Water-Color Painting: An Essay Read Before the Boston Art Club

OF the various forms of art, there is, perhaps, no one of which less is generally known in this country than watercolor painting. In Europe, water-colors have long filled an honorable position in the world of art. In America, they have filled almost no position at all. Our artists, previous to the formation of the Water-Color Club in New York, had made no energetic and successful attempt to cultivate a taste for them, either by producing good work, or by bringing it prominently before the people through an earnest and harmonious combination. It is true that here and there we find a name distinguished for excellence in this respect. Malbone (a contemporary and friend of Allston and Stuart), whose paintings on ivory have seldom been surpassed either in this country or abroad; Robert Jones, a pupil of Stanfield, and for many years a scene-painter at the old Tremont Theatre in Boston, whose works showed great power as a colorist; Thwaites, Hitchings, Hamilton, Vautin, Van Beest, Wheelock, Bellows, and perhaps a few others, have long been known among us for their excellence in this branch of painting. But there never was in this country so effective and so well sustained a movement in aid of this art as the one now begun in New York.

To define with the pen the exact rules for simplicity with the brush, though often attempted, has never yet been satisfactorily accomplished. It is almost certain that it never will be done, for the simple reason that it cannot be done. The world of literature and the world of art are distinct spheres. The pen can give but little help to the brush. But it may be said that artistic simplicity consists in judiciously stopping short of that point beyond which the material workmanship of the painter’s hand cannot well pass, and where the work of the beholder’s imagination should begin.

“Painting.” says Coleridge, “ is a something between a thought and a thing.” To the quality of simplicity the material of water - color is especially adapted. Its inferiority to oils in some respects only heightens its superiority in others. Its delicacy and harmony in the blending of a general effect, its remarkable power of representing distance by aerial perspective, its chiar-oscuro, its luminosity, its liquidity and transparency, approximating to atmospheric light and prismatic brilliancy, are equaled by no other material for the purpose of conveying the refined and subtle poetry of which landscape art is capable. The peculiar excellence of water-color painting lies especially in its capacity for expressing a sense of distance and light, or what a painter calls " aerial effects.” This it does with a brilliancy and freshness unequaled. To what is this superiority due? To the pigments, to the vehicle, or to the ground? The pigments are the same, or nearly the same, as those used in oils. So that its excellence must rest either in the vehicle and the ground, or in the manner of applying the former to the latter. It lies undoubtedly in each. In the first place, paper properly prepared for water-colors is white (or at least light-tinted); secondly. it is absorbent ; thirdly, it possesses a certain roughness or granulous texture. These qualities are characteristic of paper, and are possessed by no other material in an equal degree. In the rough surface, the little elevations receive and hold less color, and the little depressions receive and hold more color. The finest effects are usually produced by broad washes, applied with a rapid and accurate hand, and with a full brush; by these means the color is floated over the paper-ground, and then allowed to lie quiet in its place until it sets and dries. As a rule, the less it is disturbed before dry, the better the result. What are called “accidental” effects, it is true, are sometimes produced in various ways, as by wiping out with bread, by hatching, stippling, etc. But floating washes are the distinctive peculiarity in the handling of watercolors. Both the vehicle (water) and many of the colors are transparent, or semi-transparent, and allow the white paper beneath to show through them, more or less. The minute projections and cavities of the paper assist the effect of its whiteness, by creating an alternation of lights and half-lights, and casting infinitesimal shadows and halfshadows. Thus we see that the projections receive less color but reflect more light; the cavities receive more color and reflect less light. These alternations of lights and darks, and variations in depth of color, are harmonized by the wonderful capacity which the eye possesses, and are so blended together by it. — though perhaps unconsciously to the beholder — as to produce those effects of luminousness and of tender gradations of airy distance which are the property par excellence of modern watercolor when rightly handled, and which it shares with fresco.

The idea is sometimes entertained that the art of painting in water-colors is a modern one. The English claim that it originated in England and with late English artists. In an extremely restricted sense — probably the one in which most Englishmen take it —there is perhaps a grain of truth in such a statement. The English Water-Color School is, as the words imply, of English development, and of a comparatively recent date. It did not exist before Girtin and Turner; and even since Turner’s death some improvements have been made in the technical processes. ¹ The art as at present practiced had its origin in England from the custom of making what were called stained drawings. A class of topographical draughtsmen, in the latter part of the last century, were in the habit of touching their drawings, which were in Indian ink, with a few tints of local color. In the South Kensington Museum there are specimens of such drawings by Webber (who accompanied Cook on his last voyage to the Pacific) and by Poeoeke, which were executed in 1790; by Rooker, in 1795; by Hearne, Alexander, and Payne (the inventor of the pigment known as " Payne’s gray”), in 1790. These topographers were chiefly employed in making transcripts of the ruins of castles, abbeys, and cathedrals in England. Literal truth, minute and accurate copy of details were their chief aim. Beauty, grandeur, sentiment, poetry — all the higher qualities of art — were unrepresented by them. But the men above named, with Paul Sandby, who died in 1809, Varley, Malton, Dayes, Byrne, and a few others, laid the foundations of what Cozens (a grandson of Peter the Great, of Russia) and Girtin and Turner subsequently raised to the dignity of art. Samuel Prout, Robson, Copley, Fielding, Barrett, Rowlandson, Dewint, Dadd, Blake, Lewis, Harding, Hunt, Cattermole, and Cooper also deserve most honorable mention. The reader who is familiar with contemporary English art can readily supply other names deservedly eminent in this respect.

The form in which many are wont to think of water-colors is in the comparatively small easel pictures, adapted for hanging in frames on the walls of public galleries or private dwellings. But in reality, fresco painting, tempera painting, scene painting, missal painting, and miniature painting are as much watercolor painting as what are distinctively called easel or cabinet pictures.

A wide survey of the history of art shows us that there have been, in general, four different methods of representing nature; namely, tempera, encaustic, fresco, and oil. Of these the oldest is undoubtedly tempera; then follows the encaustic painting of the classic Greeks and their imitators; subsequent to this was the fresco of the Renaissance in the fourteenth and the fifteenth century; and last of all, after the middle of the fifteenth century, came oil. Modern water-color is a modification of ancient tempera.

Water-color painting is in fact not only an older, but a very much older process than the use of oils. Water-colors were used by the Egyptians, the Hindoos, the Chinese, the Assyrians, and the Etruscans, long before the birth of Christ. The earliest work extant painted in the present method of using oils, according to Sir Charles Eastlake, is at Frankfort, Germany. Eastlake says its date is 1417, A. D. But a more recent authority sets it at 1444. It is consequently now about four hundred and twenty-five years old. The name of the artist who painted it is Peter Christophsen (called by Vasari, Pietro Crista), a scholar of Hubert Van Eyck. The earliest European water-color extant is undoubtedly the one found in 1843 in Italy, in the necropolis of Veii. Its date, if it had one, antiquarians say would be about the time that Rome was founded, and it is consequently now about twenty-six hundred years old. The name of the artist who painted it is not known.

Oil was undoubtedly employed in certain ways, previous to the time of the Van Eycks. But the art of painting in oils, as now understood, was probably invented by them. ²

It was the dictum of Michelangelo that “ oil painting was fit only for women and for the luxurious and idle.” He acted up to his belief, for it is by no means certain that there is a single oil painting by Michelangelo in existence. The reverse of this opinion seems now to be commonly entertained, and Michelangelo’s dictum about oils is held by many in regard to water-colors. It is a quite prevalent idea that the material of water-colors is adapted by its nature only to the lower ranges of art; that it is limited in its resources to pictures comparatively small in size, and to subjects of such a kind as are best characterized by the term prettiness; that neither force nor feeling can be expressed in this material, but only feebleness; that however successful it may be in rendering grace or beauty, strength and grandeur are beyond its grasp. On the other hand, it is often believed that the higher ranges of art are monopolized by oil; that the best expression of the noblest ideas is only to be found within the resources of this latter material.

To see that such an opinion is a mistaken one, does not require a long consideration. Most of the great painters of the Renaissance won their immortal fame by water-color. It is by watercolor that a very large proportion of the noblest and highest achievements in art has been accomplished. Cimabue, Giotto, Masaccio, Ghirlandaio (Michelangelo’s master), Michelangelo, Perugino (the master of Raphael), Raphael, Lionardo da Vinci, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto, Andrea Mantegna, Correggio, and the great host of the Renaissance were water-color painters. Buonarotti’s paintings of The Creation and The Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel, Correggio’s paintings in the Cathedral of Parma, Raphael’s School of Athens, The Scourging of Heliodorus, and his other paintings in the Loggie and Stanze of the Vatican, are “ only water-color paintings.” And the history of water-color or fresco painting in the revival of art in the fifteenth century is the history of art itself. Moreover the practice of fresco has been renewed in modern times, and many of the chief pictures of Germany, England, and France have been executed in this method.

Fresco (the Italian adjective fresco, fresh) is the name given to mural paintings which are executed on freshly laid plaster. It is not therefore exaetlv synonymous with tempera, as this latter term is properly applied only to paintings on dry plaster. The tempera process is probably far older than that of real fresco. The latter was not much in use till near the end of the fourteenth century. The method of working in fresco is, in general, as follows. First, a finished sketch in color of the intended picture is made. This may be either of the same size as the proposed fresco, or it may be smaller. The outlines of the design are carefully drawn on thick paper or pasteboard, which is securely fastened to a cloth stretched on framework. The sketch on the cartoon is then transferred to the wall. Different methods of conveyance are made use of. By some, tracing-paper is laid on the cartoon and the design traced upon it. The tracing is then put upon the wet plaster, and the design pricked through. By others, a blank sheet of paper is placed behind the cartoon, the design pricked through on to the sheet, the sheet laid upon the wall, and black powder dusted through the holes of the paper on to the plaster. Still another method is to draw a series of small squares upon the cartoon, and also another series of larger squares upon the wall. By aid of these to guide the eye, the transfer is made. Thus the use of the cartoon by the fresco painter is similar to that of the clay or wax model by the sculptor.

The pigments used are chiefly earths, since the chemical action of the lime destroys animal and vegetable colors. Lime is mixed with them in fresco and secco, but not in tempera painting. Great attention was paid by the ancient and Renaissance painters to the careful preparation of the grounds, which were either of burnished gold or white plaster, as the luminosity of the picture depends on these being preserved pure and clean.

The fresco painter has many difficulties to contend with, arising from the nature of the materials with which he works. This is especially the case with true fresco (buon fresco) as distinguished from dry fresco (fresco secco) otherwise called mezzo (half) fresco or “ Florentine " fresco. Strictly speaking, there are three distinct kinds of wall painting, namely: the true fresco, which is executed on wet plaster, and with colors mixed with lime; second, the dry fresco, also executed with lime colors, but on plaster which has dried and been remoistened; third, tempera (or more commonly, distemper), without lime mixed with the colors, and on a dry wall. It is quite common to use the terms secco and tempera (or distemper) as synonymous, though speaking accurately there is the above-mentioned difference.

Discoveries of old fresco and tempera pictures — some beneath whitewash, others beneath accumulated rubbish — are frequently made at the present day.

As examples may be mentioned those found in 1863, in England, in Astbury church, Cheshire; those in Stone church, Kent; and those in Eaton church, near Norwich. These were probably executed about the beginning of the fourteenth century. In France, paintings in secco have lately been exhumed in the rooms of the Roman villa in the Department of Allier, near the railway station of St. Gerand le Puy. The villa belongs undoubtedly to the Augustan age, and at the breaking out of the FrancoPrussian war was undergoing excavation.

Modern chemistry has supplied another method for wall painting, called stereo-chromic. It possesses some advantages over ordinary tempera, on account of its supposed greater durability and the facility with which paintings done in this method can be glazed and retouched. It was invented by a wellknown chemist, J. R. von Fuchs, of Munich. The essence of the invention consists in mixing fluoric acid with a proper proportion of water; this mixture is then profusely sprinkled over the picture. The chemical action of the solution (“ water-glass,” as it is called) renders the colors, and the plaster on which they are laid, one uniform flint-like mass. A longer time, however, than has yet elapsed since the invention of this process is necessary before its merits or defects can be definitely ascertained.

One of the great troubles in the management of fresco consists in the fact that the eggs, which are mixed with the colors to render them of the proper consistency, dry so rapidly that it is difficult to unite the tints in the more nicely modeled parts of a picture. But this technical difficulty is in reality productive of a virtue. For it renders retouching impossible. In oil painting it is practicable to retouch, to glaze, and to use numerous appliances known to painters, by which the desired effect, if not produced at first, can yet be subsequently obtained. But in fresco painting this is out of the question. The plaster in drying forms a crystalline surface, which gives a clearness and sharpness much superior to that of which distemper is capable; and great care is required in the manipulation, because the stucco has only a limited capacity for the absorption of color. If this capacity is overworked, the plaster becomes what is called “rotten.” The rottenness is not perceptible until after the plaster is dry, so that the artist must thoroughly understand his business, must possess an experienced judgment and a swift and resolute hand, before he can produce good and durable work. This necessary simplicity in the manipulation compels the fresco painter to avoid the display of mere mechanical skill —the parade of artistic fire-works, so to speak. Soft and delicate finish, roundness, depth of color, and all the other inferior resources of art are therefore placed beyond his control. It is impossible for him to conceal poverty of invention or of poetic feeling behind the mask of artificial decoration and mechanical elaboration. Simplicity and breadth of treatment, grandeur, harmony, truth and purity of character, nobility of composition and expression, — the higher qualities of true art, — are the only fields in which he can display his triumphs. Without these he is nothing. Vasari has rightly called fresco “ the most manly of all modes of painting.”

Coleridge says that the measure of greatness in a work of art is its suggestiveness. He means, possibly, that great work is never simply specific in effect, but carries the spectator out of himself as it were, and beyond its own mere surface into an atmosphere akin to that in which the work was created. There must therefore be a greater or less degree of sympathy and congeniality between the mind of the beholder and the mind that creates. The effect of a great work of art is not one of sense alone. It is an effect not to be looked for in the work of little men; it is a spiritual essence—a quintessence beyond them, intangible and everlasting. We can, it is true, lay down the dictum that a work of art, to be the most complete, must exhibit in itself an excellence in the three directions of sensuous, of intellectual, and of spiritual beauty. But it is this intangible quality of suggestiveness which exerts the greatest influence on the true lover of art, be he professional artist or humble layman. When we see more with our minds than we can with our eyes, then comes the keenest delight.

This property of suggestiveness is a vital element of the simplicity and grandeur of fresco painting, and it led the great artists of the Renaissance, even after the invention of oil painting, to select fresco as fittest for the expression of their best thoughts. The necessity of forbearance in the technical management of frescoes; the inevitable law that in them all cannot be said, but that much must be left unsaid, enhance their parity and unity of design, and appeal to the spectator in a manner that, if he is of susceptible fibre, fills his mind with visions of purest delight. In their proper treatment all profusion of ornament is avoided, and their greatness is not infringed by a multiplicity of constituent parts. An easel water-color ought, in a less degree, to possess these characteristics of fresco. Dignified simplicity and directness should be the first objects aimed at. Elaboration is not its appropriate possession. Even rudeness and roughness, if accompanied with a manly breadth, are better than the most patient minuteness of detail. One of the chief requisite conditions in a work of art is that it should be rendered without confusion. When a water-color becomes elaborate in texture, and in what is called quality of color, it infringes on the peculiar province of oil painting, and the painter wastes his time.

Besides fresco and tempera, watercolor painting had an immense field for its development, especially during the Middle Ages, in the wide-spread fashion of ornamenting manuscripts. Miniature illumination, particularly as practiced in its later days, was a new resource in art, distinct from fresco and from oil. The illumination of MSS. forms the principal existing link between ancient and modern art. For those two enemies of art, time and barbarians, have destroyed nearly all the other varieties of pictures. It is chiefly in the illuminated Bibles, missals, rubrics, psalters, hymnals, chronicles, and other MSS., handed down to us by their royal or monastic owners, that we can find specimens of the art of painting as practiced in Europe in the time between the fifth and the twelfth century. Paintings on walls, canvas, or panels are of necessity more exposed to injury and destruction than paintings in books, these latter being easily deposited in places secure from violence; and the books being kept closed, the pictures they contain are protected likewise from atmospheric influences. It is not true, however, as Vasari and other writers have frequently asserted, that art in forms other than illuminated books was not cultivated in Italy during the period from the fifth to the thirteenth century.³

Without colored illustrations it is impossible to give a completely definite notion of the art of illumination ; and half a dozen pages are small space in which to review the work of over a thousand years. A careful comparison of the many MSS. extant shows—as is natural from the fact that the art of illumination was practiced for fifteen hundred years or more, and by many nations, European, African, and Asiatic — wide-spread diversities in design and execution. The different nations naturally formed different schools of art. And an elaborate treatment of the subject (impossible in these pages) would require a consideration of the different styles of Byzantine, Greek, Latin, Frank, Gallic, Franco - Gallic, Keltic, Anglo-Keltie, Saxon, Persian, Arabic, Hindoo, Japanese, Chinese, and all the other varieties of European, Asiatic, and African art.

Miniature painting is the term originally applied to the practice of illuminating books with colored letters, previous to the invention of printing. The word miniature is an instance of the change always taking place in language. The primary meaning of the word miniature is red-lead, from the Latin minium. Now it signifies, of course, a portrait of small size, usually executed on ivory or vellum. In the Middle Ages it was the custom of the book-writers to distinguish the beginning of chapters and paragraphs by marking the initial letters in minium or red-lead. This practice was the humble beginning of what subsequently gave employment to some of the greatest artists of Europe and Asia. By degrees these red letters — at first used simply as a matter of practical convenience, to distinguish the beginnings of paragraphs —came to be adorned with many fanciful ornaments, the illuminator adding arabesque borders and scroll-work, and finally little pictures containing birds, animals, foliage, fruit, flowers, insects, human and imaginary grotesque figures, unicorns, griffins, chimæras, and other fantastic creatures, illustrative of the context. To this the general term miniature was applied. The name of the material in which they were done was thus transferred to the pictures themselves. At first, the initial letters were of the same size as the rest of the text; but by degrees it became the custom to make them larger than the other letters, so that in some MSS., especially the choral books of several of the Italian churches, they range from two inches to twenty-four inches in length.

To the historian as well as to the artist, the illuminated books of the Middle Ages are invaluable. For, besides exhibiting the development of art, they supply the most accurate illustrations of the social manners, the religious conditions and customs, the utensils, arms, furniture, dress, and architecture peculiar to the times and countries in which they were produced. One of the first pictorial evidences of a knowledge of the existence of America is to be seen in a painting of the Adoration, belonging to the Chapter House at Viseu, Portugal. In this picture one of the Magi is represented in the dress of an American brave. From miniature illumination very valuable information on the subject of topography is to be obtained. For the illuminator followed the general practice of most of the early painters in similar cases. They painted what they saw. Rembrandt, when representing the Nativity, for example, gives us the view of a Dutch cowhouse, and not that of a Jewish stable; Raphael pictures a Roman matron for the mother of Christ; a Burgundian, in painting the Fall of Adam, represents the fruit of the Tempter as a bunch of grapes, while a Norman makes it an apple, and a Provençal, an orange. So the mediæval limner, in illustrating the Bible, introduced scenes which were familiar to his own experience. Suppose, for example, he were a Frenchman illustrating the Crucifixion. Instead of attempting a view of Jerusalem, which he never has seen, he simply inserts for a background in his miniature a view in Paris or some other French town.

And we thus obtain a correct idea of how Aix-la-Chapelle appeared when Charlemagne made it his residence, or how Notre Dame or the Louvre looked to the painter’s contemporaries. What is called the Talbot Book, given to Margaret of Anjou by Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, contains, among numerous tales of chivalry, the Life of Alexander the Great. There is a miniature in it of a view of Babylon, in the foreground of which is a very neat row of watermills, such as the painter daily saw around Ghent or Bruges. In Queen Mary’s Prayer Book, a MS. of the thirteenth century, is a drawing illustrating the death of Absalom. Absalom is represented hung to a tree, dressed in a coat of chain-mail, and surrounded with knights war-horses of the days of chivalry. Joab, likewise in armor, with his visor down, is busily at work, spearing Absalom with a long lance. Another MS., of the fourteenth century, represents King David playing, not upon the harp, but striking a row of silver bells after the manner of the Saxons; David is attended by four other figures, playing respectively on a harp, an organ, a violin, and the bag-pipes. In a medallion of Juvenal des Ursines, of the fifteenth century, which represents the shepherds receiving the glad tidings of the Saviour’s birth, there is a landscape of the river Seine, with accurate drawings of the church of Saint-Jeanen-Griève, the Petit Châtelet, the Butte Montmartre, and the Tower of the Temple.

This kind of decoration, like tempera and fresco, existed before the Middle Ages and even before the Christian era. The ancient Egyptians illuminated their papyri with elaborately painted vignettes, similar to those of the Catholic missals. The Greeks and Romans had a like custom. In Europe, its early history is quite obscure. It seems to have been practiced by Byzantine artists about the third or fourth century. The earliest Greek illuminations are very simple, being not much more than a mere framework around the page, with a colored border. A few pictures are introduced in this early work, square in shape and likewise surrounded with a border and a dark margin. Among the oldest extant specimens of illuminated books are a copy of Terence in the library of the Vatican, supposed to be of the fourth century, and the Dioscorides of the Vienna Library, executed about 354 A. D. The Vatican Vergil is also one of the most ancient. It contains about fifty miniatures and was written in the fourth or fifth century. The oldest illuminated MS. in the British Museum is the Codex Geneseos, probably of the third century; all but a few leaves was unfortunately destroyed by the great fire of 1731.

It was in the latter part of the Middle Ages — the period between the ninth and the sixteenth century —that this art was brought to its perfection. Like the mural decoration of the Renaissance times, illumination owes its development to the Christian church. To the embellishment of missals and breviaries the medialval monk resorted, for the purpose of recording his piety by painting his ideas of sacred subjects, or of whiling away the ennui of cloister life. There was also another incentive in the fact that a peculiar merit was attached to this kind of work. The following subscription is found on many mediaeval MSS.: “This Book, copied by X—for the Benefit of his Soul, was finished in the Year —. May the Lord think upon him.”The persecutions of the early Christians repressed the growth of this art for the first two or three centuries. But with the accession to the Roman empire of its first Christian ruler, Constantine, in 306, the art received a vigorous impulse. In the year 305, St. Anthony first established convents in which were collected the devotees of religion, previously compelled to live in secret places. These convents were so many laboratories for copying and illustrating MSS.

Large numbers of illuminated books are preserved in the various libraries and private collections of Europe. It is not improbable that there are rich and unexplored mines in the Eastern convents, especially of Arabic and Persian work. For during more than one thousand years — that is, from the reign of Constantine in 306 A. D., till the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, and the growth of learning in western Europe — that city was the chief seat of scholars and of book-making. The business of transcription and embellishment was most assiduously carried on, not only in the city proper, but in the monasteries of its suburbs, and throughout Asia Minor and the islands of the Ægean Sea. Cyprus, Eubœa, and Crete were especially prolific. No place was more productive than Mt. Athos, which stretches into the Ægean Sea from Macedonia. The promontory was literally honey-combed with monasteries, the occupants devoting most of their time to this work, which they have even handed down to their successors of the present day. For at the breaking out of the Greek revolution of 1828, there were more than twenty monasteries on Mt. Athos, containing over four thousand monks, most of whom were picture - makers. And in 1846, Papeti found them still illuminating books, guided by ancient models and by a receipt-book, the latter containing the most minute details in regard to the costume and even the facial expressions of all the saints in the Greek calendar.

It was only about a quarter of a century ago that one of the oldest known specimens of scriptural illumination — if not the oldest—was discovered at Jerusalem by Poujoulet, a French traveler. He describes it to be a Bible, probably of the fourth century, executed in a coarse style of Byzantine art, containing miniature paintings representing the chief scriptural personages from Adam to Christ. During the past four hundred years frequent visits have been made by European travelers and men of learning to the Egyptian monasteries, for the purpose of unearthing MSS. Among these visitors may be mentioned Robert Huntington, who in 1678 made the collection of Oriental MSS. now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, England. In 1715, Asserman and Sicard gathered for the Vatican a number of Coptic, Syriac, and Arabic books. In 1730, Sieur Granger visited the Natron monasteries of North Africa. He says “ the buildings at that time were falling into decay and the dust destroying the books and MSS., of which the monks made no use whatever. Their own patriarch had represented to them that the sum which the books would produce would be sufficient to enable them to restore their churches and rebuild their cells; but they declared they would rather be buried in the ruins” than part with their unused books. A hundred years later, Lord Prudhoe, in 1828, visited these same monasteries. He says that in one chamber he found a trap-door, through which he descended, “ candle in hand, to examine the MSS., where books and parts of books in Coptic, Ethiopic, Syriac, and Arabic were lying in a mass, on which,” he says, “I stood. To appearance it seemed as if on some sudden emergency the whole library had been thrown for security down this trap-door, and that the books had remained undisturbed in their dust and neglect for some centuries.” The British Museum has quite a large collection of MSS. made by Dr. Tattam, who twice went to Egypt solely for that purpose. In a vault of one of the monasteries he found the floor covered eight or ten inches deep with the fragments of books, which had apparently lain there many years. Over one thousand MSS. were collected from Egypt, Asia, and Mesopotamia, written in the Syriac, Aramaic, and Coptic dialects, and at different times between the fourth and the thirteenth century. Most of the MSS. above mentioned have been secured for European libraries. But these instances, and especially the late discoveries of Papeti, Poujoulet, and Dr. Tischendorf (an account of whose finding of the Mt. Sinai Bible is in the preface to the thousandth volume of Tauchnitz’ publications), lead one to hope that, in spite of previous active search, there may yet be found still more additions to our treasures of mediæval limning.

Subsequent to the fifth century, the influence of Christian art is plainly visible. In the sixth century a stimulus was given to illumination by St. Benedict. The influence of this remarkable man over the monastic institutions of western Europe was felt for a period of three hundred years. It was in the year 500, that, coming from Asiatic Greece, he established numerous convents in the west of Europe. The rules of life which he originated were adopted universally by the different religious communities; and they were exclusively observed until the ninth century. St. Benedict’s last dying injunction to his brethren was, “ Read, copy, and preserve books.” In the eighth century many Eastern artists were dispersed over western Europe by the iconoclastic emperors of Byzantium. Charlemagne took advantage of the expulsion of ecclesiastics and artists from Byzantium, and afforded them a generous support and employment at his court and throughout his empire. The Byzantine style of art, which from the idiosyncrasies of its Eastern character is readily distinguished from all others, was thus gradually amalgamated with that of the Frankish and Teutonic schools, and a great improvement made over the coarse and rude productions of the Empire of the West. During the ninth century the ecclesiastical power was much extended, and with it the production of missal paintings. Byzantium was still the place where the greatest technical perfection was attained, but its influence extended throughout western Europe and even invaded Ireland. The art continued to advance for the next hundred years. The Menelogium is the name of a celebrated calendar made about the year 1000 for Basilius II. Although nearly one half of this book is lost, only the months from September to February inclusive being left, there still remain about four hundred and thirty miniatures on grounds of gold, illustrating scenes from church history. Near the beginning of the eleventh century there was a marked decline in art, but it again received an impulse from the church. Gregory VII. issued his fiat announcing the universal dominion, temporal and spiritual, of the Roman Church, and the gorgeous cathedrals, especially those of southern Europe, began to glow with the productions of artists. The first crusaders, on their return from the Holy Land, likewise aided the movement by bringing with them a demand for Eastern luxury. This luxury is apparent in illumination in the increased practice of writing copies of the Bible in letters of gold or silver, on leaves of vellum stained with a beautiful purple.

Four circumstances in the twelfth century contributed as many impulses to the culture of the fine arts, namely: the growth of the power and wealth of the trading classes; the establishment of universities; the rise of the Italian republics ; and the adoption of miniature illumination by the Arabs, the Tartars, and the Persians. The peculiar decoration styled arabesque was, as its name imports, developed by the Arabs. The Arab artists were compelled by an article of their faith to resort to the depicting of the flowers, stalks, fruit, and leaves of plants, or to the imaginary productions of their fancy. As this people advanced in luxury, however, under the dominion of the caliphs, they gradually introduced the representations of insects, birds, and quadrupeds. In the thirteenth century, the art continued to improve. In the opinion of Ruskin the thirteenth century is the period of the climax. About the year 1200, illuminators began to use foliage in illustrations; and it was during this period that the peculiar species of illumination known to bibliographers as “ bestiaries” flourished. It takes its name from the numbers of real and imaginary animals, fantastic and grotesque, with which the illustrations are filled. In the fourteenth century, Cimabue and Giotto, with their predecessors and immediate followers of the Greek school, were the precursors of the great era of the Renaissance. And the miniature art of the time gives token of their influence.

In Flanders the churchmen adopted a method of instructing the ignorant populace by miniature illumination precisely the same in principle as that for which fresco was used. Pictorial representations of the most important subjects in the Scriptures were issued under the name of the Armen Bibel (Biblia Pauperum) or “the poor man’s Bible.” The earliest specimens of this book contain a series of forty leaves, exhibiting illustrations of the Old and New Testaments. It was designed not only for laymen but for unlettered priests. Each page of this book contains three designs arranged in a row, the central picture illustrating some scene from the life of Christ, and those on either side scenes from the Old Testament, showing a parallel or collateral incident. For example, the Adoration of the Magi is flanked on one side by Abner visiting David, and on the other by the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon. The illustrations are accompanied with an explanatory text. The leaves, put back to back, are gummed together in imitation of a book printed on both sides. This invention extended from Flanders to other countries.

Beside scriptural subjects, other classes of works received the attention of the illuminator. The songs of the troubadours, and metrical and prose romances, furnished many themes for the artist’s fancy.

In the fifteenth century large quantities of MSS. were brought to western Europe from Constantinople by the Greeks, who fled from that city after its capture by the Turks in 1453. And in the Italian cities great numbers of scribes and illuminators flourished, there being over fifty in Milan alone. Some of the most renowned artists were engaged in this work. Limning in its earlier days was cultivated almost entirely by ecclesiastics; in its later days, laymen and professional artists shared the labors and the glory of the monk. In Italy are to be found Fra Angelico da Fiesole, Simone Memmi, Giotto, Franco Bolognese, Squareione, Gherardo of Florence, Gentile da Fabriano, Girolamo, and Francesco dai Libri (contemporaries of da Vinci), da Vinci himself, Raphael, Titian, and, perhaps the greatest of all in this art, Giulio Clovio. In the Low Countries, the three Van Eycks, Roger dc Bruges, Van der Goes, and Hans Memling rivaled, if not surpassed, their Italian brethren. The passion for illumination was so great in this century, that even medical diplomas and legal documents were adorned with it. The fifteenth century and the first quarter of the sixteenth century was the time of the climax of this art. It received a mortal blow, though one not immediately fatal, from the invention of printing. With this invention the demand for MSS. of course gradually ceased, although illumination was applied to printed books for full a century afterward, blank spaces on the pages being left by the printer for the painter. For more than a hundred years after the invention of printing, official illuminators were retained by the Apostolic Chamber, the Popes of Rome, and the Doges of Venice. It was not till the reign of Louis XIV. of France (1643), that the art became practically extinct. The latest of the illuminated missals, according to Madden, is the immense folio in the Library of Rouen. It is almost three feet high, and employed its limner, a monk of St. Andoen, during thirty years of hard work. It was finished in 1682.

The two vast fields which water-color has already filled — fresco painting and miniature illumination —have shown its artistic capacity. In the small scale of treatment, it has existed in the form of miniature illumination for over one thousand five hundred years. In the large scale of treatment, it has existed in the form of tempera and fresco more than four thousand years at the very lowest estimate, and it is not improbable it may have flourished for more than double this period. In both forms it has shown a capacity and a permanence greater than almost any other of the creations of man. Still a third form, entirely distinct from either of the other two, is just coming into existence in water-color landscape. There is a magnificent opportunity for these earlier productions to be rivaled, if not surpassed, in the new and untrodden paths now lying open to the landscape water-color painters of America. The previous conditions requisite for a noble unfolding of art in this country have, in a great, measure, already been fulfilled. The necessary political and social status is nearly ripe. Taine has truthfully expressed the conditions needful for a full artistic development. “ In every country, a rich invention in the field of art is preceded by indomitable energy in the field of action. A father has fought, founded, and suffered, heroically and tragically; the son gathers, from the lips of the old, heroic and tragic traditions ; and, protected by the efforts of a previous generation, less menaced by danger, installed on paternal foundations, he imagines, expresses, narrates, sculptures, or paints the mighty deeds of which his heart, still throbbing, feels a last vibration.” Taine brings forward in support of this assertion the productions of the French between 1820 and 1830, after the great Revolution and the wars of the empire; Dutch art, after the struggle of the Netherlands for independence from Spain; Gothic architecture and the poetry of the troubadours and minnesingers, after the consolidation of feudal society; the literature of the seventeenth century, after the establishment of a regular monarchy in France; Greek tragedy, architecture, and sculpture, after the defeat of the Persians. And to these examples he might have added the Elizabethan age of English literature.

In seeking to establish a national school, while we lack the advantage of the hereditary transmission of skill, we have, on the other hand, no preconceived, traditional types, nor long-established, conventional styles to contend against. The same independence and energy of thought and action which characterize our politics, our literature, our commercial and domestic life, have equal opportunity in art. When we have acquired the science of art with the same thoroughness and vigor with which the foundations of the nation have been laid, then the higher artistic imagination will form the superstructure. “ Always,” says Taine again, “ a new conception of divine and human things produces a new mode of comprehending beauty.” If these two dicta of Taine are correct,—and unquestionably they are so, — no country ever had before it so glorious a future for its art, as the United States.

Henry S. Mackintosh.