A Text-Book of the History of Painting Part 17

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 105.--EASTMAN JOHNSON. CHURNING.]

PORTRAIT, HISTORY, AND GENRE-PAINTERS: Contemporary with the early landscapists were a number of figure-painters, most of them self-taught, or taught badly by foreign or native artists, and yet men who produced creditable work. Chester Harding (1792-1866) was one of the early portrait-painters of this century who achieved enough celebrity in Boston to be the subject of what was called "the Harding craze." Elliott (1812-1868) was a pupil of Trumbull, and a man of considerable reputation, as was also Inman (1801-1846), a portrait and _genre_-painter with a smooth, detailed brush. Page (1811-1885), Baker (1821-1880), Huntington (1816-), the third President of the Academy of Design; Healy (1808-[22]), a portrait-painter of more than average excellence; Mount (1807-1868), one of the earliest of American _genre_-painters, were all men of note in this middle period.

[Footnote 22: Died 1894.]

Leutze (1816-1868) was a German by birth but an American by adoption, who painted many large historical scenes of the American Revolution, such as Was.h.i.+ngton Crossing the Delaware, besides many scenes taken from European history. He was a pupil of Lessing at Dusseldorf, and had something to do with introducing Dusseldorf methods into America.

He was a painter of ability, if at times hot in color and dry in handling. Occasionally he did a fine portrait, like the Seward in the Union League Club, New York.

During this period, in addition to the influence of Dusseldorf and Rome upon American art, there came the influence of French art with Hicks (1823-1890) and Hunt (1824-1879), both of them pupils of Couture at Paris, and Hunt also of Millet at Barbizon. Hunt was the real introducer of Millet and the Barbizon-Fontainebleau artists to the American people. In 1855 he established himself at Boston, had a large number of pupils, and met with great success as a teacher. He was a painter of ability, but perhaps his greatest influence was as a teacher and an instructor in what was good art as distinguished from what was false and meretricious. He certainly was the first painter in America who taught catholicity of taste, truth and sincerity in art, and art in the artist rather than in the subject. Contemporary with Hunt lived George Fuller (1822-1884), a unique man in American art for the sentiment he conveyed in his pictures by means of color and atmosphere. Though never proficient in the grammar of art he managed by blendings of color to suggest certain sentiments regarding light and air that have been rightly esteemed poetic.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 106.--INNESS. LANDSCAPE.]

THE THIRD PERIOD in American art began immediately after the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876. Undoubtedly the display of art, both foreign and domestic, at that time, together with the national prosperity and great growth of the United States had much to do with stimulating activity in painting. Many young men at the beginning of this period went to Europe to study in the studios at Munich, and later on at Paris. Before 1880 some of them had returned to the United States, bringing with them knowledge of the technical side of art, which they immediately began to give out to many pupils.

Gradually the influence of the young men from Munich and Paris spread.

The Art Students' League, founded in 1875, was incorporated in 1878, and the Society of American Artists was established in the same year.

Societies and painters began to spring up all over the country, and as a result there is in the United States to-day an artist body technically as well trained and in spirit as progressive as in almost any country of Europe. The late influence shown in painting has been largely a French influence, and the American artists have been accused from time to time of echoing French methods. The accusation is true in part. Paris is the centre of all art-teaching to-day, and the Americans, in common with the European nations, accept French methods, not because they are French, but because they are the best extant. In subjects and motives, however, the American school is as original as any school can be in this cosmopolitan age.

PORTRAIT, FIGURE, AND GENRE PAINTERS (1878-1894): It must not be inferred that the painters now prominent in American art are all young men schooled since 1876. On the contrary, some of the best of them are men past middle life who began painting long before 1876, and have by dint of observation and prolonged study continued with the modern spirit. For example, Winslow Homer (1836-) is one of the strongest and most original of all the American artists, a man who never had the advantage of the highest technical training, yet possesses a feeling for color, a dash and verve in execution, an originality in subject, and an individuality of conception that are unsurpa.s.sed. Eastman Johnson (1824-) is one of the older portrait and figure-painters who stands among the younger generations without jostling, because he has in measure kept himself informed with modern thought and method. He is a good, conservative painter, possessed of taste, judgment, and technical ability. Elihu Vedder (1836-) is more of a draughtsman than a brushman. His color-sense is not acute nor his handling free, but he has an imagination which, if somewhat more literary than pictorial, is nevertheless very effective. John La Farge (1835-) and Albert Ryder (1847-) are both colorists, and La Farge in artistic feeling is a man of much power. Almost all of his pictures have fine decorative quality in line and color and are thoroughly pictorial.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 107.--WINSLOW HOMER. UNDERTOW.]

The "young men," so-called, though some of them are now on toward middle life, are perhaps more facile in brush-work and better trained draughtsmen than those we have just mentioned. They have cultivated vivacity of style and cleverness in statement, frequently at the expense of the larger qualities of art. Sargent (1856-) is, perhaps, the most considerable portrait-painter now living, a man of unbounded resources technically and fine natural abilities. He is draughtsman, colorist, brushman--in fact, almost everything in art that can be cultivated. His taste is not yet mature, and he is just now given to das.h.i.+ng effects that are more clever than permanent; but that he is a master in portraiture has already been abundantly demonstrated. Chase (1849-) is also an exceptionally good portrait painter, and he handles the _genre_ subject with brilliant color and a swift, sure brush. In brush-work he is exceedingly clever, and is an excellent technician in almost every respect. Not always profound in matter he generally manages to be entertaining in method. Blum (1857-) is well known to magazine readers through many black-and-white ill.u.s.trations. He is also a painter of _genre_ subjects taken from many lands, and handles his brush with brilliancy and force. Dewing (1851-) is a painter with a refined sense not only in form but in color. His pictures are usually small, but exquisite in delicacy and decorative charm. Thayer (1849-) is fond of large canvases, a man of earnestness, sincerity, and imagination, but not a good draughtsman, not a good colorist, and a rather clumsy brushman. He has, however, something to say, and in a large sense is an artist of uncommon ability. Kenyon c.o.x (1856-) is a draughtsman, with a strong command of line and taste in its arrangement. He is not a strong colorist, though in recent work he has shown a new departure in this feature that promises well. He renders the nude with power, and is fond of the allegorical subject.

The number of good portrait-painters at present working in America is quite large, and mention can be made of but a few in addition to those already spoken of--Lockwood, McLure Hamilton, Tarbell, Beckwith, Benson, Vinton. In figure and _genre_-painting the list of really good painters could be drawn out indefinitely, and again mention must be confined to a few only, like Simmons, s.h.i.+rlaw, Smedley, Brush, Millet, Ha.s.sam, Reid, Wiles, Mowbray, Reinhart, Blashfield, Metcalf, Low, C.

Y. Turner, Henri.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 108.--WHISTLER. WHITE GIRL.]

Most of the men whose names are given above are resident in America; but, in addition, there is a large contingent of young men, American born but resident abroad, who can hardly be claimed by the American school, and yet belong to it as much as to any school. They are cosmopolitan in their art, and reside in Paris, Munich, London, or elsewhere, as the spirit moves them. Sargent, the portrait-painter, really belongs to this group, as does also Whistler (1834-[23]), one of the most artistic of all the moderns. Whistler was long resident in London, but has now removed to Paris. He belongs to no school, and such art as he produces is peculiarly his own, save a leaven of influences from Velasquez and the j.a.panese. His art is the perfection of delicacy, both in color and in line. Apparently very sketchy, it is in reality the maximum of effect with the minimum of display. It has the pictorial charm of mystery and suggestiveness, and the technical effect of light, air, and s.p.a.ce. There is nothing better produced in modern painting than his present work, and in earlier years he painted portraits like that of his mother, which are justly ranked as great art. E. A. Abbey (1852-) is better known by his pen-and-ink work than by his paintings, howbeit he has done good work in color. He is resident in England.

[Footnote 23: Died, 1903.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 109.--SARGENT. "CARNATION LILY, LILY ROSE."]

In Paris there are many American-born painters, who really belong more with the French school than the American. Bridgman is an example, and Dannat, Alexander Harrison, Hitchc.o.c.k, McEwen, Melchers, Pearce, Julius Stewart, Weeks (1849-1903), J. W. Alexander, Walter Gay, Sergeant Kendall have nothing distinctly American about their art. It is semi-cosmopolitan with a leaning toward French methods. There are also some American-born painters at Munich, like C. F. Ulrich; Shannon is in London and Coleman in Italy.

LANDSCAPE AND MARINE PAINTERS, 1878-1894: In the department of landscape America has had since 1825 something distinctly national, and has at this day. In recent years the impressionist _plein-air_ school of France has influenced many painters, and the prismatic landscape is quite as frequently seen in American exhibitions as in the Paris salons; but American landscape art rather dates ahead of French impressionism. The strongest landscapist of our times, George Inness (1825-[24]), is not a young man except in his artistic aspirations. His style has undergone many changes, yet still remains distinctly individual. He has always been an experimenter and an uneven painter, at times doing work of wonderful force, and then again falling into weakness. The solidity of nature, the ma.s.s and bulk of landscape, he has shown with a power second to none. He is fond of the sentiment of nature's light, air, and color, and has put it forth more in his later than in his earlier canvases. At his best, he is one of the first of the American landscapists. Among his contemporaries Wyant (already mentioned), Swain Gifford,[25] Colman, Gay, Shurtleff, have all done excellent work uninfluenced by foreign schools of to-day.

Homer Martin's[26] landscapes, from their breadth of treatment, are popularly considered rather indifferent work, but in reality they are excellent in color and poetic feeling.

[Footnote 24: Died 1894.]

[Footnote 25: Died 1905.]

[Footnote 26: Died 1897.]

The "young men" again, in landscape as in the figure, are working in the modern spirit, though in substance they are based on the traditions of the older American landscape school. There has been much achievement, and there is still greater promise in such landscapists as Tryon, Platt, Murphy, Dearth, Crane, Dewey, Coffin, Horatio Walker, Jonas Lie. Among those who favor the so-called impressionistic view are Weir, Twachtman, and Robinson,[27] three landscape-painters of undeniable power. In marines Gedney Bunce has portrayed many Venetian scenes of charming color-tone, and De Haas[28] has long been known as a sea-painter of some power. Quartley, who died young, was brilliant in color and broadly realistic. The present marine-painters are Maynard, Snell, Rehn, Butler, Chapman.

[Footnote 27: Died 1896.]

[Footnote 28: Died 1895.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 110.--CHASE. ALICE.]

PRINc.i.p.aL WORKS: The works of the early American painters are to be seen princ.i.p.ally in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Athenaeum, Boston Mus., Ma.s.s. Hist. Soc., Harvard College, Redwood Library, Newport, Metropolitan Mus., Lenox and Hist. Soc. Libraries, the City Hall, Century Club, Chamber of Commerce, National Acad. of Design, N. Y. In New Haven, at Yale School of Fine Arts, in Philadelphia at Penna. Acad. of Fine Arts, in Rochester Powers's Art Gal., in Was.h.i.+ngton Corcoran Gal. and the Capitol.

The works of the younger men are seen in the exhibitions held from year to year at the Academy of Design, the Society of American Artists, N. Y., in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, and elsewhere throughout the country. Some of their works belong to permanent inst.i.tutions like the Metropolitan Mus., the Pennsylvania Acad., the Art Inst.i.tute of Chicago, but there is no public collection of pictures that represents American art as a whole. Mr. T. B. Clarke, of New York, had perhaps as complete a collection of paintings by contemporary American artists as anyone.

POSTSCRIPT.

SCATTERING SCHOOLS AND INFLUENCES IN ART.

In this brief history of painting it has been necessary to omit some countries and some painters that have not seemed to be directly connected with the progress or development of painting in the western world. The arts of China and j.a.pan, while well worthy of careful chronicling, are somewhat removed from the arts of the other nations and from our study. Moreover, they are so positively decorative that they should be treated under the head of Decoration, though it is not to be denied that they are also realistically expressive. Portugal has had some history in the art of painting, but it is slight and so bound up with Spanish and Flemish influences that its men do not stand out as a distinct school. This is true in measure of Russian painting. The early influences with it were Byzantine through the Greek Church. In late years what has been produced favors the Parisian or German schools.

In Denmark and Scandinavia there has recently come to the front a remarkable school of high-light painters, based on Parisian methods, that threatens to outrival Paris itself. The work of such men as Kroyer, Zorn, Petersen, Liljefors, Thaulow, Bjorck, Thegerstrom, is as startling in its realism as it is brilliant in its color. The pictures in the Scandinavian section of the Paris Exposition of 1889 were a revelation of new strength from the North, and this has been somewhat increased by the Scandinavian pictures at the World's Fair in 1893. It is impossible to predict what will be the outcome of this northern art, nor what will be the result of the recent movement here in America. All that can be said is that the tide seems to be setting westward and northward, though Paris has been the centre of art for many years, and will doubtless continue to be the centre for many years to come.