brought the land under cultivation, was regarded as the true pioneer
of civilization. In later times the miner fairly divides this honor.
Pursuing a hazardous occupation, he has invaded most out-of-the-way and
desolate places, creating untold wealth, founding towns and States,
and inviting vast and substantial populations. By his industry and
enterprise he has not only revealed the seventy-seven non-metallic
underground products which in the United States alone, in 1899, had
a value approximating $500,000,000, but the twelve metals—precious
and useful—whose value in the same year approximated $270,000,000.
Around his gold mines—deep and placer—have grown California, Nevada,
the Dakotas, Colorado, and even Alaska; while empires have sprung up
at the sound of his pick and the introduction of his mighty machinery
in Australasia and South Africa. In the development of silver he
has contributed wealth, population, and institutions to Colorado,
Nevada, Utah, Montana, and Arizona. His iron and copper mines have
transformed the barren coasts of the Great Lakes. The quicksilver mines
of Southern California brought San José and other towns to wealth and
importance. In the history of Ureka and Leadville, Col., we have the
romance of both the gold and lead mine. And so, whether the miner
unearths the ores, the coals, the wonderful variety of buried materials
which nature has provided for the use and comfort of mankind, he so
frequently becomes the source of wealth, population, and permanent
civic organization as to give him high rank among the “true pioneers of
civilization.”
ART PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY
BY JOHN V. SEARS,
_Art Critic Philadelphia “Evening Telegraph.”_
I. PAINTING
At no period since the Renaissance has there been such marked progress
in certain walks of art as during the period of reconstruction in the
political, social, economic, and æsthetic world immediately following
the French Revolution of 1798. The armies of France, returning from
the conquest of Europe, brought home to Paris the treasures of art
ravished from the great capital cities. The vast public galleries
and numerous private collections established under the first Empire
contained accumulations of pictures, marbles, bronzes, tapestries,
decorations, and bric-à-brac brought from Italy, from Germany, from
the Low Countries, from Spain, and even from Russia and Egypt, of
extent and value unparalleled in the history of the human race. These
treasures were dispersed under the Restoration and returned to their
former owners; but, in the meantime, their educational influence upon
the people of France, and especially of Paris, had produced profound
and permanent impressions which abide to this day. To this practical
education afforded by the models and examples of all that is noble and
exalted, gathered from the galleries and safe deposits of the civilized
world, France is primarily indebted for that cultured skill and that
refinement of good taste which have enabled her to take and hold her
acknowledged position as the leading nation in the realm of art in the
nineteenth century.
At the beginning of the century the art of France was resting inert in
the bonds of classic tradition. Academic conventionality held almost
undisputed sway; only a few painters of portraits, as, for example,
Madame Vigée-Lebrun, Isabey, and decorative artists like Greuze,
venturing beyond the limits of the hard and fast rules prescribed
by scholastic pedants. The only subjects regarded as legitimate for
artistic treatment were illustrations of mythology or of Greek or
Roman literature. Sacred pictures illustrating the Biblical narratives
and lives of the saints were permitted for church adornment and
for religious purposes; but historic and story-telling pictures of
the order now known as genre were classic in subject and academic
in treatment. Even in portraiture, where a likeness was the main
consideration, military heroes were represented in Greek armor and
distinguished civilians were invested with the dignity of the Roman
toga.
The high priest of ancient pagan worship in France during the first
quarter of the century was Jacques Louis David (1748–1825). David was
a master of such real power that he was court painter to Louis XVI.,
director of Fine Arts under the Republic, and again court painter to
the Emperor Napoleon. His great work, “The Oath of the Horatii,” now
in the Louvre, first exhibited in 1784, was universally admired and
is still highly esteemed. This was followed by a triumphal procession
of classic compositions, the most notable of which were “The Rape of
the Sabines,” usually considered to be his masterpiece, “The Death of
Socrates,” “Paris and Helen,” and “Brutus and His Sons,” all of which
have been reproduced many times in prints. David was influenced, late
in his career, by the romantic reaction, as shown by his “Napoleon
Crossing the Alps” and his “Floating Martyr,” but he championed classic
art all his life, his last words expressing an aspiration to paint the
head of Leonidas.
The downfall of the classic dominion in France was brought about by the
revolt of Géricault and Delacroix, about 1820. Jean Louis Géricault
(1791–1824) was declared by Viardot to have revealed an era when
liberty in art was revived together with political liberty, joining the
general movement of the human spirit in the march of progress toward
independence. His epoch-marking picture, “The Raft of the Medusa,” in
the Salon of 1819, created an intense excitement not only in artistic
circles, where it opened the battle between romance and classic
tradition, but also among the people. Instead of Greek heroes, posing
like antique statues, this thrilling picture portrayed a group of
French sailors, perishing amid the horrors of shipwreck and starvation,
the subject being a scene in the awful tragedy incident to the loss
of the frigate Medusa in 1816, a calamity which the nation was then
mourning with unspeakable grief. Women wept and strong men paled before
this terrible illustration of human agonies endured unto death, but the
academicians attacked the work and the artist with almost savage fury.
Géricault, a genius, sensitive and nervous, quailing before the storm
which beat upon him, fled to England, but, pining in exile, returned
home, only to die, crushed and broken-hearted.
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was a man of firmer fibre
than his friend and fellow-student, and his was the strong hand to take
up the gage of battle when Géricault fell in the fight. For daring to
depart from the classic traditions, these two young painters of the
commonplace subjects of every-day human tragedy and romantic drama were
savagely denounced by the academicians as traitors, as charlatans, as
assassins seeking to murder art. The persecution killed Géricault,
but Delacroix laughed at it. As Théophile Souvestre said of him: “The
blindness of ignorance, the intrigues and clamors of envy, have not
arrested him for an instant in his valiant and glorious course.” By the
splendor of his genius and the virility of his work, as shown in his
great pictures, “The Bride of Abydos,” “The Two Foscari,” “The Amende
Honorable,” and the magnificent series of Oriental studies by which he
is best known, he established the romantic school on a firm basis and
attracted to it nearly all the talented and promising young painters of
Paris.
Among these students and unknown painters were many whose names
subsequently became famous, as Horace Vernet, Paul Delaroche, Baron
Gros, Ary Scheffer, Alexandre Decamps,—artists whose noble productions
gave to the romantic school its finest triumphs. In the mean time,
classic art was ably and effectively supported by the distinguished
labors of Doménique Ingres, pupil and successor of David, Guillaume
Guillon-Lethière, Hippolyte Flandrin, and Jean Baptiste Regnault. The
Academy, though defeated, still lives, and modern lovers of art find
that, especially in decorative design, there is much to admire in
classic subjects.
After the revolt of the romanticists the most important movement in
the world of art also took place in France, and is known as the
“Revolution of 1830.” To understand this movement it is necessary to
consider the state of art in England, as the “men of 1830” in France
derived their inspiration from John Constable, an English landscape
painter. At the beginning of the century the two great artists of
England were Sir David Wilkie and J. M. W. Turner. David Wilkie
(1785–1841) was a portrait, historic, and genre painter, and no English
artist up to his time had ever attained such wide popularity as he
enjoyed. His pictures are all known the world over, as witness such
titles as “The Rent Day,” “Village Politicians,” “The Blind Fiddler,”
“King Alfred in the Neatherd’s Cottage,” “The Village Festival,”
“Reading the Will,” “The Chelsea Pensioners,” “Blind Man’s Buff,” “The
Village School,” and “John Knox preaching.”
[Illustration: THE HOLY WOMEN AT THE TOMB.]
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) was one of the most
remarkable artists that ever lived; a most original genius, “without
ancestors and without heirs.” He was a landscape painter and a most
earnest and faithful student of nature, as shown by his wonderful
illustrations, in black and white, of the scenery of England and
Wales. In his paintings, however, he interpreted rather than portrayed
nature, investing his subjects with the grandeur and glory of his
imagination. His pictures were “golden dreams,” revealing the beauty,
the majesty, the sadness, and the terror inspired by nature, not from
observed details “but from the image or ideal in his own mind.” Of
his many masterworks mention can only be made here of “Crossing the
Brook,” “Dido in Carthage,” “Palestrina,” “The Golden Bough,” “Hannibal
Crossing the Alps,” “The Slave Ship,” “Battle of the Nile,” “Burial
of Sir David Wilkie at Sea,” and perhaps the greatest of all, “The
Fighting Téméraire.”
Turner created no school and left no successor, but he made a distinct
impression on the art of England by stimulating an active interest
in landscape painting. Patrick Nasmyth, Augustus Wall Callcott, John
Linnell, and a score of artists turned to the study of rural scenery,
with the result that they succeeded in establishing what is known as
the Norwich school of landscape art. By far the most important name in
the annals of this period, after Turner’s, is that of John Constable
(1776–1837). Constable presents the contrast of diametric opposition
to Turner. His pictures, so far from being “golden dreams,” are more
like cast-iron realities. When Turner was an idealist, Constable
was an uncompromising realist. If the one painted poetry, the other
painted prose, and often very rugged, plain prose indeed. While Turner
subordinated fact to fancy, illuminating his subjects with the glow
of his fervid imagination, Constable devoutly stood before nature in
the attitude of a worshiper, and faithfully labored to represent as
truthfully as his powers permitted exactly what he beheld. In contrast
with the shining canvases of his brilliant contemporary, Constable’s
pictures seemed dark, dull, and heavy to the British public, and the
original genius of the conscientious artist was not recognized. His
greatest works, “Dedham Vale,” “The White Horse,” “The Hay Cart,”
“Stratford Mill,” “Salisbury Cathedral,” “The Rainbow,” and others were
exhibited in succession during the second decade of the century, before
an indifferent public, only his fellow artists and a few connoisseurs
caring for them, the painter meanwhile starving in neglect.
In 1824 two of his pictures were shown in Paris, and were then
instantly understood and appreciated. They created a profound
impression and, as has been justly said, inaugurated the second
revolution of the century in the realm of art. By this revolution the
artists were driven out of their studios and out of the city, to study
nature in the spirit of humble sincerity shown by John Constable. Among
the young students who went forth to encounter poverty, hardship,
and the severest toil were the “men of 1830,” the founders of the
Barbizon school of painting. Millet, Rousseau, Diaz, Corot, Troyon,
Daubigny, and Dupré left Paris and the ways that then led to success,
and sacrificed themselves to what they saw to be the truth in art. They
carried the study of out-door nature further than ever before; created
the standard of modern landscape art, and attained immortal fame,
though not until their leader and prototype had perished in poverty.
[Illustration: CHRISTMAS CHIMES. (BLASHFIELD.)]
[Illustration: WHISPERS OF LOVE. (BOUGUEREAU.)]
Jean François Millet (1815–1875) has been called the greatest painter
of the nineteenth century, and his masterpiece, “The Angelus,” is
regarded by many as second only to the “Sistine Madonna” of Raphael in
the brief catalogue of the world’s artistic treasures. He lived the
life of a poor peasant in the rural village of Barbizon, attracting
around him, late in life, the ablest of the “men of 1830,” and
producing there those works which have placed his name first on the
annals of our time: “The Sower,” “Waiting,” “Sheep-shearers,” “Woman
Carding,” “The Gleaners,” “Shepherdess and Flock,” and the few others
that constitute the tale of his exceedingly careful and long-considered
compositions.
Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) was declared, by Edmond About, to be the
Moses who led the landscape painters of France out of the Egyptian
bondage of academic convention into the promised land of liberty,
where rivers ran water, where trees were rooted in the ground, and
where animals lived, moved, and had their being. As late as 1848 the
Salon rejected Rousseau’s noble work, “The Alley of Chestnut Trees,”
one of the finest landscapes ever painted; but this was the last act
of the academic tyrants, the foolish offense against the great master
causing the old classic pedants to be relegated to oblivion. Rousseau
took up his residence in Barbizon, and in the forest of Fontainebleau
and the adjoining country studied those rural and pastoral scenes that
have given him his place as one of the first, if not the very first,
of landscape painters. Of these magnificent examples of landscape art,
mention can only be made here of “The Village,” “A Pool under Oaks,”
“Edge of the Forest at Barbizon,” “A Forest Interior,” “Water Course at
Sologne,” and “Hoar Frost,” these being the pictures best known to the
public through reproductions in black and white.
If Turner was a painter of “golden dreams,” Corot was a painter of
silver dreams; the pearly haze of early morning, the pale sky and
misty tree-forms of a gray day, and the soft, low tones of a still,
cloudy afternoon attracting his loving devotion and commanding the
conscientious exercise of his skill. Jean Baptiste Camille Corot
(1796–1875) was certainly one of the happiest artists that ever lived.
Like the other “men of 1830,” he was ostracized by the Academy, and
he was never allowed to receive the first medal of the Salon, but he
had every other honor and compensation, and, late in life, was given
a magnificent gold medal by popular subscription. For many years he
could not sell a single picture, but, being fortunately independent,
in a modest way, he continued to paint the subjects which, as he said,
delighted his heart, and to treat them, as he again said, “with truth
to your own instincts, to your own method of seeing, with what I call
conscientiousness and sincerity.” In due time Corot conquered his world
and, in the height of his career, was earning not less than $50,000 a
year by his brush. He was a constant visitor at Barbizon, maintained
a close intimacy with his friends, there, and studied in the vicinity
many of the hundreds of landscapes his industrious and tireless hand
rejoicingly produced.
Jules Dupré (1812–1889) and Charles François Daubigny (1817–1878)
are distinguished members of the “1830” group, each standing at the
head of the department of landscape art to which he was especially
devoted. Narcisse-Virgil Diaz de la Peña, called Diaz (1807–1876),
another of the fraternity, was not technically so thoroughly trained
as his fellows, but he was a stronger colorist than any of them and a
romanticist of the most pronounced type. Constant Troyon (1810–1865)
was the most eminent cattle-painter of the century. He came on the
scene after the revolt of Géricault was accomplished, but was in
full sympathy with the movement, and is usually accounted as one of
the revolutionists. So also with Jean Leon Gérôme (1824), an artist
surviving to the close of the century.
He first exhibited in 1847, but he took up the line of Oriental
romance, following Delacroix, and made so strong an impression with
his illustrations of the splendors and glories of the East that his
influence in art will be felt for generations to come. After attaining
fame as a painter, Gérôme also developed marked ability as a sculptor.
In strict chronological order the birth of the pre-Raphaelite movement
in art preceded the “revolution of 1830,” as the event actually
occurred in Rome, about 1812. The movement was not originally known
by the name subsequently given it, and it did not attain to more than
local importance until it was fully developed in England, about 1850.
It is to the great German artist, Peter von Cornelius (1783–1867), that
the honor of originating the pre-Raphaelite revolution must be given.
In 1811 Cornelius went to Rome and soon became the master spirit of
the “Brotherhood of Painters,” popularly called “Nazarites,” banded
together for the study of the thirteenth-century Italians, Cimabue and
Giotto, and their successors in the century following, Gaddi, Simoni,
and Orcagna. This Brotherhood was afterward imitated by Rossetti in
London, and its purposes more fully developed; but it was the young
German enthusiasts of the previous generation who affected a revival
of the pure religious spirit, the devout simplicity, and the absolute
sincerity of the Italian artists before the era of Raphael.
[Illustration: GREEK GIRLS PLAYING AT BALL. (LEIGHTON.)]
Cornelius returned to Germany in 1816, became the founder of what is
known as the Munich school of painting, and was made director of the
Art Institute of that city. He exercised a controlling influence in the
evolution of modern German art and, indirectly, on art in England and
in America. His pupil and successor, Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1805–1874),
imparted vitality and power to the Munich school, attracting to his
classes students from all civilized countries. During the second and
third quarters of this century, Kaulbach reigned as the first artist of
Germany and one of the first in the world.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) founded his pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood in London, with John Everett Millais—subsequently
president of the Royal Academy—and William Holman Hunt, in 1848. The
pre-Raphaelite movement gave a richer and stronger color to English
painting in the latter half of the century, and also awakened general
interest in early Christian art, that is, the art of the Italian
Renaissance. Beyond this, Rossetti’s new departure, though widely
advertised by John Ruskin, had very little permanent effect. Millais
soon left the Brotherhood and produced his master-works, the greatest
historic-genre pictures of his time, in England, after outliving
pre-Raphaelite influences.
Little known outside of England, that movement did not entirely absorb
British art, as proved by such a man as G. F. Watts, a master of
portraiture, who made studies of many of the most notable men of the
century in England, besides many imaginative works of great interest.
Others were Holman Hunt, with his powerful religious conceptions, and
the talented Landseer family, the youngest member of which, Edwin, is
world-famous for his animal pictures. The critic and philosopher, John
Ruskin, studied art and became a proficient draughtsman, although never
using his skill professionally. His literary works on art, however,
have had so wide an influence that it seems just to include him in
the list of contributors to art’s progress in this era. His criticism
of the fantastic productions of James McNeill Whistler brought forth
a controversy and law suit, resulting in a verdict of damages of one
farthing to the injured artist, and enough advertising gratis to secure
his fame. The genius of the latter for achieving artistic effects and
personal notoriety are equal to his skill in avoiding oblivion. He is
a unique and interesting figure, despite his abnormal vanity, for his
unquestionable talent in many lines of art, and is American by birth,
English by adoption, and now French by force of circumstances. Edwin
Abbey is also an adopted son of Britain, although born in America.
He is better known through illustrative work in black and white, but
his superb decorations in the Boston Public Library testify to his
great skill as a colorist. The most illustrious growth of foreign
seed on British soil has been Lorenz Alma Tadema, whose wonderful
representations of Greek and Roman life place him _hors concours_ as
an artist, and hold before our eyes a mirror of ancient days. Sir
Frederick Leighton, the recently deceased president of the Royal
Academy, was a true Briton and a leader of modern art in England,
as also was Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson Butler, with her patriotic war
pictures, as vigorous as any man’s could be. A talented young artist,
whose untimely death cut short a promising career, was Frederick
Walker, who is said to have been the original of “Little Billee” in Du
Maurier’s famous novel of student life in the Latin Quarter, “Trilby.”
That masterpiece takes us into the art atmosphere of Paris, and we
readily understand why there is the centre of the artistic circle.
[Illustration: LANDSEER AND HIS FAVORITES. (BY HIMSELF.)]
From thence have risen most of the great modern names, one of the
greatest and most honored being that of Rosa Bonheur, who has received
all possible distinction as an artist and reverence as a woman. Her
animal pictures, especially horses and cattle, are known the world
over, and the story of her early struggle for study, disguised as a
boy, that she might work unmolested where a girl could hardly have
gone, is well known, yet she never renounced an atom of her womanliness
in adopting masculine attire. It is hard to avoid dwelling on the lives
and works of the modern masters, but we must pass over the intermediate
period between the revolt of 1830 and our own day, touching only an
especially shining light here and there, such as Jules Breton, with his
sturdy peasants; Léon Bonnat, Alexandre Cabanel, and Carolus Duran,
with their elegant distingué portraiture. Besides these are Edouard
Détaille and Alphonse de Neuville, showing faithful studies of soldier
life and action; Eugène Fromentin, with his picturesque Arabs; and the
decorative allegories of Puvis de Chavannes. The brilliant Spaniards,
Mariano Fortuny and Don Frederick Madrazo, are practically Frenchmen
in their art, although each is distinctly individual in manner. We
must also mention Vibert, with his delightful little satires on the
human frailities of the holy fathers of the Church, and Meissonier,
the master of exquisite finish in detail, and Passini, with his small
canvases crowded with Oriental figures glowing with color. In addition
to the great French names of this time are Defregger, of the Munich
School; Israels of Amsterdam, Schreyer of Frankfort, whose works all
hold that quality dear to the popular heart, but despised by the high
priests of lofty criticism nowadays, that is, they have a story to
tell, and they tell it.