that he did
his work while hiding in the monastery because of some mischief of
which he had been guilty.

At that time he was not much more than twenty-six or eight, while the
great painter Tintoretto was forty-five, yet his work in St. Sebastian
made him as famous as the older artist.

There is very little known of the private affairs of Veronese. He
signed a contract for painting the "Marriage at Cana," for the
refectory of the monastery of St. Giorgio Maggiore, in June 1562, and
that picture, stupendous as it is, was finished eighteen months
later. He received $777.60 for it, as well as his living while he was
at work upon it, and a tun of wine. One picture he is supposed to have
left behind him at a house where he had been entertained, as an
acknowledgment of the courtesy shown him.

Paul had a brother, Benedetto, ten years younger than himself, and it
is said that he greatly helped Paul in his work, by designing the
architectural backgrounds of his pictures. If that is so, Benedetto
must have been an artist of much genius, for those backgrounds in the
paintings are very fine.

Veronese married, and had two sons; the younger being named
Carletto. He was also the favourite, and an excellent artist, who did
some fine painting, but he died while he was still young. Gabriele the
elder son, also painted, but he was mainly a man of affairs, and
attended to business rather than to art.

Veronese was a loving father and brother, and beyond doubt a happy
man. After his death both his sons and his brother worked upon his
unfinished paintings, completing them for him. He was buried in the
Church of St. Sebastian.

  PLATE--THE MARRIAGE AT CANA

This painting is most characteristic of Veronese's methods. He has no
regard for the truth in presenting the picture story. At the marriage
at Cana everybody must have been very simply dressed, and there could
have been no beautiful architecture, such as we see in the picture. In
the painting we find courtier-like men and women dressed in beautiful
silks. Some of the costumes appear to be a little Russian in
character, the others Venetian; and Jesus Himself wears the loose
every-day robe of the pastoral people to whom he belonged. We think of
luxury and rich food and a splendid house when we look at this
painting, when as a matter of fact nothing of this sort could have
belonged to the scene which Veronese chose to represent. Perhaps no
painter was more lacking in imagination than was Veronese in painting
this particular picture. He chose to place historical or legendary
characters, in the midst of a scene which could not have existed
co-incidently with the event.

Among his other pictures are "Europa and the Bull," "Venice
Enthroned," and the "Presentation of the Family of Darius to
Alexander."




XLIII

LEONARDO DA VINCI


  (Pronounced Lay-o-nar'do dah Veen'chee)
  _Florentine School_
  1451-1519
  _Pupil of Verrocchio_

Leonardo da Vinci was the natural son of a notary, Ser Pier, and he
was born at the Castello of Vinci, near Empoli. From the very hour
that he was apprenticed to his master, Verrocchio, he proved that he
was the superior of his master in art. Da Vinci was one of the most
remarkable men who ever lived, because he not only did an
extraordinary number of things, but he did all of them well.

He was an engineer, made bridges, fortifications, and plans which to
this day are brilliant achievements.

He was a sculptor, and as such did beautiful work.

He was a naturalist, and as such was of use to the world.

He was an author and left behind him books written backward, of which
he said that only he who was willing to devote enough study to them to
read them in that form, was able to profit by what he had written.

Finally, and most wonderfully, he was a painter.

He had absolute faith in himself. Before he constructed his bridge he
said that he could build the best one in the world, and a king took
him at his word and was not disappointed by the result.

He stated that he could paint the finest picture in the world--but let
us read what he himself said of it, in so sure and superbly confident
a way that it robbed his statement of anything like foolish
vanity. Such as he could afford to speak frankly of his greatness,
without appearing absurd. He wrote:

"In time of peace, I believe I can equal anyone in architecture, in
constructing public and private buildings, and in conducting water
from one place to another. I can execute sculpture, whether in marble,
bronze, or terra cotta, and in painting I can do as much as any other
man, be he who he may. Further, I could engage to execute the bronze
horse in eternal memory of your father and the illustrious house of
Sforza." He was writing to Ludovico Sforza whose house then ruled at
Milan. "If any of the above-mentioned things should appear to you
impossible or impracticable, I am ready to make trial of them in your
park, or in any other place that may please your excellency, to whom I
commend myself in proud humility."

Leonardo's experiments with oils and the mixing of his pigments has
nearly lost to us his most remarkable pictures. His first fourteen
years of work as an artist were spent in Milan, where he was employed
to paint by the Duke of Milan, and never again was his life so
peaceful; it was ever afterward full of change. He went from Milan to
Venice, to Rome, to Florence, and back to Milan where his greatest
work was done.

While Leonardo was a baby he lived in the Castle of Vinci. He was
beautiful as a child and very handsome as a man. When a child he wore
long curls reaching below his waist. He was richly clothed, and
greatly beloved. His body seemed no less wonderful than his mind. He
wished to learn everything, and his memory was so wonderful that he
remembered all that he undertook to learn. His muscles were so
powerful that he could bend iron, and all animals seemed to love
him. It is said he could tame the wildest horses. Indeed his life and
accomplishments read as if he were one enchanted. One writer tells us
that "he never could bear to see any creature cruelly treated, and
sometimes he would buy little caged birds that he might just have the
pleasure of opening the doors of their cages, and setting them at
liberty."

The story told of his first known work is that his master, being
hurried in finishing a picture, permitted Leonardo to paint in an
angel's head, and that it was so much better than the rest of the
picture, that Verrocchio burned his brushes and broke his palette,
determined never to paint again, but probably this is a good deal of a
fairy tale and one that is not needed to impress us with the artist's
greatness, since there is so much to prove it without adding fable to
fact.

Leonardo was also a very far seeing inventor and most ingenious. He
made mechanical toys that "worked" when they were wound up. He even
devised a miniature flying machine; however, history does not tell us
whether it flew or not. He thought out the uses of steam as a motive
power long before Fulton's time.

Leonardo haunted the public streets, sketchbook in hand, and when
attracted by a face, would follow till he was able to transfer it to
paper. Ida Prentice Whitcomb, who has compiled many anecdotes of da
Vinci, says that it was also his habit to invite peasants to his
house, and there amuse them with funny stories till he caught some
fleeting expression of mirth which he was pleased to reproduce.

As a courtier Leonardo was elegant and full of amusing devices. He
sang, accompanying himself on a silver lute, which he had had
fashioned in imitation of a horse's skull. After he attached himself
to the court of the Duke of Milan, his gift of invention was
constantly called into use, and one of the surprises he had in store
for the Duke's guests was a great mechanical lion, which being wound
up, would walk into the presence of the court, open its mouth and
disclose a bunch of flowers inside.

Leonardo worked very slowly upon his paintings, because he was never
satisfied with a work, and would retouch it day after day. Then, too,
he was a man of moods, like most geniuses, and could not work with
regularity. The picture of the "Last Supper" was painted in Milan, by
order of his patron, the Duke, and there are many picturesque stories
written of its production. It was painted upon the refectory wall of a
Dominican convent, the Santa Maria delle Grazie; and at first the work
went off well, and the artist would remain upon his scaffolding from
morning till night, absorbed in his painting. It is said that at such
times he neither ate nor drank, forgetting all but his great work. He
kept postponing the painting of two heads--Christ and Judas.

He had worked painstakingly and with enthusiasm till that point, but
deferred what he was hardly willing to trust himself to perform. He
had certain conceptions of these features which he almost feared to
execute, so tremendous was his purpose. He let that part of the work
go, month after month, and having already spent two years upon the
picture, the monks began to urge him to a finish. He was not the man
to endure much pressure, and the more they urged the more resentful he
became. Finally, he began to feel a bitter dislike for the prior, the
man who annoyed him most. One day, when the prior was nagging him
about the picture, wanting to know why he didn't get to work upon it
again, and when would it be finished, Leonardo said suavely: "If you
will sit for the head of Judas, I'll be able to finish the picture at
once." The prior was enraged, as Leonardo meant he should be; but
Leonardo is said actually to have painted him in as Judas. Afterward
he painted in the face of Christ with haste and little care, simply
because he despaired of ever doing the wonderful face that his art
soul demanded Christ should wear.

The one bitter moment in Leonardo's life, in all probability, was when
he came in dire competition with Michael Angelo. When he removed to
Florence he was required to submit sketches for the Town Hall--the
Palazzo Vecchio--and Michael Angelo was his rival. The choice fell to
Angelo, and after a life of supremacy Leonardo could not endure the
humiliation with grace. Added to disappointment, someone declared that
Leonardo's powers were waning because he was growing old. This was
more than he could bear, and he left Italy for France, where the king
had invited him to come and spend the remainder of his life. Francis
I. had wished to have the picture in the Milan monastery taken to
France, but that was not to be done.

Doubtless the king expected Leonardo to do some equally great work
after he became the nation's guest.

Before leaving Italy, Leonardo had painted his one other "greatest"
picture--"La Gioconda" (Mona Lisa)-and he took that wonderful work
with him to France, where the King purchased it for $9,000, and to
this day it hangs in the Louvre.

But Leonardo was to do no great work in France, for in truth he was
growing old. His health had failed, and although he was still a dandy
and court favourite, setting the fashion in clothing and in the cut of
hair and beard, he was no longer the brilliant, active Leonardo.

Bernard Berensen, has written of him: "Painting ... was to Leonardo so
little of a preoccupation that we must regard it as merely a mode of
expression used at moments by a man of universal genius." By which
Berensen means us to understand that Leonardo was so brilliant a
student and inventor, so versatile, that art was a mere pastime. "No,
let us not join in the reproaches made to Leonardo for having painted
so little; because he had so much more to do than to paint, he has
left all of us heirs to one or two of the supremest works of art ever
created."

Another author writes that "in Leonardo da Vinci every talent was
combined in one man."

Leonardo was the third person of the wonderful trinity of Florentine
painters, Raphael and Michael Angelo being the other two.

He knew so much that he never doubted his own powers, but when he
died, after three years in France, he left little behind him, and that
little he had ever declared to be unfinished--the "Mona Lisa" and the
"Last Supper." He died in the Chƒteau de Cloux, at Amboise, and it is
said that "sore wept the king when he heard that Leonardo was dead."

In Milan, near the Cathedral, there stands a monument to his memory,
and about it are placed the statues of his pupils. To this day he is
wonderful among the great men of the world.

  PLATE--THE LAST SUPPER

This, as we have said, is in the former convent of Santa Maria delle
Grazie, in Milan. It was the first painted story of this legendary
event in which natural and spontaneous action on the part of all the
company was presented.

To-day the picture is nearly ruined by smoke, time, and alterations in
the place, for a great door lintel has been cut into the
picture. Leonardo used the words of the Christ: "Verily, I say unto
you that one of you shall betray me," as the starting point for this
painting. It is after the utterance of these words that we see each of
the disciples questioning horrified, frightened, anxious, listening,
angered--all these emotions being expressed by the face or gestures of
the hands or pose of the figures. It is a most wonderful picture and
it seems as if the limit of genius was to be found in it.

The company is gathered in a half-dark hall, the heads outlined
against the evening light that comes through the windows at the
back. We look into a room and seem to behold the greatest tragedy of
legendary history: treachery and sorrow and consternation brought to
Jesus of Nazareth and his comrades.

This great picture was painted in oil instead of in "distemper," the
proper kind of mixture for fresco, and therefore it was bound to be
lost in the course of time. Besides, it has known more than ordinary
disaster. The troops of Napoleon used this room, the convent
refectory, for a stable, and that did not do the painting any
good. The reason we have so complete a knowledge of it, however, is
that Leonardo's pupils made an endless number of copies of it, and
thus it has found its way into thousands of homes. The following is
the order in which Leonardo placed the disciples at the table: Jesus
of Nazareth in the centre, Bartholomew the last on the left, after him
is James, Andrew, Peter, Judas--who holds the money bag--and John. On
the right, next to Jesus, comes Thomas, the doubting one; James the
Greater, Philip, Matthew, Thaddeus, and Simon. Jesus has just declared
that one of them shall betray him, and each in his own way seems to be
asking "Lord, is it I?" In the South Kensington Museum in London will
be found carefully preserved a description, written out fairly in
Leonardo's own hand, to guide him in painting the Last Supper. It is
most interesting and we shall quote it: "One, in the act of drinking
puts down his glass and turns his head to the speaker. Another
twisting his fingers together, turns to his companion, knitting his
eyebrows. Another, opening his hands and turning the palm toward the
spectator, shrugs his shoulders, his mouth expressing the liveliest
surprise. Another whispers in the ear of a companion, who turns to
listen, holding in one hand a knife, and in the other a loaf, which he
has cut in two. Another, turning around with a knife in his hand,
upsets a glass upon the table and looks; another gasps in amazement;
another leans forward to look at the speaker, shading his eyes with
his hand; another, drawing back behind the one who leans forward,
looks into the space between the wall and the stooping disciple."

Other paintings of Leonardo's are: "Mona Lisa," "Head of Medusa,"
"Adoration of the Magi," and the "Madonna della Caraffa."




XLIV

JEAN ANTOINE WATTEAU


  (Pronounced in French, Vaht-toh; English, Wot-toh)
  _French (Genre) School_
  1684-1721
  _Pupil of Gillot and Audran_

Watteau's father was a tiler in a Flemish town--Valenciennes. He meant
that his son should be a carpenter, but that son tramped from
Valenciennes to Paris with the purpose of becoming a great painter. He
did more, he became a "school" of painting, all by himself.

There is no sadder story among artists than that of this lowly born
genius. He was not good to look upon, being the very opposite of all
that he loved, having no grace or charm in appearance. He had a
drooping mouth, red and bony hands, and a narrow chest with stooping
shoulders. Because of a strange sensitiveness he lived all his life
apart from those he would have been happy with, for he mistrusted his
own ugliness, and thought he might be a burden to others.

Such a man has painted the gayest, gladdest, most delicate and
exquisite pictures imaginable.

He entered Paris as a young man, without friends, without money or
connections of any kind, and after wandering forlornly, about the
great city, he found employment with a dealer who made hundreds of
saints for out-of-town churches.

It is said that for this first employer Watteau made dozens and dozens
of pictures of St. Nicholas; and when we think of the beautiful
figures he was going to make, pictures that should delight all the
world, there seems something tragic in the monotony and
common-placeness of that first work he was forced by poverty to
do. Certainly St. Nicholas brought one man bread and butter, even if
he forgot him at Christmas time.

After that hard apprenticeship, Watteau's condition became slightly
better. He had been employed near the Pont Notre Dame, at three francs
a week, but now in the studio of a scene painter, Gillot, he did work
of coarse effect, very different from that exquisite school of art
which he was to bring into being. After Gillot's came the studio of
Claude Audran, the conservator of the Luxembourg, and with him Watteau
did decorative work. In reality he had no master, learned from nobody,
grovelled in poverty, and at first, forced a living from the meanest
sources. With this in mind, it remains a wonder that he should paint
as no other ever could, scenes of exquisite beauty and grace; scenes
of high life, courtiers and great ladies assembled in lovely
landscapes, doing elegant and charming things, dressed in unrivalled
gowns and costumes. Until Watteau went to the Luxembourg he had seen
absolutely nothing of refined or gracious living. He had come from
country scenes, and in Paris had lived among workmen and
bird-fanciers, flower sellers, hucksters and the like. This is very
likely the secret of his peculiar art.

Watteau would have been a wonderful artist under any circumstances, no
matter what sort of pictures he had painted; but circumstances gave
his imagination a turn toward the exquisite in colourand
composition. Doubtless when he first looked down from the palace
windows of the Luxembourg and saw gorgeous women and handsome men
languishing and coquetting and revelling in a life of ease and beauty,
he was transported. He must have thought himself in fairyland, and the
impulse to paint, to idealise the loveliness that he saw, must have
been greater in him than it would have been in one who had lived so
long among such scenes that they had become familiar with them.

After Watteau there were artists who tried to do the kind of work he
had done, but no one ever succeeded. Watteau clothed all his
shepherdesses in fine silken gowns, with a plait in the back, falling
from the shoulders, and to-day we have a fashion known as the "Watteau
back"--gowns made with this shoulder-plait. He put filmy laces or
softest silks upon his dairy maids, as upon his court ladies, dressing
his figures exquisitely, and in the loveliest colours. He had suffered
from poverty and from miserable sights, so when he came to paint
pictures, he determined to reproduce only the loveliest objects.

At that time French fashions were very unusual, and it was quite the
thing for ladies to hold a sort of reception while at their toilet. A
description of one of these affairs was written by Madame de Grignon
to her daughter: "Nothing can be more delightful than to assist at the
toilet of Madame la Duchesse (de Bourgoyne), and to watch her arrange
her hair. I was present the other day. She rose at half past twelve,
put on her dressing gown, and set to work to eat a _m‚ringue_. She ate
the powder and greased her hair. The whole formed an excellent
breakfast and charming _coiffure_." Watteau has caught the spirit of
this strange airy, artificial, incongruous existence. His ladies seem
to be eating _meringues_ and powdering their hair and living on a diet
of the combination. One hardly knows which is toilet and which is real
life in looking at his paintings.

He quarreled with Audran at the Luxembourg, and having sold his first
picture, he went back to his Valenciennes home, to see his former
acquaintances, no doubt being a little vain of his performance.

After that he painted another picture which sold well enough to keep
him from poverty for a time, and on his return to Paris he was warmly
greeted by a celebrated and influential artist, Crozat. Watteau tried
for a prize, and though his picture came second it had been seen by
the Academy committee.

His greatness was acknowledged, and he was immediately admitted to the
Academy and granted a pension by the crown, with which he was able to
go to Italy, the Mecca of all artists the world over.

From Italy he went to London, but there the fogs and unsuitable
climate made his disease much worse and he hurried back to France,
where he went to live with a friend who was a picture dealer. It was
then that he painted a sign for this friend, Gersaint, a sign so
wonderful that it is reckoned in the history of Watteau's paintings.

Soon he grew so sensitive over his illness, that he did not wish to
remain near his dearest friends, but one of them, the Abb‚ Haranger,
insisted upon looking after his welfare, and got lodgings for him at
Nogent, where he could have country air and peace.

Watteau died very soon after going to Nogent in July, 1721, and he
left nine thousand livres to his parents, and his paintings to his
best friends, the Abb‚, Gersaint, Monsieur Henin, and Monsieur
Julienne. He is called the "first French painter" and so he
was--though he was Flemish, by birth.

  PLATE--FÅTE CHAMPÅTRE

This exquisite picture displays nearly all the characteristics of
Watteau's painting. He was said to paint with "honey and gold," and
his method was certainly remarkable. His clear, delicate colours were
put upon a canvas first daubed with oil, and he never cleaned his
palette. His "oil-pot was full of dust and dirt and mixed with the
washings of his brush." One would think that only the most slovenly
results could come from such habits of work, but the artist made a
colour which no one could copy, and that was a sort of creamy,
opalescent white. This was original with Watteau, and most beautiful.

In this "Fˆte Champˆtre," which is now in the National Gallery at
Edinburgh, he paints an elegant group of ladies and gentlemen
indulging in an open air dance of some sort. One couple are doing
steps facing one another, to the music of a set of pipes, while the
rest flirt and talk, decorously, round about. There is no boisterous
rusticity here; all is dainty and refined.

The same characteristics are to be found in Watteau's other pictures
such as, "Embarkation for the Island of Cythera," "The Judgment of
Paris," and "Gay Company in a Park."




XLV

SIR BENJAMIN WEST


  _American_
  1738-1820
  _Pupil of the Italian School_

The beautiful smile of his little niece helped to make this man an
artist. This is the story:

Benjamin West was born down in Pennsylvania, at Westdale, a small
village in the township of Springfield, of Quaker parentage. The
family was poor perhaps, but in America at a time when everybody was
struggling with a new civilisation it did not seem to be such binding
poverty as the same condition in Europe would have been. Benjamin had
a married sister whose baby he greatly loved, and he gave it devoted
attention. One day while it was sleeping and the undiscovered artist
was sitting beside it he saw it smile, and the beauty of the smile
inspired him to keep it forever if he could. He got paper and pencil
and forthwith transferred that "angel's whisper."

No child of to-day can imagine the difficulties a boy must have had in
those days in America, to get an art education, and having learned his
art, how impossible it was to live by it. Men were busy making a new
country and pictures do not take part in such pioneer work; they come
later. Still, there were bound to be born artistic geniuses then, just
as there were men for the plough and men for politics and for war. He
who happened to be the artist was the Quaker boy, West.

He took his first inspiration from the Cherokees, for it was the
Indian in all the splendour of his strength and straightness that
formed West's ideal of beautiful physique.

When he first saw the Apollo Belvedere, he exclaimed: "A young Mohawk
warrior!" to the disgust of every one who heard him, but he meant to
compliment the noblest of forms. Europeans did not know how
magnificent a figure the "young Mohawk warrior" could be; but West
knew.

After his Indian impetus toward art he went to Philadelphia, and
settled himself in a studio, where he painted portraits. His sitters
went to him out of curiosity as much as anything else, but at last a
Philadelphia gentleman, who knew what art meant, recognised Benjamin
West's talent, and made some arrangement by which the young man went
to Italy.

Life began to look beautiful and promising to the Pennsylvanian. He
was in Italy for three years, and in that home of art the young man
who had made the smile of his sister's sleeping baby immortal was
given highest honours. He was elected a member of all the great art
societies in Italy, and studied with the best artists of the time. He
began to earn his living, we may be sure, and then he went to England,
where, in spite of the prejudice there must have been against the
colonists, he became at once a favourite of George III., a friend of
Reynolds and of all the English artists of repute--unless perhaps of
Gainsborough, who made friends with none.

West was appointed "historical painter" to his Majesty, George III.,
and he was chosen to be one of four who should draw plans for a Royal
Academy. He was one of the first members of that great organisation,
and when Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first president, died, West became
president, remaining in office for twenty-eight years.

About that time came the Peace of Amiens, and West was able to go to
Paris, where he could see the greatest art treasures of Europe, which
had been brought to France from every quarter as a consequence of the
war. At that time, before Paris began to return these, and when she
had just pillaged every great capital of Europe, artists need take but
a single trip to see all the art worth seeing in the whole world.

After a long service in the Academy, West quarreled with some of the
Academicians and sent in his resignation; but his fellow artists had
too much sense and good feeling to accept it, and begged him to
reconsider his action. He did so, and returned to his place as
president. When West was sixty-five years old he made a picture,
"Christ Healing the Sick," which he meant to give to the Quakers in
Philadelphia, who were trying to get funds with which to build a
hospital. This picture was to be sold for the fund; but it was no
sooner finished and exhibited in London before being sent to America,
than it was bought for 3,000 guineas for Great Britain. West did not
contribute this money to the hospital fund, but he made a replica for
the Quakers, and sent that instead of the original.

West was eighty-two years old when he died and he was buried in
St. Paul's Cathedral after a distinguished and honoured life. Since
Europe gave him his education and also supported him most of his life,
we must consider him more English than American, his birth on American
soil being a mere accident.

  PLATE--THE DEATH OF WOLFE

This death scene upon the Plains of Abraham, without the walls of
Quebec in 1759, must not be taken as a realistic picture of an
historic event. West drew upon his imagination and upon portraits of
the prominent men supposed to have been grouped around the dying
general, and he has produced a dramatic effect. One can imagine it is
the two with fingers pointing backward who have just brought the
memorable tidings, "They run! They run!"

"Who run?" asks Wolfe, for when he had fallen the issues of the fight
were still undecided. "The French, sir. They give way everywhere."
"Thank God! I die in peace," replied the English hero. At a time when
the momentous results of this battle had set the whole of Great
Britain afire with enthusiasm it is easy to understand the popularity
of a picture such as this. It was sold in 1791 for œ28, and now
belongs to the Duke of Westminster. There is a replica of it in the
Queen's drawing-room at Hampton Court.

Another famous historical picture by West is "The Battle of La Hogue."




INDEX

About, Edmund
Academia, Florence
Academy, French
  Rome,
  Royal, London,
  Venice
"Acis and Galatea"
Adoration of the Magi
"Adoration of the Shepherds"
"After a Summer Shower"
"Afternoon"
Albert, King
"Alessandro del Borro"
Alexander VI.
Alice, Princess
Allegri, Antonio. _See_ Correggi
Allegri, Pompino
"Ambassadors, The"
"American Mustangs"
"Anatomy Lesson, The"
Andrea del Sarto
Angelo, Michael
"Angels' Heads"
"Angelas, The"
Anguisciola, Sofonisba
Anne of Cleves
Anne of Saxony
Annunciata, cloister of the
"Annunciation, The"
"Ansidei Madonna, The"
"Antiope"
Apocalypse
Apollo Belvedere
Apostles, the Four
Apostles' Heads
Appelles
"Archipelago"
Arena Chapel
Arrivabene Chapel
"Artist's Two Sons, The"
"Arundel Castle and Mill"
"Assumption of the Virgin"
"At the Well"
Audran
Augusta, Princess
"Avenue, Middelharnis, Holland"
"Awakened Conscience, The"

"Bacchanal"
"Bacchus and Ariadne"
Balzac
"Banquet in Levi's House"
"Baptism of Christ, The"
Barbizon
Barile
Barry, James
Bartoli d'Angiolini
Bartolommeo, Fra
Bassano
"Bathers"
"Battle of La Hogue"
Beaumont, Sir George
Beaux-Arts, l'Ecole des
Begarelli
Bellini, Gentile
Bellini, Giovanni
Bembo, Cardinal
Beneguette
"Bent Tree"
Bentivoglio, Cardinal
Berck, Derich
Berensen, Bernard
Bergholt, East
"Berkshire Hills"
"Bianca"
Bicknell, Maria
Bigio, Francia
Bigordi. _See_ Ghirlandajo
Bird
"Birth of the Virgin"
  (Andrea del Sarto)
  (Murillo)
"Birth of Venus"
Blanc, Charles
"Blessed Herman Joseph, The"
"Bligh Shore"
"Blue Boy, The"
B”cklin, Arnold
"Boat-Building"
Boleyn, Anne
Bolton, Mrs. Sarah K.
Bonheur, Marie-Rosea
Bonheur, Raymond B.
Bordeaux
Bordone. _See_ Giotto
Borghese Palace
Borgia family
Borgia, Lucretia
Botticelli
Boudin
Bouguereau, William Adolphe
"Boy at the Stile, The"
Brancacci Chapel
Brant, Isabella
Breton, Jules
Brice, J. B.
Brouwer
Browning
Brunellesco
"Brutus"
Buckingham, Duke of
Buonarroti. _See_ Angelo Michael
Burgundy, Duchess of
Burke, Edmund
Burne-Jones, Sir Edward
Burr, Margaret

Caffin
Cagliari, Benedetto
Cagliari, Carletto
Cagliari, Gabriele
Cagliari, Paolo. _See_ Veronese
Cambridge, University of
"Camels at Rest"
Campagna
Campana, Pedro
Campanile, Florence
Canova
Caprese
"Capture of Samson"
Capuchin Church
Capuchin Convent
Carlos, Don
"Carmencita"
Carmine, Church of the
"Carthage"
Castillo, Juan del
Cecelia, wife of Titian
Cellini
Centennial Exhibition
Chamberlain, Arthur
"Chant d'Amour"
Chantry, Sir Francis
"Charity"
Charles, I.
Charles V.
Charles X.
Cherokees
"Chess Players, The"
"Children of Charles I."
"Christ Healing the Sick"
"Christ in the Temple"
"Christina of Denmark"
Church
Cibber, Theophilus
Cimabue
Claude
"Cleopatra Landing at Tarsus"
"Cock Fight"
Cogniet, L‚on
Colnaghi
"Cologne"
Constable, John
Copley, John Singleton
Copper Plate Magazine
Cornelia, Rembrandt's daughter
Cornelissen, Cornelis
"Cornfield"
"Coronation of Marie de Medicis"
"Coronation of the Virgin"
  (Ghirlandajo)
  (Raphael)
Corot, Jean Baptiste Camille
Correggio
Cosimo, Piero di
"Cottage, The"
"Countess Folkstone"
"Countess of Spencer"
Coventry, Countess of
"Creation of Man, The"
"Creation of the World, The"
Crozat
"Crucifixion, The"
  (Raphael)
  (Tintoretto)

"Dana‰"
Dandie Dinmont
"Daniel"
Dante
"Daphnis and Chloe"
Daubigny
"David"
"Dead Christ, The"
"Dead Mallard"
"Death of Ananias, The"
"Death of Wolfe, The"
"Dedham Mill"
"Dedham Vale"
Delaroche
"Deluge, The"
"Descent from the Cross, The"
  (Campana)
  (Rembrandt)
  (Rubens)
De Witt
Diaz
"Dice Players, The"
Dickens, Charles
Digby, Kenelm
"Dignity and Impudence"
"Divine Comedy"
Dolce, Ludovico
Donatello
"Don Quixote"
Dor‚, Paul Gustave
D'Orsay
"Duchess of Devonshire and Her Daughter, The"
"Duel After the Masked Ball"
Dunthorne, John
Dupr‚
Durand, Carolus
Drer, Albrecht
Dyce

"Ecce Homo"
"Education of Mary, The"
Edward, King
Egyptian art
Elizabeth, Cousin of the Virgin
Elizabeth, Princess
"Embarkation for the Island of Cythera"
"Emperor at Solferino, The"
Engravers and engraving
"Entombment, The"
  (Titian)
  (Veronese)
Eos
"Equestrian Portrait of Don Balthasar Carlos"
Errard, Charles
Escorial, the
Est‚ban, Bartolom‚. See Murillo
Est‚ban, Gaspar
Est‚ban, Therese
Etchers and etching
"Europa and the Bull"
"Eve of St. Agnes, The"

Fallen, Ambrose
"Fall of Man, The"
"Fantasy of Morocco"
Fawkes, Hawksworth
"Feast in the House of Simon"
"Feast of Ahasuerus"
"Ferdinand of Austria"
Ferdinand III., Grand Duke
Ferrara, Duke of
"Fˆte Champˆtre"
"Fighting T‚m‚raire, The"
Filipepi, Mariano
"Finding of Christ in the Temple, The"
"Flamborough, Miss"
"Flatford Mill on the River Stour"
"Flora"
  (B”cklin)
  (Titian)
"Foal of an Ass, The"
Fondato de' Tedeschi
Fontainebleau
"Fool, The"
"Fornarina, The"
Fortuny, Mariano
Fourment family
Fourment, Helena
"Four Saints"
Francis I.
Frari, monks of the
Frey, Agnes
"Friedland"

Gainsborough, Mary
Gainsborough, Thomas
Gallery, Berlin
  Dresden
  Grosvenor
  Hague, The
  Hermitage, The
  Lichtenstein, Vienna
  Louvre
  Luxembourg
  Madrid
  Naples
  National, Edinburgh
  National, London
  Old Pinakothek, Munich
  Parma
  Pitti Palace
  Uffizi
  Vienna
Garrick
"Gay Company in a Park"
Gell‚e. See Claude Lorrain
George III.
"Georgia Pines"
Gerbier
Germ, The
G‚r“me, Jean L‚on
Gersaint
Ghibertio
Ghirlandajo
"Gibeon Farm"
Gignoux, Regis
"Gillingham Mill"
Gillot
Giorgione
Giotto
"Giovanna degli Albizi"
Girten, Thomas
Gisze, Gorg
Gladstone, Mr. and Mrs.
"Gleaners, The"
"Glebe Farm"
Goethe
"Golden Calf, The"
"Golden Stairs, The"
Goldsmith, craft of the
Goldsmith, Oliver
Gonzaga, Vincenzo
"Good Samaritan, The"
Graham, Judge
Granacci
Gravelot
Grignon, Madame de
Gualfonda
"Guardian Angel, The"
Guidi, Giovanni
Guidi, Simone
Guidi. Tommaso. _See_ Masaccio
Guido
Guidobaldo of Urbino
Guilds
"Gust of Wind"

Haarlem Town Hall
"Haarlem's Little Forest"
"Hadleigh Castle"
Hals, Franz
Hamerton
Hamilton, Duchess of
"Hampstead Heath"
Hancock, John
"Hans of Antwerp"
Haranger, Abb‚
"Hark!"
"Harvest Waggon, The"
Hassam, Childe
Hastings, Warren
"Haunt of the Gazelle, The"
Hayman
"Haystack in Sunshine"
"Hay Wain, The"
"Head of Christ"
"Head of Medusa"
Hearn, George A.
Henin
Henrietta, Queen
Henry III.
Henry VIII.
"Henschel"
"Hercules"
Herrera
"Highland Sheep"
"Hille Bobbe, the Witch of Haarlem"
Hill, Jack
"Hireling Shepherd, The"
Hobbema, Meindert
Hogarth, William
Holbein, Ambrosius
Holbein, Hans, the Younger
Holbein, Michael
Holbein, Philip
Holbein, Sigismund
Holbein, the Elder
"Holofernes"
Holper, Barbara
"Holy Family and St. Bridget"
Holy Family in art, The
"Holy Family under a Palm Tree, The"
"Holy Night, The"
"Homer St. Gaudens"
"Hon. Ann Bingham, The"
Hood, Admiral
"Horse Fair, The"
Howard, Catherine
Hudson, Thomas
Hunt, William Holman

"II Giorno"
"II Medico del Correggio"
"Immaculate Conception, The"
Indian pottery
Infanta
"Infant Jesus and St. John, The"
Inman
Inness
"Innocence"
"In Paradise"
Inquisition, Spanish
"Interior of the Mosque of Omar"
Isabella, Queen
Islay
"Isle of the Dead, The"
"Ivybridge"

Jacopo da Empoli
Jacque
"Jane Seymour"
"Jerusalem by Moonlight"
"Jesus and the Lamb"
Jesus in art
Johnson, Dr.
Jones, George
Joseph in art
"Joseph in Egypt"
"Joseph's Dream"
"Judgment of Paris, The"
"Judith"
Julienne
Julius II.
Justiniana

Kann, Rudolf
"King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid"
"King of Hearts"
"Kirmesse, The"
Knackfuss
"Knight, Death and the Devil, The"

"La Belle JardiniŠre"
"La Disputa"
"Lady Elcho, Mrs. Arden, Mrs. Tennant"
"La Gioconda"
"Landscape with Cattle."
Landseer, John
Landseer, Sir Edwin Henry
Landseer, Thomas
"La Primavera"
"Last Judgment, The"
  (Angelo)
  (Tintoretto)
  (Titian)
"Last Supper, The"
  (Andrea del Sarto)
  (Ghirlandajo)
  (Veronese)
  (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Laughing Cavalier, The"
Laura
Lavinia, daughter of Titian
"Lavinia, the Artist's Daughter"
Lawrence, Sir Thomas
"Leda"
  (Correggio)
  (G‚rome)
Lee, Jeremiah
Legion of Honour
Lemon, Margaret
Leonardo. See da Vinci
Leo X.
Lewis, J. F.
_Liber Studiorium_
"Liber Veritas"
Library, Boston Public
"Light of the World, The"
Linley, Thomas
Linley, Samuel
"Lion Disturbed at His Repast"
"Lion Enjoying His Repast"
"Lioness, The Study off a"
"Lion Hunt, A"
Lippi, Fra Filippo
"Lock on the Stour"
Lombardi
"Lords Digby and Russell"
"Lord Wharton"
Lorenzalez, Claudio
Lorrain, Claude
Lott, Willy
Louis XIV.
Louise, Princess
"Love Among the Ruins"
"Low Life and High Life"
Lowther, Sir William
Lucas van Leyden
Lucia, mother of Titian
Lucretia, wife of Andrea del Sarto
Luther, Martin
Madonna and Child
"Madonna and Child with St. Anne"
"Madonna and Child with Saints"
"Madonna del'Arpie"
"Madonna della Caraffa"
"Madonna della Casa d'Alba"
"Madonna della Sedia"
"Madonna del Granduca"
"Madonna del Pesce"
"Madonna del Sacco"
"Madonna of the Palms"
"Madonna of the Rosary."
Madrazo
"Magdalene, The"
Manet
"Manoah's Sacrifice"
Mantegna
Mantua, Duke of
Mantua, Duke Frederick II. of
"Man with the Hoe, The"
"Man with the Sword, The"
Margherita
Maria Theresa
"Marriage … la Mode"
"Marriage at Cana, The"
"Marriage Contract, The"
"Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne, The"
"Marriage of Mary and Joseph, The"
"Marriage of St. Catherine, The"
"Marriage of Samson, The"
Martineau
"Martyrdom of St. Agnes, The"
"Martyrdom of St. Peter, The"
"Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, The"
Mary, the Virgin, in art
Masaccio (Tommasco Guidi)
Masoline
Mastersingers, Nuremberg
Maximillian, Emperor
Medici family
Medici, Giovanni di Bicci de'
Medici, Lorenzi de'
Medici, Ottaviano de'
Medici, Pietro de'
"Meeting of St. John and St. Anna at Jerusalem"
Meissonier, Jean Louis Ernest
"Melancholy"
Merlini, Girolama
"Meyer Madonna, The"
Michallon
"Midsummer Noon"
Millais
Millet, Jean Fran‡ois
Millet, MŠre
"Mill Stream"
"Miracle of St. Mark, The"
Missions, Spanish
Missirini
"Mr. Marquand"
"Mr. Penrose"
"Mrs. Meyer and Children"
"Mrs. Peel"
Mohawk
Mona Lisa
Monet, Claude
"Money Changers, The"
"Moonlight at Salerno"
Morales
"Moreau and His Staff before Hohenlinden"
More, Sir Thomas
"Morning Prayer, The"
"Moses"
"Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law"
Mudge, Dr.
Murat
Murillo (Bartolom‚ Est‚ban)
Murillo, Do€a Anna
Museum of Art, Basel
  Berlin
  Court, Vienna
  Madrid
  Metropolitan, New York
  Prado
  Rijks, Amsterdam
  South Kensington
Muther
"Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, The"

"Naiads at Play"
Napoleon
"Nativity, The"
  (Botticelli)
  (Drer)
Navarrette
"Nieces of Sir Horace Walpole"
"Night Watch, The"
"Noli me Tangere"
Norham Castle
Nuremberg
"Nurse and the Child, The"

"'Oh, Pearl' Quoth I"
"Old Bachelor, The"
"Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner, The"
Olivares

Pacheco
"Pallas"
"Pan and Psyche"
Pantheon
Pareja
"Parish Clerk, The"
'Past and Present"
Passignano
"Pathless Water, The"
Paul III.
"Paysage"
Pazzi family
"Penzance"
Percy, Bishop
Perez family
Perez, Maria
Perugino
Philip II.
Philip III.
Philip IV.
Picot
"Pilate Washing His Hands"
Pinas
Pirkneimer
Pissaro
"Ploughing"
Pope, Alexander
"Portrait of Old Man and Boy"
Portraits of artists by themselves
"Praying Arab"
"Praying Hands"
Pre-Raphaelites
"Presentation of Christ in the Temple"
"Presentation of the Family of Darius to Alexander"
Prim, General
"Procession of the Magi"
"Prowling Lion, The"
"Psyche and Cupid"
Pypelincx, Maria

Quakers
"Quin, Portrait of"

Rabelais
"Rake's Progress, The"
"Rape of Ganymede, The"
"Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, The"
Raphael (Sanzio)
Reade, Charles
"Reading at Diderot's, A"
"Reaper, The"
"Regions of Joy"
Rembrandt (van Rijn)
"Retreat from Russia"
Reynolds, Samuel
Reynolds, Sir Joshua
Ribera
Rinaldo and Armida
"Road over the Downs, The"
"Robert Cheseman with his Falcon"
Robusto, Jacopo. _See_ Tintoretto
Romano, Guilio
Rood, Professor
"Rosary, Story of the"
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, W. M.
Rothschild, Lord
Rousseau
Royal Princess
Rubens, Albert
Rubens, John
Rubens, Nicholas
Rubens, Peter Paul
Ruisdael, Jacob van
Ruskin, John
Ruthven, Lady Mary
Sachs, Hans
"Sacred and Profane Love"
"St. Anthony of Padua"
"St. Augustine"
"St. Barbara"
St. Bernard dog
St. Bernardino
"Saint Cecelia"
St. Christopher
St. Clemente
St. Dominic
St. George
"St. George and the Dragon"
"St. George Slaying the Dragon"
St. Giorgio Maggiore
"St. Jerome"
St, John the Baptist
St. Jovis Shooting Company
St. Leger, Colonel
St. Lucas, Guild of
St. Luke, Guild of
St. Mark
St. Martin's Church
"St. Michael Attacking Satan."
"St. Nobody"
St. Paul's Cathedral
St. Peter
"St. Peter Baptising"
St. Peter's Church
"St. Rocco Healing the Sick"
"St. Sebastian."
  (Botticelli)
  (Correggio)
  (Titian)
St. Sebastian, Church of
St. Sebastian, Monastery of
St. Sixtus
St. Trinita, Church of
"Salisbury Cathedral"
Salon
Salvator Rosa
"Samson"
"Samson Threatening His Stepfather"
"Samson's Wedding"
San Francisco
Santa Croce
Santa Maria della Pace
Santa Maria delle Grazte
Santa Maria del Orto
Santa Maria Novella
Santi, Bartolommeo
Santi Giovanni
Santo Cruz, Church of
Santo Spirito, Convent of
Sanzio. _See_ Raphael
Sarcinelli, Cornelio
Sargent, John Singer
Sarto, Andrea del. _See_ Andrea
Saskia
Savonarola
"Scapegoat, The"
"Scene from Woodstock"
Schiavone
Schmidt, Elizabeth
Schongauer
School Girl's Hymn
"School of Anatomy, The"
School of Art, Academy, London
  American
  Andalusian
  Castilian
  Dsseldorf
  Dutch
  English
  Flemish
  Florentine
  Fontainebleau-Barbizon
  Foreign
  French in
  German
  Hudson River
  Impressionist
  Italian
  Nuremberg
  Parma
  Roman
  Spanish
  Umbrian
  Venetian
"School, of Athens, The"
"School, of Cupid, The"
"Scotch Deer"
Scott, Sir Walter
Scrovegno, Enrico
Scuola di San Rocco
"Seaport at Sunset"
Sebastian
"Serpent Charmer, The"
Servi, convent of the
Sesto, Cesare de
Seurat
Sforza, Ludovico
"Shadow of Death, The"
Shakespeare
Sheepshanks Collection
"Shepherd Guarding Sheep"
Sheppey, Isle of
Sheridan, Mrs. Richard Brinsley
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley
Siddons, Mrs.
Silva, Rodriguez de
Sistine Chapel
"Sistine Madonna, The"
Six, Jan
Sixtus IV.
Skynner, Sir John
"Slaughter of the Innocents, The"
"Slave Ship, The"
"Sleeping Bloodhound, The"
"Sleeping Venus, The"
Smith, John
"Snake Charmers, The"
"Snow-storm at Sea, A"
Society of Arts
Soderini
Solus Lodge
"Sortie, The"
  _See also_ Night Watch
Sotomayer, Do€a Beatriz de
  Cabrera y
"Sower, The"
Spaniel, King Charles
"Spanish Marriage, The"
Spinola, Marquis of
"Sport of the Waves"
"Spring"
Sterne, Lawrence
"Storm, The"
Stour, River
"Straw Hat, The"
Sudbury
Sully
Sultan of Turkey
"Sunset on the Passaic"
"Sunset on the Sea"
"Surrender of Breda"
"Susanna and the Elders"
"Susanna's Bath"
"Sussex Downs"
Swanenburch, Jacob van
"Sword-Dance, The"
"Syndics of the Cloth Hall"

Taddei, Taddeo
Tassi, Agostine
Thackeray
Thornhill, Sir James
"Three Ages, The"
"Three Saints and God the Father"
Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti)
Titian (Tiziano Vecelli)
Tornabuoni, Giovanni
Torregiano
Trafalgar Square
"Transfiguration, The"
"Tribute Money, The"
"Trinity"
Troyon
Trumbull, American painter
Trumbull, English diplomat
Tulp, Nicholaus
Turner, Charles
Turner, Joseph Mallord William
"Two Beggar Boys"
Tybis, Geryck

Ulenberg, Saskia van
Urban VIII.
Urbino, Duke of

"Valley Farm, The"
Van Dyck, Sir Anthony
Van Mander, Karel
Van Marcke
Van Noort, Adam
Van Rijn. _See_ Rembrandt
Van Veen
Varangeville
Vasari
Vatican
Vecchio, Palazzo
Vecchio, Palma
Vecelli family
Vecelli, Orsa
Vecelli, Orzio
Vecelli, Pompino
Vecelli, Tiziano. _See_ Titian
Velasquez (Diego Rodriguez de Silva)
"Venice Enthroned"
"Venus Dispatching Cupid"
"Venus Worship"
Verhaecht, Tobias
Vernon
Veronese, Paul (Paolo Cagliari)
Verrocchio
"Vestal Virgin, The"
Victoria, Queen
"Villa by the Sea"
"Village Festival, The"
"Ville d'Avray"
Vinci, Leonardo da
Violante
"Virgin as Consoler, The"
"Virgin's Rest Near Bethlehem"
"Vision of St. Anthony, The"
"Visitation, The"
"Visitor, The"
"Visit to the Burgomaster"

Warren, General Joseph
"Water Carrier, The"
"Watermill, The"
Watteau, Jean Antoine
"Wedding Feast at Cana, The"
Wells, Frederick
West, Sir Benjamin
"Weymouth Bay"
Whitcomb, Ida Prentice
"William, Prince of Orange"
William the Silent
"Will-o'-the-Wisp"
"Willows near Arras"
Wilson
"Winnower, The"
"Winter"
Wolgemuth
"Woodcutters, The"
"Wooded Landscape"
"Wood Gatherers, The"

Yarmouth
"Young People's Story of Art"
"Youth Surprised by Death"

"Zingarella"
Zuccato, Sebastian




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