Magrath command sincere attention. It is not so many years ago since he
was painting signs in New York, and now we see him one of the strongest
artists in _genre_ on this side of the Atlantic. Mr. Magrath generally
paints single figures, associated with rural life--a milkmaid, or a
farmer. Naturally there is inequality in the results achieved, and
sometimes manifest weakness. But we note a constant progress in the
quality of his art, and an evidence of imagination which has been
unfortunately too rare in American _genre_ since the days of William
Mount. By this we mean the identification of the artist with his
subject, which renders it dramatic, and inspires it with that touch of
nature that makes the whole world kin. In this respect he occasionally
suggests the inimitable humanity which is the crowning excellence of the
paintings of Jean François Millet.
It is with additional pleasure that we note the works of some of our
more recent native _genre_ artists, because we see indicated in them a
growing perception of the fact that abundant subjects may be found at
our own doors to occupy the pencil of the ablest minds. It is not
uncommon to hear young artists who have studied in the ateliers of Paris
and Munich, and who have returned here to work, complaining that they
find no sources of inspiration here, no subjects to paint at home. This
dearth of subjects certainly would be a very grave obstacle to the
ultimate development of a great American school of art, if it actually
existed. But on examining the question, it seems to us that the
difficulty lies not in the lack of subjects, but in the way the artist
has learned to look at things, and the range of sympathies to which he
has become accustomed by his foreign experiences.
The artist who is the man of his time and his country never yet lacked
material for inspiration in the every-day life and every-day objects
around him. Goethe has said that the truest poetry is that woven out of
the suggestions gained from simple things. There has never yet been such
a state of society or such an order of scenery that the artist who was
in sympathy with it could not find some poetry, some color, some form or
light or shade in it that would stir the finer elements of his genius,
stimulate his fancy, and arouse his inventive powers. Some quality of
beauty is there, concealed like the water in the rock; the magician
comes whose rod can evoke the imprisoned element, and others then see
what he had first seen.
As we stroll, for example, through the streets and squares of New York's
metropolis, by its teeming wharves, and among its dilapidated avenues of
trade, we are astounded to think that any one could ever look on this
seething mass of humanity, these various types of man, and the various
structures he has erected here, and find in them no inspiration for his
brush or his pen. What if there are no feluccas or painted sails in our
harbor; one has but to cross the river on the ferry-boat at sunrise or
sunset to see wonderful picturesqueness and beauty in our sloops and
schooners, our shipping thronging the piers, all smitten by the glory of
the rosy light, or over-canopied by scowling gray masses of storm-driven
scud.
Or if one saunters up our streets and gazes on the long vista of
Broadway toward nightfall, as the lazy mist gradually broods over the
roofs and delicately tones and softens the receding rows of buildings,
he shall see effects almost as entrancing and poetic as those which
charm the enthusiast who beholds the sun, a crimson disk, couching in a
gray bank of smoke at the end of the boulevards of Paris, on an evening
in October.
Is there nothing picturesque and artistic in the Italian fruit venders
at the street corners, especially when after dark they light their
smoking torches, that waver with ruddy glow over brilliant masses of
oranges and apples?
[Illustration: "DRESS PARADE."--[J. G. BROWN.]]
There is yet another scene which we often encounter, especially early in
the morning, at a time when perhaps most artists are yet wrapped in
dreams. We refer to the groups of horses led through the streets to the
horse-market. Untrimmed, unshorn, massively built, and marching in files
by fours and fives with clanging tread, sometimes thirty or forty
together, they present a stirring and powerful effect, which would
thrill a Bonheur or a Schreyer. Why have none of our artists attempted
to paint them? Have we none with the knowledge or the power to render
the subject with the vigor it demands?
[Illustration: "A BED-TIME STORY."--[S. J. GUY.]]
[Illustration: THE MOTHER.--[EASTMAN JOHNSON.]]
No, we lack not subjects for those who know how to see them; while
nothing is more certain than the truth that a national art can only be
founded and sustained by those who are wholly in sympathy with the
influences of the land whose art they are aiding to establish. Those who
are familiar with American art will easily recall a number of our
artists, educated both at home and abroad, who have no difficulty in
finding material around home, and at the same time take the lead among
us in point of artistic strength.
While indicating, however, some of the many subjects which address one
at every turn in our land, and render it unnecessary for artists to go
abroad for a supply of fuel for their fancy, we would not, on the other
hand, imply that an artist should, in order to be an exponent or leader
of a native art, be confined exclusively to one class of subjects.
Although it is one of the most remarkable and indisputable laws in
literature and art that those who are identified with nature and human
nature, as it appears in their native country, are at the same time most
cosmopolitan, still it is, after all, not so much in the subjects as in
the treatment that the individuality of a national art is best
demonstrated. It is when the artist is so thoroughly imbued with the
spirit of the institutions of his native land that it appears in his
art, whatever be the subject--it is then that he is most national. We
hear a great deal about the French school and the English school; but it
is not because each school finds its subjects invariably at home that it
possesses an individuality of its own, but because we see unconsciously
reflected in it the influences of the land that gave it birth. For this
reason, if an English and a French painter shall each take the same
scene, and that a wholly foreign one, say an Oriental group, although
the subject be a foreign subject and identical in each canvas, you can
discern at once that one picture is English, the other French in
treatment. Each artist has stamped upon his work the impression of the
influences of the people to which he belongs.
[Illustration: SAIL-BOAT.--[WINSLOW HOMER.]]
Patriotism, a wholesome enthusiasm for one's own country, seems, then,
in some occult way to lie at the basis of a native art, and native art
founded on knowledge is therefore always the truest art; while the
artist who is thus inspired will generally find material enough to call
forth his æsthetic yearnings and arouse his creative faculties at his
own door.
In passing from _genre_ to our later portraiture we do not find the same
proportionate activity and intelligent progress that we see in other
departments of our art, although some creditable painters in this
department can be mentioned. Harvey A. Young, of Boston, has shown a
good eye for color, and seizes a likeness in a manner that is
artistically satisfactory, while he does not so often grasp the
character of the sitter as his external traits. Mr. Custer, of the same
city, charmingly renders the infantile beauty of childhood, its merry
blue eyes, the dimpled roses of the cheeks, and the flaxen curls that
ripple around the shoulders. There is, however, too much sameness in his
work--a too apparent tendency to mannerism. Mrs. Henry Peters Grey has a
faculty of making a pleasing likeness. She has executed some portrait
plaques in majolica that are remarkable evidences of the progress
ceramic art is now making in the United States. Mrs. Loop is one of our
successful portrait-painters. Her works are not strikingly original, but
they are harmonious in tone and color, and poetical in treatment. Henry
A. Loop has also executed some pleasing portraits and ideal
compositions; of the latter, his "Echo" is perhaps the most successful
rendering of female beauty he has attempted. George H. Story should be
included among the most important portrait-painters of this period. His
work is characterized by vigor of style and pleasing color; he seizes a
likeness without any uncertainty in technique. His _genre_ compositions
and ideal heads are also inspired by a refined taste and correct
perception of the principles of art. William Henry Furness, of
Philadelphia, who died in 1867, just as he reached his prime, was allied
in genius to the great masters of portraiture of the early stages of our
art. He matured slowly. His first efforts showed only small promise; but
he had the inestimable quality of growth, and has been equalled by few
of our painters in the study and rendering of character. When he had a
sitter he would give days to a preliminary and exhaustive study of his
mental and moral traits.
In Darius Cobb, of Boston, great earnestness is apparent in the pursuit
of art, together with an exalted opinion of what should be the aims of
æsthetic culture. Mr. Cobb has attempted sculpture, monumental art,
portraiture, and the painting of religious compositions. We consider it
a promising sign to see an artist of such energy seeking to exalt the
character of his pursuit. His works seem, however, to show the lack of a
systematic course of training in the rudiments of technique; but in such
strong and characteristic portraits as that of Rufus Choate he has
exhibited decided ability.
[Illustration: "THE SCOUT."--[WORDSWORTH THOMPSON.]]
The historic art of the period has been neither prolific nor attractive,
with a few exceptions. The late war has given rise to some important
works, like Winslow Homer's notable "Prisoners to the Front;" and Julian
Scott has been measurably successful in such paintings as "In the
Cornfield at Antietam," representing a charge in that memorable battle,
which belongs to a class of pictures of which we hope to have more in
the future. There is a striving after originality in his paintings that
is in the right direction. Mrs. C. A. Fassett, who has executed some
excellent portraits, has also recently composed an important painting of
the "Electoral Commission," of whose merits the writer can only speak by
report.
[Illustration: "ON THE OLD SOD."--[WILLIAM MAGRATH.]]
In Wordsworth Thompson we find an artist who seems to realize the
possibilities of American historical art. Although a pupil of Gleyre,
and for a number of years a resident abroad, there is no evidence of
servile subserviency to any favorite school or method in the style of
Mr. Thompson. He is an excellent draughtsman, his color is a happy
medium between the high and low keys of different schools--fresh, cool,
and crisp--and his work is thoroughly finished, and yet broad in
effect. He evidently has no hobbies to ride. As a designer of horses he
has few equals in this country. If we have a fault to find with him, it
is in a certain lack of snap, of warmth, of enthusiasm in the handling
of a subject, which renders it less impressive than it might otherwise
be.
[Illustration: "A MATIN SONG."--[FIDELIA BRIDGES.]]
Mr. Thompson, in his Mediterranean wanderings, gathered material for a
number of attractive coast scenes, effective in atmosphere and in the
rendering of figures, feluccas, and waves, all tending to illustrate his
versatility. But he deserves to be most widely known on account of
scenes taken from Southern life, and historic compositions suggested by
the late war, or illustrating notable events of the Revolution. For
pictures of this description Mr. Thompson seems to us to rank next to
Trumbull, whose masterly paintings of the "Death of Montgomery" and the
"Battle of Bunker Hill," now at New Haven, have hitherto been by far the
most remarkable military paintings produced by an American artist. There
is less action, fire, and brilliance of color in Mr. Thompson's works,
but they possess many admirable qualities that entitle them to much
respect. Among the most notable is an elaborate composition representing
the Continental army defiling before General Washington and his staff at
Philadelphia. The group of officers and horses in the foreground is one
of the best pieces of artistic work recently painted by an American.
[Illustration: STUDY OF A DOG.--[FRANK ROGERS.]]
When we come to a consideration of animal painting in this period of our
æsthetic culture, we find that it is the most barren of good results of
any branch of our art. We are at a loss to account for this, especially
as the evidences of promise are also less prominent than in landscape
and _genre_. Not only has the number of the artists who have pursued
this department been proportionately small, but the quality of their
work has been of a low average, and lacking in the originality elsewhere
apparent.
In the painting of pastoral scenes, with cattle, Peter Moran, of
Philadelphia, probably shows the most originality and force; and Thomas
Robinson, of Boston, has displayed exceptional vigor in painting the
textures of cattle, but without much invention in composition. James
Hart for the past twelve years has made a specialty of introducing
groups of cattle into his idyllic landscapes. They are often well drawn
and carefully painted, and are in general effect commendable, although,
like most of our animal painters, Mr. Hart does not seem to have got at
the character of the animal as Snyders, Morland, or Landseer would have
done. Mr. Dolph has painted some creditable cats and pugs in combination
with interiors; and two young artists, Messrs. George Inness, Jun., and
J. Ogden Brown, have executed some promising cattle pieces.
Miss Bridges must be credited with developing a charming and original
branch of art, of which thus far she seems to enjoy a monopoly. There is
exquisite fancy, as well as capital art, in the method in which, with
water-colors, she composes stalks of grain or wild-flowers in
combination with field birds, meadow-larks, linnets, bobolinks,
sparrows, or sand-pipers, balancing on the apex of a wavering stalk, or
flying over the wheat or by the sands of the sea-beat shore.
Mr. Frank Rogers, who is still a very young man, takes especial interest
in painting dogs, although not intending to confine himself to that
branch of animal life, and has already achieved considerable success in
his attempts to represent canine traits. He has trained several dogs to
pose for him for ten to fifteen minutes at once. In the decided ability
and success already shown by Mr. Rogers we can see that it is now
possible for our artists, availing themselves of influences already at
work here, combined with an intense love of nature and the ideal, to do
strong original work without devoting half their lives to foreign study,
and thus carry on to a higher stage the national art for which so many
clamor unreasonably, not considering that new schools of art are not
born in a day, nor evolved without the conditions which have invariably
prepared the way for the national art of other people. Art travels by no
royal road.
[Illustration: "LOST IN THE SNOW."--[A. F. TAIT.]]
Our continent is not so plentifully stocked with wild beasts and game as
some parts of the Old World, but we yet have the panther and the bison,
although now fast fading into a mere traditionary existence before the
rifle of the pioneer. R. M. Shurtleff has a pleasant fancy for
catamounts and deer, and has been a careful student of their habits, of
which the results appear in dramatic bits of the wild life of the woods
introduced into effective paintings of forest scenery; "A Race for Life"
is the title of a weird, savage, and powerful composition by this
artist, representing a flock of ravening wolves pursuing their victim
over fields of frozen snow, behind which the low red sun is setting;
and A. F. Tait has also devoted his life to rescuing from oblivion
species which are rapidly becoming extinct, unless our game-laws are
better enforced than they have been hitherto. There is often too
finished a touch to the style of Mr. Tait, which deprives it of the
force it might otherwise have; but he has, on the other hand, painted
both game and domestic animals with remarkable truth, and he brings to
the subject an inventive fancy that greatly adds to the variety and
interest of his works. We might add in this connection an allusion to
the ingenious carvings of Alexander Pope, a young artist who not only
cuts out groups of game from a block of wood with much cleverness, but
also truthfully colors the grouse and teal his skilful knife carves out
of pine.
There is a branch of art which latterly has attracted much attention in
this country. We refer to still-life. George H. Hall, who is also known
as a _genre_ painter, justly earned a reputation years ago for effective
painting of fruit and flowers, in which he has hitherto had few equals
in this country; and M. J. Heade has devoted his attention successfully
to the rendering of the wonderful gorgeousness of tropical vegetation.
The ideal flower-painting of Mr. Lafarge we have already mentioned. Miss
Robbins, of Boston, is at present one of the most prominent artists we
have in this department. She composes with great taste, and lays on her
colors with superb effect. Some of her paintings suggest the rich,
massive coloring of Van Huysams. Messrs. Seavey, of Boston, Way, of
Baltimore, and Lambdin, of Philadelphia, have produced some interesting
results in this direction; and Miss Dillon and Mrs. Henshaw must be
credited with some very beautiful floral compositions. The list of
ladies who have been measurably successful in realistic flower-painting
is very large, and indicates the strong tendency toward decorative art
in the country, which must result ere long in a distinctly national type
of that branch of æesthetic culture.
In arriving at the close of the second period of American painting, we
are encouraged by abundant evidences of a healthy activity. While some
phases of our art, after a growth of half a century, are passing through
a transition period, and new methods and theories are grafting
themselves upon the old, there is everywhere apparent a deeper
appreciation of the supreme importance of the ideal, and a gathering of
forces for a new advance against the strongholds of the materialism that
wars against the culture of the ideal, combined with a rapidly spreading
consciousness on the part of the people of the ethical importance of
art, and a disposition to co-operate in its healthful development. At
the same time new influences are entering into the national culture of
æsthetics, and branches which have hitherto received little attention
from our artists are coming rapidly into prominence, suggesting that we
are about entering upon a third stage of American art.
V.
_SCULPTURE IN AMERICA._
It is a generally conceded fact that since the death of Michael Angelo
the art of sculpture has made little progress in the expression of the
ideal. It has rather indicated, until recently, a lack of steadiness of
purpose, and a want of freshness and intellectual grasp that place the
plastic art of the last three centuries in a lower rank than that of the
Classic and the Middle Ages. It is, therefore, a matter of surprise that
in a people apparently so unideal as our own, and engaged in struggling
to win for itself a right to exist among the wilds of a new world, that
we find that so much evidence has already been shown of an appreciation
for sculpture. It is true that we have not yet produced any masterpieces
that can rank with those of antiquity; but, on the other hand, some of
our plastic art compares favorably with the best that has been created
in modern times.
But what might have been expected under the circumstances has proved to
be the case. Originality has been the exception and not the rule, even
with our best sculptors. Naturally led to study the antique in Europe,
and also to master there the technical elements of the art of sculpture,
owing to the entire absence of facilities for art education here, it was
only to be expected that they would at first yield to the art influences
whose guidance they sought. It was not their fault that, until recently,
those influences were conventional, and based upon a false perception of
the principles of art.
[Illustration: "EVE BEFORE THE FALL."--[HIRAM POWERS.]]
Some of our most successful sculptors have never been abroad, or at
least have not systematically placed themselves under the tuition of a
foreign master; while a number of them have indicated in their
tendencies a natural sympathy with the later movement of modern
sculpture, which is rather in the direction of allegory, portraiture,
and _genre_ suggested by domestic life. When the ancients represented
Venus or Jove in marble, they sculptured a being in whose actual
existence they believed, and thus a profound reverence inspired the work
of the master. When the sculptor of the Middle Ages carved the deeds of
the Saviour, or the saints, or represented the Last Judgment, he was
moved by deep love or reverential awe, and an unquestioning belief in
the events he was commemorating. But when the sculptor of this century
undertakes to revive classical subjects and modes of thought, he
encounters an insurmountable obstacle at the outset, which checks all
progress, and relegates his art to a secondary rank, without even the
benefit of a doubt in his favor. The laws and limitations of mind make
it impossible for an art to be of the first order which depends upon the
imitation of other art. It is only by copying nature directly, under the
inspirations of its own age and country, that a school of art has the
slightest chance of immortality. Thorwaldsen, the greatest sculptor
since Michael Angelo, exemplified this truth to a remarkable degree.
Moved by a realization of classic art which no other modern sculptor
except Flaxman has approached, we yet find his classical subjects
inferior to those allegorical subjects in which he gave expression to
the impulses of his own times. A slowly dawning consciousness that art
cannot by any force of will or free agency escape from these limitations
of growth is becoming at last evident in recent sculpture, especially in
the emotional and sometimes sensational sculpture of France. Lacking
repose, it is yet fresh and original, and is destined by continued
self-assertion to reach a high rank.
It is in imitations of the antique or in allegory, and portraiture, that
our sculpture has exerted its best efforts, until within a few years.
General Washington has also proved a sort of Jupiter Tonans to our
sculptors. Elevated to a semi-apotheosis by the people, he has hitherto
been the most prominent subject of the plastic art of the West, and has
thus afforded a fair standard of comparison between the merits of
different artists, since very few of them but have tried their hand with
the national hero. As regards popular appreciation or pecuniary reward,
it must be admitted that our sculptors have relatively little cause for
complaint.
The art of sculpture was by no means unknown here when the white man
first stepped foot on our shores. The pipe-stone quarries of the West
are an evidence of what had already been attempted by the aboriginal
savages. Tobacco, so much maligned by certain zealous philanthropists,
was at least an innocent cause of some of the earliest attempts at
sculpture made on this continent. The writer has in his possession an
Indian pipe carved out of flint, which represents a man sitting with
hands clasped across his knees. Simple as it is, it indicates good skill
in stone-carving, and considerable observation of race characteristics
and anatomy. Evidences of great technical skill in the plastic arts, but
with an unformed perception of beauty, are being constantly discovered
among the relics of the extinct Mound-builders of the West and South.
[Illustration: "ORPHEUS."--[THOMAS CRAWFORD.]]