WITH PENCIL AND BRUSH
It is hard to say whether Gibson was first a naturalist and afterwards
an artist, or first an artist and afterwards a naturalist. Art was his
mode of expression; but his knowledge of nature furnished the material
of what he would express. Art was his speech, but nature was his theme.
In point of time there was no difference in the development of these two
sides of his nature. His boyhood passion seemed to divide between
studying nature and drawing pictures. He wrote of himself in “Pastoral
Days” (p. 66): “Insect-hunting had always been a passion with me. Large
collections of moths and butterflies had many times accumulated under my
hands, only to meet destruction through boyish inexperience; and even in
childhood the love for the insect and the passion for the pencil strove
hard for the ascendency, and were only reconciled by a combination which
filled my sketch-book with studies of insect life.”
His letters are equally full of the nature-subjects he is treating and
of the ways in which he is treating them. But there is no question of
the strong, irrepressible need of his spirit which drove him to
self-expression by pencil and brush. “I am fairly crazy to get to
painting,” he said to a friend at the beginning of the last summer of
his life. “My lecture course and other business matters have kept me
from using my brush lately, and I long to get my colors and go to work.”
That was a remark which reveals his whole life, his constant mood. Not
only was he always anxious to be at work, but he wanted to be at work
with his colors. This urgency drove him to art as a profession. It
lightened all his busy years. It ranked him by divine right among the
best of American artists.
He was a thorough artist in his love of the technical side of his work.
He delighted in mastery of the materials of art. He liked the problems
growing out of them. He knew the tools of his craft, and never was
hampered by any uncertainty as to what he could do with the means at his
command. His use of pencil and brush began early, and he soon knew the
possibilities of black and white and water-colors. He was quick to learn
the special art of drawing upon wood, for the engraver. He had no
fastidious scruples against the camera, but was swift to resort to it
and learn its possibilities and make it into a tool to shape his
thought. When he turned to color as a medium of expression, he did so
with all the
[Illustration: _Pen-and-Ink Sketch_
_From a Letter_]
enthusiam of a true believer in its power, and a purpose to get at all
its resources. Although so much of his early work was translated to the
world by the wood-engraver, yet when wood-engraving began to decline,
and the publishers took to process-work, and the “half-tone” crowded out
the fine, laborious work of the burin, Gibson was not in the least
dismayed. He wasted no time or sentiment in mourning the decadent
methods, but sought at once to learn the utmost what the new methods
would yield to a determined and artistic mind. How successful he was is
well shown in that beautiful volume which won such instant favor with
his later constituency, “Sharp Eyes.” Its delicate half-tones vie with
the wood-engraving in expressiveness, in delicacy, and in poetic
feeling; and they are a standing testimony to the artist’s versatility
and technical energy. He was never at a loss for a means of expression.
The rudest tools were converted to delicate and sufficient implements in
his fingers. There are letters from him describing some illustration of
his or some painting, in which the pen and ink with which he wrote were
made to sketch his work so vividly that one is tempted to rate the
_tour-de-force_ of the written page as fine a show of power as the
picture it illustrated.
His work, moreover, was strong not only in its mastery of the science of
expression, but by its fidelity to the facts of science in its
subject-matter. It was a flat refutation of the doctrine, so dear to
shallow sentimentalists, that the progress of science must weaken the
power and circumscribe the field of art. There is much misleading talk
to the effect that science is filching from the realm of the
imagination, the kingdom where art thrives, and by its cold light is
taking all the glow and loveliness out of the atmosphere in which the
fancy has been wont to see its fairest visions. But almost any one of
Gibson’s illustrations of natural history, of botanical subjects, or of
open-air life and scenery sufficiently refutes this theory. Here is a
mind at once faithful to the scientific method, and free in its artistic
spirit. Here is the accuracy of the scientist’s eye and the artist’s
creative imagination. Turning the pages of “Sharp Eyes,” or indeed
almost any of his books, one knows not which to praise the more, his
close observation of fact or his easy translation of it into the dress
of fancy. One of his critics said: “His pictures sometimes seem ideal,
they are wrought with such a light and painstaking touch. Yet close
analysis will show them to be almost photographic in their accuracy.”
However freely his fancy deals with the facts, he never violates their
logic, nor misrepresents their substance. Mr. Roe, in a letter to Gibson
once told him: “You understand nature, and are capable of seeing her as
she exists. Most other artists have conventional ideas of nature. You
can take an actual scene and reproduce it, while at the same time
idealizing it.” His methods are a triumphant example of the scientific
use of the imagination, and of the imaginative presentation of science.
The most hardened Gradgrinds of research could find no fault with his
facts, but were astonished and put to confusion by his power to suffuse
reality with the glow of a poetic fancy. One critic, writing in the “New
York Tribune,” did say of him, in the tone of one pointing out a
limitation, “Nimble and agile as he was of intellect, he did not possess
breadth and scope of judgment, nor maintain a deliberate balance of
interests.” But even this farfetched comment did not deny his fidelity
to the facts, but only claimed a tendency to give them wrong values; and
moreover the critic was reckoning without a large knowledge of his mind.
He confuses Gibson’s business as an artist with what his business might
have been as a mere naturalist, and in doing so makes the common mistake
of disparaging what is done by showing that it is not something which
was not attempted.
Here, for instance, in a chapter on “Ballooning Seeds,” Gibson draws
across a page what he calls a “fanciful eddy,” wafting up a swarm of
seeds, which fly abroad on the autumn breeze. Every form in the airy
sketch is accurate enough for a text-book, yet the whole is fit for the
illustration of a poem. Again, in “A Masquerade of Stamens,” his pencil
leads down the page out of a sunny meadow a long procession which,
beginning in the grasses of the foreground, develops into the exactly
drawn forms of a score of curiously fashioned stamens. The
illustrations for “Queer Fruits from the Bee’s Basket,” with its
decorated initial, showing just the right bee, investigating just the
right flower; the laden bees hastening from the clump of bushes in the
foreground to the distant hives behind the farmhouse; and finally the
sketch at the close, of a group of the odd forms of pollen-dust which
the microscope reveals;--these are all examples of a fancy which only
serves to illumine, throw light upon, the fact, but never to distort it
or to pervert it. In this phase of his work, Gibson carries the office
of the illustrator to its highest possible point, and shows all its
dignity and power.
He did all this in his own way. No artist of our generation was more
thoroughly individual in his methods and in his aim. He sought what his
own spirit loved and longed for. He saw with no eyes but his own. He
drew and painted after his own fashion. His originality was absolute. He
had none of the mannerisms of any man or any school but his own. He
asked no one to tell him the color of the grass, or the fashion in which
he should paint the clouds. What he did was his own work, what he saw
was his own vision. What men called his “versatility” in the choice of
“mediums” was his quick sense of fitness and of adaptation. His aim was
never loyalty to a school, adherence to a method, repetition of a
successful device of technique. It was always, rather, fidelity to
nature, adaptation of the medium to the thing represented, variety of
method to treat his various themes. If his style became characteristic,
it was because he put his own strong mark on all his work. It was as
much his own as his autograph. It was William Hamilton Gibson
transferred to paper or canvas.
Gibson’s success as an artist was as good for the American people as it
was for himself. It was truly a “popular” success. The people, and a
great many of them, secured it. For he spoke to them, and they made
approving answer. It would be hard to name an artist of his generation
who appealed to a larger public, whose work in the magazines was hailed
with a heartier delight, whose name stood for a more definite pleasure
and appreciation than his. The people liked his work, and they knew why
they liked it. One of his most discriminating critics said of him, in
1888:
“Mr. Gibson’s work has been essentially democratic, that is, has reached
the many rather than the few, presenting to them studies of nature which
stand for a great deal more than mere descriptive picturesqueness,
because, as we have said before, they are informed not only with the
feeling for the beautiful, but also with the scientific spirit of
inquiry and a love of exact truth.” To gain such universal approval
without the slightest swerving from his artistic integrity, or any
lowering of his artistic standard, was an immense triumph. He realized
it, and it gave him great joy. His honest and ingenuous pride in the
reception accorded to his early work is well shown in two brief notes to
his mother, one in May, the other in July, 1878:
“The bird article is finished and the proofs are beginning to pour in.
One or two of them are so fine that their fame has spread over the city,
and I am besieged by engravers and artists to see them. One, a
full-sized peacock’s feather which takes up a full page of the magazine,
is by far the most superb piece of wood-engraving that has ever been
accomplished. It is spoken of in art-circles all over the city. It is
the opening picture, and will create a sensation. The illustrations
number sixteen in all, and Mr. Parsons told Mr. Beard and others that it
was the most beautiful and at the same time the most expensive article
the magazine had ever gotten up. Mr. Parsons told me that the drawings
not only pleased him, but that they exceeded his highest expectations,
and that he did not believe there was another man in this country or in
any other that could excel them.”
In similar vein, after the notices began to appear, he wrote again:
“BROOKLYN, _July 27, 1878_.
“DEAR MOTHER:--
“I send you to-day a copy of the ‘Nation’ containing notice of
Harper’s Magazine. The ‘Nation’ is a high authority and has the
reputation of stating the truth. It seldom goes into ecstasies over
anything, and such a notice as it has given of my ‘birds’ is
considered by the Harpers as a magnificent compliment.”
The qualities of his art in which the public delighted and which came to
be characteristic of all his work, were refinement, gracefulness, and
truth. He saw the finer qualities of nature, sought out her delicate
beauties, loved her humbler moods, objects, episodes. He vindicated his
own taste in the paragraph with which he prefaced the chapter on “Sap
Bewitched,” over the signature of “Plinius Secundus”:
“We wonder at the mighty and monstrous shoulders of Elephants, we marvel
at the strong necks of bulls: we keep a wondering at the ravening of
tigers, and the shag manes of Lions: and yet in comparison of insects
there is nothing wherein Nature and her whole power is more seen,
neither sheweth she her might more than in these least creatures of
all.”
In the spirit of those words he wrought at his art. “These least
creatures of all” found in him a loving exponent. He saw their charm,
and he was not above interpreting it to others. The web of a spider, the
nest of a bird, the down of the dandelion, the leaf of the jewel-weed,
the tangle of grasses in a fence-corner, the vegetable contents of a
city back-yard,--Gibson found beauties in all these least things, which
he did not disdain to celebrate. He had learned from Thoreau, chief
among American students and expositors of nature, the meaning of the
proverb, “Natura maxima in minimis.” His devotion to the Concord
recluse, and to his methods, appears in his studies. That discipleship
affected his artistic life. It inspired him in his choice of themes and
it drew his eyes still closer to the lesser objects and humbler
horizons. He wrote to a friend in 1888:
“There are few authors whom I love more than Thoreau.... I have read him
with love and reverence, and have visited his haunts as sacred ground,
and have pictured those haunts in projected compositions, and yet hope
to see them realized.”
He had no apologies whatsoever for having elected the field of what men
call the minor forms of life. He knew there was no such thing as major
and minor in the things of nature. One may go in either direction and
find infinity. A telescope is no more effective than a microscope; and
it begins to look as if the atoms would be found as marvelous as the
universe. Gibson repeatedly preached this doctrine. In one place he
said:
“There is often an almost inexhaustible field for botanic investigation
even on a single fallen tree. My scientific friend already alluded to
recently informed me, on his return from an exploring tour, that he had
spent two days most delightfully and profitably in the study of the
yield of a single dead
[Illustration: _At the Easel_
_Brooklyn Studio_]
tree, and had surprised himself by a discovery by actual count of over a
hundred distinct species of plants congregated upon it. Plumy dicentra
clustered along its length, graceful sprays of the frost-flower, with
its little spire of snow crystals, rose up here and there, scarlet
berries of the Indian turnip glowed among the leaves, and, with the
crowding beds of lycopodiums and mosses, its ferns and lichens, and host
of fungous growths, it became an easy matter to extend the list of
species into the second hundred. It is something worth remembering the
next time we go into the woods.”
Such study and such affection made him the guide of a great multitude of
people in America, teaching them of beauties and graces they had never
perceived for themselves. To him thousands of men and women were under
the deepest obligation, because he gave knowledge that in small areas
and in close quarters one may see great beauties and far-reaching powers
and forces. He taught by his art the greatness of the little, the
divinity of the familiar. He revealed the wonders of the every-day
world, the miracles of the commonplace. He seemed to discern, and had
the power to show others, the whole of nature in her humblest parts. He
was the prophet of the unnoted and the unprized; for when his
appreciative pencil had drawn them, they straightway became noteworthy,
brilliant, extraordinary. One feels all the power of this call of his
to be the apostle of the unconsidered in a bit of rhapsody over the
infinite pictures hung along any country roadside:
“See how the cool gray rails are relieved against that rich dark
background of dense olive juniper, how they hide among the prickly
foliage! Look at that low-hanging branch which so exquisitely conceals
the lowest rail as it emerges from its other side, and spreads out among
the creeping briers that wreathe the ground with their shining leaves of
crimson and deep bronze! Could any art more daringly concentrate a
rhapsody of color than nature has here done in bringing up that gorgeous
spray of scarlet sumach, whose fern-like pinnate leaves are so richly
massed against that background of dark evergreens? And even in that
single branch see the wondrous gradation of color, from purest green to
purplish olive melting into crimson, and then to scarlet, and through
orange into yellow, and all sustaining in its midst the clustered cone
of berries of rich maroon! Verily, it were almost an affront to sit down
before such a shrine and attempt to match it in material pigment. A
passing sketch, perhaps, that shall serve to aid the memory in the
retirement of the studio, but a careful copy, _never!_ until we can have
a tenfold lease of life, and paint with sunbeams. But there is more
still in this tantalizing ideal, for a luxuriant wild grapevine, that
shuts in the fence near by, sends toward us an adventurous branch that
climbs the upright rail, and festoons itself from fence to tree, and
hangs its luminous canopy over the crest of the yielding juniper. Even
from where we stand we can see the pendent clusters of tiny grapes
clearly shadowed against the translucent golden screen. Add to all this
the charm of life and motion, with trembling leaves and branches bending
in the breeze, with here and there a flitting shadow playing across the
half hidden rails, and where can you find another such picture, its
counterpart in beauty--where? perhaps its very neighbor, for all
roadside pictures are ‘hung upon the line,’ they are all by the same
great Master, and it is often difficult to choose.”
Two letters must serve as types of hundreds which he received, from
every quarter of this country and from England--from California and from
Anticosti Island, from Minnesota and from Georgia. The people loved his
work. It expressed things they all had felt. It revealed to them things
they had never seen. It was at once interpretation and disclosure. They
did not know how good it was technically, but they did realize that it
was good art in substance and in spirit, and from grateful hearts and
lives quickened and enriched by his genius they wrote him their letters
of gratitude and recognition. This one is from a Massachusetts town:
“B----, MASS., _Aug. 30, ’90_.
DEAR MR. GIBSON:--
“Your exquisite drawings and no less delightful descriptions have
been a constant delight and inspiration to me for ten years. I have
often wanted to tell you so, but the fear that a letter of thanks
might seem intrusive has kept me silent. You really must forgive me
for writing now, however, for your ‘group of pyrolas’ has a
fascination quite irresistible.
I resolutely close my Harper only to open again for one more long
lingering look at their airy loveliness, and then of course must
follow another peep at the lilies and the goodyera and the dainty
fern fronds which seem to spring up as spontaneously under your
pencil’s magic as they do in our fern-filled woods of B----.
“Do you realize how much you have added to the joy of pastoral
days, what an enchantment you have thrown around our highways and
byways?
“Almost every favorite flower lives again for me in your
illustrations, and many and many a time have I been lifted up and
out of weariness or discouragement by your pen or pencil, for your
word pictures are as vivid as the others.
“Let me thank you too for your suggestions. ‘There is a spiritual
body and there is a natural body,’ and the atmosphere of the first
is always around your work, always full of help for all who can
discern it.
“I am not an art connoisseur and should never dare express my
opinion ‘as one having authority,’ but I do love beauty, and some
of your beautiful woodland scenes, some ferns or mosses or flowers
or birds have power to give ‘thoughts that do often lie too deep
for tears.’ You reveal Nature’s very soul and as a most ardent
worshipper of Nature and as a child of the Heavenly Father whose
thoughts you have so often interpreted, I want to thank you.
“May you have many long years to continue making the world happier,
and may you receive as much sunshine in your own life as you have
given others.
“Yours most sincerely,
“MARY SAWYER.”
The other letter is from his pastor:
* * * * *
“To me you are an interpreter of a word of God which is both older
and newer than the one to the interpretation of which I have given
my life. You have enabled a vaster congregation than any minister
ever speaks to, to see in it a meaning before unseen, if not
unsuspected. I am one of your congregation and I am your debtor for
lessons, not merely of beauty, but of truth and purity, which
cannot be put into words. In interpreting Nature you bring us
nearer to God and the eternal beauty and goodness. For this, no
less than for the autograph which hangs on our walls Mrs. Abbott
and I heartily thank you.
“Yours sincerely,
LYMAN ABBOTT.
“70 COLUMBIA HEIGHTS,
_7 April, 1888_.”
Gibson was a warm partisan of water-color as a medium of artistic
expression. He believed thoroughly in the possibilities of that mode of
painting, which, it will be noted, was by no means understood or
well-developed in this country when he was beginning to paint. His views
in reference to it are well set forth in a letter to his mother,
describing his first picture for the Water Color Society’s exhibition,
written in the winter of 1874. He says:
“I am at present busily engaged on my water-color painting for the
coming Spring exhibition. It is only just under way, but all who have
seen it express much pleasure and enthusiasm at it and particularly
admire my selection of a subject. It would be difficult to find a
subject calculated to create such popular favor, and you know that a
good selection in this particular is ‘half the battle.’ The idea is
this: Subject, a ‘Struggle for Life.’ It is indicated by an old, old
tree (an oak if you please) growing under all possible disadvantages,
and besieged with a host of parasitic growths which threaten to sap its
vitality and hasten its death. The trunk and main portion of a few
branches only are shown and but one or two of them are possessed of any
leafage. The near portion is devoid of bark and the exposed wood, by the
action of the weather without and decay within, has become stained and
broken. The interior is hollow, and the rich brown debris of its
decomposing wood falls through a large irregular opening at the base of
the trunk, and then spreading itself on a moss and lichen covered rock
becomes the prey to brilliantly colored fungi and mother to many ferns.
The tree is supposed to have started life near a rock and in the course
of time its roots have grown over its surface and again by the action of
time and other causes are now bare of bark and some of them dead. Higher
in the tree, an unsightly gaping hollow presents itself, left after the
fall of some dead and useless limb and this, collecting the rain water
from each successive shower, has caused the gradual undermining of the
tree and hurried it to its approaching death. Close beneath this
opening, true to nature, sapping what little life blood still circulates
in the part clings a luxuriant clump of the deadly agaric (touch wood)
which may so often be seen on trees that have passed their better days.
These are not all the burdens under which this aged subject is
struggling. The mistletoe has fastened itself upon its only living
branch, and parasitic vines innumerable clamber up and surround the
trunk in their ‘deadly embrace.’ A brightly colored woodpecker has just
alighted on the dying tree and finds food in plenty in the substance of
decay. The whole picture is intended to suggest the idea of a struggle,
and I know that I can make it so plain that anyone will realize my
intention. A little pool of rain water lies at the foot of the rock and
touching the roots which will give an additional effect of reflection,
and what with this, the warm coloring of dried fallen leaves relieved by
a group of delicate ferns, and other like growths, together with a
strong play of sunlight on the whole, I see no reason why the picture
should not be a good success and feel equal to rendering all that my
imagination suggests and pictures. I have only just commenced, but
enough is even now suggested to insure an at least attractive result. I
have selected the medium of water-color because I believe that more can
be done with that than most people are aware. I can work faster with
water-color and secure just as brilliant effect as I could in oils.
People in general do not know how much can be done with water-color, and
I hope that I may live to show them.”
Six years later, coming back to the same subject in a letter to Colonel
Gibson, he defends water-color as a medium in the following hearty
fashion:
“Concerning the ‘water-color’ subject, on which you say ‘Of course
water-color painting is not or cannot be high art, because it concerns
itself too much with detail’ (not verbatim but embodying your
[Illustration: _The Struggle for Life_
_First Watercolor_]
expressed idea), I regret that a man in your position should decline
from the standard to which his namesake had elevated him, and come down
to such a statement as that. Color is color, whether it is mixed with
water or oil, and you can make a broad flat tint in oil-color or
water-color just as you choose. There is no reason why one should use
‘one-hair brushes’ in water-color painting either. Neither is there any
reason why he should paint more detail in the one than in the other. You
should have had one glimpse of the last W. C. Ex. It would have made you
open your eyes. I never saw stronger or broader pictures in oil than
some that were in that exhibit. Neither does the medium make a snap of
difference, excepting so far as it cramps the hand that wields it. The
talk about ‘body color’ is a ‘hobby horse’ for art critics to ride on
when they get ‘run out’ of their vocabulary. I use both, so do several
others, some to such an excess as to abuse it and spoil the result. It
should not be used to tell as paint, but to express texture or relief in
an object where such qualities are important requisites.”
His own work in this medium showed the same steady and constant
improvement as his work with the pencil. He toiled incessantly, and with
his toil his power and facility grew. Remembering that he was
self-taught in all his art-work; that he wholly lacked the training of
the schools; that all his studies had to be made in the rush and under
the pressure of his intensely busy life; yet that all of these studies
were good enough to have a market value, and to take rank as works of
art, his professional career is indeed a marvelous one. It was soon
apparent that he was to take his place among the leading workers in
color, and in an astonishingly short time he was recognized as one of
the first water-colorists in America. He brought the same dash and
fervor and sincerity to the color-box that he bestowed upon monotone. He
was as ambitious to excel in this field as in his earlier one. He
overcame heavy odds, chief among which was a popular prejudice that a
man who does one thing well cannot do anything else. The public had come
to rank him as a master in illustration. It was not readily converted to
the notion that he might take as good a position in color-work. The
critics talked, as critics will, in much this strain. “He is not a
colorist,” said one. “His best work is in monotone,” said another. “He
has won more admirers by his black-and-white work than he ever will win
as a water-colorist,” wrote a third. They evidently had not heard the
tale of his early attempts, and had not the fear of his caricatures
before them. Gibson lived to confute their judgment and to prove his
power as a colorist. That he had the root of the matter in him, and that
he was qualified by temperament to see and feel the power of nature’s
glowing hues he shows in a few lines of revelation, written out of his
inmost spirit.
“How many beautiful pictures have I seen emerge from a cloud of dust
upon a country road! How many of those pictures have again been half
obliterated by the dust of after-years, only to be recalled to life by
even so trivial a thing as the bleating of a lamb, the ring of a boyish
laugh, or the homely music of the falling pasture bars!
“Pity for him whose heart knows no such sensitive and latent chord of
sympathy to yield its harmony along the way, lending an inspiration to
the present, while sanctifying the past, and drawing from its better
memories a renewed delight in living! There is no walk in life, however
dull or prosaic, no circumstance so commonplace, that they can stifle
this ever-present melody. It sings in unison with nature in a thousand
different keys--in a falling leaf or a cricket’s song. The rain-drops of
to-day but repeat the old-time patter on the garret-roof. The noisy
katydid, whenever heard, is that same untiring nightly visitant outside
your window to whose perpetual whim you loved to listen, and in fancy
tantalize until you dropped off to sleep upon your pillow. This skimming
swallow sailing near will never cross your path but so surely will he
fly to those same old nests beneath the barn-yard eaves. If there is
ever a blessed mood ‘most musical, most melancholy,’ it may be found
beneath the refining influence of just such reminiscences; for whether
or not there are added elements of home association, there are always a
legion of indelible memories that love to linger along the country road
and lane--highways and byways beloved of fancy--paths of recollection
filled with footprints which not even the tempest can obliterate.”
One rarely finds a profounder analysis of the true mean between breadth
and detail, between effect and incident, nor a truer affirmation of one
of the neglected sources of power in translating the larger aspects of
the world than in the following:
“‘There is as much finish in the right concealment of things as in the
right exhibition of them.’
“Here is a key to the very heart of nature, if one will only use it. And
I would but add my faint echo in an entreaty for a deeper sense of the
infinity of nature’s living tone and palpitating color--a plea for the
more intelligent recognition of the elements that yield the tint which
we vainly strive to imitate upon the canvas. Such knowledge will give a
voice to every pigment on the palette, and to the brush an answering
consciousness; for, whether disciple of a school or not, whether artist,
poet, or layman, who can deny that such an attitude toward nature shall
yield a harvest of deeper knowledge, and increased delight, not merely
in the contemplation of the footprint, but even as truly in the study of
the limitless panorama?
“Is there not to me an added charm in the pink flush that mantles the
side of yonder mountain-spur when I know so well that it is shed by the
myriads of blossoms in an acre of glowing fire-weed? And as my eye
follows the cool cloud-shadow as it glides down upon the mountain-slope,
among the varied patchwork of its fields and farms, is there not a
deepened significance imparted to every separate tint that tells me
something of its being?
“If in the faint yellow checkered forms I see fields of billowing wheat
and barley, and recall a hundred of their associations, or if from that
quaintly-dotted patch there comes a whiff from a sweet-scented field,
with its cocks of new-mown hay, its skimming swallows and ringing
scythes, with here a luminous gray of sandy meadow fresh from the plough
or harrow, and there a weed-grown copse lit up with golden-rod; if that
kaleidoscopic medley of grays and olives and browns tells me of its
pastures, with their tinkling bells, of its fragrant beds of
everlasting, ferns, and hardhack, its trailing junipers and its
moss-flecked bowlders, and each of these in turn draws me still closer,
and whispers something of itself--the everlasting with its pendent
jewel, the orchis with its little confidant and nursling, the gentian
with its close-kept secret and its never-opened eye; if yonder bluish
bloom means a field of blueberries to me, and that snowy sweep brings
visions of the blossoming buckwheat field, with its symphony of humming
bees--tell me, have I not only seen the mountain-slope, but have I not
also heard its voice?
Such a man could not keep out of the field of color. The feeling in him
had to express itself. He must interpret on the canvas what he saw upon
the hillside. It was inevitable that he should soon win as hearty praise
for his color as he had for his drawing. Of course, the reputation could
not be as wide as that he had achieved as illustrator in black and
white. Fewer eyes could see his paintings than had been regaled with his
illustrations. But when he laid down his brush, to paint no more, he had
made a name for himself as one of the foremost American water-colorists.
It is but fair to say that his later experiences taught him a larger
respect for “oil” as a medium of artistic expression. He was so eager to
enlarge his field of work that he could not but venture upon experiments
which brought to him a new sense of power and a knowledge of resources
hitherto untouched. A few brief entries in his journal show his state of
mind, and his prompt surrender of former prejudices. In March, 1881, he
wrote:
“Painting for three weeks on oil-pictures for Academy Exhibition. First
attempts in oil for exhibition. Trouble with medium. Final triumph of
mind over matter. Painted a week or more on large autumn study commenced
at Williamstown. Grew frantic and in a moment of frenzy took a piece of
pasteboard and palette-knife and produced strongest picture I ever
painted, in less than fifteen minutes,--a revelation which gave me
confidence. A victorious fight with an oil-tube which had threatened to
get the better of me.”
A few days later he tried a similar study, with which he was even more
satisfied. In another entry he says of this attempt:
“Much pleased with effect of sky I carried picture to a finish by four
o’clock. Went out and ordered frame for it. A Diaz effect,--quite
strong. What a revelation to me who, ten days ago, was disgusted with
oil-color as a medium! I am all aglow with enthusiasm at finding another
medium for the expression of my thoughts and feelings.”
From this time forward he knew that there were still greater
possibilities before him than he had realized, and with the knowledge
came a fresh ambition, a stronger challenge to his artistic nature.
The “smoke-pictures” which he executed were one more example of his
versatility and delight in new and daring methods. He did a great many
of them, and they attracted much attention. They were, briefly,
black-and-white pictures made by a gas flame upon a cardboard or paper
ground. In his first experiments he held the paper before a horizontal
flame and by passing one part after another across the flame, secured
masses of lamp-black, which he found he could manipulate to great
advantage. Landscape, cloud-effects, deep shadows of night or storm were
easily within reach. Afterward he attached a rubber tube to his
gas-fixture, and with a suitable nozzle was able to sit at his easel and
manipulate the pipe as he would a brush. After the paper was well coated
with varying shades of gray and black, he would work up the picture with
brush or finger or palette-knife, deepening the tones, when desirable,
by more smoke, lightening them by scraping and rubbing. The total effect
was broad, yet marked by gradations so fine as to be almost beyond the
reach of ordinary methods of black-and-white work; while the rich,
velvety textures were of a depth quite remarkable. Though he never
devised any method of “fixing” the smoke, yet after the lapse of a dozen
years, these pictures, when preserved under glass, have kept all their
original brilliancy and force.
But all that Gibson had done in his artistic career was to him only an
apprenticeship. He meant more than he achieved. He was on the way to
better things, when death stayed his feet. With all his tremendous
intensity, his restless industry, his fulness of conception and scheme,
he was yet a man of undreamed-of patience. He saw far ahead of what he
had reached, and planned for it, and meant to attain it. He himself
regarded all that he had done in black and white, in water-color, even
his beginnings in oil, as only the preparation for a larger, stronger
art, in which he should interpret the spiritual side of Nature. There
was always before his mind a dream of the subtler phases of natural
beauty, the deeper meaning she conveys to the listening soul. He was
feeling, with more and more force every day that he lived, the spell of
“The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration and the poet’s dream,”
and the passion grew within him to paint, in the most permanent and
adequate medium, the things he was coming to feel and to see. Art was
really his goal. Painting was his crowning ambition. His own view of his
life was that he had but just fitted himself for a worthier task, that
he was just ready to begin the work to which he was called.