Artists Past and Present Part 5

Whatever the subject, the treatment is always brilliant, frank and joyous. Larsson's brushwork is light and flowing; he has, indeed, a certain French vivacity of technique, but his motives and his personal point of view are so purely Scandinavian as to leave no other impression on the mind. Nor is he merely the painter of the Swedish type. He is the painter of intimate home life and character as found within his own walls. Hardly any other family in Sweden is known so well as his, and the variety and enthusiasm of his mind lend spontaneity to these domestic pictures, so that one does not easily tire of the strong smiling creatures naturally and effectively presented to our vision.

In the field of mural decoration also he has shown marked originality.

Under the encouragement of Mr. Pontus Furstenberg, one of the foremost patrons of art in Sweden, he tested himself on a series of paintings for a girl's school in Gothenburg. He accomplished his task in a manner entirely his own, taking for his subjects typical figures of women in Sweden at different periods of history--a Viking's widow; the holy Brigitta; a n.o.ble house mother of the time of the Vasas, etc.--but although his manner of painting was free and blithe it hardly satisfied the most severe critics on account of its lack of architectonic qualities and the absence in it of anything like monumental simplicity.

He has continued, however, to go his own way in mural decoration and holds to the principle that the walls should look flat and that the harmony of color and line should be balanced and proportioned with regard to decorative and not to realistic effect. His subjects are apt to be fanciful and are executed in a semi-playful spirit not in the least familiar to an uninventive age, as where the spirit of the Renaissance is represented by a young woman seated high on a step-ladder, looking toward the sky, with Popes and Cardinals seated on the rungs below gazing in adoration, while underneath them all yawns the grave filled with skeletons, from which the Renaissance has risen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A PAINTING BY CARL LARSSON]

On the subject of home arts and handicrafts Larsson has emphatic ideas and urges on his compatriots the desirability of preserving their national types. "Take care of your true self while time is," he says, "again become a plain and worthy people. Be clumsy rather than elegant: dress yourselves in furs, skins, and woolens, make yourselves things that are in harmony with your heavy bodies, and make everything in bright strong colors; yes, in the so-called gaudy peasant colors which are needed contrasts to your deep green pine forests and cold white snow." He has made designs for haute-lisse weaving which were executed by the Handicraft Guild and which were practically open air painting translated into the Gobelin weave. In all that he does he is free from the trammels of convention; but his chief triumphs are in a field that is sadly neglected in modern art. As a painter of family life he is surpa.s.sed by none of his contemporaries.

JAN STEEN

X

JAN STEEN

Jan Steen was born in Leyden about 1626, which would make him nineteen years younger than Rembrandt. He is said to have studied first under Nicolas Knupfer and then possibly under Adriaen van Ostade in Harlem, and finally under Jan van Goyen at the Hague. In 1648 he was enrolled in the Painter's Guild at Leyden, and the following year he married Margaretha van Goyen, the daughter of his latest master. His father was a well-to-do merchant and beer-brewer and Steen himself at one time ran a brewery, though apparently not with great success. He incontestably was familiar with the life of drinking places and houses in which rough merrymaking was the chief business. Many of his subjects are drawn from such sources and his brush brings them before us with their characteristic features sharply observed and emphasized. He has been accused of a moralizing tendency and it may at least be said that he permits us to draw our own moral from perverted and unpolished facts. In his least restrained moments he is a kind of Dutch Jordaens, less exuberant, less st.u.r.dy and florid and gesticulatory; but with the same zest for living, the same union of old and young in any festival that includes good meat and good drink with song and dance and horse-play. If we compare "_Die l.u.s.tige Familie_" at Amsterdam with that ebullient rendering of the same subject by Jordaens ent.i.tled "_Zoo de ouden zongen: Zoo pypen de jongen_" that hangs in the Antwerp Museum, we have no difficulty in perceiving the points of similarity. There even are likenesses in the color-schemes of the two painters, Jordaen's silvery yellows for once meeting their match; but we find in Steen's picture a more subtle discrimination in the characters and temperaments lying beneath the physical features of the gay company.

Oftentimes Steen indulges in a gay and harmless badinage as different as possible from the bold and keen irony of his wilder themes. In "_Die Katzentanz Stunde_" of the Rijks museum at Amsterdam the laughing children putting the wretched little cat through a course of unwelcome instruction, the excited pose of the dog, the concentration of the girl upon her dance-music, are rendered with joyous freedom and animation, and suggest a childlike mood. The lovely _Menagerie_ of the Hague is conceived in a still milder and gentler temper, the demure child among her pets, feeding her lamb, with her doves flying about her head and the faithful little Steen dog in the background, is an idyllic figure.

Indeed the entire composition has a tenderness and almost a religious depth of sentiment that make it unique among the painter's achievements.

Another charming composition in which homely pleasures enjoyed with moderation and in a mood of simple merriment are delicately depicted is "_Der Wirtshausgarten_" in Berlin, in which the young people and their elders together with the happy dog are having a quiet meal under a green arbor. Family pets play an important part in all these scenes of domestic life; apparently Jan Steen even more than other Dutch painters was interested in the idiosyncrasies of the animals about him and was amused by incidents including them. His pictures gain by this a certain suggestion of kindliness and community of good feeling that is refres.h.i.+ng in the midst of the frequent vulgarity of theme and sentiment. Reminiscences of the exquisite feeling shown in "_Die Menagerie_" continually occur in such incidents as a girl feeding her parrot, the play of children with the friendly dogs and cats of the noisy inn, and especially in the importance given to the expressions and att.i.tudes of the dumb creatures. The dog is nearly always in the foreground, invariably characterized with the utmost vivacity and clearness, and usually playing his cheerful part in whatever of lively occupation his masters are engaged in. In "_Die l.u.s.tige Familie_" he joins his voice to the family concert with an expression of canine agony.

Frequently the subjects are obviously drawn from the life of his own family circle and the portraits of his children in these canvases are always sympathetic and delightful, giving a peculiarly intimate character to the artist's works in this kind. In "_Das Nikolausfest_" at Amsterdam the little girl in the foreground--apparently the little Elisabeth born in 1662, who figures in so many of the later paintings--is a particularly engaging figure.

These simpler "feasts" and family gatherings in which gay laughter reigns in place of brawling, const.i.tute a delightful phase of Steen's art, yet curiously they are seldom as beautiful in their esthetic qualities as the tavern scenes and incidents of low and vicious life.

The picture in the Louvre, however, "_Das Familien Mahl_," contradicts this generalization in the sheer loveliness of color, in the light that streams through the window hung with vines, and in the delicately discriminated textures of the gowns and furnis.h.i.+ngs. In this picture the figure of the woman nursing her child in the background has an amplitude of line and graciousness of pose that places it on a plane with Millet's renderings of similar subjects, while the painting in itself is of a quality never achieved by the poetic Frenchman.

Occasionally we find compositions by Steen in which only two or three figures are introduced, although as a rule he crowds every inch of his canvas with human beings and still-life. A very beautiful example of these compositions is seen in "_Die Musikstunde_" of the National Gallery, London. The daintiness and innocence of the young girl's profile, the refinement of the man's face, and the enchanting tones of the yellow bodice and blue skirt make of this picture a worthy sequel to "_Die Menagerie_."

Another composition of two figures is "_Das Trinkerpaar_" in the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam. A woman is drinking from a gla.s.s, and a man standing at one side holds a jug and looks at her with an expression of concern. The painting of the woman's right hand which she holds to her breast is delightful and so is the clear half-tone of her face. An attractive one-figure composition, also in the Rijks Museum, is "_Die Scheuermagd_," a scullery maid scouring a metal pitcher on the top of a cask. The discriminations of texture in this picture, the wood and metal surfaces, the cotton of the woman's blouse, the rather coa.r.s.e skin of her bared arms and the more delicate texture of her full throat, are especially noteworthy. Several compositions in which two or three figures are grouped are variations of one theme, an invalid visited by her physician. In several instances the t.i.tle, the rather lackadaisical expression of the lady, and the significant glances of her companions, indicate that love-sickness is the malady. The color in these pictures is usually beautiful and the types are cleverly differentiated, the entire story becoming apparent to the spectator by particularities of gesture and feature, neither exaggerated nor emphasized unduly, but acutely observed and rendered at their precise value in the expressiveness of the whole. A very fine example of these "_Doktorbilder_" is in the collection of the New York Historical Society. The doctor is bleeding his patient, and there are several people in the room. The rich costumes are distinguished by the indescribable blond yellows and silvery blues that make Steen's color harmonies at their best singularly delicate and blithe.

Among the compositions in which many figures in a complicated environment tax the artist's technical skill to the utmost, are several representations of the bean feast, that saturnalia of Germany, upon which abundant eating and drinking are in order. One of the most beautiful of these pictures is in the Ca.s.sel Gallery. Steen himself, portly and flushed, sits at the table, grimacing good-naturedly at the racket a.s.sailing his ears. His handsome wife is in the foreground, her large free gesture and unrestrained pose bringing out the opulent beauty of her form draped in s.h.i.+ning silken stuffs. Her face, turned toward the little urchin who has found the bean in the cake and thus won the right to wear a paper crown as king of the revels, is dimpled with smiles. The two children are babyish in figure and expression and the little dog is more serious than is his wont upon these occasions. A couple of men are making a din with bits of bra.s.s and iron, and the place is in complete disorder with eggsh.e.l.ls and kitchen utensils scattered about on the floor, yet the aspect of the scene is curiously removed from vulgarity. Both beauty and character have been ideals of the artist. He has not only grasped the loveliness of external things but he has delved rather deeply into the individualities of these roistering Hollanders. You do not feel as you do with Jordaens that excess of flesh and the joys of the palate are all the world holds for the revelers. The world holds, for one thing, appreciation of rich accessories. The columned bedstead, the handsome rugs, the carved furniture, the glint of gold in the ornate picture frame, especially the sheen of the silk skirts, the soft thick velvet and fur of the sacques and bodices, these, while they are not uncommon in the Dutch interiors of the period combine to produce an impression of esthetic well-being that tempers the unctuous physical satisfactions of a merry-making cla.s.s. With Jordaens it is the satyr in man that sets the standard of enjoyment, except in his religious pictures which often are filled with genuine and n.o.ble emotion, and in which he rises superior to Steen where the latter works in the same kind. Nothing could be more commonplace or characterless in color and form than Steen's rendering of the dinner at Emmaus. Occasionally, however, he is equally without inspiration in his l.u.s.tiest subjects. In the "_Frohliche Heimkehr_" at Amsterdam, a merry enough scene of people returning from a boatride in high spirits, there is neither charm of color (save in the yellow jacket of a girl who leans over the side of the boat) nor subtlety of characterization.

Fully to appreciate Steen, we should know his pictures in the Louvre and at Amsterdam. They cover a wide range and comprise a considerable number of masterpieces. The life he depicts in them is not of a very high order, but he has seen the possibilities for pictorial representation in his surroundings as almost no other painter of his time. His people are alive and their living is active and fervent. What they do they do with zest. There is energy in the painter's line and vitality in his color.

Nothing is dull or tame in his family drama. All has a touch of moving beauty. In the "_Schlechte Gesellschaft_" of the Louvre or the more vulgar "_Nach dem Gelage_" of the Rijks Museum--least rewarding of pictures for the moralist--how rich in beauties of color and line is the composition, how tender in modeling are the forms, how bewitching to the eye the fine enamel of the surface!

In the Metropolitan Museum, in New York, is one characteristic example: "The old rat comes to the trap at last," which badly needs cleaning, and one new purchase attributed to Steen in the lists of his work but hardly typical or even characteristic. The subject is a kitchen scene. In it we have neither Steen's charm of color nor his perfection of finish. Yet the turn of the woman's head, the unaffected merriment of her expression and that of the youth, and the type to which her face belongs sufficiently recall such examples of the artist's work as "_Das Galante Anerbieten_" at Brussels with which indeed it has more in common than with any other of Jan Steen's pictures known to me.

Steen's own portrait, painted by himself and hanging now in the Amsterdam Museum, shows a face upon which neither wild living nor ardent toil has left unhappy marks. His serious eyes look frankly out from under arched brows. His mouth is firm though smiling slightly. The high, bold nose and strong chin, the well-shaped head and thoughtful brow indicate a character more decided and more praiseworthy than the legends adrift concerning his life would lead us to expect in him.

ONE SIDE OF MODERN GERMAN PAINTING

XI

ONE SIDE OF MODERN GERMAN PAINTING

The best subst.i.tutes for the judgments of posterity are the judgments of foreigners. A group of pictures by the artists of one country, taken to another country for exhibition and criticism, is subjected to something the same test as the pictures of one generation coming under the scrutiny of another generation.

When a collection of pictures by modern German artists was exhibited in America in 1909, the American people were prompt in their recognition of a certain quality which they termed national. The critics--many of them--saw this quality from the adverse side and were far from complimentary to the Germans in their comparisons between American art and German art, but a general impression was given of a vitality sufficiently marked to make itself felt by the least initiated observer.

A number of the pictures by the older men had little enough of this vitality, but where it existed it was so decided as to leaven the ma.s.s.

And there was almost none of the sentimentality characterizing the Teutonic ideal as it had manifested itself in the pictures formerly brought to this country.

Compared, then, with the paintings of American artists and with those of the Frenchmen, whose work we have known so much better than that of any other country, compared also with the work of the modern Spaniards, whose paintings were on exhibition the same winter at the Hispanic Museum, we find the special character of the German painting to exist in a resolute individualism, a determination to express the inner life of the artist, his temperament and predilections and his mood at whatever cost of technical facility. Expressiveness, getting the idea into circulation, getting something said, this appears to be the common goal of the German painter of the present day.

In such case, of course, the idea is of particular importance. If it is to take precedence over purely esthetic qualities it is reasonable to expect it to be an idea of no little importance. Let us examine some of the painters represented in the exhibition arranged for America, and see whether in most cases the idea is emotional as with the artists of China and j.a.pan, and therefore peculiarly appropriate to translation by rhythms of line and harmonies of color, or intellectual, and therefore demanding a complex and difficult expression and the solution of technical problems that do not come into the question at all when nothing else is required than to evoke an especial mood or temper of soul.

The oldest of the painters represented was Adolf von Menzel, who was born in 1815 and died in his ninetieth year. As he began work at an early age his accomplishment practically covers the period of the nineteenth century. He has been designated by one of his German critics as three Menzels in one: the first, the historian of the Freiderician period; the second, the historian of his own time, recording the court life in which he played his part; the third, the acute observer of the life of the streets and workrooms and a commentator on the amusing details of the pa.s.sing show.

A number of his sketches were shown at the exhibition, a couple of landscapes, a ballroom scene and a theater subject, beside a little mediaeval subject in gouache. These displayed his dexterity of hand which was truly astounding, and also his memory, as the "Theatre Gymnase" was painted fully a year after he left Paris. The ballroom supper was painted in an ironic mood and the gluttony of his fellow humans, their unattractive personalities, their curious aspect of the educated animal, appear with an intense and pitiless fidelity to the fact which is of the essence of intellectual realism, but which could equally have been achieved through the medium of words. In spite of a cultivated color sense and a fine control over his instrument he was from first to last essentially an ill.u.s.trator. It was difficult for him to omit any detail that would add to the piquancy or fulness of his story, however much the omission might have done for his general effect.

He said himself, "There should be no unessentials for the artist," and he advised his pupils to finish as much as possible and not to sketch at all. This pa.s.sion for completeness rarely accompanies a strong feeling for the romantic aspects of nature or for atmospheric subtleties.

Neither does the painter who observes human nature closely and represents it with a detailed commentary upon its characteristics usually convey the impression of any subjective emotion.

Menzel is no exception to this rule. In his work he appears as emotionless as a machine, but his accomplishment is not mechanical. It is, on the contrary, the record of a busy, highly individualized, accurate mind. A Berlin man, he had the alertness, the clear-cut effectiveness, the energy, and the coldness typical of a cosmopolitan product. If we compare his "Ball Supper" in which the glare of lights, the elaboration of costume, the rapacity and shallow glittering superficiality of a Court festivity are presented almost as though in hackneyed phrases, so devoid is the picture of any meaning beyond the obvious, with the "Steel Foundry" in which the unsentimental acceptance of labor as a necessary factor in civilization is conspicuous, it is clear that his mind was free from dreams and visions whichever side of society he looked upon. In this respect his influence is salutary. It is like a cool and wholesome breeze blowing away all miasmic vapors, and there is a positively exhilarating quality in his firm a.s.sumption of the power of the human being over his material. His workmen are men of strong muscle and prompt brain. In the "Steel Foundry" we see their efficient handling of the great bars of metal with admiration as we should in life, and we note what in modern times is not always present for notation, the intelligence and interest in their faces. In one corner of the room, behind a screen or part.i.tion, a little group is devouring luncheon. Here we strike once more the note of the ballroom supper in the munching eagerness of the eaters, but seen in juxtaposition with the physical force and effort of the workers it ceases to be revolting, and seems to symbolize the l.u.s.ty joy of living with a sympathetic zest of realization.

In all of Menzel's work we have this sense of physical and mental competency. It shows nothing of the abnormal or decadent, and it must also be admitted that only in a few instances does it show anything of esthetic beauty. He was able to paint crowds of people and he managed to get a remarkable unity of effect in spite of his devotion to detail, but his ma.s.ses of light and shade are not held in that n.o.ble harmonious relation achieved by the peasant Millet who was Menzel's contemporary, his lines have no rhythmic flow, his color, though often charming, is seldom held together in a unified tone. Some one has called him "the conscience of German painting," but he is more than that. He is both conscience and brain. It is always possible to obtain an intellectual satisfaction from his point of view. What is lacking is emotion.

We feel this lack in other Berlin masters. Professor Max Liebermann is one of the most distinguished of the modern group, and his large, cool, definite art is innocent of the moving quality. He was represented in the exhibition by a portrait of Dr. Bode, a vigorous little composition called "The Polo-players," the "Flax Barn at Laren," and "The Lace Maker." The last two were especially typical of his steady detachment from his subject. The old lace maker, bending over her bobbins, suggests only absorption in her task. There is no enn.o.bling of her form, no idealizing of her features, no enveloping of her occupation with sentiment, nothing but the direct statement of her personality which is neither subtle nor complex and the description of what she is doing. But she is intensely real, more real, even, than Menzel's closely observed individuals. Liebermann, born in 1847, was the leader of the new tendency characterizing the Germany of the seventies, the tendency toward constant reference to nature as opposed to the old-fas.h.i.+oned conventionalism and Academic methods. There could have been no safer leader for a band of rebels since he was the sanest of thinkers and worked out a style in which the cla.s.sic qualities of n.o.bility in the disposition of lines and s.p.a.ces and remarkable purity of form played a prominent part.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Courtesy of Berlin Photographic Company.

PEASANT WOMEN OF DACHAUER

_From a painting by Leibl_]

Observing his "_Flax Barn_," in comparison with the work of his compatriots, its fine freedom from triviality of detail was apparent, and the beauty of its cool light, spread over large s.p.a.ces and diffused throughout the interior of the low shed, made itself felt. One noted also, as elements of the picture's peculiarly dignified appeal, the severe arrangement of the figures with the long row of workers under the windows, the long threads of flax pa.s.sing over their heads to the women in the foreground, and the almost straight line formed in turn by these women. The composition, quite geometrical in its precision, gave a sense of deep repose in spite of the vitality of the individual figures and the impression they made of being able to turn and move at will, an impression nearly always missed by Leibl, Liebermann's great forerunner in the painting of humble life. We get much the same austere effect from the almshouse pictures of old men and women on benches in the open square, always arranged in a geometrical design, and always calm in gesture and mild in type, which appear from time to time in the foreign exhibitions of Liebermann's work.

Liebermann has done for the Germans something of what Millet did for the French. He has built his art upon the daily life of the poor, but while, like Millet, he has introduced a monumental element into his work, it is clearer, more closely reasoned, more firmly knit than Millet's art, and at the same time less emotional. Liebermann's hospitality to purely technical ideas, his interest in problems of light and air, his diligent a.n.a.lysis of motion, his ability to translate a scene from the life of the laboring cla.s.s without sentimentality, without prettiness or eloquence or any of the attributes that catch the mult.i.tude, give to his art a touch of coldness that is not without its charm for those who care for a highly developed orderly product of the mind.

Most of the Berlin men who are in any degree notable share somewhat in this attribute. Arthur Kampf, although he has less than Liebermann of cool detachment, has both elegance and gravity. He could hardly have had a better representation by any one or two canvases than by the "Charity"

and the "Two Sisters" of the American exhibition. In the first he depicts a street scene with its contrasts of poverty and wealth. A man and woman in evening dress, returning from their evening's pleasure, are besought by poor people cl.u.s.tering around a soup stall and drop coin into the insistent hands. The smoking caldron of soup in the center and the circle of sharply differentiated faces form an admirable composition, the apparently accidental lines of which play into a dignified linear scheme. The "Two Sisters" reveals the influence of Velasquez in its flat modeling and subtle characterization, and in its atmospheric grays enlivened with geranium reds. Both of these pictures indicate a modern temper of mind in the fluency of their technique and the realism of their treatment together with the attention paid to the tonal quality and to the character of the s.p.a.ce composition. Kampf, however, although a young man--he was born in 1864--has pa.s.sed through many phases of development which are recorded in his many-sided art. His subjects range from the historical themes of his wall decorations at Magdeburg and Aachen through portraiture in which he grasps characters essentially diverse and suggests with unerring instinct the dominant quality, scenes of labor as in his "Bridge-Building," scenes of brutality and excitement as in his "Bull-fight," scenes from the drama of the Biblical story, scenes of domestic life as in his delicately humorous picture of the absorbed reader eating his breakfast with the morning paper propped up in front of him, and scenes of peaceful holiday-making among the poor as in his idyllic "Sunday Afternoon" which shows a peasant boy playing his harmonic.u.m under the trees, with his old father and mother sitting by in placid enjoyment. Various as these pictures are and closely as the manner has in each case been adapted to the special subject, we nowhere miss the note of individuality, although in such a portrait as that of the Kaiser, which was shown in America, it unquestionably is subdued. Neither do we miss the note of locality. Born at Aachen, Kampf is a true Rheinlander and one of his German critics notes that we must look to this fact for the explanation of his special qualities, declaring that without the Rheinlander's cheerfulness and energetic temperament, and without the background of the ancient Rhenish culture, he would be inconceivable. On the other hand his turning to drama and romance for his inspiration speaks of his Duesseldorfian training and his realism of representation allies him to Menzel. At forty-two he was made president of the Royal Academy of Art in Berlin, and it is probable that the wholesome Rhenish energy of which his critic speaks will save him from sinking into the formalism of the academic tradition.

In his art, however, as in that of his compatriots, it is apparent that the world of ideas is the world in which he lives, and he works to express his mind rather than his soul, his thoughts rather than his emotions, if we follow the indefinite and arbitrary division between thought and feeling that does service as a symbol of a meaning difficult to express clearly.

There were other interesting painters represented in the Berlin group at the American Exhibition, Otto Engel, Fritz Berger, Hans Hartig--and of all it is more or less true that the idea in their work is more important than the feeling. It is true also that the tradition of the peasant Leibl, a great painter, but invariably cold, rests upon most of them. His wonderful manipulation of pigment is equaled by none of them, but his accurate, detached observation, his balanced rendering, the firmness of his method, have entered more or less into their scheme of art. And it is to be noted that his ideas and theirs are ideas appropriate to the painter's medium. Menzel's literary bent is not shared by them, his predilection for a story to ill.u.s.trate almost never appears among the younger Berlin painters, and he cannot in any real sense be considered their prototype.