In a small house in Aabeuraa—the street where Holberg lets his poor poets dwell—lived Albert Thorwaldsen with his parents, and divided his time between the study of art and assisting his father. The Academy's lesser gold was then the prize to be obtained for sculpture. Our artist was now twenty years of age; his friends knew his abilities better than himself, and they compelled him to enter on the task. The subject proposed was, "Heliodorus Driven out of the Temple."

We are now in Charlottenburg; but the little chamber in which Thorwaldsen lately sat to make his sketch is empty, and he, chased by the demons of fear and distrust, hastens down the narrow back-stairs with the intention not to return. Nothing is accidental in the life of a great genius; an apparent insignificance is a God's guiding finger. Thorwaldsen was to complete his task. Who is it that stops him on the dark stairs? One of the professors just comes that way, speaks to him, questions, admonishes him. He returns, and in four hours the sketch is finished, and the gold medal won. This was on August 15, 1791.

Count Ditlew de Reventlow, minister of state, saw the young artist's work, and became his protector; he placed his own name at the head of a subscription that enabled Thorwaldsen to devote his time to the study of his art. Two years afterward the large gold medal was to be contended for at the Academy, the successful candidate thereby gaining the right to a travelling stipendium. Thorwaldsen was again the first; but before he entered on his travels, it was deemed necessary to extend that knowledge which an indifferent education at school had left him in want of. He read, studied, and the Academy gave him its support; acknowledgment smiled on him, a greater and more spiritual sphere lay open to him.

A portrait figure stands now before us; it is that of a Dane, the learned and severe Zoega, to whom the young artist is specially recommended, but who only sees in him a common talent; whose words are only those of censure, and whose eye sees only a servile imitation of the antique in his works. Strictly honest in his judgment, according to his own ideas, is this man, who should be Thorwaldsen's guide.

We let three years glide away after the arrival of Thorwaldsen, and ask Zoega what he now says of Albert, or, as the Italians call him, Alberto, and the severe man shakes his head and says: "There is much to blame, little to be satisfied with, and diligent he is not!" Yet he was diligent in a high degree; but genius is foreign to a foreign mind. "The snow had just then thawed from my eyes," he has himself often repeated. The drawings of the Danish painter Carstens formed one of those spiritual books that shed its holy baptism over that growing genius. The little atelier looked like a battle-field, for roundabout were broken statues. Genius formed them often in the midnight hours; despondency over their faults broke them in the day.

The three years, for which he had received a stipendium, were as if they had flown away, and as yet he had produced nothing. The time for his return drew nigh. One work, however, he must complete, that it might not with justice be said in Denmark, "Thorwaldsen has quite wasted his time in Rome." Doubting his genius just when it embraced him most affectionately; not expecting a victory, while he already stood on its open road, he modelled "Jason who has Gained the Golden Fleece." It was this that Thorwaldsen would have gained in the kingdom of arts, and which he now thought he must resign. The figure stood there in clay, many eyes looked carelessly on it, and—he broke it to pieces!

It was in April, 1801, that his return home was fixed, in company with Zoega. It was put off until the autumn. During this time "Jason" occupied all his thoughts. A new, a larger figure of the hero was formed, an immortal work; but it had not then been announced to the world, nor understood by it. "Here is something more than common!" was said by many. Even the man to whom all paid homage, the illustrious Canova, started, and exclaimed: "Quest' opera di quel giovane Danese e fatta in uno stilo nuovo, e grandioso!" Zoega smiled. "It is bravely done!" said he. The Danish songstress, Frederikke Brunn, was then in Rome and sang enthusiastically about Thorwaldsen's "Jason." She assisted the artist, so that he was enabled to get this figure cast in plaster; for he himself had no more money than was just sufficient for his expenses home.

The last glass of wine had been already drunk as a farewell, the boxes packed, and the vetturino's carriage was before the door at daybreak; the boxes were fastened behind. Then came a fellow-traveller—the sculptor, Hagemann, who was returning to his native city, Berlin. His passport was not ready. Their departure must be put off until the next day; and Thorwaldsen promised, although the vetturino complained and abused him, to remain so long. He stayed—stayed to win an immortal name on earth, and cast a lustre over Denmark.

Though forty years resident in Rome, rich and independent, he lived and worked with the thought of once returning home to Denmark, there to rest himself; unaccustomed to the great comforts of other rich artists in Rome, he lived a bachelor's life. Was his heart, then, no longer open to love since his first departure from Copenhagen? A thousand beautiful Cupids in marble will tell us how warmly that heart beat. Love belongs to life's mysteries.

We know that Thorwaldsen left a daughter in Rome, whose birth he acknowledged; we also know that more than one female of quality would willingly have given her hand to the great artist. The year before his first return to Denmark he lay ill at Naples, and was nursed by an English lady who felt the most ardent affection for him; and, from that feeling of gratitude which was awakened in him, he immediately consented to their union. When he had recovered and afterward returned to Rome, this promise preyed on his mind, he felt that he was not now formed to be a husband, acknowledged that gratitude was not love, and that they were not suited for each other; after a long combat with himself, he wrote and informed her of his determination. Thorwaldsen was never married.

The following trait is as characteristic of his heart as of his whole personality. One day, while in Rome, there came a poor countryman to him, an artisan, who had long been ill. He came to say farewell, and to thank him for the money that he and others of his countrymen had subscribed together, with which he was to reach home.

"But you will not walk the whole way?" said Thorwaldsen.

"I am obliged to do so," replied the man.

"But you are still too weak to walk—you cannot bear the fatigue, nor must you do it!" said he.

The man assured him of the necessity of doing so.

Thorwaldsen went and opened a drawer, took out a handful of scudi and gave them to him, saying, "See, now you will ride the whole way!"

The man thanked him, but assured him that his gift would not be more than sufficient to carry him to Florence.

"Well!" said Thorwaldsen, clapping him on the shoulder, as he went a second time to the drawer and took out another handful. The man was grateful in the highest degree, and was going. "Now you can ride the whole way home and be comfortable on the way," said he, as he followed the man to the door.

"I am very glad," said the man. "God bless you for it! but to ride the whole way requires a little capital."

"Well, then, tell me how great that must be," he asked, and looked earnestly at him. The man in a modest manner named the requisite sum, and Thorwaldsen went a third time to the drawer, counted out the sum, accompanied him to the door, pressed his hand, and repeated, "But now you will ride, for you have not strength to walk!"

Our artist did not belong to the class of great talkers; it was only in a small circle that he could be brought to say anything, but then it was always with humor and gayety. A few energetic exclamations of his are preserved. A well-known sculptor, expressing himself one day with much self-feeling, entered into a dispute with Thorwaldsen, and set his own works over the latter's. "You may bind my hands behind me," said Thorwaldsen, "and I will bite the marble out with my teeth better than you can carve it."

Thorwaldsen possessed specimens in plaster of all his works; these, together with the rich marble statues and bas-reliefs which he had collected of his own accord, without orders, and the number of paintings that he every year bought of young artists, formed a treasure that he wished to have in his proper home, Copenhagen. Therefore, when the Danish government sent vessels of war to the Mediterranean, in order to fetch the works that were ready for the palace or the churches, he always sent a number of his own things with them. Denmark was to inherit these treasures of art; and, in order to see them collected in a place worthy of them, a zeal was awakened in the nation to build a museum for their reception. A committee of his Danish admirers and friends sent out a requisition to the people, that everyone might give their mite; many a poor servant-girl and many a peasant gave theirs, so that a good sum was soon collected. Frederick VI. gave ground for the building, and the erection thereof was committed to the architect, Bindesbol.

Thorwaldsen, in 1838, had attained universal fame. The frigate Rota was dispatched to bring a cargo of his works to Copenhagen, and he was to arrive at the same time, perhaps to remain in Denmark. Close to Presto Bay, surrounded by wood-grown banks, lies Nysoee, the principal seat of the barony of Stampenborg, a place which, through Thorwaldsen, has become remarkable in Denmark. The open strand, the beautiful beech woods, even the little town seen through the orchards, at some few hundred paces from the mansion, make the place worthy of a visit on account of its truly Danish scenery. Here Thorwaldsen found his best home in Denmark; here he seemed to increase his fame, and here a series of his last beautiful bas-reliefs were produced.

Baron Stampe was one of nature's noblest-minded men; his hospitality and his lady's daughterly affection for Thorwaldsen opened a home for him here, a comfortable and good one. A great energetic power in the baroness incited his activity; she attended him with a daughter's care, elicited from him every little wish, and executed it. Directly after his first visit to Nysoee, a short tour to Moen's chalk cliffs was arranged, and during the few days that were passed there, a little atelier was erected in the garden at Nysoee, close to the canal which half encircles the principal building; here, and in a corner room of the mansion, on the first floor facing the sea, most of Thorwaldsen's works, during the last years of his life, were executed: "Christ Bearing the Cross," "The Entry into Jerusalem," "Rebecca at the Well," his own portrait-statue, Oehlenschlaeger's and Holberg's busts, etc. Baroness Stampe was in faithful attendance on him, lent him a helping hand, and read aloud for him from Holberg. Driving abroad, weekly concerts, and in the evenings his fondest play, "The Lottery," were what most easily excited him, and on these occasions he would say many amusing things. He has represented the Stampe family in two bas-reliefs: in the one, representing the mother, the two daughters, and the youngest son, is the artist himself; the other exhibits the father and the two eldest sons.

All circles sought to attract Thorwaldsen; he was at every great festival, in every great society, and every evening in the theatre by the side of Oehlenschlaeger. His greatness was allied to a mildness, a straightforwardness, that in the highest degree fascinated the stranger who approached him for the first time. His atelier in Copenhagen was visited daily; he therefore felt himself more comfortable and undisturbed at Nysoee. Baron Stampe and his family accompanied him to Italy in 1841, when he again visited that country. The whole journey, which was by way of Berlin, Dresden, Frankfort, the Rhine towns, and Munich, was a continued triumphal procession. The winter was passed in Rome, and the Danes there had a home in which they found a welcome.

The following year Thorwaldsen was again in Denmark, and at his favorite place, Nysoee. On Christmas eve he here formed his beautiful bas-relief, "Christmas Joys in Heaven," which Oehlenschlaeger consecrated with a poem. The last birthday of his life was celebrated here; the performance of one of Holberg's vaudevilles was arranged, and strangers invited; yet the morning of that day was the homeliest, when only the family and the author of this memoir, who had written a merry song for the occasion, which was still wet on the paper, placed themselves outside the artist's door, each with a pair of tongs, a gong, or a bottle on which they rubbed a cork, as an accompaniment, and sung the song as a morning greeting. Thorwaldsen, in his morning gown, opened the door, laughing; he twirled his black Raphael's cap, took a pair of tongs himself, and accompanied us, while he danced round and joined the others in the loud "hurra!"

A charming bas-relief, "The Genius of Poetry," was just completed; it was the same that Thorwaldsen, on the last day of his life, bequeathed to Oehlenschlaeger, and said, "It may serve as a medal for you."

On Sunday, March 24, 1844, a small party of friends were assembled at the residence of Baron Stampe, in Copenhagen. Thorwaldsen was there and was unusually lively, told stories, and spoke of a journey that he intended to make to Italy in the course of the summer. Cahn's tragedy of "Griseldis" was to be performed for the first time that evening at the theatre. Tragedy was not his favorite subject, but comedy, and particularly the comedies of Holberg; but it was something new that he was to see, and it had become a sort of habit with him to pass the evening in the theatre. About six o'clock, therefore, he went to the theatre alone. The overture had begun; on entering he shook hands with a few of his friends, took his usual seat, stood up again to allow one to pass him, sat down again, bent his head, and was no more! The music continued. Those nearest to him thought he was only in a swoon, and he was borne out; but he was numbered with the dead.

The mournful intelligence of his death soon spread through the country and through all lands; funeral dirges were sung and funeral festivals were arranged in Berlin and Rome; in the Danish theatre, whence his soul took its flight to God there was a festival; the place where he sat was decorated with crape and laurel wreaths, and a poem by Heiberg was recited, in which his greatness and his death were alluded to.

The day before Thorwaldsen's death the interior of his tomb was finished, for it was his wish that his remains might rest in the centre of the court-yard of the museum; it was then walled round, and he begged that there might be a marble edge around it, and a few rose-trees and flowers planted on it as his monument. The whole building, with the rich treasures which he presented to his fatherland, will be his monument; his works are to be placed in the rooms of the square building that surrounds the open court-yard, and which, both internally and externally, are painted in the Pompeian style. His arrival in the roads of Copenhagen and landing at the custom-house form the subjects depicted in the compartments under the windows of one side of the museum. Through centuries to come will nations wander to Denmark; not allured by our charming green islands, with their fresh beech-woods alone—no, but to see these works and this tomb.

There is, however, one place more that the stranger will visit, the little spot at Nysoee where his atelier stands, and where the tree bends its branches over the canal to the solitary swan which he fed. The name of Thorwaldsen will be remembered in England by his statues of Jason and Byron; in Switzerland, by his "recumbent lion;" in Roeskilde, by his figure of Christian the Fourth. It will live in every breast in which a love of art is enkindled.



JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET[6]

[Footnote 6: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By CLARENCE COOK

(1814-1875)



We read that on one occasion, when a picture by some Dutch artist, representing peasants at their sports, was shown to Louis XIV., he angrily exclaimed, "Take away those vermin!" Such subjects had never been chosen by French artists, nor indeed had they been seen anywhere in Europe before the Dutch artists began to paint them in the seventeenth century. The Italian painters of the early and the later Renaissance, working almost exclusively for the churches, or for the palaces of pleasure-loving princes, did not consider the peasant or the laboring man, by himself, a proper subject for his art. If he were introduced at any time into picture or bas-relief, it was only as a necessary actor in some religious story, such as "The Adoration of the Shepherds," or in the representations of the months or the seasons, as in the Fountain of the Public Square at Perugia, where we see the peasant engaged in the labors of the farm or vineyard: cutting the wheat, gathering in the grapes, and treading out the wine, and, in the later season, dressing the hog he has been killing; for in those less sophisticated times, Art, no more than Poetry, despised the ruder side of rustic life.

The German artists of the sixteenth century introduced peasants and peasant-life into their designs whenever the subject admitted. Albert Duerer was especially given to this, and it often gives a particular savor, sometimes a half-humorous expression, to his treatment of even religious subjects; as where, in his design, "The Repose in Egypt," he shows Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus, making a water-trough out of a huge log, and a bevy of cherub-urchins about him gathering up the chips. Mary, meanwhile, as the peasant mother, sits by, spinning and rocking the cradle of the Holy Child with her foot.

But these examples only serve to make clearer the fact that in the earlier times there was no place found in art for the representation of the laboring man, whether in the field or in the shop, except as an illustration of some allegorical or religious theme. Nor in the Dutch pictures that Louis XIV. despised, and that our own time finds so valuable for their artistic qualities, was there anything outside of their beauty or richness of tone or color to redeem their coarseness and vulgarity. There was no poetry in the treatment, nor any sympathy with anything higher than the grossest guzzling, fighting, and horseplay. The great monarch, who, according to his lights, was a man of delicacy and refinement, was certainly right in contemning such subjects, and it is perhaps to his credit that he did not care enough for "Art for Art's sake" to excuse the brutality of the theme for the sake of the beauty of the painting.

The next appearance of the peasant in art was of a very different sort, and represented a very different state of social feeling from the "peasants" of the Dutch painters. In the Salon of 1850 there appeared a picture called "The Sower" and representing a young peasant sowing grain. There was nothing in the subject to connect it particularly with any religious symbolism—not even with the Parable of the Sower who went forth to sow; nor with any series of personifications of the months. This was a simple peasant of the Norman coast, in his red blouse and blue trousers, his legs wrapped in straw, and his weather-beaten hat, full of holes. He marches with the rhythmic step made necessary by his task, over the downs that top the high cliffs, followed by a cloud of crows that pounce upon the grain as he sows it. At first sight there would seem to be nothing in this picture to call for particular notice; but the public, the artists, the critics, were with one accord strongly drawn to it. Something in the picture appealed to feelings deeper than mere curiosity, and an interest was excited such as did not naturally belong to a picture of a man sowing a field of grain. The secret was this: that a man born and bred in the midst of laboring people, struggling with the hard necessities of life—himself a laborer, and one who knew by experience all the lights and shades of the laborer's life—had painted this picture out of his own deep sympathy with his fellows, and to please himself by reproducing the most significant and poetical act in the life of the farmer.

The painter of this picture, the first man of our time to give the laborer in the fields and on the farm a place in art, and to set people to thinking about him, as a man, not merely as an illustration of some sacred text, or an image in a book of allegories, was Jean-Francois Millet, known as the peasant painter of peasants.

He was born at Gruchy, a small hamlet on the coast of Normandy, where his family, well known in the region for several generations, lived by the labor of their hands, cultivating their fields and exercising the simple virtues of that pastoral life, without ambition and without desire for change. This content was a part of the religion of the country and must not be looked upon as arguing a low state of intelligence or of manners. Of their neighbors we have no account, but the Millet household contained many of the elements that go to sustain the intellectual no less than the spiritual life. If there was plain living, there was high thinking; there were books and of the best, and more than one member of the circle valued learning for its own sake. Millet owed much to his grandmother, a woman of great strength of character and of a deeply religious nature. As his godmother she gave him his name, calling him Jean, after his father, and Francois, after Saint Francis of Assisi. As is usual in Catholic countries, the boy was called after the name of his patron saint, and in the case of Millet, Saint Francis, the ardent lover of nature, the friend of the birds and of all the animate creation, was well chosen as the guardian of one who was to prove himself, all his life, the passionate lover of nature.

The boyhood of Millet was passed at home. He had no schooling except some small instruction in Latin from the village priest and from a neighboring curate, but he made good use of what he learned. He worked on the farm with his father and his men, ploughing, harrowing, sowing, reaping, mowing, winnowing—in a word, sharing actively and contentedly in all the work that belongs to the farmer's life. And in the long winter evenings or in the few hours of rest that the day afforded, he would hungrily devour the books that were at hand—the "Lives of the Saints," the "Confessions of Saint Augustine," the "Life of Saint Jerome," and especially his letters, which he read and re-read all his life. These and the philosophers of Port Royal, with Bossuet, and Fenelon, with the Bible and Virgil, were his mental food. Virgil and the Bible he read always in the Latin; he was so familiar with them both that, when a man, his biographer, Sensier, says he never met a more eloquent translator of these two books. When the time came, therefore, for Millet to go up to Paris, he was not, as has been said by some writer, an ignorant peasant, but a well-taught man who had read much and digested what he had read, and knew good books from bad. The needs of his narrow life absorbed him so seriously that the seeds of art that lay hid in his nature found a way to the light with difficulty. But his master-passion was soon to assert itself, and, as in all such cases, in an unexpected manner.

Millet's attempts at drawing had hitherto been confined to studies made in hours stolen from rest. He had copied the engravings found in an old family Bible, and he had drawn, from his window, the garden, the stable, the field running down to the edge of the high cliff, and with the sea in the horizon, and he had sometimes tried his hand at sketching the cows and sheep in the pasture. But he was now to take a step in advance. Coming home one day from church, he walked behind an old man bent with age and feebleness, painfully making his way. The foreshortening and the movement of the man's figure struck the boy forcibly, and in a flash he discovered the secret of perspective and the mystery of planes. He ran quickly home, got a pencil and drew from memory a picture of the old man, so lively in its resemblance that as soon as his parents saw it, they recognized it and fell a-laughing. Talk with his boy revealed to the father his son's strong desire to be an artist; but before such a serious step could be taken, it was necessary to consult with some person better able to judge than any one in the Millet household. Cherbourg, the nearest large town, was the natural place where to seek advice; thither Millet and his father repaired, the boy with two drawings under his arm that he had made for the occasion, and these were submitted to the critical eye of Mouchel, an old pupil of David, who eked out the scanty living he got by painting by giving lessons in drawing. When the two drawings made by young Millet were shown him he refused to believe they were the work of the lad of fifteen. The very subjects chosen by the boy showed something out of the common. One was a sort of home idyl: two shepherds were in a little orchard close, one playing on the flute, the other listening; some sheep were browsing near. The men wore the blouse and wooden shoes of Millet's country; the orchard was one that belonged to his father. The other drawing showed a starry night. A man was coming from the house with loaves of bread in his hand which he gave to another man who eagerly received them. Underneath, in Latin, were the words from St. Luke: "Though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth." A friend of Millet's, who saw these drawings thirty years after, said they were the work of a man who already knew the great significance of art, the effects it was capable of, and what were its resources.

Mouchel consented to receive Millet as a pupil, but, as it proved, he could do little for him in the way of direct teaching. He left the boy free to follow his own devices. He said to him: "Do whatever you wish; choose whatever model you find in my studio that pleases you, and study in the Museum." This might not be the course to follow with every boy, but Mouchel had the artist's penetration and knew with whom he had to deal.

The death of Millet's father interrupted his studies and he returned home for awhile to help his mother on the farm. But it was thought best that he should keep on with the work he had begun. The grandmother urged his return: "My Francois," she said, "we must accept the will of God. Thy father, my son, Jean-Louis, said that you were to be a painter; obey him, and go back to Cherbourg."

Millet did not need persuasion from his family. Friends in Cherbourg urged him to come back, promised him commissions, and assured him a place in the studio of Langlois, a painter of a higher grade than Mouchel, who had recently set up his easel in the town. Once more established at Cherbourg Millet continued his studies after the same easy fashion with Langlois as with his former master. Langlois, who was as much impressed by his pupil's talent as Mouchel had been and willing to serve him, made a personal appeal to the mayor and council, asking that Millet, as a promising young artist and one likely to do credit to the town, might be assisted in going to Paris to study under better advantages than he could enjoy at home.

On the strength of this appeal, the council of Cherbourg agreed to allow Millet an annuity of four hundred francs, equal to eighty dollars. With this small sum, and the addition of two hundred francs given him at parting by his mother and grandmother, making one hundred and twenty dollars in all, Millet left his quiet life in Normandy behind him and set out for Paris, where, as his biographer, Sensier, says, he was to pass as a captive the richest years of his life.

Millet was twenty-two years old when he went first to Paris and he remained there, with occasional visits to Gruchy and Cherbourg, for the next thirteen years. Paris was, from the first, more than distasteful to him. He was thoroughly unhappy there. Outside the Louvre and the studios of a few artist-friends, he found nothing that appealed to what was deepest in him. His first experiences were unusually bitter. The struggle with poverty was hard to bear, but perhaps a more serious drawback was his want of an aim in art, of a substantial reason, so to speak, for the profession he had chosen, leading him to one false move after another in search of a subject. Unformed and unrecognized in his mind lay the desire to express in art the life he had left behind him in Normandy; but it was long before he arrived at the knowledge of himself and of his true vocation. He seems to have had no one in Paris to guide or direct him, and he rather stumbled into the studio of Delaroche, than entered it deliberately. He made but a brief stay there, and although he won the respect of his master, who would willingly have retained him as pupil and assistant, he was conscious that he learned nothing from Delaroche; and accordingly, in company with another pupil, Marolles, who had taken a great liking to him, he left the studio without much ceremony; and the two friends improvised a studio and a lodging for themselves in a garret in a poor quarter of the city, and began their search for a means of pleasing the public. But the way was not opened to either of them; they could not sell what they painted, and they were reduced to serious straits. It was not the fault of the public. Marolles was but an indifferent painter at any time, and Millet would not have blamed the public for its indifference to subjects in which he himself took no real interest.

Millet was at a loss what to do for bread. His mind ran back continually to his rural life at Gruchy. "What if I should paint men mowing or winnowing?" he said to Marolles; "their movements are picturesque!" "You could not sell them," replied his friend. "Well, then, what do you say to fauns and dryads?" "Who in Paris cares for fauns and dryads?" "What shall I do, then?" said Millet in despair. "What does the public like?" "It likes Boucher's Cupids, Watteau's Pastorals, nudities, anecdotes, and copies of the past." It was hard for Millet, but hunger drove him. He would not appeal to his family, life was as difficult for them as for him. But before yielding he would make one more trial, painting something from his own fancy. He made a small picture representing "Charity"—a sad-faced woman cherishing three children in her arms. He carried it to the dealers: not one of them would buy it. He came back to Marolles. "Give me a subject," he said, "and I will paint it."

To this time belong the pictures for which Millet has been much criticised by people who did not appreciate his position. Some of them recall Watteau, others Boucher, but they have a charm, a grace of their own; they are far from being copies of these men. Others were fanciful subjects to which Marolles gave names likely to attract the notice of picture-buyers in search of a subject. But all was in vain. The dealers were obstinate: the public unsympathetic. The highest price that was offered was never above twenty francs, or five dollars. Yet with this in his pocket, Millet deemed himself already on the high road to fortune, and saw the day not distant when he could paint at his pleasure the rustic subjects, memories of his home, that had always been in his mind.

Several times in the course of this hard novitiate, Millet had escaped from Paris for a visit to his own country. At one time he had remained for a year at Cherbourg, where he painted portraits for such small sums as he could get, and here he and one of his sitters, a young girl of Cherbourg, falling in love with one another, were married. The marriage only added, as might have been foreseen, to Millet's troubles: his wife's health was always delicate; after her marriage it became worse, and she died four years after in Paris. Not long after her death Millet married again, and this proved a fortunate venture. His wife came with him to Paris, and the struggle with life began anew. The turning-point in the long period of Millet's uncertainties and disappointments with himself came in 1849, when the political troubles of the time, and the visit of the cholera, combined to drive him and his family from Paris. They took refuge at Barbizon, a small hamlet on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleau, and here, in the place that was to be forever associated with his name and work, Millet passed, with few interruptions, the remaining years of his life.

The phrase so often heard to-day, "The Barbizon School," is rather wider than a strict interpretation would warrant, since Millet and Rousseau were the only ones of the group who lived in the village. Corot was not acquainted with Millet. Decamps was never in Millet's house except as a rare visitor to his studio. Diaz lived in Paris. Jacque, the painter of sheep, was a friend of Millet, and for a time at least lived at Barbizon in the house where he lodged before he procured a home of his own. The artistic relationship between these artists is slight, except in the case of Rousseau and Diaz, and even there it is only occasionally to be detected. All these men, with Dupre, Courbet and Delacroix, were counted heretics in art by the Academy and the official critics, and as Millet was the most marked figure in the group and was greatly admired and respected by all who composed it, it was perhaps natural that they should be considered by the public as disciples of the peasant painter of Barbizon.

Here, then, at Barbizon, Millet lived for the remaining twenty-seven years of his life, dividing his day between the labors of his farm in the morning hours, painting in his studio in the afternoon—he always preferred the half-light for painting—and in the evening enjoying the society of his wife and children and of such friends as might join the circle. Occasional visits to Paris, to the galleries, and to the studios of his artist-circle, kept him in touch with the world to which he belonged. His books, too, were his unfailing companions, though he never cared to stray far beyond the circle of his youthful friendships, Homer, and Virgil, and especially the Bible, which he looked upon as the book of painters, the inexhaustible source of the noblest and most touching subjects, capable of expression in the grandest forms.

But it was in the rural life about him, the life in which he actively shared, that he found the world wherein he could pour all his thoughts, feelings, and experiences with the certainty of seeing them emerge in forms answering to his conception. It was not until he came to Barbizon that he began truly to live the artist-life as he understood it, where the work is a faithful reflection of the only things a man really cares for—the things he knows by heart. In the pictures painted at Barbizon, and in the multitude of slight sketches for subjects never painted, with finished drawings and pastels, Millet has composed a series of moral eclogues well worthy of a place with those of Virgil and Theocritus. All the world knows them; all the world loves them: the "Mother Feeding Her Children," "The Peasant Grafting," "The First Step," "Going to Work," "The Sower," "The Gleaners," "The Sheep-Shearing," "The Angelus"—even to name them would carry us far beyond our limits. They made the fame of Millet while he still lived, although the pecuniary reward of his labors was not what they deserved nor what it would have been had he earlier found his true way or had his life been prolonged to the normal limit. He died in 1875 at the age of sixty-one. Since his death more than one of his pictures has been sold at a price exceeding all that he earned during his whole lifetime. Seen from the world's side, there was much in his life that was sad and discouraging, but from the spiritual side there was far more to cheer and uplift. His private life was honorable and happy, his friends were many and among the chosen ones of the time, and he had the happiness of seeing his work accepted and rated at something like its true worth before he left it.

[Signature of the author.]



MEISSONIER[7]

[Footnote 7: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By CLARENCE COOK

(1813-1891)



Among the many beautiful paintings collected in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, there is one that always attracts a crowd, on the free-days and holidays when the general public finds admission. This is the picture called simply, "Friedland: 1807," and representing the soldiers of Napoleon saluting the emperor at the battle of Friedland. It was painted by Jean Louis Meissonier for the late A. T. Stewart, of New York, who paid for it what seemed a very large sum, $60,000; but when Mr. Stewart died, and his pictures were sold at auction, this painting brought the still larger sum of $66,000, showing that a great many people admired the work, and were willing to pay a good price for it. The picture was bought by Judge Hilton, of New York, and was presented by him to the Metropolitan Museum as a memorial of the long friendship that had existed between himself and Mr. Stewart. No doubt the facts of the high price paid for the picture, and that a gift of such value should be made to the Museum, have caused a great many people to look at the painting with more interest than they would, had the circumstances been less uncommon. But a great many more people find this picture interesting for its own sake; they are moved rather by the spirited way in which it tells its story, and find their curiosity excited by the studious accuracy shown by the artist in the painting of every detail.

The scene of the action is a field that has been planted with grain which now lies trampled under the feet of men and horses. The turning-point in the battle has been reached, and in the joy of coming victory, the body-guard of the emperor, spurring their jaded horses to the hillock where he sits on his white charger surrounded by his mounted staff, salute him with loud cries as they rush madly by him. Napoleon, calm and self-possessed, returns the salute, but it is plain his thoughts are busier with the battle that is raging in the distance than with these demonstrations of his body-guard's loyalty. This picture was the favorite work of the artist; he calls it, "the life and joy of my studio," and he is said to have worked on it at intervals during fifteen years.



Somebody has said that "genius" means nothing but "taking pains." In that case, Meissonier must have been a man of genius, for, with whatever he painted, were it small or great, he took infinite pains, never content until he had done everything in his power to show things exactly as they were. Thus, in the picture we have just been describing, we may be sure that we know, from looking at it, exactly how Napoleon was dressed on the day of Friedland, and also how each member of his military staff was dressed; not a button, nor a strap, nor any smallest detail but has been faithfully copied from the thing itself, while every head in the group is a trustworthy portrait. When it was not possible to get the actual dress worn by the person he was painting, Meissonier spared no pains nor money to obtain an exact copy. How it was in the case of the "Friedland," we do not know, but when he painted the "March to Paris," Meissonier borrowed from the Museum, in Paris, where relics of all the kings of France are kept (the Musee des Souverains), the famous "little gray riding-coat" worn by Napoleon at the battle of the Pyramids and in other engagements. This coat, Meissonier had copied by a tailor, with the minutest accuracy, and it was then worn by the model while he was painting the picture. The same pains were taken with the cuirassiers who are dashing across the front of the picture in the "Friedland." As will be seen on looking closely, one model served for all the men in the front rank, but as the uniform was the same it was only necessary to vary the attitude. The uniform and all the accoutrements were carefully reproduced by workmen from originals of the time, borrowed by Meissonier for the purpose, and the model was then mounted on a jointed wooden horse and made to take the attitude required: the action of the horse was as carefully studied from that of the living animal. By the time that Meissonier came to paint this picture, he was so famous an artist, and had gained such a place in the world, that he could have almost anything he asked for to aid him in his work. So, when, with the same desire for accuracy that he had shown in painting other parts of the picture, he came to paint the trampled grain, the Government, or so we are told, bought the use of a field of ripe grain and lent Meissonier the services of a company of cuirassiers who were set to dashing about in it until they had got it into proper condition. We can see that the cost of all this accuracy would, in the end, amount to a considerable sum, and when we reckon the time of an artist so distinguished as Meissonier, it is not so surprising as it may have appeared at first, that his picture should have brought so much money.

Of course, Meissonier did not come all at once to fame and prosperity. The rewards he gained were such as are earned only by hard and constant labor. When he came to Paris about the year 1832, from Lyons, where he was born, he was about nineteen years old. His parents were in humble circumstances, and would seem to have been able to do nothing to advance the lad, who arrived in Paris with little money in his pocket, and with no friends at hand. He had, however, the materials out of which friends and money are made: health, a generous spirit, energy, and a clear purpose, and with these he went to work. We do not hear much about his early life in Paris. When he first appears in sight, he is working in the same studio with Daubigny, the landscape-painter, the two painting pictures for a dollar the square yard, religious pictures probably, and probably also copies, to be sent into the country and hung up in the parish churches. Although this may have seemed like hardship at the time, yet there is no doubt it was good practice, for among artists we are told it is an accepted doctrine that in order to paint on a small scale really well, you must be able to paint on a larger. And it is said that Meissonier was in the habit all his life of making life-size studies in order to keep his style from falling into pettiness. So, after all, the painting of these big pictures may have been a useful ordeal for the artist who for the next sixty years was to reap fame by painting small ones.

While he was earning a scanty living by this hack-work, Meissonier found time to paint two pictures which he sent to the Salon of 1836. One of these attracted the attention of a clever artist, Tony Johannot, who introduced him to Leon Cogniet, with whom he studied for a time, but from whom he learned but little. The mechanism of his art he had pretty well mastered already, as was shown by the Salon accepting his early pictures, and the chief advantage he gained from his stay in Cogniet's studio was a wider acquaintance with the world of artists; for Cogniet was a favorite teacher, and had a great many pupils, not a few of whom became distinguished painters. But his style of painting was not one to attract Meissonier, who was ambitious to paint like the old Dutch artists, Terburg, Metzu, Mieris, and others, who have the charm that their pictures are finished with the most exquisite minuteness, and yet treated in such a large way that, after awhile, we forget the microscopic wonder of the performance and think only of the skill the artist has shown in painting character. Meissonier was the first artist to bring back into favor the Dutch school of painting of the seventeenth century. Louis XIV., who set the fashion in everything in his day, had set the fashion of despising the Dutch painters, and the French people had never unlearned the lesson. It was Meissonier who brought back the taste, and taught the public to admire these small panels where interest in the subject is for the most part lost in the exquisite beauty of the painting and where the Dutch painters of similar subjects are successfully met on their own ground and equalled in every respect except in the charm of color.

There is an old saying: "Imitation is the sincerest mode of flattery;" and Meissonier's immediate success with the public was the signal for a bevy of imitators to try to win a like success by like methods. Some of these artists were very clever, but an imitator is but an imitator after all, and is more apt to call attention to his model than to himself. It must be admitted that Meissonier himself has suffered somewhat in the same way: the evident fact that his methods of painting were inspired by the study of the Dutch masters has led to his being called an imitator, and his pictures are often compared, and not to their advantage, with those of his models. Meissonier is, however, very much more than an imitator; he was inspired by the Dutch painters, but he soon found a way of his own, and he has put so much of himself into his work, that the charge of imitation long since ceased to be brought against him.

While he was still not much known to the public, the Duke of Orleans bought of him, for six hundred francs, a picture that to-day is worth thirty thousand francs. As is usual in such affairs, the purchase was made, not by the duke in person, but by an agent: in this case, it was his secretary, M. Adaline, who bought the picture from Meissonier, who as an acknowledgment of the service gave the secretary a water-color drawing which, to-day, like everything coming from the hand of Meissonier, would bring the owner a good round sum if offered for sale.

In 1865, Meissonier's son Charles, himself a very good painter, went to a costume-ball dressed like a Fleming of the seventeenth century and looking as if he had stepped out of a picture by Terburg. The costume had been made with the greatest accuracy, and Meissonier was so pleased with his son's appearance that he made a study and sold it for two thousand francs. Twenty years after, in 1884, hearing that it was to be sold at auction, and desiring, out of affection for his son, to have the study back again, he asked his friend, M. Petit, to buy it for him, at whatever cost. A rich Parisian, M. Secretan, who had a collection of pictures since become famous—it was to him that Millet's "L'Angelus" belonged—and who had such an admiration for Meissonier and his work that he had paid no less than four hundred thousand francs for his picture "Les Cuirassiers," hearing from M. Petit of Meissonier's desire for the portrait of his son, bought the picture for twenty-five thousand francs and presented it to the artist. These stories are told only as illustrations of the growth of Meissonier's reputation and of the increased number of people who desire to have an example of his work. The rise in value of a small sketch of a single figure, from $500 to $5,000, in fifteen years, is no greater in proportion than has happened in the case of every one of Meissonier's pictures, drawings, studies, and even his slight sketches, on some of which originally he would have placed no value at all. Yet everything he left behind him, even unconsidered trifles, are found to be of value, and the sale of the contents of his studio just ended in Paris brought nearly five hundred thousand francs, although the collection contained not a single finished picture of importance, but was made up almost entirely of unfinished studies and of sketches.

Meissonier's industry was constant and untiring. It is told of him that he rarely had the pencil or the brush out of his hand when in the house, and that when he called at a friend's house and was kept waiting he used the spare minutes in sketching upon the first piece of paper that he found at hand. One of his friends, who knew of this habit, collected in the course of many visits he received from the artist enough of these scraps to fill a small album; while it is told of another of his friends that he instructed his servant to put beside Meissonier's coffee-cup after dinner a number of bits of paper of the size of cigarette-papers but of better quality on which Meissonier in his absent way would fall to drawing as he chatted with his companions. After dinner these jottings remained as a valuable memorial of his visit. Perhaps if they were all collected, these slight affairs might bring enough at auction to pay for all the dinners to which the prudent host had invited the artist.

The world of subjects included in Meissonier's art was a very narrow one, and was not calculated to interest men and women in general. The nearest that he came to striking the popular note was in his Napoleon subjects, and beside the excellence of the painting, these pictures really make a valuable series of historical documents by reason of their accuracy. But the greater number of the pictures which he left behind him are chiefly interesting from the beautiful way in which they are painted: we accept the subject for the sake of the art. The world rewarded him for all this patient labor, this exquisite workmanship, by an immense fortune that enabled him to live in splendor, and to be generous without stint. From the humble lodgings of his youth in the Rue des Ecouffes, he passed, in time, to the palace in the Place Malsherbes where he spent the latter half of his long life in luxurious surroundings: pictures and statues, rich furniture, tapestries and armor and curiosities of art from every land. But the visitor, after passing through all this splendor, came upon the artist in a studio, ample and well lighted indeed, but furnished only for work, where, to the end of his life, he pursued his industrious calling with all the energy and ardor of youth. He died in 1891, and was buried by the government with all the honors that befitted one of her most illustrious citizens.

[Signature of the author.]



ROSA BONHEUR[8]

[Footnote 8: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By CLARENCE COOK

(BORN 1822)

A girl of something over ten, of sturdy build, with a dark complexion, deep blue eyes, and strong features crowned by a head of clustering curls, is sitting in the window of a plainly furnished room, high up in an apartment-house in Paris. In a cage at her side is a parrot, which, with its head on one side, is gravely calling out the letters of the alphabet, while the child as gravely repeats them, interrupting the lesson every now and then by a visit to the other side of the room, where a pet lamb greets its young mistress with a friendly bleat.

This is our first glimpse of Rosalie, known now to all the world as Rosa Bonheur, the painter of "The Horse Fair" and of many another picture, which have earned for her the distinction of the best animal-painter of her time.

Her father's family belonged to Bordeaux. Raymond Bonheur had gone up as a youth to Paris to study art. After the usual apprenticeship to privation which art exacts from her servants, he had become moderately successful, when the condition of his parents, now old and poorly-off, moved him to return to Bordeaux and do what he could to make their life easier. As the chances for a professional artist were small, he adopted the modest employment of drawing-teacher. His skill soon brought him pupils; among them a young lady from Altona, between whom and her teacher a mutual interest sprang up which led to their marriage. Raymond Bonheur brought his wife home to his father's house, where she was welcomed as a daughter, and for the brief term of her life all went well. What the husband earned by his drawing-lessons, the wife supplemented by her lessons in music; but this happiness was not to last. The parents of Raymond Bonheur died, and then, after not more than twelve years of marriage, the wife died, leaving behind her four children, Rosalie, Francois-Auguste, Jules-Isidore, and Juliette.



Rosalie is the best known of these four children of Raymond Bonheur; but each of them has honorably connected his name with the art of modern France. Francois-Auguste has a reputation as an animal-painter almost equal to that of his sister Rosa. A fine picture painted by him, "Cattle in the Forest of Fontainebleau," was once the property of the late A. T. Stewart. His merit secured him the Cross of the Legion of Honor in 1867. He died in 1880. The other brother, Jules-Isidore, has gained distinction as a sculptor of animals; most of his work is on a small scale, but he has designed some large pieces that decorate his sister's chateau near Fontainebleau. Juliette Bonheur married a M. Peyrol, and joining her family-name to his, is known in the art-world as Mme. Peyrol Bonheur. It is thus she signs her pictures, mostly still-life and animal subjects, which have gained for her a good position among the minor artists of France.

Rosa, the eldest of the family, born in 1822, was ten years old when her mother died. Not long after, Raymond Bonheur decided to leave Bordeaux and to return to Paris, where the chances for professional success were better than in a provincial town, and where there were greater opportunities for the education of his young children. The change proved very distasteful, however, to the little ones. Accustomed to the comparative freedom of the town in which they had been brought up, and where their family had been so long rooted that their circle of friends and relatives gave them playmates and companions in plenty, they found themselves very lonely in Paris, where they were reduced for a good part of the time to such amusement as they could find in the narrow quarters of their rooms on the sixth floor of an apartment-house. It is not the custom in Paris for the children, even of the poor, to make a playground of the street, and our little ones had nobody to walk out with them but an old servant who had come with them from Bordeaux, and who was ill-fitted, for all her virtues, to take a mother's place to the children. She was honest and faithful, but like all of her class, she liked routine and order, and she could make no allowances for the restlessness of her bright-minded charge. Rosa was her especial torment; the black sheep of the brood. Household tasks she despised, and study, as it was pursued in the successive schools to which her despairing father sent her, had no charms for her. Her best playmates were animals; the horses and dogs she saw in the streets and which she fearlessly accosted; the sheep that found itself queerly lodged on the top floor of a city house; and the parrot which, as we have seen, was not only her playmate but her schoolmaster.

There came a time when the charge of such a child, so averse to rules and so given to strange ways of passing her time, became too much for the old servant with her orthodox views of life, and she persuaded Rosa's father to put her as a day-scholar with the nuns at Chaillot, a small suburb of Paris. How it happened that she was allowed to go back and forth alone, between home and school, we do not know; but it is not to be wondered at if she were irregular in her hours; if, one day, she set the nuns wondering why she did not appear at school-opening, and another day put the old servant into a twitter because she did not come home in season. The truth was, she had found that there was something better in Paris than streets and shops and tall houses; she had discovered a wood there, a veritable forest, with trees, and pools of water, and birds, and wild flowers, and though this enchanted spot which citizens called the Bois de Boulogne—not then a formal park as it is to-day—was off the road to Chaillot, yet it was not so far that she need fear getting lost in going there or in coming back. No wonder, then, if, once this way discovered of escape from tiresome school duties, it was travelled so often by Rosalie, and that her school-work became in consequence so unsatisfactory that at length the patient nuns remonstrated. They advised Rosa's father, since she neither would nor could learn anything from books, that it would be better to put her to some useful trade by which she might earn her living; and the good sisters suggested—dressmaking! The wisdom of these ladies, who could not see that they were dealing with the last woman in the world to whom dressmaking could be interesting, was matched by that of the father, who showed himself so blind to the character of his daughter that he resolved to act at once upon the advice of the nuns; and without consulting the wishes of poor Rosalie he apprenticed her straightway to a Parisian dressmaker. The docile girl allowed the yoke to be slipped over her head without complaint, but the confinement wore upon her health and spirits, and after a short trial the experiment had to be abandoned. Her father yielded to her entreaties and took her home.



The girl was long in coming to a knowledge of herself. Although she was to be, in time, a famous artist, the familiar legend of the biographers is wanting in her case; we read nothing about scribbled books or walls defaced by childish sketches, nor does she appear to have handled a pencil or a brush until she was a girl well grown. Her father's means were not sufficient to give Rosa or his other children an education such as he could wish; but an expedient suggested itself in his perplexity over this latest experiment in providing for his eldest daughter: he proposed to the principal of a young ladies' school where he taught drawing, that his services should be accepted in payment of Rosa's education. The offer was accepted, and in the regular course of study Rosa became a member of her father's drawing-class. It was not long before she surpassed all her school-fellows in that department, and found herself for the first time in her life in possession of the key to that happiness which consists in knowing what we can do, and feeling the strength within us to do it. Some of the biographers of Rosa's life speak of unhappy days at this school: the richer girls made sport of the dress of the drawing-master's daughter, and of her independent, awkward ways. Her progress in drawing, too, was counterbalanced by her slowness in her other studies; in fact her new accomplishment was such a delight to her, that in her devotion to it she became less and less interested in her books; and as for dress—that it should be clean and suited both to her means and to the work she was doing, was all that concerned her, then or since!

At the end of her first year in school, Rosa obtained her father's permission to give up her other studies and to enter his studio as pupil and assistant. From that time, though as yet she had not found the reason of her vocation, yet her true life had begun. She worked diligently under the direction of a master she loved, and her father, in his turn, delighted at the discovery of a talent so long hid, redoubled his efforts to advance his pupil and to make up for lost time.

Rosa worked for some months at copying in the Louvre, but though she worked with such diligence and skill as to win the praise of the director, she came, after a time, to feel that the mere copying of the works of other men, however great, was not the goal she was striving after; so one day she took a sudden determination, left the Louvre, packed up her painting materials, and started off for one of the rural suburbs of Paris, where she sat herself down to sketch from nature. Her love of animals, hitherto an aimless pleasure, now took on a new phase as she saw her beloved cows and sheep in their place in nature giving life and animation to the landscape.

In the winter season, when work out-of-doors was no longer pleasant or profitable, Rosa made what use she could of the few opportunities Paris had to offer for the study of animals. She spent what time she could spare from work at the horse-market; she visited the slaughter-houses, and the suburban fairs where cattle and horses, sheep and pigs compete for prizes, and in these places she filled her portfolios with sketches.

In 1840 she sent her first picture to the Salon, and as it was accepted and well received, she continued to send her work every year; but, up to 1849, her pictures were small, and had little more interest than belongs to simple studies from nature; 1849 was a memorable year to her, as it was to France. In this year her father died of cholera, just as he had been appointed director of the School of Design for Young Girls. Rosa was appointed to succeed him with the title of Honorary Directress, and her sister Juliette was made a teacher in the school. In the same year she exhibited the picture that may be said to have made her reputation with the artists and amateurs, as well as with the general public. This was her "Oxen of Cantal," a picture that combined with no little feeling for landscape the most admirable painting of cattle in repose. Its high qualities were immediately recognized. Horace Vernet, in the name of the Provisional Government, presented her with a handsome vase of Sevres porcelain, and the gold medal for painting. In 1851, the jury selected for exhibition at the World's Fair in London another picture by Rosa, "Ploughing in the Nivernais," which made the artist's name known to England, where the national love of animals secured for her no end of praise and of substantial reward. In 1856 Rosa painted her most popular picture, "The Horse Fair," now in the Metropolitan Museum. This painting went from Paris to London, where it was bought for rising L1,500, and created such an interest in the artist's personality as would have turned the head of any ordinary woman; but Rosa Bonheur's whole life proves her no ordinary woman.

For many years Mlle. Bonheur lived in Paris in a house surrounded by a large garden where she kept a number of animals, partly for the pleasure of their companionship, partly for the opportunity it gave her of studying their habits, and using them as models. She now resides in the Chateau By, near Fontainebleau, where she leads the same industrious life in her advancing years that she did in the beginning of her career. She rises early, and works at her painting all day, and often spends the evening in drawing: for she takes but little interest in what is called society, and cares only for the companionship of her intimate friends, which she can enjoy without disarranging her life, or neglecting the studies she loves. She dresses with great simplicity at all times, and even when she accepts invitations, makes no concessions to the caprices of fashion. In her student-days, when visiting the abattoirs, markets, and fairs, she accustomed herself to wear such a modification of man's dress as would permit her to move about among rough men without compromising her sex. But, beside that her dignity was always safe in her own keeping, she bears testimony to the good manners and the good dispositions of the men she came in contact with. Rosa Bonheur has always been an honor to art and an honor to her sex. At seventy-two she finds herself in the enjoyment of many things that go to make a happy life. She has a well-earned fame as an artist; an abundant fortune gained by her own industry and used as honorably as it has been gained; and she has troops of friends drawn to her by her solid worth of character.

Of the great number of pictures Rosa Bonheur has painted, by far the most are of subjects found in France, but a few of the best were painted in Scotland. She has received many public honors in medals and decorations. In 1856, after painting the "Horse Fair," the Empress Eugenie visited her at her studio and bestowed upon her the Cross of the Legion of Honor, fastening the decoration to the artist's dress with her own hands. When the invading army of Prussia reached Paris, the Crown Prince gave orders that the studio of Rosa Bonheur should be respected. But though she, no doubt, holds all these honors at their worth, yet she holds still more dear the art to which she owes, not only these, but all that has made her life a treasury of happy remembrances.

[Signature of the author.]



GEROME[9]

[Footnote 9: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By CLARENCE COOK

(BORN 1824)



In the Paris Salon of 1847, a small picture appeared, representing a Greek boy and girl stirring up two game-cocks to fight. Although it was the work of an unknown painter, and had to contend with an unusually brilliant display of pictures, many of them by men already famous, yet it strongly attracted the general public, partly by the novelty of the subject, and partly by the careful and finished manner of the painting. It delighted the critics as well, and one of the most distinguished of them, Theophile Gautier, wrote: "A new Greek is born to us, and his name is Gerome!"

This picture, which was to prove the first leaf in a laurel-crown to be awarded the painter in his lifetime, and not, as is so often the case, by the tardy hand of Death, was the work of Jean-Leon Gerome, a young man of twenty-three. He had been for six years under the teaching of Paul Delaroche, part of the time in Italy, but most of it in Paris. He was born at Vesoul, a small, dull town in the Department of Haute-Saone, in 1824. His father was a goldsmith, who, like most French fathers in his rank of life, had hoped to bring up his son to succeed him in his business. The boy did for a time, we believe, work in his father's shop, but he had a stronger natural bent for painting; something perhaps in the occupation fostered, or even created, this taste—for not a few distinguished painters have been apprenticed to the goldsmith's trade—and his father, like a wise man, instead of opposing his son's wishes, did what he could to further them. He bought him painting-materials; and instead of sending him to a "school of design," or putting him under the tutelage of some third-rate drawing-master, such as is commonly found in country towns, he bought him a picture by Decamps, an artist since become famous, but then just in the dawn of his fame, and put it before his son as a model. Young Gerome made a copy of this picture, and an artist from Paris, who happened to be passing through Vesoul, saw it, and discerning the boy's talent, gave him a letter to Paul Delaroche, encouraging him to go to Paris and there to take up the study of art as a profession. At seventeen years of age, with his father's consent and $250 in his pocket, Gerome went up to Paris, and presenting his letter to Delaroche, was well received by him, and entered the School of Fine Arts (Ecole des Beaux-Arts) as his pupil.

He had been with Delaroche three years and had proved himself one of the most loyal and diligent of his pupils, when an event occurred, insignificant in itself, but which was to have an important influence upon his life and give a new direction to his talent.

French studios are not as a rule very orderly places. The young men who frequent them are left pretty much to themselves, with no one to govern them or to oversee them. The artist they are studying under makes, at the most, a brief daily visit, going the round of the easels, saying a word or two to each pupil, although it often happens that he says nothing, and then departs for his proper work, leaving his pupils to their own devices. The students are for the most part like young men everywhere, a turbulent set, full of animal spirits, which sometimes carry them beyond reasonable bounds. It was a boisterous outbreak of this sort, but far wilder than common, that occurred in the studio of Delaroche, and which brought about the crisis in Gerome's life to which we have alluded. Fortunately for him, the incident took place while Gerome was on a visit to his parents at Vesoul, so that he was in no way implicated in the affair. He came back to find the studio closed; Delaroche, deeply disturbed, had dismissed all his pupils and announced his intention to visit Italy. His studio was to be taken during his absence, by Gleyre, and he advised those of his pupils in whom he took a personal interest, to continue their studies under his successor. Gerome was one of those to whom he gave this advice, but Gerome was too much attached to his master to leave him for another, and bluntly announced his purpose of following him to Rome. A few of the other pupils of Delaroche were of the same mind, and they all set out for Italy together. Arrived in Rome, Gerome, always a hard worker, threw himself energetically into his studies; drawing the ancient buildings, the Capitol, the Colosseum; sketching in the Forum and on the Campagna; copying the pictures and the statues, saturating his mind in the spirit of antique art, and schooling his hand in its forms, until he had laid up a rich store of material for use in future pictures. On his return to Paris he worked for a while in Gleyre's studio, but when Delaroche came back from Italy, Gerome again joined him and renewed his old relation as pupil and assistant—working, among other tasks, on the painting of "Charlemagne Crossing the Alps," a commission given to Delaroche by the Government, for the Grande Galerie des Batailles at Versailles: a vast apartment lined with pictures of all the victories of the French from Soissons to Solferino.

Such work as this, however, had little interest for Gerome. His mind at this time was full of the Greeks and Romans; his enthusiasm for Napoleon, which later was to give birth to so many pictures, had not yet awakened; nor did he care for the subjects from the histories of France and England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that had provided his master, Delaroche, with so many tragic themes for his pencil: "The Death of the Duke of Guise," "The Children of Edward," the "Death of Queen Elizabeth," "The Execution of Lady Jane Grey," "Cromwell at the Coffin of Charles I.," and others of the same strain.

Gerome's visit to Italy had awakened in him a strong interest in the life of the antique world, and this would naturally be strengthened by all that he would hear and see of the growing interest of the public in the same subject: an interest kindled by the discoveries of archaeologists in classic soil: in Greece and Italy, in Assyria and Egypt. These discoveries had filled the museums and the cabinets of private collectors with beautiful and interesting fragments illustrating the external life of the past, and illuminating its poetry; and it is no wonder that some of the younger artists rejoiced in the new world of anecdote and story that opened so richly before them.

However it came about—whether his own interest in the antique life communicated itself to his fellows, or whether they, all together, simply shared in the interest taken in the subject by the world about them—Gerome and some of his companions in Delaroche's studio showed such a predilection for classic themes, that they were nicknamed by the critics "The New Greeks." Among Gerome's fellow-pupils were two young men, Hamon and Aubert, who later gained no small applause by their playful and familiar way of treating classic themes. They are well known to us by engravings from their pictures, which are in all our shops. Hamon's "My Sister is not at home," and Aubert's various pretty fancies of nymphs and cupids, while they are not great works of art, are reasonably sure of a long life, due to their innocent freshness and simplicity.

Delaroche's pupils were working all together in friendly competition for the grand Roman prize which was to give the fortunate one the right to four years' study in Rome at the expense of the state. Gerome's studio was shared by his friends Picou and Hamon. Hamon, writing in later years about his youthful days, says: "Companions and rivals at the same time, we were all working together for the Grand Prix de Rome. Gerome inspired us all with the love of hard work, and of hard work to the accompaniment of singing and laughing."

But in the intervals of his hard work for the prize, Gerome was also working on a picture which he hoped to have accepted for the Salon. This was the picture we spoke of in the beginning of this notice: "Two Young Greeks stirring-up Game-cocks to fight." When it was finished Gerome showed it to his master with many misgivings; but Delaroche encouraged him to send it to the Salon. It was accepted, and as we have seen, won for Gerome a great success with the public. The next year, 1848, he again exhibited, but the impression he made was less marked than on the first occasion. His former picture had a subject such as it was, of his own devising. The "Cock-fight" was not an illustration of any passage in Greek poetry, and in spite of its antique setting, it had a modern air, and to this, no doubt, its popularity was largely due. But in 1848 he essayed an illustration of the Greek poet, Anacreon, translating into picture the poem that tells how, one winter evening, sitting by his fire, the old poet was surprised by a sound of weeping outside his door, and opening it, found Cupid wet and shivering and begging for a shelter from the cold. The man takes the pretty, dimpled mischief to his bosom, warms his feet and hands at the fire, dries his bow and arrows, and lets him sip wine from his cup. Then, when Cupid is refreshed and warmed, he tries his arrows, now here, now there, and at last aims one straight at his benefactor's heart, and laughing at the jest, flies out at the open door. Gerome's picture was in three panels. The first showed the poet opening the door to the sobbing Cupid, with his bedraggled wings and dripping curls; in the next, the rosy ingrate wounds his benefactor; in the third, the poet sits disconsolate by his hearth, musing over the days when Love was his guest, if but for an hour. As the story was an old one, so many an artist before Gerome had played with it as a subject for a picture. Jean-Francois Millet himself, another pupil of Delaroche, though earlier than Gerome, had tried his hand at illustrating Anacreon's fable before he found his proper field of work in portraying the occupations of the men and women about him, the peasants among whom he was born and bred.

Gerome's picture did nothing to advance his fortunes with the public. 1848 was a stormy time in France and in all Europe, and people were not in the mood to be amused with such trifles as Anacreon and his Cupid. The pictures in that year's Salon that drew the public in crowds about them were Couture's "The Romans of the Decline of the Empire," in which all Paris saw, or thought it saw, the handwriting-on-the-wall for the government of Louis-Philippe; and the "Shipwrecked Sailors in a Bark," of Delacroix, a wild and stormy scene of terror that seemed to echo the prophecies of evil days at hand for France with which the time was rife.

Gerome's next picture, however, was to bring him once more before the public, and to carry his name beyond his native France even as far as America. Leaving for the nonce his chosen field of antiquity, where yet he was to distinguish himself, he looked for a subject in the Paris of his own day. "The Duel after the Masquerade" opens for us a corner of the Bois de Boulogne—the fashionable park on the outskirts of Paris—where in the still dawn of a winter's day, a group of men are met to witness a duel between two of their companions who have quarrelled at a masked ball. The ground is covered with a light fall of snow; the bare branches of the trees weave their network across the gray sky, and in the distance we see the carriages that have brought the disputants to the field. The duel is over. One of the men, dressed in the costume of Pierrot, the loose white trousers and slippers, the baggy white shirt, and white skull-cap, falls, mortally wounded, into the arms of his second: the pallor of coming death masked by the white-painted face. The other combatant, a Mohawk Indian (once a staple character at every masked-ball in Paris: curious survival of the popularity of Cooper's novels), is led wounded off the field by a friend dressed as Harlequin. Gerome in this striking picture showed for the first time that talent as a story-teller to which he is so largely indebted for his reputation. Whatever his subject may be, it is always set forth in the clearest manner, so that everyone may understand the story without the need of an interpreter.

Leaving out of view the few pictures he painted illustrating passages in Napoleon's career, it may be said that Gerome's taste led him away from scenes of modern life; for even his many oriental subjects so relate to forms of life belonging in reality to the past, that they make no exception to the statement. He did not therefore follow up "The Duel" with other comments on the follies of modern society—for in the temper of that time this picture, like Couture's "Roman Orgie" and Millet's "Man with the Hoe," was looked upon as a satire and a warning, and owed its popularity as much to this conviction on the part of the public as to its pictorial merits—but returned to antique times, and showed in his treatment of themes from that source an equal, if not a greater power to interest the public.

Gerome's two pictures, the "Ave Caesar! Morituri te Salutant," "Hail, Caesar! Those about to die, salute Thee," and "The Gladiators," are so universally known as to need no description. Whatever criticism may be made upon them, they will always remain interesting to the world at large; from their subject, from the way in which the discoveries of archaeology are made familiar, and, not least, from the impression they make of the artist's own strong interest in what he had to say. In both pictures he succeeded in showing the Colosseum as no longer a ruin, but as, so to speak, a living place peopled by the swarm of the Roman populace, with the emperor and his court, and the College of the Vestal Virgins, and, for chief actors, the hapless wretches who are "butchered to make a Roman holiday." Another picture that greatly increased Gerome's reputation, was his "Death of Julius Caesar," though it must be confessed there was a touch of the stage in the arrangement of the scene, and in the action of the body of senators and conspirators leaving the hall with brandished swords and as if singing in chorus, that was absent from the pictures of the amphitheatre. There was also less material for the curiosity of the lovers of archaeology; no such striking point, for instance, as the reproduction of the gladiators' helmets and armor recently discovered in Herculaneum; but the body of the dead Caesar lying "even at the base of Pompey's statue" with his face muffled in his toga, was a masterly performance; some critic, moved by the grandeur of the lines, said it was not a mere piece of foreshortening, it was "a perspective." Gerome made a life-size painting of the Caesar in this picture. It is in the Corcoran Gallery at Washington.

Gerome painted several other pictures from classic subjects, but none of them had the interest for the general public of those we have described. In 1854 he exhibited a huge canvas, called "The Age of Augustus," a picture suggested, perhaps, by the "Hemicycle" of his master Delaroche, on which he himself had painted. It represented heroes, poets, sages, of the Augustan age, grouped about the cradle of the infant Christ; it procured for Gerome the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, and is now, as the artist himself jestingly says, "the 'greatest' picture in the Museum of Amiens." In the same year Gerome went to Egypt for the first time; since then he has more than once visited it, but it is doubtful if he could renew the pleasure of his youthful experience. "I set out," he says, "with my friends, I the fifth, all of us lightly furnished with money, but full of youthful enthusiasm. Life was then easy in Egypt; we lived at a very moderate rate; we hired a boat and lived four months upon the Nile, hunting, painting, fishing by turns, from Damietta to Philae. We returned to Cairo and remained there four months longer in a house in the older part of the town, belonging to Soleman Pasha. As Frenchmen, he treated us with cordial hospitality. Happy period of youth, of freedom from care! Hope and the future opened bright before us; the sky was blue!"

Gerome's pictures of Eastern life make a gallery by themselves. A few of them are historic, such as his "Cleopatra visiting Caesar," but the most of them are simply scenes and incidents drawn from the daily life of the modern inhabitants of Cairo and the desert, illustrating their manners and customs. The mere titles would fill up a large part of our space. Many of the best of them are owned in this country, and all have been reproduced by engraving or by photography.

In another field Gerome won great distinction, painting scenes from the history of France in the reign of Louis XIV.; subjects drawn from what may be called the high comedy of court-life, and treated by Gerome with remarkable refinement and distinction. Among these pictures the best known are: "Moliere Breakfasting with Louis XIV.," illustrating the story of the king's rebuke to his courtiers who affected to despise the man of genius; "Pere Joseph," the priest who under the guise of humility and self-abnegation reduces the greatest nobles to the state of lackeys; "Louis XIV. Receiving the Great Conde," and "Collaboration," two poets of Louis XIV.'s time working together over a play. Among his accomplishments as an artist we must not forget the talent that Gerome has shown as a sculptor. He has modelled several figures from his own pictures, with such admirable skill as to prove that he might easily have made sculpture a profession had he not chosen to devote himself to painting.

[Signature of the author.]



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI[10]

[Footnote 10: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By EDMUND GOSSE

(1828-1882)



Those whose privilege it was to meet the late Mr. Gabriel Rossetti, at once in the plenitude of his powers and in the freshness of their own impressions, will not expect to be moved again through life by so magnetic a presence. In his dealings with those much younger than himself, his tact and influence were unequalled; he received a shy but ardent youth with such a noble courtesy, with so much sympathy yet with no condescension, with so grand an air and yet so warm a welcome, that his new acquaintance was enslaved at the first sentence. This seems to me to have been in a certain sense the key-note of the man. He was essentially a point of fire; not a peripatetic in any sense, not a person of wide circumference, but a nucleus of pure imagination that never stirred or shifted, but scintillated in all directions. The function of Gabriel Rossetti, or at least his most obvious function, was to sit in isolation, and to have vaguely glimmering spirits presented to him for complete illumination. He was the most prompt in suggestion, the most regal in giving, the most sympathetic in response, of the men I have known or seen; and this without a single touch of the prophetic manner, the air of such professional seers as Coleridge or Carlyle. What he had to give was not mystical or abstract; it was purely concrete. His mind was full of practical artistic schemes, only a few of which were suited to his own practice in painting or poetry; the rest were at the service of whoever would come in a friendly spirit and take them. I find among his letters to me, which I have just been reading once again, a paper of delightful suggestions about the cover of a book of verse; the next youth who waited upon him would perhaps be a painter, and would find that the great genius and master did not disdain the discussion of picture-frames. This was but the undercurrent of his influence; as we shall see more and more every year as the central decades of this century become history, its main stream directed the two great arts of painting and poetry into new channels, and set a score of diverse talents in motion.

But, as far as anything can be seen plainly about Rossetti at present, to me the fact of his immovability, his self-support, his curious reserve, seems to be the most interesting. He held in all things to the essential and not to the accidental; he preferred the dry grain of musk to a diluted flood of perfume. An Italian by birth and deeply moved by all things Italian, he never visited Italy; a lover of ritual and a sympathizer with all the mysteries of the Roman creed, he never joined the Catholic Church; a poet whose form and substance alike influenced almost all the men of his generation, he was more than forty years of age before he gave his verse to the public; a painter who considered the attitude of the past with more ardor and faith than almost any artist of his time, he never chose to visit the churches or galleries of Europe. It has been said, among the many absurd things which his death has provoked, that he shrank from publicity from timidity, or spurned it from ill-temper. One brilliant journalist has described him as sulking like Hector in his tent. It used to be Achilles who sulked when I was at school; but it certainly never was Gabriel Rossetti. Those who only knew him, after his constitution had passed under the yoke of the drug which killed him, cannot judge of his natural reserve from that artificial and morbid reserve which embittered the last years of his life. The former was not connected with any objection to new faces or dislike of cordial society, but with the indomitable characteristic of the man, which made him give out the treasures of the spirit, and never need to receive them. So far from disliking society, it is my impression that he craved it as a necessity, although he chose to select its constituents and narrow its range.

He was born in 1828. The story of his parentage is well known, and has been told in full detail since his death. He was born in London and christened Gabriel Charles Rossetti; it was not, I am told, until he was of age to appreciate the value of the name that he took upon himself the cognomen which his father had borne, the Dante by which the world, though not his friends, have known him. Living with his father in Charlotte street, with two sisters and a brother no less ardently trained in letters than himself, he seems to have been turned to poetry, as he was afterward sustained in it, by the interior flame. The household has been described to me by one who saw it in 1847: the father, titular professor of Italian literature, but with no professional duties, seated the livelong day, with a shade over his eyes, writing devotional or patriotic poetry in his native tongue; the girls reading Dante aloud with their rich maiden voices; Gabriel buried here in his writing, or darting round the corner of the street to the studio where he painted. From this seclusion he wrote to the friend who has kindly helped me in preparing these notes, and whose memories of the poet extend over a longer period than those of any survivor not related to him.

Mr. W. B. Scott, now so well known in more arts than one, had then but just published his first book, his mystical and transcendental poem of "The Year of the World." This seems to have fallen under Rossetti's notice, for on November 25, 1847, he wrote to the author, a perfect stranger to himself, a letter of warm sympathy and acknowledgment. Mr. Scott was living in Newcastle, and, instead of meeting, the young poets at first made acquaintance with each other by correspondence. Rossetti soon mentioned, of course, his own schemes and ambitions, and he sent, as a sample of his powers, his poems of "The Blessed Damozel," and "My Sister's Sleep," which he had written about eighteen months before.