THE CHILDREN OF FIELD AND VILLAGE.
The most fortunate children in the world are those whose first lessons
in life have been learned on the lap of Mother Nature. Taught by her to
know and love all the beautiful things of the glad green earth; versed
in the mystic language of woodland birds and beasts; trained to the
skilful use of eye and muscle,--they possess the secret of a happiness
which knows no equal. Theirs is a life of perfect liberty, untrammelled
by the false conventions of society, uninjured by over-indulgence,
untainted by contact with vice. Growing up under these conditions into a
healthy and vigorous beauty, the children of field and village have
long been a source of delight and inspiration to both poet and painter.
In _genre_ painting, Holland gave the initiative to the art world in the
works of Jan Steen, the Teniers, and others. The influence of the Dutch
school at length made itself felt in England; and after the renaissance
of British art, in the middle of the eighteenth century, many painters
arose to interpret the conditions of rustic life peculiar to England.
First on this list stands the name of Thomas Gainsborough.[7] From early
boyhood he loved nature with all the intensity of a true artist's soul,
and many picturesque scenes in the vicinity of his native Sudbury were
indelibly impressed upon his youthful mind. Later in life, when at the
height of his success as a great London painter, his favorite summer
resort was Richmond, where, wandering about the country from day to day,
he met many an interesting village child whose face was transferred
to his canvas. Fortunate little models, these; for the artist always
rewarded them for their sittings with lavish generosity.
[Illustration: RUSTIC CHILDREN.--GAINSBOROUGH.]
One particular boy, Jack Hill by name, so charmed Gainsborough that he
actually adopted the lad, and immortalized his handsome features in two
paintings.[8] Jack Hill did not live up to his privileges, and,
preferring his old free life to the restrictions of a more elegant
household, he ran away. He was, however, never forgotten; and after
Gainsborough died, his good widow provided amply for the youth's
welfare.
Perhaps the most extensively known of all Gainsborough's delineations of
country child-life is the Rustic Children of the National Gallery. The
central figure is a young girl, standing, with a child in her arms; a
boy sits on the bank beside her with a bundle of fagots. The group is
artistically conceived, with one of Gainsborough's characteristic
landscapes as a background, showing a cottage home. The children are
graceful and natural, with that indefinable poetic charm peculiar to the
painter's work.
A picture attracting a great deal of admiration in the lifetime of
Gainsborough, was the Boy at the Stile. While this treasure was still in
the hands of the artist, he was visited one day by Colonel Hamilton,
then considered the finest violinist of his times. Gainsborough, a
devoted lover of music, begged him to play, and when the first air was
finished, rapturously exclaimed, "Now, my dear Colonel, if you will but
go on, I will give you that picture of the Boy at the Stile, which you
so wished to purchase of me."
In half an hour the prize was won, and both parties were well satisfied
with the agreement.
In studying Gainsborough's rustic children as a class, it is noticeable
that he emphasizes the pathetic side of their life; instead of a
thrifty, tidy appearance, in which England's village children are by no
means lacking, he gives his subjects a careless, neglected air. The
Rustic Children of the National Gallery are unnecessarily ragged; their
hair is wild and dishevelled, and their general appearance untidy. Many
of the children of the most celebrated pictures are attractive from a
delicate, refined beauty, rather than from the robust and healthy
vitality we naturally associate with country life. This makes their
surroundings incongruous, and we feel sorry that they are not in their
true sphere. The child who stands, half-clad, before the hearth-fire, in
the painting called the "Little Cottager," has the delicate features of
a true aristocrat. No cottage boy this, with shapely hands and large,
melancholy eyes. His wistfulness is so touching that we would fain
snatch him from his surroundings, and set him down amidst the soft
luxuries which belong to him by right.
The Shepherd Boy in a Storm has the face and expression of a poet, as he
lifts his beautiful eyes to the overhanging clouds, with nothing of fear
or shrinking, but with apparent admiration for the grandeur of Nature.
Gainsborough painted many scenes of child-life in which animals are
introduced, as in the picture of a girl holding a child on a donkey, and
in one representing two shepherd boys looking on at fighting dogs. He
did not hesitate before a subject which would have appalled most
artists, and which, in other hands, would have been vulgar and
common,--A Girl Feeding Pigs. This he painted with such skill that
Reynolds instantly recognized its greatness, and eagerly purchased it
for a sum far in advance of the price modestly named by the painter. The
amusing anecdote is related concerning this work that a countryman, who
studied it attentively some time, gave it as his opinion that "they be
deadly like pigs; but nobody ever saw pigs feeding together but what one
on 'em had a foot in the trough."
Gainsborough[9] is pronounced by Ruskin the purest colorist of the
English school, taking rank beside Rubens, and adding a lustre to the
fame of British art which time can do nothing to dim. His style is so
peculiarly individual in its characteristics that it cannot properly
be compared with that of any other artist; but his predilection for
subjects drawn from rural child-life finds a parallel in the work of his
French contemporary, Jean Baptiste Greuze.[10]
The pictures by which Greuze made his early reputation, and which
perhaps he never excelled in later times, were the Father Explaining the
Bible to his Children,[11] and the Village Bride.[12] Both represent
family scenes among village people, and contain, as their most charming
features, some delightfully natural children. One could scarcely find
anything more deliciously childlike than the mischievous little ones who
gather about the table to listen to the Father Explaining the Bible, and
whose love of fun even this solemn occasion cannot repress. Equally
attractive are the young people gathering affectionately and tearfully
about their pretty elder sister, the Village Bride, who comes with her
lover to receive the parental blessing.
The appearance of these two compositions made their artist famous,
and won for him the ardent admiration and powerful friendship of the
encyclopaedist Diderot. Continuing his work along this new[13] line of
subjects, Greuze went on to paint many other scenes in the child-life
of the country. Two notable companion pictures of this kind are the
Departure of the Cradle, and the Return from the Nurse, founded upon
a phase of French village life quite unknown in many other countries,
namely, the custom among busy working-people of sending their infants
out to board with nurses. Unnatural as was the custom, it by no means
indicated a lack of family affection, as is seen in these charming
compositions. In both cases, the child, at first an infant, and later
a little boy a year or two old, is the centre of the group, fondled and
admired by all.
The pre-eminence of Greuze was due not only to the entire novelty of his
chosen range of subjects, but to the exquisite beauty of his technique.
He excelled in painting those fresh carnations, "mixed with lilies and
roses," as the French used to say, and diversified with blue-gray
shadows and warm reflected light. Such characteristics are easily
carried to extremes, and were often exaggerated by Greuze himself; but
when held in true control they are a delight to the eye of the true
color-lover.
An example of his coloring, in its most lovely aspects, is the Trumpet.
The scene is a cottage interior, in which a young mother, with a babe in
her arms, sits beside a cradle containing another little one, and turns
to quiet her roguish boy, who stands somewhat sulkily by her chair,
reluctant to forego the pleasure of blowing on his trumpet. "Silence! do
not awaken him!" is what the mother seems to say; and these words form
the title under which the picture first appeared.
Greuze could not altogether escape the blight of that artificiality
which was everywhere characteristic of his times, and nowhere more
conspicuous than in France. "Soyez piquant, si vous ne pouvez pas etre
vrai," was his advice to a fellow artist, Ducreux; and his own work too
often shows evidence of the sacrifice of truth to piquancy. His single
figures and heads are not, as a class, so true to nature as his
compositions, although they are much better known to the public.
Scattered far and wide through all the great art galleries of the world,
they have been greatly admired for their delicate coloring, and for
those qualities of prettiness which are always attractive.
Nearly all these purport to be representations of children, but they are
certainly not like the children of our own households, nor, indeed, like
those of the same artist's domestic pictures. They reverse the proverb,
by being young heads on old shoulders, the face and features of
childhood on the mature and well-developed figure of womanhood. The
expression, too, is a curious combination of childlike simplicity with
the sentimental melancholy of young maidenhood; and one cannot escape
the impression that the models are not genuine peasant children, but
pretty and somewhat worldly young women, masquerading in pastoral
costumes for a fancy ball.
From the long list of examples of this class, both figures and heads, a
few well-known subjects will suggest the type: The Milkmaid, the Little
Pouter, Simplicity, the Girl with an Orange, and the Broken Pitcher.
[Illustration: THE BROKEN PITCHER.--GREUZE.]
The last is probably more familiar than any other work of Greuze. It
attained an immense popularity in the lifetime of the artist, attracting
many people to his studio. Among the visitors was Mademoiselle
Philipon, afterwards known to fame as Madame Roland, and her delightful
description[14] gives a complete idea of the picture:--
"It is a little girl, naive, fresh, charming, who has just broken her
pitcher; she holds it on her arm, near the fountain where the accident
occurred. Her eyes are downcast, her lips half parted; she tries to
account for her mishap, and does not know if she is in fault. Nothing
could be more piquant and charming. The only criticism one could suggest
is that Monseiur Greuze has not made the little maid sorry enough, so
that in the future she will not be tempted to return to the fountain!"
The heroine of the broken pitcher is dressed in white, has blue eyes and
auburn hair, cherry lips, and pink-and-white complexion.
For twenty-five years Greuze was the fashion in Paris. With all his
faults, he was immeasurably superior to his French contemporaries, and
his work was a decided step towards a new era. With the great political
and social changes inaugurated in France early in the nineteenth
century, an entirely new style of art, literary and graphic, was made
possible, and a new school of painters arose to portray French peasant
life.
No modern artist has chosen a field which exactly corresponds to that of
Greuze, the tendency being rather to neglect the child element to which
he devoted so much energy. One painter may be mentioned, however, who
has contributed a few valuable additions to this department of
art,--William Adolphe Bouguereau.
The remarkable number of works which Bouguereau has produced since his
first great success in 1854 have made him distinguished for a large
variety of subjects; but the pictures by which he has touched the hearts
of the people are those in which he portrays the peasants of his own
sunny land,--sweet, shy, dark-eyed girls, with masses of black hair
pushed back loosely from their foreheads.
One is a Little Shepherdess, who stands with careless grace poising a
crook across her shoulders, while her eyes meet ours with a frank yet
modest gaze. Again the same girl rests from her labors, sitting on a
stone, lost in revery. Another sweet child is the girl seated by a well,
with a broken pitcher lying on the ground beside her. Her hands are
clasped on her knee, as she bends slightly forward in a pensive
attitude, her large eyes full of childish pathos. Cajolery also belongs
to this set, and is so named from the caresses with which a little girl
begs some favor of an older sister, whose merry eyes show that she
fully understands the secrets of child diplomacy.
Younger than any of these children is the bewitching little gypsy, whose
tangled curls frame a round, dimpled face, with rosebud mouth, and big
black eyes looking bashfully askance. There is a peculiar charm in the
child's shyness, as if, like some wild creature of the woods, she would
turn and flee before a nearer approach.
Bouguereau's work, academic in style, and always refined and elegant in
manner, has qualities of artistic excellence which place him in the
foremost rank; and we are glad to believe that for many generations to
come his lovely little peasant girls will be widely known and loved.
[Illustration: CHILD HEAD.--BOUGUEREAU.]
From the dark-eyed children of sunny France to the fair-haired sons
and daughters of the Saxon race is a long step, which introduces us
to child-life of a totally different type. Childhood in the rural
districts of Germany and Switzerland has been very completely portrayed
by Johann Georg Meyer, better known as Meyer von Bremen,--the name he
has taken in honor of his native city.
With an intense sympathy for all the pleasures of childhood, Meyer
unites a wonderfully delicate sense of the artistic and picturesque. His
fertility of invention seems well-nigh inexhaustible. He has given us
cottage scenes and out-of-door life with impartial liberality, and has
shown equal skill of treatment, whether he handles groups or single
figures.
His subjects are drawn largely from life in the Hessian, Bavarian, and
Swiss Alps, where he has carefully studied the manners and customs of
the people. The cottage interiors have all the characteristic quaintness
and charm of these peasant homes. High wooden chairs, of the
"fiddle-back" pattern, are the conspicuous pieces of furniture; rich
old cabinets stand against the walls, and oddly shaped earthern jars are
ranged on shelves. The light comes through little diamond-paned windows,
and gleams on floors of hard wood, unadorned with carpet or rug. In
these surroundings, groups of flaxen-haired children sport in all the
sweet innocence of healthy, happy childhood. Sometimes they gather
eagerly about the table to play with their Pet Canary; at another time
they cluster about their mother's knee to peep admiringly at the
wonderful new baby in her arms, and to hear the mysterious announcement
that The Storks Brought It. Again, the centre of their attention is the
tiny brother gleefully taking his first uncertain steps towards the
outstretched arms of his young mother.
[Illustration: THE LITTLE RABBIT-SELLER.--MEYER VON BREMEN.]
The out-of-door scenes have the picturesque mountain scenery of the Alps
for their background, and sometimes a pretty cottage is included in
the scene. A characteristic example is the Little Rabbit-Seller. A group
of children gather round a little girl, who carries, suspended from her
shoulders, a large basket of rabbits. Two of the number peep with
intense interest into the basket, delighted with the opportunity to feed
the pretty creatures. The others are talking with the young merchant,--a
school-boy with book satchel held behind him, and an older girl holding
a curly-haired child on her back. The pure, gentle face of the young
girl is one not to be easily forgotten, and which reappears on other
canvases of the artist. The affectionate care of this older sister for
the child she carries is one of many instances in which the same trait
is shown in Meyer's pictures, and is eminently characteristic of the
Germans.
The earnest piety in which the children of these simple-hearted people
are reared is beautifully expressed in the companion pictures, Morning
Prayer and Evening Prayer, as well as in one called Simple Devotion,
where a little girl offers a bouquet to the Virgin of a wayside shrine.
In whatever mood the children are portrayed, they are always entirely
unconscious of observers, never posing for the artist, but caught
unawares on his canvas, in the midst of their pursuits. In this way they
always make pictures with "stories" in them, of just the kind to delight
the heart of a child.
Such art carries a beautiful and enduring lesson, whether the scenes it
represents are German or French, English or American. In these visions
of the simple and joyous life of the country, we are brought, as it
were, face to face with Nature, to enjoy her sweetest and most
beneficent influence.
IV.
THE CHILD-LIFE OF THE STREETS.
When I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp;
When I could not sleep for cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And builded, with roofs of gold,
My beautiful castles in Spain!
LOWELL.