Artists Past and Present Part 1

Artists Past and Present.

by Elisabeth Luther Cary.

I

ANTOINE LOUIS BARYE

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art are two pictures by the Florentine painter of the fifteenth century called Piero di Cosimo. They represent hunting scenes, and the figures are those of men, women, fauns, satyrs, centaurs, and beasts of the forests, fiercely struggling together. As we observe the lion fastening his teeth in the flesh of the boar, the bear grappling with his human slayer, and the energy and determination of the creatures at bay, our thought involuntarily bridges a chasm of four centuries and calls up the image of the Barye bronzes in which are displayed the same detachment of vision, the same absence of sentimentality, the same vigor and intensity if not quite the same strangeness of imagination. It is manifestly unwise to carry the parallel very far, yet there is still another touch of similarity in the beautiful surfaces. Piero's fine, delicate handling of pigment is in the same manner of expression as Barye's exquisite manipulation of his metal after the casting, his beautiful thin patines that do not suppress but reveal sensitive line and subtle modulation. We know little enough of Piero beyond what his canvases tell us. Of Barye we naturally know more, although everything save what his work confides of his character and temperament is of secondary importance, and he is interesting to moderns, especially as the father of modern animal sculpture, and not for the events of his quiet life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: From the collection of the late Cyrus J. Lawrence, Esq.

PORTRAIT OF ANTOINE LOUIS BARYE

_From a painting by J. F. Millet_]

Antoine Louis Barye, born at Paris September 15, 1796, died June 25, 1875, in the same year with Corot and at the same age. The circ.u.mstances under which he began his career have been told in detail by more than one biographer, but it would be difficult rightly to estimate the importance and singularity of his work without some review of them. His father was a jeweler of Lyons, who settled in Paris before Antoine was born, and whose idea of education for his son was to place him at less than fourteen with an engraver of military equipments from whom he learned to engrave on steel and other metals, and later with a jeweler from whom he learned to make steel matrixes for molding reliefs from thin metals. A certain stress has been laid on this lack of schooling in the conventional sense of the word, but it is difficult to see that it did much harm, since Barye, though he was not a correct writer of French, was a great reader, keenly intelligent in his a.n.a.lysis of the knowledge he gained from books, and with extraordinary power of turning it to his own uses. Such a mind does not seriously miss the advantages offered by a formal training, and it might fairly be argued that the manual skill developed at the work-bench was in the long run more valuable to him than the abstract knowledge which he might have acquired in school could possibly have been. Be that as it may, up to the time of his marriage in 1823 he had a varied apprenticeship. At sixteen he was drawn as a conscript and was first a.s.signed to the department where maps in relief are modeled. Before he was twenty-one he was working with a sculptor called Bosio, and also in the studio of the painter, Baron Gros. He studied Lamarck, Cuvier and Buffon. He competed five times for the _Prix de Rome_ at the Salon, once in the section of medals and four times in the section of sculpture, succeeding once (in the first compet.i.tion) in gaining a second prize. He then went back to the jeweler's bench for eight years, varying the monotony of his work by modeling independently small reliefs of _Eagle and Serpent_, _Eagle and Antelope_, _Leopard_, _Panther_, and other animals.

In 1831 he sent to the Salon of that year the _Tiger Devouring a Gavial of the Ganges_, a beautiful little bronze, seven and a half inches high, which won a Second Medal and was bought by the Government for the Luxembourg. This was the beginning of his true career. In the same Salon was exhibited his _Martyrdom of St. Sebastian_, but the powerful realism and energy of the animal group represented what henceforth was to be Barye's characteristic achievement, the realization, that is, of what the Chinese call the "movement of life;" the strange reality of appearance that is never produced by imitation of nature and that makes the greatness of art. The tiger clutches its victim with great gaunt paws, its eyes are fixed upon the prey, its body is drawn together with tense muscles, its tail is curled, the serpent is coiled about the ma.s.sive neck of its destroyer with large undulating curves. The touch is everywhere certain, the composition is dignified, and the group as an exhibition of extraordinary knowledge is noteworthy.

A lithograph portrait of Barye by Gigoux, made at about this time, shows a fine head, interested eyes, a firm mouth and a determined chin. His chief qualities were perseverance, scientific curiosity, modesty and pride, and that indomitable desire for perfection so rarely encountered and so precious an element in the artist's equipment. He was little of a talker, little of a writer, infinitely studious, somewhat reserved and cold in manner, yet fond of good company and not averse to good dinners.

Guillaume said of him that he had the genius of great science and of high morality, which is the best possible definition in a single phrase of his artistic faculty. He had the kind of sensitiveness, or self-esteem, if you will, that frequently goes with a mind confident of its merits, but not indifferent to criticism or sufficiently elevated and aloof to dispense with resentment. In 1832 he sent to the Salon his _Lion Crushing a Serpent_, and in 1833 he sent a dozen animal sculptures, a group of medallions and six water-colors. That year he was made chevalier of the Legion of Honour, but the following year nine groups made for the Duke of Orleans were rejected by the Salon jury, and again in 1836 several small pieces were rejected, although the _Seated Lion_, later bought by the government, was accepted. The reasons for the rejections are not entirely clear, but Barye was an innovator, and in the field of art the way of the innovator is far harder than that of the transgressor. Charges of commercialism were among those made against him, and he--the least commercial of men--took them deeply to heart. His bitterness a.s.sumed a self-respecting but an inconvenient and unprofitable form, as he made up his mind to exhibit thereafter only in his own workshop, a resolution to which he held for thirteen years.

After the rejection of his groups in 1834 he happened to meet Jules Dupre, who expressed his disgust with the decision. "It is quite easy to understand," Barye replied, "I have too many friends on the jury." This touch of cynicism indicates the ease with which he was wounded, but it was equally characteristic of him that in planning his simple revenge he hurt only himself. He did indeed refrain from sending his bronzes to the Salon and he did act as his own salesman, and the result was the incurrence of a heavy debt. To meet this he was obliged to sell all his wares to a founder who wanted them for the purpose of repeating them in debased reproductions. His own care in obtaining the best possible results in each article that he produced, his reluctance to sell anything of the second cla.s.s, and his perfectly natural dislike to parting with an especially beautiful piece under any circ.u.mstances, did not, of course, work to his business advantage, although the amateurs who have bought the bronzes that came from his own refining hand have profited by it immensely. It would be a mistake, however, to think of him as a crushed or even a deeply misfortunate man. He simply was poor and not appreciated by the general public according to his merits. After 1850, however, he had enough orders from connoisseurs, many of them Americans, and also from the French government to make it plain that his importance as an artist was firmly established at least in the minds of a few. He sold his work at low prices which since his death have been trebled and quadrupled, in fact, some of his proofs have increased fifty-fold, but the fact that he was not overwhelmed with orders gave him that precious leisure to spend upon the perfecting of his work which, we may fairly a.s.sume, was worth more to him than money.

[Ill.u.s.tration: From the collection of the late Cyrus J. Lawrence, Esq.

LION DEVOURING A DOE

("LION DEVORANT UNE BICHE")]

[Ill.u.s.tration: From the collection of the late Cyrus J. Lawrence, Esq.

BULL THROWN TO EARTH BY A BEAR

("TAUREAU TERRa.s.se PAR UN OURS")

_From a bronze by Barye_]

Nor was he entirely without honor in his own country. At the Universal Exposition of 1855 he received the Grand Medal of Honour in the section of artistic bronzes, and in the same year the Officer's Cross of Legion of Honour--a dignity that is said to have reached poor Rousseau only when he was too near death to receive the messengers. In 1868 Barye was made Member of the Inst.i.tute, although two years earlier he had been humiliated by having his application refused. And from America, in addition to numerous proofs of the esteem in which he was held there by private amateurs, he received through Mr. Walters in 1875 an order to supply the Corcoran Gallery at Washington with an example of every bronze he had made. This last tribute moved him to tears, and he replied, "Ah! Monsieur Walters, my own country has never done anything like that for me!" These certainly were far from being trivial satisfactions, and Barye had also reaped a harvest of even subtler joys.

One likes to think of him in Barbizon, living in cordial intimacy with Diaz and Rousseau and Millet and the great Daumier. Here he had sympathy, excellent talk of excellent things, the company of artists working as he did, with profound sincerity and intelligence, and he had a chance himself to paint in the vast loneliness of the woods where he could let his imagination roam, and could find a home for his tigers and lions and bears studied in menageries and in the _Jardin des Plantes_.

It is pleasant also to think of him among the five and twenty _Amis du Vendredi_ dining together at little wineshops on mutton and cheese and wine with an occasional pate given as a treat by some member in funds for the moment. He was not above enthusiasm for "_un certain pate de maquereau de Calais_" and he was fond of the theater and of all shows where animals were to be seen. It is pleasantest of all to think of him at his work, the beauty of which he knew and the ultimate success of which he could hardly have doubted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: From the collection of the late Cyrus J. Lawrence, Esq.

A LIONESS

_From a bronze by Barye_]

In what does the extraordinary quality of this work consist? The question is not difficult to answer, since, like most of the truly great artists, Barye had clear-cut characteristics among which may be found those that separate him from and raise him above his contemporaries.

Scientific grasp of detail and artistic generalization are to be found in all his work where an animal is the subject, and this combination is in itself a mark of greatness. If we should examine the exceptionally fine collection of Barye bronzes belonging to the late Mr. Cyrus J.

Lawrence, and consisting of more than a hundred beautiful examples, or the fine group in the Corcoran Gallery at Washington, we should soon learn his manner and the type established by him in his animal subjects.

In the presence of so large a number of the works of a single artist, certain features common to the whole accomplishment may easily be traced. One dominating characteristic in this case is the ease with which the anatomical knowledge of the artist is worn. Even in the early bronzes the execution is free, large, and quite without the dry particularity that might have been expected from a method the most exacting and specific possible. Barye from the first went very deeply into the study of anatomy, examining skeletons, and dissecting animals after death to gain the utmost familiarity with all the bones and muscles, the articulations, the fur and skin and minor details. His reading of Cuvier and Lamarck indicates his interest in theories of animal life and organism. He took, also, great numbers of comparative measurements that enabled him to represent not merely an individual specimen of a certain kind of animal, but a type which should be true in general as well as in particular. He would measure, for example, the bones of a deer six months old and those of a deer six weeks old, carefully noting all differences in order to form a definite impression of the normal measurements of the animal at different ages. He made comparative drawings of the skulls of cats, tigers, leopards, panthers, the whole feline species, in short, seeking out the principles of structure and noting the dissimilarities due to differences in size. He made innumerable drawings of shoulders, heads, paws, nostrils, ears, carefully recording the dimensions on each sketch. Among his notes was found a minute description of the characteristic features of a blooded horse.

He was never content with merely an external observation of a subject when he had it in his power to penetrate the secrets of animal mechanism. He first made sketches of his subjects, of course, but frequently he also modeled parts of the animal in wax on the spot to catch the characteristic movement. His indefatigable patience in thus laying the groundwork of exact knowledge suggests the thoroughness of the old Dutch artists. He followed, too, the recommendation of Leonardo--so dangerous to any but the strongest mind--to draw the parts before drawing the whole, to "learn exact.i.tude before facility."

[Ill.u.s.tration: From the collection of the late Cyrus J. Lawrence, Esq.

THE PRANCING BULL

("TAUREAU CABRe")

_From a bronze by Barye_]

A story is told of a visit paid him by the sculptor Jacquemart: "I will show you what I have under way, just now," said he to his friend, and looking about his studio for a moment, drew out a couple of legs and stood them erect. After a few seconds of puzzled thought he remembered the whereabouts of the other members, and finally drew out the head from under a heap in a corner. And the statue once in place was conspicuous for its fine sense of unity. It was not, of course, this meticulous method, but the use he made of it, that led Barye to his great results.

His mind was strengthened and enriched by every fragment of knowledge with which he fed it. It all went wholesomely and naturally to the growth of his artistic ideas, and he does not appear to have been interested in acquiring knowledge that did not directly connect itself with these ideas. By his perfect familiarity with the facts upon which he built his conceptions he was fitted to use them intelligently, omit them where he chose, exaggerate them where he chose, minimize them where he chose. They did not fetter him; they freed him; and he could work with them blithely, unhampered by doubts and inabilities. It is most significant both of his accuracy and his freedom that in constructing his models he dispensed with the rigid iron skeleton on which the clay commonly is built. Having modeled the different parts of his composition, he brought them together and supported them from the outside by means of crutches and tringles, after the fashion of the boat builders, thus enabling himself to make alterations, corrections and revisions to the very end of his task. The definitive braces were put in place only at the moment of the molding in plaster.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PANTHER SEIZING A DEER

_From a bronze by Barye_]

For small models he preferred to use wax which does not dry and crack like the clay. He also sometimes covered his plaster model with a layer, more or less thick, of wax, upon which he could make a more perfect rendering of superficial subtleties. Occasionally, as in the instance of _The Lion Crushing the Serpent_, cast by Honore Gonon, he employed the process called _a cire perdue_, in which the model is first made in wax, then over it is formed a mold from which the wax is melted out by heat. The liquid bronze is poured into the matrix thus formed, and when this has become cold the mold is broken off, leaving an almost accurate reproduction of the original model, which is also, of course, unique, the wax model and the mold both having been destroyed in the process.

Upon his _patines_ he lavished infinite care. Theodore Child has given an excellent description of the difference between this final enrichment of a bronze as applied by a master and the _patine_ of commerce. "The ideal _patine_," he says, "is an oxydation and a polish, without thickness, as it were, a delicate varnish or glaze, giving depth and tone to the metal. Barye's green _patine_ as produced by himself has these qualities of lightness and richness of tone, whereas the green _patine_ of the modern proofs is not a _patine_, not an oxydation, but an absolute application of green color in powder, a _mise en couleur_, as the technical phrase is. In places this _patine_ will be nearly a millimeter thick and will consequently choke up all delicate modeling, soften all that is sharp, and render the bronze dull, _mou_, heavy. To produce Barye's fine green _patine_, requires time and patience, and for commercial bronze is impracticable. Barye, however, was never a commercial man. When a bronze was ordered he would never promise it at any fixed date; he would ask for one or two or three months; 'he did not know exactly, it would depend on how his _patine_ came.'"

His patines are by no means all green; some of them are almost golden in their vitality of color--the "_patine medaille_," as in _The Walking Deer_, which is a superb example; some are dark brown approaching black.

The most beautiful in color and delicacy which I have seen is that on Mr. Lawrence's _Bull Felled by a Bear_ (_Taureau terra.s.se par un ours_), a bronze which seems to me in many particulars to remain a masterpiece unsurpa.s.sed by the more violent and splendid later works. Another remarkable example of the effect of color possible to produce by a _patine_ is furnished by the _Lion Devouring a Doe_ (_Lion devorant une biche_), dated 1837. The green lurking in the shadows and the coppery gleam on the ridge of the spine, the thigh, and the bristling mane, the rich yet bright intermediate tones, give a wonderful brilliancy and vitality to the magnificent little piece in which the ferocity of nature and the charm and lovableness of art are commingled. In his interesting book on Barye, published by the Barye Monument a.s.sociation, Mr. De Kay has referred to this work as an example of Barye's power to reproduce the horrible and to make one's blood run cold with the ferocity of the destroying beast. It seems to me, however, that it is one of the pieces in which Barye's power to represent the horrible without destroying the peace of mind to be found in all true art, is most obvious. With his capacity for emphasizing that which he wishes to be predominant in his composition he has brought out to the extreme limit of expression the strength of the lion and its savage interest in its prey. The lashing tail, the wrinkled nose, the concentrated eyes are fully significant of the mood of the beast, and were the doe equally defined the effect would be disturbing. But the doe, lying on the ground, is treated almost in bas-relief, hardly distinguishable against the ma.s.sive bulk of its oppressor. The appeal is not to pity, but to recognition of the force of native instincts. Added to this is the beauty, subtly distinguished and vigorously rendered, of the large curves of the splendid body of the lion. Even among the superb later pieces it would be difficult to find one with greater beauty of flowing line and organic composition.

In the ill.u.s.tration we can see the general contour from one point of view, but we cannot see the rhythm of the curves balancing and repeating each other from the tip of the uplifted tail to the arch of the great neck. Nor is a particle of energy sacrificed to these beautiful contours. The body is compact, the head large and expressive of power, the thick paws rest with weight on the ground. There is none of the pulling out of forms so often employed to give grace and so usually suggestive of weakness. The composition is at once absolutely graceful and eloquent of immense physical force. In the _Panther Seizing a Deer_ (_Panthere saississant un Cerf_), one of the largest of the animal groups, we have again the characteristic double curves, the fine play of line, and the appropriate fitting of the figures into a long oval, and also the minimizing of the cruelty of the subject by the reticent art with which it is treated. We see clearly enough the angry jaws, the curled tail, the weight of the attacking beast falling on the head of its victim, dragging it toward the ground. Nothing is slighted or compromised. We see even the gash in the flesh made by the panther's claws and the drops of blood trickling from the wound. But we have to thank Barye's instinct for refined conception that these features of the work do not claim and hold our attention which is absorbed by the vital line, the gracious sweep of the contours, the lovely surface, and the omission of all irrelevant and unreasonable detail.

Many of Barye's subjects included the human figure and in a few instances the human figure alone preoccupied him. Occasionally he was very successful in this kind. The small silver reproduction of _Hercules Carrying a Boar_ has the remarkable quality of easy force. The figure of Hercules is without exaggerated muscles, is normally proportioned and quietly modeled. His burden rests lightly on his shoulders, and his free long stride indicates that the labor is joy. This is the ancient, not the modern tradition, and the little figure corresponds, curiously enough, with one of the male figures in the Piero di Cosimo mentioned at the beginning of this article. In the latter case the strong man is engaged in combat with a living animal, but he carries his strength with the same a.s.surance and absence of effort in its exercise. Barye, however, does not always give this happy impression when he seeks to represent the human figure. If we compare, for example, the bronze made in 1840 for the Duke of Montpensier (_Roger Bearing off Angelica on the Hippogriff_) with any of the animal groups of that decade or earlier, we can hardly fail to be amazed at the lack of unity in the composition and the distracting multiplicity of the details. If we compare the _Hunt of the Tiger_ with the _Asian Elephant Crushing Tiger_ the great superiority of the latter in the arrangement of the ma.s.ses, the dignity of the proportions, and in economy of detail, is at once evident. The figures of the four stone groups on the Louvre, however, have a certain antique n.o.bility of design and withal a naturalness that put them in the first cla.s.s of modern sculpture, I think.

[Ill.u.s.tration: From the collection of the late Cyrus J. Lawrence, Esq.

THE LION AND THE SERPENT

("LION AU SERPENT")

_From a bronze by Barye_]

One point worthy of note in any comparison between Barye's animals and his human beings is the intensity and subtlety of expression in the former and the absence of any marked expression in the latter. His men are practically masked. No pa.s.sion or emotion makes its impression on their features. Even their gestures, violent though they may be, seem inspired from without and not by the impulse of their own feelings. His animals on the contrary show many phases of what must be called, for lack of a more exact word, psychological expression. A striking instance of this is found in the contrast between the sketch for _The Lion Crushing the Serpent_ and the finished piece. In the sketch there is terror in the lion's face, his paw is raised to strike at the reptile, his tail is uplifted and lashing, the att.i.tude and expression are those of terror mingled with rage and the serpent appears the aggressor. In the finished bronze the lion is calmer and in obvious possession of the field. The fierce claws pushing out from their sheathing, the eyes that seem to snarl with the mouth, the ma.s.sive paw resting on the serpent's coiled body combine to give a subtle impression of certain mastery, and the serpent is unquestionably the victim and defendant in the encounter. It is by such intuitive reading of the aspect of animals of diverse kinds, that Barye awakens the imagination and leads the mind into the wilderness of the untamed world. He is perhaps most himself when depicting moods of concentration. The fashion in which he gathers the great bodies together for springing upon and holding down their prey is absolutely unequaled among animal sculptors.

His mind handled monumental compositions with greater success, I think, than compositions of the lighter type in which the subject lay at ease or exhibited the pure joy of living which we a.s.sociate with the animal world.

Two exceptions to this statement come, however, at once to my mind--the delightful _Bear in his Trough_ and the _Prancing Bull_. The former is the only instance I know of a Barye animal disporting itself with youthful irresponsibility, and the innocence and humor of the little beast make one wish that it had not occupied this unique place in the list of Barye's work. The _Prancing Bull_ also is a conception by itself and one of which Barye may possibly have been a little afraid. With his extraordinary patience it is not probable that he had the opposite quality of ability to catch upon the fly, as it were, a pa.s.sing motion, an elusive and swiftly fading effect. But in this instance he has rendered with great skill the curvetting spring of the bull into the air and the lightness of the motion in contrast with the weight of the body.

This singular lightness or physical adroitness he has caught also in his representation of elephants, the _Elephant of Senegal Running_, showing to an especial degree the agility of the animal despite its enormous bulk and ponderosity.

While Barye's most important work was accomplished in the field of sculpture, his merits as a painter were great. His devotion to the study of structural expression was too stern to permit him to lapse into mediocrity, whatever medium he chose to use, and the animals he created, or re-created, on canvas are as thoroughly understood, as clearly presented, as artistically significant as those in bronze. With every medium, however, there is, of course, a set of more or less undefinable laws governing its use. Wide as the scope of the artist is there are limits to his freedom, and if he uses water-color, for example, in a manner which does not extract from the medium the highest virtue of which it is capable he is so much the less an artist. It has been said of Barye that his paintings were unsatisfactory on that score.

About a hundred pictures in oil and some fifty water-colors have been put on the list of his works. Mr. Theodore Child found his execution heavy, uniform, of equal strength all over, and of a monotonous impasto which destroys all aerial perspective. I have not seen enough of his painting in oils either to contradict or to acquiesce in this verdict; but his water-colors produce a very different impression on my mind. He uses body-color but with restraint and his management of light and shade and his broad, free treatment of the landscape background give to his work in this medium a distinction quite apart from that inseparable from the beautiful drawing. In the painting that we reproduce the soft washes of color over the rocky land bring the background into delicate harmony with the richly tinted figure of the tiger with the effect of variety in unity sought for and obtained by the masters of painting. The weight and roundness of the tiger's body is brought out by the firm broad outline which Barye's contemporary Daumier is so fond of using in his paintings, the interior modeling having none of the emphasis on form that one looks for in a sculptor's work. In his paintings indeed, even more than in his sculpture, Barye shows his interest in the psychological side of his problem. Here if ever he sees his subject whole, in all its relations to life. The vast sweep of woodland or desert in which he places his wild creatures, the deep repose commingled with the potential ferocity of these creatures, their separateness from man in their inarticulate emotions, their inhuman pa.s.sions, their withdrawn powerfully realized lives, their self-sufficiency, their part in nature--all this becomes vivid to us as we look at his paintings and we are aware that the portrayal of animal life went far deeper with Barye than a mere anatomical grasp of his subject. Corot did not find his tigers sufficiently poetic and altered, it is said, the tiger drawn for one of his own paintings until he succeeded in giving it a more romantic aspect. Barye's poetry, however, was the unalterable poetry of life. He found his inspiration in realities but that is not to say that his realities were external ones. He excluded nothing belonging to the sentiment of his subject and comparison of his work with that of other animal sculptors and painters deepens one's respect for the penetrating insight with which he sought his truths.

Since Barye's death and the great increase in the prices of his work, many devices have been used to sell objects bearing his name, but not properly his work. For example, he produced for the city of Ma.r.s.eilles some objects in stone (designed for the columns of the gateway), which were never done in bronze; since his death these have been reduced in size and produced in bronze as his work. Works of the younger Barye signed by the great name are also confused with those of the father.