The sale of the late Sir John Day’s pictures was particularly
interesting to me, since it happens that I have the satisfaction of
sharing that good judge’s predilections. His gods are for the most
part mine. I, too, would choose for my walls (if I had any) Corots and
Daubignys, Marises and Mauves, Millets and Bosbooms, Rousseaus and De
Wints. I, too, prefer the wistful crepuscule to the vivid noon. Hence
I entered Christie’s at a quarter to one on 13 May, 1909, and took
the place that a boy messenger was keeping for me, with feelings of
peculiar excitement and enthusiasm.
The seated company at a big sale at Christie’s is as unchanging as an
ordinary congregation. A few strangers may be there, looking in for
the first time, but the rest, the regular attendants, the pew-owners,
so to speak, know each other, and are known to the auctioneer, so that
the bids of those who engage in the contest are, as at most sales where
dealers congregate, often imperceptible to others, although to him
clear as speech.
We opened modestly. Lot 1 was a seascape by De Bock, and the first bid
was five guineas. It little thought, that bid, what a huge total would
be built upon it. The De Bock reached 160 guineas, and then made room
for a Bosboom. Bosboom is a modern Dutch painter, now dead (you may see
his palette in the Museum at the Hague), whose ecclesiastical interiors
have a grave and sombre beauty that I suppose has never been equalled.
Among collectors he is becoming more and more desired.
After the Bosbooms we came to the Corots, of which there were a round
dozen, and a little anticipatory flutter was perceptible in the room.
There are better Corots in the world than Sir John Day possessed; but
this procession of twelve of the tender, serene canvases from the
Ville d’Avray studio was very wonderful, and one lost the bidding in
the quietude of the paint. Among them were three early works, when the
artist liked a more rarefied air than later in life. And these one has
to know in order to realize fully not only how superb Corot was, but
how bewilderingly blind were the connoisseurs of that day to let him
languish as they did. Of course it is easy to recognize his greatness
now, when the very name Corot carries magic with it; it is difficult to
put one’s self back into those times when it meant nothing, and to see
the pictures with eyes unassisted by tradition; and yet I find it hard
to believe that if one of these early works had come to me suddenly
out of a clear sky, I should have failed to be arrested by it.
Well, there we sat, packed together like excursionists, while the giant
picture-dealers of Europe fought for these pacific landscapes--these
sweet lark songs among the light clouds of the grey day, to quote
Corot’s own description of his ideal--until the dozen had reached a
total of nearly £12,000.
To Corot succeeded his friend Charles Daubigny, whose vast and luminous
“Harvest Moon” produced the instant bid of 1000 guineas, to which,
after a long interval of silence, it fell. His “Bords de l’Oise,” a
great wet landscape, with Daubigny’s stern, sincere beauty drenching
it, brought 1800 guineas. Others followed, and then five rich scenes by
Diaz, also a citizen of the white village of Barbizon, whose home you
may see to-day, with a tablet on the gate, almost opposite the rambling
house of Jean François Millet. The first of these Diazes was an evening
picture with cattle coming down to drink beneath a stormy sky; not
unlike the superb moorland scene from the same brush which Mr. Salting
left to the National Gallery. It began at fifty guineas and reached
850. (By the way, the starting of safe pictures at fifty and a hundred
guineas would be a pleasant task for a reduced gentleman of the Captain
Jackson type, who, able no longer to collect, wished still to sun
himself in the illusion of prosperity and connoisseurship. To make in a
loud voice a bid of 100 or 500 guineas, whether one has such a sum in
the bank or not, must do something for the spirit. It cannot leave one
quite where one was.)
After Diaz, Jules Dupré, another great and sincere painter of
landscape, a direct disciple of Constable (who was a founder of the
Barbizon school) and the friend of Corot, Rousseau, and their friends.
It was Dupré who said beautifully of Corot that he might--it was within
the bounds of possibility--be replaced as a painter, but never as a
man. There were five Duprés, upon the first of which a sanguine friend
of mine, unconscious of the growing value of this master, had placed
the sum of £100, for which I was to try and get it for him. It was too
little, I had suggested; but no, Dupré was not much considered, he
fondly replied. His face fell when I told him how the first bid had
been 200 guineas and the last 520.
It is one of the charms of Christie’s that you never can tell. Pictures
fetch every day unexpected prices, both high and low. Good pictures
slip through, taking the room unawares, and bad pictures occasionally
reach absurd figures, for various reasons. This Dupré, however, was
fine. I once bought at Christie’s for two guineas two water-colour
drawings attributed to Clarkson Stanfield, and, behold, on stripping
them to be framed again, one was revealed, by a minute history on its
back, to be a David Cox worth many times what I gave for it. Let no
one despair of a bargain, even when all the dealers from the Continent
and all the dollars from America are present. The dealers’ idea, it
must be remembered, is to sell again, and they buy accordingly. Many
a good picture does not appeal to the commercial eye. At this sale,
for instance, five examples of the, to me, impressive art of Georges
Michel, the rich and sombre painter of windmills, a French Crome,
brought together only a little more than 100 guineas, while on the
second or water-colour day, there were many lots that went far too
cheaply. In a sale where competition is concentrated upon the great
works, the humble collector has often a chance.
After the Duprés came the Harpignies’, in which Sir John Day was
peculiarly rich. This grand old man, who is still (1911) hale, at the
age of 92, has been painting all his life in oil and water-colour, and
has never put forth a meretricious or hurried thing. He is the link
between Barbizon and the present day. Less charming, perhaps, than
the greatest men of that school, he is more of a realist, and trees
and foliage have no closer or more inspired student. His great lack,
I suppose, is tenderness; everything else he has. It is good to know
that in this fine, sure hand the blood still flows; that this artist,
who has loved the world of beauty so long, is still able to enjoy it;
and that he can watch himself becoming an Old Master, and the quarry of
the collector, while he is still living.
The old age of artists was a theme on which Hazlitt wrote one of his
best essays, and just now, were he to be still among us, he would find
new subjects for study--for not only is there Harpignies at ninety-two
in France, but Sir John Tenniel at ninety-two in London; while it is
only a year or so since William Callow died at ninety-six, and W. P.
Frith at ninety-one. An artist--particularly an open-air artist,
like Harpignies and Callow--has, one would say, every opportunity of
attaining to a great age. Given a strong constitution and the absence
of such harassments as, for example, bowed prematurely the head of
Haydon, there is little to put a strain upon his faculties or physique.
By the conditions of his art he cannot work at night. He is a daylight
man: he lives upon light and air; he is in direct _rapport_ with the
sun; he watches the skies (and how few of us do that!); his eye,
searching for beauty and knowing beauty when it sees it, is constantly
being rewarded in the best way--and that must make for the content that
in its turn must make for longevity. When the painter’s temperament
has both placidity and simplicity, it must be the happiest of all.
Harpignies’ prices at Sir John Day’s sale were far in advance of
anything he had previously made at Christies’. The largest picture
produced 1800 guineas, and the eleven 6270 guineas. A week later,
however, the old man’s English record rose to 2000 guineas at the
Cuthbertson sale.
So far all the important work had been French, but now (the
arrangement was alphabetical) came in an illustrious Dutchman, another
Nestor--Joseph Israels, still happily active at the age of 87. Mr.
Preyer, of Amsterdam, who hitherto had been silent, began now to be
busy. For the most important picture, “Bonheur Maternel,” 1080 guineas
were paid, and for five others 2470 guineas--among them “The Fisher,”
which fell to Mr. Drücker and added yet another to a collection of
Israels’ which has overflowed both into our National Gallery and into
the City Museum at Amsterdam.
After the “Shepherdess” of Charles Jacque, who painted sheep more
brilliantly than any hand ever before, had been sold for 1680 guineas,
we entered upon a longer Dutch interlude, filled by the three Marises,
Mauve, and Mesdag; and once again the room fluttered, for the name of
Maris grows more powerful every year. There is, indeed, perhaps no
recent prolific painter so certain of a great financial future as
the late James Maris. On every sale his prices rise, both for oil and
water-colour. His brother Matthew I do not set against him in rivalry,
because Matthew stands apart. He is an exotic, the most fastidiously
select painter of our day, beyond Whistler even. Matthew Maris is
alone: a reserved, half-mystical exile, who has always painted as
little rather than as much as possible, and has never taken his brush
in hand but to produce a masterpiece unique and haunting. To him we
come soon.
James Maris was as abundant as Matthew has been restrained; and this
makes the huge figures that his work now commands, and will, I believe,
increasingly command, the more interesting. Sir John Day had fifteen
of his oils and thirteen of his water-colours, all of which he bought
during the artist’s life (only recently ended) through dealers at
modest enough sums, averaging for the oils something about £80, and
for the water-colours £40. At the sale the oils averaged £1000 and the
water-colours £400. The highest sum paid for a single oil was 1600
guineas for a view of Dordrecht. That was large, but the following
week, at the Cuthbertson sale, a James Maris brought 4000 guineas.
These prices may sound absurd, but they are not. An artist now and then
becomes the fashion and excites competition beyond his deserts; but
not so James Maris. James Maris was a great painter of skies, a great
painter of river-side towns, a great painter of his native land. He saw
things largely and painted them largely (now and then a little in the
manner of the most beautiful landscape in the world--Vermeer’s “View
of Delft”), and these facts are now known. His future, I fancy, is as
secure as that of Constable and Crome. It gave me immense pleasure to
see the brave, candid painter so popular.
And then Matthew Maris, and the first thrill of the sale. James’s rich
and buoyant canvases, one by one on the easel, and the competition of
the bidders, had set pulses agreeably beating; but we had not broken
into applause. The first applause--no small thing at Christie’s, where
impassivity is cultivated not only as a gentlemanly English habit but
also from motives of commercial self-protection--the first applause was
won by Lot 77.
What was Lot 77? The quietest little red and brown picture you ever
saw, 8½ by 11½ inches; “a town [in the words of the catalogue] on the
farther bank of a river; standing well above the red roofs of the
houses are seen four windmills; a bridge crosses the river on the
right; a barge and raft lying against the bank; a peasant woman in the
foreground.” Such is “The Four Mills” of Matthew Maris, that strange,
exclusive genius, most remarkable of the three Maris brothers. Matthew
was born in 1835, and is therefore now an old man. He lives in lodgings
in London, far from Holland and its mills and canals and sweeping sky:
solitary and sad, with a few marvellous classics to his name, and on
the walls of his sitting-room some dreadful oleographs which he will
not ask the landlady to remove for fear of hurting her feelings. Here
he lives, painting a little every day,--but they are pictures for no
one to see,--and writing (I am told) some of the best letters of our
time. The old age of artists! Hazlitt truly knew what to write about.
Matthew Maris has lived in England ever since he left Paris after the
war. He even carried a rifle in that struggle, but it is characteristic
of his gentle nature that he refused to load it. When he gave up
painting for the public I know not. But the latest work that I
know--that exquisite picture entitled “Butterflies”--a little blue
girl lying in the grass, which seems to make much of both Whistler and
Albert Moore insincere and even unnecessary, is dated 1874. It was
exhibited in London again in 1909, with sixteen other of his works,
including the adorable “Enfant Couchée” and one of the low-toned
Montmartre souvenirs.
Such is the painter of Lot 77, which left his easel in 1871 and was
then sold with difficulty for 100 francs, or four English sovereigns,
or twenty American dollars, to M. Goupil, of Paris, who, it is
recorded, threw in a little friendly lecture on the folly of painting
“such unsaleable stuff.” Well, here it was now, Lot 77, “The Four
Mills,” thirty-eight years older, and beautiful beyond description,
with an appeal to the deeper nature of the connoisseur such as I cannot
put into words. “Why,” I asked an artist, as we stood before it on the
day before the sale, “why is it so good?” “Partly,” he said, “because
he never wanted to show how cleverly he could paint. Everything has
its true value. It is so simple and so sincere.” But this, of course,
is not all. There is also the curious and exquisite alchemy of the
painter’s mind; and how much of the painter is in this particular
masterpiece may be gathered from the circumstance that (as I happen
to know) it does not represent any real Dutch town at all but was an
invention of his own. The Four Mills exist only on this canvas and in
Matthew Maris’s strange and beautiful brain.
Lot 77. We have seen what the dealer gave the artist for it--100
francs. It then passed to Lord Powerscourt, and it was from his
collection that Sir John Day bought it for £120. It was now, therefore,
being sold for the third time.
“Lot 77. What shall I say for a start, gentlemen?”
“A thousand guineas? Thank you. A thousand guineas for this picture.”
“Eleven hundred.”
“Twelve.”
“Thirteen.”
“Fourteen.”
“Fifteen.”
“Sixteen.”
“Seventeen.”
“Seventeen fifty.”
“Eighteen.”
“Eighteen fifty.”
“Nineteen.” (The red roofs are getting redder, the brown mills browner!
The peace of it all!)
“Two thousand guineas.”
“And one hundred.”
“Two hundred.”
“Three hundred.”
“Four hundred.”
“Five hundred.”
“Six hundred.”
“Seven hundred.”
“Eight hundred.”
“Nine hundred.” (How quiet and beautiful, and above all price, all
struggle, all commercialism, the picture is!)
“Three thousand guineas.”
“And one hundred.”
“Two hundred and fifty.” (Strange reading for old Matthew Maris in his
London lodgings to-morrow morning!)
“Three hundred.”
A pause.
“For three thousand three hundred guineas.”
A longer pause.
“For three thousand three hundred guineas.”
And the hammer falls and the room vibrates with the tapping of sticks
and clapping of hands; and “The Four Mills” disappears, bound for
the house of a dealer, who was to sell it, in time, to an English
connoisseur, whom, upon my soul, I envy. He is the right kind of
connoisseur, too; no Peer he, or National Gallery Trustee enamoured of
American dollars, but a simple gentleman who has already given pictures
to the nation and intends (I am told) to give more--perhaps this very
Dutch masterpiece.
Lot 78. “Feeding Chickens.” This also is by Matthew Maris, and was
painted in 1872. “A Girl in buff dress and blue cap, is feeding
chickens with some grain which she holds in the fold of her white
apron; foliage background.” Such is the Christie description, and
it serves to recall the little enchanted scene to mind; but it says
nothing of the mysterious romantic feeling of it, or the richness and
delicacy and sweetness of it, or even of the fascinating mediæval city
in the distance.
For this Sir John Day gave £300, and at the sale it began at a thousand
guineas and reached three, falling also to a Scotch purse--and it is
now, I hear, in Canada. Two hundred and sixty-four thousand six hundred
saxpences never went bang to better purpose. This second picture, by
the way, was painted from the same model that lends such charm to “The
Girl at the Well,” feeding pigeons, in the McCulloch collection.
Six William Marises[1] follow, and then we come to another
Dutch painter whose work is every year more and more desired of
collectors--Anton Mauve, the pastoral poet of Holland, who did for
its cows and sheep and blue-coated peasants what Israels has done for
its fisher-folk and James Maris for its skies. The place that Mauve’s
sincere and modest art has won in the eyes of the best connoisseurs
is a refreshing proof that honesty in painting is ultimately the best
policy, although the honest artist may have every opportunity of
starving before the tide turns his way.
[1] William Maris also is coming to his own. On June 30, 1911,
one of his pastoral scenes brought £3200, at Christie’s.
Sir John Day had eight Mauves in oil and seven in water-colour.
The first oil, “Troupeau de Moutons sous Bois,” he bought in 1888,
immediately after the artist’s death. It was a picture of which Mauve
was very fond; Sir John Day gave £150 for it. At the sale it began
at 500 guineas, and after fierce competition it was secured by Mr.
Reinhart, of Chicago, for 2700 guineas. Pictures with sheep in them,
it has been said, always find buyers; but when the sheep are painted
as these are, not with the _brio_ of Jacque, but so quietly and
lovingly...!
Mauve, like all the greatest painters, took what he found around him
and made it beautiful. He was one of the artists of whom the Creator
must be most proud, in whom He must take most delight, for his whole
life was given up to the demonstration of how beautiful everything
is--and never with the faintest whisper of the words, “and how skilful
am I!” Never. Anton Mauve stands with the greatest in his sincerity,
his genius, and his self-effacement. American collectors have always
appreciated him, while his village of Laren, in Holland, has long been
a settlement of American painters.
Our first thrill was with the Matthew Maris; the next was with J. F.
Millet’s “Goose Maiden”--one of the most lovely pieces of colour that
can ever have leaned against Christie’s historic post. The merest
trifle in size--12¼ by 9½ inches--an old master--a jewel of paint--from
the moment it was born. Millet was no less a great colourist than a
great draughtsman and a great lover of the earth, and here, in this
tiny canvas, all his virtues meet. Sir John Day paid heavily for it in
his time, but its new owner paid more heavily still. The bidding began
at 500 guineas and mounted by hundreds to 5000.
After the Millet the most beautiful picture was a little landscape by
Rousseau, the painter who left his studio at Barbizon to the villagers
as a chapel. “River Scene: with a man fishing from a punt” was the
description; but that omitted the wonder of the work--the evening light
and stillness. It literally hushed the room. This picture is now in the
National Gallery, for all to see. A week later (observe what it is to
have the Christie habit) I saw another Rousseau with a richer but not
more beautiful afternoon light in it, and some trees painted as only
Rousseau could paint them, which brought 4600 guineas. (If forests
can think, if villages have thoughts, what must be the reflection of
Fontainebleau and Barbizon when they receive the news of these Christie
contests!)
And so the day finished, some £75,000 having changed hands in three
hours--a large sum for a little paint. A little paint, do I say? That
is true; but a new world, too--a world of wistful beauty. And that, of
course, cannot be appraised: it is dear at a five-pound note, if you do
not want it--if your taste is unlike Sir John Day’s; it is cheap at all
you have, if you desire it sufficiently.