pleasure of catching, painting, and eating the same fish on a summer's
morning by the limpid brooks of New Hampshire, has justly won a
reputation as an artistic Walton. If he would but paint his rocks and
trees as cleverly as he renders the speckled monarch of the stream, his
compositions would leave little to be desired. Henry C. Bispham has
given us some spirited but sometimes badly drawn paintings of cattle and
horses; and Colonel T. B. Thorpe, an amateur with artistic tastes, in
such semi-humorous satires as "A Border Inquest," representing wolves
sitting on the carcass of a buffalo, struck a vein peculiarly American
in its humor, and carried to a high degree of excellence by William H.
Beard, whose brother, James Beard, can also be justly ranked as an
animal-painter of respectable attainments. Mr. Beard, although
remarkably versatile, has made a specialty, if it may be so termed, of
exposing the failings and foibles of our sinful humanity by the medium
of animal _genre_. Monkeys, bears, goats, owls, and rabbits are in turn
impressed into the benevolent service of taking us off, and repeating
for us the old Spartan tale of the slave made drunk by his master as a
warning to his son. Of the skill which Mr. Beard has exhibited in this
novel line there can be no question. The "Dance of Silenus," the
pertinacious, iterative, pragmatic ape called "The Bore," and "Bears on
a Bender," are masterly bits of characterization. There is also a deal
of comic satire in "The Bulls and Bears of Mammon's Fierce Zoology,"
which, with a multitude of struggling fighting figures, takes off the
eccentricities of the Stock-exchange. Beard can justly be called the
American Æsop. It is asserted by many that this is not art. The fact is
that it is exceedingly difficult to draw the line, and to prescribe what
subjects an artist shall choose. In art the result justifies the means.
And this certainly seems as legitimate a subject for the brush of the
artist as the graphic pictorial satires of Hogarth, or the mildly
comical genres of Erskine Nicol.
[Illustration: "WHOO!"--[WILLIAM H. BEARD.]]
In a previous chapter we alluded to some of the figure, historical, and
_genre_ painters of this period. William Mount was the precursor of a
number of _genre_ artists of more or less ability, among whom may be
mentioned Thomas Hicks, a pupil of Couture, and one of the first of our
painters who studied at Paris. In this admirable school Mr. Hicks became
an excellent colorist, although of late his art has appeared to lose
some of this quality. He has painted landscape and _genre_, meeting with
respectable success in the latter, but portraiture has chiefly occupied
his attention. His portrait of General Meade is a striking and
satisfactory work. Then there was Richard Caton Woodville, who followed
Whittredge to Düsseldorf, and promised much in _genre_. His paintings
show very decided traces of German influence, but behind it all was a
strong individuality that seemed destined to assert itself, and to place
him among our foremost painters. But he died young, and (shall we not
say?) happily for him, since little fame and less appreciation are
destined to the artists who come ere the people are ripe for their art.
George B. Flagg at one time promised well for our _genre_ art, but his
abilities were too precocious, and unfortunately the splendid
opportunities he enjoyed as a pupil of Allston, and as a long resident
in London, do not seem to have been sufficient to give growth or
permanence to his talents.
About this time our frontier life was coming more prominently into view,
and that picturesque border line between civilization and barbarism was
becoming a subject for the pen of our leading writers. Irving, Cooper,
and Kennedy, Street, Whittier, and Longfellow, were tuning the first
efforts of their Muse to celebrate Indian life and border warfare in
prose and verse, while the majestic measures of Bryant's "Prairies"
seemed a prophetic prelude to the march of mankind toward the lands of
the setting sun. "Evangeline," the most splendid result of our poetic
literature, attracted not less for its magnificent generalizations of
the scenery of the West than for the constancy of the heroine, and the
artistic mind responded in turn to the unknown mystery and romance of
that vast region, and gave us graphic pictures of the rude humanity
which lent interest and sentiment to its unexplored solitudes. It is
greatly to be regretted that the work of these pioneers in Western
_genre_ was not of more artistic value; from a historical point of view,
too much importance cannot be attached to the enterprise and courage of
men like Catlin, Deas, and Ranney, who, imbued with the spirit of
adventure, identified themselves with Indian and border life, and
rescued it from oblivion by their art enthusiasm, which, had it been
guided by previous training, would have been of even greater value. As
it is, they have with the pencil done a service for the subjects they
portrayed similar to what Bret Harte has accomplished in giving
immortality with the pen to the wild, picturesque, but evanescent mining
scenes of the Pacific slope. In this connection the fact is worth
recording that the important mutual life-insurance association called
the Artists' Funding Society took its origin in a successful effort to
contribute to the support of the family of Ranney after his death.
Our historical painters of this period rarely created any works
deserving of note or remembrance. Here and there a painting like that of
Huntington's "Republican Court" was produced, which is a graceful and
elegant composition, and one of the best of the kind in American art.
Peter F. Rothermel, the able portrait-painter of Philadelphia, also
composed a number of historical works, of which the last is probably of
most value. His "Battle of Gettysburg" is a bold and not ineffective
representation of one of the critical moments in the world's history,
although open in parts to severe criticism. J. G. Chapman, well known at
one time as a skilful wood-engraver and _genre_ painter, also aspired to
the difficult field of historical painting; but it is to an artist of
German extraction, Emmanuel Leutze, that we owe our best historical art
previous to 1860, excepting perhaps some of the compositions of Copley
and West and two or three of the battle-pieces of Trumbull. Although
born abroad, Leutze may be justly claimed as an American painter, for he
was taken to Philadelphia in childhood, and remained in this country
until thoroughly imbued with a patriotic love for the land and its
history and the spirit of its institutions; and although he
subsequently passed a number of years at Düsseldorf, whither he went at
twenty-seven, the last ten years of his life were here; here he died,
and the subjects of his art were almost entirely inspired by American
scenes, and have become incorporated with the growth of our
civilization.
[Illustration: "LAFAYETTE IN PRISON."--[E. LEUTZE.]]
Leutze was a man who was cast in a large mould, capable of a grand
enthusiasm, and aspiring to grasp soaring ideals. Although his art was
often at fault, it makes us feel, notwithstanding, that in contemplating
his works we are in the presence of a colossal mind which, under
healthier influences, would have better achieved what he aspired to win.
He drew from wells of seemingly inexhaustible inspiration. He was
Byronic in the impetus of his genius, the rugged incompleteness of his
style, the magnificent fervor and rush of his fancy, the epic grandeur
and energy, dash and daring, of his creations. It is easy to say that he
was steeped in German conventionalism, that he pictured the impossible,
that he was sometimes harsh in his color and technique; and so he was at
times, but, with it all, he left the impression of vast intellectual
resources.
We would not be understood as saying that all the works of Leutze are
worthy of unqualified acceptance; we refer rather to their general
character. His art was very prolific, and as a pupil of Lessing and
Schadow it bore the unmistakable stamp of Düsseldorf. Much of his work,
partaking also of the grandiose style of Kaulbach, was of a
semi-decorative character, like the "Landing of the Norsemen," which
represents two fresh, sturdy Scandinavian rovers stepping out of an
impossible ship, bearing aloft a noble princess, and in the very act of
landing snatching the grapes "hanging wanton to be plucked." Spirited as
it is, the manifest absurdity of the composition as a representation of
reality yet requires us to accept it as decorative in design. "Godiva"
is a somewhat coarse but characteristic work of Leutze, and the
"Iconoclast" one of his most interesting and artistic works. In America,
Leutze will be remembered longest by his large and magnificent painting
of "Washington at Princeton," his "Emigration to the West" (a decorative
composition in one of the panels of the stairway of the Capitol at
Washington), and his "Washington Crossing the Delaware." The latter was
executed at Düsseldorf, and the ice was painted from an unusual mass of
shattered ice floating down the Rhine on the breaking up of the winter.
It is another illustration of the apparent caprice with which man is
treated by destiny, that scarcely had Leutze closed his eyes in his last
sleep, at the early age of fifty-one, when a letter arrived from Germany
bringing official tidings that he had just been elected to succeed
Lessing as president of the Düsseldorf Academy of Art.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A LADY.--[WILLIAM PAGE.]]
While we find in Leutze the qualities we have described, it cannot be
said that he sought out any new methods of expression, or that he
undertook to suggest the deeper and more subtle traits of human nature;
he was content to work after the manner of the school in which he
studied. It is to another painter (already referred to), of great
intellectual resource and a thoroughly American discontent with the
actual, that we turn for aspirations after a higher form of art. William
Page, a native of Albany, who studied law, and for a time also theology,
at Andover Seminary, was from the first biassed in favor of art. His
mind presents a combination of the speculative and the practical, and it
is the union of these antithetical qualities which has alternately aided
or hindered the success of Page's efforts and experiments. He is
deliberate rather than inspirational, guided by an exquisite feeling for
color and an admirable sense of form, but too often unduly controlled by
the logical and analytical faculty. Had his fancy only been more
childlike, and been left more to the guidance of its own natural and
correct instincts, Mr. Page's works would have oftener moved us by their
beauty rather than by the dexterity of the technique. Still, it is by
the aid of a few such questioning minds that art makes its advances, and
interprets the secrets of nature. As a portrait painter, Page has placed
himself among the first artists of the age. We see in his portraits a
dignity and repose, a grasp of character, and a harmonious richness of
color that are wonderfully impressive. In attempting to represent the
beauty of the feminine figure Mr. Page has been influenced by great
delicacy and refinement of motive, although in the celebrated painting
of "Venus Rising from the Sea," he gave cause for much discussion as to
the merits of his theories.
[Illustration: "THE REFUGE."--[ELIHU VEDDER.]]
When Page was in his prime, our literature had already become
distinguished by several writers of thoroughly original and mystically
creative imagination, native to the soil, and drawing sustenance from
native inspiration: they were Charles Brockden Brown, Judd, Hawthorne,
and Poe. In point of originality in conceiving of scenes powerfully
weird and imaginative, these writers have had no superiors in this
century. With a style essentially individual, they analyzed the
workings of the human heart, and dealt with the great problems of
destiny. Their genius was cosmopolitan, and for all ages. Our pictorial
art, in a less degree, began soon after to be prompted by a similar
tendency.
Most prominent among these artists whose faltering efforts have most
distinctly articulated the language and aspirations of the soul are
Elihu Vedder and John Lafarge. It cannot be said that either of these
artists has yet accomplished with complete success the end he has
sought; but their efforts have been in the right direction, and as such
are highly interesting, hopeful, and suggestive.
Mr. Vedder's early _genre_ and landscape compositions are full of subtle
attempts at psychology in color. Outward nature with him is but a means
for more effectively conveying the impressions of humanity; and his
faces are full of vague, mystic, far-off searching after the infinite,
and the why and the wherefore of this existence below. Since Mr. Vedder
took up his residence permanently in Italy, he has improved in
technique, and there is less dryness in his method of using color, as
witnessed by his remarkable painting called a "Venetian Dancing Girl, or
'La Regina;'" but he has not in recent years produced anything so
marvellously imaginative as his "Lair of the Sea-Serpent," or so grand
and desolate as his "Death of Abel." The man who painted the "Lost
Mind," the "Death of Abel," and the "Lair of the Sea-Serpent," did not
need to borrow from the ancients--at least so far as regards forms of
expression. The vast, solemn, appalling solitude of the primeval world,
the terrific sublimity of its first tragedy, are rendered in Mr.
Vedder's painting with the sombre grandeur of Dante; while as a work of
imaginative art, the steel-colored monster reposing his gigantic folds
on the dry grass of a desolate shore by the endless seas, is a
composition of wonderful simplicity and mysterious power, a creation of
pure genius.
[Illustration: CARTOON SKETCH: CHRIST AND NICODEMUS.--[JOHN LAFARGE.]]
Mr. Lafarge is by nature a colorist; to color, the emotional element of
art, his sensitive nature vibrates as to well-attuned harmonies of
music. For form he has less feeling; his drawing is often very
defective, and the lines are hesitating, uncertain, and feeble. But we
have had no artist since Stuart who has shown such a natural sympathy
for the shades and modulations of chromatic effects. But, while his
drawing is open to criticism, this artist is inspired by the general
meaning of form, and has sometimes produced some very weird and
startling compositions entirely in black and white, or camaieu. But
whether it be form or color, the various elements of art are regarded by
Lafarge not so much for what they are as for what they suggest; he is
less concerned with the external than with the hidden meaning it has for
the soul. It is because of his subtle way of regarding the beauty of
this world that he has given us such thoughtful landscapes as "Paradise
at Newport," and such exquisitely painted flowers, rendered with a
tender harmony of color that thrills us like a lyric of Keats or of
Tennyson. It is this serious, reflective turn which has given a
religious hue to his art, and has enabled him to succeed so well in the
most ambitious attempt at decorative-painting yet undertaken in this
country--the frescoes of Trinity Church, in Boston; in which, it should
be added, he was ably assisted by Mr. Lathrop. In these compositions we
see the results of a highly ideal and reverent nature, nourished by the
most abundant art opportunities the age could afford. It is not
difficult to find in them points fairly open to attack; but the promise
they show is so hopeful a sign in our art, the success actually achieved
in them in a direction quite new in this country is so marked, that we
prefer to leave to others any unfavorable criticism they may suggest.
IV.
_AMERICAN PAINTERS._
1828-1878.
The discovery of the gold mines of California was a signal for
enterprise, daring, and achievement, not only to our commerce and the
thrift of our shifting millions of uneasy settlers, but also to the
literature and landscape-art of the United States. "To the kingdom of
the west wind" hied artist and author alike; and the epic of the
settlement of California, of the scaling of the Rocky Mountains, of the
glory of the Columbia River, and the stupendous horrors of the
Yellowstone was pictured on the canvas of the artist. Taylor and Scott
conquered the Pacific slope; Fremont pointed out the pathway over the
swelling ranges of the Sierras; and our painters revealed to us the
matchless splendor of a scenery which shall arouse increasing
astonishment and reverential awe and rapture in the hearts of
generations yet to be. In the gratitude we owe to these
landscape-painters who dared, discovered, and delineated for us the
scenery of which we were hitherto the ignorant possessors, criticism is
almost left in abeyance, for the service done the people has been a
double one--in leading them to the observation of paintings, and
informing them of the attractions of a little known possession. If the
art of these paintings of our Western scenery had been in all respects
equal to the subject, the country would have been rich indeed. Among the
artist explorers to whom we are most indebted, Messrs. Bierstadt, Hill,
and Moran are the most famous. The former, by his great composition
entitled the "Rocky Mountains," threw the people into an ecstasy of
delight, which at this time it is difficult to understand, and bounded
at one step to celebrity.
Albert Bierstadt is a native of Düsseldorf, but came to this country in
infancy. Subsequently he studied at Düsseldorf and Rome. On returning to
America, he accompanied the exploring expedition of General Lander that
went over the plains in 1858. Fitz Hugh Ludlow, the well-known
_littérateur_, was associated with him in a subsequent trip, and several
graphic articles in which he afterward described the journey undoubtedly
helped to bring Mr. Bierstadt into notice.
The "Rocky Mountains" is not the representation of an actual scene, but
a typical composition, and, thus regarded, is an interesting work,
although it seems to us somewhat too theatrical, and scarcely true in
some of the details. Local truth is desirable in topographical art,
although of quite secondary importance in compositions of a more ideal
character. Since then this artist has executed a number of similarly
ambitious paintings of our Western scenery, including a colossal
painting of the gorge of the Yosemite Valley. All of them are
characterized by boldness of treatment, but sometimes they are crude in
color and out of tone. Of these we prefer, as least sensational and most
artistically correct, the painting of a storm on Mount Rosalie.
Bierstadt's smaller California scenes are generally more valuable than
his large ones for artistic quality: one of the best compositions we
have seen from his easel is a war sketch representing Federal
sharp-shooters on the crest of a hill behind some trees. This is an
excellent piece of work, fresh, original, and quite free from the
Düsseldorf taint; and confirms us in the opinion that Mr. Bierstadt is
naturally an artist of great ability and large resources, and might
easily have maintained a reputation as such if he had not grafted on the
sensationalism of Düsseldorf a greater ambition for notoriety and money
than for success in pure art.
[Illustration: "VIEW ON THE KERN RIVER"--[A. BIERSTADT.]]
Some of the qualities we have learned to look for in vain in the
canvases of Bierstadt we find emphasized in the paintings of Thomas
Hill, who succeeded him as court painter to the monarch of the Rocky
Mountains. Hill began life as a coach-painter at Taunton, Massachusetts.
After deciding on a professional art career, he visited Europe, and
benefited by observation in foreign studios, especially of France,
although his style is essentially his own. His method of using pigments
is sometimes open to the accusation of hardness; there is too often a
lack of juiciness--a dryness that seems to remind us of paint rather
than atmosphere, which may be owing to the fact, as I have been
informed, that he uses little or no oil in going over a painting the
second time. But Mr. Hill is a good colorist, bold and massive in his
effects, and a very careful, conscientious student of nature. He has
been happy in the rendering of wood interiors, as, for example, bits
from the Forest of Fontainebleau. One of his most remarkable New England
landscapes represents the avalanche in the Notch of the White Mountains,
which was attended with such disastrous results to the dwellers in the
valley. But Mr. Hill will be identified in future with California, where
he has become a resident, and has devoted his energies to painting some
of the magnificent scenery of that marvellous region, where the roar of
the whirlwind and the roll of the thunder reverberate like the tread of
the countless millions who evermore march to the westward. As he sat on
the edge of the precipice, the forerunner of coming ages, and painted
the sublime, solitary depths of the Yosemite, did the artist realize
that with every stroke of the brush he was aiding the advance guard of
civilization, and driving away the desolation which gave additional
grandeur to one of the most extraordinary spots on the planet? In his
great painting of the Yosemite he seems to have been inspired by a
reverential spirit; he has taken no liberties with his subject, but has
endeavored with admirable art to convey a correct impression of the
scene; and the work may be justly ranked with the best examples of the
American school of landscape-painting.
[Illustration: "THE YOSEMITE."--[THOMAS HILL.]]
[Illustration: "THE BATHERS."--[THOMAS MORAN.]]
The first fever of the California rush had subsided when the uneasy
explorer again stirred the enthusiasm of adventurous artists by
thrilling descriptions of the Yellowstone River, its Tartarean gorges,
and the lurid splendor of its sulphurous cliffs and steaming geysers.
Once more the landscape artist of the country was moved to go forth and
make known to us those unrevealed wonders; and Thomas Moran, "taking his
life in his hands," in the language of religious cant, aspired to
capture the bouquet, the first bloom, from this newly-opened draught of
inspiration. We all know the result. Who has not seen his splendid
painting of the "Gorge of the Yellowstone," now in the Capitol at
Washington? Granting the fitness of the subject for art, it can be
frankly conceded that this is one of the best paintings of the sort yet
produced. The vivid local colors of the rocks, which there is no reason
to doubt have been faithfully rendered--for Mr. Moran is a careful and
indefatigable student of certain phases of nature--appear, however, to
give such works a sensational effect.
This seems to us to be the most valuable of the numerous paintings of
Western subjects produced by this artist. It would be a mistake,
however, to judge him wholly by the more ambitious compositions
suggested by tropical or Western scenery. Some of his ideal paintings
are very clever, and show us an ardent student of nature, and a mind
inspired by a fervid imagination. But while conceding thus much to the
talents of this artist--who belongs to an artistic family, two of his
brothers being also well-known painters, one in marine, the other in
cattle painting--we can not accord him great original powers. He has
studied the technique of his calling most carefully, and has bestowed
great attention to the methods of several celebrated artists; but we are
too often conscious, in looking at his works, that his style has leaned
upon that of certain favorite painters. There is great cleverness, but
little genius, apparent in the landscapes of Mr. Moran, for the
imitative faculty has been too much for him.
[Illustration: LANDSCAPE.--[JERVIS M'ENTEE.]]