Gottfried Mind was born at Bern, in the year 1768. His father, but a
short time before, had come in the capacity of joiner and form-cutter
into Switzerland from Lipsich, in Upper Hungary, and had fixed his abode
at Warblaufen, a village near Bern, where he was chiefly employed for
the paper-manufactory of one Herr Gruner, and soon after his arrival
purchased the freedom of Pizif, in the Waadtland. Young Mind, on account
of his weak constitution of body, was in great measure left to himself,
perhaps in the hope of making him healthier and stronger by the cheap
and easy means of idle running about. Herr Gruner was a lover of art;
during summer he had a German artist, named Legel, in his house, a
talented and active man, who often, in country excursions, drew
buildings and cattle from nature. This excited the attention of young
Mind in some of his idle rambles: he followed Legel every where, and
watched him while he worked. Legel, touched with compassion for the poor
boy, showed him what he was engaged with, or what he had already
finished; and, in the end, would take him along with him in his walks,
or amuse him in his own apartment with exhibitions of prints. In
particular, he allowed the boy, as often as he liked, to turn over
Ridinger's Animals, of which Herr Gruner had a collection; and some of
these Mind was not long in trying to imitate with the lead pencil,
preferring above all lions, which continued long his favourite animals.
These attempts Legel from time to time corrected, and, from less to
more, the youngster at length ventured to copy from nature, like his
master, and to draw some sheep, goats, and _cats_.
His father, the joiner, however, thought that to draw on paper was
nothing, and wood was the only material on which it was worth one's
pains to work. Accordingly, whenever the boy asked paper for drawing, he
threw him a bit of wood; so that Gottfried was fain to try also cutting
animals in wood, an art in which he speedily attained such dexterity,
that, by degrees, his wooden sheep and goats came to ornament all the
presses and mantel-pieces in the village. Occasionally, too, he tried
drawing likenesses of some peasant boys of Worblaufen, or carving them
in wood; and these attempts were not unsuccessful.
It is unknown on whose recommendation Mind, in his eighth year, was
placed at the academy for poor children, which Pestalozzi had previously
instituted at Neuenhof, near Bern, Aargau; but, in the year 1778, we
find, in the authentic account of that institution, published by the
Economic Society of Bern, the following short and somewhat clumsily
expressed notice:--"Friedly Mynth of Bossi (Mind of Pizy), of the
bailliwick of Aubonne, resident in Worblaufen, very weak, incapable of
hard work, full of talent for drawing, a strange creature, full of
artist-caprices, along with a certain roguishness: drawing is his whole
employment: a year and a half here: ten years old." Neither do we know
how long he remained at this academy; somewhere between the years 1780
and 1785, he came to the painter, Sigmund Hendenberger, at Bern, a man
who had formed himself mostly at Paris in the Boucher school, but
afterwards rather inclined to Greuze's style, and who, by his painting
of Swiss family pieces, had acquired a considerable sum of money, and
a reputation not undeserved. With this person Mind learnt his art of
drawing, and colouring with water-colours, &c. but nothing more; in all
the other branches of human knowledge he remained at the lowest grade;
for he could with difficulty be made to write his name, and he had not
the slightest idea of arithmetic. Thus, for example:--once, when he had
to pay the postman six kreuzers for a letter, and Madame Freudenberger
gave him the money in two silver pieces, he positively refused to take
them and carry them down, affirming that two pieces were not enough;
and, though his mistress assured him that these were equal in value to
six kreuzers, still he persisted in his refusal, and went on grumbling
until the six kreuzers, one by one, were counted into his hand. This
ignorance and helplessness his master was not slow to take advantage of,
so that poor Mind never once thought of looking about him for a better
place. From his entrance into Freudenberger's house up to the time of
his death, there is nothing to tell of him except that he spent his
whole life on the selfsame stool, busied in colouring Freudenberger's
sheets so long as he was alive, and, after his death, in drawing and
painting, after his own fancy, bears, cats, and children at play, for
the benefit of the widow, with the same pitiful day's wages which he had
formerly received from his master. Many artists, after Freudenberger's
death, would gladly have taken poor Mind into their service, but, like
his beloved cats, he was so attached to the house, to his corner and its
appurtenances, that he constantly turned a deaf ear to such proposals;
and, at last, when Madame Freudenberger began to notice that the people
wished to buy away her Friedli from her, she would not let them come
near him; and only at rare times, and by way of special favour, allowed
a few acquaintances, whom she could depend on, to visit him in her
presence. She used, for the most part, to sit beside him herself, with
her knitting implements, spurring him on to work. When he had to copy
any of his drawings, he usually sketched the outline of them against the
glass of the window; and if, on these occasions, it chanced that some
boy, cat, dog, or other street passenger he might think worth looking
at, withdrew his eye for a moment from the work, his taskmistress failed
not to squall forth--"Gaping out again! Not a bit of work done all day!
Sit down with thee! Mind thy paper, and give over spying!" How meanly
he was kept in regard to clothing--how he had to sleep, for his life
long, in a child's bed, far too short for him, for want of a straw
mattress--and how, under such continual toil and miserable constraint,
he at last sank, and died of water in the chest, it is now needless to
say or to lament. We turn, rather, to the more pleasing contemplation of
what Mind, in this most unfavourable situation, nevertheless succeeded
in performing, and rendering himself as an artist.
Mind's special talent for representing cats was discovered and awakened
by chance.[4] It was not till after Freudenberger's death that Mind
fully developed his peculiar talent for the objects to which,
subsequently, through his whole life, he applied himself with such
special affection, and which, accordingly, he succeeded in representing
with such fidelity and truth. The condition of peasant children, their
sorrows and joys, their sports and bickerings--the coarse insolence of
the richer, the timid dispiritment of the needy, all stood in lively
remembrance before his fancy, which liked to go back into that first and
only period of his freedom, though, perhaps, also of his beggarhood.
In Freudenberger's school he had learned a natural, easy, and
comprehensible arrangement of little groups, and a neat, dainty manner,
in which wise it was no difficult task for him to represent such scenes
with truth and grace. Thus we find these pictures of his, which, for
the most part, are painted on small sheets, his sports, banterings,
quarrellings, sledge-parties of children, with their half-frozen but
still merry faces, in their puffy yet not unpicturesque costume; his
beggar-boys, with their rag-ware on their backs, are almost always
genial and pleasing. In the course of his narrow, in-doors life, he
had worked himself into a friendly, nay, as it were, almost paternal
relation with domestic and fire-side animals, especially with cats.
While he sat painting, a cat might generally be seen sitting on his back
or on his shoulder; and many times he kept, for hours, the most awkward
postures, that he might not disturb it. Frequently there was a second
cat sitting by him on the table, watching how the work went on;
sometimes a kitten or two lay in his lap under the table. Frogs (in
bottle) floated beside his easel; and with all these creatures he kept
up a most playful, loving style of conversation; though, often enough,
any human beings about him, or such even as came to see him, were
growled or grunted at in no social fashion. His countenance, especially
in latter years, was a mixture of the bear's, the lion's, and the human,
for most part of a dull brick-colour; so that many people, particularly
children, were afraid to look at him. In figure he was very small, and
bent; but, at the same time, had hands and fingers of extraordinary
size and coarseness, with which, nevertheless, he produced the cleanest
and prettiest drawings. His chief diligence and most careful elegance
he brought to work in the painting of his beloved cats. In right
delineation of their forms he had the art to seize the general nature
of this animal, and, in the portrait-like indication of their various
physiognomies, to reflect the specific character of each. The
sycophantic look full of falseness, the dainty movements of the kittens,
several of which are sometimes painted sporting round their dam--all
this, in the most multifarious postures, turns, groups, sports, and
quarrels, is depicted with a true observance to nature,--nay, one might
say with genius and fidelity.
On Sundays and winter nights, Mind, by way of pastime, used, out of
dried, wild chestnuts, to carve little cats, bears, and other beasts,
and this with so much art that these little dainty toys were shortly in
no less request than his drawings. It is a pity that insects, such as
frequently exist in the interior of chestnuts, have already destroyed so
many of these carvings.
At the _Barengraben_ (bear-yard) in Bern, where a few live bears
are always to be seen, Mind passed many a happy hour; and, between the
beasts and him there seemed to prevail a singularly confidential
feeling. The moment Friedli--such was the name Mind was best known by in
Bern--made his appearance, the bears hastened towards him with friendly
grumbling, stationed themselves on their hind feet, and received,
impartially, each a piece of bread or an apple out of his pocket. For
this reason, bears, next to cats, were a favourite subject of his art;
and he reckoned himself, not unjustly, better able to delineate these
animals than even celebrated painters have been. Moreover, next to his
intercourse with living cats and bears, Mind's greatest joy was in
looking at objects of art, especially copper-plates, in which, too,
animal figures gave him most satisfaction.
Herr Sigmund Wagner, of Bern, who possesses a choice collection of
copper-plates, frequently invited Mind, on winter Sunday evenings, to
his house, and would then show him his volumes. While Herr Wagner might
be writing, reading, or drawing, Mind, grumbled to himself half-aloud,
made his remarks on each sheet, and frequently gave a true, stubborn,
rugged judgment even on the most celebrated masters, especially on
pictures of animals; for, among these, nothing pleased him but the lions
of Rubens, of Rembrandt, and Potter, and the stags of Kidinger; the
other animals of the latter he declared to be falsely drawn. Even the
most applauded cats of Cornelius Vischer and Wenzel Hollar could not
obtain his approbation. After such picture-reviewing he used to drink
tea with Herr Wagner; and it seemed as if the baked ware presented
therewith was somewhat to his taste. Such evenings were, to a certain
extent, his heaven upon earth; nevertheless, he sometimes replied to
Herr Wagner's invitation with a "could not come--his Busi (puss) was
sick--he must stay with her." Another time he signified "that Busi was
like to have kittens to-day, and so it was impossible to leave her."
Mind seldom drew from Nature; at most he did it with a few strokes. His
conception was so strong, that whatever he had once strictly observed,
stamped itself so firmly in his memory that, on his return home, and
often a considerable time afterwards, he could represent it with entire
fidelity. On such occasions he would look now and then, as it were, into
himself; and when at these moments, he lifted his head, his eyes had
something dreamy in them.
An increasing disorder in the breast had put him past all exertion for
the space of a year; and, on the 17th of November, 1814, a paroxysm of
his malady carried him off, in the 46th year of his age.
_Foreign Review_.
[4] See "Painting Cats," page 190.
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