Rome, that prodigious repository of art! with what reverential
admiration the young artist approached her! What fascinated him from
the start, offspring that he was of fair and undulating Alsace, was the
Roman Campagna with its violent contrasts, its wide expanses ablaze
with sunlight, cleft here and there with dense shadows, profound and
nevertheless luminous. Here before his eyes, within reach of his
palette, was not this the ideal landscape, such as his artistic
instinct had taught him to prevision? Shadow and light clashing,
interpenetrating, in order to form an imponderable and luminous dust,
the light vivifying the shadow, the shadow sifting out the crudities of
the light,--picture his joy at having foreseen all this instinctively,
without having seen it, solely by his artistic intuition!
The five years which he passed in Rome were one perpetual enchantment.
The proof of this is found in his correspondence with M. Goutzwiller,
his first drawing-master, who remained his best friend. One receives
the impression, in reading it, that he lived in a continuous ecstasy,
in a world of fairyland.
[Illustration: PLATE V.--JOSEPH BARA
(Petit Palais des Beaux-Arts)
This subject, consecrated to the glory of the young hero of the
Revolution, had already been magnificently treated by David; none
the less, Henner's Bara is not inferior to the other, and if perhaps
it inspires a less degree of pity, there is something truly dramatic
in the outstretched body, under the lowering sky.]
And with what admiration and reverence he speaks of the great masters!
How he loves them, and how well he understands the prodigious greatness
of certain ones among them! The Venetians especially, those
incomparable colourists, fired his ardour. He went to Venice, in order
to worship them on the spot, in the presence of their works. But he was
without prejudice; his taste was eclectic, like his own talent. His
love for Titian and Giorgione did not prevent him from valuing Raphael
and Leonardo da Vinci. He loved them all, because he understood them
all and because in each one of them he recognized the marvellous gift
of genius. But none the less he had one preference, and he could avow
it unashamed, for its object was one of the most extraordinary of all
masters of design and colour: Correggio. Everything in the work of that
admirable artist fascinated him; his dexterity, which verges upon the
miraculous, his prodigious foreshortenings, the magic of his palette,
and above all his mastery of chiaroscuro, which no other artist, not
even Rembrandt, has surpassed. This time Henner had found his true
master, the one with whom he was destined to impregnate himself
permanently, as regards the harmonious distribution of lights and
shades.
When he awoke from his contemplation of Correggio, it was in order to
shut himself into his studio and feverishly endeavour to recapture with
his own brush those exquisite colour tones that still dazzled his
vision and possessed his spirit. What amazed him above all was the
simplicity of means employed by the great masters to obtain all their
effects, even those that seem the most complicated. "See," he said,
"they have on their palettes only a few colours, and those the
simplest: red, green, yellow, blue, black, and white! It is the modern
painters who have invented the mixtures, that are so far removed from
primitive simplicity!" Following the example of the earlier masters,
Henner never employed any other colours than the simple ones. He always
showed a marked aversion for mixed tints. His colours were always frank
and sincere, even when toned down in order to avoid glaring and harsh
effects. And it may justly be said of him that, "even on his palette
his colours have already imprisoned light."
His studies in Rome did not make him forgetful of his obligations: he
worked very seriously at his future exhibits. His five years' sojourn
was distinguished by five masterpieces. He sent successively to the
Beaux-Arts _Christ in Prison_ and _The Child with the Orange_, pictures
of rare perfection, each of which received the award of a medal, and
both of which were purchased by the museum at Colmar, which wished to
possess the first works of the young Alsatian artist. The following
year, he sent in _The Chaste Susannah_, now one of the treasures of the
Luxembourg Museum. The model who posed for Susannah was named Chiara.
She was very handsome and well known in the artist world of Rome, and
possessed an education much above her station. She exhibited much pride
in having served as model for such a masterpiece.
The picture was exhibited at the Salon of 1865, and, curiously enough,
it by no means met with the success that it deserved. The critics,
accustomed to a very different type of painting, did not understand
this new and unfamiliar method. Théophile Gautier was the only one who
proclaimed its merit. It is only fair to add that his opinion was
easily worth all the others. "It is not alone," he wrote, "the style
and beauty of line that form the distinction of this beautiful Jewess,
but also and more especially the fine instinct for colour. This is no
statue that is bathing here, it is a very genuine woman."
At this same Salon, Henner exhibited two portraits of superior
workmanship: that of Schnets, director of the École de Rome, and that
of M. Joyau, architect of the same school.