In the early seventies a group of students—dissatisfied with the
cut-and-dried instruction of the Paris art school and attracted by
certain qualities of color and technique in the work of a young Frenchman
from the city of Lille, who was just beginning to attract the attention
of connoisseurs—went in a body to his studio with the request that he
would oversee their work and direct their studies. The artist thus
chosen was Carolus-Duran. Oddly enough, a majority of the youths who
sought him out and made him their master were Americans.
The first modest workroom on the Boulevard Montparnasse was soon too
small to hold the pupils who crowded under this newly raised banner, and
a move was made to more commodious quarters near the master’s private
studio. Sargent, Dannat, Harrison, Beckwith, Hinckley, and many others
whom it is needless to mention here, will—if these lines come under their
notice—doubtless recall with a thrill of pleasure the roomy one-storied
structure in the rue Notre-Dame des Champs where we established our
_atelier d’élèves_, a self-supporting cooperative concern, each student
contributing ten francs a month toward rent, fire, and models,
“Carolus”—the name by which this master is universally known abroad—not
only refusing all compensation, according to the immutable custom of
French painters of distinction, but, as we discovered later, contributing
too often from his own pocket to help out the _massier_ at the end of a
difficult season, or smooth the path of some improvident pupil.
Those were cloudless, enchanted days we passed in the tumbled down old
atelier: an ardent springtime of life when the future beckons gayly and
no doubts of success obscure the horizon. Our young master’s enthusiasm
fired his circle of pupils, who, as each succeeding year brought him
increasing fame, revelled in a reflected glory with the generous
admiration of youth, in which there is neither calculation nor shadow of
envy.
A portrait of Madame de Portalais, exhibited about this time, drew all
art-loving Paris around the new celebrity’s canvas. Shortly after, the
government purchased a painting (of our master’s beautiful wife), now
known as _La Femme au Gant_, for the Luxembourg Gallery.
It is difficult to overestimate the impetus that a master’s successes
impart to the progress of his pupils. My first studious year in Paris
had been passed in the shadow of an elderly painter, who was comfortably
dozing on the laurels of thirty years before. The change from that
sleepy environment to the vivid enthusiasm and dash of Carolus-Duran’s
studio was like stepping out of a musty cloister into the warmth and
movement of a market-place.
Here, be it said in passing, lies perhaps the secret of the dry rot that
too often settles on our American art schools. We, for some unknown
reason, do not take the work of native painters seriously, nor encourage
them in proportion to their merit. In consequence they retain but a
feeble hold upon their pupils.
Carolus, handsome, young, successful, courted, was an ideal leader for a
band of ambitious, high-strung youths, repaying their devotion with an
untiring interest and lifting clever and dull alike on the strong wings
of his genius. His visits to the studio, on which his friend Henner
often accompanied him, were frequent and prolonged; certain Tuesdays
being especially appreciated by us, as they were set apart for his
criticism of original compositions.
When our sketches (the subject for which had been given out in advance)
were arranged, and we had seated ourselves in a big half-circle on the
floor, Carolus would install himself on a tall stool, the one seat the
studio boasted, and chat _à propos_ of the works before him on
composition, on classic art, on the theories of color and clair-obscur.
Brilliant talks, inlaid with much wit and incisive criticism, the memory
of which must linger in the minds of all who were fortunate enough to
hear them. Nor was it to the studio alone that our master’s interest
followed us. He would drop in at the Louvre, when we were copying there,
and after some pleasant words of advice and encouragement, lead us off
for a stroll through the galleries, interrupted by stations before his
favorite masterpieces.
So important has he always considered a constant study of Renaissance art
that recently, when about to commence his _Triumph of Bacchus_, Carolus
copied one of Rubens’s larger canvases with all the naïveté of a
beginner.
An occasion soon presented itself for us to learn another side of our
trade by working with our master on a ceiling ordered of him by the state
for the Palace of the Luxembourg. The vast studios which the city of
Paris provides on occasions of this kind, with a liberality that should
make our home corporations reflect, are situated out beyond the
Exhibition buildings, in a curious, unfrequented quarter, ignored alike
by Parisians and tourists, where the city stores compromising statues and
the valuable débris of her many revolutions. There, among throneless
Napoleons and riderless bronze steeds, we toiled for over six months side
by side with our master, on gigantic _Apotheosis of Marie de Médicis_,
serving in turn as painter and painted, and leaving the imprint of our
hands and the reflection of our faces scattered about the composition.
Day after day, when work was over, we would hoist the big canvas by means
of a system of ropes and pulleys, from a perpendicular to the horizontal
position it was to occupy permanently, and then sit straining our necks
and discussing the progress of the work until the tardy spring twilight
warned us to depart.
The year 1877 brought Carolus-Duran the _médaille d’honneur_, a crowning
recompense that set the atelier mad with delight. We immediately
organized a great (but economical) banquet to commemorate the event, over
which our master presided, with much modesty, considering the amount of
incense we burned before him, and the speeches we made. One of our
number even burst into some very bad French verses, asserting that the
painters of the world in general fell back before him—
. . . _épouvantès_—
_Craignant ègalement sa brosse et son èpèe_.
This allusion to his proficiency in fencing was considered particularly
neat, and became the favorite song of the studio, to be howled in and out
of season.
Curiously enough, there is always something in Carolus-Duran’s attitude
when at work which recalls the swordsman. With an enormous palette in
one hand and a brush in the other, he has a way of planting himself in
front of his sitter that is amusingly suggestive of a duel. His lithe
body sways to and fro, his fine leonine face quivers with the intense
study of his model; then with a sudden spring forward, a few rapid
touches are dashed on the canvas (like home strokes in the enemy’s
weakest spot) with a precision of hand acquired only by long years of
fencing.
An order to paint the king and queen of Portugal was the next step on the
road to fame, another rung on the pleasant ladder of success. When this
work was done the delighted sovereign presented the painter with the
order of “Christ of Portugal,” together with many other gifts, among
which a caricature of the master at work, signed by his sitter, is not
the least valued.
When the great schism occurred several years ago which rent the art world
of France, Carolus-Duran was elected vice-president of the new school
under Meissonier, to whose office he succeeded on that master’s death;
and now directs and presides over the yearly exhibition known as the
_Salon du Champ de Mars_.
At his château near Paris or at Saint Raphael, on the Mediterranean, the
master lives, like Leonardo of old, the existence of a grand seigneur,
surrounded by his family, innumerable guests, and the horses and dogs he
loves,—a group of which his ornate figure and expressive face form the
natural centre. Each year he lives more away from the world, but no more
inspiriting sight can be imagined than the welcome the president receives
of a “varnishing” day, when he makes his entry surrounded by his pupils.
The students cheer themselves hoarse, and the public climbs on everything
that comes to hand to see him pass. It is hard to realize then that this
is the same man who, not content with his youthful progress, retired into
an Italian monastery that he might commune face to face with nature
undisturbed.
The works of no other painter give me the same sensation of quivering
vitality, except the Velasquez in the Madrid Gallery and, perhaps,
Sargent at his best; and one feels all through the American painter’s
work the influence of his first and only master.
“_Tout ce qui n’est pas indispensable est nuisible_,” a phrase which is
often on Carolus-Duran’s lips, may be taken as the keynote of his work,
where one finds a noble simplicity of line and color scheme, an
elimination of useless detail, a contempt for tricks to enforce an
effect, and above all a comprehension and mastery of light, vitality, and
texture—those three unities of the painter’s art—that bring his canvases
very near to those of his self-imposed Spanish master.
Those who know the French painter’s more important works and his many
splendid studies from the nude, feel it a pity that such masterpieces as
the equestrian portrait of Mlle. Croisette, of the Comédie Française, the
_Réveil_, the superb full length of Mme. Pelouse on the Terrace of
Chenonceau, and the head of Gounod in the Luxembourg, could not be
collected into one exhibition, that lovers of art here in America might
realize for themselves how this master’s works are of the class that
typify a school and an epoch, and engrave their author’s name among those
destined to become household words in the mouths of future generations.