SUBJECT IN PAINTING
IT has been intimated, more than once in these lectures, that the
artist, deep down in his heart, has no great respect for the public’s
taste concerning works of art. He has always arrogated to himself and
his fellows the exclusive right of saying what was and what was not art;
and he would have us believe that after all art is made only for the
appreciation of artists. Such a feeling is comforting and comfortable,
no doubt. It possibly pervades branches of industry other than the arts.
The shoemaker probably feels that he knows more about shoes than the
people that wear them and the cook more about dinners than the people
that eat them; but neither of them would contend that shoes were made
only for shoemakers or dinners only for cooks. Nor can the contention of
art exclusively for the artist be made good save in the extravagant
atmosphere of the art-school. Unless the picture appeals to someone
without the studio, unless it is accepted by someone in the outside
world, its excuse for being would seem to be very slight. The work may
please the worker and he may be as absorbed and happy in his occupation
as a child making sand houses on the sea-shore; but in neither case is
energy put to a profitable purpose. An author writes a book to be read
by the public, and an orator speaks to be heard by the public; why
should not a painter paint to be seen by the public?
[Illustration:
XXVII.—TINTORETTO, Marriage in Cana, S. M. della Sa’ute, Venice.
]
And the audience that sees has something to say about what the painter
shall paint. It creates in large measure the demand which the artist
supplies. I am aware that oftentimes the contrary is maintained and it
is asserted that the artist sets the pace and directs the public taste.
Sometimes he does, but he is influenced more or less by his audience.
The demand for work has always come from those who could pay for it, and
the patron usually insists upon having his views incorporated in the
work. The history of painter and patron in the past rather confirms
this. No doubt Michael Angelo had some contempt for the art views of
Julius II., but he painted the Sistine ceiling as the Pope requested.
And probably Rubens thought his Jesuit patrons in Flanders an ignorant
pack of priests, but he painted the themes and subjects they designated.
The subject—aye—there’s the rub! For the public will have it and the
painters will hate it—that is to say, some of the modern painters have
come to hate it apparently for no other reason than that the public
likes it. Of recent years there has arisen a cry of “art for art’s
sake”—that is to say, art in the form, color, and workmanship, but not
in the thought or subject—and many artists have given their unqualified
support to the dogma. In upholding the charm of the decorative they are
prone to deny charm to anything and everything else. Form and color,
they alone make a picture, and all else is philistine sentiment—the very
leather and prunello of art.
It is not to be denied that this contention of the painter is right
enough so far as it affirms the importance of the decorative. Form and
color do make art, and that too with slight reference to
subject-meaning; but we may question the assumption that there is no
other form of art, and that the subject and what art may mean to us are
matters of no importance. We have already considered the different kinds
of painting that are produced by painters who think and paint in
different ways. “Art is in the look,” says Whistler; “No, it is in the
thought,” says Millet; Vibert in his pictures seems to believe it is the
subject that counts; and if Meissonier were alive he would certainly
insist upon it that art consists in realizing the model—in painting a
boot you could pull off or a spur you could put on. But it must be
apparent to you that each one of these men, while exploiting his own
preference, is possibly exploiting his own limitation. No doubt each one
of them believes there is nothing to be seen beyond where he has
travelled.
But there is something too much of “my way is the only way” in these
views of painting. Not perhaps too much for the men themselves, because
a person usually succeeds better who believes implicitly in himself and
is convinced by his own convictions; but too much perhaps for those who
have nothing to do with production, who have to do only with the
enjoyment of things produced. Individually we may be willing to admit
that neither the subject nor the realistic portrayal of nature interests
us so much as the look of a picture and what it may express in thought
or sentiment; but it would be idle for us to ignore the fact that
four-fifths of the people who are looking at pictures are interested
only in subject and that perhaps two-thirds of the painters who are
painting them are intent only upon doing something realistic. It is
possible to influence and persuade these many dwellers in Philistia, if
you choose so to regard them, but they cannot be pushed aside
contemptuously.
And sometimes the persuasion of the artist is in direct defiance of the
rational. The “no-subject” cry of some present-day writers of fiction
will perhaps illustrate this. What shall we say, for instance, to the
extravagance of those who tell us that in writing nothing which teaches,
argues, or expounds is “literature”; that “literature” consists in the
writing of something clever about nothing, and that when the thing said
becomes of importance the work ceases to be literary. The inference is,
of course, that history and essay step down and out in favor of poetry
and fiction; that Richard Le Gallienne’s sensuous cadences and Henry
Harland’s delightful ping-pong conversations are “literature”; but not
Macaulay’s history and De Quincey’s essays. Are we to believe that there
is no art in Bossuet’s oration over the great Condé because it preaches;
no art in Taine’s philosophy because it teaches? It is true enough that
there is art in the skilful use of the adjective, in the glow of words,
and in the slip of sentences; but why is there not art also in the
handling of an idea, in the development of a subject, in a point of
view? Why is it necessary to let the sense out of everything before it
becomes artistic? Practically it is not possible to separate the mental
from the mechanical. The mind guides the hand, and both are but
manifestations of an individuality. How shall you distinguish
Shakespeare the thinker from Shakespeare the dramatic writer? How shall
you separate emotional thinking from its sequence, enthusiastic
craftsmanship? People are not convinced by the argument for art in the
method but not in the mind or the material.
Mr. Whistler, speaking for painting, is scarcely less extravagant than
the writers. “As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry
of sight, and the subject-matter has nothing to do with the harmony of
sound or of color. Art should stand alone and appeal to the artistic
sense of eye or ear without confounding this with emotions entirely
foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like.” Thus
Mr. Whistler; and again there is a measure of pungent pertinence in the
remark. Painting should appeal primarily to “the artistic sense of eye,”
but not necessarily to that alone. There is no reason why it should not
have a meaning and express a feeling or a sentiment about something
besides form and color. Even music appeals to something more than the
ear. It suggests a feeling, an association. If it be true that it has no
idea or sentiment, why do we grow sad over Siegfried’s Death March, or
elated over that last upward burst of song in the dungeon scene from
“Faust”? Why do we become emotional or sentimental or romantic over a
symphony by Beethoven? If we wish meaningless sound we must take the
æolian harp or the hum of the wind through pine needles or the roar of
the sea breaking on the beach; and perhaps each of these seems beautiful
to us largely because it suggests something like a human moan or wail.
Just so there may be a suggestion or meaning behind the most decorative
of pictures. Every picture, if it be coherent at all, illustrates,
represents, or expresses some fact, thought, or feeling. However shadowy
the trees of the no-subject artist, however vague and ghost-like the
figures of a symphonist in paint, we see and recognize the trees and the
figures. The lines, lights, and colors are so placed that they
illustrate subjects, namely, trees and figures; they convey to us a
meaning, and if they are so indefinite that we cannot distinguish trees
from figures, rocks from grass, or water from sky, then the picture is
not a picture, but merely a dash of variegated colors. Two dead fish
upon a plank and behind them an iron pot—the picture that Vollon has
painted for us—has, as a picture, perhaps as little subject about it as
the most confirmed modern could desire; yet it is no less a subject. We
recognize the pot, the plank, the fish readily enough. Smear the canvas
so that we have only streaks of gray and black, and the subject is gone
and with it the picture. It is then only a medley of pigment which may
be rather interesting as a color-spot, but is no more of a picture than
so much color rubbed on the panel of a door.
Mr. Whistler may call one of his small canvases of the open sea a
symphony in blue or gray or catalogue it by any other fantastic name he
chooses; but the fact remains that his few touches of the brush give us
not only the form and color of the sea, but suggest to us the great
ocean tossing after storm—rolling moodily under gray skies. The painter
intended that such a meaning should be suggested. If he had not defined
his sea and sky so that we could recognize them his canvas might still
be a pretty piece of blue and gray, and it might be a “symphony”; but it
would not be a picture. It would not picture anything; it would be
merely pigment again.
And even an art-for-art’s-sake devotee might wonder why Mr. Whistler
should fight wind-mills about “devotion, pity, love and patriotism” in
pictures. Are the altar-pieces of the early Italians the worse for being
filled with what people choose to think true “devotion”? Would the
pictures by Filippino or Botticelli be the better if the pietistic
sentiment were eliminated and a smiling Froufrou took the place of the
sad-faced Madonna? Consider for a moment that splendid family group
kneeling in the altar-piece of the Pesaro family by Titian, and then ask
yourself if the suggestion of devotion here is any more objectionable
than the spirit of frivolity or gayety in a scene from the ballet by
Degas. Some years ago there was a rather interesting picture by
Dagnan-Bouveret in the Salon, called “The Conscripts”—a picture showing
a squad of youths marching down the street to the sound of drum-beats,
with the tricolor flying over their heads. The sentiment of it was
undoubtedly patriotic, and crowds stood about it day by day as long as
the exhibition remained open. Would Mr. Whistler condemn it for either
its patriotism or its popularity? If so, why not the “Surrender at
Breda” by Velasquez? That, too, smacks of military glory, and I doubt
not had its crowds of Spaniards staring at it in the past as
Dagnan-Bouveret’s picture in the present. And why not put Rembrandt’s
“Night Watch,” and Frans Hals’s Shooting Companies at Haarlem in the
same pillory? They are full of uniforms, flags, drums and guns, and they
are stuffed with patriotism, civic pride and burgher conceit; but, oddly
enough, we find no painter-writer abusing them on that account. Why?
Because they are not lacking in decorative quality; they are superb as
form and color.
So it seems then that Velasquez, Frans Hals, and Rembrandt shall go
scot-free for perpetrating what is adjudged little short of a crime in
Sir John Millais and George Boughton. Which is it, then, the presence of
the devotional and the patriotic or the absence of the decorative that
really excites the wrath of the Whistlerians? Possibly what their
spokesmen meant to say was that in modern painting there is too much
insistence upon the theme, the subject, the story told; that artistic
qualities of form and color are ignored, pushed aside, overlooked in
favor of the incident set forth; that painting is not a mere vehicle for
illustrating poetry, fiction, religion, or history; that it has
qualities peculiarly its own, which are entitled to quite as much
consideration as the thought or theme which may be illustrated. And all
of that would be true enough. The decorative phase of art is quite as
important as the illustrative, but why are not both important? Why and
how do they conflict with one another?
[Illustration:
XXVIII.—RAPHAEL, Sistine Madonna. Dresden Gallery.
]
But, to return to our original contention, expressive painting cannot
get on without a thought and a theme. It must represent or illustrate
something. And if we should cast out all the pictures that have an
expressive meaning we should do away with almost all the art of the
past. Certainly all descriptive art would have to go. Historical
canvases, we are told, are only “illustrative” anyway, and not art pure
and simple. But just where shall the line be drawn between what is
historical and what is not historical? A canvas of Napoleon retreating
from Russia is illustrative—historical beyond doubt; but how does
Meissonier’s portrait of Napoleon riding at the head of his bedraggled
columns differ from Mr. Whistler’s picture of a blacksmith at his forge?
One is the likeness of a famous general in time of war, the other is the
likeness of a common blacksmith in time of peace; but both canvases are
biographical, and therefore historical. A picture of the field of
Gravelotte or the palace at Versailles might serve as an illustration of
the political history of France; but a wheat stack and a row of poplars
by Monet, a wood-chopper or a gleaner by Millet, why do they not equally
well illustrate the social and agricultural history of France? There is
really no point where one can stop. Everything that can be recognized at
all in a painting is more or less illustrative of history, fact or
incident. And there is no reason why modernity should strain at an
interesting subject because it happens to be political history, and
swallow a stupid one because it happens to be social history. Titian,
Rubens, and Velasquez did not do it. Each one of them painted the life
and history of his time, not in portraiture alone, but in battle scene
and court ceremony. And famous canvases they made of them, too. Can it
be thought for a moment that the subjects were detrimental to the
artists or their art? Evidently the painters themselves did not think
so.
And is the church art of Italy to go, too, because it illustrates the
biblical narratives? Without doubt it is the most complete expression of
painting we have ever known, the most perfect in decorative charm, the
most satisfactory in expressive meaning. What if it did teach the Bible
to those who could not read! Did it not also adorn the interior of
churches, and fulfil the modern requirements of painting by its beauty
of form and color? And if it be true that art consists not in devotion
or patriotism, but in drawing the nude figure, what difference does it
make whether you draw that of Adam lying upon the edge of the world as
Michael Angelo, or that of a dead unknown lying upon a hospital slab as
Rembrandt? If the female figure be insisted upon as the acme of graceful
line and delicate color, why cannot these be shown in a “Susanna at the
Bath” as well as in a “Venus” or an “Olympe”? Some years ago Mr.
Whistler painted the figure of a girl in white standing at full length
upon a white bear-skin, and the result was called “The White Girl.” It
is a study in whites, and his followers might count it a symphony in
white without making much more of it than a clever exposition of
painter’s values. In Venice, some centuries ago, Palma Vecchio painted
the figure of a girl in rich browns standing at full length upon guns,
and called the result “Santa Barbara.” (Frontispiece.) As a symphony, as
a study in color-harmony, as a piece of drawing and painting, it is
irreproachable. It is decoratively all that could be desired. Yes; and
there is something more to it. The figure expresses superb dignity,
nobility, and repose; it is the perfect type of woman; and in addition
the picture has illustrated to the mob for many years the story of Santa
Barbara the martyr. Both pictures are true enough art, delightful each
in its way; but which is the more complete? And would you have the
meaning knocked out of Palma’s picture, would you have it reduced to a
mere symphony of brown and gold—something you might catalogue as “The
Brown Girl”? Suppose, for argument’s sake, we admit that calling it
Santa Barbara does not help it in any way; but does it injure it in any
way? Certainly not.
Nor is it worth while to accept an allegorical figure by Fantin-Latour
or a nursing mother by Degas and then quarrel with the meaning of a
“Madonna” by Bellini (Plate 7) or a “St. Catherine” by Sodoma. The use
of the latter pictures by the Church to point a moral or adorn a tale
does not invalidate their art, nor does the name attached to them blind
anyone to their harmony of form, light, and color. We may be certain
that those Renaissance men were just as much interested in the
decorative side of their art as the moderns. They were expert
technicians with a fine sense of line and color. Every feature of the
Madonna’s face, form or costume, the fall of a robe, the sparkle of a
gem, the play of light upon hair or nude shoulder, the depth and
resonance of colors, were seized upon for decorative effect; but the
emotions of “devotion, pity and the like,” which Mr. Whistler insists
are quite foreign to art, did not disturb them in any way. They used
them as they pleased and still made beautiful pictures.
Just so with the Dutchmen at the north. They painted portraits,
interiors, _fête_ scenes, marines—all things that related to Holland—and
they were very intent upon giving the realistic appearance of everything
so that anyone could divine the meaning; but they did not neglect the
decorative nor quarrel about the subjects of their canvases. The fine
conversation-pictures of Terburg or the interiors of Steen or the
portraits of Hals (Plate 22) need no apology for their purely artistic
qualities. Every face or hand or figure, every scrap of light or color,
has the most made of it. The painters wrung all the hues possible out of
silks and satins, caught all the sparkle of glass, all the sheen of pots
and dishes; but they did not think to win entirely by virtue of these
qualities. They cared something for their subject and insisted upon its
truth of representation and illustration, too.
[Illustration:
XXIX.—BOTTICELLI, Allegory of Spring. Academy, Florence.
]
And what of the landscape? Are we to cast out the historical productions
of Claude and Turner (Plates 11 and 26) because they are supposed to
represent ancient Italy or classic Greece? What if Turner does paint a
picture of Venice in which people may recognize some things Venetian,
does that mar his painting of light, air, sky, and color, or dim the
decorative splendor of the landscape in any way? Those splendid Venetian
sunsets with scarlet clouds waving and flaming far up the zenith, their
crimson reflection in the waters of the lagoons, the golden atmosphere
that never painter yet painted, how are they harmed by the stray
sunshafts that flush pink the familiar top of the San Marco campanile or
gild into recognition the great silver domes of the Salute? And if a
modern paint a patch of mid-ocean without a name how much greater as art
are his sea-waves than the waves of Claude shown in a seaport of France?
What harm does the “seaport” and “France” do the picture? We have
recently had some very beautiful studies of color, light, and air by
Claude Monet which he has called “Rouen Cathedral” and “Westminster
Bridge.” They are much vaguer in outline than Turner or Claude would
have painted them; but they picture historical structures and might be
called historical landscapes with as much reason as Turner’s “Bay of
Baiæ” or Claude’s “Queen of Sheba.”
But the chief quarrel of the modern is with the story-telling
subject—the sentimental or funny incident in paint—of which we see
enough and to spare at every new exhibition. This too is historical art
in a way. For the _genre_ subjects of the present time are history in
the little—personal incidents usually, but nevertheless the history of
the people. And yet it must be acknowledged that there is some reason
for waging war against this kind of art as we find it to-day. Not that
the story in itself is necessarily objectionable. If we are not
interested in its incident perhaps we can enjoy its decorative
qualities. The “Sacred and Profane Love” by Titian, which I have already
mentioned, certainly had a literary meaning at one time, but to-day the
allegory is lost to us and the picture lives by virtue of its fine form
and color—the allegory in no way injuring its decorative qualities. Nor
are the stories of Jan Steen or Van der Meer of Delft or Teniers
objectionable in their pictures. You will hear no modern railing against
them, for the very good reason that the pictures are excellent pieces of
workmanship and exceptionally beautiful in surfaces, handling, color,
light and atmosphere. But the present-day story-teller with a
paint-brush is not so good a workman as the Dutchmen. He slurs the
decorative and throws all the interest of his picture upon the incident
portrayed, and lets form and color go lame, blind and halt if they
choose. There is little to be said in praise of his work. The tawdry
colors and the card-board figures with which his stories are told
condemn them at the start. Yet the public, seeing not the cheapness of
the method, applauds the incident portrayed and thus endorses a lame and
halting art. It is this that stirs the wrath of the art-for-art’s-sake
advocates and leads to their extravagance of statement.
It is the Marcus Stones, the Viberts, and the Defreggers of painting who
have brought the story into contempt and caused the opposition to it.
That the “unco guid” Sunday-school incident or the horse-play of the
grinning Tyrolean peasant, or the red-robed monk story should pass
current as art while the peasants of Millet, the landscapes of Corot,
the marines of Whistler should be sneered at as impressionistic or
“faddish,” was more than the artistic brotherhood could bear. It took up
the cudgels for more art and less literature, and in knocking the silly
incident in the head, it also tried to knock in the head every other
incident in the art-world. This was perhaps an error. For the subject is
not necessarily silly except in the hands of the whipper-snapper
painter. There is nothing silly about the “Moses saved from the Nile”
(Plate 23) by Bonifazio, or the “Miracle of the Slave” (Plate 15) by
Tintoretto, or the “Good Samaritan” by Rembrandt, or the “Garden of
Love” by Rubens, or the “Shepherds in Arcadia” (Plate 30) by Poussin.
Oh, yes; the old masters could paint stories when it pleased them to do
so. They were religious and classic stories—themes hallowed by
tradition—but not differing in other respects from the stories of
to-day. They painted them well and with great decorative skill and
therefore you never hear any painter decrying them; but, so far as their
legitimacy or illegitimacy is concerned, they were not different from
the “Love and Death” of Mr. Watts or the “Beguiling of Merlin” by Sir
Edward Burne-Jones or the “Blind Fiddler” by Sir David Wilkie.
But we must not push our argument too hard, for we are not the special
advocates of the story-picture. Nor should we, while stating the
contention of the public for the subject-picture, be unjust to the
contention of the painter for the decorative picture. It is true enough
that the religious or classic theme of Renaissance art is not its most
enduring quality with us to-day. The pictures live more by their
excellences of form and color than by their subjects. Still the painters
found no great hardship in having to paint designated themes. They
worked easily under imposed conditions. When Mantegna was asked to paint
a chapel in the Eremitani at Padua and the life of St. Christopher was
given him as a subject he did not cry out against subjects in painting
and talk about the absurdity of devotion and patriotism in art. He
accepted the conditions and fulfilled them nobly. When Correggio was
asked to paint an Assumption of the Madonna in the cupola of the Duomo
at Parma he, too, accepted the conditions of subject and architectural
surroundings and produced that wonderful circle of whirling angels
which, seen from below, seems to rise higher and higher in the dome as
though actually disappearing in the blue sky.
[Illustration:
XXX.—POUSSIN, Shepherds in Arcadia. Louvre, Paris.
]
Hundreds of the Renaissance painters filled wall and altar spaces under
similar limitations, producing Nativities, Flights into Egypt,
Crucifixions, Resurrections, without ever a thought of quarrelling with
their themes. They were hackneyed themes, too; but they knew that their
success in the estimation of their fellow-craftsmen was largely
dependent upon the degree of freshness and originality with which the
subjects were treated. One of the astonishing things about Tintoretto at
Venice is that, coming at the final day of the Renaissance, he should
have handled the old time-worn and art-worn themes with such novelty and
power. The Annunciation, the Nativity, the Flight, the Crucifixion in
the Scuola San Rocco at Venice are marvellous pieces of originality and
invention. Before Tintoretto’s time there were innumerable “Marriages in
Cana” painted for the Church, but that wonderful picture in the Sacristy
of the Salute at Venice goes beyond them all (Plate 27). What was it to
Titian or Moretto that the early men had painted the “Assumption of the
Madonna”? They did it over again with greater originality and splendor.
Nor did the Renaissance painters wholly ignore the audience for which
their pictures were intended. When Raphael painted the “Sistine Madonna”
(Plate 28), he was most careful about the composition of the group,
about the drawing, the draperies, the light, the color, the action of
the figures. He studied long and hard every decorative feature of the
picture, that it might have grace of line and charm of hue. Yes; and he
also studied long and hard the story it should tell to the congregation
of the Black Friars’ Church at Piacenza, for whom the picture was
originally painted. It hung over the high altar of the church and was so
conspicuously placed that the whole kneeling throng could see it. The
curtains painted at the top of the picture are supposed to be the real
altar-curtains, the ledge at the bottom where the cherubs rest is
supposed to be the real altar-top. The angel-throng with the Madonna is
coming down from heaven. She is walking on the clouds, coming forward to
meet the kneeling worshippers and holding up to them the Child as the
Hope of the World. Behind them is a great halo of light made up of
angel-heads—the light of the Eternal Day. At the right St. Barbara
kneeling turns away her face as though blinded by the radiance; at the
left San Sisto the martyr looks up to the Madonna and with one
deprecating hand upon his bosom points outward with the other to the
congregation as though saying: “Not for me, but for these poor souls in
my keeping.” It is impossible to ignore the story told in the picture;
impossible to say that it is an intrusion or should have been left out.
There is nothing very decorative about the large round eyes of the
Mother and Child—they were taken almost _verbatim_ from the old
Byzantine mosaics—but again it is impossible not to recognize the look
of wonder they express and the specific meaning they must have had for
the audience.
All of which would seem to suggest once more that the theme in painting
is at least not a hindrance, not a something to be got rid of, but a
condition to be dealt with and handled illustratively in the same way
that a given space of wall, panel or canvas is a condition to be dealt
with decoratively. To say that painting shall reveal only “the
appearance of things” and that the significance of those things shall
count for naught is one extreme; to say that objects shall depend solely
upon their meaning and be regardless of decorative charm is the other
extreme. Painters may choose either one or the other as becomes
partisans (the great painters have always chosen both), but the
spectator should cultivate a broader taste and exhibit a more
discriminative mind. To Mr. Whistler, for instance, was given the sense
of color, light, air, and the power to produce the glamour and the
mystery of these in harmonies, symphonies, nocturnes—all of them
decorative things lovely to look upon. Let us by all means admire them
and love them; but we should not allow ourselves to think that this
alone is art, and all the products of the other men but so much rags and
scrap-iron. Mr. Watts has a differently endowed mind. He grasps
elemental truths of life and presents them in allegorical forms that are
beautiful to think about, and Mr. Whistler does not like that. But never
mind; let us listen to Mr. Watts, too. He is a man of imagination, and
what he has to say is well worth listening to, though he has not Mr.
Whistler’s point of view, and is somewhat lacking in the decorative
quality.
Nor need we despise those painters whose equipment leads them to care as
little for things decorative as for things symbolical. There are
artistic minds that love to deal with facts as facts. Realism is
healthful at least, and besides there may be much that is interesting in
facts if we only study them long enough. Men like Courbet and Bonnat and
Meissonier and Gérôme are not to be ignored. They are great students,
great artists of their kind. Their minds move along scientific and
archæological grooves, and in that respect they are quite different from
the Whistlers, the Millets, and the Delacroixs; but I do not see why
they are not entitled to admiration for what they do, especially when
they do it so very well.
We should find something to admire in all of them, if we had more
judgment and less prejudice. Unfortunately, we allow our likes to
dictate to our taste. A certain form of art is agreeable to us, and
therefore everything else is bad form and not art at all. Because one
likes the Madonnas of Raphael is no reason for condemning the Madonnas
of Holbein and Rubens. The landscape of Claude Lorraine is not
incompatible with the landscape of Claude Monet. Both are good. But it
is very difficult to make people see and believe that. Raising ourselves
above prejudice is not easy of accomplishment. It is what is called,
broadly, education—a difficult attainment to many, an absolute
impossibility to some.
Indeed when we come to sum up these lectures we find their burden to be
chiefly “Raising ourselves above prejudice.” The special pleas of
painters, whether for realization or decoration or illustration, are, of
course, to be heard and accepted in part; but we are not to believe in
any one of them to the utter exclusion of the others. Each is excellent
of its kind, so far as it goes; but in our final judgment of the work of
art we may conclude that the sum of the whole is greater than any of its
parts, and that truth to nature, individuality, imagination, pictorial
poetry, decorative beauty, subject—all the elements—go to the making of
what is called “great art.” Titian, Rubens, and Velasquez scorned none
of these elements, advocated none of them exclusively; and you and I,
who help make up the public, can perhaps do no better than base our
principles of taste upon the works of those famed masters of the craft.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOKS BY JOHN C. VAN DYKE
Professor of the History of Art in Rutgers College
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
----------------------------
The Meaning of Pictures
With 31 full-page illustrations. 12mo, $1.25 net
“It may be questioned if any other book of its scope has ever shown ‘the
meaning of pictures’ in a way that will make it so clear to the average
English reader.”—_The Dial._
“A book that is always calm and cool and right.”—_New York Evening
Post._
“Essentially sound and rational.”—_Outlook._
“We could ask nothing better for the training of art taste in America
than the wide circulation and careful reading of this sound and sensible
introduction.”—_The Congregationalist._
“An unusual quality in art criticism, plain common sense with a
delightful avoidance of technical jargon.”—New York _Sun_.
“‘The Meaning of Pictures’ has in abundant measure a happy kind of
originality, the most genuine sort of helpfulness, and rare power to
stimulate.”—Boston _Herald_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BY PROFESSOR JOHN C. VAN DYKE
----------------------------
Art for Art’s Sake
Seven University Lectures on the Technical Beauties of Painting
With 24 reproductions of representative paintings. 12mo, $1.50
“One of the best books on art that has ever been published in this
country.”—Boston _Transcript_.
“We consider it the best treatise on the technic of painting for general
readers.”—_The Nation._
“Mr. Van Dyke is very good reading indeed, and withal remarkably clear
and precise in explaining much that shapes itself but hazily in the
brain of those interested in art.”—London _Spectator_.
“I do not know that there is a book in English from which one can learn
more of what pictures are and why they are admired.”—DR. TALCOTT
WILLIAMS.
“Has all the recommendations that are to be looked for in essays of the
kind. They take a broad survey, they deal with the points that it is
worth while to know about, they are perfectly lucid, and they are very
charming in their literary art.”—New York _Sun_.
“Temperate and appreciative.”—_Atlantic Monthly._
“Written in an easy, entertaining style.”—New York _Tribune_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BY PROFESSOR JOHN C. VAN DYKE
----------------------------
Studies in Pictures
An Introduction to the Famous Galleries
With 40 Illustrations. 12mo, $1.25 _net_
“Professor Van Dyke is a helpful cicerone, for he does not overpower the
reader with his theories, or force upon him his tastes, or crush him
with the weight of his learning, but talks clearly and sensibly about
what pictures are painted for and how we can get the most out of
them.”—_The Independent._
“It would be difficult to find a better or more accomplished guide in
gaining a comprehension of the principles of appreciation as applied to
painting.”—_The Press (Philadelphia)._
“Not only useful to the unsophisticated, to whom it is admirably
adapted, but valuable to those who have a tendency to lose themselves in
technicalities.”—_New York Times._
“Mr. Van Dyke will help the student to understand how pictures have been
made and how they have been brought together in the great galleries; he
will show how to get at the points of view held by the masters, and how,
in short, to use the technique of art-study.”—_New York Tribune._
“Much useful information and suggestive thought in an informal little
volume.”—_International Studio._
“Professor Van Dyke writes with his usual cool good sense.”—_New York
Evening Post._
“An admirable introduction to travel or study.”—_The Congregationalist._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BY JOHN C. VAN DYKE
----------------------------
WHAT IS ART?
Studies in the Technique and Criticism of Painting
$1.00 _net_. Postpaid $1.10
Professor Van Dyke in this volume returns to the general subject of fine
art, which he has already done so much to illustrate and illuminate in
his various books. This book expounds the painter’s point of view as
distinct from that of the connoisseur, the collector, or the museum
director, which, he thinks, has for the past twenty years so monopolized
discussion among us as to obscure the consideration of art as art, in
considering it as a curiosity or commodity. To the preaching of this
gospel, which is particularly timely in view of recent famous sales and
expert controversies, are added chapters on the constitution,
production, and appreciation of painting. The book is written in a
particularly vivacious style, and its criticism of current materialism
is crisp and even cutting. The author takes up such subjects as “The Use
of the Model,” “Quality in Art,” “Art Criticism,” “Art History and Art
Appreciation.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BY PROFESSOR JOHN C. VAN DYKE
----------------------------
Nature for Its Own Sake
First Studies in Natural Appearances 12mo, $1.50
“No one can read it without having his knowledge of nature enlarged, his
curiosity quickened, and his sensitiveness to the beauty that is all
about him in the world increased and stimulated.”—Chicago _Tribune_.
“He writes clearly and simply and indulges in little rhetoric or false
sentiment. His ‘first studies,’ therefore, will probably reveal to many
people many things of which they were unaware.”—_The Nation._
“A series of interesting and distinctly original essays.”
—Philadelphia _Public Ledger_.
“A book of uncommon merit, first, in its point of view, and, second,
in the peculiar skill with which the subject of nature is
handled.”—Washington _Post_.
“A book on nature widely different from anything yet written, and fresh,
suggestive, and delightful.”
—New York _Times_.
“A book for all nature lovers.... A most delightful _vade mecum_.”—BLISS
CARMAN in New York _Commercial Advertiser_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BY PROFESSOR JOHN C. VAN DYKE
----------------------------
The Desert
Further Studies in Natural Appearances
With frontispiece. 12mo, $1.25 _net_
“The reader who once submits to its spell will hardly lay it aside until
the last page is turned.”—_The Spectator_ (London).
“This charming volume comes as strong wine indeed after the tepid
rose-water of books dealing with snails and daffodils in suburban
gardens. Mr. Van Dyke unquestionably knows his desert; he has the true
wanderer’s eye for its essential fascination.”—_The Athenæum_ (London).
“No virgin rush of young impressions, but an adult mingling of vision
and criticism in a style that engages without startling the
attention.”—London _Academy_.
“Strange and curious reading, this book of the desert, and has all the
fascination of things unaccustomed.”—New York _Tribune_.
“The writer’s personality is carefully subordinated, but one cannot help
feeling it strongly; that of a man more sensitive to color than to form,
enthusiastic, but with a stern hand on his own pulse.”—_Atlantic
Monthly._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BY PROFESSOR JOHN C. VAN DYKE
----------------------------
The Opal Sea
Continued Studies in Impressions and Appearances
With Frontispiece. 12mo, $1.25 _net_
“Prof. Van Dyke takes his reader’s imagination captive with prose in
which we feel the sea’s own glamour of beauty and movement and mystery,
its glory of color and power.”—_New York Tribune._
“Pleasure awaits the reader of ‘The Opal Sea.’”—_Boston Evening
Transcript._
“The history, the poetry, the science, and the endless aspects of the
sea are given in a style that will charm all lovers of the ocean.”—_The
Independent._
“Will be read for the pleasure which the work of a skillful observer
wielding a practised pen is bound to give; and the pleasure will be
great. Prof. Van Dyke is a master of the art of ‘seascape’ who need fear
no comparison.”—_The Spectator_ (_London_).
“No English writer, and no other writer except Michelet, has done as
much as Mr. Van Dyke to arrange attractively what has been in the course
of ages learned about the sea.”—_The World_ (_London_).
“We strongly approve the combination of gifts which represent Prof. Van
Dyke’s literary equipment and wish to commend his books most cordially
to intelligent readers.”—_The Standard_ (_London_).
“Lovers of the sea and lovers of nature generally will find much to
interest them in this book, and here and there passages that may
enthrall them.”—_Literary World_ (_London_).
“Prof. Van Dyke’s being at heart a poet of the sea is proved in his fine
raptures on well-nigh everything of the deep.”—_Daily Chronicle_
(_London_).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BY PROFESSOR JOHN C. VAN DYKE
----------------------------
The Money God
Chapters of Heresy and Dissent
Concerning Business Methods
and Mercenary Ideals in
American Life.
_$1.00 Net. Postpaid $1.10_
“A tremendous indictment of the degrading materialism now menacing both
democracy and religion, as such it should be read by all who have at
heart the need of a moral revival.”—_The Outlook._
“It is a strong book, from a strenuous mind, on a neglected and
forgotten phase of modern society.”—_Boston Advertiser._
“The book is written in Mr. Van Dyke’s usual scholarly and fascinating
way, and it should make itself felt as an appeal for a return to moral
standards in public and private and financial life.”—_Philadelphia
Record._
“As an economic Philippic the book goes to the head of the class. It
would be well to add it as a text-book in the business courses of our
schools and colleges.”—_Springfield Union._
“It is stimulating, frank, and often startling.”—_Chicago Inter-Ocean._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that:
was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_);
was in bold by is enclosed by “equal” signs (=bold=).