Art

A RECENT discussion, provoked by the juxtaposition of Veronese’s Marriage of St. Catherine with some remarkable works by the French master, Millet, in Mr. Shaw’s loan-collection at the Athenæum, seems to us peculiarly interesting. It has brought forward for a second time the sharp difference of opinion among teachers of art and painters in Boston and Cambridge, which the publication of Mr. Hunt’s Talks on Art had revealed in the spring. Mr. Moore, of Harvard College, in writing to the Boston Advertiser, praised some of the qualities of the Veronese at the expense of Millet. “ Let one’s eyes get filled with this work,” he writes, “ and then turn toward the loose sketching of modern French pictures. . . . Take No. 91, for example. This is what the modern French school understand by broad and suggestive painting. . . . This vague and inaccurate drawing indicates shallow grasp of a subject. . . . The loose and meaningless dashes of paint in the work of the Frenchman indicate that he is not a master.” These strictures called out some energetic rejoinders — among them a note from Mr. Hunt, epigrammatic, but somewhat too headlong to plant any effective blow; indeed, it contained an assumption that Mr. Moore had ranked Millet as a “trifler,” which nothing in the former’s letter could warrant. After careful reference, we understand Mr. Moore to complain merely that “shallow grasp” is manifest in No. 91, and that Millet and Corôt are not “ exemplary masters in execution.” These complaints, however, are serious, and it is at least very unfortunate that Mr. Moore should have entirely overlooked those pieces characteristic of Millet, namely, The Sower, The Cooper, the powerful study of two figures sitting on a hillside, and the small picture called Sheep Shearing. No. 91 is a landscape, hardly justifying its painter’s fame : the sentiment is vague, and the modeling very deficient. But then, Millet is chiefly a painter of figures, and should be met on his own ground, as the depicter of peasant life par excellence. Courbet, Corôt, Daubigny, Rousseau, Diaz, and Jacques form the reserve which the assailant of French landscape is compelled to encounter. Mr. Moore’s mistake seems to have been the confounding of the defects in Millet’s minor landscape with certain errors which he considers inevitable in all “ broad ” French art. The chief of these is said by him to be a want of detail, and of characterization. Characterization Millet certainly possesses, of a massive and peculiar kind. He steeped himself with his subject, and powerfully stamped its leading traits on his canvas. As for detail, it seems to us that two things have been included under this term, namely, actual detail, and the effect of detail. Now, Veronese’s Marriage gives us both; but in Millet we find the two separated. Observe in the Sheep Shearing the exquisite effect of detail ; and for the other, turn to the masterly drawing of the peasant’s shirt, in that hill-side study, No. 85. There is abundant proof in these pictures of Millet’s force in drawing, though his management of the paint seems to be blind and confusing. We have seen etchings by this master which in precision and power recall Dürer and Holbein, though distinctly individual; but his color swallows up many of his merits. It is easy to understand a preference for Veronese’s solid, intelligent, and above all thoroughly healthy painting, and we can appreciate Mr. Moore’s admiration for a style at once so general and so particular, so fearlessly distinct yet so thoroughly well related in its parts as this of the great Venetian’s. Indeed, it is difficult to suppose that Mr. Hunt and the anonymous upholders of Millet really intend to place the French master on the same plane with Veronese. Millet has not that supreme command of resources, nor that simple, large, contented, and somewhat unintellectual outlook that marks Veronese, but neither had Veronese the spiritual keenness, the weird imagination, of the Frenchman. On the other hand, Mr. Moore ignores the fact that mastery may be of different kinds; and, though we may admit a share of truth in his hint that Millet is not “exemplary ... in execution” (to Corôt this cannot, in our opinion, apply), we suppose few persons will sympathize in strictures so general as to intimate that “ French art ” is wholly without merits worthy of emulation. But it is evident that each party to the discussion has had more than one aim In Mr. Moore’s generalizations we detect a dread of the predominating influence of French painting in this country, and especially in Massachusetts ; and in the unnecessary heat of some of his adversaries, injurious to a cause well-grounded enough in itself, there would seem to be proof of a latent irritation, conscious of the opinions it has to expect from Mr. Moore. For ourselves, we think a certain amount of protest against exclusive French influence salutary, but we regret any state of things which may prevent reasonable and observant remonstrance from having its due weight. Mr. Moore clearly calls attention to excellences in Veronese which we do not easily find developed to the same magnificent stature in recent French painters, and probably no one of his opponents would have denied this statement, had it been advanced in a manner favorable to a pacific hearing. Neglect to note the short - comings of French painting, on the part of those who look almost exclusively to that source of artistic training, is certainly not without its dangers. But perhaps it is not chimerical to suppose that, the smoke of this skirmish clearing off, both sides may find themselves in a more frank and mutually approachable position.

— Some spirited pieces — paintings, charcoal-sketches, and photographs — shown at Mr. Blakeslee’s rooms, recently, and peculiarly interesting when looked at in the light of the controversy just noticed, presented Mr. Hunt’s different characteristics as a painter in very concise form. We had here the glimpse from Florida, — white house, rosy cloud, violet water, and orange-dotted greenery; the classic grace that black and white in skillful hands can impart to riverfringing trees and a pair of Watertown spires; and the nervous characterization that has brought Mr. Hunt his fame as a portrait-painter. Then there was a Laughing Girl, a Boy and Butterfly, an Elaine. The latter was not a successful conception, making, so far as we could see, no claim to dramatic realization of the character. The Boy and Butterfly (photograph) was graceful and good, the Laughing Girl superb. No one of our other Boston painters, we think, has yet come very near Mr. Hunt’s standpoint in portraiture and landscape, and it is always agreeable to get a glimpse of work so suggestive as that shown here, and so frequently powerful and sufficient. Miss Knowlton’s contributions were equal in number to her master’s, but her considerable skill has thus far only served her in what, it can hardly be disguised, is candid imitation. All the apples from Mr. Hunt’s bough have fallen not far from it; but this must be laid as much to the score of gravitation as to the artist’s influence. An admirable head “ by a pupil ” (Miss Knowlton ?) seemed to promise real poetic perception in the executor of it; and Miss Ellen Hale sent in an excellent little Orange-Seller, — a simple effect of contrasted oranges and lemons and a boy’s white shirt-sleeve. To be sure, everything in the collection had a French accent; though this was more especially the case with the landscape, which in every way made a poorer show than the heads.

Now, Mr. Inness (whom we are glad to have in this country again) lately placed at Messrs. Doll and Richards’s some large and very remarkable landscapes, which do him more than credit, and compare very curiously with these of the Hunt group. One of them is a sunset —a calm, golden glory overspreading the sky beyond a simple stretch of grass and road and stone wall. A heavy cluster of trees stands directly against the light, on the not distant horizon, wearing that peculiar look of being on the very topmost point of earth which heavy trees always bear in such conjunction, and through a low opening in the mass the quiet glare bores its way with a resistless and concentrated but unobtrusive splendor that we scarcely remember to have seen equaled. Nearer, a farmer sits in a gap of the wall (or rocky outcrop), also against the sky ; his humble and weary inactivity emphasizing with strange power the gorgeous quietude of the heaven behind him. At the left, two cattle are walking slowly in upon the scene. Even more powerful is the huge canvas opposite — the pine grove of the Barbarini Villa, with a bit of meadowy foreground, and far down beyond the grove, the dully purpled Mediterranean. There is no controlling incident of sunset or other similar phenomenon here, but the painter, first choosing that most difficult of effects, the look downward upon a wide vista, has so treated these immense, eternal-looking stone-pines, the few olives in front of them, and the white gleam of Pompey’s tomb on the left, as to impart in its full strength that dim, historic horror and that pathetic beauty of the broad landscape which dwell so subtly in it as to seem out of reach of any but a literary embodiment. A similar result is obtained in the pines and the olives; and these three, as they are the most peculiar are also the most powerful in the room. According to mood and individual preference, other spectators than ourselves will have got more or less pleasure out of the view near Leeds, New York, the scene from Monte Luce, and the Oak Grove near Perugia, all of which are full of merit, and of a certain massive and rugged beauty characteristic of Mr. Inness. The Washing Place at Pretela, with its misty, tapestry - like effect, will hardly have met with as much favor, we imagine ; and justly. In all of these works, the painter’s incompleteness appears to some extent, and the Italian scenes are not true to the coloring and atmosphere of their localities, Mr. Inness, as we have before hinted,¹ is strongly influenced by his moods ; but we believe we may congratulate him on having developed from his later phase some of the most powerful pictures that he has yet given us.

They are all treated with a pronounced “breadth,” and have something of the French accent remarked in the Hunt landscapes. But the difference in this case seems precisely that between painters who have studied a foreign language until it affects their every utterance, and one who has gathered knowledge from various sources, but keeps it all in bondage to his own individual vocabulary of color.

— Meantime, while we debate of French art and pre - Raphaelism, there are signs that another strong influence is at work among us, emanating from a wholly different source. The portraits by Messrs. Wyatt Eaton, W. M. Chase, Toby Rosenthal, and David Neal, in the Academy of Design last spring, showed in different degrees the effect of study in Munich, with perhaps a dash of English feeling. At the same time, Mr. Duveneck’s very remarkable and in many ways admirable contributions to the Boston Art Club exhibition ² called attention still more sharply to Bavarian arttutelage. Within a few weeks, three additional productions of the last-named artist’s have been brought to Messrs. Doll and Richards’s rooms, and they fully sustain the interest excited by his first installment at the Art Club. These three portraits were painted with an interval of one or two years between the first and second and the second and third, and they thus mark Mr. Duveneck’s rapid modification of style. The first, a bearded face of an old man in a fur cap, is wrought in the same rough grain as that of The Professor (described in our previous notice); the second represents a black-haired young man in a black velvet coat, who has a short black beard and wears a broad, dark hat. The effect of all this nearly unmitigated black, contrasted with the lively flesh-tones, is very peculiar, decidedly startling, and a little disagreeable. In both these cases there is a realization of the mere corporeality of the subjects which appears to us excessive. It is the most natural thing possible for a sensitive young painter to be unduly affected by this view of the human form and its surfaces, and none but a student with great executive power could give such splendid emphasis to it as Mr. Duveneck has given ; nevertheless it is a partial and not entirely healthy view. The artist changes it for a better one in his Portrait of a Lady. Here is a demure, gentle - looking German woman clad in a brown kirtle, her hat covered with slate-tinted tulle painted in simple, seemingly rapid touches that give it an amazing lightness and downiness of look; and her face and eyes are finished with a perfect finish, of the smooth and complete, not the suggestive kind. If in the two preceding instances Mr. Duveneck saw too much, it was perhaps a fortunate fault, for all that he then saw or learned has doubtless gone to enrich this more refined result. Still without abating anything from the praise which is justly his due, we must observe that thus far Mr. Duveneck has given us only studies — powerful and promising ones, without doubt, but they tell us nothing of his powers of design. It is a common error in recent painting, even in that of masters, to stop at this point; there is, in short, a dearth of good design. Especially is this the case in America. It is exceedingly encouraging to find, just at this time, talents like that of Mr. Duveneck breaking upon us almost full-fledged; but to contribute anything of permanent and educative value to American art, they must be developed to the point of design. One thing, however, is to be avoided utterly, and that is design of the Kaulbach and Dubufe pattern. For pictorial conceptions in the larger sense Mr. Duveneck cannot do better than to go to the Italian and Netherland masters, to nature, and to his own imagination. One other requisite he in some measure lacks; that is, robust color; and for this he must go to France and England.