complaint at giving up her music and letting him silence her lovely
voice, but turned all her attention to advancing his fortunes. She
worked for him even harder than she had for her father, and that was
saying a great deal. When he became a great writer of plays his wife
took charge of all the accounts of his Drury Lane Theatre, and when he
was in the House of Commons she acted as his secretary. Sheridan died
in great poverty and wretchedness, and it is believed had his
self-sacrificing wife not died before him she would have looked after
his affairs so well that he would not have lost his fortune.
Gainsborough painted the portraits of Sheridan's father-in-law, and of
Samuel Linley; and it was said that this last portrait was painted in
forty-eight minutes. Among his other portraits are: eight of George
III., Sir John Skynner, Admiral Hood, Colonel St. Leger, and "The Blue
Boy"; but he was first and last a landscape painter of highest genius.
XVI
JEAN LEON GEROME
(Pronounced Zhahn Lay'on Zhay-rome)
_French, Semi-classical School_
1824-1904
_Pupil of Delaroche_
One cannot write much more than the date of birth and death of a man
who lived until three or four years of the time of writing, so we may
only say that Gérôme was one of the most brilliant of modern French
painters. He was born at Vesoul and his father was a goldsmith. Thus
he probably had no very great difficulty in getting a start in his
work. The prejudice against having an artist in the family was dying
out, and as a prosperous goldsmith we may believe that his father had
means enough to give his son good opportunities.
Gérôme, like Millet, studied under Delaroche, but became no such
characteristic painter as he. While studying with Delaroche he also
was taking the course in l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
His first exhibited picture was "The Cock Fight," and he won a third
class medal by it.
Almost always this painter has chosen his subjects from ancient or
classic life, and his pictures are not always decent, but he painted
with much care, the details of his work are very finely done and their
vivid colour is fascinating.
PLATE--THE SWORD DANCE
This painting may be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York City. The scene is full of action and interest, but perhaps the
details of dress, mosaic decoration upon the walls, patterns of the
rugs, the coloured and jewelled lamps and windows are the most
splendidly painted of all.
The central figure is a dancing girl, only partly draped, balancing a
sword on her head, while a brilliant green veil flies from head and
face. Other Oriental women squat upon the floor watching her with a
half indolent expression, while their Oriental masters and their
friends sit in pomp at one side, absorbed in the dance and in the
girl. The expressions upon all the faces are excellent and, the
jewelled light that falls upon the group, the rich clothing, the grace
of the dancer--all make a fascinating picture of a genre type. Other
Gérômes are "Daphnis and Chloe," "Leda," and "The Duel after the
Masked Ball."
XVII
GHIRLANDAJO
(Pronounced Geer-lan-da'yo)
_Florentine School_
1449-1494
_Pupil of Fra Bartolommeo_
It is a good deal of a name--Domenico di Tommaso di Currado
Bigordi--and it would appear that the child who bore it was under
obligation to become a good deal of a something before he died.
Italian and Spanish painters generally had large names to live up to,
and the one known as Ghirlandajo did nobly.
His father was a goldsmith and a popular part of his work was the
making of golden garlands for the hair of rich Italian ladies. His
work was so beautiful that it gained for him the name of Ghirlandajo,
meaning the garland-twiner, a name that lived after him, in the great
art of his son. Domenico began as a worker in mosaic, a maker of
pictures or designs with many coloured pieces of glass or stone.
Ghirlandajo's art was no improvement on that of his teacher, but he in
turn became the teacher of Michael Angelo.
The Florentine school of painting, to which Ghirlandajo belonged, was
not so famous for colour as the Venetian school, but it had many other
elements to commend it. One cannot expect Ghirlandajo to rank with
Titian, Rubens, or other "colourists" of his own and later periods,
but he did the very best work of his day and school. He attained to
fame through his choice of types of faces for his models, and by his
excellent grouping of figures.
Until his day, the faces introduced into paintings were likely to be
unattractive, but he chose pleasing ones, and he painted the folds of
garments beautifully. He was not entirely original in his ideas, but
he carried out those which others had thus far failed to make
interesting.
Often, in his wish to paint exactly what he saw, he softened nothing
and therefore his figures were repulsive, but Fra Bartolommeo's pupil
gave promise of what Michael Angelo was to fulfill.
Ghirlandajo and Michael Angelo were a good deal alike in their
emotional natures. Both sought great spaces in which to paint, and
both chose to paint great frescoes. Indeed Ghirlandajo had the
extraordinary ambition to put frescoes on all the fortification walls
about Florence. It certainly would have made the city a great picture
gallery to have had its walls forever hung with the pictures of one
master. Had he painted them, inside and out, when such an enemy as
Napoleon came along, with his love of art, and his fashion of taking
all that he saw to Paris, he would likely enough have camped outside
the walls while he decided what part of the gallery he would transfer
to the Louvre.
One of the reasons that Ghirlandajo is famous is that he often chose
well known personages for his models, and as he painted just what he
saw, did not idealise his subject, he gave to the world amazing
portraits, as well as fine paintings. The same thing was done by
painters of a far different school, at another period. The Dutch and
Flemish painters were in the habit of using their neighbours as
models.
Ghirlandajo is classed among religious painters, but let us compare
some of his "religious" paintings with those of Raphael or Murillo,
and see the result.
He painted seven frescos on the walls of the Santa Maria Novella in
Florence, all scenes of Biblical history, as Ghirlandajo imagined
them. They show him to have been a fine artist, but to have had not
much idea of history, and to have had little sense of fitness.
Ghirlandajo's seven subjects are taken from legends of the Virgin, and
the greatest represents Mary's visit to Elizabeth; it is called "The
Visitation," and it is a fresco about eighteen feet long painted on
the choir wall.
Let us imagine the possible scene. The Virgin Mary came from Cana, a
little town in Galilee placed in the hills about nine miles from
Nazareth, the home of the lowliest and the poorest, of a kindly
pastoral people living in the open air, needing and wanting very
little, simple in their habits. Elizabeth, Mary's old cousin, lived in
Judea, and St. Luke writes thus: "Mary arose in those days and went
into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judea; and entered
into the house of Zacharias" (Elizabeth's husband) "and saluted
Elizabeth."
This record had been made at least eleven hundred years before
Ghirlandajo painted in the Santa Maria Novella, and from it one cannot
imagine that Mary made any preparation for her journey, nor does it
suggest that Elizabeth had any chance to arrange a reception for
her. Even had she done so, it must have been of the simplest
description, at that time among those people. One can imagine a lowly
home; an aged woman coming out to meet her young relative either at
her door or in the high road.
There may have been surroundings of fruit and flowers, a stretch of
highroad or a hospitable doorway; but the wildest imagination could
not picture what Ghirlandajo did.
He paints Elizabeth flanked with handmaidens, as if she were some
royal personage, instead of a priest's wife in fairly comfortable
circumstances where comfort was easily obtained. Mary appears to be
escorted by ladies-in-waiting, hardly a likely circumstance since she
was affianced to no richer or more important person than a carpenter
of Galilee. Possibly the three ladies that stand behind Mary in, the
picture are merely lookers-on, but in that case the visit of Mary
would seem to have been of public importance, especially as there are
youths near by who are also much interested in one woman's hasty visit
to another. The rich brocades worn by Elizabeth's waiting ladies are
splendid indeed and the landscape is fine--a rich Italian landscape
with architecture of the most up-to-date sort--showing, in short, that
the artist lacked historical imagination. He found some models, made a
purely decorative painting with an Italian setting and called it "The
Visitation." The doorway on the right is distinctly renaissance.
Such a painting as this is not "religious," nor is it historic, nor
does it suggest a subject; it is merely a fine picture better coloured
than most of those of the Florentine school. There is another painting
of this same subject by Ghirlandajo in the Louvre, but it is no nearer
truth than the one in the Santa Maria.
Ghirlandajo painted other than religious subjects, and one of them, at
least, is quite repulsive. It is the picture of an old man, with a
beautiful little child embracing him. The old man may have tenderness
and love in his face, but his heavy features, his warty nose, do not
make one think of pleasant things and one does not care to imagine the
dear little child kissing the grotesque old fellow.
It was before Ghirlandajo's time that another painter had discovered
the use of oil in mixing paints. Previously colours had been mixed in
water with some gelatinous substance, such as the white and yolk of an
egg, to give the paint a proper texture or consistency. This
preparation was called "distemper," and frescoes were made by using
this upon plaster while it was still wet. Plaster and colours dried
together, and the painting became a part of the wall, not to be
removed except by taking the plaster with it.
The different gluey substances used had often the effect of making the
colours lose their tone and they presented a glazed surface when used
upon wood, a favourite material with artists.
There are numberless anecdotes written of this artist and his brother,
and one of these shows he had a temper. The brothers were engaged in a
monastery at Passignano painting a picture of the "Last Supper." While
at work upon it, they lived in the house. The coarse fare did not suit
Ghirlandajo, and one night he could endure it no longer. Springing
from his seat in the refectory he flung the soup all over the monk who
had served it, and taking a great loaf of bread he beat him with it so
hard that the poor monk was carried to his cell, nearly dead. The
abbot had gone to bed, but hearing the rumpus he thought it was
nothing less than the roof falling in, and he hurried to the room
where he found the brothers still raging over their dinner. David
shouted out to him, when the abbot tried to reprove the artist, that
his brother was worth more than any "pig of an abbot who ever lived!"
It is recorded in the documents found in the Confraternity of St. Paul
that:
Domenico de Ghurrado Bighordi, painter, called del Grillandaio, died
on Saturday morning, on the 11th day of January, 1493 (o.s.), of a
pestilential fever, and the overseers allowed no one to see the dead
man, and would not have him buried by day. So he was buried, in Santa
Maria Novella, on Saturday night after sunset, and may God forgive
him! This was a very great loss for he was highly esteemed for his
many qualities, and is universally lamented.
The artist left nine children behind him.
Ghirlandajo's pictures may be found in the Louvre, the Berlin Museum,
the Dresden, Munich, and London galleries. Most children will find it
hard to see their beauty.
Great men are likely to come in groups, and with Ghirlandajo there are
associated Botticelli and Fra Filippo Lippi.
PLATE--PORTRAIT OF GIOVANNA DEGLI ALBIZI
This lovely lady was the wife of one of the painter's patrons,
Giovanni Tornabuoni, through whom he received the commission for a
series of frescoes in the choir of the Santa Maria Novella,
Florence. The subjects chosen were sacred, but since Ghirlandajo, no
more than his neighbours, knew what the Virgin or her contemporaries
looked like, he saw no reason why he should not compliment some of the
great ones of his own city and his own time by painting them in to
represent the different characters of Holy Writ. So, as one of the
ladies attendant upon Elizabeth when Mary comes to visit her, we have
this signora of the fifteenth century. The artist made another picture
of her, the one here shown, but in the same dress and posed the same
as she had been for the church fresco. This accounts for its dignity
and simplicity. It would seem like a bas-relief cut out of marble were
it not for its wonderful colouring. It is in the Rudolf Kann
Collection, Paris. This artist's other pictures are "Adoration of the
Shepherds," "Adoration of the Magi," "Madonna and Child with Saints,"
"Three Saints and God the Father," "Coronation of the Virgin," and
"Portrait of Old Man and Boy."
XVIII
GIOTTO (DI BORDONE)
(Pronounced Jot-to)
_Florentine School_
1276-1337
_Pupil of Cimabue_
Giotto painted upon wood, and in "distemper"--the mixture of colour
with egg or some other jelly-like substance. We know nothing of his
childhood except that he was a shepherd, as we learn from a story told
of him and his teacher, Cimabue.
The story runs that one day while Giotto was watching his sheep, high
up on a mountain, Cimabue was walking abroad to study nature, and he
ran across a shepherd boy who was drawing the figure of a sheep, with
a piece of slate upon a stone. In those days we can imagine how rare
it was to find one who could draw anything, ever so rudely.
Immediately Cimabue saw a chance to make an artist and he asked the
little shepherd if he would like to be taught art in his studio.
Giotto was overjoyed at the opportunity, and at once he left the
mountains for the town, the shepherd's crook for the brush.
In those days the studio of one like Cimabue was really a workshop.
Artists had to grind their own colours, prepare their own panels upon
which to paint, and do a hundred other things of a workman rather than
an artist kind in connection with their painting. Such a studio was
crowded with apprentices--boys who did these jobs while learning from
the master. Their teaching consisted in watching the artist and now
and then receiving advice from him.
It was into such a shop as this, in Florence, that Giotto went, and
soon he was to become greater than his master. Even so, we cannot
think him great, excepting for his time, because his pictures,
compared with later art, are crude, stiff, and strange.
No pupil was permitted to use a brush till he had learned all the
craft of colour grinding and the like, and this was supposed to take
about six years. These workshops were likely to be dull, gloomy
places, and only a strong desire to do such things as they saw their
master doing, would induce a boy to persevere through the first
drudgery of the work. Giotto persevered, and not only became an
original painter, at a time when even Cimabue hardly made figures
appear human in outline, but he designed the great Campanile in
Florence, and he saw it partly finished before he died. The Campanile
is a wonder of architecture, but Giotto's Madonnas had to be improved
upon, as certainly as he had improved upon those of Cimabue.
There are many amusing stories of Giotto, mainly telling of his good
nature, and his ugly appearance, which everyone forgot in appreciation
of his truly kind heart. Once a visit was made to his studio by the
King of Naples, after the artist had become famous. Giotto was
painting busily, though the day was very hot. The King entered, and
bade Giotto not to be disturbed but to continue his work, adding:
"Still, if I were you, I should not paint in such hot weather." Giotto
looked up with a laugh in his eye: "Neither would I--if I were you,
Sire!" he answered.
There is a famous saying: "As round as Giotto's "O," and this is how
it came about. The pope wanted the best of the Florentine artists to
do some work in Rome for him and he sent out to them for examples of
their work. When the pope's messenger came to Giotto the artist was
very busy. When asked for some of his work to show the pope, he
paused, snatched a piece of paper and with the brush he had been
using, which was full of red paint, he hurriedly drew a circle and
gave it to the messenger who stared at him.
"But--is this _all_?" he asked.
"All--yes--and too much. Put it with the others." This perfect circle
and the account the messenger gave of his visit so delighted the pope
that Giotto was chosen from all the Florentine artists to decorate the
Roman buildings.
Thus Giotto worked till he was fifty-seven or eight years old when he
put aside his brush and turned to sculpture and architecture. Meantime
he had far outstripped his master in art. The arrangement of the
groups is about the same, but the figures look human and the draperies
are more natural, while he gives the appearance of length, breadth,
and thickness to his thrones and enclosures. We shall not choose a
Madonna for illustration, but another of Giotto's masterpieces,
remembering that good as he was in his time, he seems amazingly bad
compared with those who came after him.
PLATE--THE MEETING OF ST. JOHN AND ST. ANNA AT JERUSALEM.
In 1303 a certain Enrico Scrovegno had a private chapel built in the
Arena at Padua and he sent for Giotto to come there and adorn the
whole of its walls and ceiling with frescoes. These remain, though the
chapel is now emptied of all else, and they suffice to bring scores of
art-lovers to Padua. The picture here reproduced represents the
meeting and reconciliation between the father and mother of the Virgin
before her birth. The peculiarly shaped eyes and eyebrows that Giotto
gives to all his characters are specially noteworthy here as in every
one of the thirty-eight frescoes. There are three rows of pictures,
one above the other and in them are portrayed the principal scenes in
the lives of Christ and the Virgin. The painter here reached his
high-water mark, showed the very best he could produce in sincere,
restrained art.
XIX
FRANZ HALS
_Dutch School_
1580-04-1666
_Pupil of Karel Van Mander_
Franz Hals belonged to a family which for two hundred years had been
highly respected in Haarlem in the Netherlands. The father of the
painter left that town for political reasons in 1579, and it was at
Antwerp that Franz was born sometime between that date and 1585. His
parents took him back to Haarlem as an infant, and that is the town
with which his name and fame are most closely associated.
Little is known of his early life except that he began his studies
with Karel Van Mander and Cornelis Cornelissen. What we know of his
family life is not to his credit. In the parish register of 1611 is
recorded the birth of a son to Franz Hals and five years later he is
on the public records for abusing his wife, who died shortly
afterward. He married again within a year and the second wife bore him
many children and survived him ten years. Five of his seven sons
became painters.
Franz Hals drank too much and mixed too freely with the kind of
disreputable people he loved to paint, but he never became so degraded
that his hand lost its cunning, or his eye its keen vision for that
which he wished to portray. In 1644, he was made a director of the
Guild of St. Lucas, an institution for the protection of arts and
crafts in Haarlem, but from that time onward he sank in popular
esteem, deservedly. He fell into debt, then into pauperism, and when
he died, about the age of eighty-six, he was buried at public expense
in the choir of St. Bavon Church in Haarlem.
It was in the year 1616 that Hals first became known as a master of
his art by the painting of the St. Jovis Shooting Company, one of the
clubs composed of volunteers banded together for the defence of the
town should occasion arise. Such guilds were common throughout
Holland, and they became a favourite subject with Hals, as with other
painters of the time, who vied with one another in portraiture of the
different members. These groups were hung upon the walls of the
chambers where meetings were held for social purposes in times of
peace. The men of highest rank are always given the most conspicuous
places in the pictures. The flag is generally the one bit of gorgeous
colour in the scene; but Franz Hals seized the opportunity to show his
wonderful skill in detail while painting the cuffs and ruffs worn by
these grandees. In all his work there is an impression of strength
rather than of beauty; it is the charm of expressiveness he is aiming
at, rather than the charm of grace and colour to which the Italian
school was devoted. He differed from that school, also, in his choice
of subjects, for he was distinctly and almost entirely a portrait
painter, and within his own limited range he is unsurpassed. A
wonderful collection of his works is to be seen in the Haarlem Town
Hall.
PLATE--THE NURSE AND THE CHILD
Considering the woeful life that Franz Hals led, it is amazing to
think that he of all artists is the best painter of good humour. He
puts a smile on the face of nearly every one of his "leading
characters," whether it be a modest young girl, a hideous old woman, a
strolling musician, or a riotous soldier, and in every case the laugh
suits the subject. It may have been his own easygoing shiftlessness,
his way of casting care aside with a jest that enabled him to live so
long and to accomplish so much in spite of his poverty and other
misfortunes.
The roguish look upon the face of this baby of the house of Ilpenstein
makes it appear older than the pleasant faced nurse. The dress of the
child is such as Hals delighted to spend his talents upon. The picture
is in the Berlin Gallery.
Among his best known paintings are "The Laughing Cavalier," "The
Fool," "The Man with the Sword," and "Hille Bobbe. the Witch of
Haarlem."
XX
MEYNDERT HOBBEMA
_Dutch School_
1637-1709
_Pupil of Jacob van Ruisdael_
When a man becomes famous many people claim his acquaintance, and
often many places his birthplace. In Hobbema's case it has never been
decided whether he was born in the little town of Koeverdam, or in the
city of Haarlem or in Amsterdam. Nor is it quite certain when he was
born; but what he did afterward, we are all acquainted with.
No one knows much about the life of this artist, but his master was
doubtless his uncle, van Ruisdael. Hobbema was dead a hundred years
before the world acknowledged his genius, thus he reaped no reward for
hard work and ambition. He, like Rembrandt, died in great poverty, and
with nearly the same surroundings. Rembrandt died forsaken in
Roosegraft Street, Amsterdam, and Hobbema died in the same
locality. We must speak chiefly about his work, since we know little
of his personality or affairs.
If Böcklin's pictures seem to be composed of vertical lines, Hobbema's
are as startling in their positive vertical and horizontal lines
combined. We are not likely to find elevations or gentle, gradual
depressions in his landscapes, but straight horizons, long trunked,
straight limbed trees; and the landscape seems to be punctured here
and there by an upright house or a spire. It is startlingly beautiful,
and so characteristic that after seeing one or two of Hobbema's
pictures we are likely to know his work again wherever we may find it.
Hobbema got at the soul of a landscape. It was as if one painted a
face that was dear to one, and not only made it a good likeness but
also painted the person as one felt him to be--all the tenderness, or
maybe all the sternness.
It may be that Hobbema's failure to get money and honours, or at the
very least, kind recognition as a great artist, while he lived,
influenced his painting, and made him see mostly the sad side of
beauty, nor it is certain that his landscapes give one a strange
feeling of sadness and desolation, even when he paints a scene of
plenty and fulness.
The French have made a phrase for his kind of work, _paysage
intime_--meaning the beloved country--the one best known. It is a fine
phrase, and it was first used to describe Rousseau's and Corot's work;
but it especially applies to Hobbema's.