Art

IT appears that in New York the Academy has at last succeeded in selling some pictures from its exhibition-rooms. If such a thing could be effected in the galleries of the Boston Art Club, we might hope to see collections of pictures formed there which should comprise always the best that our painters have, and constitute nurseries of fresh and constantly progressive effort. As it is, we are provided at stated times and seasons with assemblages of paintings, of which a third, perhaps, are the productions of foreigners, copies from the works of European painters of former times, or antique products of early American genius. In the last exhibition, for example, were a cartoon by Mengs, and one by Overbeck; a fine group of portraits by Angelica Kaufmann, a charming Calame, and some finely modeled and wonderfully colored Italian children, by Bonnat. The exhibitions thus acquire an historically illustrative value to students ; but is there not another function which they might, but do not yet, fulfill ? Is it well that the only organized body among our artists should expend its energies upon the formation of exhibitions which do not especially and forcibly bear upon the development of a vigorous native art ? The phrase “ development of native art ” is, we confess, discouragingly vague. Yet we believe it could he made to mean something, if sympathetically accepted and acted upon. All movements towards its realization, however, to be successful, must be mutual on the part of painters and the patrons of art. And it strikes us that the artists of Boston have hardly done their part in endeavoring to make the exhibitions of the Art Club representative of them at their best. Several of those painters to whom the public looks with special eagerness for fresh pleasures have become veryguarded in their contributions to the club exhibitions. The name of William Hunt hardly appears at all on the catalogues; Frank Smith has not been represented during the past season; J. Appleton Brown has dropped out of the ranks, in the spring exhibition. Mr. Hunt, it is true, contributes, this time, an interesting river scene in Florida, but only vicariously — the picture having passed out of the artist’s hands. What we stand in need of is a determination among all prominent or energetic young painters, to put some of their best strength and skill every year into a picture or two for the Art Club! There is no lack of skill in one department, at least — that of landscape-painting. Even as the case stood this spring, the few contributors made a fair show in that branch. W. E. Norton contributed a noble Midnight on the Grand Banks, containing what we might call an elegiac passage of moonlight, glittering mournfully on the great deep ; with a fine contrast of ship-lights, a cloud of spectral canvas on the large vessel “ head on ” to the spectator, and wonderful gradations of light throughout, contributing to a sombre, pervasive harmony of the whole. The drawing was perfect; the sea moving in its own way, heedless of all else, while the vessels rock as they would upon waves really passing under them. The clouds around the moon were masterly; the whole was a clear, profound poem, of a strong naturalistic flavor. E. Baxter’s Marsh near Providence, a capital performance, gives notice of a real genius for landscape; the varicolored mist and moist ground being felt out with delicate sympathy, and artistically converted into a delicious web of color. F. P. Vinton displayed an honest study of a walnut-tree, and a pleasing Sheep Pasture, showing a nice sentiment for a simple meadow on a gray morning. A view of land and water, —Eagle Head,—by R. S. Fay, was a good bit of water-color; and Miss Beckett’s Coming Home,— a twilight sky gleaming through a lonely wood, and crows flying westward, — was very poetically rendered. Other smaller performances we can only mention, namely : Cranch’s dreamy Glimpse from J. R. Lowell’s Window, and two Venetian subjects; and four water-colors by Miss Hedges, two of which indicate a good appreciation of the pale minor color-chords characteristic of our sea-shore. Some landscapes by Miss M. J. Beckett (a name new to us) are not without promise. The human figure, however, is nearly ignored by American contributors. We have three or four portraits by Longfellow, Healy, Miss Reed; and a cold and hard Priscilla by Miss Knowlton. Miss Boott contributes a Mother and Child sympathetically imagined,—the child’s head worked out with some skill and much tenderness. He sides this, there is only an agglomeration of false, gymnastic, elocutionary figures, by J. W. Carter, called Death of Warren.

So far as we know, there is no cöoperative effort whatever made by the artists of Boston, to procure models for the figure and to work systematically from the life. Until such effort is made, we cannot, of course, look for any satisfactory achievement in that direction. But at least we may ask that our painters should fairly let us know what is to be expected from them, — in what they are strong, and in what weak. The compact being once formed that every individual shall put forth all his strength in a fair representative picture, we shall soon know the status of art in this locality. On all accounts it would be better to know this ; for, in discovering deficiencies, we should also be made aware of strength sometimes unsuspected under the present lackadaisical mode of procedure. The painters themselves would be the first to profit by a change of policy; and the public, instead of being subject to a fortuitous conjunction of circumstances, as at present, for the boon of an agreeable exhibition, would always have the interest attaching to collections which really indicate the rate and direction of progress among the painters who live among them.

Among the European pictures there was a piece of grape-painting by Giordano of Rome, in which the luxurious branches were executed with great truth and wonderful relief—the grape leaves hardly so good. Constantinople, by Félix Ziem of Paris, gave a distant and sketchy glimpse of the city, with white houses and minarets gleaming across fields and a strip of very blue water and under a row of large trees, beneath which were grouped in picturesque confusion crowds of gayly dressed Orientals, feasting, talking, and making music. The picture is effective, but the colors are too crude. The blue sky especially, which takes up a large part of the canvas, is quite unworthy such a colorist as Ziem, being very hard and opaque. The old trees are very sketchily treated, and are steeped in an afternoon light a little too hot to be quite agreeable. A certain French exaggeration characterizes the work. It is artistic, perhaps poetic ; everything is managed with a remarkable chic. The bit of blue, yellow, and red drapery on the greens under the shadow of the trees, are dashed off with a telling vigor and effect. But the whole picture has too much of a stage-scenic look, and as if it were painted for the market.

There were two or three figure-pictures which are marked illustrations of the purely materialistic school of art, by which we mean the school that believes in emphasizing all the externalities, bestowing more love and labor on a bit of tapestry or wallpaper or ormolu, than on the action of a figure or the expression of a face, and troubles itself very little about an idea, or an imagination, or a feeling, in comparison with mere mechanical execution. Every gallery of high-priced pictures is afflicted with such gilded traps to catch the unthinking public. Their name is legion. Europe exports them, and America imitates them. Here is one of them — probably one of the imitations — by E. H. Blatchfield, with a glass over it, as though it were too precious to be exposed to the vulgar air. The title thereof is Rejected. But the subject might be anything else. How often have we seen this same characterless young lady in white satin, standing in her elegant boudoir, posing, with her costly furniture and bric-à-brac around her, every inch of which is just as important, just as lovable, in the painter’s eye, as the maiden herself! The young lady takes various poses. Sometimes she is looking into a mirror, dressing, sometimes holding a love-letter, sometimes a book, or a flower, sometimes fondling a parrot or greyhound. Like Queen Elizabeth she is semper eadem. We very soon get through with our admiration of the handsome objects by which she is so artistically surrounded. Mr. Blatchfield introduces her anew with as much circumstance as if she were a stranger. She has even less expression than usual. We hardly look at her face — it is her satin robe we admire. She is posing with her hand on an exquisite little cabinet of yellow and black wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl, behind which are two rich old china plates. The cabinet stands on an exquisite table of black wood of highly ornamental pattern, with hanging silver chains. Beneath her feet is a rich and expensive carpet. Behind her is a highly elegant and aristocratic chair ; and the wall-paper is of the most approved artistic and costly quality. And all under glass. Could anything he more récherché in selection, more faultless in execution ? What labor, what skill but alas, what vapidity !

Here is another young lady by M. Becker, a disciple apparently of M. Hamon, but without Hamon’s poetry. A Pompeian Lady, she is called. Her chief attraction is a piece of gorgeously figured drapery. She is looking at some images and masks, and other objects of virtu supposed to be Pompeian. How nicely painted, — but how without meaning or motive !

Anri here is M. Merle, a popular French painter, who finishes up everything with such wonderful neatness of brush. This is a moral French tableau, called The Right Path ; a more ambitious subject, and a larger picture, than the last two we have commented upon. It is a young artist of the old Italian time, looking like Masaccio, with portfolio and palette in one hand, the other hand raised theatrically to his chin, while he looks steadily away from a group of fair tempters behind him. He stands, in shadow, in the front of the canvas, with red cap and thick black curls, red robe relieved with green drapery and exquisite embroidered yellow sleeves, and red tightfitting hose on his legs, — altogether an expensively dressed youth for a painter, But then he is only posing, like the young lady models; and so long as he is posing, why not drape him in the handsomest style ? The improper young ladies in the background are not real enough to be alluring ; but make a pretty enough tableau, with the conventional columns, flowers, inlaid mosaic floors, and all that.

These were perhaps the most noticeable pictures of the materialistic school, in this exhibition. And before leaving the gallery we turn with a certain feeling of refreshment to two or three pieces of natural painting: a Zouave eating his Broth, by M. Pils, a French battle-painter of some note, is finely touched ; an Italian peasant girl with a fat, good-natured baby in her arms, is deserving of praise as a solid piece of painting ; and M. Schmitzberger’s family of cat and kittens is charming for all who appreciate truthful and characteristic portraiture of the feline race,

— Dr. Franz Reber has published the first number of a History of Modern German Art from the end of the last century down to the Vienna Exposition of 1873, with a side glance at the contemporary art-history of France, Belgium, Holland, England, Italy, and Russia. The present number contains 128 octavo pages printed in fair, open type, on good paper, and the book, which the publishers say will be completed in the course of the present year, is to consist of five numbers, each of about the same size as the one before us. The work promises to be a useful one, supplying a want much felt by persons interested in the modern development of art; it gives us more amply and completely the history too slightly sketched by Kugler in his hand-book (Hand buch der Geschichte der Malerei seit Constantin dem Grossen).

But what is it that makes it impossible apparently for Germans to write at once learnedly and interestingly on art-matters ? They take the ripe vintage, and, having pressed it in their mill, present us with the pulp, skin, seeds, and stems, and ask us to warm the cockles of our hearts with that. Perhaps this statement hardly does them justice, but the best we can say for the most of their writing on art is, that feeding on it is like feeding on bran-bread. We know it is nourishing, and we wish it were nice. It is often said that the French writers are indeed more entertaining, but then the Germans are the more lastingly useful because of their greater accuracy. However this may be true in science and history, we cannot say that it is true always in art, — at least in the case of modern writers ; witness Fassavant, Waagen, Woltmann, and Lübke. It is not safe to depend upon either of these writers in his statements of facts, as many a student must know to his cost. Passavant and Waagen are bftenest wrong in their facts ; Woltmann and Lübke least to be depended on in their deductions : the reader may judge which of these counts is the greater disparagement. Lübke’s short-comings have already been exposed in The Atlantic. How little Woltmann is to be leaned upon, witness his dancing back and forth on the subject of the Dresden and Darmstadt Madonnas, and his treatment of the Dance of Death in his Holbein und seine Zeit, with reference to Holbein’s authorship. This book is a useful one no doubt, and represents a vast amount of plodding industry, and abounds in dryasdust detail, but it is not easy, for all that, to understand why Mr. Ruskin should call it, as he has lately, a very valuable book. Perhaps he has been vainly trying to read Mr. Wornum’s lumpish and futile work on the same subject, and after the effort, any book on Holbein might seem valuable. Perhaps it only comes from the difference between the two men. Woltmann’s book is all facts and no spirit. Ruskin’s books are all spirit, and no facts to speak of. Dr. Waagen’s principal work, Art-treasures of Great Britain, is useful as a guide-book, but as an authority his reputation has gone steadily down. He tells us where the Titians, Vandycks, and Holbeins are said to be, and, to be sure, that is something, but unfortunately his decision as to authenticity in any case makes nothing either for or against the work in question. As for Passavant, he is the least worthy respect of the four, though strangely enough he has the highest popular reputation of all of them for learning and accuracy. He is being slowly found out, however, and it is risking little to prophesy that when lie has been examined in detail, the result will be in each case what so careful an observer and so conscientious a writer as Mr. G. E. Street found it in his own field of study. In the preface to his Gothic Architecture in Spain, second edition, 1869, passing in review the writers on the subject of mediæval Spanish architecture, he says of Passavant, “ Passavant who has published some notes on Spanish architecture (Die Christliche Kunst in Spanien, Leipzig, 1858) is so ludicrously wrong in most of his statements that it seems probable that he trusted to his internal consciousness instead of to personal inspection for his facts.” But we did not mean to make Dr. Reber’s book a text for fault-finding. After all, the short-comings we complain of are such as must, we fear, always he counted on in reckoning with human work, and the student of any subject, if he be really a student, will never buy of these middle-men, but will go to original sources; while the general public, that insists so in these days on having everything made easy, must look to be often served by journeymen.