Art

MR. THOMAS MORAN, an artist, hitherto better known to the public interested in art by his lithographic drawings, and his drawings-on-the-block for wood-engravers than for his painted pictures, has just finished a work in oils, which, whatever may finally come to be thought of it in its relation to the landscape art of our own time or of other times, cannot but be admitted, by whoever will study it, a work of real artistic and scientific importance. The subject is the Grand Canon of the Yellowstone River with the Lower Falls, and it is a lively presentment of one of the most wonderful wonders in a land made by Nature, when, to use the language of her child, the artless Pike, “ she had her high-heeled shoes on.” So faithful to the facts of the place is the picture, that those who have seen both assure us we might as well be on the spot as looking at this canvas. And this is no doubt a recommendation of the picture to those who, for any one of a half-dozen reasons, would rather not go to the Rocky Mountains just now. This accuracy, however, would hardly be sufficient of itself to give the picture a title to be spoken of under the head of fine arts, and therefore we hasten to say that if it be not, above all and before all, a work in which the imagination has its part, and in which the artist has revealed his love of beauty and his desire to communicate to Others what he knows or feels of beauty, it is not because he has not earnestly labored to that end. It is plain that the man who made this picture loves Nature, not

but with the deep delight of the poet, and he knows how to interpret her with welltrained skill.

We believe we are right in saying that this picture introduces Mr. Thomas Moran to the public : it is his first important work. He has been for some time known to a small circle ; his brother, Mr. Edward Moran, much wider known ; and he has from time to time exhibited, but nothing he has done has drawn much notice ; only his skill in black-and-white has made him in great demand as an illustrator of books; among these he has for some time been considered our ablest man. Now, however, he has chosen a larger stage, and entered boldly into the lists. He must be compared with men more known, — with Church and Bierstadt ; there are no others with whom it would be worth while to compare him. Setting aside, however, Mr. Church’s “ Niagara,” the noblest landscape yet painted in this country, we judge Mr. Moran’s picture worthy the second place; we think the public will finally come to give it that honor as its due.

We are not at all sure, however, if Mr. Moran has done wisely in choosing so pronounced a subject for his picture. Of course, he must be limited by the facts of the place, for, if he be not true to them on the whole, or even in details, he might as well call his picture by any other name. And he has been so conscientiously true to the facts that the temptation is strong in the mind of the ordinary spectator to see nothing on his canvas but a geological and geographical statement, another of those painted photographs of which we already have too many, and which have done so much to give our landscape art a name for childishness and journey-work. Then, again, we doubt the wisdom of taking so large a canvas, not merely for what we are used to hearing called “ practical” reasons,— that our houses are too small to show these big pieces well, and that not many purchasers are to be found for them, etc, etc., — but for a reason that may not seem to everybody so important, this, namely, that the taking so large a canvas seems to imply the necessity for so much space to do justice to the landscape in.

The truth is, as very little study of the matter will convince, that a painter with a true eye for proportions can get as much grandeur into a small space as into a large one. Here, on this intaglio, — no bigger than the agate-stone on the forefinger of an alderman, — the Greek has cut a Venus as grand and beautiful to the right-seeing eye as if she were the size of her of Milo. Take up Rogers’s “ Italy ” and open to the very first of Turner’s designs. It is plain that if he had had two square yards to work in, he could not have given us more space, and air, and height, and distance, than he has given us in barely two square inches. It seems to us that Mr. Moran has this power to perceive proportions, and the skill to convey to others his sense of them. We have no doubt that if he were to copy this large picture on a smaller canvas, it would make on the mind the same impression of grandeur that is made by the larger one. For the artist has not o’erstepped the modesty of nature : he has neither overdone his work nor come tardy off. And this healthful, direct, unaffected method of dealing with his subject goes far to justify his working on so large a scale. For, filled as he was with admiration of the scene, and with a mind stored with facts and impressions, the fruit of his long study, he went joyfully to his work and knew that he had enough to say to fill the time. No doubt, it makes a great difference whether a man has material enough to make every part of a large canvas interesting, or must merely hope to carry the day by a single impression. If he cannot do this last on the small canvas, he cannot do it on the large. Also, it has happened not seldom that men have made a happy hit within a circumference of a few inches, and have thought that to repeat this on a big canvas was to make a great picture. But the more canvas, the more fact, — facts of imagination, thoughts, suggestions. Mr. Moran is well furnished with facts ; they make his picture a most interesting study. The variety of the rocks, the limestones, the basalts, the porphyries, with the varied action of the water on each, resulting in curious and picturesque differences of form ; the color, either natural to the rock, or stained upon it by the metallic oxides, or overlaid upon it by the sulphur of the innumerable springs ; the glancing river, with its delicious azure bright between the whirling foam ; the pinetrees drawn with splendid vigor, and seen near, with detailed truth, their strong lines cutting clear against the delicate sky streaked with cirrus, and veiled with the veil of the leaping cataract upborne by her arrowy flight; then, on the far horizon, a cloud among clouds, the snow - covered range of the Rocky Mountains, and on the plain between them and the great lake that feeds this river the spouting geysers looking like the sails of ships, as everybody is quick to remark ; — these are a few of the incidents that make the picture pleasant to look long upon. One does not need to be instructed in art to enjoy it; its appeal is to the general love of nature, to the love of color, and of grandeur in forms and lines. Perhaps, also, it appeals a little to the pleasure we all may have, and not be ashamed of it, in the fact that this wonderful place is not merely a bit of the continent, but is, indeed, the private property of every man, woman, and child of us, being in the very middle of that generous tract of 3,578 square miles which by the energy and persistence of Professor F. V. Hayden, backed by good men and true in both Houses, Hon. S. C. Pomeroy in the Senate, and Hon. W. S. Claggett in the House, has been set apart forever as a public park for the people of the whole United States to walk abroad and recreate themselves.

This year, the presence of the Peace Jubilee seems to have effected an artificial prolongation of the picture seasons ; and Mr. Selous’s “ Jerusalem in her Grandeur,” and “Jerusalem in her Fall,” remained still on exhibition, last month, at the auctionrooms of Messrs. Leonard, Bird, & Co.

Mr. Selous, the descriptive pamphlet informs us, is an English artist of French extraction ; but in his case, as last month in that of another London painter, we have again to regret that pictures which do not fairly represent the English school should be associated with it in appearance. These paintings in particular do not belong to any phase of British art. But their peculiar merits are, as we shall have occasion to show, quite distinct from those which distinguish any school of art whatever, and consist in the historical and topographical memoranda which they offer. The suggestive antithesis of the titles finds but little response in the pictures themselves. The first represents Christ’s entry into Jerusalem ; and in the foreground, accordingly, are seen his figure, with those of the adoring multitude, about to pass over the brow of the Mount of Olives, from which point the view is taken, on their way to the city below and beyond. But the real interest lies in the imaginary representation of the Holy City, as it existed at the time of this event. Here the artist takes in hand what in itself is a subject full of pictorial possibilities. But he seems to have preferred resting upon the extraneous interests of locality and historic association, rather than upon those with which he should, as a painter, have chiefly concerned himself. We have here no poetic, colorous dream of the past in the strains of Turner’s “ Ancient Rome,” which, however it be wanting in coherent or accurate detail, must always remain true in spirit and effect, but simply an elaborated bird’s-eye view of a great expanse of walls and towers and gardens. Nor do we find much assistance in bringing the two hundred and fifty distinct points of interest into a satisfactory unity of effect, beyond what is afforded by the fact of their being included within the limits of one city, and in the presence of a sparse blue mist, which, rising dimly from the valley of Kedron, suffuses a large part of the canvas. But even could we believe that the latter adjunct supplies the something which is needed to make this large expanse of oil-paint a thoroughly harmonious whole, it would still be too transparent a medium to veil successfully the unhappy coloring of the various portions. Mr. Selous’s imagination, in short, has not served him in restoring the aspect of the day on which the sacred occurrence with which he deals took place, so well as the mere relative position and general appearance of the different city quarters. It is only when we take the descriptive pamphlet in hand that we find any satisfaction in looking at the piece. And then it is a satisfaction not at all depending on its pictorial qualities, but, as we have hinted, on the identification of building sites. Taken for this, however, which is its only real benefit to us, it is a very useful production, being, so far as we are able to judge, painstaking and accurate, and consequently valuable for reference. Abstractly, the acme of excellence in treating subjects of this scope could be attained only by the picture which should combine accuracy of detail with unity of effect and a vital color-harmony. Of art developed from this principle, Holman Hunt’s picture of Christ in the Temple is a Striking instance. But in general it is esteemed safer for the artist — Washington Allston making it a rule in all paintings — not to have an eye too alert for detail, in other words, to be able to forget something. The two parties adherent to these differing principles divide the truth between them, and disagree more or less as to the proportions of the divison. But Mr. Selous, it is perhaps needless to say, falls wholly below the plane on which these opposing parties meet, his talent being more that of the panoramic illustrator than that of the artist. We have been at pains, however, clearly to define his position, because it is precisely from works of this nature — so attractive and popular in certain regards, yet so entirely deficient in the essentials of high art — that public taste with us has at present the most to dread. Paintings which draw the beholder by some interest more tangible to the common sense than those which are purely pictorial, must necessarily be the most in favor before the higher natural taste induced by culture comes to predominate. In the mean time they are not to be discouraged, but also they should not be allowed to mislead.

“Jerusalem in her Fall” is more successful in point of color than the companion-piece. But taken on general grounds, apart from the truthfulness with which it may have reproduced the original scene, it is not at all an inspiring landscape. We are haunted by the sense of paint in its earth, and in its sky find no refreshment. Both works are characterized, or, rather, made wellnigh characterless, by the thinness of the painting, and gain in the engravings which were exhibited simultaneously with them.