It is said to be the finest modern gallery in Europe, and is one among
the few buildings designed especially for a gallery, old palaces
being utilized generally for this purpose. I doubt not, however (if
European critics would believe it), that the Boston, New York and
Philadelphia art museums or academies are in architectural design in
many respects superior. The National Gallery in Berlin is built of
the reddish Nebraer sandstone. The dimensions are 62 metres long by
31 wide. From the ground plan can be seen the extent of the flight of
stairs outside, which lead to a portico. This portico is supported in
the pseudo-peripteral Corinthian style. The columns extend around the
entire second story of the building. Between each two is engraved the
name of an architect or artist. There are four fine groups of statuary
on this stairway. A door opens from the portico into the second floor
of the building, which is not in keeping with the generous dimensions
of the columns and stairs. The entrance adds 34 metres in length to the
building.
The walls of the entrance hall or vestibule in the first floor are
overlaid with red Pyrenean marble; the ceiling is metal made in the
Cassetin pattern, so much used in the Dresden gallery, and is supported
by four Ionic columns. On the left broad white marble stairs lead to
the second floor. To the right is a large open space for statuary.
The first hall runs obliquely, and rests upon twelve black Belgian
marble pillars, with capital and base of gilded zinc. The walls are of
a sombre yellow stucco, reflective as marble. Upon the arched ceiling
is frescoed in grey the story of the “Niebelungen Lied,” which is
exceedingly pretty, surrounded as it is by brilliant borders. Between
the columns the wall rises in the form of arches, and in these arches
the story of Siegfried is painted.
Leading from this first hall to the left is a room for statuary (II),
two rooms beyond for pictures (III and IV), to the right four rooms
(XIV, XIII, XII, XI,) for paintings. These again unite in an oblique
hall for statuary which expands into five fan-like rooms for paintings.
Ascending the stairs slowly, we can study a plaster frieze, extending
around the wall from the first to the second story, representing the
“Progress of Civilization in Germany.” All her great men are here,
from St. Boniface and Charles the Great to Frederick William IV, and
the distinguished men of his times, kings, princes, poets, scientists,
philosophers, _literateurs_, philanthropists, historians, musicians,
artists, architects, sculptors, all are here gracefully and ingeniously
brought out with their own accessories, consciously or unconsciously
working with their separate aims into one another’s hands. It is a
succession of men one can well pause to study. Otho I, Ulrich von
Hütten, Melancthon, Luther, Cranach, Holbein, Dürer, the great elector,
Libnitz, Winkelmann, Mengs, Klopstock, Bach, Glück, Frederick the
Great, Kant, Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven,
Blücher, Stein, Schleiermacher, Hegel, the brothers Grimm, Humboldt,
Weber, Schinkel, Tieck, Rauch, Overbeck, Kaulbach, Stüber, Cornelius,
Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, Rietichel Kiss, Hildebrandt—are only selected
from the long list. Among all are the names of but two women! Sophia
Charlotte, and Queen Louise, who make prominent the two monarchs
standing by their sides. Is it not almost dazzling to see this nation
growing by “its own genius into a civilization of its own?”
We must not forget, however, in the distraction of thought caused by
the encounter of the representative men of eleven centuries that we are
ascending the stairs of a modern gallery in search of the works of a
single man, who stood at the head of his own department, and revived
art in Germany in a century when the equipoise between it and other
interests had been lost.
There has been much dissatisfaction expressed by critical people that
the two handsomest rooms in the National Gallery have been devoted to
the shadowy old cartoons of Cornelius. But we intend to enter these
rooms, not with the complaints of many fresh in our memory, but in the
spirit of Hermann Grimm—he who says of himself that he “regards art as
the noblest fruit of human activity,” and who writes in his “Life of
Michael Angelo:” “Since Michael Angelo’s death, no one has presented
such vast problems to art as Cornelius, whose noble conceptions have
been more powerfully and grandly embodied with increasing years. He
is a painter in the highest sense. Like Michael Angelo and Raphael,
he touches the intellectual life of the people on all points, and
endeavors to represent that which most deeply affects their minds. Yet
in spite of all, how do his efforts, and all that has resulted from
them, tell upon the people? and what has been the end of the mighty
power waited for through centuries? With deep shame I write the fate
awarded to this man in Prussia. He is not, indeed, allowed to suffer
want; an honorable, brilliant old age has fallen to his lot. But,
while for that which is called official art, the greatest sums are
fixed and given, not only are there none finished of the paintings
ordered of Cornelius—the cartoons of which, whenever they appear,
eclipse everything else, unsightly as is their gray paper and charcoal
strokes—but so much can not even be obtained in Berlin as a couple
of simple walls for the cartoons of the paintings executed by him in
Munich, which are kept shut up there, or go traveling around the world,
appearing in Belgium, Austria and England, acquiring in these places
the notoriety to which he owes his late fame. Engravings are taken from
them. As photographs, they are in every hand; and in this way their
influence will endure, until, perhaps, some day a museum worthy of
them may be achieved, where they may find their true place, not as the
ornament of a Camposants, but as the memorials of a great man.”
The day has arrived! The words of Hermann Grimm for his friend have not
been lost, but like Ruskin’s praise of Turner, have fallen into good
ground. Before reaching the Cornelius Halls, the Cupola room, which
is the most gorgeous in ornamental work, must be entered. At the top
of nine pillars are the sitting figures of the nine muses in light
polychromatic tints—so exquisitely delicate the shells of the sea seem
to have furnished the colors. Between these figures the roof forms into
shells, above which and encircling the dome, are painted the signs of
the zodiac in brilliant colors upon a gold background. This “Cupola
Saal” has four doors, one from the vestibule, the other opening into
the Cornelius Halls, and the other two on either side leading into
the long picture halls. I have said doors—but fortunately there are
no doors in this tasteful building; costly tapestry, caught back in
bewitching folds alone indicate the entrance from one room to another.
The portraits of the emperor and empress are the only pictures in the
Cupola Hall. Unfortunately they are not from Angelo’s brush. The artist
Plockhorst is comparatively unknown, and these portraits are very
conventional in style.
The frescoes on the ceiling in the Cornelius Halls were done under
the direction of Professor E. Bendemann, by Ernst, Fritz, Röber and
William Beckmann. The Germans call it wax color, after the receipt of
Prof. Andreas Müller, of Düsseldorf. The subjects are only the long
catalogue of beautiful abstractions as Prophecy, Science, Genius, etc.,
but the color and execution show the high degree of perfection of
modern frescoes. In the second hall is depicted the myths of Prometheus
in this same wax color. The drawing of Prometheus’ figure taken from
one of Cornelius’ cartoons, in Munich, is especially fine—so full of
strength and fortitude. He looks a splendid type of vicarious suffering
and strength of will, resisting oppression, almost ready to exclaim in
Lowell’s lines:
“I am still Prometheus, and foreknow
In my wise heart the end and doom of all.”
In looking at this figure, and in studying carefully the cartoons, we
tried to come to an impartial conclusion between the opinions of German
and French writers in regard to the school of Cornelius, or the revival
of German art. This began twenty years later than that of the French,
under Louis David, and is said to have been undertaken in an entirely
different spirit. A French author says in regard to the Germans that
“instead of carrying art forward they turned back, and being not bold
enough to go on to the discovery of a new future they took refuge in
archaism.” Every one knows that after the death of Albert Dürer, art
in Germany fell asleep, that it was aroused by the rumors of a revival
in France. Also that the little German colony with Overbeck directing
it, did go to Rome to study the antique, but to go further with the
Frenchman and say that all subsequent heads of schools—Peter Cornelius
included—followed to the letter the paradoxical advice of Lanzi, “that
modern artists should study the artists of the times preceding Raphael,
for Raphael, springing from these painters, is superior to them, whilst
those who followed him have not equalled him”—we can not, inasmuch as
the statement includes Cornelius. If it had not been for the interest
of Niebuhr, who was German ambassador at Rome when Cornelius was
studying there, in exerting himself to get the Prussian government to
give Cornelius commissions at home, he might have remained in Italy,
and, like Overbeck and others, renounced the religion of his fathers,
as well as all style but that anterior to the reformation. But he did
go back to Germany. He may have gone to Italy with Van Eyck, Holbein,
and Dürer in his mind; he may have returned with Michael Angelo and
Raphael as ideals, but he certainly worked as Cornelius.
While not disagreeing with the French altogether, we can not unite
with the Germans entirely in believing that “he drew the human body
as though he saw it for the first time, and had never seen it painted
or drawn by others.” He certainly received many impressions, before
going to Rome, from the old German and Netherland masters, and adding
to all what he learned in Rome, this idea of total individualism seems
preposterous. What one must feel in studying his works is, that he did
not obliterate from his memory what he had studied from Grecian, Roman,
and German Art, but he reconciled them in his own mind, and worked out
in his own way results from this reconciliation, giving to Germany
productions as faithful to her own instincts as ever Albert Dürer or
Lucas Cranach did.
The Düsseldorf Academy was the first result. Of this school even
Frenchmen have been willing to write: “The school of Düsseldorf, from
Kaulbach and Lessing to Knaus, and the school of Munich, with Piloty,
Adam, Horschelt, Lier, etc., by returning to picturesque truth have
returned to their own times and to their own country.”
The “National Gallery,” as yet, has but two cartoons from Kaulbach; no
painting. The fine old “Treppen Haus,” in the Royal Museum, should be
in this modern gallery to make the collection chronological, for these
frescoes belong essentially to modern art, and would be in their place,
leading from the Cornelius Saals, as Kaulbach was one of his favorite
pupils.
As the Düsseldorf Academy is the oldest of German schools, a glance at
the first artists educated there will be proper. Schadow, who was born
in 1789, and who succeeded Cornelius as director of this academy, is
represented by two pictures, “The Walk to Emmaus,” and a female head.
One discovers at once more poetical feeling than in the pictures of his
master, who delighted, like Milton, in painting
“Dread horror plumed—
Dire tossings and deep groans.”
Schadow died in Düsseldorf in 1862, leaving such pupils as Hübner,
Lessing, Bendemann, etc., the latter being appointed, in 1859, his
successor. Bendemann carries many honors—and paints good pictures—the
gold medal from the Paris Exposition of 1837, and the medal from
Vienna in 1873. He is knight of the “Order of Merit,” Fellow of the
Societies at Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Cassel, Antwerp, Brussels,
Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Philadelphia. He belongs intimately
to that class of German artists who began to modify the rigid dignity
and formal tendencies of historical pictures by freedom of style and
warmth of color. In this sense his great picture (now in the National
Gallery), “Jeremiah at the Fall of Jerusalem,” was said to produce
an epoch in art. Bendemann resigned his position as director of the
Düsseldorf Academy in 1867.
Of all the Düsseldorf artists, Karl Frederick Lessing (whose style
lies between the old and new school), Ludwig Knaus, and the brothers
Achenbach, are the best known in America. In Cincinnati some of the
best pictures of Lessing, and Andreas and Oswald Achenbach can be seen
in private galleries, while in Boston and New York “The Golden Wedding”
and the “Holy Family,” Knaus’s _chief-d´œuvres_, can be found. The
latter picture proved to be too valuable for the Empress of Russia
(by whom it had been ordered) to take,[I] and so fell into the hands
of a wealthy New York lady, who was attracted toward it when it was
on exhibition in Berlin two years ago. Lessing’s original sketch of
“The Martyrdom of Huss,” is in Cincinnati, as well as some of Andreas
Achenbach’s best marine pictures. The names of Schräder, Schirmer,
Hübner, Knille, Hoff, and Gelhardt, are not so well known outside of
Germany. The German artists, with the exception of Makart, who, as an
Austrian, does not class himself with the northern German school, left
such an indescribably blank page in the Philadelphia Exposition, owing
to their indifference and timidity, and want of energy in sending off
their pictures, that the American mind is sadly prejudiced against
German art. The French pictures have so long crowded the market that
not until some young disciples of the Munich school returned to New
York several years ago, would they believe that there was such a thing
as German art. And now the impression is that it all concentrates in
Munich. What is to be done with Knaus, Werner, Richter, Knille, Gussow,
and the other distinguished names in northern Germany?
In Knaus, to whom we have already referred, and who has been recently
called to Berlin as director of one of the newly-established “Meister
Ateliers,” one finds that rare accordance of the character of the man
with the peculiar excellencies of his productions. His _genre_ pictures
reflect his own spirit. He is as genuine, unaffected, and fresh in his
feelings as the children he paints.
Werner, the director of the Royal Academy of Berlin, made the designs
for the Column of Victory, and has a tremendous productive power,
almost equal to Makart, but he is far from possessing the luxuriant
imagination and oriental instinct for color that distinguishes the
latter from the artists of his day.
Gentz paints with vigor and fine sentiment oriental pictures. He has
spent much time in the East, and has innumerable treasures for his
house, which is one of the most attractive in Berlin.
Gustave Richter is considered by many the greatest of the German
artists. He is a favorite at court, and the National Gallery is
indebted to the emperor for the most wonderful picture he ever painted,
“The Raising of Jairus’ Daughter.” Richter married the daughter of
Meyerbeer, the composer. He paints his wife as often as Rembrandt
painted “Saskia,” and in much the same style. One of the best, although
less known of these portraits, is that called by the artist “Revery.”
Knille’s well-known picture of “Tannhäuser and Venus,” with its superb
half-defined drapery of silk and satin, from which the faultless Venus
rises, and the pellucid streams of light flow, and the flowers invested
with purpureal gleams, is in the possession of the National Gallery.
Carl Becker is well liked in America, but it is doubtful, however,
if the talented dwarf Menzel is ever heard of outside Germany. His
countrymen are too fond of his pictures to allow them to go beyond
their reach. He can paint anything and everything, from the glittering
rooms of Sanssouci to the forging and rolling machine works. He has
a picture of this latter class in the Gallery, where the varied
lights—daylight, firelight, reflected light from red-hot iron, all
fall upon the faces of the men; a feat in painting but little less
remarkable than that of Rembrandt’s “_Ronde de Nuit_,” at Amsterdam.
There remains but the “Schlachten-maler,” as the Germans call them,
with Camphausen at the head, whose battle scenes are multiplying in
times of peace as if they were still longing for
“The smoke of the conflict,
The cannon’s deep roar.”
If one regards works of art as the necessary products of their age,
these artists are following with fidelity the direction of their own
times. The emperor is a soldier at heart, and Camphausen as court
painter only represents his sovereign’s taste on canvas. Steffeck,
Dietz, Franz, Adam, belong to this same class. When Pascal said, “How
vain is painting which excites our admiration for the likeness of
things, the original of which we do not admire,” Louis Vierdot calls
him a philosopher, and especially a Christian, but not an artist.
In looking at these battle pictures and Gussow’s burly girls and
toothless old men, we prefer not to be artistic. “Ah,” said a young
Munich disciple, “we do not think much of Gussow here in Munich; he is
like the ceramic sensation; he will soon wear out.” But the Berlinese
laugh this jealousy to scorn. They have a _genius_ among them in this
very sensational Gussow. He is a young man not more than thirty, who
was called to Berlin from Düsseldorf to take the ladies’ class in
the Berlin Academy. He teaches these enthusiastic pupils as if they
were strong, rough men, preparing themselves to encounter criticism;
to banish everything that reminds them of an artificial world; that
they may help him to restore nature to her simplicity, and in so
doing absolve themselves from all laws by which perverted ideas seek
security against themselves. He says, “Paint what you see! Art is not
always to seek for the beautiful. A widow in her weeds is as fine a
model as a bride in her orange blossoms. Lay on the color as nature
has laid it on—rough and coarse if you find it so. Draw the figure
large, gross, and rude, if in so doing you can emancipate yourself from
conventionalism. By force of refinement art perishes, like society. It
must be refreshed once in a while by a return to barbarism!” Gussow’s
pictures are like bold statements and frank confessions, and a better
teacher for shrinking, undecided talent, either in man or woman, is not
to be found. He is the most wonderful colorist of the age in Germany.
In conclusion, we ask if the day has not arrived in Germany, and even
in Northern Germany, when she has a national art? Rome claimed at the
beginning of the last century, that she was the jail of the German
and Netherland artists. Paris boastingly says the same to-day; but we
believe just persons, after examining into the condition of the various
German schools, will admit that they have much peculiar to themselves,
even if many of their artists have studied in Paris. (In a catalogue of
two hundred names I find twenty-five only who ever received instruction
in Paris.)
* * * * *
The International Geological Congress, which met at Bologna last
year, decided upon the preparation of a geological map of Europe, and
appointed an international committee to superintend the work. The
map is to be published in Berlin. It will include the whole basin of
the Mediterranean and all of Europe to the eastern slope of the Ural
mountains. The river systems, the principal towns, the more important
mountain-ranges, and the curves indicating sea depths, will be some
of its features. The object of the committee will be to give a clear
representation of geological conditions.
* * * * *
“When you have found the master passion of a man, remember never to
trust him where that passion is concerned.”—_Lord Chesterfield._