not a tragic number to him--he exhibited pictures in the Royal
Academy. These were a mule, and a dog with a puppy. In the stories of
"Famous Artists" we are told that he was a fine, manly little chap
with light curly hair and very well behaved. When he became a student
of the Academy the keeper, Fuseli, used to look about among the
students and cry: "Where is my little dog boy?" if Landseer was not in
his place. The little chap's favourite dog was his own Brutus, which
he painted lying at full length; and though the picture was small, it
sold for seventy guineas. This means an earning capacity indeed, for a
small boy.
When he was but seven years old he had made pictures of lions and
tigers, each with a different expression from the other and each with
a character of its own. Critics spoke specially of the tiger's
whiskers as "admirable in the rendering of foreshortened curves."
Tigers' whiskers were thought to be most difficult things to make, but
in Landseer's pictures, they were as "natural as life." The great
success of the artist's animal pictures was that he made them seem to
have human intelligence, and it was also said that if one only saw the
dog's collar, as Landseer painted it, he would know it to be the work
of a great artist, that a great dog-picture must be attached to it.
At least one of his pictures had a remarkable history. He had been
commissioned by the Hon. H. Pierrpont to paint a "white horse in a
stable." After the painting was ready for delivery it disappeared, and
for twenty-four years it could not be found. At last it was discovered
in a hay-loft! It had been stolen by a servant and hidden there. In
spite of the long years that had passed, Landseer sent it at once to
the man for whom it had been made, with the message that he had not
retouched it nor changed it in the least, "because," said he, "I
thought it better not to mingle the style of my youth with that of my
old age."
One of Landseer's early advisers had told him he must dissect animals
to get the proper effects in painting them, as it was necessary for
him to understand their construction. So, one time, when a famous old
lion died in the Exeter Exchange menagerie Landseer got its body and
dissected it, and immediately afterward he painted three great lion
pictures: "The Lion Disturbed at His Repast," "A Lion Enjoying His
Repast," and "A Prowling Lion."
Sir Walter Scott became so enchanted with Landseer's pictures that the
great novelist came to London to take the young artist to his home at
Abbotsford. "His dogs are the most magnificent things I ever saw,"
said Scott, "leaping and bounding and grinning all over the canvas."
Landseer lived in the centre of London till he was more than thirty
years old, and then, looking for more quiet and space he bought a very
small house and garden at No. 1, St. John's Wood. There was not much
room in the house but it had a stable attached which made a fine
studio, and there Landseer lived with a sister of his, for nearly
fifty years. When he first wished to rent the house, the landlord
asked him a hundred pounds premium which Landseer felt that he could
not pay and he was about to give it up, when a friend declared that if
the matter of money was all that prevented him, he was to rent it
immediately, and he could repay him as he chose. Landseer then took
the house, his friend paying down the premium, and Landseer returned
the money twenty-pounds at a time, till all the debt was paid.
Landseer made this a famous and hospitable house, and it is said that
more great people gathered under his roof than had ever gathered about
any other artist with the exception of Sir Joshua Reynolds. That was
the house in which Landseer's loving old father spent his last days
and finally died. A story is told of the witty D'Orsay, who would call
out at the door, when he went to visit the artist: "Landseer, keep de
dogs off me, I want to come in and some of dem will bite me--and dat
fellow in de corner is growling furiously."
On one of his several visits to Abbotsford, where he went many times
after his first invitation, to enjoy Scott's delightful hospitality,
he painted a famous dog of Sir Walter's called Maida, which died six
weeks afterward.
There are several such stories about dogs who died rather tragically
and were also painted by Landseer. The two King Charles spaniels which
he painted both died soon after sitting to the great painter. They had
been pets of Mr. Vernon, who commissioned the painting, and the white
Blenheim spaniel fell from a table and was killed, while the King
Charles fell through the railings of a staircase and was picked up
dead. The great bloodhound, Countess, belonging to Mr. Bell who gave
her picture to the Academy, was watching for her master's return one
dark night and when she heard the wheels of his carriage, then his
voice, she leaped from the balcony, but missed her footing and fell
nearly dead at Mr. Bell's feet. That gentleman loved the dog so much
that he was distracted, and taking her into his gig, knowing that she
must die, he raced in to London again that same night, and rousing Sir
Edwin, begged him to paint the dog before it was too late. Then and
there was the sketch of the dying animal made.
Sir Edwin Landseer was the most versatile and entertaining of
artists. He was a wit, and could also perform all sorts of sleight of
hand tricks, besides being so quick with his pencil that his doings
seemed miraculous. One evening, during a conversation with many
friends, someone declared that in point of time Sir Edwin could do a
record-sketch. One young woman spoke up and said: "There is one thing
that even he cannot do--he cannot make two different pictures at the
same time."
"Think not?" cried Sir Edwin. "Let us see!" Gaily taking two pencils,
he rapidly drew a stag's head with one hand and a horse's head with
the other.
Landseer became the guest of royalty, a favourite of Queen Victoria,
whose dog Dash was one of the many famous dogs painted by him. Dash
was the favourite spaniel of the Duchess of Kent, Victoria's mother;
and the Queen's biographer says that she too loved him very much. On
Coronation Day she had been away from him longer than usual, and when
the great state coach rolled up to the palace steps she could hear
Dash barking for her in the hall. "Oh," she exclaimed, "there's Dash,"
and throwing aside the ball and sceptre which she carried, she hurried
to change her fine robes, in order to wash the dog. This is a very
homelike and picturesque story, but it is possibly not true. Doubtless
the little Queen heard the dog bark--and was glad to see him.
At Windsor Landseer painted another royal dog, Islay, the pet terrier
of Victoria; also Dandie Dinmont, belonging to the Princess Alice;
then Eos, who was Prince Albert's--King Edward's--dog. All the last
years of Sir Edwin Landseer' life, the royal family were his devoted
and comforting friends. The painter suffered much and during his
visits to Balmoral he wrote to his sister how the Queen used to go
several times a day to his room, to look after his comfort and to
inquire about his condition. He wrote:
"The Queen kindly commands me to get well here. She has to-day been
twice to my room to show additions recently added to her already rich
collection of photographs. Why, I know not, but since I have been in
the High lands I have for the first time felt wretchedly weak, without
appetite. The easterly winds, and now again the unceasing cold rain,
may possibly account for my condition, but I can't get out. Drawing
tires me; however, I have done a little better to-day. The doctor
residing in the castle has taken me in hand, and gives me leave to
dine to-day with the Queen and the rest of the royal family....
Flogging would be mild compared with my sufferings. No sleep, fearful
cramp at night, accompanied by a feeling of faintness and distressful
feebleness."
When he was well, he was gay and cheerful; and Dickens, Thackeray, and
many other noted men were his friends. We are told that above all
things. Sir Edwin was a great mimic and that one night at dinner he
threw everybody into fits of laughter by imitating his friend the
sculptor Sir Francis Chantry. It was at the sculptor's table, where a
large party was assembled. Chantry called Sir Edwin's attention, when
the cloth was removed, to the reflection of light in the highly
polished table.
"Come here and sit in my place," said Chantry, "and see the
perspective you can get." Then he went and stood by the fire, while
Landseer sat in his place. Seated then in Chantry's chair, Landseer
called out in perfect imitation of his host: "Come, young man, you
think yourself ornamental; now make yourself useful, and ring the
bell." Chantry did so, and when the butler came in he was confused and
amazed to hear his master's voice from where Landseer sat in Chantry's
place at the table. The voice of his master from the head of the table
ordered claret, while his master really stood before the fire with his
hands under his coat-tails.
We are told that Landseer stood his pictures on their heads, or upon
one corner or looked at them from between his legs, any way, every
way, to get a complete view of them from all quarters. He went to bed
very late and got up very late, but in the mornings, while lying in
bed he mostly thought out the subjects of his pictures.
He was not much of a sportsman, preferring to paint animals rather
than to kill them, and one day when hunting, he saw a fine stag before
him. Instead of firing at it, he thrust his gun into a gillie's hands,
crying: "Hold that! hold that!" and whipping out his pencil and pad he
began to sketch the stag. Whereupon the gillies were disgusted that he
should miss so fine a shot, and they said something to each other in
Gaelic, which Sir Edwin must have understood, for he became very
angry.
"It was a pity," wrote one who knew all his qualities, "that Landseer,
who might have done so much for the good of the animal kind, never
wrote on the subject of their treatment. He had a strong feeling
against the way some dogs are tied up, only allowed their freedom now
and then. He used to say a man would fare better tied up than a dog,
because the former can take his coat off, but a dog lives in his
forever. He declared a tied-up dog, without daily exercise, goes mad,
or dies, in three years."
He had a wonderful power over dogs, and he told one lady it was
because he had "peeped into their hearts." A great mastiff rushed
delightedly upon him one day and someone remarked how the dog loved
him. "I never saw the dog before in my life," the artist said.
While teaching some horses tricks for Astley's, he showed his friends
some sugar in his hand and said: "Here is my whip." His studio was
full of pets, and one dog used as a model used to bring the master's
hat and lay it at his feet when he got tired of posing.
This charming man suffered a great deal before his death, and had
dreadful fits of depression. During one of these he wrote: "I have got
trouble enough; ten or twelve pictures about which I am tortured, and
a large national monument to complete." That monument was the one in
Trafalgar Square, for which he designed the lions at the base. "If I
am bothered about anything and everything, no matter what, I know my
head will not stand it much longer." Later he wrote: "My health (or
rather condition), is a mystery beyond human intelligence. I sleep
seven hours, and awake tired and jaded, and do not rally till after
luncheon. J. L. came down yesterday and did her best to cheer me... I
return to my own home in spite of kind invitations from Mr. and
Mrs. Gladstone to meet Princess Louise at breakfast." Of the many
anecdotes told of this great man, his introduction to the King of
Portugal furnishes the most amusing. "I am delighted to make your
acquaintance," the King said, "I am so fond of beasts."
Before he died he had made a large fortune from his work, and during
his illness he was tended most lovingly by his friends and sister. One
day, walking in his garden, much depressed, he said sadly: "I shall
never see the green leaves again," but he did live through other
seasons. He wished to die in his studio, and at one time when he was
much distracted the Queen wrote him not to fear, but to trust those
who were doing all they could for him, that her confidence in his
physicians and nurses was complete. At last with brother, sister,
friends and fortune about him the great animal painter died, and on
October 11, 1873, and was buried with great honours in St. Paul's
Cathedral.
PLATE--THE OLD SHEPHERD'S CHIEF MOURNER
Of all the dogs Landseer loved to paint, the sheep collie has the most
character; and here he shows us one expressing in every line of his
face and form the most profound grief. The Glengarry bonnet on the
floor beside the shepherd's staff, the spectacles lying on the Bible,
the ram's horn, the vacant chair, the black and white shawl known as a
"Shepherd's plaid"--all these things have failed to comfort this
humble follower. We can imagine him, not bounding ahead with a joyous
bark, but walking staidly behind the coffin when it is borne away and
laying himself down upon his master's grave, perhaps to die of
starvation, as some of his kind have been known to do. The painting is
one of the Sheepshanks Collection in the South Kensington Museum.
Among Landseer's other famous dog pictures are "Low Life and High
Life," "Dignity and Impudence" and "The Sleeping Bloodhound," all in
the National Gallery.
XXVI
CLAUDE LORRAIN (GELLEE)
_Classical French School_
1600-1689
_Pupil of Godfrey Wals_
Of all the contrasts between the early and later lives of great
artists, Claude Lorrain gives us the most complete.
He was born to make pastry. His family may have been all pastry cooks,
because people of Lorrain were famous for that work; anyway as a
little chap he was apprenticed to one. His parents were poor, lived in
the Duchy of Lorrain and from that political division the Artist was
named.
The town in which he was born was Chamagne, and his real name was
Gellée. As a pastry cook's apprentice he served his time, and then,
without any thought of becoming anything else in the world, he set off
with several other pastry cooks to go to Rome, where their talents
were to be well rewarded.
But how strangely things fall out! In Rome he was engaged to make
tarts for Agostine Tassi, a landscape painter. His work was not simply
to furnish his master with desserts, but to do general housekeeping,
and it fell to his lot to clean Tassi's paint brushes. So far as we
know, this was the first introduction of Claude Lorrain to art other
than culinary.
From cleaning brushes it was but a step to trying to use them upon
canvas, and Tassi being a good-natured man, began to give Lorrain
instruction, till the pastry cook became his master's assistant in the
studio. This led to a larger and larger life for the young Frenchman,
and he copied great masters, did original things, and finally in his
twenty-fifth year returned to France a full-fledged artist. He
remained there two years, and then went back to Italy, where he lived
till he died. The visit to France turned out fortunately because on
his way back he fell in with one of the original twelve members of the
French Academy, Charles Errard, who became the first director of the
Academy in Rome. A warm friendship sprang up between the men, and
Errard was very helpful to the young artist.
Nevertheless, Lorrain did not gain much fame till about his fortieth
year, when he was noticed by Cardinal Bentivoglio, and was given
certain commissions by him. He grew in Bentivoglio's favour so much
that the Cardinal introduced him to the pope. The Catholic Church set
the fashions in art, politics, and history of all sorts at that time,
so that Lorrain could not have had better luck than to become its
favourite. The pope was Urban VIII., whose main business was to hold
the power of the Church and make it stronger if he could, so that he
was continually building fortresses and other fortifications, and he
had use for artists and decorators. Lorrain's fame outlasted the life
of Urban VIII., and he became a favourite in turn with each of the
three succeeding popes. All this time he was doing fine work in Italy
and for Italy, besides receiving orders for pictures from France,
Holland, Germany, Spain, and England, for his fame had reached
throughout the world.
Besides leaving many paintings behind him when he died, he left half a
hundred etchings; also a more precise record of his work than most
artists have left. He executed two hundred sketches in pen or pencil,
washed in with brown or India ink, the high lights being brought out
with touches of white. On the backs of them the artist noted the date
on which the sketch was developed into a picture, and for whom the
latter was intended. The story is that his popularity produced many
imitators, and that he adopted this means to establish the identity of
his own work and distinguish it from the many copies made.
These sketches were collected in a volume by Lorrain and called "Liber
Veritatis," and for more than a hundred years the Dukes of Westminster
have owned this.
PLATE--ACIS AND GALATEA
This picture in the Dresden Gallery is a scene from the mythical story
of a goddess who fell in love with the youthful son of a faun and a
naiad. Thus she excited the jealous fury of the cyclops, Polythemus,
who is seen in the picture herding his flock of sheep upon the high
cliff at the right. Soon he will rise and hurl a rock upon Acis,
crushing the life out of him, so that there will be nothing left for
Galatea to do but to turn him into the River Acis, but meanwhile the
lovers are unconscious and happy. Venus is reposing near them on the
waves and Cupid is closer still, while the sea in the background seems
to be stirred with a fresh morning breeze.
Some of the famous Lorrains in the Louvre are: "Seaport at Sunset,"
"Cleopatra Landing at Tarsus," and "The Village Festival."
XXVII
MASACCIO (TOMMASO GUIDI)
(Pronounced Tome-mah'so Mah'sahch'cheeo)
_Florentine School_
1401-1428
_Pupil of Ghibertio, Donatello, and Brunellesco_
This artist, who lived and died within the century that witnessed the
discovery of America, was famous for more than his painting. He was
the original inventor who first learned and taught the mixing of
colours with oils, thus making the peculiar "distemper" unnecessary.
The story of Italian artists includes a history of their names, for
the Italians seem to have had most remarkable reasons for naming
children. For example, this artist, Masaccio, was born on St. Thomas's
day, hence, his name of Tommaso. Presently, for short, or for love, he
was called Maso, and to cap all, being a careless lad, his friends
added the derogatory "accio," and there we have the artist completely
named. He owed nothing of this to his father, who was plain, or
ornamentally, Ser Giovanni di Simone Guidi, of Castello San Giovanni,
in the Valdamo.
As a very little boy, it was plain to be seen that slovenly Thomas was
going to be a great artist, and no time was lost in putting him to
work with the best of masters.
He was a veritable inventive genius. Until his time difficulties in
drawing had been overcome mostly by ignoring them. Since no artist had
been able to draw a foreshortened foot, it had been the fashion in art
to paint people standing upon their tiptoes, to make it possible for
an artist to paint the foot. The enterprising Thomas came along and he
decided that feet must be painted both flat and crossed, on tiptoe or
otherwise; in short he did not mean to lose by a foot.
He worked at this problem day and night, till at last the naturally
poised foot came into existence for the artist. Never after Masaccio's
time did an artist paint the foot stretched upon the toes. Moreover,
until his time flesh had never been painted of a remotely natural
colour, so Masaccio set about combining colours till he made one that
had the tint of real flesh. Thus he was the first to overcome the
difficulties of drawing and the first to discover a mixture that would
not leave a glazed, hard, unnatural appearance and be likely to crack
and destroy the finest effort of an artist.
He worked during his youth in Pisa, where the "leaning tower" stands;
then he worked in Florence, finally in Rome, but those early pictures
are long since gone. It was a century of adventure and discovery as
well as of art, and with so much change, so many wars and rumours of
wars, many great art works were lost. Besides, the horrible plague
swept Italy east, west, north, and south. Who was to concern himself
with saving works of art, when human life was going out wholesale all
over the land?
Masaccio was certainly very poor most of his life. He lived with his
mother and his brother Giovanni, an artist like himself, but not
nearly so brilliant. Masaccio could not spend his life in painting but
had to eke out the family fortunes by keeping a little shop near the
old Badia, and being pestered day and night by his creditors he was
forced again and again to go to the pawn shop.
Somewhere about 1422, careless Thomas painted his greatest picture
which was doomed to destruction too early for us to know much about
it; but it was named "San Paolo" and it was painted in the bell-room
of the Church of the Carmine in Florence. The figure for his model was
an illustrious personage, Bartoli d'Angiolini, who had held many
honourable offices in Florence for many years. A critic and friend of
artists tells us that the portrait was so great it lacked only the
power of speech.
In this picture Masaccio made his first great triumph in the
foreshortening of feet.
He undertook to celebrate the consecration Of the Church of the
Carmine, and for this he made many frescoes, among which was a correct
painting of the procession as it entered from the cloisters of the
church. "Among the citizens who followed in its wake, portraits are
introduced of Brunellesco, Donatello, Masolino, Felice Brancacci (the
founder of the chapel) Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, and others,
including the porter of the convent with the key of the door in his
hand."
This work was thought to be very wonderful because the figures grew
smaller in the distance, thereby giving "perspective" for the first
time. Imagine how crude a thing was painting in the day of careless
Thomas.
That fresco is long since gone, but drawings of it still exist which
tell us something of the people of Christopher Columbus's
day--previous to their appearance, and their conditions.
After Masaccio had finished the procession he went back to his
painting of the chapel and in the end covered three of its four walls
with his works. Many of those paintings are scenes from the life of
St. Peter, and several were worked at by other artists than Masaccio.
Masaccio was greater than Raphael, greater than Michael Angelo in so
far as he pointed the way that they were to go, having solved for them
all the problems that had kept artists from being great before
him. Sir Joshua Reynolds says that "he appeared to be the first who
discovered the path that leads to every excellence to which the art
afterward arrived; and may therefore be justly considered one of the
great fathers of modern art."
The artist lived but a little time, and was most likely
poisoned. Nobody knows, but it is said that other painters were so
wildly jealous of his original genius that they wished him out of the
way, and his death was at least mysterious. He drew very rapidly and
let the details go, caring only to represent motion and
action. Because he painted so many portraits into his pictures there
was great life and animation in them, and people said of him that he
painted not only the body but the soul.
PLATE--ARTIST'S PORTRAIT [Footnote: Many artists have left us
portraits of themselves, painted, no doubt, with the aid of a
mirror, in a group or alone. This one of Masaccio in the Naples
Museum, shows him to have been a picturesque model.]
Some of his known pictures are the frescoes in the church of
St. Clemente in Rome; the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel in the
Church of the Carmine, "St. Peter Baptising" and the "Madonna and
Child, with St. Anne," which is in the Accademia at Florence.
XXVIII
JEAN LOUIS ERNEST MEISSONIER
(Pronounced May-sohn-yay)
_French School_
1815-1891
_Pupil of Léon Cogniet_