The terrible story is told of how the late W. H. Vanderbilt came near
being cheated out of three hundred thousand dollars by purchasing a
painting that was no better than it looked! From that imminent peril
he was rescued by death. The painting, it seems, was discovered (where
it had not been lost) by a person—nay, a parson—named Nicole, who gave
his personal assurance that it was a Rafael. It must have looked a good
deal like a Rafael, for although it was for a long time an object of
adoration for artist pilgrims from all over Europe, none detected its
spurious character. That is clear from the facts that it was later that
Mr. Vanderbilt agreed to take it, and that while negotiations were
going on Herr Nicole borrowed twelve thousand dollars on it from a
banker who has it yet. That could hardly have been true if the pilgrims
to its shrine at Lausanne had had their transports moderated by a
suspicion that it was not so good as it looked.
The reader will kindly repress his hilarity. This is no joke. If a
picture can not be better than it looks how does it happen that this
one is not so valuable after the exposure as it was before? The notion
that a picture _can_ be better or worse than it looks does seem
absurd when one stops to think about it. It is not original with me;
the late Bill Nye once set the country smiling by solemnly explaining
that he had been told that Wagner’s music was better than it sounded.
But why did we laugh? We do not laugh when a wealthy “patron of
art,” or a paternal government pays an enormous price for a painting
_because_ it is pronounced by experts to be a genuine work of a
famous “old master.” And we do not laugh—not all of us—when, as in
the present instance, the value drops to nearly nothing because the
painting proves to be a copy only, or the work of an unknown hand.
I am no artist—Heaven forbid!—nor even a connoisseur. If I were I
should doubtless understand why a copy that is as beautiful as an
original is not so desirable a possession—why it does not give so great
pleasure to the eye and the mind and the heart. I should understand why
the work of an obscure or unknown artist is not so valuable as the work
of a famous artist if it happens to be as good.
One would suppose—that is, one unacquainted with art might be conceived
as supposing—that the value of a painting would be appraised without
reference to the question: Who made it? It seems (to the unenlightened)
as if it would make no difference what name was borne by the person
that painted it—just as the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_ would
be equally pleasing whether written by Homer or by “another man of
the same name,” or another name. I have the hardihood to declare that
it is—and here I am on my own ground. I affirm—nay, “swear tiptoed
with lifted hand”—that the pleasure of any reasonable man in reading
“Ossian” is not abated by knowledge that the author was Macpherson;
that to a sane judgment the “Rowley” poems are altogether as delightful
as if the secret of their composition had been carried into the next
world by little Chatterton when “he perished in his pride.” What is
it to me, or to you, if the Shakspeare plays were written by Bacon?
We have the plays; let us read and be thankful. Shakspeare and Bacon
may fight it out in Elysium, with Ignatius Donnelly as umpire; of the
decision, “it boots not to inquire.”
If that is the mental attitude of the true lover of letters, and it is,
why is the true lover of art differently constituted, if he is? Why are
“the still vexed Bermoothes” of his soul still vexed? Why can not he
make up his mind that a work of art is good, or is bad, and let it go
at that, serenely unconcerned about the “irrelevant, incompetent and
immaterial” babble of the experts in authenticity?
Being ignorant, I thank Heaven for the existence of artists obscure
by fortune or by choice, skilful enough to imitate in line or style
the work of the great and famous painters. For gratification of my own
eye I would as lief see and possess their work as the work that they
imitate. So would anybody—for gratification of his own eye. For pigly
satisfaction of owning something denied to one’s neighbor; something
rare because death has stopped the supply; something to be triumphantly
shown to one’s visitors in the hope of exciting some of the baser
passions of the human heart, such as covetousness, envy and the
like—for such “satisfaction and refined delight” one would of course
prefer an original “old master” and be willing to pay a pretty penny
for gratification of the preference.
Some wicked man has said that an artist has sensibility, but no sense.
I fancy that is not so, but finding artists pretty generally concerned
with questions of the “genuineness” of “canvases”—that is to say,
pretty generally assenting to the proposition that a picture can be
better or worse than it looks—I am sometimes tormented by doubt.