The painting River Farm by American artist John Francis Murphy, six by twelve inches, reproduced as the frontispiece to this volume is exquisite example of the early period. The River Farm, with its houses and barns, haymow and boat at the water’s edge, soft green meadow and distant fields, is a well-nigh perfect poem of country life. The cool blue of the sky where it shows through the soft white clouds is beautifully reflected in the placid waters of the river, together with all the charming detail of the foreground, and helps to make it a singularly attractive picture. This art work is sufficient, to enable one to visualize his artistic development and at the same time they illustrate admirably the ideas of Murphy’s art. If stop to consider in what direction the development of landscape painting is now progressing it will be only to recognize it immediately in the way of increased attention given to atmospheric envelopment in which the painters of today are finding and giving to us a new revelation of beauty. It is Murphy’s distinction to be one of the first as well as one of the best of our American exponents of this new type of landscape art.
Picture Reverie by American painter Wyatt Eaton
Wyatt Eaton, whose parents were of New England stock, was born May 6, 1849, at Philipsburg, on Miss quoi Bay, a tributary of Lake Champlain. As early as his eighteenth year he had determined upon his career, and going to New York began the study of art at the National Academy of Design under Samuel Colman, Daniel Huntington and others, working at the same time in the studio of Joseph Orion Eaton, from whom he also received instruction. Five years later, in 1872, he went abroad and after a short stay in London, where he met and received some valuable suggestions from Whistler, he proceeded to Paris and entered the atelier of Gerome at the Beaux-Arts. The next four years he divided between Paris and Barbizon, and during this interval was fortunate enough to become a sort of protégé of Millet’s, who both criticized his work and favored him with good advice. Millet’s influence, of course, is evident in much of Eaton’s painting of this period, but he was neither a copyist nor a servile imitator, and very soon thereafter had developed a very characteristic as well as a very distinguished style of his own. Shortly after his return to this country he joined with Walter Shirlaw, Augustus St. Gaudens and others in the formation, in 1877, of the Society of American Artists, of which he was the first Secretary. He was singularly gifted, not alone as a painter but as a critic and a writer. His “Notes on the Early Italian Masters,” ” Reminiscences of Millet” and ” Recollections of American Poets” are extremely interesting and suggestive reading.
The Reverie by American painter Wyatt Eaton is a picture of a popular pattern, but a very unusual and expressive one. Its chief interest is as an interpretation of a particular mood, though the obvious elegance of the arrangement or design is too apparent not to occasion remark. The brushwork is very deft, the touch fluent and the color gracious and reserved, as befits the subject. No detail of dress or surroundings is sufficiently developed to divert one’s attention, howsoever slightly or momentarily, from the supreme interest of the canvas, and yet the fabrics of the costume are painted with consummate skill and the reflection in the mirror is well-nigh a piece of pure perfection in pictorial art.
The most obvious difference in manner is perhaps an increased definition of detail in the later work of painter Harry Wilson Watrous and a corresponding sacrifice of that fine simplicity that gives dignity to the most trifling subjects treated by the great Dutchmen.
In two other subjects, picture Records, and one entitled, Lost, there is an insistence upon the minutiae of this kind of painting that unhappily magnifies the more specifically technical and therefore less really important elements that enter into it. In the former particularly the edges are hard and the light so strong as to reveal pitilessly the otherwise unimportant imperfections of the composition.
The canvas called Lost is chiefly interesting for the fine rendering of the textures of the old gentleman’s olive-green, fur trimmed great-coat, the red waistcoat showing beneath, and for being exceptionally happy in color as a whole. The gray sands of the shore in the foreground, the pale gray and blue of the water and the sky, form a most charming setting for the figure.
Another of these early cabinet paintings by Mr. Harry W. Watrous is possible out of a dimmed recollection of its actual appearance. It was called Mending the Fishing Rod and represented a middle-aged man seated on a low bench or stool, his legs spread wide and across his lap a fish-pole, over which he is bent at work, winding it with silk perhaps or fixing a guide ring for his line. A homely subject, it was treated with sincerity, and impressed me at the time as being a particularly successful performance. In conclusion a very small oil painting, a portrait of his mother as an old lady, on a panel approximately three by five inches or so. It is one of the best pieces of portraiture “in little” in American art. No another reproduces so accurately such an indication of old age as the pink of the little veins just under the transparent flesh of a face or, from a more comprehensive view, a more definite impression of a very real and lovable personality.
As a youth in Philadelphia and New York, painter Benjamin West began by painting portraits exclusively, and if the few he did in after years are any criterion of his early abilities he must have started out with a remarkable aptitude for incorporating in his likenesses just those elusive indications of personality that are common to all that is notably true and fine in portraiture. It would not be possible to maintain that he was ever a great portrait-painter in the sense that several of his contemporaries unquestionably were, but it is quite evident that in the realm of male portraiture at least he was the equal of some of them.
In the Brook Club in New York hangs the portrait group of Ralph Izard and his Friends by American painter Benjamin West. The picture is an attractive composition and a distinguished technical performance as well as being an interesting interpretation of nicely differentiated presentments of personality. Painter Benjamin West wisely eschewed in his portraiture any approach to that approximation of the dramatic in arrangement that is so considerable a factor in his historical and religious canvases, and specialized altogether upon the portrayal of personality as it is to be observed in the human countenance, translated by a momentary glance or a passing expression into an intelligible definition of character.
Picture The Prout’s Neck by American painter Winslow Homer
Of landscape Winslow Homer painted very little. The two examples, one comparatively early and the other quite late, are therefore of all the more interest, simply as illustrating a very uncommon and little known departure from his customary and familiar habit. The earlier picture is a result of his trip to France, and though appreciably tighter in treatment than the Prout’s Neck sketch, it has all of the out-of-door feeling that so sensibly constitutes the persuasive charm of the later canvas. It is also entirely as enjoyable in color, and from it one gets definitely the feeling of locality which is a quality that differentiates honest from inferior landscape painting. The Prout’s Neck is a study so marked with the conscious realization of actual appearances and an adequate rendering of their artistic interest as to persuade one that Homer might well have evolved from such an auspicious experiment a landscape as vital as the most impressive of his marines. It is instinct with the evidence of an intimate understanding of significant form, finislied with a rare economy of effort in the matter of mere painting, and not only satisfies the most exacting expectations of the realist, but measurably fulfils the higher aim of pictorial art in its suggestive indication of abstract beauty.
Picture Presentation of the Queen of Sheba at the Court of King Solomon by American painter Benjamin West
In historical composition by painter Benjamin West, the picture Presentation of the Queen of Sheba at the Court of King Solomon, now at the Worcester Museum, the suggestion of Rembrandt occurs again in the turbaned figure at the right of the King, as well as more forcibly in whole general arrangement, grouping and lighting, of the canvas. The face of that one of the Queen’s attendants facing the spectator and standing at the centre of those behind her, except for a certain softness and sweetness, somehow reminds one of the great Spaniard, Goya. The composition has an undeniable heroic quality and the lighting is notably effective. It would be an almost wholly satisfactory rendering of the subject did not the impressiveness of the moment suffer somewhat of an eclipse through the simpering fatuity of the various females. It is curious, by the way, that West, having introduced the style of painting personages of his own and immediately preceding ages in their proper costume should have persisted in the use of the costume of his own day in picturing scenes from antiquity. The women in picture Presentation of the Queen of Sheba at the Court of King Solomon and in the Hackley Art Gallery picture are dressed in the mode of eighteenth century England and thereby quite effectually prevent their perfectly realizing the effects intended. That they are not impressive in any such sense as they were intended is the conclusion that is forced upon one.
As a matter of fact, however, none of the great artists of Benjamin West’s time were any more successful in their efforts in this direction, and so far, at least, it is true that the preeminence of his position as a painter of such subjects was entirely justified by his performance which, though it is never entirely convincing, is yet very often punctuated by passages of real and definite distinction. Too much of the passion, the lust, the pathos of life, which never entered into the artist’s experience, and which, never understanding, he was unable to picture, is missing for these canvases to sensibly stir us to any great enthusiasm. Lacking sufficiently dominant and compelling facial expressiveness to emphasize or explain their actions, his figures fail to properly sustain the dramatic possibilities of the scenes in which they appear. A great actor must perforce be a master of action and of both vocal and facial expression. In painting there being no possibility of representation of vocal expression the artist is forced into the necessity of realizing all of the possibilities of dramatic interpretation by such a delineation of bodily action and facial expression as will create a really significant and unforgettable picture of the humor, the pathos, or the tragedy of life. Only the greatest painters have ever succeeded in doing this.
Picture Portrait of a Young Girl by American painter Arthur B. Davies
Arthur B. Davies, a very expert and extremely facile craftsman, his latest works have more the appearance of elaborate exercises in drawing than of anything that can be reasonably described as authentic artistic creation. Without any sensible meaning and lacking sufficient vital significance to even suggest that which they lack, these pictures display, nevertheless, a degree of skill expended in fruitless experiments in the intricacies of linear design that might very possibly suffice to express living thoughts in some such way as to produce real masterpieces. One is constantly aware, in looking at them, of Mr. Arthur B. Davies’ prodigious delight in the display of his facility, but in so much as one looks for anything more than fine drawing, color or design in a picture they are consistently disappointing. Picture Portrait of a Young Girl admire by its uniqueness. If, indeed, these works have any meanings at all, they are entirely lost in a style of composition at once too involved for the human understanding and too evidently egotistic and personal to permit of any permanent intellectual enjoyment even if they were intelligible. To represent any number of exquisitely satisfying human figures so muddled together in elaborate denial of the most elementary requirements of grace, or so twisted and tortured in unnecessary and unnatural contortions as to recall nothing if not man’s animal ancestry, is hardly evidence of an impulse likely to add anything of lasting importance to the art of today. No recognized masterpiece in pictorial art that does not either express an idea or convey a suggestion of something other than the mere ability of the artist. It is precisely these ideas and these suggestions that enliven with interest and inform with vitality those paintings of every school and of every master that really achieve greatness.
Picture Portrait Of A Gentleman by American painter Benjamin West
One of the gratifying results of the present revival of interest in the early American portrait-painters is the fact that it has brought to our shores a number of excellent examples by painter artist Benjamin West, acquainting us with that phase of his art which he almost entirely neglected at the height of his powers and during the period of his unprecedented popularity. Their suavity as well as their sincerity, their fine color as well as their technical excellence, inevitably persuade one that this was his proper field of artistic expression, and that the circumstances which permitted him to devote the best part of his life to the execution of elaborate tableaux that today are but little more than a memory in the minds of men, deprived his time and our own, as well as posterity, of any number of really fine portraits of men, for he was an indefatigable worker and consequently a prolific painter. The John Sedley in the collection of Mr. Walter Jennings and another male portrait Portrait Of A Gentleman recently acquired by the Chicago Art Institute are fortunately both late works, the former being dated 1802 and the latter 1792. They belong to the limited series of commissions undertaken toward the end of his lifetime, but before his eye began to fail or his hand to falter and are excellent interpretations of character and convincing pieces of portraiture. The modeling of the features and the sensitive emphasis of individual expression in the faces are happily evident in the reproductions. No better illustrations of the artist’s accomplishment in the way of portraiture are likely to be found. That he was content to adhere to established procedure in the posing of his sitters is of no particular consequence inasmuch as they are invariably represented in natural and dignified attitudes that never detract from the illusion of life.
Picture Nydia by American painter George Fuller
According to Fuller’s way of thinking, “color in its highest sense is a delicate sense of gradation,” and as Mr. Howells informs us in his brief sketch of the artist’s life, “He preferred to remove the object of interest in his picture a degree into its atmosphere, believing that this gave a greater chance for expression,” just as one might say that the stage provides an atmosphere for the actor in whatever role he may appear that enables him to realize more effectually its possibilities. This atmosphere in Fuller’s canvases is adjusted always to that degree of definition he considered best suited to bring out the particular characteristics of the type pictured without discovering the obvious and inessential details of the mizzen scene. It is because of this that the Nydia is so much more than an imaginary portrait of Bulwer’s heroine. She is the personification of all the tragedy of the blind made doubly real and moving by her youth and beauty. There is nothing forced about the development of the meaning of such a calamity in the picture; rather is it apparently, though not actually, modified by his removal of the figure a degree into the atmosphere. It illustrates very forcibly, the logic of his theory. The painting Nydia came in 1882.
Every one of great works of Fuller’s was painted long after he had left the Deerfield farm where somehow he had found leisure to invent for himself a style that was eminently his own.
The picture Musical Amateurs, formerly in the collection of Mr. John H. Converse and now owned by Mr. De Vine, possesses somewhat of the Whistlerian quality that Kenyon Cox has remarked in another early Homer, the New England Country School. Indeed, a sketch for the figure of the Cellist reminded one very forcibly of another sketch of a Cellist, from the brush of Whistler himself, formerly in the late William M. Chase’s collection and now in that of Mr. Frank Vanderlip. The picture Musical Amateurs is dated 1867 and is not uninteresting in color. The sincerity of the study of the two musicians is sufficient to convey a definite idea of their personalities to anyone interested enough in such a subject to examine the canvas with the attention it deserves. And such an examination will discover in it also a fine tonality and a charming breadth of handling that was not at all common to the genre painting of the day in this country. In these pictures of Homer’s the pose, whatever it is, is natural, not theatrical in the sense that many of the figures in later canvases are obviously arranged in difficult tableaux to illustrate unusual stories. In doing just that sort of thing he oftener than not sacrificed too much of the realism, the truth, of life, to be very convincing, and to some of us, at least, a few of his greatest canvases can therefore never be anything other than noble failures.
|
|