The sublime lesson of forgiveness, inculcated by the story of
the Prodigal Son, is among the earliest and most familiar in the
memories of a nation of Bible readers like our own. Every one
of us, perhaps unconsciously, carries in mind a simple,
straight-forward conception of this subject, formed in early
childhood--a time when the imagination rarely goes beyond an
attempt to realize the unlooked for forgiveness of the once
deserted parent, or the captivating visions of adventure
suggested by the changing fortunes of the wanderer during his
absence in a "far country."
With the painter the picture is his vision, and the panels are
the realities. As a man of a different order of thought would
have chosen another incident of the story for illustration, so
also would a painter of a less independent school have permitted
himself to be bound down by the historical facts of the
architectural and costume fashions of the time of narration.
Dubufe has so far discarded the unities of time and place, if
any can _really_ be said to exist--as no date was fixed in
the relation of the parable by Christ--that he has adopted the
mingled costumes of Europe and the East, which obtained in the
fifteenth century, and has placed his figures in a Corinthian
porch under the light of Italian skies. Apart from the conception
and the "telling of the story," about which there will be various
opinions, this picture may be justly regarded as a magnificent
work of art.
The great David, a pupil of whose pupil Edouard Dubufe was, and
Horace Vernet, appear to have been the guides selected by him,
rather than the greatest of his masters--Paul Delaroche. The
influence of both is to be traced in this work, although it may
be said to take rank above any production of either of them. In
drawing, color, and composition, rendering of textures, and the
exhibition of the resources of the palette, now better known to
French painters than ever before, the picture leaves nothing to
be desired. The faces of the principal figures are full of
that "expression to the life" in which the English are justly
considered to excel, while the admirable focus of the groups,
the color, and interest, are as un-English as excellent.
Fault-finding in more than one or two unimportant details would
be hypercriticism where so much is perfect, and it becomes our
happy privilege, in this notice, to commend and to point out, to
"lay" readers about Art, the manifold beauties of its technical
execution. A critical examination will show that the composition
is on the pyramidal principle, and the arrangement of groups
principally in threes. In the central portion of the canvas,
where the marble pillars of the porch fall off in perspective,
the Profligate stands holding up a golden cup in his right
hand, as in the act of proposing a toast. His red costume and
commanding figure attract the eye, and the attention falls at
once and equally on him and on the magnificent woman whose arms
embrace his neck, and whose eyes, as her chin rests close on his
breast, gaze with dangerous fascination into his face. Her dress
is of rich white satin, and, with the delicate green and gold
sheen of her rival's robe--she with whom the Prodigal's right
hand toys in caress--makes up a wonderfully brilliant prismatic
chord, having the effect of focusing the richer, but not less
gorgeous, pigments spread everywhere on the canvas. The faces of
the women are very beautiful, and are made voluptuous by a
subtle art which, through all their beauty, tells a story of
unrestrained lives of passion and pleasure.
The face of the magnificent creature at the Prodigal's left hand
is a wondrous piece of drawing. It is thrown back against him
and from the spectator, in order that she may look up into his
face--at the moment a dissipated, spiritless face, without even
the flush of the wine which dyes her's so rosily--a face at once
weak and weary, and yet revealing a possible intensity, indeed,
the face of a French woman who "has lived," rather than that of a
man.
Up to this centre leads the other groups. Below, and seated on
the rich rugs which cover the marble pavement, musicians
and singers pause to listen to impassioned words from a
laurel-crowned poet, while further on a sort of orchestra
plays time for the sensuous dance of lithe-bodied Oriental
dancers--each woman of them more ravishing than the other. Minor
incidents, like dice-play and love-making, give interest to the
remaining space, and keep up the revel.
Throughout, the drawing is true, and good, and graceful. The
hands of the figures demand especial mention. The hand of one of
the women, near the central group, grasped by her lover at the
wrist as he kisses her shoulder, is particularly exquisite
in form and color; the more remarkable, perhaps, because the
position of it is so trying in nature and so difficult to draw.
The type of feature chosen for the women, the dancing girls
excepted, is essentially Gallic. As remarked before, the face
of the Prodigal, also, is French; but the musicians and the poet
have faces of their own which seem to belong to the university of
genius. The mere revelers, curiously enough, have a likeness to
the figures in some old Italian pictures; one of them looks like
a copy of Judas Iscariot, made younger.
A distant city and mountains fill up the background, and, on
the extreme right of the near middle distance, flights of
marble steps ascend to a grand doorway, where servants are seen
loitering within easy call of their masters.
It was by a sublime inspiration that Dubufe painted the accessory
panels in monotone. In that on the right, a dismal sky, filled
with rolling clouds and sad presaging ravens flying, over-shadows
the outcast, seated on a rock in an attitude of listless
dejection, with the swine feeding at his feet. In the panel on
the left he is seen in the close embrace of his merciful parent.
His head is bowed in humility, and, in an agony of remorse and
shame, while the old house-dog sniffs at him for an obtrusive
mendicant who has no business with such affectionate welcome.
Let us congratulate ourselves that this picture has come to our
country, as yet so barren of great works, and pray that the noble
school of art of which this is so admirable an exponent, may
find favor, not only with our painters, but with those who call
themselves connoisseurs, in preference to unmeaning works of
microscopic finish, or slick examples of boudoir and millinery
painting.
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"_THE ALDINE PRESS._"--JAMES SUTTON & CO., _Printers and
Publishers, 23 Liberty St., N.Y._