A Text-Book of the History of Painting Part 11

[Footnote 10: Died, 1894.]

[Footnote 11: Died, 1899.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 65.--ROUSSEAU, CHARCOAL BURNERS' HUT. FULLER COLLECTION.]

THE PEASANT PAINTERS: Allied again in feeling and sentiment with the Fontainebleau landscapists were some celebrated painters of peasant life, chief among whom stood Millet (1814-1875), of Barbizon. The pictorial inclination of Millet was early grounded by a study of Delacroix, the master romanticist, and his work is an expression of romanticism modified by an individual study of nature and applied to peasant life. He was peasant born, living and dying at Barbizon, sympathizing with his cla.s.s, and painting them with great poetic force and simplicity. His sentiment sometimes has a literary bias, as in his far-famed but indifferent Angelus, but usually it is strictly pictorial and has to do with the beauty of light, air, color, motion, life, as shown in The Sower or The Gleaners. Technically he was not strong as a draughtsman or a brushman, but he had a large feeling for form, great simplicity in line, keen perception of the relations of light and dark, and at times an excellent color-sense. He was virtually the discoverer of the peasant as an art subject, and for this, as for his original point of view and artistic feeling, he is ranked as one of the foremost artists of the century.

Jules Breton (1827-), though painting little besides the peasantry, is no Millet follower, for he started painting peasant scenes at about the same time as Millet. His affinities were with the New-Greeks early in life, and ever since he has inclined toward the academic in style, though handling the rustic subject. He is a good technician, except in his late work; but as an original thinker, as a pictorial poet, he does not show the intensity or profundity of Millet. The followers of the Millet-Breton tradition are many. The blue-frocked and sabot-shod peasantry have appeared in salon and gallery for twenty years and more, but with not very good results. The imitators, as usual, have caught at the subject and missed the spirit. Billet and Legros, contemporaries of Millet, still living, and Lerolle, a man of present-day note, are perhaps the most considerable of the painters of rural subjects to-day.

THE SEMI-CLa.s.sICISTS: It must not be inferred that the cla.s.sic influence of David and Ingres disappeared from view with the coming of the romanticists, the Fontainebleau landscapists, and the Barbizon painters. On the contrary, side by side with these men, and opposed to them, were the believers in line and academic formulas of the beautiful. The whole tendency of academic art in France was against Delacroix, Rousseau, and Millet. During their lives they were regarded as heretics in art and without the pale of the Academy. Their art, however, combined with nature study and the realism of Courbet, succeeded in modifying the severe cla.s.sicism of Ingres into what has been called semi-cla.s.sicism. It consists in the elevated, heroic, or historical theme, academic form well drawn, some show of bright colors, smoothness of brush-work, and precision and nicety of detail.

In treatment it attempts the realistic, but in spirit it is usually stilted, cold, unsympathetic.

Cabanel (1823-1889) and Bouguereau (1825-1905) have both represented semi-cla.s.sic art well. They are justly ranked as famous draughtsmen and good portrait-painters, but their work always has about it the stamp of the academy machine, a something done to order, knowing and exact, but lacking in the personal element. It is a weakness of the academic method that it virtually banishes the individuality of eye and hand in favor of school formulas. Cabanel and Bouguereau have painted many incidents of cla.s.sic and historic story, but with never a dash of enthusiasm or a suggestion of the great qualities of painting.

Their drawing has been as thorough as could be asked for, but their colorings have been harsh and their brushes cold and thin.

Gerome (1824-[12]) is a man of cla.s.sic training and inclination, but his versatility hardly allows him to be cla.s.sified anywhere. He was first a leader of the New-Greeks, painting delicate mythological subjects; then a historical painter, showing deaths of Caesar and the like; then an Orientalist, giving scenes from Cairo and Constantinople; then a _genre_ painter, depicting contemporary subjects in the many lands through which he has travelled. Whatever he has done shows semi-cla.s.sic drawing, ethnological and archaeological knowledge, Parisian technic, and exact detail. His travels have not changed his precise scientific point of view. He is a true academician at bottom, but a more versatile and cultured painter than either Cabanel or Bouguereau. He draws well, sometimes uses color well, and is an excellent painter of textures. A man of great learning in many departments he is no painter to be sneered at, and yet not a painter to make the pulse beat faster or to arouse the aesthetic emotions. His work is impersonal, objective fact, showing a brilliant exterior but inwardly devoid of feeling.

[Footnote 12: Died, 1904.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 66.--MILLET. THE GLEANERS. LOUVRE.]

Paul Baudry (1828-1886), though a disciple of line, was not precisely a semi-cla.s.sicist, and perhaps for that reason was superior to any of the academic painters of his time. He was a follower of the old masters in Rome more than the _ecole des Beaux Arts_. His subjects, aside from many splendid portraits, were almost all cla.s.sical, allegorical, or mythological. He was a fine draughtsman, and, what is more remarkable in conjunction therewith, a fine colorist. He was hardly a great originator, and had not pa.s.sion, dramatic force, or much sentiment, except such as may be found in his delicate coloring and rhythm of line. Nevertheless he was an artist to be admired for his purity of purpose and breadth of accomplishment. His chief work is to be seen in the Opera at Paris. Puvis de Chavannes (1824-[13]) is quite a different style of painter, and is remarkable for fine delicate tones of color which hold their place well on wall or ceiling, and for a certain grandeur of composition. In his desire to revive the monumental painting of the Renaissance he has met with much praise and much blame. He is an artist of sincerity and learning, and as a wall-painter has no superior in contemporary France.

[Footnote 13: Died, 1898.]

Hebert (1817-1908), an early painter of academic tendencies, and Henner (1829-), fond of form and yet a brushman with an idyllic feeling for light and color in dark surroundings, are painters who may come under the semi-cla.s.sic grouping. Lefebvre (1834-) is probably the most p.r.o.nounced in academic methods among the present men, a draughtsman of ability.

PORTRAIT AND FIGURE PAINTERS: Under this heading may be included those painters who stand by themselves, showing no positive preference for either the cla.s.sic or romantic followings. Bonnat (1833-) has painted all kinds of subjects--_genre_, figure, and historical pieces--but is perhaps best known as a portrait-painter. He has done forcible work.

Some of it indeed is astonis.h.i.+ng in its realistic modelling--the accentuation of light and shadow often causing the figures to advance unnaturally. From this feature and from his detail he has been known for years as a "realist." His anatomical Christ on the Cross and mural paintings in the Pantheon are examples. As a portrait-painter he is acceptable, if at times a little raw in color. Another portrait-painter of celebrity is Carolus-Duran (1837-). He is rather startling at times in his portrayal of robes and draperies, has a facility of the brush that is frequently deceptive, and in color is sometimes vivid. He has had great success as a teacher, and is, all told, a painter of high rank. Delaunay (1828-1892) in late years painted little besides portraits, and was one of the conservatives of French art. Laurens (1838-) has been more of a historical painter than the others, and has dealt largely with death scenes. He is often spoken of as "the painter of the dead," a man of sound training and excellent technical power.

Regnault (1843-1871) was a figure and _genre_ painter with much feeling for oriental light and color, who unfortunately was killed in battle at twenty-seven years of age. He was an artist of promise, and has left several notable canvases. Among the younger men who portray the historical subject in an elevated style mention should be made of Cormon (1845-), Benjamin-Constant (1845-[14]), and Rochegrosse. As painters of portraits Aman-Jean and Carriere[15] have long held rank, and each succeeding Salon brings new portraitists to the front.

[Footnote 14: Died, 1902.]

[Footnote 15: Died, 1906.]

THE REALISTS: About the time of the appearance of Millet, say 1848, there also came to the front a man who scorned both cla.s.sicism and romanticism, and maintained that the only model and subject of art should be nature. This man, Courbet (1819-1878), really gave a third tendency to the art of this century in France, and his influence undoubtedly had much to do with modifying both the cla.s.sic and romantic tendencies. Courbet was a man of arrogant, dogmatic disposition, and was quite heartily detested during his life, but that he was a painter of great ability few will deny. His theory was the abolition of both sentiment and academic law, and the taking of nature just as it was, with all its beauties and all its deformities. This, too, was his practice to a certain extent. His art is material, and yet at times lofty in conception even to the sublime. And while he believed in realism he did not believe in petty detail, but rather in the great truths of nature. These he saw with a discerning eye and portrayed with a masterful brush. He believed in what he saw only, and had more the observing than the reflective or emotional disposition.

As a technician he was coa.r.s.e but superbly strong, handling sky, earth, air, with the ease and power of one well trained in his craft.

His subjects were many--the peasantry of France, landscape, and the sea holding prominent places--and his influence, though not direct because he had no pupils of consequence, has been most potent with the late men.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 67.--CABANEL. PHaeDRA.]

The young painter of to-day who does things in a "realistic" way is frequently met with in French art. L'hermitte (1844-), Julien Dupre (1851-), and others have handled the peasant subject with skill, after the Millet-Courbet initiative; and Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884) excited a good deal of admiration in his lifetime for the truth and evident sincerity of his art. Bastien's point of view was realistic enough, but somewhat material. He never handled the large composition with success, but in small pieces and in portraits he was quite above criticism. His following among the young men was considerable, and the so-called impressionists have ranked him among their disciples or leaders.

PAINTERS OF MILITARY SCENES, GENRE, ETC.: The art of Meissonier (1815-1891), while extremely realistic in modern detail, probably originated from a study of the seventeenth-century Dutchmen like Terburg and Metsu. It does not portray low life, but rather the half-aristocratic--the scholar, the cavalier, the gentleman of leisure. This is done on a small scale with microscopic nicety, and really more in the historical than the _genre_ spirit. Single figures and interiors were his preference, but he also painted a cycle of Napoleonic battle-pictures with much force. There is little or no sentiment about his work--little more than in that of Gerome. His success lay in exact technical accomplishment. He drew well, painted well, and at times was a superior colorist. His art is more admired by the public than by the painters; but even the latter do not fail to praise his skill of hand. He was a great craftsman in the infinitely little. As a great artist his rank is still open to question.

The _genre_ painting of fas.h.i.+onable life has been carried out by many followers of Meissonier, whose names need not be mentioned since they have not improved upon their forerunner. Toulmouche (1829-), Leloir (1843-1884), Vibert (1840-), Bargue (?-1883), and others, though somewhat different from Meissonier, belong among those painters of _genre_ who love detail, costumes, stories, and pretty faces. Among the painters of military _genre_ mention should be made of De Neuville (1836-1885), Berne-Bellecour (1838-), Detaille (1848-), and Aime-Morot (1850-), all of them painters of merit.

Quite a different style of painting--half figure-piece half _genre_--is to be found in the work of Ribot (1823-), a strong painter, remarkable for his apposition of high flesh lights with deep shadows, after the manner of Ribera, the Spanish painter. Roybet (1840-) is fond of rich stuffs and tapestries with velvet-clad characters in interiors, out of which he makes good color effects.

Bonvin (1817-1887) and Mettling have painted the interior with small figures, copper-kettles, and other still-life that have given brilliancy to their pictures. As a still-life painter Vollon (1833-) has never had a superior. His fruits, flowers, armors, even his small marines and harbor pieces, are painted with one of the surest brushes of this century. He is called the "painter's painter," and is a man of great force in handling color, and in large realistic effect. Dantan and Friant have both produced canvases showing figures in interiors.

A number of excellent _genre_ painters have been claimed by the impressionists as belonging to their brotherhood. There is little to warrant the claim, except the adoption to some extent of the modern ideas of illumination and flat painting. Dagnan-Bouveret (1852-) is one of these men, a good draughtsman, and a finished clean painter who by his recent use of high color finds himself occasionally looked upon as an impressionist. As a matter of fact he is one of the most conservative of the moderns--a man of feeling and imagination, and a fine technician. Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) is half romantic, half allegorical in subject, and in treatment oftentimes designedly vague and shadowy, more suggestive than realistic. Duez (1843-) and Gervex (1848-) are perhaps nearer to impressionism in their works than the others, but they are not at all advance advocates of this latest phase of art. In addition there are Cottet and Henri Martin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 68.--MEISSONIER. NAPOLEON IN 1814.]

THE IMPRESSIONISTS: The name is a misnomer. Every painter is an impressionist in so far as he records his impressions, and all art is impressionistic. What Manet (1833-1883), the leader of the original movement, meant to say was that nature should not be painted as it actually is, but as it "impresses" the painter. He and his few followers tried to change the name to Independents, but the original name has clung to them and been mistakenly fastened to a present band of landscape painters who are seeking effects of light and air and should be called luminists if it is necessary for them to be named at all. Manet was extravagant in method and disposed toward low life for a subject, which has always militated against his popularity; but he was a very important man for his technical discoveries regarding the relations of light and shadow, the flat appearance of nature, the exact value of color tones. Some of his works, like The Boy with a Sword and The Toreador Dead, are excellent pieces of painting. The higher imaginative qualities of art Manet made no great effort at attaining.

Degas stands quite by himself, strong in effects of motion, especially with race-horses, fine in color, and a delightful brushman in such subjects as ballet-girls and scenes from the theatre. Besnard is one of the best of the present men. He deals with the figure, and is usually concerned with the problem of harmonizing color under conflicting lights, such as twilight and lamplight. Beraud and Raffaelli are exceedingly clever in street scenes and character pieces; p.i.s.sarro[16] handles the peasantry in high color; Brown (1829-1890), the race-horse, and Renoir, the middle cla.s.s of social life. Caillebotte, Roll, Forain, and Miss Ca.s.satt, an American, are also cla.s.sed with the impressionists.

[Footnote 16: Died, 1903.]

IMPRESSIONIST LANDSCAPE PAINTERS: Of recent years there has been a disposition to change the key of light in landscape painting, to get nearer the truth of nature in the height of light and in the height of shadows. In doing this Claude Monet, the present leader of the movement, has done away with the dark brown or black shadow and subst.i.tuted the light-colored shadow, which is nearer the actual truth of nature. In trying to raise the pitch of light he has not been quite so successful, though accomplis.h.i.+ng something. His method is to use pure prismatic colors on the principle that color is light in a decomposed form, and that its proper juxtaposition on canvas will recompose into pure light again. Hence the use of light shadows and bright colors. The aim of these modern men is chiefly to gain the effect of light and air. They do not apparently care for subject, detail, or composition.

At present their work is in the experimental stage, but from the way in which it is being accepted and followed by the painters of to-day we may be sure the movement is of considerable importance. There will probably be a reaction in favor of more form and solidity than the present men give, but the high key of light will be retained. There are so many painters following these modern methods, not only in France but all over the world, that a list of their names would be impossible. In France Sisley with Monet are the two important landscapists. In marines Boudin and Montenard should be mentioned.

PRINc.i.p.aL WORKS: The modern French painters are seen to advantage in the Louvre, Luxembourg, Pantheon, Sorbonne, and the munic.i.p.al galleries of France. Also Metropolitan Museum New York, Chicago Art Inst.i.tute, Boston Museum, and many private collections in France and America. Consult for works in public or private hands, Champlin and Perkins, _Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings_, under names of artists.

CHAPTER XV.

SPANISH PAINTING.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Bermudez, _Diccionario de las Bellas Artes en Espana_; Davillier, _Memoire de Velasquez_; Davillier, _Fortuny_; Eusebi, _Los Differentes Escuelas de Pintura_; Ford, _Handbook of Spain_; Head, _History of Spanish and French Schools of Painting_; Justi, _Velasquez and his Times_; Lefort, _Velasquez_; Lefort, _Francisco Goya_; Lefort, _Murillo et son ecole_; Lefort, _La Peinture Espagnole_; Palomino de Castro y Velasco, _Vidas de los Pintores y Estatuarios Eminentes Espanoles_; Pa.s.savant, _Die Christliche Kunst in Spanien_; Plon, _Les Maitres Italiens au Service de la Maison d'Autriche_; Stevenson, _Velasquez_; Stirling, _Annals of the Artists of Spain_; Stirling, _Velasquez and his Works_; Tubino, _El Arte y los Artistas contemporaneos en la Peninsula_; Tubino, _Murillo_; Viardot, _Notices sur les Princ.i.p.aux Peintres de l'Espagne_; Yriarte, _Goya, sa Biographie_, etc.

SPANISH ART MOTIVES: What may have been the early art of Spain we are at a loss to conjecture. The reigns of the Moor, the Iconoclast, and, finally, the Inquisitor, have left little that dates before the fourteenth century. The miniatures and sacred relics treasured in the churches and said to be of the apostolic period, show the traces of a much later date and a foreign origin. Even when we come down to the fifteenth century and meet with art produced in Spain, we have a following of Italy or the Netherlands. In methods and technic it was derivative more than original, though almost from the beginning peculiarly Spanish in spirit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 69.--SANCHEZ COELLO. CLARA EUGENIA, DAUGHTER OF PHILIP II. MADRID.]

That spirit was a dark and savage one, a something that cringed under the lash of the Church, bowed before the Inquisition, and played the executioner with the paint-brush. The bulk of Spanish art was Church art, done under ecclesiastical domination, and done in form without question or protest. The religious subject ruled. True enough, there was portraiture of n.o.bility, and under Philip and Velasquez a half-monarchical art of military scenes and _genre_; but this was not the bent of Spanish painting as a whole. Even in late days, when Velasquez was reflecting the haughty court, Murillo was more widely and nationally reflecting the believing provinces and the Church faith of the people. It is safe to say, in a general way, that the Church was responsible for Spanish art, and that religion was its chief motive.

There was no revived antique, little of the nude or the pagan, little of consequence in landscape, little, until Velasquez's time, of the real and the actual. An ascetic view of life, faith, and the hereafter prevailed. The pietistic, the fervent, and the devout were not so conspicuous as the morose, the ghastly, and the horrible. The saints and martyrs, the crucifixions and violent deaths, were eloquent of the torture-chamber. It was more ecclesiasticism by blood and violence than Christianity by peace and love. And Spain welcomed this. For of all the children of the Church she was the most faithful to rule, crus.h.i.+ng out heresy with an iron hand, gaining strength from the Catholic reaction, and upholding the Jesuits and the Inquisition.

METHODS OF PAINTING: Spanish art worthy of mention did not appear until the fifteenth century. At that time Spain was in close relations with the Netherlands, and Flemish painting was somewhat followed. How much the methods of the Van Eycks influenced Spain would be hard to determine, especially as these Northern methods were mixed with influences coming from Italy. Finally, the Italian example prevailed by reason of Spanish students in Italy and Italian painters in Spain.

Florentine line, Venetian color, and Neapolitan light-and-shade ruled almost everywhere, and it was not until the time of Velasquez--the period just before the eighteenth-century decline--that distinctly Spanish methods, founded on nature, really came forcibly to the front.

SPANISH SCHOOLS OF PAINTING: There is difficulty in cla.s.sifying these schools of painting because our present knowledge of them is limited.

Isolated somewhat from the rest of Europe, the Spanish painters have never been critically studied as the Italians have been, and what is at present known about the schools must be accepted subject to critical revision hereafter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 70.--MURILLO. ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA. BERLIN.]

The earliest school seems to have been made up from a gathering of artists at Toledo, who limned, carved, and gilded in the cathedral; but this school was not of long duration. It was merged into the Castilian school, which, after the building of Madrid, made its home in that capital and drew its forces from the towns of Toledo, Valladolid, and Badajoz. The Andalusian school, which rose about the middle of the sixteenth century, was made up from the local schools of Seville, Cordova, and Granada. The Valencian school, to the southeast, rose about the same time, and was finally merged into the Andalusian. The Aragonese school, to the east, was small and of no great consequence, though existing in a feeble way to the end of the seventeenth century. The painters of these schools are not very strongly marked apart by methods or school traditions, and perhaps the divisions would better be looked upon as more geographical than otherwise. None of the schools really began before the sixteenth century, though there are names of artists and some extant pictures before that date, and with the seventeenth century all art in Spain seems to have centred about Madrid.

Spanish painting started into life concurrently with the rise to prominence of Spain as a political kingdom. What, if any, direct effect the maritime discoveries, the conquests of Granada and Naples, the growth of literature, and the decline of Italy, may have had upon Spanish painting can only be conjectured; but certainly the sudden advance of the nation politically and socially was paralleled by the advance of its art.

THE CASTILIAN SCHOOL: This school probably had no so-called founder.

It was a growth from early art traditions at Toledo, and afterward became the chief school of the kingdom owing to the patronage of Philip II. and Philip IV. at Madrid. The first painter of importance in the school seems to have been Antonio Rincon (1446?-1500?). He is sometimes spoken of as the father of Spanish painting, and as having studied in Italy with Castagno and Ghirlandajo, but there is little foundation for either statement. He painted chiefly at Toledo, painted portraits of Ferdinand and Isabella, and had some skill in hard drawing. Berruguete (1480?-1561) studied with Michael Angelo, and is supposed to have helped him in the Vatican. He afterward returned to Spain, painted many altar-pieces, and was patronized as painter, sculptor, and architect by Charles V. and Philip II. He was probably the first to introduce pure Italian methods into Spain, with some coldness and dryness of coloring and handling. Becerra (1520?-1570) was born in Andalusia, but worked in Castile, and was a man of Italian training similar to Berruguete. He was an exceptional man, perhaps, in his use of mythological themes and nude figures.