_The Louvre, Paris_]
If we were to try to explain why The Man with the Glove is a great work
of art we should find the first reason, perhaps, in the fact that the
man seems actually alive. The portrait has what the critics call
vitality, in a remarkable degree. Again, the painter has revealed in the
face the inner life of the man himself; the portrait is a revelation of
his personality.
It has been said that every man wears an habitual mask in the presence
of his fellows. It is only when he is taken unaware that the mask drops,
and the man's real self looks out of his face. The portrait painter's
art must catch the sitter's expression in such a moment of
unconsciousness. The great artist must be a seer as well as a painter,
to penetrate the secrets of human character.
The young man of our picture is one of those reticent natures capable of
intense feeling. In this moment of unconsciousness his very soul seems
to look forth from his eyes. It is the soul of a poet, though he may not
possess the gift of song. He has the poet's imagination as a dreamer of
noble dreams.
The time seems to have come when he is just awakening to the
possibilities of life. He faces the future seriously, but with no
shrinking. One recalls the words of Gareth, in Tennyson's Idyll:
"Man am I grown, a man's work must I do.
* * * * *
Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the king--
Else wherefore born?"[20]
The lofty ideals of the knights of King Arthur's
Round Table are such as we feel sure this gentle spirit
would make his own:--
"To reverence the king as if he were
Their conscience, and their conscience as their king,
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slander, no nor listen to it,
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
And worship her by years of noble deeds
Until they won her."[21]
It may be of these "noble deeds" of chivalry that our young man is
dreaming, or it may be of that "one maiden" for whose sake they are to
be done. Certainly these candid eyes see visions which we should be glad
to see, and show us the depths of a knightly soul.