depended upon his own labors for support; retouching photographs at first.
Later he entered the elementary school of the academy where he received
honors. He drew from the antique and from the model and began to make
drawings for illustration when he was about eighteen. The public knew him
first through his drawings for the comic paper called _Kasper_, and he
shortly became a much sought after illustrator for papers and books. The
first book illustrated by him was a collection of stories by Richard
Gustafsson, the editor of _Kasper_, the next was Anderson's "Tales." In
the latter he succeeded Isidor Toernblom, who died in 1876 after having
executed only a few drawings for the first part. He became bold and rapid
in improvisation, and light and easy in execution--qualities that he never
lost. He was obliged to make of his academic studies a side issue,
bread-winning taking necessarily the first place with him. No doubt it is
to this necessity that he owes that prompt adaptation of his facility to
various uses, that practical application of his freshly acquired knowledge
which give to the simple compositions of his earlier period an especial
spontaneity. He had no time to fix himself in ruts of practice. To draw
from the Antinous one day and the next to press one's Greek outline into
service for the representation of little dancing girls and happy babies is
to effect that union between art and life which makes the first moving and
the second beautiful; the union in which Daumier found the source of his
prodigious strength. In his early years Larsson was anything but a
realist. His fancy turned to unusual and vast subjects, and his natural
impatience caused him to launch himself upon them with very inadequate
preliminary study. The first canvas attempted by him during the study-time
in Paris (time which he won at the Academy) was nearly ten feet high and
represented a scene from the deluge with figures double life size.
Naturally, he found himself unable to cope with the difficulties that
promptly arose and was obliged to give it up. In 1877, when he was
twenty-four years old, he painted a three-quarter length portrait of a
woman standing, which was his best work of that period. The genre
pictures which he sent home to Stockholm at about the same time awakened
little enthusiasm and spread the impression that he had no future as a
painter and would be obliged to content himself with illustration. As an
illustrator he became thoroughly successful, turning out a large amount of
work and gaining for himself in Stockholm the very inappropriate name of
"the Swedish Dore." He made enough money in this branch of art to try
painting again in Paris, but with almost no success until the Spring of
1883, when he exhibited at the Salon a couple of small water-colors, the
subjects taken from the field and garden life of Grez, a little painting
village that lies south of the Fontainebleau forest. These pictures won a
medal and were bought in Gothenburg. Other similar subjects followed, all
distinguished, Nordensvan affirms, by the same pleasing delicacy of
handling, the same glow and splendor of sunlight, and the same glad
color-harmony. He now was in a position to marry, and pictures of family
life presently appeared in great numbers. These are altogether
charming--spirited, vivid, original, and full of an indescribable
freshness and heartiness. Sometimes he painted his young wife holding her
baby, sometimes he painted his two boys parading as mimic soldiers;
sometimes it was his little girl hiding under the great, handsome
dining-table; or a young people's party in the characteristic
dining-room, all the furniture and decorations of which are reproduced
with crisp naturalism.
Not the least charm of his paintings lies in the beauty of these
handsome interiors in which detail has the precise definition found in
the work of the old Dutch artists. While Larsson's technique lacks the
exquisite finish of a Terborch or Vermeer of Delft he tells almost as
many truths about a house and its occupants as they do. If we consider,
for example, the charming composition which he calls "The Sluggard's
Melancholy Breakfast" ("Sjusofverskans dystra frukost") we find worthy
of note not only the pensive and rather cross little girl sitting alone
at the table with her loaf of bread and cup of milk, but also the long
tablecloth with its handsome conventional design, obviously a bit of
artistic handicraft since it is signed and dated above the fringe at one
end, the decoration on the wall, possibly the lower part of a painted
window, with its significant motto "Arte et Probitate"; the graceful
pattern of the chairs, the big pitcher full of flowers and fruits, the
plain ample dishes, the polished floor of the passage-way at the end of
which a door opens on the green fields with a child's figure half-seen
standing on the threshold, the fine rich color harmony of greens and
reds and blues and browns held together by a subtlety of tone that
involves no loss of strength.
His outdoor scenes are hardly less personal in their portraiture. There
is the one called "Apple-Bloom" with a Larsson child in a pink sunbonnet
clinging to the slim stem of a young apple-tree; in the distance some
long low red buildings behind a board fence, in the foreground the pale
green of spring grass; there is the one in which the larger part of the
picture is filled with delicate field growth, thin sprays of pink, blue
and white blossoms, and long slender leaves, at the top of the canvas a
little thicket of trees with a small bright head peering between the
branches; there is the one in which a baby lies on the greensward under
the trees; each has an indescribable charm of individuality. Doubtless
resembling a hundred other groves or meadows, these have an expression
of their own distinguishing them from their kind. It is the genius of
the close observer for discrimination between like things.
Whatever the subject, the treatment is always brilliant, frank and
joyous. Larsson's brushwork is light and flowing; he has, indeed, a
certain French vivacity of technique, but his motives and his personal
point of view are so purely Scandinavian as to leave no other impression
on the mind. Nor is he merely the painter of the Swedish type. He is the
painter of intimate home life and character as found within his own
walls. Hardly any other family in Sweden is known so well as his, and
the variety and enthusiasm of his mind lend spontaneity to these
domestic pictures, so that one does not easily tire of the strong
smiling creatures naturally and effectively presented to our vision.
In the field of mural decoration also he has shown marked originality.
Under the encouragement of Mr. Pontus Furstenberg, one of the foremost
patrons of art in Sweden, he tested himself on a series of paintings for
a girl's school in Gothenburg. He accomplished his task in a manner
entirely his own, taking for his subjects typical figures of women in
Sweden at different periods of history--a Viking's widow; the holy
Brigitta; a noble house mother of the time of the Vasas, etc.--but
although his manner of painting was free and blithe it hardly satisfied
the most severe critics on account of its lack of architectonic
qualities and the absence in it of anything like monumental simplicity.
He has continued, however, to go his own way in mural decoration and
holds to the principle that the walls should look flat and that the
harmony of color and line should be balanced and proportioned with
regard to decorative and not to realistic effect. His subjects are apt
to be fanciful and are executed in a semi-playful spirit not in the
least familiar to an uninventive age, as where the spirit of the
Renaissance is represented by a young woman seated high on a
step-ladder, looking toward the sky, with Popes and Cardinals seated
on the rungs below gazing in adoration, while underneath them all yawns
the grave filled with skeletons, from which the Renaissance has risen.
[Illustration: A PAINTING BY CARL LARSSON]
On the subject of home arts and handicrafts Larsson has emphatic ideas
and urges on his compatriots the desirability of preserving their
national types. "Take care of your true self while time is," he says,
"again become a plain and worthy people. Be clumsy rather than elegant:
dress yourselves in furs, skins, and woolens, make yourselves things
that are in harmony with your heavy bodies, and make everything in
bright strong colors; yes, in the so-called gaudy peasant colors which
are needed contrasts to your deep green pine forests and cold white
snow." He has made designs for haute-lisse weaving which were executed
by the Handicraft Guild and which were practically open air painting
translated into the Gobelin weave. In all that he does he is free from
the trammels of convention; but his chief triumphs are in a field that
is sadly neglected in modern art. As a painter of family life he is
surpassed by none of his contemporaries.
JAN STEEN
X
JAN STEEN
Jan Steen was born in Leyden about 1626, which would make him nineteen
years younger than Rembrandt. He is said to have studied first under
Nicolas Knuepfer and then possibly under Adriaen van Ostade in Harlem,
and finally under Jan van Goyen at the Hague. In 1648 he was enrolled in
the Painter's Guild at Leyden, and the following year he married
Margaretha van Goyen, the daughter of his latest master. His father was
a well-to-do merchant and beer-brewer and Steen himself at one time ran
a brewery, though apparently not with great success. He incontestably
was familiar with the life of drinking places and houses in which rough
merrymaking was the chief business. Many of his subjects are drawn from
such sources and his brush brings them before us with their
characteristic features sharply observed and emphasized. He has been
accused of a moralizing tendency and it may at least be said that he
permits us to draw our own moral from perverted and unpolished facts. In
his least restrained moments he is a kind of Dutch Jordaens, less
exuberant, less sturdy and florid and gesticulatory; but with the same
zest for living, the same union of old and young in any festival that
includes good meat and good drink with song and dance and horse-play. If
we compare "_Die Lustige Familie_" at Amsterdam with that ebullient
rendering of the same subject by Jordaens entitled "_Zoo de ouden
zongen: Zoo pypen de jongen_" that hangs in the Antwerp Museum, we have
no difficulty in perceiving the points of similarity. There even are
likenesses in the color-schemes of the two painters, Jordaen's silvery
yellows for once meeting their match; but we find in Steen's picture a
more subtle discrimination in the characters and temperaments lying
beneath the physical features of the gay company.
Oftentimes Steen indulges in a gay and harmless badinage as different as
possible from the bold and keen irony of his wilder themes. In "_Die
Katzentanz Stunde_" of the Rijks museum at Amsterdam the laughing
children putting the wretched little cat through a course of unwelcome
instruction, the excited pose of the dog, the concentration of the girl
upon her dance-music, are rendered with joyous freedom and animation,
and suggest a childlike mood. The lovely _Menagerie_ of the Hague is
conceived in a still milder and gentler temper, the demure child among
her pets, feeding her lamb, with her doves flying about her head and
the faithful little Steen dog in the background, is an idyllic figure.
Indeed the entire composition has a tenderness and almost a religious
depth of sentiment that make it unique among the painter's achievements.
Another charming composition in which homely pleasures enjoyed with
moderation and in a mood of simple merriment are delicately depicted is
"_Der Wirtshausgarten_" in Berlin, in which the young people and their
elders together with the happy dog are having a quiet meal under a green
arbor. Family pets play an important part in all these scenes of
domestic life; apparently Jan Steen even more than other Dutch painters
was interested in the idiosyncrasies of the animals about him and was
amused by incidents including them. His pictures gain by this a certain
suggestion of kindliness and community of good feeling that is
refreshing in the midst of the frequent vulgarity of theme and
sentiment. Reminiscences of the exquisite feeling shown in "_Die
Menagerie_" continually occur in such incidents as a girl feeding her
parrot, the play of children with the friendly dogs and cats of the
noisy inn, and especially in the importance given to the expressions and
attitudes of the dumb creatures. The dog is nearly always in the
foreground, invariably characterized with the utmost vivacity and
clearness, and usually playing his cheerful part in whatever of lively
occupation his masters are engaged in. In "_Die Lustige Familie_" he
joins his voice to the family concert with an expression of canine
agony.
Frequently the subjects are obviously drawn from the life of his own
family circle and the portraits of his children in these canvases are
always sympathetic and delightful, giving a peculiarly intimate
character to the artist's works in this kind. In "_Das Nikolausfest_" at
Amsterdam the little girl in the foreground--apparently the little
Elisabeth born in 1662, who figures in so many of the later
paintings--is a particularly engaging figure.
These simpler "feasts" and family gatherings in which gay laughter
reigns in place of brawling, constitute a delightful phase of Steen's
art, yet curiously they are seldom as beautiful in their esthetic
qualities as the tavern scenes and incidents of low and vicious life.
The picture in the Louvre, however, "_Das Familien Mahl_," contradicts
this generalization in the sheer loveliness of color, in the light that
streams through the window hung with vines, and in the delicately
discriminated textures of the gowns and furnishings. In this picture the
figure of the woman nursing her child in the background has an amplitude
of line and graciousness of pose that places it on a plane with Millet's
renderings of similar subjects, while the painting in itself is of a
quality never achieved by the poetic Frenchman.
Occasionally we find compositions by Steen in which only two or three
figures are introduced, although as a rule he crowds every inch of his
canvas with human beings and still-life. A very beautiful example of
these compositions is seen in "_Die Musikstunde_" of the National
Gallery, London. The daintiness and innocence of the young girl's
profile, the refinement of the man's face, and the enchanting tones of
the yellow bodice and blue skirt make of this picture a worthy sequel to
"_Die Menagerie_."
Another composition of two figures is "_Das Trinkerpaar_" in the Rijks
Museum at Amsterdam. A woman is drinking from a glass, and a man
standing at one side holds a jug and looks at her with an expression of
concern. The painting of the woman's right hand which she holds to her
breast is delightful and so is the clear half-tone of her face. An
attractive one-figure composition, also in the Rijks Museum, is "_Die
Scheuermagd_," a scullery maid scouring a metal pitcher on the top of a
cask. The discriminations of texture in this picture, the wood and metal
surfaces, the cotton of the woman's blouse, the rather coarse skin of
her bared arms and the more delicate texture of her full throat, are
especially noteworthy. Several compositions in which two or three
figures are grouped are variations of one theme, an invalid visited by
her physician. In several instances the title, the rather lackadaisical
expression of the lady, and the significant glances of her companions,
indicate that love-sickness is the malady. The color in these pictures
is usually beautiful and the types are cleverly differentiated, the
entire story becoming apparent to the spectator by particularities of
gesture and feature, neither exaggerated nor emphasized unduly, but
acutely observed and rendered at their precise value in the
expressiveness of the whole. A very fine example of these
"_Doktorbilder_" is in the collection of the New York Historical
Society. The doctor is bleeding his patient, and there are several
people in the room. The rich costumes are distinguished by the
indescribable blond yellows and silvery blues that make Steen's color
harmonies at their best singularly delicate and blithe.
Among the compositions in which many figures in a complicated
environment tax the artist's technical skill to the utmost, are several
representations of the bean feast, that saturnalia of Germany, upon
which abundant eating and drinking are in order. One of the most
beautiful of these pictures is in the Cassel Gallery. Steen himself,
portly and flushed, sits at the table, grimacing good-naturedly at the
racket assailing his ears. His handsome wife is in the foreground, her
large free gesture and unrestrained pose bringing out the opulent beauty
of her form draped in shining silken stuffs. Her face, turned toward
the little urchin who has found the bean in the cake and thus won the
right to wear a paper crown as king of the revels, is dimpled with
smiles. The two children are babyish in figure and expression and the
little dog is more serious than is his wont upon these occasions. A
couple of men are making a din with bits of brass and iron, and the
place is in complete disorder with eggshells and kitchen utensils
scattered about on the floor, yet the aspect of the scene is curiously
removed from vulgarity. Both beauty and character have been ideals of
the artist. He has not only grasped the loveliness of external things
but he has delved rather deeply into the individualities of these
roistering Hollanders. You do not feel as you do with Jordaens that
excess of flesh and the joys of the palate are all the world holds for
the revelers. The world holds, for one thing, appreciation of rich
accessories. The columned bedstead, the handsome rugs, the carved
furniture, the glint of gold in the ornate picture frame, especially the
sheen of the silk skirts, the soft thick velvet and fur of the sacques
and bodices, these, while they are not uncommon in the Dutch interiors
of the period combine to produce an impression of esthetic well-being
that tempers the unctuous physical satisfactions of a merry-making
class. With Jordaens it is the satyr in man that sets the standard of
enjoyment, except in his religious pictures which often are filled with
genuine and noble emotion, and in which he rises superior to Steen where
the latter works in the same kind. Nothing could be more commonplace or
characterless in color and form than Steen's rendering of the dinner at
Emmaus. Occasionally, however, he is equally without inspiration in his
lustiest subjects. In the "_Froehliche Heimkehr_" at Amsterdam, a merry
enough scene of people returning from a boatride in high spirits, there
is neither charm of color (save in the yellow jacket of a girl who leans
over the side of the boat) nor subtlety of characterization.
Fully to appreciate Steen, we should know his pictures in the Louvre and
at Amsterdam. They cover a wide range and comprise a considerable number
of masterpieces. The life he depicts in them is not of a very high
order, but he has seen the possibilities for pictorial representation in
his surroundings as almost no other painter of his time. His people are
alive and their living is active and fervent. What they do they do with
zest. There is energy in the painter's line and vitality in his color.
Nothing is dull or tame in his family drama. All has a touch of moving
beauty. In the "_Schlechte Gesellschaft_" of the Louvre or the more
vulgar "_Nach dem Gelage_" of the Rijks Museum--least rewarding of
pictures for the moralist--how rich in beauties of color and line is the
composition, how tender in modeling are the forms, how bewitching to
the eye the fine enamel of the surface!
In the Metropolitan Museum, in New York, is one characteristic example:
"The old rat comes to the trap at last," which badly needs cleaning, and
one new purchase attributed to Steen in the lists of his work but hardly
typical or even characteristic. The subject is a kitchen scene. In it we
have neither Steen's charm of color nor his perfection of finish. Yet
the turn of the woman's head, the unaffected merriment of her expression
and that of the youth, and the type to which her face belongs
sufficiently recall such examples of the artist's work as "_Das Galante
Anerbieten_" at Brussels with which indeed it has more in common than
with any other of Jan Steen's pictures known to me.
Steen's own portrait, painted by himself and hanging now in the
Amsterdam Museum, shows a face upon which neither wild living nor ardent
toil has left unhappy marks. His serious eyes look frankly out from
under arched brows. His mouth is firm though smiling slightly. The high,
bold nose and strong chin, the well-shaped head and thoughtful brow
indicate a character more decided and more praiseworthy than the legends
adrift concerning his life would lead us to expect in him.
ONE SIDE OF MODERN GERMAN PAINTING
XI
ONE SIDE OF MODERN GERMAN PAINTING
The best substitutes for the judgments of posterity are the judgments of
foreigners. A group of pictures by the artists of one country, taken to
another country for exhibition and criticism, is subjected to something
the same test as the pictures of one generation coming under the
scrutiny of another generation.
When a collection of pictures by modern German artists was exhibited in
America in 1909, the American people were prompt in their recognition of
a certain quality which they termed national. The critics--many of
them--saw this quality from the adverse side and were far from
complimentary to the Germans in their comparisons between American art
and German art, but a general impression was given of a vitality
sufficiently marked to make itself felt by the least initiated observer.
A number of the pictures by the older men had little enough of this
vitality, but where it existed it was so decided as to leaven the mass.
And there was almost none of the sentimentality characterizing the
Teutonic ideal as it had manifested itself in the pictures formerly
brought to this country.
Compared, then, with the paintings of American artists and with those of
the Frenchmen, whose work we have known so much better than that of any
other country, compared also with the work of the modern Spaniards,
whose paintings were on exhibition the same winter at the Hispanic
Museum, we find the special character of the German painting to exist in
a resolute individualism, a determination to express the inner life of
the artist, his temperament and predilections and his mood at whatever
cost of technical facility. Expressiveness, getting the idea into
circulation, getting something said, this appears to be the common goal
of the German painter of the present day.
In such case, of course, the idea is of particular importance. If it is
to take precedence over purely esthetic qualities it is reasonable to
expect it to be an idea of no little importance. Let us examine some of
the painters represented in the exhibition arranged for America, and see
whether in most cases the idea is emotional as with the artists of China
and Japan, and therefore peculiarly appropriate to translation by
rhythms of line and harmonies of color, or intellectual, and therefore
demanding a complex and difficult expression and the solution of
technical problems that do not come into the question at all when
nothing else is required than to evoke an especial mood or temper of
soul.
The oldest of the painters represented was Adolf von Menzel, who was
born in 1815 and died in his ninetieth year. As he began work at an
early age his accomplishment practically covers the period of the
nineteenth century. He has been designated by one of his German critics
as three Menzels in one: the first, the historian of the Freiderician
period; the second, the historian of his own time, recording the court
life in which he played his part; the third, the acute observer of the
life of the streets and workrooms and a commentator on the amusing
details of the passing show.
A number of his sketches were shown at the exhibition, a couple of
landscapes, a ballroom scene and a theater subject, beside a little
mediaeval subject in gouache. These displayed his dexterity of hand
which was truly astounding, and also his memory, as the "Theatre
Gymnase" was painted fully a year after he left Paris. The ballroom
supper was painted in an ironic mood and the gluttony of his fellow
humans, their unattractive personalities, their curious aspect of the
educated animal, appear with an intense and pitiless fidelity to the
fact which is of the essence of intellectual realism, but which could
equally have been achieved through the medium of words. In spite of a
cultivated color sense and a fine control over his instrument he was
from first to last essentially an illustrator. It was difficult for him
to omit any detail that would add to the piquancy or fulness of his
story, however much the omission might have done for his general effect.
He said himself, "There should be no unessentials for the artist," and
he advised his pupils to finish as much as possible and not to sketch at
all. This passion for completeness rarely accompanies a strong feeling
for the romantic aspects of nature or for atmospheric subtleties.
Neither does the painter who observes human nature closely and
represents it with a detailed commentary upon its characteristics
usually convey the impression of any subjective emotion.