from many sources. Duveneck in the realistic and Whistler with the
decorative each had their day and sway with him. Something of the
Japanese becomes apparent in a flattening of the canvas, in elimination
of non-essential features, in gaining a sketchy effect by filling in
large spaces with flat tones and throwing emphasis upon salient points
of high light and color. Finally comes an unusual employment of dress
in making a pattern of swirling lines which not only contrast with the
angles of the canvas but lend movement and life to the figure. The
use of drapery for line effect is, of course, apparent all through
art. Alexander may have taken suggestions regarding this from Greek
marbles or Italian pictures or Pre-Raphaelite glass. But so vague and
shadowy are all these sources of influence that one cannot trace them
home. Such pictures as “The Green Gown,” “A Rose,” “The Gossip,” “The
Ring,” have no counterpart in any painting, ancient or modern. One
comes back again to a former conclusion that they are Alexander’s own
creations--his distinct contribution to art.
How far does the contribution carry? Well, little farther than the
decorative face of the canvas. The handsome, well-gowned, and well-bred
young woman who holds the rose or ring or bowl is only part of a
color pattern on the canvas. She does not symbolize or signify much
of anything beyond that. You could not guess if she has a brain
or a heart or a soul. She is not a document or a problem or even a
character. Alexander did not believe that painting was a means of
epitomizing abstract ideas but merely a way of revealing graceful color
patterns that please the eye and hang harmoniously upon the wall. There
is nothing intensive or dramatic or even narrative about his work. It
is not sentimental or emotional or passion-strung. A late canvas like
that entitled “Husband, Wife, and Child” may suggest sentiment, but
only as a superfluity. The painter meant to stop with the completed
pattern.
Almost always the pattern is agreeable and sufficient in itself as art.
The space is happily filled with one figure, sometimes two, but seldom
more. The linear design meets the upright of the frame with flowing
lines in which repetition plays more of a part than contrast. “The Blue
Bowl” is a good illustration. The figure is placed diagonally upon the
canvas, the bowl lines are repeated in the head and shoulders, the
dress is spread in fan-like lines toward the far corner of the canvas.
The whole design is unusual and extraordinary but very graceful. So,
too, with “The Ring,” in the Metropolitan Museum, where a young woman
seated on a lounge with a large straw hat in her lap is holding up a
ring for admiration. The round hat somehow suggests a repetition of
the round head, and the dress lines repeat its curves. Great care is
taken with the linear arrangements of all these single figures. The
composition is carefully thought out, wrought out, brought out.
[Illustration: “The Ring,” by John W. Alexander.
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art.]
Just as important as the design is the color scheme. It is, in fact,
so prominent that the title of the picture is often derived from it.
“The Green Gown” or “The Blue Bowl” are hints that green or blue is
the key in which the picture is pitched. The continuance or repetition
or perhaps slight variance of the green or blue runs through the whole
picture and produces what is called a tone or harmony or symphony in
green or blue. The aim with Alexander is precisely as with Whistler.
Neither of them harps on the one note to the exclusion of every other,
but the one note nevertheless prevails throughout. The picture by
Alexander called “The Rose” shows a young girl in dull green which
would be monotonous if insisted upon everywhere. It is relieved by the
pink of the flesh, the dark hair, the white linen, but above all by
the rose which the girl holds in her hand. The rose hue is in the same
tone of light as the green and emphasizes the latter because red is the
complementary color of green.
The appearance of complementary or slightly varying colors in the
central high lights argues the prevalence of a large half-tone in
the background and intermediate spaces. This half-tone when prepared
in a thin medium like petroleum and used upon a soft or absorbent
canvas sinks into the canvas, becomes an atmospheric depth, becomes
vague, indefinite, mysterious. To avoid too much monotony of half-tone
Alexander very often introduced a burst of light upon the figure. This
sounds like the old Rembrandt-Lenbach formula which he followed in
his early student days at Munich, but his later practice diffused the
illumination, made it less hard on the edges, and more atmospheric.
Even in certain pictures where a ray of sunshine is shot into a dark
room through an unlatched door the ray is not hard and the half-tone
gives it an atmospheric setting quite extraordinary.
Under these peculiar conditions of canvas, of tone, of illumination,
the drawing is often flattened, even abbreviated. The heads and
costumes are brushed in broadly, the hands are sometimes passed over
with a mere suggestion of form or value, the accessories are still
more vague in line, in bulk, in texture. Nothing but things of vital
importance are given. By suppression of the parts the painter gets
concentration on certain salient features of surface, or light or
color. With thin painting in the ground and shadows and fat painting
in the high lights the picture takes on the look of a large and easily
done sketch. A feeling of freedom, of spontaneity, is apparent, and
with it life, spirit, gusto in the recital.
There was more or less variation of this sketch-appearance in all
Alexander’s late canvases. Sometimes he drew with sharper edges
and more protrusive modelling and produced a more realistic effect;
but far oftener he gave merely a suggestion of form or created an
atmospheric nimbus with his tone that surrounded and enveloped the
figure. It has been frequently noted in these pages that almost every
painter oscillates between too much drawing and not enough. When
Alexander dismissed his form rather summarily for a tone or a texture,
his critics declared him vague, shadowy, merely decorative; when he
insisted upon the drawing and perhaps minimized his tone, he was
declared prosaic. He did not have to be told that he was between the
devil and the deep sea. Every painter knows it, or comes to know it,
before he has struggled through many canvases.
A more frequent comment on Alexander was that he was a painter
of attitudes and draperies--nature plus a pose. To avoid the
conventional he chose the accidental and the momentary rather than
the characteristic or permanent. He was seeking the decorative, and
his girl in green or gray or yellow was just a little more elegantly
disposed than in nature. It was frankly an “arrangement”--a placing of
the figure and a disposition of the accessories to the best advantage.
The robes were swung in gracefully with no sharp angle lines or crabbed
pothooks to break the flow. The photographer of to-day seeks to
produce the same graceful exaggeration but with less success. And the
realist who depicts the charwoman bending over the ash-barrel usually
exaggerates more positively the other way. If the beauty of the ugly
in an awkward pose may be accounted art, why not the beauty of the
charming in a graceful pose? Alexander got what he could out of his
handsome model, making her a little more graceful than reality, to be
sure, but did not Van Dyck, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence, do the
same thing with marked success?
His portrait sitters differed from his abstract types holding a ring or
a blue bowl or a rose chiefly in the matter of a facial likeness. The
“arrangement” was carried out with the one as with the other, though
it was usually not so conspicuous in the portrait as in the type.
Perhaps because the costume and coloring of women were more adaptable
to the “arrangement” than the costume and coloring of men, the painter
achieved the reputation of being more successful with the former
as sitters than with the latter. Certainly in his most attractive
portraits of women he has not failed to use graceful composition, and
has gotten much pictorial effect out of his color, tone, and light.
The “Mrs. Hastings,” for instance, is both portrait and picture.
It is expectant in look and lively in spirit. The pose in profile,
which is repeated vaguely in the Winged Victory back of the figure,
is complemented by a color and a tone quite in keeping. It is one
of the painter’s best efforts. The “Mrs. Duryea” is perhaps a little
more conscious in its formality. The space is not so well filled and
the dress spreads too obviously. With the “Mrs. Ledyard Blair” the
dress again spreads for decorative effect and becomes pronounced in
importance. A similar result is apparent in the portrait known as the
“Woman in Gray” now in the Luxembourg. All of these last-mentioned
portraits have excellences quite aside from their decorative planning,
and the “Woman in Gray” had much to do in creating Alexander’s vogue in
Paris; but one turns from them to the refined simplicity of the “Miss
Dorothy Roosevelt” with some relief. Sometimes nature is not the better
for being “arranged.”
When it was necessary to insist upon characterization Alexander could
do it, and do it well. The “Mrs. Wheaton,” an old lady with gray hair
and lace cap, done in 1904, is excellent in its gentle (not brutal)
realization of the model. It is quite in the class with the Whistler
and Chase mother portraits, and in refinement is perhaps superior to
either of the others. The children canvases of “Eleanor Alexander” with
the doll in the chair or “Geraldine Russell” standing at full length
are equally good.
It is true enough that the grace and charm belonging to women and
children seemed to appeal to Alexander more than the sturdier qualities
of men. He painted many men but they were not always as forceful as
the “Fritz Thaulow.” That figure has bulk and body to it but again
no brutality. It is more forceful than the “Walt Whitman,” which is
just a little too much ironed out and smoothed down for the vociferous
original. The beard and hair and _soi-disant_ look are those of a
poet rather than Whitman--a distinction with a difference to some
people. The “Dr. Patton” in academic robes as president of Princeton is
probably as satisfactory as any of Alexander’s portraits of men. It is
a simple, well-drawn, convincing presentation, not surprising in any
way nor again falling short in any way.
All of this work is simple, large in design, not confused with detail
or small objects, and always with ample breathing room. Alexander
attempted no elaborate grouping or historical composition except in his
designs for mural decoration. The earlier pictures such as “Pandora”
and “The Pot of Basil” are merely single figures. “The Piano” is a
single figure with a piano, the “Memories” is two figures, as is also
the “Music Panel.” They are all spacious and do not crowd the canvas
or the frame. Occasionally he did landscapes--some of them up in
the hills about Cornish, New Hampshire--in which there is the same
simplicity of design and feeling of space in hillside, valley, and sky.
His landscapes have a decorative swing of line similar in kind to his
figure pictures, and there is something of the same tonal effect,
though less pronounced. In other words, the painter saw or read the
decorative into landscape as into figures, which may be considered a
mistake if one is looking for a realistic presentation, but is just as
certainly a success if one is looking for something to hang upon the
wall that shall not clash with every other object in the room.
[Illustration: “Walt Whitman” by John W. Alexander.
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art.]
Therein lies a marked feature of Alexander’s work. It is art that can
be lived with. It takes its place in the household and accommodates
itself to almost any color scheme because of its neutral tone and lack
of glittering notes. How many modern easel pictures are keyed up to the
shrieking point, and are planned to outshriek their neighbors in an
exhibition! They are Salon pictures--“machines” that make a clatter and
having served their purpose go back to the studio and are faced against
the wainscoting. But Alexander’s pictures could be taken home without
danger of a family quarrel. They are delicate enough in pattern to go
in the drawing-room and refined enough in manner to be seen and not
heard.
Perhaps this very quality of refinement, so acceptable in his easel
pictures, was something of a defect in his mural decorations. The
greatly enlarged wall space of a public building called for more
intensity of color, more sharp contrast of angle lines, more loftiness
and elaborateness of composition than the painter dreamt of in his
art philosophy. His attempts at mural painting were somewhat sporadic.
It was not exactly his _métier_, and though he took it up with energy
when asked to do so, he succeeded in producing little more than an
enlargement of his easel pictures. The same tone, light, and color
of his portraits and single figures went into the groupings in the
Congressional Library, the Harrisburg Capitol, and the Carnegie
Institute at Pittsburgh. The Library decorations gave the “Evolution of
the Book” in six lunettes that illustrated the stages of book-making
rather than symbolized or epitomized them. At Harrisburg the theme was
the “Evolution of the State,” another set of fourteen lunettes. The
decoration at Pittsburgh was the most ambitious performance of the
three and sought to tell the story of Pittsburgh--the story of steel
and labor. It is called the “Apotheosis of Pittsburgh,” with the city
personified by a knight in armor with a flaming sword in his hand
instead of the large female figure of conventional decoration. The
panels carry over three stories of the entrance-hall of the Carnegie
Institute and some five hundred figures are used. The first floor
shows the half-naked furnacemen at work amid smoke, steam, and fire
glare. The smoke and steam rise up and envelop, make an atmospheric
setting for, the allegorical figures of the second floor that from all
sides are bringing tributes to the mailed figure of Pittsburgh. The
allegorical figures are winged, robed in long trailing garments, and
drift lightly through the air or upon clouds. The third floor contains
lunettes typifying the arts and sciences.
The whole decoration is well thought out, and is put together, within
its framings of yellowish marble, with a distinctly decorative effect.
The tone of it is quiet, subdued, restful--perhaps too much so. The
figures are graceful, even the men--again, perhaps too much so. One
is not sorry that Labor is shown with cheerful face and normal body
rather than sad-browed, nerve-racked, and body-wrecked, after the
Zola-Meunier formula. That exaggeration has become just as conventional
and wearisome as the prettiness of Bouguereau, or the pettiness of
Meissonier. But Alexander’s workers are perhaps too elegant for
reality as his floating figures are too graceful for allegory. There
is a feeling that there is not enough mental grip about them. It is
paradoxical to say that the decoration is too decorative, but that
states the case quite rightly. The pattern and the color that set off
an easel picture appropriately fail to carry when employed on so vast
a scale of wall decoration--fail to carry from sheer attenuation of
motive and design. The Pittsburgh decoration has not enough strength
behind it to spread over five thousand feet of painted surface.
Strength was never a quality of Alexander’s art. He had skill, grace,
refinement, charm, style, but he never attempted to win by force or
power.
After his return from Paris in 1901 he took up his permanent residence
in New York and immediately entered into the art life of the city and
the country. He had received gold medals at Paris and St. Louis and
the Legion of Honor from France, had placed his pictures in public
galleries all the way from St. Petersburg and Odessa to Chicago, and
had become a member of some twenty art societies. In addition to
the McDowell Club and the School Art League he was the head of the
Federation of Fine Arts, the Society of Mural Painters, and from 1909
the president of the National Academy of Design. His interest in art
movements was great and the energy he gave to them was at the expense
not only of his painting but his health. As president of the Academy
of Design his devotion was unflagging even though it met with almost
everything but encouragement and success. During his presidency he took
up anew the problem of a building site which had been dragging along
for years. There had been failure in Fifty-seventh Street in 1896, and
over the Lenox Library plot in 1904, but Alexander failed four further
times with the sites of the Arsenal, the Central Park, Bryant Park, and
the Railroad Yard.
This with many other burdens he was carrying helped to wear him out. He
had never been robust. On the contrary, he was of delicate, refined
physique and possessed of a mental energy that far outran his bodily
strength. Moreover, he never knew how to spare himself. In his last
years with many overhead burdens to carry he could still take on new
enterprises. At Onteora, where he had a summer home, he became much
interested in costuming and decorative settings for the theatre, and
later, with Mrs. Alexander, made many designs for Miss Maude Adams’s
productions of “Jeanne d’Arc,” “Peter Pan,” “Chantecler,” and “The
Little Minister.” In New York he presided over the National Institute
of Arts and Letters, spoke at every gathering of art people, and was at
the beck and call of society whenever anything of an artistic nature
was desired. At the last--that is, in 1915--death came to him quite
suddenly.
Both socially and artistically Alexander had become a man of
distinction. Every one liked his refined, gentlemanly personality,
admired his art, and listened to his counsel. For these reasons and
because of his commanding position he came to have a strong influence
in all art matters. He had set a pattern that many of the younger
painters followed, and, like Chase, had helped to establish the
latter-day tradition of craftsmanship here in America. It was not
the exact craftsmanship of Chase or Alexander or Sargent that was
established, though each of them has had his imitators. The movement
for sound technical education in American art was of no one painter’s
devising. The three were typical of the movement, but there were
others--Weir, Twachtman, Beckwith, Blum, Brush, Thayer, Dewing, Cox,
Blashfield--who were of the same faith and who added their quota of
strength. All of them working together, with a common energy and
enthusiasm, have created a body of belief as to what constitutes
style and skill in art. They have established a tradition based in
sound craftsmanship than which nothing could be safer or better for
the future of American art. It was Alexander’s part to help lay the
foundation-stones. War or national madness or economic change may
prevent any splendid palace of art arising therefrom, but at least
Alexander and his contemporaries builded the firm foundation--builded
perhaps better than they knew.
X
JOHN S. SARGENT
The major events in Mr. Sargent’s life as we read them or hear them
told to-day seem in no way striking or startling. He has moved along
well-trodden paths, in a well-ordered career, responsive always to the
teaching of his youth, and reflective of his social and intellectual
surroundings. He did not wholly achieve art, for some of it was born
to him and some of it, perhaps, was thrust upon him. He came to it
early, grew up in its atmosphere, and was under its spell at an
impressionable age. Which is to say that he is not a self-made painter
in the Inness-Wyant sense, but something of a traditional painter in
the La Farge sense. Training started him aright, but his great success
is, of course, not wholly due to that. Genius alone can account for the
remarkable content of his work.
He was born in Florence in 1856. His parents were Americans residing
in Italy at the time of his birth. The father was from Gloucester,
Massachusetts, and had studied medicine in Philadelphia, afterward
remaining in the latter city to practise his profession. He had met
and married a Miss Singer of an old Philadelphia family, and later
they had gone to Florence to live. Legally, therefore, the painter is
an American, but the legal tie is about all that binds him to us. We
like to claim him because he is a celebrity, but in reality he is an
American only in a nominal way. He was not reared or educated here,
he has not lived here, he has not fought in our quarrels or failed in
our failures or succeeded in our successes. The greater part of his
life has been passed abroad amid other scenes and other peoples. As
a boy he travelled about Europe with his parents, speaking German as
his first acquired language, if I report him aright, and gaining the
bulk of his schooling in Italy and Germany. At eighteen he went to
Paris and entered the _atelier_ of Carolus Duran--at that time perhaps
the most famous of the French portrait-painters. It was not until
1876, when Sargent was twenty years old, that he saw the shores of the
United States. That was his first visit. He did not stay for any length
of time, and what were his impressions of the land and the people
we do not know. Several times since then he has been here for short
periods, but one or another of the large European capitals has been
his residence. Since 1884 his permanent abiding-place has been London,
though he lived for a time in Paris, and just now (1918) he is again
here in America.
It would seem then that however much pride we may take in Sargent’s
achievements we can hardly be proud because he is peculiarly our own.
He is not American in the sense of knowing the land and the people and
reflecting our life and civilization. Just as little has his birth in
Italy made him Italian or his residence in France and England made him
French or English. No country can claim him, no people can appropriate
him, for in reality he is a citizen of the world at large--the
manner of man we sometimes call a cosmopolite. If there is one place
above another that he can be traced to and said to emanate from it
is Paris; and Paris is no longer merely the first city of France.
It, too, has become cosmopolitan--the centre of modern life and the
gathering-place of the world’s knowledge, intelligence, and fashion.
Sargent reflects its taste and its skill, but not anything else that
is peculiarly French, not anything that smacks of the French soil. The
accomplishments of Paris are his, but without the sentiment or the
feeling that is French.
It is questionable if a man who is equally at home in London, Paris,
Florence, and New York will or can have a very strong sentiment about
any one of those places. He can hardly spend a winter in the United
States and become vitally interested in democracy, and the next winter
go to England and fall deeply in love with aristocracy. Nor can he
live for a few months in Spain or Germany and penetrate to the quick
the life and character of its people. The cosmopolite who moves hither
and yon about the globe hardly ever takes to heart the affairs and
interests of those with whom he is temporarily sojourning. On the
contrary, it is rather his attitude of mind that nothing is to be taken
too seriously. To ruffle one’s composure with an emotion or to worry
one’s self about a sentiment is the very thing he seeks to avoid.
He accepts the facts as facts, concerns himself with the appearance
of things, is a stickler for the refinements, and a great student
of manners, methods, and styles. He quickly absorbs whatsoever is
artistic or intelligent or learned, his perceptions are very acute, his
knowledge and manner are polished to the last degree; but the strong
feeling that, after all, lies at the bottom of great endeavor finds no
utterance in his work, and the national beliefs that are really the
insistent and persistent things in both literature and art are not the
mainspring of his action.