A History of Art for Beginners and Students Part 16

"Ehrenbreitstein," "Venice from the Salute Church," and "Line-fishing off Hastings." In 1836 he exhibited a "View of Rome from the Aventine Hill,"

and the "Burning of the House of Lords and Commons," which last was almost entirely painted on the walls of the exhibition. At this time it was the custom to have what were called "varnishing days" at the exhibition, during which time artists retouched, and finished up their pictures. They were periods of fun and practical jokes, and Turner always enjoyed, and made the most of them. He frequently sent his canvas to the Academy merely sketched out and grounded, and then coming in as early as four in the morning on varnishing days, he would put his nose to the sketch and work steadily with thousands of imperceptible touches until nightfall, while his picture would begin to glow as by magic. About this time he exhibited many pictures founded on cla.s.sical subjects, or with the scenes laid in Italy or Greece, as "Apollo and Daphne in the Vale of Tempe," "Regulus Leaving Rome to Return to Carthage," the "Parting of Hero and Leander,"

"Phryne Going to the Public Baths as Venus," the "Banishment of Ovid from Rome, with Views of the Bridge and Castle of St. Angelo." A year later he exhibited pictures of "Ancient Rome," a vast dreamy pile of palaces, and "Modern Rome," with a view of the "Forum in Ruins."

One of the most celebrated of Turner's pictures was that of the "Old Temeraire," an old and famous line-of-battle ship, which in the battle of Trafalgar ran in between and captured the French frigates Redoubtable and Fougueux. Turner saw the Temeraire in the Thames after she had become old, and was condemned to be dismantled. The scene is laid at sunset, when the smouldering, red light is vividly reflected on the river, and contrasts with the quiet, gray and pearly tints about the low-hung moon.

The majestic old ship looms up through these changing lights, bathed in splendor. The artist refused a large price for this picture by Mr. Lennox, of New York, and finally bequeathed it to the nation. In 1840 Turner exhibited the "Bacchus and Ariadne," two marine scenes, and two views in Venice; also the well-known "Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, a Typhoon Coming On" (Fig. 76), which is now in the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston. Of this picture Thackeray says: "I don't know whether it is sublime or ridiculous." But Ruskin, in "Modern Painters," says: "I believe if I were reduced to test Turner's immortality upon any single work, I should choose the 'Slave Ship.' Its daring conception, ideal in the highest sense of the word, is based on the purest truth, and wrought out with the concentrated knowledge of a life. Its color is absolutely perfect, not one false or morbid hue in any part or line, and so modulated that every square inch of canvas is a perfect composition; its drawing as accurate as fearless; the ship buoyant, bending, and full of motion; its tones as true as they are wonderful; and the whole picture dedicated to the most sublime of subjects and impressions (completing thus the perfect system of all truth which we have shown to be formed by Turner's works), the power, majesty, and deathfulness of the open, deep, illimitable sea."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 76.--THE SLAVE SHIP. _By Turner._]

No painter of modern times, or perhaps of any time, has ever provoked the discussion of his merits which Turner did. When he was at his best his great merits and his originality procured for him the strongest defenders, and finally brought his pictures into favor with the wealthy middle cla.s.s of England, so that he obtained high prices, and since his death these prices have doubled, and even quadrupled. At a sale of Mr. Bicknell's collection in 1836, ten of Turner's pictures, which had been bought for three thousand seven hundred and forty-nine pounds, were sold for seventeen thousand and ninety-four pounds. As Turner grew older and his manner deteriorated he was a.s.sailed by the wits, the art critics, and the amateurs with cruel badinage, and to these censures Turner was morbidly sensitive. But even Ruskin admits that the pictures of his last five years are of "wholly inferior value," with unsatisfactory foliage, chalky faces, and general indications of feebleness of hand.

Wornum, in his _Epochs of Painting_, said: "In the last ten years of his career, and occasionally before, Turner was extravagant to an extreme degree; he played equally with nature and with his colors. Light, with all its prismatic varieties, seems to have been the chief object of his studies; individuality of form or color he was wholly indifferent to. The looseness of execution in his latest works has not even the apology of having been attempted on scientific principles; he did not work upon a particular point of a picture as a focus and leave the rest obscure, as a foil to enhance it, on a principle of unity; on the contrary, all is equally obscure and wild alike. These last productions are a calamity to his reputation; yet we may, perhaps, safely a.s.sert that since Rembrandt there has been no painter of such originality and power as Turner." Dr.

Waagen says in his _Treasury of Art in Great Britain_: "No landscape painter has yet appeared with such versatility of talent. His historical landscapes exhibit the most exquisite feeling for beauty of hues and effect of lighting, at the same time that he has the power of making them express the most varied moods of nature."

Toward the last part of his life Turner's peculiarities increased; he became more morose, more jealous. He was always unwilling to have even his most intimate friends visit his studio, but he finally withdrew from his own house and home. Of late years he had frequently left his house for months at a time, and secreted himself in some distant quarter, taking care that he should not be followed or known. When the great Exhibition of 1851 opened, Turner left orders with his housekeeper that no one should be admitted to see his pictures. For twenty years the rain had been streaming in upon them through the leaky roof, and many were hopelessly ruined. He sent no pictures to the exhibition of that year, and he was hardly to be recognized when he appeared in the gallery. Finally his prolonged absence from the Academy meetings alarmed his friends; but no one dared seek him out. His housekeeper alone, of all that had known him, had the interest to hunt up the old artist. Taking a hint from a letter in one of his coats, she went to Chelsea, and, after careful search, found his hiding-place, with but one more day of life in him. It is said that, feeling the need of purer air than that of Queen Anne Street, he went out to Chelsea and found an eligible, little cottage by the side of the river, with a railed-in roof whence he could observe the sky. The landlady demanded references from the shabby, old man, when he testily replied, "My good woman, I'll buy the house outright." She then demanded his name--"in case, sir, any gentleman should call, you know." "Name?" said he, "what's your name?" "My name is Mrs. Booth." "Then I am Mr. Booth." And so he was known, the boys along the river-side calling him "Puggy Booth," and the tradesmen "Admiral Booth," the theory being that he was an old admiral in reduced circ.u.mstances. In a low studded, attic room, poorly furnished, with a single roof window, the great artist was found in his mortal sickness. He sent for his favorite doctor from Margate, who frankly told him that death was at hand. "Go down stairs," exclaimed Turner, "take a gla.s.s of sherry, and then look at me again." But no stimulant could change the verdict of the physician. An hour before he died he was wheeled to the window for a last look at the Thames, bathed in sunshine and dotted with sails. Up to the last sickness the lonely, old man rose at daybreak to watch, from the roof of the cottage, the sun rise and the purple flush of the coming day.

The funeral, from the house in Queen Anne Street, was imposing, with a long line of carriages, and conducted with the ritual of the English Church in St. Paul's Cathedral. Dean Milman read the service, and at its conclusion the coffin was borne to the catacombs, and placed between the tombs of James Barry and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Turner's will, with its codicils, was so confused and vague that the lawyers fought it in the courts for four years, and it was finally settled by compromise. The real estate went to the heir-at-law, the pictures and drawings to the National Gallery, one thousand pounds for a monument in St. Paul's Cathedral, and twenty thousand pounds to the Royal Academy for annuities to poor artists.

Turner's gift to the British nation included ninety-eight finished paintings and two hundred and seventy pictures in various stages of progress. Ruskin, while arranging and cla.s.sifying Turner's drawings, found more than nineteen thousand sketches and fragments by the master's hand, some covered with the dust of thirty years.

Sir DAVID WILKIE (1785-1841) has been called the "prince of British _genre_ painters." His father was a minister, and David was placed in the Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh in 1799. In 1805 he entered the Royal Academy in London, and was much noticed on account of his "Village Politicians," exhibited the next year. From this time his fame and popularity were established, and each new work was simply a new triumph for him. The "Card Players," "Rent Day," the "Village Festival," and others were rapidly painted and exhibited.

In 1825 Wilkie went to the Continent, and remained three years. He visited France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, and after his return he painted a new cla.s.s of subjects in a new manner. He made many portraits, and his other works were historical subjects. His most celebrated works in this second manner were "John Knox Preaching," "Napoleon and the Pope at Fontainebleau," and "Peep-o'-Day Boy's Cabin." The portrait of the landscape painter William Daniell is a good picture.

In 1830 Wilkie succeeded Sir Thomas Lawrence as painter to the king, as he had been limner to the King of Scotland since 1822. He was not knighted until 1836. In 1840 he visited Constantinople, and made a portrait of the sultan; he went then to the Holy Land and Egypt. While at Alexandria, on his way home, Wilkie complained of illness, and on shipboard, off Gibraltar, he died, and was buried at sea. This burial is the subject of one of Turner's pictures, and is now in the National Gallery.

The name of Landseer is an important one in British art. JOHN LANDSEER (1761-1852) was an eminent engraver; his son THOMAS (1795-1880) followed the profession of his father and arrived at great celebrity in it.

CHARLES, born in 1799, another son of John Landseer, became a painter and devoted himself to a sort of historical genre line of subjects, such as "Cromwell at the House of Sir Walter Stewart in 1651," "Surrender of Arundel Castle in 1643," and various others of a like nature. Charles Landseer travelled in Portugal and Brazil when a young man; he was made a member of the Royal Academy in 1845; from 1851 to 1871 he was keeper of the Academy, and has been an industrious and respected artist. But the great genius of the family was:

Sir EDWIN LANDSEER (1802-1873), the youngest son of John Landseer, the engraver. He received his first drawing lessons from his father, and from a very early age showed a great talent for sketching and that love for the brute creation which have been his chief characteristics as an artist. He had the power to understand his dumb subjects as well as if they spoke some language together, and then he had the ability to fix the meaning of all they had told him upon his canvas, by means of the sketching lines which gave the precise form of it all and by his finishing shades which put in the expression. If his animals were prosperous and gladsome, he represented their good fortune with hearty pleasure; if they were suffering, sad, or bereaved, he painted their woes with a sympathy such as none but a true friend can give.

When Edwin and Thomas were old enough that their father thought other instruction than his own should be given them, he placed them with Haydon, and in these early days the master predicted that Edwin Landseer would be the Snyders of England. Edwin sent his first picture to the Royal Academy when he was but thirteen years old, and during the following fifty-eight years there were but six exhibitions to which he did not contribute. When he began his studies at the Royal Academy he was fourteen years old, and already famous as an animal painter. He was a bright, curly-headed, manly lad, and the aged Fuseli, then keeper of the Academy, grew to be very fond of him; he would often ask, "Where is my little dog-boy?"

Edwin Landseer now worked on diligently and quietly; his works were constantly praised, and he received all the patronage that he desired.

Through the advice of his master, Haydon, he had the habit of dissecting animals, and learning their anatomy with all the exactness with which other artists study that of human beings. About 1820 a lion died in the Exeter Change Menagerie, and Edwin Landseer secured the body for dissection. He then painted three large pictures of lions, and during the year in which he became eighteen years old, he exhibited these pictures and others of horses, dogs, donkeys, deer, goats, wolves, and vultures.

When nineteen, in 1821, he painted "Pointers, To-ho!" a hunting scene, which was sold in 1872, the year before his death, for two thousand and sixteen pounds. In 1822 Landseer gained the prize of the British Inst.i.tution, one hundred and fifty pounds, by his picture of "The Larder Invaded." He made the first sketch for this on a child's slate, which is still preserved as a treasure. But the most famous of this master's early works is the "Cat's Paw," in which a monkey uses a cat's paw to draw chestnuts from a hot stove. Landseer was paid one hundred pounds; its present value is three thousand pounds, and it is kept at the seat of the Earl of Ess.e.x, Cashiobury.

This picture of the "Cat's Paw" had an important result for the young artist, as it happened that it was exhibited when Sir Walter Scott was in London, and he was so much pleased with it that he made Landseer's acquaintance, and invited him to visit Abbotsford. Accordingly, in 1824, Landseer visited Sir Walter in company with Leslie, who then painted a portrait of the great novelist, which now belongs to the Ticknor family of Boston. It was at this time that Sir Walter wrote in his journal: "Landseer's dogs were the most magnificent things I ever saw, leaping, and bounding, and grinning all over the canvas." Out of this visit came a picture called "A Scene at Abbotsford," in which the dog Maida, so loved by Scott, was the prominent figure; six weeks after it was finished the dog died.

At this time Sir Walter was not known as the author of the "Waverley Novels," but in later years Landseer painted a picture which he called "Extract from a Journal whilst at Abbotsford," to which the following was attached: "Found the great poet in his study, laughing at a collie dog playing with Maida, his favorite old greyhound, given him by Glengarry, and quoting Shakespeare--'Crabbed old age and youth cannot agree.' On the floor was the cover of a proof-sheet, sent for correction by Constable, of the novel then in progress. N. B.--This took place before he was the acknowledged author of the 'Waverley Novels.'" Landseer early suspected Scott of the authorship of the novels, and without doubt he came to this conclusion from what he saw at Abbotsford.

Landseer repeated his visits to Scotland for many years, and saw all parts of that country at various seasons. From the time of his first visit there was a new feeling in his works--a breadth and power was in them which he gained from nature, and a refinement and elevation which he undoubtedly received from his friendship with Sir Walter and the impetus it gave him.

He also became so interested in the Gaelic people that he painted good pictures of them. At first these men did not know what to make of a huntsman who would throw away his gun when fine game appeared, and draw out pencils and paper to make pictures of what others were so eager to shoot. This tendency made him a poor hunter; but he was intensely interested in the chase, and especially in deer-stalking. He insisted that deer had intelligence, and the question was whether the game or the hunter happened to have the superior mind. When in London the artist was a quiet, society gentleman; but each year he broke away from all city habits, and went to the Highlands, where he divided his days between the chase and painting portraits of his friends there with their children and pets, or putting frescoes on the walls of their houses.

Landseer continued to live in his father's house long after he was a famous man. The senior artist conducted all business matters--sold pictures, and took the money for them as if his son was still a boy. At length, through the advice of a friend, Edwin Landseer removed to No. 1 St. John's Wood Road, to which he gave the name of Maida Vale; he enlarged, and improved this home from time to time, and had no other for nearly fifty years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 77.--THE EAGLE AND DEAD STAG. _By Landseer._]

In 1826 Landseer painted "Chevy Chase;" it was the only historical painting he ever did, and still remains at Woburn Abbey, where it originally went. The animals in the picture are excellent of course, but this sort of painting was not that in which Landseer showed his best. This year of 1826 was an important one to this master. He was twenty-four years old, and was immediately admitted an a.s.sociate of the Royal Academy. No one can be a candidate for this honor at a younger age, and very few others have attained it so early. Before he was thirty Landseer was a full member, and his diploma picture, "The Dead Warrior" is in the Royal Academy. But this year saw a great change in his pictures, as may be seen in that of "The Chief's Return from Deer-stalking," which he sent to the next exhibition. It was free, broad, and effective beyond any previous work, and this manner was his best. Many judges fix the year 1834 as the very prime in the art of Landseer, and one of the works of that year, called "Bolton Abbey in the Olden Time," is very famous. It represents the va.s.sals of the abbey bringing in their tributes of game, fish, and fruits, which the jolly, old monks gladly receive.

There is no question but that Landseer's best pictures are of dogs, and we can but echo the words of Hamerton when he says: "The best commentators on Landseer, the best defenders of his genius, are the dogs themselves; and so long as there exist terriers, deer-hounds, blood-hounds, his fame will need little a.s.sistance from writers on art."

Landseer had a long and happy intimacy with Queen Victoria and the royal family. He painted portraits of the various members of the queen's household in all possible ways, with dogs and on horseback, in fancy dress and hunting costume--in short, these portraits are far too numerous to be mentioned in detail. Ever after 1835 Landseer was called upon to paint pictures of the pets of the royal family, and these works became very numerous. While he was thus favored as an artist he was also a friend of the queen and her immediate family; he was often summoned to play billiards with Prince Albert. The queen's Journal of Life in the Highlands frequently mentions him, and we are sure that if we could read Landseer's diary it would tell us many interesting things of the queen and her family. Naturally it followed that an artist thus favored by the queen would be patronized by the n.o.bility, and it is true that much of Landseer's time, both as an artist and as a gentleman of society, was pa.s.sed in the company of people of the highest positions in Great Britain; and with the one exception of Sir Joshua Reynolds, no artist in England was ever visited by so many people of rank. His house was really a social centre, and no one felt above accepting his hasty invitations to his parties, which were almost always gotten up on an impulse and the guests invited at the last possible moment.

Among Landseer's friends were d.i.c.kens and Thackeray, and Sydney Smith was very fond of the artist; and it is said that when the great wit was asked to sit to Landseer for his portrait, he replied in the words of the haughty Syrian: "Is thy servant a _dog_ that he should do this thing?"

When at his best Landseer had a facility in drawing and painting that was marvellous. He could draw two entirely different objects at the same moment, his left hand being equally skilful with the right. He was seen to draw a horse's head with one hand and a stag's head with antlers at exactly the same time--and this at an evening party to prove that it could be done. He once sent to an exhibition a picture of rabbits under which he wrote, "Painted in three-quarters of an hour." He painted a life-size picture of a fallow-deer in three hours, and it required no retouching.

One of his comrades said: "Sir Edwin has a fine hand, a correct eye, refined perceptions, and can do almost anything but dance on the slack wire. He is a fine billiard player, plays at chess, sings when with his intimate friends, and has considerable humor."

We have pa.s.sed over the best and most pleasant part of the life of this great painter, for in 1840 he had an attack of illness from which he never recovered. He travelled, and endeavored in every way to go on with his work; but he was always subject to attacks of depression which were sometimes so serious that his friends feared loss of reason. Of course there was a different tone in his works--a seriousness and pathos, and at times a religious element, which was very acceptable to some persons, and he gained admirers where he had not found them before. But it can scarcely be said that his last days were his best days, though he executed some famous pictures.

In 1866 he exhibited a model of a stag at bay which was afterward cast in bronze. The lions at the base of the Nelson monument in Trafalgar Square may be called the work of Sir Edwin, for he modelled one of the colossal beasts from which the others were formed with but slight changes, and the whole were cast under the care of Baron Marochetti.

In 1872 he painted "The Font," which is a religious subject. It represents the sheep and lambs of the Gospel gathering round a font, upon the edge of which are doves. A rainbow spans the sky; on the sides of the font are a mask of the face of Christ and the symbols of the Atonement. This is a painful picture, for while it is exquisite in conception its execution shows the weakness of the painter, who so soon after he made it was released from all his darkness and suffering.

Sir Edwin Landseer was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral with all the honors which his genius and character merited. His works are known to almost every child in America by means of the engravings which have been made from them. His brother Thomas engraved hundreds of the designs of Edwin and made them popular all over the world, and a large part of this success was due to the skill and sympathy which Thomas devoted to what was largely a work of love. Of course many other engravers have worked after Landseer, and almost all his pictures have been reproduced in one style of engraving or another.

There are nine portraits of Sir Edwin Landseer in existence--one by J.

Hayter when Landseer was thirteen years old and is represented as a cricketer; one painted a year later by Leslie, in which Edwin Landseer is the Rutland in the work called "Henry VI." It is owned by the Philadelphia Academy. The next were not made until 1843, when Count d'Orsay painted two portraits of him; in 1830 Dupper had made a drawing, and in 1835 a photograph was taken; Baron Marochetti made a bust portrait of Landseer which is in the Royal Academy, and in his picture called the "Connoisseurs" Sir Edwin painted his own portrait, with dogs on each side who stand as critics of his work. This was painted in 1865.

Sir Edwin Landseer left an estate of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and the works unsold at his death brought about seventy thousand pounds. His will made but a few bequests, and the remainder of this large sum was divided between his brother and three sisters. With the account of Sir Edwin I shall close the account of painters given in this volume.

We have seen how few actual remains of the painting of ancient nations are now in existence. Almost nothing is left even from the times of the Greeks; in truth, there is more upon the tombs of Egypt than in the land of h.e.l.las. We read accounts of cla.s.sic painting which arouse our deepest interest one moment, only to remember in the next that we can see but the merest sc.r.a.ps of all this wealth of beauty which moved the cultured Greeks to write of it with such enthusiasm.

After the days of cla.s.sic art we have endeavored to trace painting through a period when it could scarcely be termed an art, so little of it was done, and that little was so far below our ideal. Again, this decline was followed by a Renaissance--an awakening--and from that day in the fourteenth century when the Madonna of Cimabue was carried in triumph through the streets of Florence, this art moved on with progressive steps until Michael Angelo, Leonardo, Raphael, t.i.tian, and others highly gifted, had set up the standards which have remained as beacons and guides to all the world.

In tracing this progress we have seen that Italy, the German nations, Spain, France, and England have all striven to dream dreams of beauty and grandeur, of tenderness and love, and to fix them in fitting colors where all the world could see them.

The past is always fascinating. No stories are so pleasantly begun as those that say, "A long time ago there lived," etc. One can have the most complete satisfaction in the study of what has happened so far in the past that we can see all its effects and judge of it by the tests which time is sure to bring to everything. It is such a study that has been made in these pages, and I would suggest that it has a second use scarcely less important than the study of history--that is, the preparation it affords for judging of what is done in the present. A knowledge of what has been achieved enables us by comparison to decide upon the merits of new works.

The painting of to-day offers an immense field for investigation. When we remember that five centuries ago the painters of the world could be counted by tens, and are told that now there is an average of twenty-five hundred painters in some foreign cities, we see that a lifetime is scarcely sufficient in which to study the painting of our own era.

Have we not reason to hope that works are now being produced which shall be studied and admired in the future as we study and admire those of the past? Is it not true that the artistic works of any period show forth the spirit of the time? If, then, the close of the Dark Ages and the dawn of a better life could bring forth the treasures which remain from those days, what ought to be the result of the more universal learning and the advancing civilization of the nineteenth century? And so, in leaving this book, I hope that it may be useful to all who read it for one purpose that I have suggested or the other; either to present an outline of what has been done in the past, or aid in the understanding of the painting of the present.