occasion of the production of Mr. Ogilvie’s play of _Hypatia_, when I
had persuaded him, at Tree’s invitation, to undertake the designs for
the scenery and costumes. This is a kind of work to which many gifted
painters cannot readily adapt themselves. But Tadema’s constructive
talent, his rare ingenuity in dealing with architectural problems, and,
above all, his unrivalled gifts in contriving diversified effects of
light and shade, amply fitted him for such a task; and the difficulty
which some painters experience of yoking their intended design with the
interpretative resources of the scenic artists, proved no difficulty
to him. He loved their art with all its infinite devices for the
production of illusion, and he knew how to treat them in a spirit of
true and loyal comradeship. At the first I had been a little nervous
on this score, but, one day, when I asked him how he and the principal
scene-painter were progressing, he relieved me of all anxiety upon the
matter by the emphatic announcement that he and his associate were in
such complete agreement that, as he quaintly phrased it from a peasant
formula recalled from the land of his birth, “we are like two hands
on one stomach.” As the production neared completion, I remember one
evening, we were waiting for Tadema, who had been detained by a council
meeting at the Royal Academy. The most important scene was ready set,
and, as it seemed to us, with really admirable effect; but when Tadema
arrived everything was wrong. He scattered objection and criticism in
every direction, sometimes, as I thought, with so little reason that
I cast about to discover what could be the source of his discontent.
Suddenly I remembered that the hour was late, and that, as he had come
straight from Burlington House to keep the appointment, the probability
was that he had not dined. I put the question to him, and his answer
was immediate, “Of course I have not dined.” “Then,” I said, “let us
dine, and leave the men to put these matters right.” The cure acted
like magic, for when we returned to the theatre an hour later, Tadema
readily found a way by which every defect might be set right.
I was associated with him at a later time with several other
productions which he made for the stage, notably the _Coriolanus_, in
the later days of the Lyceum, and, in a lesser degree as far as my work
was concerned, in the _Julius Caesar_ presented by Sir Herbert Tree.
I think such work was always a pleasure to him, because it brought
into play qualities that are not directly involved in the work of
a painter. His talent had always a strongly practical side, and it
was that which made the construction and perfecting of his own house
so keen a pleasure to him. His labours there would, I believe, have
remained incomplete even if he had lived for another twenty years. He
was always discovering new possibilities that opened the door for fresh
improvements, and his knowledge of the details of every craft employed
in his service was so exacting and complete that the skilled artificers
who laboured for him knew well that they were under the trained eye of
a master as well as of an employer.
When I called at his house on the day that brought the news of his
death, the quaintly covered way that leads to the front door was girt
on either side by a wealth of varied blooms that had been made ready
by his gardener to greet his expected return from abroad; and then, a
few days later, as I stood beside his coffin that had been reverently
set down in the great studio, I found it buried beneath an avalanche
of flowers, which his countless friends had sent as a last mark of
love and affection. And it was, indeed, a fitting tribute to the
dead artist; for Tadema, while he lived, had an absolute passion for
flowers. As a painter he would linger with untiring devotion over each
separate petal of every separate bloom, and yet with such a sustained
sense of mastery in the rendering of their beauty that when the result
was complete the infinite mass of perfected detail was found to be
firmly bound together by the controlling force of a single effect of
light and shade. To a young man who stood beside his easel on a day
when he was making a careful study of azaleas that formed an integral
part of the design upon which he was engaged, Tadema summed up in
a single sentence the spirit in which he constantly laboured: “The
people of to-day, they will tell you,” he said, “that all this minute
detail--that is not art!” And then, turning again to his picture, he
added in his quaint English: “But it has given me so much pleasure to
paint him that I cannot help thinking it will give, at least, some one
pleasure to look at him, too.” This was the spirit of the older men
before the pestilent pursuit of originality came to infect the modest
worship of Nature, and it will remain as the dominant quality of all
art, whether of to-day or to-morrow, that is destined to outlive the
passing fashion of an hour.
WITH ROSSETTI IN CHEYNE WALK
Passing along the Chelsea Embankment a while ago I was reminded by the
sight of Rossetti’s old house of the number of studios where I was once
a constant visitor, which time had long since left untenanted. Millais,
Leighton, Whistler, Fred Walker, Cecil Lawson, and Burne-Jones were
among the names that crowded upon my recollection; and thinking of
these men and of their work, I could not but be reminded of the changed
spirit in which art has come to be regarded in these later days of
restless experiment and ceaseless research after novelty of form and
expression.
And yet those earlier times of which I am speaking were also marked
by conflict and controversy; for even in the seventies, when I first
became actively engaged in the study of painting, the stirring spirit
of English Art still throbbed in response to the message that had
been delivered by the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood more than twenty
years before. It may be a fancy, but I hardly think the workers or
students of a later generation can quite understand the concentrated
eagerness and expectation which awaited each new achievement of that
small group of men upon whom the hope of the time had been set. We did
not, perhaps, then quite realise that the revolution, so far as they
were concerned, was already complete, and that what was to come was
not destined to signalise any new or important development of what had
already been accomplished.
Millais, Holman Hunt, and Rossetti, the three men who stand as the
authentic founders of the pre-Raphaelite movement, had all, in the only
sense in which their names still stand in linked association, produced
the work by which they will be best remembered. During the twenty years
that had passed since the movement took birth, the output of these
three men, at first bitterly disputed and sometimes keenly resented,
was in a sense the best that any or all of them were destined to give
to the world--in a sense, I say, because their after-career, whatever
new triumphs it proclaimed, exhibited a partial desertion of the aims
which had held them in close comradeship during the brief season of
their youth. It is probable that no three stronger or more distinct
personalities ever laboured in the pursuit of a common purpose; and it
was therefore inevitable that as the years passed they should each
assert in separate ways the widely divergent tendencies which at the
time I am speaking of were held in subjection to a common ideal. But
when it is remembered what their combined efforts had already produced,
the result must stand, I think, as a record unmatched in the domain
of painting by any contemporary achievement in the art of Europe.
Millais had painted and exhibited, among many other and less notable
works, “The Feast of Lorenzo,” “The Carpenter’s Shop,” the “Ophelia,”
the “Huguenot,” and the “Blind Girl”; Holman Hunt, whose methods as
a painter were not calculated to win such ready acceptance, had none
the less firmly established his fame by his picture of the “Light of
the World,” at first roundly denounced by most of the organs of public
opinion, but in the end, as much perhaps by reason of its intense
religious sentiment as by its qualities of pure art, achieving through
the advocacy of Mr. Ruskin a settled place in public esteem; and
Rossetti, although during these years little or nothing had been shown
to the world, was already accepted by those of the inner circle who
were admitted to his confidence as the chief exponent of the spiritual
tendencies of the new movement.
In 1873, when I first made the acquaintance of Rossetti, I knew more of
his verse than of his painting. The first volume of his poems had been
before the world for nearly three years, and it was hardly wonderful
that the picturesque beauty of his writing, with its occasional direct
reference to paintings and designs of his own, should have stirred
within me an eager curiosity to make acquaintance with the pictures
themselves. It happened about this time that I gained access to the
small but choice collection of Mr. Rae of Birkenhead, which contained
several of the most beautiful of Rossetti’s works; and filled with
admiration of what I had seen, I had written, over the signature of
Ignotus, an article in one of the daily papers containing an incomplete
but enthusiastic appreciation of Rossetti’s powers. Searching where I
could, I afterwards made myself acquainted with some of his designs in
black and white; but still eager for a wider knowledge of a man whose
poetic invention had laid so strong a hold upon me, I ventured to
address myself directly to the recluse of Cheyne Walk, praying that if
he could see his way to grant my request I might be permitted to visit
his studio. From that time our acquaintance began. His letter in reply
to mine, wherein I had mentioned a project then in my mind of enlarging
my brief essay so as to make it more worthy of its subject, already
revealed to me some part of that reticent side of his nature which our
later friendship helped me the better to understand.
“My youth,” he wrote to me, “was spent chiefly in planning and
designing, and whether I shall still have time to do anything I cannot
tell.” And then, in conclusion, he added: “As to what you ask me about
views connected with my work, I never had any theories on the subject,
or derived, as far as a painter may say so, suggestions of style or
tendency from any source save my own natural impulse.”
This letter, dated, as I have said, in 1873, shows how little an artist
may be aware what part of his life’s work is destined to constitute his
enduring title to fame. Still eagerly looking forward, he had already
produced the work by which he will be best remembered, for although
in years a young man--he was not more than forty-five at the time of
our first acquaintance--his progress as a painter was not afterwards
destined to record any notable development. “Beata Beatrix,” “The
Loving Cup,” “The Beloved,” the “Monna Vanna,” the “Blue Bower,” and
the “Lady Lilith” already stood to his credit, besides the series of
water-colours, including “Paolo and Francesca,” and the beautiful
pen-and-ink design of “Cassandra.”
The room into which I was shown on the occasion of my first visit to
Cheyne Walk came to seem to me as aptly characteristic of the man. It
offered few or none of the ordinary features of a studio, and in its
array of books around the walls spoke rather of the man of letters than
of the painter; and the careless disposition of the simple furniture,
though it bore some tokens of the newer fashion introduced by William
Morris and Rossetti himself, made no very serious appeal on the score
of deliberate decoration. It was obviously the painter’s living room
as well as his workshop, and as I came to know it afterwards, remains
associated in my mind with many long evenings of vivid and fascinating
talk, in which Rossetti roamed at will over the fields of literature
and art. But the thing that at once took me by surprise on that first
visit was the masculine and energetic personality of the man himself.
From what I knew of his persistent seclusion, and in part, also, from
what I had gleaned from the subtle and delicate qualities expressed
both in his painting and in his poetry, I was prepared to find in
their author a man of comparatively frail physique and of subdued
and retiring address. Nothing could be less like the reality that
confronted me on that May afternoon, as he stood beside his easel at
work upon the picture before him. It was not till much later, and then
only by indications half-consciously conveyed, that I recaptured the
picture of Rossetti as I had first found it reflected in his verse
and in his painting. Little by little, as I got to know him better,
I realised that my fancied image of him did indeed mirror qualities
that lay deeply resident in his character; but at the first encounter
it was the dominating strength and vigour of his intellect and the
overpowering influence of a personality rich in varied sympathies, that
struck itself in vivid outline upon the imagination of the observer.
As our intercourse and our friendship advanced, it was easy enough to
comprehend the source of that potent spell which he wielded over all
who came within the sphere of his influence. Without any reservation, I
may say of him that he was beyond comparison the most inspiring talker
with whom I have ever been brought into contact: certainly the most
inspiring to a youth, for his conversation, although it sought no set
phrase of eloquence, flowed in a stream that was irresistible; and
yet so quick was his appreciation and so keen his sympathy that the
youngest man of the company could always draw from him encouragement
to speak without fear upon any theme that sincerely engaged him. I
have heard him sometimes “gore and toss” without mercy any one who
ventured to enter the debate with an empty ambition of display. Of
insincerity of view, of any mere flimsy preciousness or prettiness
of phrase, he was always impatiently intolerant; but he was equally
quick to recognise and to welcome a thought truly held and modestly
stated. At such times his ready power of evoking a full and fearless
statement of what even the most insignificant of his visitors had to
say was scarcely less inspiring than the rich and rounded tones of his
own voice, as it glowed in enthusiastic appreciation of some worshipped
hero in the field of art or letters. And though his work owns to a
concentration and intensity of purpose that would seem sometimes to
imply a corresponding narrowness of vision, it was in his work only
that such a limited outlook could be said to be characteristic of the
man.
That he dwelt by preference on the imaginative side of life, and
chiefly chose for eulogy achievements in which the imagination was
the dominating factor, is unquestionably true; but his taste within
the wide limits of the region he had explored was catholic and
comprehensive to a degree that I have not known equalled by any of
his contemporaries. And lest this should seem an exaggerated estimate
of the man as I knew him then, I may here quote the testimony of
others who stood nearer to him than I did. Burne-Jones, his pupil and
disciple, wrote long afterwards: “Towards other men’s ideas he was
decidedly the most generous man I ever knew. No one so threw himself
into the ideas of the other men; but it was part of his enormous
imagination. The praises he had first lavished upon me, had I not had
any inborn grains of modesty, would have been enough to turn my head
altogether.” And at another time he wrote: “What I chiefly gained from
him was not to be afraid of myself, and to do the thing I liked most;
but in those first years I only wanted to think as he did, and all
he did and said fitted me through and through. He never harangued or
persuaded; he had a gift of saying things authoritatively, such as I
have never heard in any man.”
But there is, indeed, no surer testimony to the magic of his
personality than is betrayed in the restive spirit with which his two
comrades of those earlier days endeavoured afterwards to assert their
independence of his influence. Both Sir John Millais and Mr. Holman
Hunt, in their later life, went out of their way to try to prove to
the world that the pre-Raphaelite movement would have been in no way
changed in its direction if Rossetti had not been one of the original
group. I often talked with Millais on this subject, and it was easy to
perceive that he harboured something almost of resentment at the bare
suggestion that the direction of his art was in any sense due to the
example or teaching of Rossetti; and of the Millais of later years,
who had partly discarded the poetic impulses of his youth, it may be
readily conceded that he owed nothing to the man whose art, whether in
its splendour or in its decay, was governed always by the spirit of
imaginative design.
And equally of Holman Hunt who, in his two long volumes, has
so laboriously and so needlessly laboured to vindicate his own
independence, it may be admitted without reservation that his kinship
with the spirit in which Rossetti worked was transient and almost
accidental. But it remains, nevertheless, unquestionably true that
during that brief season of close comradeship, the supremacy of
Rossetti’s genius is very clearly reflected in the work of both. The
aftergrowth of talents as great as--and in some respects greater
than--his, led each of these men into ways of Art that owned, it may be
freely confessed, no obligation to Rossetti; and of the rich gifts of
Millais as a painter, extraordinary in their precocity and developed in
increasing power almost to the end of his career, no one could exhibit
keener or truer appreciation than Rossetti himself. I recall on one of
those nights in Cheyne Walk with what power and fulness of expression
he paid willing homage to Millais’ genius. “Since painting began,”
he said, “I do not believe there has ever been a man more greatly
endowed.” And then he went on to speak with genuine humility of his own
many shortcomings in technical accomplishment, wherein he admitted that
Millais stood as the unchallenged master of his time.
Rossetti was the kindest, but most careless, of hosts, and the many
little dinners at which I was permitted to be a guest always had about
them something of the air of improvisation. Of the actual details of
the feast, from a culinary point of view, he seemed to take little
heed, and there was something quaint and humorous in the way in which,
at the head of his table, he would attack the fowl or joint that
happened to be set before him, lunging at it with the carving knife
and fork almost as if it were an armoured foe who had challenged him
to mortal combat. I remember on one of those occasions an incident
occurred that showed in striking fashion the quick warmth of his heart
at the sudden call of friendship. We were in the midst of cheeriest
converse. Fred Leyland, one of his staunchest and earliest patrons,
was of the company, when the news came by special messenger that young
Oliver Madox Brown was stricken with serious illness. It chanced that
we had been talking of the young man’s youthful essays, both in art and
in literature, and Rossetti had spoken in almost exaggerated praise
of the promise they displayed, when the letter was handed to him. He
remained silent for a moment, though it was easy to see by the working
of his face that he was deeply distressed. “Brown is my oldest friend,”
he said. “His boy is ill, and I must go to him; but that need not break
the evening for you.” And then, without any added word of farewell, he
left us where we sat, and in a moment we heard the street door close,
and we knew that he had gone. For a time we lingered over the table,
but Cheyne Walk was no longer itself without the presence of its host.
We passed into the studio, where Rossetti was wont to coil himself up
on the sofa in preparation for long hours of talk, and we felt as by
common consent that the evening was at an end.
The circumstance was slight enough in itself, but I remember feeling
afresh how magical and inspiring was the spell he exercised over us
all, and I little realised then that this friendship with Rossetti,
which had proved so powerful a factor in moulding the intellectual
tendencies of my own life, was not destined much longer to endure. For
a time, indeed, the old welcome always awaited me, but after a time I
thought I detected a certain reserve and restraint in our intercourse
which I was unable to explain. A little later those longed-for
invitations to dine at Cheyne Walk ceased altogether, and once or
twice when I called the studio door, always open to me heretofore, was
closed, on the excuse that the painter was too busily engaged. It was
not, indeed, until after his death, that I learnt from his truest and
most trusted friend the cause of our alienation.
Rossetti, although he never exposed his own pictures to public
criticism, was, like every artist who has ever lived, eager for the
praise of those whose praise he valued; and his nature, already grown
morbid under the stress of influences that were undermining his
health, was not without an element of jealousy that seemed strangely
inconsistent with the tribute he could on many an occasion offer to
the work of others. He saw but little of Burne-Jones in those days,
but he knew that I saw him often. He knew, also, from my published
criticism, that I was strongly attracted to his genius, and although I
have heard Rossetti himself speak of his pupil and follower in terms of
laudation that could not be surpassed, the thought, as I learnt later,
had already begun to poison his mind that my allegiance to himself had
suffered diminution; and he frankly confessed to the friend from whom
little in his life was hidden that my presence in Cheyne Walk became to
him, for this reason, a source of irritation, which, in the condition
of his health, he was unable to endure.
Such flaws in a nature so splendidly endowed count for nothing in
remembrance of the picture of him that remains to me as I first knew
him in the plenitude of his intellectual powers. For a time it seemed
as if the great movement at the head of which his name must enduringly
remain was likely to suffer eclipse. The taste of later years had taken
an entirely different direction, and the ideals which the small band he
led had striven so manfully to recapture from a renewed study of nature
and a finer understanding of the artistic achievements of the past
appeared to have sunk into oblivion. It was therefore a delight to find
in Rome in the spring of two years ago how enthusiastic was the welcome
accorded to a man who, while he ranks so high among English painters,
owned in his veins the blood of Italy and from whose painters, at that
bewitching season when the spirit of the Renaissance was in its youth,
he had drawn the inspiration which was destined to kindle his own
genius.
EDWARD BURNE-JONES
“I think Morris’s friendship began everything for me; everything that I
afterwards cared for; we were freshmen together at Exeter. When I left
Oxford I got to know Rossetti, whose friendship I sought and obtained.
He is, you know, the most generous of men to the young. I couldn’t bear
with a young man’s dreadful sensitiveness and conceit as he bore with
mine. He taught me practically all I ever learnt; afterwards I made
a method for myself to suit my nature. He gave me courage to commit
myself to imagination without shame--a thing both bad and good for me.
It was Watts, much later, who compelled me to try and draw better.
“I quarrel now with Morris about Art. He journeys to Iceland, and I to
Italy--which is a symbol--and I quarrel, too, with Rossetti. If I could
travel backwards I think my heart’s desire would take me to Florence in
the time of Botticelli.”
So Burne-Jones wrote of himself more than forty years ago. It chanced
I had just then written a series of papers on living English painters;
and, with the thought of their re-publication, had asked him for
some particulars of his earlier career. The scheme, I remember, was
never carried into effect; but his answer to my inquiry, from which I
have drawn this interesting fragment of autobiography, served as the
beginning of a long friendship that was interrupted only by death.