little, although he painted much, inexorably blotting out, no matter
after what expenditure of labor, the work that failed to respond to his
idea, and striving constantly to be simple, straightforward, and
impressive, without being vapid, arrogant, or dogmatic. He possessed in
large measure that rarest of gifts to genius--modesty--and approached
the secrets of nature and life more tremblingly as he passed from their
outer to their inner circles. It was a necessity of his peculiar feeling
and manner of study that he should develop a lingering, hesitating,
half-uncertain style of painting, which, however variously it may be
viewed by different minds, is undoubtedly of the utmost effectiveness in
describing the principles, rather than the facts, of nature and life.
This way of presenting his idea, which some call a "mannerism,"--a term
that has wrongly come to have a suggestion of contempt attached to
it,--was with him a principle, and employed by him as the one in which
he could best express truth. Art may justly claim great latitude in this
endeavor, and schools and systems arrogate too much when they seek to
define its limitations. Absolute truth to nature is impossible in art,
which is constrained to lie to the eye in order to satisfy the mind, and
continually transposes the harmonies of earth and sky into the minor
key. Fuller offended the senses often, but he touched that nerve-centre
in the heart, without which impressions are not truly recognized. He won
liking, rather than startled men into it, and his art, instead of
approaching, retired and beckoned. His figures never "came out of the
frame at you," as is the common expression of admiration nowadays. He
put everything at a distance, made it reposeful, and drew about figure
and landscape an atmosphere which not only made them beautiful, but
established a strange and reciprocal mood of sentiment between them. He
alone of all American painters filled the whole of his canvas with air;
others place a barrier to atmosphere in their middle distance, and it
comes no farther, but he brought it over to the nearest inch of
foreground. This treatment, while it aided the quietness and restful
mystery of his pictures, also strengthened his constant effort to avoid
marked contrasts. He sought always a general impression, and ruthlessly
sacrificed everything that called attention to itself at the expense of
the whole. Yet he was not a man of swift insight in comprehensive
matters, nor one who could be called clever. Weighty in thought as in
figure, he moved slowly and in long waves, and although of marked
quickness in intuition, he seemed to distrust this quality in himself
until he had proved it by reason. He received his motive as by a spark
quicker than the lightning's, and when he began a work saw its intention
clearly, although its form and details were wholly obscured. Out of a
mist of darkness he saw a face shine dimly with some light of joy or
sorrow that was in it, and at the moment caught its suggestion upon the
waiting canvas. Then came inquiry, explanation, reasoning, the exercise
of a manly and poetic sensibility, and endless experiment with lines and
forms, of which the greater part were meaningless, until by unwearied
searching, and constant trial and correction, the complete idea was
expressed at last.
When a painter produces works in this strange fashion, an involved and
confused manner of technical treatment becomes inevitable. The schools,
which glorify manual skill and the swift and exhilarating production of
effects, cannot appreciate it, for all their teaching is opposed to the
principle that makes technique subordinate to idea, and they cannot look
with favor upon a man who boldly reverses everything. The perfect art
undoubtedly rests upon a combination of sublime thought and entire
command of resources, but while we wait for this we shall not make
mistake if we consider the effective, even if unlicensed, expression of
idea superior to a facility that has become cheap from hundreds
mastering it yearly. We cannot close our eyes to Fuller's technical
faults and weaknesses, but his pictures would undeniably be a less
precious heritage to American art than they now are, if he had not been
great enough to perceive that academic skill becomes weak by just so
much as it is magnified, and is strong only when viewed in its just
relation, as the means to an end. We perplex and confuse ourselves in
studying his work, and are naturally a little irritated that he keeps
his secret of power so well; yet we cannot help feeling that his style
is wonderfully adapted to the end in view, and perhaps the only
appropriate medium for the expression of a habit of thought that is as
peculiar as itself. Schools will insist, and with reason, upon working
by rule; yet in art, as in other discipline of teaching, genius does not
develop itself until it escapes from its instructors.
Mr. Fuller's life was constantly swayed by circumstances, and through it
all he was impelled to steps which he might never have taken of his own
accord. He was drawn by influences that he could not control into his
fruitful course of study and experience at Deerfield, where his farm
gave him support, and permitted him to indulge in an unembarrassed
practice of his art; then, when his time was ripe, he was driven by the
sharp lash of financial embarrassment into the world again. Eight years
ago he reappeared in Boston, with about a dozen paintings of landscapes,
ideal heads, and small figures, which were exhibited and promptly sold
amid every expression of interest and favor. Confirmed and strengthened
in his belief by this success, he again established his studio here, and
began that series of remarkable works which have given him a place among
the greatest of American painters. The touch of popular favor quickened
him into a lofty and quiet enthusiasm, and stimulated both his
imagination and his descriptive powers. During all his experience at
Deerfield a certain lack of self-confidence seems to have prevented him
from making any large endeavor, but with his convictions endorsed by the
public, he attempted at once to labor on a more ambitious scale. He
broadened his canvases, and increased the size of his figures and
landscapes, and where he was before sweet and inviting, became strong
and impressive, yet still holding all his former qualities. The first
year of his new residence in Boston saw the production of The Dandelion
Girl, a light-hearted, careless creature, full of a life that had no
touch of responsibility, and descriptive of a joyous and ephemeral mood.
A long step forward was taken in The Romany Girl, which immediately
followed,--a work full of fire and freedom, strongly personal in
suggestion, and marked by a wild and impatient individuality which
revealed in the girl the impression of a lawless ancestry, that somehow
and somewhere had felt the action of a finer strain of blood. The next
year Fuller reached the highest point of his inspiration and power in
The Quadroon, a work which is likely to be held for all time as his
masterpiece, so far as strength of idea, importance of motive, and vivid
force of description are concerned. Without violence, even without
expression of action, but simply by a pair of haunting eyes, a
beautiful, despairing face, and a form confessing utter weariness and
abandonment of hope, he revealed all the national shame of slavery, and
its degradation of body and soul. Every American cannot but blush to
look upon it, so simple and dignified is its rebuke of the nation's long
perversity and guilt. The artist's next important effort was the famous
Winifred Dysart, as far removed in purpose from The Quadroon as it could
well be, yet akin to it by its added testimony to the painter's constant
sympathy with weak and beseeching things, and worthy to stand at an
equal height with the picture of the slave by virtue of its beauty of
conception, loveliness of character, and pathetic appeal to the
interest. It was in all respects as typical and comprehensive as The
Quadroon itself, holding within its face and figure all the sweetness
and innocence of New-England girlhood, yet with the shadow of an
uncongenial experience brooding over it, and perhaps of inherited
weakness and early death. And the wonder of it all was that the girl had
no sign about herself of longing or discontent; she was not of a nature
to anticipate or dream, and the spectator's interest was intensified at
seeing in her and before her what she herself did not perceive. That art
can give such power of suggestion to its creations is a marvel and a
delight.
Following these two works--and at some distance, although near enough to
confirm and even increase the painter's fame--came the Priscilla,
Evening; Lorette, Nydia, Boy and Bird, Hannah, Psyche, and others,
ending this year with the Arethusa, whose glowing and chastened
loveliness makes it his strongest purely artistic work, and confirms the
technical value of his method as completely as The Quadroon and Winifred
Dysart do his habit of thought. He painted innumerable landscapes,
portraits, and ideal heads, and in figure compositions produced, among
others, two works of great and permanent value, the And She Was a Witch,
and The Gatherer of Simples, to whose absorbing interest all who have
studied them closely will confess. The latter, particularly, is of
importance as showing how carefully Fuller studied into the secret of
expression, and of nature's sympathy with human moods. This poor, worn,
sad, old face, in which beauty and hope shone once, and where
resignation and memory now dwell; this trembling figure, to whose
decrepitude the bending staff confesses as she totters _down_ the hill;
the gathering gloom of the sky, in which one ray of promise for a bright
to-morrow shines from the setting sun; the mute witnessing of the trees
upon the hill, which have seen her pass and repass from joyful youth to
lonely age, and even her eager grasp upon the poor treasure of herbs
that she bears,--all these items of the scene impress one with a
sympathy whose keenness is even bitter, and excite a deep respect and
love for the man who could paint with so much simplicity and power. It
is not strange that when the news of his death became known, many who
had never seen him, but had studied the pictures in his latest
exhibition, should have come, with tears in their eyes, to the studios
which neighbored his, to learn something of his history.
Such works are not struck out in a heat, but grow and develop like human
lives, and it will not surprise many to know that most of them were
labored on for years. With Fuller, a picture was never completed. His
idea was constantly in advance of his work, and persisted in new
suggestions, so that the Winifred Dysart was two years in the painting,
the Arethusa five, and The Gatherer of Simples and the Witch, after an
even longer course of labor, were held by him at his death as not yet
satisfactory. The figures in the two works last mentioned have suffered
almost no change since first put upon the canvas, but they have from
time to time appeared in at least a dozen different landscapes, and
would doubtless have been placed in as many more before he had satisfied
his fastidious and exacting taste.
The artist found as much difficulty in naming his pictures when they
were done as he did in painting them. It is a prevalent, but quite
erroneous, impression that his habit was to select a subject from some
literary work, and then attempt to paint it in the light of the author's
ideas. His practice exactly reversed this method: he painted his picture
first, and then tried to evolve or find a name that would fit it. The
name Winifred Dysart, which is without literary origin or meaning, and
yet in some strange way seems the only proper title for the work to
which it is attached, came out of the artist's own mind. His Priscilla
was started as an Elsie Venner, but he found it impossible to work upon
the lines another had laid down without too much cramping his own fancy;
when half done he thought of calling it Lady Wentworth, and at last gave
it its present name by chance of having taken up The Blithedale Romance,
and noting with pleased surprise how closely Hawthorne's account of his
heroine fitted his own creation. The Nydia was started with the idea of
presenting the helplessness of blindness, with a hint of the exaltation
of the other senses that is consequent upon the loss of sight, and
showed at first merely a girl groping along a wall in search of a door;
and the Arethusa was the outgrowth of a general inspiration caused by a
reading of Spenser's Faerie Queen, and did not receive its present very
appropriate name until its exhibition made some designation necessary.
I have devoted this study on of Mr. Fuller to his quality as an artist
rather than to his character as a man, but shall have written in vain if
some hint has not been given of the loveliness of his disposition, the
modesty of his spirit, the chaste force of his mind. A man inevitably
paints as he himself is, and shows his nature in his works: Fuller's
pictures are founded upon purity of thought, and painted with dignity
and single-heartedness, and the grace of his life dwells in them.
* * * * *
[GEORGE FULLER was born in Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 1822. He was
descended from old Puritan stock, and his ancesters were among the early
settlers of the Connecticut River valley. He inherited a taste for art,
as an uncle and several other relatives of the previous generation were
painters, although none of them attained any particular reputation. He
began painting by himself at the age of about sixteen years, and at the
age of twenty entered the studio of Henry K. Brown, of Albany, New York,
where he received his first and only direct instruction. His work, until
the age of about forty years, was almost entirely devoted to portraits;
but he is best known, and will be longest remembered, for his ideal work
in figure and landscape painting, which he entered upon about 1860, but
did not make his distinctive field until 1876. From the latter date, to
the time of his death, he painted many important works, and was
pecuniarily successful. He received probably the largest prices ever
paid to an American artist for single figures: $3,000 for the Winifred
Dysart, and $4,000 each for the Priscilla and Evening; Lorette. He died
in Boston on the twenty-first of March, 1884, leaving a widow, four
sons, and a daughter. During May, a memorial exhibition of his works was
held at the Museum of Fine Arts.--EDITOR.]
* * * * *
THE LOYALISTS OF LANCASTER.
By HENRY S. NOURSE.
The outburst of patriotic rebellion in 1775 throughout Massachusetts was
so universal, and the controversy so hot with the wrath of a people
politically wronged, as well as embittered by the hereditary rage of
puritanism against prelacy, that the term _tory_ comes down to us in
history loaded with a weight of opprobrium not legitimately its own.
After the lapse of a hundred years the word is perhaps no longer
synonymous with everything traitorous and vile, but when it is desirable
to suggest possible respectability and moral rectitude in any member of
the conservative party of Revolutionary days, it must be done under the
less historically disgraced title,--loyalist. In fact, then, as always,
two parties stood contending for principles to which honest convictions
made adherents. If among the conservatives were timid office-holders and
corrupt self-seekers, there were also of the Revolutionary party blatant
demagogues and bigoted partisans. The logic of success, though a success
made possible at last only by exterior aid, justified the appeal to arms
begun in Massachusetts before revolt was prepared or thought imminent
elsewhere. Now, to the careful student of the situation, it seems among
the most premature and rash of all the rebellions in history. But for
the precipitancy of the uprising, and the patriotic frenzy that fired
the public heart at news of the first bloodshed, many ripe scholars,
many soldiers of experience, might have been saved to aid and honor the
republic, instead of being driven into ignominious exile by fear of mob
violence and imprisonment, and scourged through the century as enemies
of their country. In and about Lancaster, then the largest town in
Worcester County, the royalist party was an eminently respectable
minority. At first, indeed, not only those naturally conservative by
reason of wealth, or pride of birthright, but nearly all the
intellectual leaders, both ecclesiastic and civilian, deprecated revolt
as downright suicide. They denounced the Stamp Act as earnestly, they
loved their country in which their all was at stake as sincerely, as did
their radical neighbors. Some of them, after the bloody nineteenth of
April, acquiesced with such grace as they could in what they now saw to
be inevitable, and tempered with prudent counsel the blind zeal of
partisanship: thus ably serving their country in her need. Others would
have awaited the issue of events as neutrals; but such the committees of
safety, or a mob, not unnaturally treated as enemies.
On the highest rounds of the social ladder stood the great-grandsons of
Major Simon Willard, the Puritan commander in the war of 1675. These
three gentlemen had large possessions in land, were widely known
throughout the Province, and were held in deserved esteem for their
probity and ability. They were all royalists at heart, and all connected
by marriage with royalist families. Abijah Willard, the eldest, had just
passed his fiftieth year. He had won a captaincy before Louisburg when
but twenty-one, and was promoted to a colonelcy in active service
against the French; was a thorough soldier, a gentleman of stately
presence and dignified manners, and a skilful manager of affairs. For
his first wife, he married Elizabeth, sister of Colonel William
Prescott; for his second, Mrs. Anna Prentice, but had recently married a
third partner, Mrs. Mary McKown, of Boston. He was the wealthiest
citizen of Lancaster, kept six horses in his stables, and dispensed
liberal hospitality in the mansion inherited from his father Colonel
Samuel Willard. By accepting the appointment of councillor in 1774, he
became at once obnoxious to the dominant party, and in August, when
visiting Connecticut on business connected with his large landed
interests there, he was arrested by the citizens of the town of Union,
and a mob of five hundred persons accompanied him over the state line
intending to convey him to the nearest jail. Whether their wrath became
somewhat cooled by the colonel's bearing, or by a six-mile march, they
released him upon his signing a paper dictated to him, of which the
following is a copy, printed at the time in the Boston Gazette:--
STURBRIDGE, August 25, 1774.
Whereas I Abijah Willard, of Lancaster, have been appointed by
mandamus Counselor for this province, and have without due
Consideration taken the Oath, do now freely and solemnly and in
good faith promise and engage that I will not set or act in said
Council, nor in any other that shall be appointed in such manner
and form, but that I will, as much as in me lies, maintain the
Charter Rights and Liberties of the Province, and do hereby ask
forgiveness of all the honest, worthy Gentlemen that I have
offended by taking the abovesaid Oath, and desire this may be
inserted in the public Prints. Witness my Hand
ABIJAH WILLARD.
From that time forward Colonel Willard lived quietly at home until the
nineteenth of April, 1775; when, setting out in the morning on horseback
to visit his farm in Beverly, where he had planned to spend some days in
superintending the planting, he was turned from his course by the
swarming out of minute-men at the summons of the couriers bringing the
alarm from Lexington, and we next find him with the British in Boston.
He never saw Lancaster again. It is related that, on the morning of the
seventeenth of June, standing with Governor Gage, in Boston,
reconnoitring the busy scene upon Bunker's Hill, he recognized with the
glass his brother-in-law Colonel William Prescott, and pointed him out
to the governor, who asked if he would fight. The answer was: "Prescott
will fight you to the gates of hell!" or, as another historian more
mildly puts it: "Ay, to the last drop of his blood." Colonel Willard
knew whereof he testified, for the two colonels had earned their
commissions together in the expeditions against Canada. An officer of so
well-known skill and experience as Abijah Willard was deemed a valuable
acquisition, and he was offered a colonel's commission in the British
army, but refused to serve against his countrymen, and at the evacuation
of Boston went to Halifax, having been joined by his own and his
brother's family. In 1778, he was proscribed and banished. Later in the
war he joined the royal army, at Long Island, and was appointed
commissary; in which service it was afterwards claimed by his friends
that his management saved the crown thousands of pounds. A malicious
pamphleteer of the day, however, accused him of being no better than
others, and alleging that whatever saving he effected went to swell his
own coffers. Willard's name stands prominent among the "Fifty-five" who,
in 1783, asked for large grants of land in Nova Scotia as compensation
for their losses by the war. He chose a residence on the coast of New
Brunswick, which he named _Lancaster_ in remembrance of his beloved
birthplace, and there died in May, 1789, having been for several years
an influential member of the provincial council. His family returned to
Lancaster, recovered the old homestead, and, aided by a small pension
from the British government, lived in comparative prosperity. The son
Samuel died on January 1, 1856, aged ninety-six years and four months.
His widowed sister, Mrs. Anna Goodhue, died on August 2, 1858, at the
age of ninety-five. Memories of their wholly pleasant and beneficent
lives, abounding in social amenities and Christian graces, still linger
about the old mansion.
Levi Willard was three years the junior of Abijah. He had been collector
of excise for the county, held the military rank of lieutenant-colonel,
and was justice of the peace. With his brother-in-law Captain Samuel
Ward he conducted the largest mercantile establishment in Worcester
County at that date. He had even made the voyage to England to purchase
goods. Although not so wealthy as his brother, he might have rivaled him
in any field of success but for his broken health; and he was as widely
esteemed for his character and capacity. At the outbreak of hostilities
he was too ill to take active part on either side, but his sympathies
were with his loyalist kindred. He died on July 11, 1775. His partner in
business, Captain Samuel Ward, cast his lot with the patriot party, but
his son, Levi Willard, Jr., graduated at Harvard College in 1775, joined
his uncle Abijah, and went to England and there remained until 1785,
when he returned and died five years later.