When sitters came, Giuseppe was only a valet: he cleaned the brushes, polished the knives, ran for water and hovered near to do his master's bidding. He was the only person allowed in the model-room, and all the time he was there his keen eyes made a correct and proper estimate of the sitter. Listening to no conversation, seeing nothing, he yet heard everything and nothing escaped his glance.

When the sitting, which occupied an hour, was over, Giuseppe took the picture into another room, and filled in the background and drapery just as he knew it should be.

"Marchi does not sign and date the portraits, but he does all the rest," said Garrick. And "Little Burney," treading on thinner ice, once remarked, "If Sir Joshua ever embraces a fair sitter and imprints upon her forehead a chaste kiss, I am sure that Giuseppe Marchi will never tell."

It is too late to accuse Sir Joshua Reynolds of ingratitude towards Giuseppe; he was grateful, and once referred to Marchi as "an angel sent from God to help me do my work." But he paid Marchi valet's wages and treated him like a servant. Possibly this was the part of expedience, for had Marchi ever gotten it into his head that he could paint as well as Sir Joshua he would have been worthless as a helper.

For forty years they were never separated.

Cotton disposes of Giuseppe Marchi by saying, "He was a clever colorist, but incapable of doing independent work." Cotton might, however, have told the whole simple truth, and that was that Marchi was hands, feet, eyes and ears for his master—certain it is that without his help Sir Joshua could never have attained the fame and fortune he did.

* * * * *

In selecting his time for a career, Joshua Reynolds showed good judgment. He went into public favor on a high tide. England was prosperous, and there was in the air a taste for the polite arts. Literature was becoming a fad.

Within a short time there had appeared Gray's "Elegy," Smollett's "Peregrine Pickle," Fielding's "Amelia" and Richardson's "Clarissa Harlowe." Here was menu to fit most palates, and the bill-of-fare was duly discussed in all social gatherings of the upper circles. The afflicted ones fed on Gray; the repentant quoted Richardson; while Smollett and Fielding were read aloud in parlor gatherings where fair ladies threatened to leave the room—but didn't. Out at Strawberry Hill, his country home, Horace Walpole was running that little printing-shop, making books that are now priceless, and writing long, gossipy letters that body forth the spirit of the time, its form and pressure. The Dilettante Society, composed of young noblemen devoted to high art and good-fellowship, was discussing a scheme for a National Academy. Garrick was at the height of his fame; Hogarth was doing for art what Smollett did for literature; while two young Irishmen, Burke and Goldsmith, were getting ready to make English letters illustrious; Hudson was painting portraits with a stencil; Gainsborough was immortalizing a hat; Doctor Johnson was waiting in the entry of Lord Chesterfield's mansion with the prospectus of a dictionary; and pretty Kitty Fisher had kicked the hat off the head of the Prince of Wales on a wager.

And so into this atmosphere of seething life came Joshua Reynolds, the handsome, gracious, silent, diplomatic Reynolds. Fresh from Italy and the far-off islands of the Southern seas where Ulysses sailed, he came—his name and fame heralded as the Raphael of England.

To have your portrait painted by Reynolds was considered a proper "entree" into the "bon ton." To attempt to give the names of royalty who sat to him would be to present a transcript of Burke's Peerage.

Unlike Van Dyck, at whose shrine Reynolds worshiped, Reynolds was coldly diplomatic in his relations with his sitters. He talked but little, because he could not hear, and to hold an ear-trumpet and paint with both hands is rather difficult. On the moment when the sitting was over, the patron was bowed out. The good ladies who lay in wait with love's lariat never found an opportunity to make the throw.

Reynolds' specialty was women and children. No man has ever pictured them better, and with him all women were kind. Not only were they good, but good-looking; and when arms lacked contour, or busts departed from the ideal, Kitty Fisher or Nelly O'Brien came at the call of Marchi and lent their charms to complete the canvas.

Reynolds gradually raised his prices until he received fifteen guineas for a head, one hundred for a half-length, and one hundred and fifty for a full-length. And so rapidly did he work that often a picture was completed in four hours.

Usually, success is a zigzag journey, but it was not so with Reynolds. From Seventeen Hundred Fifty-seven to Seventeen Hundred Eighty-eight, his income was never less than thirty thousand dollars a year, and his popularity knew no eclipse.

About the time the American Stamp Act was being pushed through Parliament, Reynolds' studio was the neutral stamping-ground for both parties.

Copley, the Boston artist, gave Reynolds a bias in favor of truth; and when Townshend, the man who introduced the Stamp Act in Parliament, sat to Sir Joshua, the artist and sitter forgot their business and wrangled over politics. Soon afterward Sir Joshua made a bet with Townshend, a thousand pounds against five, that George Washington would never enter Reynolds' studio. This was in response to the boast that Washington would soon be brought to England a captive, and Townshend would conduct him to Reynolds to have his picture taken.

The bet made a sensation and Reynolds offered to repeat it to all comers; and a score or more of sincere men paid over five pounds into the hands of Sir Joshua, and took his note for one thousand pounds, payable when Washington landed in England a prisoner.

Old Ursa Major had small patience with Reynolds' political prophecies; he called America a land of pirates and half-breed cutthroats, and would have bet Sir Joshua to a standstill—only he had conscientious scruples about betting, and besides, hadn't any money.

Goldsmith and Burke, of course, sided with Reynolds in his American sympathies, and Garrick referred to them as "My friends, the three Irish Gentlemen."

A frequent visitor at the studio at this time was Angelica Kauffman, who deserves a volume instead of a mere mention. She came up from Switzerland, unknown, and made her way to the highest artistic circles in London. She had wit and beauty, and painted so well that Reynolds admitted she taught him a few tricks in the use of color. She produced several portraits of Reynolds, and Reynolds painted several of her; and the daughter of Thackeray wrote a novel which turns on the assumption that they were lovers.

There certainly was a fine comradeship existing between them; but whether Reynolds was ever capable of an all-absorbing passion there is much doubt. He was married to his work.

Reynolds had many intimate friends among women: Peg Woffington, Mrs. Clive, Mrs. Thrale, Hannah More, Fanny Burney and others. With them all there went the same high, chivalrous and generous disinterestedness. He was a friend to each in very fact.

When the Royal Academy was formed in Seventeen Hundred Sixty-eight, Reynolds was made its president, and this office he held until the close of his life. He was not one of the chief promoters of the Academy at the beginning, and the presidency was half forced upon him. He might have declined the honor then had the King not made him a knight, and showed that it was his wish that Reynolds should accept. Sir Joshua, however, had more ballast in his character than any other painter of his time, and it was plain that without his name at the head the Academy would be a thing for smiles and quiet jokes.

The thirty-four charter members included the names of two Americans, Copley and West, and of one woman, Angelica Kauffman.

And it is here worthy of note that although the Methodist Church still refuses to allow women to sit as delegates in its General Conference, yet, in Seventeen Hundred Sixty-eight, no dissent was made when Joshua Reynolds suggested the name of a woman as a member of the Royal Academy.

Sir Joshua did not forget his friends at the time honors were given out, for he secured the King's permission to add several honorary members to the Academy—men who couldn't paint, but who still expressed themselves well in other ways.

Doctor Johnson was made Professor of Ancient Literature; Oliver Goldsmith, Professor of Ancient History; and Richard Dalton, Librarian.

In this case the office did not seek the man: the man was duly measured, and the office manufactured to fit him.

When Sir Joshua died, in February, Seventeen Hundred Ninety-two, it was the close of a success so uninterrupted that it seems unequaled in the history of art. He left a fortune equal to considerably more than half a million dollars; he had contributed valuable matter to the cause of literature; he had been the earnest friend of all workers in the cause of letters, music and art; and had also been the intimate adviser and confidant of royalty. He was generous and affectionate, wise and sincere; a cheerful and tireless worker—one in whom the elements were so well mixed that all the world might say, This was a man!



LANDSEER

The man behind his work was seen through it—sensitive, variously gifted, manly, genial, tender-hearted, simple and unaffected; a lover of animals, children and humanity; and if any one wishes to see at a glance nearly all we have written, let him look at Landseer's portrait, painted by himself, with a canine connoisseur on either side.

—Monkhouse



Happy lives make dull biographies. Young women with ambitions should be very cautious lest mayhap they be caught in the soft, silken mesh of a happy marriage, and go down to oblivion, dead to the world.

"Miss Pott—the beautiful Miss Pott," they called her. The biographers didn't take time to give her first name, nor recount her pedigree, so rapt were they with her personality. They only say, "She was tall, willowy and lissome; and Sir Joshua Reynolds painted her picture as a peasant beauty, bearing on her well-poised head a sheaf of corn."

It was at the house of Macklin, the rich publisher, that John Landseer, the engraver, met Miss Pott. She was artistic in all her instincts; and as she knew the work of the brilliant engraver and named his best pieces without hesitation he grew interested. Men grow interested when you know and appreciate their work; sometimes they grow more interested, at which time they are also interesting.

And so it came about that they were married, the beautiful Miss Pott and John Landseer, and it can also be truthfully added that they were happy ever afterward.

But that was the last of Miss Pott. Her husband was so strong, so self-centered, so capable, that he protected her from every fierce wind, and gratified her every wish. She believed in him thoroughly and conformed her life to his. Her personality was lost in him. The biographer scarcely refers to her, save when he is obliged to, indirectly, to record that she became the mother of three fine girls, and the same number of boys, equally fine, by name, Thomas, Charles and Edwin.

Thomas and Charles grew to be strong, learned and useful men, so accomplished in literature and art that their names would shine bright on history's page, were they not thrown into the shadow by the youngest brother.

Before Edwin Landseer was twenty years of age he was known throughout the United Kingdom as "Landseer." John Landseer was known as "the father of Landseer," and the others were "the brothers of Landseer."

And when once in Piccadilly, the beautiful Miss Pott (that was) was pointed out as "the mother of Landseer," the words warmed the heart of the good woman like wine. To be the wife of a great man, and the mother of a greater was career enough—she was very happy.

Queen Anne Street, near Cavendish Square, is a shabby district, with long lines of plain brick houses built for revenue only.

But Queen Anne Street is immortal to all lovers of art because it was the home of Turner; and within its dark, dull and narrow confines were painted the most dazzlingly beautiful canvases that the world has ever seen. And yet again the street has another claim on our grateful remembrance, for at Number Eighty-three was born, on March Seventh, Eighteen Hundred Two, Edwin Landseer.

The father of Landseer was an enthusiastic lover of art. He had sprung from a long line of artistic workers in precious metals; and to use a pencil with skill he regarded as the chief end of man.

Long before his children knew their letters, they were taught to make pictures. Indeed, all children can make pictures before they can write. For a play-spell, each day John Landseer and his boys tramped across Hampstead Heath to where there were donkeys, sheep, goats and cows grazing; then all four would sit down on the grass before some chosen subject and sketch the patient model.

Edwin Landseer's first loving recollections of his father went back to these little excursions across the Heath. And for each boy to take back to his mother and sisters a picture of something they had seen was a great joy.

"Well, boys, what shall we draw today?" the father would ask at breakfast-time.

And then they would all vote on it, and arguments in favor of goat or donkey were eloquently and skilfully set forth.

I said that a very young child could draw pictures: standing by my chair as I write this line is a chubby little girl, just four years old, in a check dress, with two funny little braids down her back. She is begging me for this pencil that she may "make a pussy-cat for Mamma to put in a frame."

What boots it that the little girl's "pussy-cat" has five or six legs and three tails—these are all inferior details.

The evolution of the individual mirrors the evolution of the race, and long before races began to write or reason they made pictures.

Art education had better begin young, for then it is a sort of play; and good artistic work, Robert Louis Stevenson once said, is only useful play.

Probably Edwin Landseer's education began a hundred years before he was born; but his technical instruction in art began when he was three years old, when his father would take him out on the Heath and placing him on the grass, put pencil and paper in his hand and let him make a picture of a goat nibbling the grass.

Then the boy noted for himself that a goat had a short tail, a cow a switch-tail, and horses had no horns, and that a ram's horns were unlike those of a goat.

He had begun to differentiate and compare—and not yet four years old!

When five years of age he could sketch a sleeping dog as it lay on the floor better than could Thomas, his brother, who was seven years older.

We know the deep personal interest that John Landseer felt in the boy, for he preserved his work, and today in the South Kensington Museum we can see a series of sketches made by Edwin Landseer, running from his fifth year to manhood.

Thus do we trace the unfolding of his genius.

That young Landseer's drawing was a sort of play there is no doubt. People who set very young children at tasks of grubbing out cold facts from books come plainly within the province of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and should be looked after, but to do things with one's hands for fun is only a giving direction to the natural energies.

Before Edwin Landseer was eight years of age his father had taught him the process of etching, and we see that even then the lad had a vivid insight into the character of animals. He drew pictures of pointers, mastiffs, spaniels and bulldogs, and gave to each the right expression.

The Landseers owned several dogs, and what they did not own they borrowed; and once we know that Charles and Thomas "borrowed" a mastiff without the owner's consent.

All children go through the scissors age, when they cut out of magazines, newspapers or books all the pictures they can find, so as to add to the "collection." Often these youthful collectors have specialties: one will collect pictures of animals, another of machinery, and still another of houses. But usually it is animals that attract.

Scissors were forbidden in the Landseer household, and if the boys wanted pictures they had to make them.

And they made them.

They drew horses, sheep, donkeys, cattle, dogs; and when their father took them to the Zoological Garden it was only that they might bring back trophies in the way of lions and tigers.

Then we find that there was once a curiosity exhibited in Fleet Street in the way of a lion-cub that had been caught in Africa and mothered by a Newfoundland dog. The old mother-dog thought just as much of the orphan that was placed among her brood as of her sure-enough children. The owner had never allowed the two animals to be separated, and when the lion had grown to be twice the size of his foster-mother there still existed between the two a fine affection.

The stepmother exercised a stepmother's rights, and occasionally chastised, for his own good, her overgrown charge, and the big brute would whimper and whine like a lubberly boy.

This curious pair of animals made a great impression on the Landseers. The father and three boys sketched them in various attitudes, and engravings of Edwin's sketch are still to be had.

And so wherever in London animals were to be found, there, too, were the Landseers with pencils and brushes, and pads and palettes.

In the back yard of the house where the Landseers lived were sundry pens of pet rabbits; in the attic were pigeons, and dogs of various breeds lay on the doorstep sleeping in the sun, or barked at you out of the windows.

It is reported that John Landseer once contemplated a change of residence; he selected the house he wanted, bargained with the landlord, agreed as to terms and handed out his card preparatory to signing a lease.

The real-estate agent looked at the name, stuttered, stammered, and finally said: "You must excuse me, Sir, but they say as how you are a dealer in dogs, and your boys are dog-catchers! You'll excuse me—but—I just now 'appened to think the 'ouse is already took!"

* * * * *

The Landseers moved from Queen Anne Street to Foley Street, near Burlington House. This was a neighborhood of artists, and for neighbors they had West, Mulready, Northcote, Constable, Flaxman and our own picturesque Allston, of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Elgin Marbles were then kept at Burlington House, and these were a great source of inspiration to the Landseer boys. It gave them a true taste of the Grecian, and knowing a little about Greece, they wanted to know more. Greece became the theme—they talked it at breakfast, dinner and supper. The father and mother told them all they knew, and guessed at a few things more, and to keep at least one lesson ahead of the children the parents "crammed for examination."

Edwin sketched that world-famous horse's head from the Parthenon, and the figures of horses and animals in bas-relief that formed the frieze; and the boys figured out in their minds why horses and men were all the same height.

Gradually it dawned upon the father and the brothers that Edwin was their master so far as drawing was concerned. They could sketch a Newfoundland dog that would pass for anybody's Newfoundland, but Edwin's was a certain identical dog, and none other.

Edwin Landseer really discovered the dog.

He discovered that dogs of one breed may be very different in temper and disposition; and going further he found that dogs have character and personality. He struck an untouched lode and worked it out to his own delight and the delight of great numbers of others.

His pictures were not mystical, profound or problematic—simply dogs, but dogs with feelings, affections, jealousies, prejudices. In short, he showed that dogs, after all, are very much like folks; and from this, people with a turn for psychology reasoned that the source of life in the dog was the same as the source of life in man.

Plain people who owned a dog beloved by the whole household, as household dogs always are, became interested in Landseer's dogs. They could not buy a painting by Landseer, but they could spare a few shillings for an engraving.

And so John Landseer began to reproduce the pictures of Edwin's dogs.

The demand grew, and Thomas now ceased to sketch and devoted all his time to etching and engraving his brother's work.

Every one knew of Landseer, even people who cared nothing for art: they wanted a picture of one of his dogs to hang over the chimney, because the dog looked like one they used to own.

Then rich people came and wanted Edwin to paint a portrait of their dog, and a studio was opened where the principal sitters were dogs. From a position where close economy must be practised, the Landseers found themselves with more money than they knew what to do with.

Edwin was barely twenty, but had exhibited at several Royal Academy Exhibitions and his name was on every tongue. He gave no attention to marketing his wares—his father and brothers did all that—he simply sketched and had a good time. He was healthy, strong, active, and could walk thirty miles a day; but now that riches had come that way he bought a horse and rode.

Then other horses were presented to him, and he began to picture horses, too. That he knew horses and loved them is evidenced in many a picture. In every village or crossroads town of America can be found copies of his "Shoeing," where stands the sleek bay mare, the sober, serious donkey, and the big dog.

No painter who ever lived is so universally known as Landseer, and this is because his father and brothers made it their life-business to reproduce his work by engraving.

Occasionally, rich ladies would want their own portraits painted with a favorite dog at their feet, or men wanted themselves portrayed on horseback, and so Landseer found himself with more orders than he could well care for. People put their names, or the name of their dog, on his waiting-list, and some of the dogs died of old age before the name was reached.

"I hear," said a lady to Sydney Smith at a dinner party—"I hear you are to have your portrait painted by Landseer."

"Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" answered the wit. The story went the rounds, and Mulready once congratulated the clergyman on the repartee.

"I never made the reply," said Sydney Smith; "but I wish I had."

Sydney Smith was once visiting the Landseer studio, and his eye chanced to light on the picture of a very peculiar-looking dog.

"Yes, it's a queer picture of a queer dog. The drawing is bad enough, and never pleased me!" And Landseer picked up the picture and gave it a toss out of the window. "You may have it if you care to go get it," he carelessly remarked to the visitor. Smith made haste to run downstairs and out of the house to secure his prize. He found it lodged in the branches of a tree.

In telling the tale years afterward, Smith remarked that, whereas many men had climbed trees to evade dogs, yet he alone of all men had once climbed a tree to secure one.

Sir Walter Scott saw Landseer's picture of "The Cat's Paw," and was so charmed with it that he hunted out the young artist, and soon after invited him to Abbotsford.

Leslie, the American artist, was at that time at Scott's home painting the novelist's portrait. This portrait, by the way, became the property of the Ticknor family of Boston, and was exhibited a few years ago at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Landseer, Leslie and Scott made a choice trio of congenial spirits. They were all "outdoor men," strong, sturdy, good-natured, and fond of boyish romp and frolic. Many were the long tramps they took across mountain, heath and heather. They visited the Highland district together, fished in Loch Lomond, paddled the entire length of Loch Katrine, and hunted deer on the preserve of Lord Gwydr.

On one hunting excursion, Landseer was stationed on a runway, gun in hand, with a gillie in attendance. The dogs started a fine buck, which ran close to them, but instead of leveling his gun, Landseer shoved the weapon into the hands of the astonished gillie with the hurried whispered request, "Here, you, hold this for me!" and seizing his pencil, made a hasty sketch of the gallant buck ere the vision could fade from memory.

In fact, both Landseer and Leslie proved poor sportsmen—they had no heart for killing things.

A beautiful live deer was a deal more pleasing to Landseer than a dead one; and he might truthfully have expressed the thought of his mind by saying, "A bird in the bush is worth two on a woman's bonnet." And indeed he did anticipate Thoreau by saying, "To shoot a bird is to lose it."

The idea of following deer with dogs and guns, simply for the sport of killing them, was repugnant to the soul of this sensitive, tender-hearted man.

In the faces of his deer he put a look of mingled grandeur and pain—a half-pathos, as if foreshadowing their fate.

In picturing the dogs and donkeys, he was full of jest and merriment; but the kings of moor and forest called forth deeper and sadder sentiments.

That wild animals instinctively flee in frenzied alarm at man's approach is comment enough on our treatment of them.

The deer, so gentle and so graceful, so innocent and so beautiful, are never followed by man except as a destroyer; and the idea of looking down a rifle-barrel into the wide-open, soulful eyes of a deer made Landseer sick at heart.

* * * * *

To Landseer must be given the honor of first opening a friendly communication between the present royal family and the artistic and literary world.

Wild-eyed poets and rusty-looking, impecunious painters were firmly warned away from Balmoral. The thought that all poets and painters were anarchistic and dangerous—certainly disagreeable—was firmly fixed in the heart of the young Queen and her attendants.

The barrier had first been raised to Landseer. He was requested to visit the palace and paint a picture of one of the Queen's deerhounds. It was found that the man was not hirsute, untamed or eccentric. He was a gentleman in manner and education—quite self-contained and manly.

He was introduced to the Queen; they shook hands and talked about dogs and horses and things, just like old acquaintances. They loved the same things, and so were friends at once. It was not long before Landseer's near neighbors at Saint John's Wood were stricken speechless at the spectacle of Queen Victoria on horseback waiting at the door of Landseer's house, while the artist ran in to change his coat. When he came out he mounted one of the groom's horses for a gallop across the park with the Queen of England, on whose possessions the sun never sets.

These rides with royalty were, however, largely a matter of professional study; for he not only painted a picture of the Queen on horseback, but of Albert as well. And at Windsor there can now be seen many pictures of dogs and horses painted by Landseer, with nobility incidentally introduced, or vice versa, if you prefer.

It was in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five that Landseer began to paint the pets of the royal family, and the friendly intimacy then begun continued up to the time of his death in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-three.

In the National Academy are sixty-seven canvases by Landseer; and for the Queen, personally, he completed over one hundred pictures, for which he received a sum equal to a quarter of a million dollars.

Landseer's career was one of continuous prosperity. In his life there was neither tragedy nor disappointment. His horses and dogs filled his bachelor heart, and when Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart bayed and barked him a welcome to that home in Saint John's Wood where he lived for just fifty years, he was supremely content.

His fortune of three hundred thousand pounds was distributed at his death, as he requested, among various servants, friends and needy kinsmen.

Landseer had no enemies, and no detractors worth mentioning. That his great popularity was owing to his deference to the spirit of the age goes without saying. He never affronted popular prejudices, and was ever alert to reflect the taste of his patrons. The influence of passing events was strong upon him: the subtlety of Turner, the spiritual vision of Fra Angelico, the sublime quality of soul (that scorned present reward and dedicated its work to time) of Michelangelo were all far from him.

That he at times attempted to be humorous by dressing dogs in coats and trousers with pipe in mouth is to be regretted. A dog so clothed is not funny—the artist is.

The point has also been made that in Landseer's work there was no progression—no evolution. His pictures of mountain scenery done in Scotland before he was thirty mark high tide. To him never again came the same sweep of joyous spirit or surge of feeling.

Bank-accounts, safety and satisfaction are not the things that stir the emotions and sound the soul-depths. Landseer never knew the blessing of a noble discontent. But he contributed to the quiet joy of a million homes; and it is not for us to say, "It is beautiful; but is it art?" Neither need we ask whether the name of Landseer will endure with those of Raphael and Leonardo. Edwin Landseer did a great work, and the world is better for his having lived; for his message was one of gentleness, kindness and beauty.



GUSTAVE DORE

Lacroix told Dore one day, early in his life in Paris, that he should illustrate a new edition of his works in four volumes, and he sent them to him. In a week Lacroix said to Dore, who had called, "Well, have you begun to read my story?" "Oh! I mastered that in no time; the blocks are all ready"; and while Lacroix looked on stupefied, the boy dived into his pockets and piled many of them on the table, saying, "The others are in a basket at the door; there are three hundred in all!"

—Blanche Roosevelt



It was at the Cafe de l'Horloge in Paris. Mr. Whistler sat leaning on his cane, looking off into space, dreamily and wearily.

He roused enough to answer the question: "Dore—Gustave Dore—an artist? Why, the name sounds familiar! Oh, yes, an illustrator. Ah, now I understand; but there is a difference between an artist and an illustrator, you know, my boy. Dore—yes, I knew him—he had bats in his belfry!"

And Mr. Whistler dismissed the subject by calling for a match, and then smoked his cigarette in grim silence, blowing the smoke through his nose.

Not liking a man, it is easy to shelve him with a joke, or to waive his work with a shrug and toss of the head, but not always will the ghost down at our bidding.

In the realm of art nothing is more strange than this: genius does not recognize genius. Still, the word is much abused, and the man who is a genius to some is never so to others. In defining a genius it is easiest to work by the rule of elimination and show what he is not.

For instance, neither Reynolds, Landseer nor Meissonier was a genius. These men were strong, sane, well poised—filled with energy and life. They were receptive and quick to grasp a suggestion or hint that could be turned to their advantage—to further the immediate plans they had in hand. They had ambition and the ability to concentrate on a thing and do it. Just what they focused their attention upon was largely a matter of accident. They had in them the capacity for success—they could have succeeded at anything they undertook, and they were too sensible to undertake a thing at which they could not succeed. They always saw light through at the other end.

"I have success tied to the leg of my easel by a blue ribbon," said Meissonier.

They succeeded by mathematical calculation, and the fame, name and gold they won was through a conscious laying hold upon the laws that bring these things to pass.

They chose to paint pictures, and the entire energy of their natures was concentrated upon this one thing. Practising the art, day after day, month after month, year after year, they acquired a wonderful facility. They knew the history of art—its failures, pitfalls and successes. They knew the human heart—they knew what the people wanted and what they didn't. They set themselves to supply a demand. And all this keenness, combined with good taste and tireless energy, would have brought a like success in any one of a dozen different professions.

And these are the men who give plausibility to that stern half-truth: a man can succeed in anything he undertakes—it is all a matter of will.

But you can not count Gustave Dore in any such category. He stands alone: he had no predecessors, and he left no successors. We say that the artist has his prototype; but every rule has its exception—even this one.

Gustave Dore drew pictures because he could do nothing else. He never had a lesson in his life, never drew from a model, could not sketch from Nature; accepted no one's advice; never retouched or considered his work after it was done; never cudgeled his brains for a subject; could read a book by turning the leaves; grasped all knowledge; knew all languages; found an immediate market for his wares and often earned a thousand dollars before breakfast; lived fifty years and produced over one hundred thousand sketches—an average of six a day; made two million dollars by the labor of his own hands; was knighted, flattered, proclaimed, adored, lauded, scorned, scoffed, hooted, maligned, and died broken-hearted.

Surely you can not dispose of a man like this with a "bon mot"!

Comets may be good or ill, but wise men nevertheless make note of them, and the fact that they once flashed their blinding light upon us must live in the history of things that were.

* * * * *

An Alsatian by birth, and a Parisian by environment, Dore is spoken of as of the French School, but if ever an artist belonged to no "school" it was Gustave Dore.

His early years were spent in Strassburg, within the shadow of the cathedral. His father was a civil engineer—methodical, calculating, prosperous. The lad was the second of three sons: strong, bright, intelligent boys.

In his travels up and down the Rhine the father often took little Gustave with him, and the lad came to know each wild crag, and crowning fortress, and bend in the river where strong men with spears and bows and arrows used to lie in wait. In imagination Gustave repeopled the ruins and filled the weird forests with curious, haunting shapes. The Rhine reeks with history that merges off into misty song and fable; and this folklore of the storied river filled the day-dreams and night-dreams of this curious boy.

But all children have a vivid imagination, and the chief problem of modern education is how to conserve and direct it. As yet no scheme or plan or method has been devised that shows results, and the men of imagination seem to be those who have succeeded in spite of school. In Gustave Dore we have the curious spectacle of Nature keeping bright and fresh in the man all those strange conceptions of the child, and multiplying them by a man's strength.

The wild imaginings of Gustave only served his father and mother with food for laughter; and his erratic absurdities in making pictures supplied the neighbors' fun.

But actions that are funny in a child become disturbing in a man; he's cute when little, but "sassy" when older.

Gustave, however, did not put away childish things. When he had reached the age of indiscretion—was fourteen, and had a frog in his throat, and was conscious of being barefoot—he still imagined things and made pictures of them. His father was distressed, and sought by bribes to get him to quit scrawling with pencil and turn his attention to logarithms and other useful things; but with only partial success.

When fifteen he accompanied his father and older brother to Paris, where the older boy was to be installed in the Ecole Polytechnique. It was the hope of the father that, once in Paris, Gustave would consent to remain with his brother, and thus, by a change of base, a reform in his tastes would come about and he would leave the Rhine with its foolish old-woman tales and cease the detestable habit of picturing them.

It was the first time Gustave had ever been to Paris—the first time he had ever visited a large city. He was fascinated, captivated, enthralled. Paris was fairyland and paradise. He announced to his father and brother that he would not return to Alsace, neither would he go to the Polytechnique. They told him he must do either one or the other; and as the father was going back home in two days, Gustave could have just forty-eight hours in which to decide his destiny.

Passing by the office of the "Journal pour Rire," the father and son gaping in all the windows like true rustics, they saw announced an illustrated edition of "The Labors of Hercules." Some of the illustrations were shown in the window with the hope of tempting possible buyers. Gustave looked upon these illustrations with critical eye, and his face flushed scarlet—but he said nothing.

He knew the book; aye, every tale in it, with all its possible variations, had long been to him a bit of true history. To him Hercules lived yesterday, and, confusing hearsay with memory, he was almost ready to swear that he was present and used a shovel when the strong man cleaned the Augean stables.

The next morning, when his father and brother were ready to go to visit the Polytechnique, Gustave pleaded illness and was allowed to lie abed. But no sooner was he alone than he seized pencil and paper and began to make pictures illustrating "The Labors of Hercules."

In two hours he had half a dozen pictures done, and fearing the return of his father he hurried with his pictures to Monsieur Philipon, director of the "Journal pour Rire." He shouldered past the attendants, pushed his way into the office of the great man, and spreading his pictures out on the desk cried, "Look here, sir! that is the way 'The Labors of Hercules' should be illustrated!"

It was the action of one absorbed and lost in an idea. Had he taken thought he would have hesitated, been abashed, self-conscious—and probably been repulsed by the flunkies—before seeing Monsieur Philipon. It was all the sublime effrontery and conceit—or naturalness, if you please—of a country bumpkin who did not know his place.

Philipon glanced at the pictures and then looked at the boy. Then he looked at the pictures. He called to another man in an adjoining room and they both looked at the pictures. Then they consulted in an undertone. It was suggested that the boy draw another illustration right there and then. They wished to make sure that he himself did the work, and they wanted to see how long it took.

Gustave sat down and drew another picture.

Philipon refused to let the lad leave the office, and dispatched a messenger for his father. When the father arrived, a contract was drawn up and signed, whereby it was provided that the "infant" should remain with Philipon for three years, on a yearly salary of five thousand francs, with the proviso that the lad should attend the school, Lycee Charlemagne, for four hours every day.

Thus, while yet a child, without discipline or the friendly instruction that wisdom might have lent, he was launched on the tossing tide of commercial life.

His "Hercules" was immediately published and made a most decided hit—a palpable hit. Paris wanted more, and Philipon wished to supply the demand. The new artist's pictures in the "Journal pour Rire" boomed the circulation, and more illustrations were in demand. Philipon suggested that the four hours a day at school was unnecessary—Gustave knew more already than the teachers.

Gustave agreed with him, and his pay was doubled. More work rushed in, and Gustave illustrated serial after serial with ease and surety, giving to every picture a wildness and weirdness and awful comicality. The work was unlike anything ever before seen in Paris: every one was saying, "What next!" and to add to the interest, Philipon, from time to time, wrote articles for various publications concerning "the child illustrator" and "the artistic prodigy of the 'Journal pour Rire.'"

With such an entree into life, how was it possible that he should ever become a master? His advantages were his disadvantages, and all his faults sprang naturally as a result of his marvelous genius. He was the victim of facility.

Everything in this world happens because something else has happened before. Had the thing that happened first been different, the thing that followed would not be what it is.

Had Gustave Dore entered the art world of Paris in the conventional way, the master might have toned down his exuberance, taught him reserve, and gradually led him along until his tastes were formed and character developed. And then, when he had found his gait and come to know his strength, the name of Paul Gustave Dore might have stood out alone as a bright star in the firmament—the one truly great modern.

Or, on the other hand, would the ossified discipline and set rules of a school have shamed him into smirking mediocrity and reduced his native genius to neutral salts?

Who will be presumptuous enough to say what would have occurred had not this happened and that first taken place?

* * * * *

Before Gustave Dore had been in Paris a year his father died. Shortly after, the Strassburg home was broken up, and Madame Dore followed her son to Paris. Gustave's tireless pencil was bringing him a better income than his father had ever made; and the mother and three sons lived in comfort.

The mother admonished Gustave to apply himself to pure art, and not be influenced by Philipon and the others who were making fortunes by his genius. And this advice he intended to follow—not yet, but very soon. There were "Rabelais" and Balzac's "Contes Drolatiques" to illustrate. These done, he would then enter the atelier of one of the masters and take his time in doing the highest work.

But before the books were done, others came, with retainers in advance. Then a larger work was begun, to illustrate the Crimean War, in five hundred battle-scenes.

And so he worked—worked like a steam-engine—worked without ceasing. He illustrated Shakespeare's "Tempest" as only Dore could; then came Coleridge, Moore, Hood, Milton, Dante, Hugo, Gautier, and great plans were being laid to illustrate the Bible.

The years were slipping past. His brothers had found snug places in the army, and he and his mother lived together in affluence. Between them there was an affection that was very loverlike. They were comrades in everything—all his hopes, plans and ambitions were rehearsed to her. The love that he might have bestowed on a wife was reserved for his mother, and, fortunately, she had a mind strong enough to comprehend him.

In the corner of the large, sunny apartment that was set apart for his mother's room, he partitioned off a little room for himself, where he slept on an iron cot. He wished to be near her, so that each night he could tell her of what he had done during the day, and each morning rehearse his plans for the coming hours. By telling her, things shaped themselves, and as he described the pictures he would draw, others came to him.

The confessional seems a crying need of every human heart—we wish to tell some one. And without this confessional, where one soul can outpour to another that fully sympathizes and understands, marriage is a hollow, whited mockery, full of dead men's bones.

There is a desire of the heart that makes us long to impart our joy to another. Corot once caught the sunset on his canvas as the great orb sank, a golden ball, behind the hills of Barbizon. He wished to show the picture to some one—to tell some one, and looking around saw only a cottage on the edge of the wood a quarter of a mile away, and thither he ran, crying to the astonished farmer, "I've got it! I've got it!"

When Dore did a particularly good piece of work, in the first intoxication of joy he would run home, kiss his mother on both cheeks, and picking her up in his strong arms run with her about the rooms.

At other times he would play leap-frog over the chairs, vault over the piano, and jump across the table. And this wild joy that comes after work well done he knew for many years. In the evening, after a particularly good day, he would play the violin and sing entire scenes from some opera, his mother turning the leaves.

As to his skill as a musician, is this testimonial on the back of a fine photograph I once had the pleasure of handling: "As a souvenir of tender friendship, presented to Gustave Dore, who joins with his genius as a painter the talents of a distinguished violinist and charming tenor.—G. Rossini."

The illustrations for Dante's "Inferno" were done in Dore's twenty-second year, and for this work he was decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor. He never did better work, and at this time his hand and brain seemed at their best.

Every great writer and every great artist makes vigorous use of his childhood impressions. Childhood does not know it is storing up for the days to come, but its memories sink deep into the soul, and when called upon to express, the man reaches out and prints from the plates that are bitten deep; and these are the pictures of his early youth—or else they tell of a time when he loved a woman.

The first named are the more reliable, for sex and love have been made forbidden subjects, until self-consciousness, affectation and untruth creep easily into their accounting. All literature and all art are secondary sex manifestations, just as surely as the song of birds or the color and perfume of flowers are sex qualities. And so it happens that all art and all literature is a confession; and it occurs, too, that childhood does not stand out sharp and clear on memory's chart until it is past and adolescence lies between. Then maturity gives back to the man the childhood that is gone forever.

Many of the world's best specimens of literature are built on the impressions of childhood. Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, and I'll name you another—James Whitcomb Riley—have written immortal books with the autobiography of childhood for both warp and woof.

Gustave Dore's best work is a reproduction of his childhood's thoughts, feelings and experiences—all well colored with the stuff that dreams are made of.

The background of every good Dore picture is a deep wood or mountain-pass or dark ravine. The wild, romantic passes of the Vosges, and the sullen crags, topped with dark mazes of wilderness, were ever in his mind, just as he saw them yesterday when he clutched his father's hand and held his breath to hear the singing of the wood-nymphs 'mong the branches.

His tracery of bark and branch, and drooping bough held down with weight of dew, are startlingly true. The great roots of giant trees, denuded by storm and flood, lie exposed to view; and deep vistas are given of shadowy glade and swift-running mountain torrent. All is somber, terrible, and tells of forces that tossed these mountain-tops like bowls, and of a Power immense, immeasurable, incomprehensible, eternal in the heavens.

Dore's first exhibition in the Salon was made when he was eighteen, and a few years later, when he was presented with the Cross of the Legion of Honor, the decoration made his work exempt from jury examination. And so every year he sent some large painting to the Salon.

His work was the wonder of Paris, and on every hand his illustrations were in demand, but his canvases were too large in size and too terrible in subject to fit private residences.

Patrons were cautious.

To own a "Dore" was proof of a high appreciation of art, or else a lack of it—buyers did not know which.

They were afraid of being laughed at.

His competitors began to hoot and jeer. Not being able to make pictures that would compete with his, they wrote him down in the magazines.

His name became a jest.

Various of his illustrations for the Bible were enlarged into immense canvases, some of which were twenty feet long and twelve feet high. All who looked upon these pictures were amazed by the fecundity in invention and the skill shown in drawing; but the most telling criticism against them was their defect in coloring. Dore could draw, but could not color, and the report was abroad that he was color-blind.

The only buyers for his pictures came from England and America. Paris loved art for art's sake, and the Bible was not popular enough to make its illustration worth while. "What is this book you are working on?" asked a caller.

It was different in London, where Spurgeon preached every Sunday to three thousand people. The "Dores" taken to London attracted much attention—"mostly from the size of the canvases," Parisians said. But the particular subject was the real attraction. Instead of reading their daily "chapter," hard-working, tired people went to see a Dore Bible picture where it was exposed in some vacant storeroom and tuppence entrance-fee charged.

It occurred to certain capitalists that if people would go to see one Dore, why would not a Dore gallery pay?

A company was formed, agents were sent to Paris and negotiations begun. Finally, on payment of three hundred thousand dollars, forty large canvases were secured, with a promise of more to come.

Dore took the money, and, the agents being gone, ran home to tell his mother. She was at dinner with a little company of invited guests. Gustave vaulted over the piano, played leap-frog among the chairs, and turning a handspring across the table, incidentally sent his heels into a thousand-dollar chandelier that came toppling down, smashing every dish upon the table, and frightening the guests into hysterics.

"It's nothing," said Madame Dore; "it's nothing—Gustave has merely done a good day's work!"

The "Dore Gallery" in London proved a great success. Spurgeon advised his flock to see it, that they might the better comprehend Bible history; the Reverend Doctor Parker spoke of the painter as "one inspired by God"; Sunday-schools made excursions thither; men in hobnailed shoes knelt before the pictures, believing they were in the presence of a vision.

And all these things were duly advertised, just as we have been told of the old soldier who visited the Gettysburg Cyclorama at Chicago and looking upon the picture, he suddenly cried to his companion, "Down, Bill, down! by t' Lord, there's a feller sightin' his gun on us!"

Barnum offered the owners twice what they paid for the "Dore Gallery," with intent to move the pictures to America, but they were too wise to accept.

Twenty-eight of the canvases were eventually sold, however, for a sum greater than was paid for the lot, yet enough remained to make a most representative display; and no American in London misses seeing the Dore Gallery, any more than we omit Madame Tussaud's Wax-Works.

In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-three, Dore visited England and was welcomed as a conquering hero. The Prince of Wales and the nobility generally paid him every honor. He was presented to the Queen, and Victoria thanked him for the great work he had done, and asked him to inscribe for her a copy of the "Dore Bible."

More than this, the Queen directed that several Dore pictures be purchased and placed in Windsor Castle.

Of course, all Paris knew of Dore's success in England. Paris laughed. "What did I tell you?" said Berand. And Paris reasoned that what England and America gushed over must necessarily be very bad. The directors of the Salon made excuses for not hanging his pictures.

Dore had become rich, but his own Paris—the Paris that had been a foster-mother to him—refused to accredit him the honor which he felt was his due.

In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-eight, smarting under the continued gibes and geers of artistic France, he modeled a statue which he entitled "Glory." It represents a woman holding fast in affectionate embrace a beautiful youth, whose name we are informed is Genius. The woman has in one hand a laurel-wreath; hidden in the leaves of this wreath is a dagger with which she is about to deal the victim a fatal blow.

Dore grew dispirited, and in vain did his mother and near friends seek to rally him out of the despondency that was settling down upon him. They said, "You are only a little over forty, and many a good man has never been recognized at all until after that—see Millet!"

But he shook his head.

When his mother died, in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-one, it seemed to snap his last earthly tie. Of course he exaggerated the indifference there was towards him; he had many friends who loved him as a man and respected him as an artist.

But after the death of his mother he had nothing to live for, and thinking thus, he soon followed her. He died in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-three, aged fifty years.

* * * * *

SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF EMINENT PAINTERS," BEING VOLUME FOUR OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD: EDITED AND ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS, AND PRODUCED BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, MCMXXII



[Transcriber's Note:

Inconsistencies in the original (e.g., Arnola/Arnold; Edgcumbe/Edgecumbe; geers/jeers) have been retained in this etext.]