sent to paint another--Anne of Cleves--that Henry might see what he
thought of her before he undertook to make her his queen. Holbein did
a disastrous deed, for he made Anne a very acceptable looking woman,
(the portrait hangs in the Louvre) and Henry negotiated for her on the
strength of that portrait. Later, when he saw her, he was utterly
disgusted and disappointed.
Holbein, notwithstanding this trick, was employed to paint the next
wife of Henry, and doubtless he also made the miniature of Catherine
Howard which is in Windsor Castle. Holbein finally died of the plague
and no one knows where he was buried. His wife died later, and it was
left for his son, Philip, who was said to be "a good well-behaved
lad," to bring honours to the family. He was apprenticed in Paris,
and, settling later in Augsburg, he founded a branch of the Holbein
family on which the Emperor Matthias conferred a patent of nobility,
making them the Holbeins of Holbeinsberg.
PLATE--ROBERT CHESEMAN WITH HIS FALCON
This is one of the best of the many splendid portraits Holbein
painted. It hangs in The Hague gallery. The gentleman was forty-eight
years old and in the portrait he wears a purplish-red doublet of silk
and a black overcoat, which was the fashion of the day, all trimmed
with fur. He has curly hair, just turning gray. His left hand is
gloved and on it he holds his falcon, while with the other hand he
strokes its feathers.
Of all sports at that time, falconry was the most fashionable and
every fine gentleman had his sporting birds. Robert Cheseman lived in
Essex. He was rich and a leader in English politics. His father was
"keeper of the wardrobe to Henry VIII." and he himself served in many
public offices. He was one of the gentleman chosen to welcome Anne of
Cleves when she landed on English soil to marry Henry VIII. These
details were first published by Mr. Arthur Chamberlain and are taken
from his sketch of Holbein and his works.
Among Holbein's other famous pictures are: "The Ambassadors," "Hans of
Antwerp," "Christina of Denmark," "Jane Seymour," "Anne of Cleves,"
and "St. George and the Dragon."
XXIII
WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT
_English (Pre-Raphaelite) School_
1827--
_Pupil of Academy School_
The story of the Pre-Raphaelites is all by itself a story of
art. Holman Hunt was one of three who formed this "brotherhood"; and
he, with one other, are the only ones whom some of us think worthy of
giving a place in art. This is to be the story of the brotherhood
rather than a story of one man.
The last great artist England had had before this extraordinary group,
was J. M. W. Turner, truly a wonderful man, but after him England's
painters became more and more commonplace, drawing further and further
away from truth, There was one, J. F. Lewis, who went away to Syria
and lived a lonely and studious life, trying to paint with fidelity
sacred scenes, but he was not great enough to do what his conscience
and desires demanded of him; and, finally, Constable declared that the
end of art in England had come. But it had not, for up in London, in
the very heart of the city, in Cheapside (Wood Street) there was born,
in April, 1827, a child destined to be a brilliant and wonderful man,
who was actually to rescue English art from death. Many do not think
thus, but enough of us do to warrant the statement.
The new artist was Holman Hunt. He was the son of a London
warehouseman, with no inclination whatever for learning, so that it
seemed simply a waste of time to send him to school. This continually
repeated history of artists who seem to know nothing outside their
brushes and colours, is astonishing, but it is true that artists for
the most part must be regarded as artists, pure and simple, and not as
men of even reasonably good intellectual attainments, and more or less
this accounts for their low estate centuries ago. One does not
associate "learning" and the artist. When we have such splendid
examples as Dürer and two or three others we discuss their
intellectuality because they are so unusual.
Holman Hunt was like most of his brother artists in all but his
art. He hated school and at twelve years of age was taken from it. His
father wanted him to become a warehouse merchant like himself, and he
began life as clerk or apprentice to an auctioneer. He next went into
the employment of some calico-printers of Manchester. The designing of
calicoes can hardly be called art, even if the department of design
had fallen to Holman Hunt's lot and we have no evidence that it did,
but he started to be an artist nevertheless, there in the
print-shop. He found in his new place another clerk who cared for art;
and this sympathy encouraged him to fix his mind upon painting more
than ever. He used to draw such natural flies upon the window panes
that his employer tried one day to "shoo away a whole colony of flies
that seemed miraculously to have settled." This gave the clerks much
amusement, and also attracted attention to Holman Hunt's genius.
His very small salary was spent, not on his support, but in lessons
from a portrait painter of the city. His parents did not like this,
but they could not help themselves, and thus this greatest of the
Pre-Raphaelites began his work.
The Pre-Raphaelites were a little group of men who believed that
artists were drawing too much on their imaginations, not painting
things as they saw them, and that the painter had become incapable of
close observation. He worked in his studio, did not get near enough to
nature, and instead of trying to follow along this line, this group of
men, with their new and partly correct ideas, meant to go back further
than the great masters themselves and present an elemental art. This
was a part of their scheme and partly it was justified, but of all the
men who undertook to make a new school, Holman Hunt was the only one
who remained, and will remain forever, a representative. He alone
stuck to the original purpose of the group and developed it into a
truly great school; so that it is he alone we need to know.
After he began to take lessons of the portrait painter in London, he
developed so quickly that he found by painting portraits three days a
week, he could pay his own expenses, and the rest of the time he
devoted to study. He tried to be admitted to the Academy schools twice
and was twice refused before they would receive him.
It was there in the Academy the three original Pre-Raphaelites met for
the first time; they were Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and
Millais. After entering the school Hunt painted and sold four
excellent pictures, but they all seem to have been lost; nobody can
trace them. He was not yet a "Pre-Raphaelite."
All this time Hunt was half ill because he knew that he was grieving
his father of whom he was devotedly fond, and the strain of trying to
work while he was unhappy nearly destroyed him. The pictures that he
exhibited at the Royal Academy were so poor that the commission
declared they should not only be removed but that Hunt ought really to
be forbidden to exhibit any more. This must have been a great blow to
the young and struggling artist, and to add to this trouble, his
father was being jeered at for having such a good-for-nothing
son. Hunt's pictures in the Academy were so much despised that his
father was told his son was a disgrace to him, and we may be sure that
did not help the young fellow, who meantime was earning a living, not
by painting pictures, but by cleaning up those of another man. Dyce,
who had painted on the walls of Trinity House, engaged him to clean
and restore those paintings, and Hunt was doing this for his bread and
butter.
At that time he became so downhearted and discouraged that he almost
decided to leave England altogether and go to live in Canada away from
his friends who jeered, and his family who reproached him; but just
then Millais, one of the successful painters whom he had met in the
Academy school, who could afford to be generous, came to Hunt's aid
and gave him the means of living while he painted "The Hireling
Shepherd." This was destined to be the turning point in Hunt's luck,
for that painting was properly hung at the exhibition, and it received
recognition. After that he painted a picture which he sold on the
installment plan--being paid by the purchaser so much a month.
Meantime he owed his landlady a large sum, and he says himself that he
"suffered almost unbearable pain at passing her and her husband week
after week without being able to even talk of annulling his debts." In
time he not only settled that bill which distressed him, but paid back
his friend Millais the money loaned by him.
Hunt rarely took a commission, because to do so meant that he must
paint a picture after the manner his employer wished, and Hunt had
certain ideas of art in which he believed and therefore would not bind
himself to depart from them; but after a little success, which enabled
him to pay his bills, he did undertake a commission from Sir Thomas
Fairbairn, and it was called "The Awakened Conscience." He finished
this picture on a January day late in the afternoon, and that very
night he left England, setting out upon a longed-for journey to the
Holy Land, where he meant to study the country and people till he
believed himself able to paint a truthful picture of sacred scenes. He
refused to paint pictures of Eastern Jews who should look like
Parisians, with Venetian backgrounds. He meant to paint Oriental
scenes as nearly as he could, as they might have taken place.
He came back to his English home just two years and one month from the
time he had left it, and he brought back a picture of the goat upon
which the Jews loaded their sins and then turned loose in waste-places
to wander and die. "The Scapegoat" was a great picture, but before he
left England he had painted a greater--the one we see here--"The Light
of the World."
He had depended upon the sale of the "Scapegoat" to pay his way for a
time after his return home, and alas, it did not sell. More than that,
his beloved father died and this added to his sense of desolation, for
he had not been sufficiently successful before his death to justify
himself in his father's eyes. These things so overwhelmed his
sensitive mind with trouble, that his condition became very serious,
and if certain good friends had not stood by him loyally, he would
probably never have painted again.
He began at last another ambitious picture--"Finding of Christ in the
Temple"--but while he was engaged upon this, he had to paint mere
pot-boilers also in order to get on at all, and he says that half the
time the great picture "stood with its face to the wall" while he was
trying merely to earn bread and butter. The wonderful Louis Blanc
tried once to plan a way by which all deserving people should have in
this world equal opportunity to try. This has never been "worked out."
It never will be, but Holman Hunt reminds us how much the world loses
by not providing that "equal opportunity." No one deserves more than
his chance; but such struggles of genius tell us that all is not fair.
Hunt persevered with this Christ in the Temple and when finished he
sold it for 5,500 guineas--a larger sum than he had ever before been
given for a painting.
He no sooner received his money for this great picture than off he
went once more to the Holy Land. He was conscientious in everything he
did, and never before had an artist painted scenes of Christ that
carried such a sense of truth with them. The set haloes seen about the
heads of the saints and of holy people even in Raphael's pictures and
in those of the very greatest artists of his time, disappeared with
Holman Hunt's coming. In the "Light of the World," the halo is an
accident--the great white moon, happening to rise behind the Christ's
head--and there we have the halo, simple, natural, only suggestive,
not artificial. Then, too, in the "Shadow of Death," there is a
menacing shadow of the cross--made upon the wall by Christ's body, as
he naturally stretches out his arms, after his work in the carpenter
shop.
There is not one false note that shocks us, or makes us feel that
after all the story itself is affected and artificial. Everything that
is symbolical is brought about naturally. They are sincere, truthful
pictures that speak to the mind as well as to the eye.
Hunt's colouring and many other technical matters are often far from
perfect, but there is something besides technicality to be considered
in judging a picture.
For a time, while the three men, Hunt, Rossetti, and Millais, kept
together, their pictures were signed P. R. B., as a sign of their
league; but this did not last very long, and afterward Hunt signed his
pictures independently.
After the "Brotherhood" had worked against the greatest
discouragements for a long time, and felt nearly hopeless of success,
John Ruskin, one of the greatest of critics and most fearless of men,
who was so much respected that his words had great influence, suddenly
published a defence of these Pre-Raphaelites. He declared that they
were the greatest artists of the time, and while scorning their
critics he applauded those three young men, till he turned the tide,
and everybody began to know what truly brilliant work they were
doing. Ruskin's words came, Hunt said, "as thunder out of a clear
sky."
When the "Brotherhood" was formed the three young men thought they
should have a paper--a periodical of some sort, in which they might
tell of their purposes and express their ideas; and so Rossetti, who
wrote as well as painted, proposed that they print such a periodical
once a month, and call it the _Germ_; and the P. R. B's. were to be
joint proprietors. Rossetti had first thought of a different title,
_Thoughts Toward Nature_, and his brother, W. M. Rossetti, who was
going to take charge of the monthly, thought that expressed the
Pre-Raphaelites' idea; but it was finally agreed to call it the
_Germ_. Only two numbers could be published by the Pre-Raphaelites,
because nobody bought it and the young men's money gave out, but the
printers came to the rescue, and put up the money to issue two or
three more _Germs_.
Although that journal failed utterly, its four numbers were worth
publishing, and are to-day worth reading. They were truly valuable,
for they contained a story and poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, besides
work of the other P. R. B's.
Above all things Hunt was conscientious in his work, trying with all
his might to represent things as be believed them to be. When he made
his "Scapegoat," he went to the shores of the Dead Sea to paint,
accompanied only by Arab guides, and there he found the desolate, hard
landscape for his picture. The hardships he experienced were very
many. The wretched goat he took with him died in the desert of that
dreary place after it had been no more than sketched in, but back in
Jerusalem Hunt finished the goat. Ruskin's description of the picture
helps one to feel all the desolation of the subject: "The salt sand of
the wilderness of Ziph, where the weary goat is dying. The
neighbourhood is stagnant and pestiferous, polluted by the decaying
vegetables brought down by the Jordan in its floods, and the bones of
the beasts of burden that have died by the way of the sea, lie like
wrecks upon its edge, bared by the vultures and bleached by the salt
ooze."
Even the superstitious Arabs would not go near the spot which Hunt
chose as the scene of his picture, but Hunt endured all things,
believing it due to his art.
When he painted "Christ in the Temple," he needed Jewish models, and
it was almost impossible for him to get them. He could not let them
know what they were to represent, or they would not have sat for him
at all but he succeeded in painting the "first Semitic presentment of
the Semitic Scriptures." In Jerusalem the Jews heard that he had come
"to traffic with the souls of the faithful," and they forbade him to
have any Jews come into his studio; so that he could not finish the
picture there. Back in London he had to find his models in the Jewish
school. He left the figures of Christ and the Virgin till the last and
then painted them "from a lady of the ancient race, distinguished
alike for her amiability and beauty, and a lad in one of the Jewish
schools, to which the husband of the lady furnished a friendly
introduction."
Thus, step by step, through the greatest difficulties, Holman Hunt
established a new school of painting--allegory with a modern treatment
which all could understand.
PLATE--THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD
This is the most popular picture of a sacred subject, ever painted;
and John Ruskin's description of it, here quoted, is the best ever
written or that can be written. "On the left of the picture is seen
the door of the human soul. It is fast barred, its bars and nails are
rusty; it is knitted and bound to its stanchions by creeping tendrils
of ivy, showing that it has never been opened. A bat hovers over it;
its threshold is overgrown with brambles, nettles and fruitless
corn.... Christ approaches in the night time, ... he wears the white
robe, representing the power of the Spirit upon Him; the jewelled robe
and breastplate, representing the sacredotal investitude; the rayed
crown of gold, interwoven with the crown of thorns; not dead thorns,
but now bearing soft leaves, for the healing of the nations.... The
lantern carried in Christ's left hand is the light of conscience....
Its fire is red and fierce; it falls only on the closed door, on the
weeds that encumber it, and on an apple shaken from one of the trees
of the orchard, thus marking that the entire awakening of the
conscience is not to one's own guilt alone, but to the guilt of the
world, or, 'hereditary guilt.'...
"This light is suspended by a chain, wrapt around the wrist of the
figure, showing that the light which reveals sin to the sinner appears
also to chain the hand of Christ. The light which proceeds from the
head of the figure--is that of the hope of salvation; it springs from
the crown of thorns, and, though itself sad, subdued and full of
softness, is yet so powerful, that it entirely melts into the glow of
it the forms of the leaves and boughs which it crosses, showing that
every earthly object must be hidden by this light, where its sphere
extends."
If you will study every detail of this reproduction, finding all the
objects--the apple, the rusty bolts--noting how the full risen moon
has formed a natural nimbus for the sacred head, and then re-read what
Ruskin has said, you will discover the rarest truths in Holman Hunt's
picture. The several pictures which he painted, but which cannot now
be found are: "Hark!" which was first exhibited in the Royal Academy;
"Scene from Woodstock," "The Eve of St. Agnes," "Jerusalem by
Moonlight," "The King of Hearts," "Moonlight at Salerno," "Interior of
the Mosque of Omar," "The Pathless Water," "Winter," "Afternoon,"
"Sussex Downs," "Penzance," "The Archipelago," "Will-o'-the-Wisp,"
"Ivybridge," "The Foal of an Ass," "Road over the Downs," "The Haunt
of the Gazelle," "'Oh, Pearl,' Quoth I," "Miss Flamborough," "The
School-girl's Hymn." Portraits: Mr. Martineau; Mr. J. B. Brice. Small
sketch of the "Scapegoat," "Sunset on the Sea," "Morning Prayer,"
"Bianca," "Past and Present," and "Dead Mallard."
Should you ever find one of these pictures bearing the initials
P. R. B. or those of Holman Hunt, you will have made an interesting
discovery and should make it known to others.
XXIV
GEORGE INNESS
_American_
1825-1897
_Pupil of Regis Gignoux_
George Inness was destined to keep a grocery store as his father had
kept one before him, and had grown rich in it. When George was a young
man he was given a grocery store in Newark, New Jersey, a very small
store indeed, and it is not surprising that the young man preferred
art to butter and eggs. The Inness family had just moved from Newburg,
probably the elder Innes seeking in Newark a good location for his
son's beginning.
The first art-work Inness did was engraving; as he had been
apprenticed to that business, but afterward he studied with Gignoux, a
pupil of Delaroche.
At that time there was what is known as the Hudson River School. Its
ideas were set and formal, and not very inspiring, aside from the
subjects treated. Church was then a young man like Inness, and he was
studying in the Hudson River School, but the young grocer struck out a
line for himself.
He was forty years old before he got to Paris, but once there, he
turned to the men at Barbizon--Rousseau, Millet, Corot, and the
rest--for inspiration, and began to do beautiful things
indeed. Rousseau became his friend, and the art of Inness grew large
and rich through such influences.
Inness had inherited much religious feeling from his Scotch ancestors,
and all his work was conscientious, very carefully done.
When Inness returned from Paris he was not yet well known. He went to
Montclair, New Jersey, to live and it was there that he did his best
work. Finally, after he was fifty years old, he became known as a
truly splendid painter. He loved best to paint quiet scenes of
morning, evening sunset, and the like. His pictures began to gain
value, and one that he had sold for three hundred dollars jumped in
price to ten thousand and more. His work is not equally good, because
his moods greatly influenced him.
PLATE--BERKSHIRE HILLS
This picture in the George A. Hearn collection is full of the sense of
restfulness that the works of this artist always convey. The trees are
as motionless as the distant hills, and if the oxen are moving at all
it is but slowly.
Some other Inness paintings are the "Georgia Pines," "Sunset on the
Passaic," "The Wood Gatherers" and "After a Summer Shower."
XXV
SIR EDWIN HENRY LANDSEER
_English School_
1802-1873
_Pupil of his father, John Landseer_
It is pleasant to speak of one artist whose good work began in the
companionship of his father; the case of Edwin Landseer is most
unusual.
His father was a skilful engraver who loved art, and encouraged the
cultivation of it in his son, as other fathers of painters encouraged
them to become priests or haberdashers or bakers, as the case might
be. Little Landseer's beginning has been described by his father as he
and a friend stood looking upon one of the scenes of his childhood:
"These two fields were Edwin's first studio. Many a time have I lifted
him over this very stile. I then lived in Foley Street, and nearly all
the way between Marylebone and Hampstead was open fields. It was a
favourite walk with my boys; and one day when I had accompanied them,
Edwin stopped by this stile to admire some sheep and cows which were
quietly grazing. At his request I lifted him over, and finding a scrap
of paper and a pencil in my pocket, I made him sketch the cow. He was
very young indeed, then--not more than six or seven years old.
"After this we came on several occasions, and as he grew older this
was one of his favourite spots for sketching. He would start off
alone, or with John (Thomas?) or Charles, and remain till I fetched
him in the afternoon. I would then criticise his work, and make him
correct defects before we left the spot. Sometimes he would sketch in
one field, sometimes in the other, but generally in the one beyond the
old oak we see there, as it was more pleasant and sunny."
All the Landseer men were gifted, and the mother was the beautiful
woman whom Reynolds painted as a gleaner, carrying a bundle of wheat
upon her head.
There were seven little Landseers, the oldest of them being Thomas,
the famous engraver, whose reproduction of his brother's works will
preserve them to us always, even after the originals are gone. The
first of Edwin's drawings which seemed to his family worthy of
publishing was a great St. Bernard dog, such a wonderful performance
for a little fellow of thirteen that Thomas engraved it and
distributed it all over England. Little Edwin had seen this beautiful
dog one day in the streets of London in a servant's charge, and he was
so delighted with its beauty, that he followed the two home and asked
the dog's owner if he might sketch him. The St. Bernard was six feet
four inches long "and at the middle of his back, stood two feet seven
inches in height." A great critic said that this drawing was one of
the very finest that any master of art had ever made, though it was
done by a little child of thirteen years and it is also said that
Landseer himself never did anything better than that little-boy
work. A live dog who was let into the room with it--as critic,
maybe--proved to be the most flattering of such, because he bristled
instantly for a fight.