demand for art education--a want which has been met by the establishment
of numerous schools or academies of art in our leading cities all over
the land, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It is true that in
Philadelphia, Boston, and New York academies were founded early in the
century, and the last especially had become a very important factor in
stimulating the latent love for art in our people. The Massachusetts
Normal Art School, under the able direction of Mr. Walter Smith, while
devoted chiefly to the advancement of industrial art, has also by its
example greatly assisted the growth of the art feeling in the popular
mind. While much may be urged with reason against compulsory instruction
of art in the public schools, it would seem that few could be found to
object to the education of art instructors, and the addition of an
optional art branch to the State schools for the benefit of those who
are desirous of art instruction, but are too poor to avail themselves of
the advantages offered by such admirable art schools as those of the
Cooper Institute and Artists' League in New York, the National Academy
or the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, or the Academy in Philadelphia.
It may, then, be conceded that the founding of the Massachusetts Normal
Art School is not only a strong indication of a growing demand, but that
it has also been a very powerful agent in the diffusion of art knowledge
in the United States.
[Illustration: "THE OLD ORCHARD."--[R. SWAIN GIFFORD.]]
Thus we see that by a cumulative effort the arts are making sudden and
rapid progress in America. And there is still another movement which
strikingly indicates this. Slow to be recognized, and meeting in some
quarters with but cold welcome, it is yet by no means the least
significant indication out of many that we are in the full tide of
æsthetic progress, and have fairly entered on the third period of
American art. From the time of West it has been not uncommon for our
painters to go to Europe for study and observation; but they either had
the misfortune to form their style after that of schools already
conventional and on the wane, or they were not yet sufficiently advanced
to accept the methods and principles of new masters and schools. A
possible explanation, that is more philosophical, but which some may
decline to accept, may be found in the general laws directing human
progress, that obliged us, unconsciously, falteringly to tread one after
the other the successive steps which others have followed before us. For
the same reason, when an artist of unusual ability, like Stuart,
appeared in the country, he had little or no following, because he came
before his time.
[Illustration: A LANDSCAPE.--[GEORGE INNESS.]]
But it has been evident for some years that a new element was entering
our art ranks and demanding expression, which has at last reached a
degree of vigor and organized strength that challenges respectful
attention, if not unqualified acceptance. By associations, schools, and
exhibitions of its own, it has thrown down the gauntlet to conservatism
and conventionalism, and the time has arrived when we can no longer shut
our eyes to the fact that a new force is exerting itself with
iconoclastic zeal to introduce a different order of things into American
art. We cannot justly consider this movement in the light of reform, for
up to this time our art has been very creditable, and, considering the
environing circumstances, full as advanced proportionally as the other
factors of American civilization. We regard it simply as another stage
in our art progress, destined, when it has accomplished its end, to be
in turn succeeded by yet higher steps in the scale of advance; for,
notwithstanding the somewhat demonstrative assumptions of some of its
promoters, the new movement does not comprehend within itself, more than
any other school, all the qualities of great art. To no school of art
has it yet been given to demonstrate and include in itself all the
possibilities of art, or to interpret all the truths of nature and man.
Perhaps some future school may arise, with all the knowledge of the ages
to choose from, which may comprehend the whole sphere of art in its
compass. But they are probably not yet born who shall see it, or give to
it the symmetry of perfection. Until that time, it behooves those
neophytes and disciples, who proclaim that their art includes all that
art has to tell, to be modest in their claims, and to be satisfied if
they have been able by fasting and prayer to enrich the world of art
with one or two new truths. Nowhere is humility more becoming than in
art; arrogance and assumption dig its grave sooner or later; while
humility is by no means incompatible with earnestness, zeal, and
progress.
[Illustration: "LA MARGUERETTE--THE DAISY."--[WILLIAM M. HUNT.]]
The ripeness of our art for a change before the new movement actually
assumed definite shape had already been suggested and welcomed in
advance by such artists as Eastman Johnson, Homer Martin, and Samuel
Colman, the admirable painter in oil and water colors, strong in
_chiaro-oscuro_, brilliant in color, and, although without academic
training abroad, of a most excellent catholic spirit in all matters
relating to art, ready to accept the good of whatever school, and to aid
progress in the arts of his native land by whomsoever promoted. Benjamin
C. Porter, whose massive characterizations in portraiture, broadly
treated and admirably colored, have been among the most important
achievements in recent American art, and Winslow Homer, A. H. Wyant, and
E. M. Bannister are also among the artists whose sympathies are
naturally with the new movement, although receiving their art training
chiefly in this country, and who have thus indicated and prepared the
way for the assertion of new influences in our art.
R. Swain Gifford should be added to the list of the noteworthy
landscape-painters who have thrown the weight of their influence in
advance to welcome to our shores new elements of progress and change
whereby to quicken American art to fresh conquests. This artist at one
time devoted his efforts to marine-painting, in which he did and still
does some creditable work, his knowledge of ships being sufficiently
technical to satisfy the nautical eye; but since his sojourn in Algeria,
and the observations made in the Continental galleries and studios, he
has devoted himself to landscape, and adopted a bolder style and a truer
scheme of color. The influence of French art is perceptible in his later
methods, but altogether as an influence, and in no sense as an
imitation, for in his works there is always evident a sturdy
self-assertion, whether in subject or treatment. In catching the gray
effects of brooding skies receding in diminishing ranks through an
aërial perspective of great distance and space, and giving with fine
feeling the Druid-like spirit of clumps of sombre russet-hued cedars
moaning by the granite shore of old Massachusetts, and identifying
himself with the mysterious thoughts they suggest, Mr. Gifford has no
superior on this side of the Atlantic. As a professor in the Cooper
Institute, his influence is of great importance to the future of
American pictorial art.
[Illustration: MOONLIGHT.--[JOHN J. ENNEKING.]]
George Inness is another painter who, although without training in
foreign studios, should be included with the artists just named, whose
sympathies have gradually led him to exemplify in his works some of the
most characteristic traits of later Continental methods. At first his
style was not unlike the prevailing style of our middle school of
landscape-painting; like that, giving careful attention to the
reproduction of details. But his emotional nature, and intense
reflection upon the philosophical principles of art, gradually led him
to a broader style and a more free expression of the truths of nature,
dealing with masses rather than with details, and handling his
subjects--especially atmospheric effects--with a daring and an insight
that has never been surpassed in our landscape art. To these he has
added a feeling for light and color that place him, at his best, among
the masters of the art. But there is inequality in his works, and
sometimes a conflict of styles, as when he dashes off a composition, in
two or three sittings, that is full of fire and suggestion; and then,
perhaps with a relic of his first method still lingering in his memory
like a habit, goes over it again, and smooths away some of those bold
touches which, to an imaginative observer, gave it additional force.
[Illustration: "HAVING A GOOD TIME."--[LOUIS C. TIFFANY.]]
In his latest works Mr. Inness has shown a disposition to yield more
and more to a style at present called impressionist. Impressionism pure
and simple, as represented by its most extravagant supporters, is like
trying to represent the soul without the body. This may be well enough
in another world; but in this a material body is needed to give it
support. But, philosophically considered, there is no question that
impressionism--or the attempt to represent nature according to the
impressions it makes upon the mind's eye, rather than the mere
reflections left on the material eye--undoubtedly presents the
quintessence of the spirit of art; and therefore all good art must have
in it more or less evidence of subjective influence. But just so long as
art finds expression with material means, the artist must make
concessions to the limitations of substance. Naturally, of all the arts,
music comes nearest to the ideal which the impressionist is seeking to
grasp.
It is useless to deny that, extravagant as some of the works of the
contemporary impressionists appear to many, they undoubtedly present a
keen appreciation of aërial chromatic effects, and for this reason are
worthy of careful attention. That they are not carried nearer to
completion, however, indicates a consciousness on the part of the artist
that he is as yet unable to harmonize the objective and subjective, the
material and the spiritual phases of art. A perfect work of art combines
the two; but, alas! such achievements are as yet rare, although that is
the ideal which the artist should keep in view. The artist who gives us
what is called a finished painting is so far right. He represents what
appears to the material eye. In proportion as he combines with this a
suggestion of the intellectual impression also made on his mental
vision, he approaches the ideal in art execution. On the other hand, the
artist who is impatient of details, and deals wholly with a broad, and
sometimes, we regret to say, dauby and slovenly interpretation of
nature, is yet so far right, because he is endeavoring to interpret the
wholly imaginative and intellectual side of art. When to this bias he
adds the balance of power which enables him to give something of the
other phase of art, he in turn approaches the ideal aim of art. Turner
was an impressionist; so was Corot; so, to go farther back, was
Velasquez; so, also, are the Japanese. But these artists, especially
Turner and Velasquez, had the supreme faculty of uniting the two
opposite poles in art in their best works, and hence the commanding
position which they hold, and always will hold, in the art world.
[Illustration: SOUTHAMPTON, LONG ISLAND.--[C. H. MILLER.]]
So far as can be ascertained, it is to the late William M. Hunt that we
must ascribe the initiation of the third period in our pictorial art,
and perhaps, in a secondary manner, the general impulse toward foreign
styles now modifying the arts of design in this country. When Mr. Hunt
went to Düsseldorf to study, in 1846, he did no more than many of our
artists had already done. But when, dissatisfied with the
conventionalism of that school, he turned his steps to Paris, and
became a pupil of Couture, and was one of the first to discover, to
admire, and to emulate the art methods of Millet, then, unconsciously,
he became a power, destined by his somewhat narrow but intense
personality to influence the destinies of our art--especially by
returning to Boston, a city easily brought under the magnetism of a
strong individuality, and more ready than any other city in the land to
surrender the guidance of its opinions to those whom it condescends to
admire.
The going of Mr. Hunt to Paris meant that technical knowledge and the
perception of the underlying principles of art were now, as never
before, to be systematically mastered and imported to America by our
artists, together with the most advanced theories, truths, or
discoveries in the technical part of the subject. It did not mean that
all our artists who went abroad to study would necessarily be great, or
that any of them would be especially original, but that there would be a
general harmony of action toward improving the means of art education in
America. Regarded in this light, Mr. Hunt must be considered to have
been a most important promoter of the development of art in America. He
was probably not a man of genius--unless great force of character be
considered as such--but he had a true perception of the character and
aims, the limitations and possibilities of art; and the intolerance he
sometimes exhibited was not unusual in those who are introducing new
methods, and have to create a circle of influence. In his own works, as
a landscape, portrait, _genre_, and decorative painter, it cannot be
said that he added greatly to the sum of the world's art by anything
strikingly original; but he exhibited a true perception of the
importance of the ideal in art; and one feels, in contemplating his
works, that he was ever striving to overcome the difficulties of
material means of expressing the ideal. Moved, like most leading
American painters, by a feeling for color rather than for form, yet, in
such compositions as "The Bathers," representing a boy about to dive
from the shoulders of another, who is half immersed in a pool, vanishing
into the green gloom of the wooded banks, we have an admirable example
of the manner in which this artist sometimes combined form,
_chiaro-oscuro_, and color, with a delicacy, force, and suggestion of
outline and tint, to a degree rarely equalled before by American art;
with a technique essentially that of the later French school, yet
modified by individual feeling.
[Illustration: A STUDY.--[FREDERICK DIELMAN]]
But the life-work of Mr. Hunt was, after all, not more in his paintings
than in that influence by which he gathered about him a school of
admirers and disciples who disseminated his opinions and imitated his
style, although rarely with his success. Among those who directly
profited by his style and influence may be mentioned Mrs. Darrah, who
effectively paints gray coast scenes and landscapes in a low, minor key;
Miss Helen M. Knowlton; Miss Bartol; F. P. Vinton; and S. S. Tuckerman,
the marine painter.
The power of Mr. Hunt was still more widely felt in directing a large
number of young art-students to visit Paris, and eventually also Munich,
at each of which the tendency has been for some years toward bolder
methods in the technics of art. The result has been to introduce to this
country a truer perception of the vital importance of style in the
present stage of our art, and to emphasize the truth that he who has
anything to say will make it much more effective if he knows how to
give it adequate utterance.
Of the many Boston artists who have profited by foreign study and are
now resident in that city, we can mention but three or four. John J.
Enneking, a graduate of the studios of Munich and Paris, can hardly be
called an idealist. There is little evidence of imagination in his
canvases; but in seizing the effects of the brilliant lights of sunset,
or the varied grays of a lowering sky on a cloudy day, he shows himself
equally happy in color, _chiaro-oscuro_, and technical skill in handling
pigments. His versatility is remarkable. He can render the figure from
life with a vigor and freshness scarcely less than that of his
landscapes. There is, unfortunately, an evidence of haste in too many of
his works, which cannot be too much regretted, for he thus fails to do
justice to the very decided ability he possesses. Having studied both in
Munich and Paris, and given careful attention to all the European
schools of art, and adding to this knowledge sturdy independence of
opinion and great earnestness and energy, Mr. Enneking ought to be
strongly influential in the present stage of American art.
We find much that is interesting in the paintings of E. L. Weeks. They
are marked by a powerful individuality, which delights in glowing
effects of light, and revels in the brilliant coloring of tropical
scenery or the varied splendor of Oriental architecture and costumes.
There is something Byronic in the fervor of this artist's enthusiasm for
the East, and the easy adaptability that has enabled a son of New
England to identify himself with the life and scenery of lands so
exactly the opposite of his own. Although a pupil of Bonnât, and an
ardent admirer of the excessive realism now affected by some of the
followers of the later French school, Mr. Weeks is, in spite of himself,
an idealist, and no imitator of any style. This has, perhaps, been an
injury to him, for he finds difficulty in mastering the technical or
mechanical problems of his profession. A lack of knowledge or feeling
for form, a weakness in drawing which is too often perceptible in his
works, and sometimes an apparent opaqueness in his pigments, impair the
quality of compositions which are inspired by the fire of genius.
[Illustration: "THE BURGOMASTER."--[H. MUHRMAN.]]
J. M. Stone, who is one of the professors at the Museum of Fine Arts,
and a graduate of the Munich schools, indicates considerable force in
rendering the figure, both in color and drawing, and a touch of genius
in the painting of dogs and horses. His service in the army during
the war intensified his interest in equine art, and will probably result
in important compositions suggested by that conflict. C. R. Grant has a
delicate poetic feeling for color and form, and a pleasant fancy tinged
with quaintness; and in his choice of treatment and subject suggests the
works of G. H. Boughton. In T. W. Dewing, a pupil of Lefévre, who has
recently settled in Boston, we find much promise in figure-painting, but
altogether after the clear-cut, well-drawn, but somewhat dry method of
Gérôme.
J. Foxcroft Cole, who has been a careful student of the best phases of
French landscape art, but has formed, at the same time, a sufficiently
individual style of his own, is an artist whose works command a growing
esteem. Although adding groups of cattle to his compositions, he is
essentially a landscape-painter. We receive from a study of his works an
impression of sameness, like that conveyed by the landscapes of Corot,
chiefly because they are generally on one key, and refer to a class of
subjects so quiet and undemonstrative that only he who observes them
repeatedly and reflectively discovers that each work is the result of a
distinct inspiration, and possesses suggestions and qualities of its
own. Exquisite feeling for space and atmosphere, for the peaceful
effects of pastoral life, and the more subtle aspects of nature,
especially in color, are the characteristics of the style of Mr. Cole.
In reviewing the Boston school, we note in its development much activity
and earnestness, too often combined, however, with crudeness; while the
foreign influence that is, on the whole, most evident in it is that of
the contemporary French school. As Boston is intense rather than broad
in its intellectual traits, and is inclined to follow the lead of its
own first thinkers and artists, it is the more unfortunate that one
influence should predominate, because in such a case the errors as well
as the good qualities of a style are liable to receive too much
attention; while free growth depends on the catholic eclecticism which
supplements the study of nature by culling the good from different
schools, and correcting one by comparison with another, thus enabling
the artist to arrive at a more just and profound view of a question that
proceeds upon irreversible laws. The mind thus educated learns by
balancing the merits of different schools, and the results are not so
much imitation as assimilation, yielding healthy growth and development.
[Illustration: "BURIAL OF THE DEAD BIRD."--[J. ALDEN WIER.]]
In New York there seems to be, with no less activity than that of
Boston, an art movement which is based on broader grounds, and offers
more encouragement for the future of our art. The artists who are the
most influential in this advance are more equally divided between the
French and the German schools than those of Boston, and indicate more
breadth of sympathy and art culture, together with a cosmopolitan love
for the good in the art of all schools, which is one of the most
encouraging of signs in a dawning intellectual reform. So decided had
the tendency toward Munich become soon after 1870, that the colony of
American art students in Munich soon grew sufficiently large to
establish an art association, having stated days of meeting, at which
contributed paintings were exhibited and discussed, and carefully
prepared papers on art topics were read. Opinions were exchanged in this
manly, earnest, sympathetic manner, and breadth and catholicity were
reached in the consideration of the great question in which all were so
profoundly interested. Thus were gained many of the influences which are
destined to affect American art for ages to come.
[Illustration: "THE APPRENTICE."--[WILLIAM M. CHASE.]]
The writer regards as among the most improving and delightful evenings
he has enjoyed those passed with some of these talented and enthusiastic
art students at the table where a number regularly met to dine--at the
Max Emanuel café in Munich. Dinner over, huge flagons of beer were
placed before each one, and pipes were lit, whose wreaths of
upward-curling smoke softened the gleam of the candles, and gave a
poetic haze to the dim nooks of the hall that was highly congenial to
the hour and the topics discussed. The leonine head of Duveneck,
massively set on his broad shoulders, as from time to time behind a
cloud of smoke he gave forth an opinion, lent much dignity to the scene;
while the grave, thoughtful features of Shirlaw, and the dreamy,
contemplative face of Chase, occasionally lit by a flash of impetuous
emotion, aided by an eloquent gesture, made the occasion one of great
interest. Others there were around the board whose sallies of humor or
weighty expressions of opinion made an indelible impression.
Among the resident artists of New York who have recently studied abroad,
Louis C. Tiffany, a follower of the French school, holds a prominent
position. He has done some very clever things in landscape and _genre_
from subjects suggested by his trip to the East, and has succeeded
equally in oil and water colors, and is now giving a preference to
American subjects, and also turning his attention to the pursuit of
decorative art. He is essentially a colorist, to whom the radiant tints
of the iris seem like harmoniously chorded strains of music. William
Sartain, a pupil of Bonnât and Yvon, has also proved himself an
excellent colorist, and shows vigor and truth of drawing both in figure
and architectural perspective, as well as pleasing composition in work
which he has done abroad.