Pictures Every Child Should Know Part 11

"You have not to do with Holbein," he said, "but with me. I tell you, of seven peasants I can make seven lords, but of seven lords I cannot make one Holbein. Begone! and remember that if you ever attempt to avenge yourself, I shall look upon any injury offered to the painter as done to myself."

It was Holbein who, visiting a brother artist and finding a picture on the easel, painted a fly upon it. When the artist returned he tried to brush the fly off, then set about looking for the one who had deceived him.

His portrait painting was so superb that he received many commissions.

Meantime, Sir Thomas More had fallen into disfavour with the King and was to lose his head, but it is written that the artist's portraits "betray nothing of this tragedy." He was as ready to climb to fame by the favour of his generous patron's enemies as he had been to accept the offices of Sir Thomas More. He painted the portraits of several of the wives of Henry VIII., and it may be said that there was a good deal of that monarch's temperament to be found in Holbein himself. Take him all in all, Hans was as detestable as a man as he was excellent as a painter.

In his adopted home in Lucerne, Holbein had painted frescoes, both on the inside and the outside of a citizen's house, and this house stood until 1824, when it was torn down to make way for street improvements, but several artists hastily copied the frescoes so that they are not entirely lost.

Before he left Germany for England, Holbein had been commissioned to decorate the town hall in Basel, and a certain amount of money was voted for the work, but after he had finished three walls, he decided that the money was only enough to pay him for what he had already done. The councillors agreed with him, but as money was a little "close" in Basel at that time, they felt unable to give him more, and so voted to "let the back wall alone, till further notice."

He painted one Madonna whom he surrounded with the entire family of Burgomaster Meyer, including even the burgomaster's first wife, who was dead. This work is called the "Meyer Madonna."

It is said that after Holbein's return to Basel he, with others, was persecuted for his "religious principles," but if this were true, his persecutors went to considerable pains for nothing, because Holbein was never known to have any sort of principles, religious or otherwise. He was neither a Protestant, nor a Catholic but a painter, a man without convictions and without thought. He did not care for family, country, friends, politics, religion, nor for anything else, so far as any one knows.

When he was asked why he had not partaken of the Sacrament, he answered that he wanted to understand the matter better before he did so. Thus he escaped punishment, and when matters were explained to him, he did whatever seemed safest and most convenient under the circ.u.mstances.

On his return to England, he settled among the colony of German and Netherland merchants, who were in the habit of meeting at a place called "The Steelyard," as their home and warehouses were grouped in that locality, with a guild hall and a wineshop they alone patronised.

While a.s.sociated with his compatriots Holbein made portraits of many of them, and these are magnificent works of art. He painted them separately or in groups; in their offices and in their guild hall, as the case might be. The men whom he thus painted were: Gorg Gisze, Hans of Antwerp, Derich Berck, Geryck Tybis, Ambrose Fallen, and many others. He designed the arch which the guild erected upon the occasion of Anne Boleyn's coronation, and he painted Henry's next Queen, Jane Seymour.

Holbein painted many portraits of Henry VIII. and probably all those dated after 1537 were either copies or founded upon the portrait which Holbein made and which was destroyed with Whitehall.

While he painted for Henry, Holbein received a sort of retainer's fee of thirty pounds a year, but he may have received sums for outside commissions which he undertook. On one occasion, when he took a journey to Upper Burgundy to paint a portrait of the d.u.c.h.ess whom Henry contemplated making his next wife, the King gave him ten pounds out of his own purse. We have no record of vast sums such as Raphael received.

Henry did not succeed in making the d.u.c.h.ess his wife, so Holbein was sent to paint another--Anne of Cleves--that Henry might see what he thought of her before he undertook to make her his queen. Holbein did a disastrous deed, for he made Anne a very acceptable looking woman, (the portrait hangs in the Louvre) and Henry negotiated for her on the strength of that portrait. Later, when he saw her, he was utterly disgusted and disappointed.

Holbein, notwithstanding this trick, was employed to paint the next wife of Henry, and doubtless he also made the miniature of Catherine Howard which is in Windsor Castle. Holbein finally died of the plague and no one knows where he was buried. His wife died later, and it was left for his son, Philip, who was said to be "a good well-behaved lad," to bring honours to the family. He was apprenticed in Paris, and, settling later in Augsburg, he founded a branch of the Holbein family on which the Emperor Matthias conferred a patent of n.o.bility, making them the Holbeins of Holbeinsberg.

PLATE--ROBERT CHESEMAN WITH HIS FALCON

This is one of the best of the many splendid portraits Holbein painted. It hangs in The Hague gallery. The gentleman was forty-eight years old and in the portrait he wears a purplish-red doublet of silk and a black overcoat, which was the fashion of the day, all trimmed with fur. He has curly hair, just turning gray. His left hand is gloved and on it he holds his falcon, while with the other hand he strokes its feathers.

Of all sports at that time, falconry was the most fashionable and every fine gentleman had his sporting birds. Robert Cheseman lived in Ess.e.x. He was rich and a leader in English politics. His father was "keeper of the wardrobe to Henry VIII." and he himself served in many public offices. He was one of the gentleman chosen to welcome Anne of Cleves when she landed on English soil to marry Henry VIII. These details were first published by Mr. Arthur Chamberlain and are taken from his sketch of Holbein and his works.

Among Holbein's other famous pictures are: "The Amba.s.sadors," "Hans of Antwerp," "Christina of Denmark," "Jane Seymour," "Anne of Cleves,"

and "St. George and the Dragon."

XXIII

WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT

_English (Pre-Raphaelite) School_ 1827-- _Pupil of Academy School_

The story of the Pre-Raphaelites is all by itself a story of art. Holman Hunt was one of three who formed this "brotherhood"; and he, with one other, are the only ones whom some of us think worthy of giving a place in art. This is to be the story of the brotherhood rather than a story of one man.

The last great artist England had had before this extraordinary group, was J. M. W. Turner, truly a wonderful man, but after him England's painters became more and more commonplace, drawing further and further away from truth, There was one, J. F. Lewis, who went away to Syria and lived a lonely and studious life, trying to paint with fidelity sacred scenes, but he was not great enough to do what his conscience and desires demanded of him; and, finally, Constable declared that the end of art in England had come. But it had not, for up in London, in the very heart of the city, in Cheapside (Wood Street) there was born, in April, 1827, a child destined to be a brilliant and wonderful man, who was actually to rescue English art from death. Many do not think thus, but enough of us do to warrant the statement.

The new artist was Holman Hunt. He was the son of a London warehouseman, with no inclination whatever for learning, so that it seemed simply a waste of time to send him to school. This continually repeated history of artists who seem to know nothing outside their brushes and colours, is astonishing, but it is true that artists for the most part must be regarded as artists, pure and simple, and not as men of even reasonably good intellectual attainments, and more or less this accounts for their low estate centuries ago. One does not a.s.sociate "learning" and the artist. When we have such splendid examples as Drer and two or three others we discuss their intellectuality because they are so unusual.

Holman Hunt was like most of his brother artists in all but his art. He hated school and at twelve years of age was taken from it. His father wanted him to become a warehouse merchant like himself, and he began life as clerk or apprentice to an auctioneer. He next went into the employment of some calico-printers of Manchester. The designing of calicoes can hardly be called art, even if the department of design had fallen to Holman Hunt's lot and we have no evidence that it did, but he started to be an artist nevertheless, there in the print-shop. He found in his new place another clerk who cared for art; and this sympathy encouraged him to fix his mind upon painting more than ever. He used to draw such natural flies upon the window panes that his employer tried one day to "shoo away a whole colony of flies that seemed miraculously to have settled." This gave the clerks much amus.e.m.e.nt, and also attracted attention to Holman Hunt's genius.

His very small salary was spent, not on his support, but in lessons from a portrait painter of the city. His parents did not like this, but they could not help themselves, and thus this greatest of the Pre-Raphaelites began his work.

The Pre-Raphaelites were a little group of men who believed that artists were drawing too much on their imaginations, not painting things as they saw them, and that the painter had become incapable of close observation. He worked in his studio, did not get near enough to nature, and instead of trying to follow along this line, this group of men, with their new and partly correct ideas, meant to go back further than the great masters themselves and present an elemental art. This was a part of their scheme and partly it was justified, but of all the men who undertook to make a new school, Holman Hunt was the only one who remained, and will remain forever, a representative. He alone stuck to the original purpose of the group and developed it into a truly great school; so that it is he alone we need to know.

After he began to take lessons of the portrait painter in London, he developed so quickly that he found by painting portraits three days a week, he could pay his own expenses, and the rest of the time he devoted to study. He tried to be admitted to the Academy schools twice and was twice refused before they would receive him.

It was there in the Academy the three original Pre-Raphaelites met for the first time; they were Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Millais. After entering the school Hunt painted and sold four excellent pictures, but they all seem to have been lost; n.o.body can trace them. He was not yet a "Pre-Raphaelite."

All this time Hunt was half ill because he knew that he was grieving his father of whom he was devotedly fond, and the strain of trying to work while he was unhappy nearly destroyed him. The pictures that he exhibited at the Royal Academy were so poor that the commission declared they should not only be removed but that Hunt ought really to be forbidden to exhibit any more. This must have been a great blow to the young and struggling artist, and to add to this trouble, his father was being jeered at for having such a good-for-nothing son. Hunt's pictures in the Academy were so much despised that his father was told his son was a disgrace to him, and we may be sure that did not help the young fellow, who meantime was earning a living, not by painting pictures, but by cleaning up those of another man. Dyce, who had painted on the walls of Trinity House, engaged him to clean and restore those paintings, and Hunt was doing this for his bread and b.u.t.ter.

At that time he became so downhearted and discouraged that he almost decided to leave England altogether and go to live in Canada away from his friends who jeered, and his family who reproached him; but just then Millais, one of the successful painters whom he had met in the Academy school, who could afford to be generous, came to Hunt's aid and gave him the means of living while he painted "The Hireling Shepherd." This was destined to be the turning point in Hunt's luck, for that painting was properly hung at the exhibition, and it received recognition. After that he painted a picture which he sold on the installment plan--being paid by the purchaser so much a month.

Meantime he owed his landlady a large sum, and he says himself that he "suffered almost unbearable pain at pa.s.sing her and her husband week after week without being able to even talk of annulling his debts." In time he not only settled that bill which distressed him, but paid back his friend Millais the money loaned by him.

Hunt rarely took a commission, because to do so meant that he must paint a picture after the manner his employer wished, and Hunt had certain ideas of art in which he believed and therefore would not bind himself to depart from them; but after a little success, which enabled him to pay his bills, he did undertake a commission from Sir Thomas Fairbairn, and it was called "The Awakened Conscience." He finished this picture on a January day late in the afternoon, and that very night he left England, setting out upon a longed-for journey to the Holy Land, where he meant to study the country and people till he believed himself able to paint a truthful picture of sacred scenes. He refused to paint pictures of Eastern Jews who should look like Parisians, with Venetian backgrounds. He meant to paint Oriental scenes as nearly as he could, as they might have taken place.

He came back to his English home just two years and one month from the time he had left it, and he brought back a picture of the goat upon which the Jews loaded their sins and then turned loose in waste-places to wander and die. "The Scapegoat" was a great picture, but before he left England he had painted a greater--the one we see here--"The Light of the World."

He had depended upon the sale of the "Scapegoat" to pay his way for a time after his return home, and alas, it did not sell. More than that, his beloved father died and this added to his sense of desolation, for he had not been sufficiently successful before his death to justify himself in his father's eyes. These things so overwhelmed his sensitive mind with trouble, that his condition became very serious, and if certain good friends had not stood by him loyally, he would probably never have painted again.

He began at last another ambitious picture--"Finding of Christ in the Temple"--but while he was engaged upon this, he had to paint mere pot-boilers also in order to get on at all, and he says that half the time the great picture "stood with its face to the wall" while he was trying merely to earn bread and b.u.t.ter. The wonderful Louis Blanc tried once to plan a way by which all deserving people should have in this world equal opportunity to try. This has never been "worked out."

It never will be, but Holman Hunt reminds us how much the world loses by not providing that "equal opportunity." No one deserves more than his chance; but such struggles of genius tell us that all is not fair.

Hunt persevered with this Christ in the Temple and when finished he sold it for 5,500 guineas--a larger sum than he had ever before been given for a painting.

He no sooner received his money for this great picture than off he went once more to the Holy Land. He was conscientious in everything he did, and never before had an artist painted scenes of Christ that carried such a sense of truth with them. The set haloes seen about the heads of the saints and of holy people even in Raphael's pictures and in those of the very greatest artists of his time, disappeared with Holman Hunt's coming. In the "Light of the World," the halo is an accident--the great white moon, happening to rise behind the Christ's head--and there we have the halo, simple, natural, only suggestive, not artificial. Then, too, in the "Shadow of Death," there is a menacing shadow of the cross--made upon the wall by Christ's body, as he naturally stretches out his arms, after his work in the carpenter shop.

There is not one false note that shocks us, or makes us feel that after all the story itself is affected and artificial. Everything that is symbolical is brought about naturally. They are sincere, truthful pictures that speak to the mind as well as to the eye.

Hunt's colouring and many other technical matters are often far from perfect, but there is something besides technicality to be considered in judging a picture.

For a time, while the three men, Hunt, Rossetti, and Millais, kept together, their pictures were signed P. R. B., as a sign of their league; but this did not last very long, and afterward Hunt signed his pictures independently.

After the "Brotherhood" had worked against the greatest discouragements for a long time, and felt nearly hopeless of success, John Ruskin, one of the greatest of critics and most fearless of men, who was so much respected that his words had great influence, suddenly published a defence of these Pre-Raphaelites. He declared that they were the greatest artists of the time, and while scorning their critics he applauded those three young men, till he turned the tide, and everybody began to know what truly brilliant work they were doing. Ruskin's words came, Hunt said, "as thunder out of a clear sky."

When the "Brotherhood" was formed the three young men thought they should have a paper--a periodical of some sort, in which they might tell of their purposes and express their ideas; and so Rossetti, who wrote as well as painted, proposed that they print such a periodical once a month, and call it the _Germ_; and the P. R. B's. were to be joint proprietors. Rossetti had first thought of a different t.i.tle, _Thoughts Toward Nature_, and his brother, W. M. Rossetti, who was going to take charge of the monthly, thought that expressed the Pre-Raphaelites' idea; but it was finally agreed to call it the _Germ_. Only two numbers could be published by the Pre-Raphaelites, because n.o.body bought it and the young men's money gave out, but the printers came to the rescue, and put up the money to issue two or three more _Germs_.

Although that journal failed utterly, its four numbers were worth publishing, and are to-day worth reading. They were truly valuable, for they contained a story and poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, besides work of the other P. R. B's.

Above all things Hunt was conscientious in his work, trying with all his might to represent things as be believed them to be. When he made his "Scapegoat," he went to the sh.o.r.es of the Dead Sea to paint, accompanied only by Arab guides, and there he found the desolate, hard landscape for his picture. The hardships he experienced were very many. The wretched goat he took with him died in the desert of that dreary place after it had been no more than sketched in, but back in Jerusalem Hunt finished the goat. Ruskin's description of the picture helps one to feel all the desolation of the subject: "The salt sand of the wilderness of Ziph, where the weary goat is dying. The neighbourhood is stagnant and pestiferous, polluted by the decaying vegetables brought down by the Jordan in its floods, and the bones of the beasts of burden that have died by the way of the sea, lie like wrecks upon its edge, bared by the vultures and bleached by the salt ooze."

Even the superst.i.tious Arabs would not go near the spot which Hunt chose as the scene of his picture, but Hunt endured all things, believing it due to his art.