Pictures Every Child Should Know
by
Dolores Bacon
Part 3 out of 6
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
Gelle. 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 Lon 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 FRANOIS 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--Franois, 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.
Franois 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 Franois 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 "Mre 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 "Mre
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 Mre 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 Estban 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 Drer
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 Jardinire."
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
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