CHAPTER XV
THE VICTORY OVER PSEUDO-IDEALISM
The Historical Picture of Manners as opposed to Historical Painting, an advance in the direction of intimacy of feeling.--The Antique Picture of Manners: Charles Gleyre, Louis Hamon, Gérôme, Gustave Boulanger.--The Picture of Costume from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.--France: Charles Comte, Alexander Hesse, Camille Roqueplan.--Belgium: Alexander Markelbach, Florent Willems.--Germany: L. v. Hagn, Gustav Spangenberg, Carl Becker.--The importance of Hendrik Leys, Ernest Meissonier, and Adolf Menzel as mediators between the past and ordinary life, between the heroic art of the first half of the nineteenth century and the intimate art of the second half 363
BIBLIOGRAPHY 391
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES IN COLOUR
PAGE ANTON GRAFF: Portrait of Himself _Frontispiece_ REYNOLDS: Mrs. Siddons 20 GAINSBOROUGH: The Sisters 38 GREUZE: The Milkmaid 58 CHARDIN: The House of Cards 64 WATTEAU: Fête Champêtre 74 ANGELICA KAUFFMANN: Portrait of a Lady as a Vestal 86 ELIZABETH VIGÉE-LEBRUN: Portrait of the Painter with her Daughter 100 CORNELIUS: "Let there be Light" 144 SCHWIND: The Wedding Journey 182 REGNAULT: General Prim 300 MEISSONIER: A Cavalier 378
IN BLACK AND WHITE
BAUDRY, PAUL. Portrait of Baudry 286 Charlotte Corday 287 Truth 288 The Pearl and the Wave 289 Cybele 290 Leda 291 Edmond About 292
BENDEMANN, EDUARD. The Lament of the Jews 165
BIÈFVE, EDOUARD. Portrait of Bièfve 314 The League of the Nobles of the Netherlands 315
BOUGUEREAU, WILLIAM ADOLPHE. Brotherly Love 281
CABANEL, ALEXANDRE. Portrait of Cabanel 279 The Shulamite 280
CARSTENS, ASMUS JACOB. Portrait of Himself 88 Scylla and Charybdis 90 Argo Leaving the Triton's Mere 91 Children of the Night 92 Priam and Achilles 93
CHARDIN, JEAN SIMÉON. Portrait of Himself 63 Grace before Meat 65
CHASSÉRIAU, THÉODORE. Apollo and Daphne 259
CHODOWIECKI, DANIEL. Portrait of Chodowiecki 66 The Family Picture 67 All Sorts and Conditions of Women 68, 69 The Morning Compliment 70 The Artist's Nursery 71
COGNIET, LÉON. Tintoretto Painting his Dead Daughter 261 The Massacre of the Innocents 263
CORNELIUS, PETER. Portrait of Cornelius 143 From the Frescoes in the Friedhofshalle, Berlin 145 Marguerite in Prison 146 The Apocalyptic Host 147 The Fall of Troy 149
COUTURE, THOMAS. Portrait of Couture 271 The Love of Gold 273 The Romans of the Decadence 275 The Troubadour 277
DAVID, JACQUES LOUIS. Portrait of David 102 Madame Récamier 103 The Oath of the Horatii 105 The Rape of the Sabines 107 Helen and Paris 109 Belisarius asking Alms 111 The Death of Marat 113
DELACROIX, EUGÈNE. Portrait of Delacroix 226 Dante's Bark 227 Hamlet and the Grave-diggers 230 Tasso in the Mad-house 231 Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople 233 Jesus on Lake Gennesaret 235 Horses Fighting in a Stable 237 Medea 238 The Expulsion of Heliodorus 239
DELAROCHE, PAUL. Portrait of Delaroche 264 The Assassination of the Duke of Guise 265 The Princes in the Tower 267 Strafford on his Way to Execution 269
DELAUNAY, ÉLIE. Diana 293 Boys Singing 294 Madame Toulmouche 295
FEUERBACH, ANSELM. Portrait of Himself 318 Hafiz at the Well 319 Pieta 321 Iphigenia 322 Portrait of a Roman Lady 323 Mother's Joy 325 Medea 327 Dante Walking with High--born Ladies of Ravenna 329
FÜHRICH, JOSEPH. Portrait of Führich 126 From the "Legend of St. Gwendolin" 127 Ruth and Boaz 128 The Departure of the Prodigal Son 129 Jacob and Rachel 130
GAINSBOROUGH, THOMAS. Portrait of Gainsborough 34 Mrs. Siddons 35 Wood Scene, Village of Cornard, Suffolk 36 The Market Cart 37 The Duchess of Devonshire 38 The Watering Place 39
GALLAIT, LOUIS. Portrait of Gallait 312 Egmont's Last Moments 313
GENELLI, BONAVENTURA. The Embassy to Achilles 94 Thetis lamenting the Fate of Hector 95 Odysseus and the Sirens 96 Portrait of Genelli 97
GÉRARD, FRANÇOIS. Portrait of Gérard 190 Mlle. Brongniart 191 Madame Visconti 192 Cupid and Psyche 193 Madame Récamier 194
GÉRICAULT, THÉODORE. Portrait of Géricault 221 The Wounded Cuirassier 222 Chasseur 223 The Raft of the Medusa 224 The Start 225
GÉRÔME, LÉON. The Cock-fight 367
GESSNER, SALOMON. Landscape 75 Landscape 76
GOYA, FRANCISCO. Portrait of Himself 42 The Majas on the Balcony 43 The Maja Clothed 44 The Maja Nude 45 De Que Mal Morira (from "Los Capriccios") 46 Soplones (from "Los Capriccios") 47 Se Repulen (from "Los Capriccios") 48 Que Pico de Oro (from "Los Capriccios") 49 Volaverunt (from "Los Capriccios") 50 Quien lo Creyera (from "Los Capriccios") 51 Linda Maestra (from "Los Capriccios") 52 Devota Profesion (from "Los Capriccios") 53 Otres Leyes por el Pueblo 54
GREUZE, JEAN BAPTISTE. Portrait of Greuze 58 Head of a Girl 59 Girl carrying a Lamb 60 Girl looking up 61 Girl with an Apple 62
GROS, ANTOINE JEAN (BARON). Saul 215 Portrait of Gros 216 The Battle of Eylau 217
GUARDI, FRANCESCO. Venice 77
HAMON, LOUIS. My Sister's not at Home 365
HENNEBERG, RUDOLF. The Race for Fortune 330
HENNER, JEAN JACQUES. Susanna and the Elders 284 The Sleeper 285
HILDEBRANDT, THEODOR. The Sons of Edward 161
HOGARTH, WILLIAM. Portrait of Himself 12 The Harlot's Progress (Plate VI.) 13 The Rake's Progress (Plate II.) 14 The Rake's Progress (Plate VII.) 15 The Rake's Progress (Plate VIII.) 16 Marriage à la Mode (Plate V.) 17 The Enraged Musician 18 Gin Lane 19
INGRES, JEAN AUGUSTE DOMINIQUE. Portrait of Ingres 242 The Maid of Orleans at Rheims 243 Portrait of Himself as a Youth 244 Bertin the Elder 245 Study for the Odalisque in the Louvre 247 The Source 248 Oedipus and the Sphinx 249 Paganini 251 Mlle. de Montgolfier 252 The Forestier Family 253
KAUFFMANN, ANGELICA. Portrait of Herself 86
KAULBACH, WILHELM. Portrait of Kaulbach 151 The Deluge 152 Prince Arthur and Hubert 153 Marguerite 156
DE KEYZER. Portrait of de Keyzer 308 The Battle of Woeringen 309
LAURENS, JEAN PAUL. The Interdict 298
LEFÉBURE, JULES. Truth 283
LESSING, CARL FRIEDRICH. The Sorrowing Royal Pair 164 The Hussite Sermon 335
LEYS, HENDRIK. Portrait of Leys 369 A Family Festival 370 The Armourer 371 Mother and Child 372
LUMINAIS, EVARISTE. Les Énervés de Jumièges 297
MAKART, HANS. Portrait of Makart 341 The Espousals of Catterina Cornaro 343 The Feast of Bacchus 345
MAX, GABRIEL. Portrait of Max 347 A Nun in the Cloister Garden 349 The Lion's Bride 351 Light 353 The Spirit's Greeting 355 Adagio 356 A Winter's Tale 357 Madonna 359
MAYER, CONSTANCE. Portrait of Mayer 201 The Dream of Happiness 202 The Tomb of Prudhon and Constance Mayer at Père-Lachaise 203
MEISSONIER, ERNEST. The Man at the Window 373 A Man reading 374 Reading the Manuscript 375 Polcinello 376 A Reading at Diderot's 377 A Halt 378
MENGS, ANTON RAFAEL. Portrait of Himself 84 Mount Parnassus 85
MENZEL, ADOLF. Portrait of Menzel, 1837 379 Frederick the Great and his Tutor 380 The Round Table at Sans-Souci 381 Frederick the Great on a Journey 383 Illustration to Kugler's History of Frederick the Great 384 Portrait of Frederick the Great 385 Reifspiel 387 When will Genius Awake? 388
OVERBECK, FREDERICK. Portrait of Overbeck 118 The Annunciation 119 The Naming of St. John 120 Christ Healing the Sick 121 Christ's Entry into Jerusalem 122 The Resurrection 123 The Seven Lean Years 124 Portrait of Himself and Cornelius 140
PESNE, ANTOINE. Portrait of Himself and Daughters 72
PILOTY, CARL. Portrait of Piloty 336 Girdonists on the Road to the Guillotine 337 Under the Arena 339
PRUDHON, PIERRE PAUL. Portrait of Himself 195 Joseph and Potiphar's Wife 196 Study directs the Flight of Genius 197 Le Coup de Patte du Chat 198 Cupid and Psyche 199 The Unfortunate Family 204 The Rape of Psyche 205 Le Midi 206 La Nuit 207 L'enjouir 208 Marguerite 209 Les Petits Dévideurs 210 The Vintage 211 The Virgin 212 Christ Crucified 213 Madame Copia 214
REGNAULT, HENRI. Salome 299 The Moorish Headsman 300
RETHEL, ALFRED. The Emperor Otto at the Tomb of Charlemagne 169 The Destruction of the Pagan Idols 170 Hannibal's Passage over the Alps 171 Death at the Masked Ball 172 Death the Friend of Man 173
REYNOLDS, SIR JOSHUA. Portrait of Himself 20 Dr. Johnson 21 Garrick as Abel Drugger 22 Heads of Angels 23 Samuel Richardson 24 Miss Reynolds 25 Edmund Burke 26 Mrs. Abington 27 Edmund Malone 28 Oliver Goldsmith 29 Lady Cockburn and her Daughters 30 Bishop Percy 31 The Girl with the Mousetrap 32 Dr. Burney 33
RICHTER, GUSTAV. Portrait of Himself 331 A Gipsy 332
SCHEFFER, ARY. Portrait of Scheffer 257 Marguerite at the Well 258
SCHNORR VON CAROLSFIELD, JULIUS. Portrait of Schnorr 125 Adam and Eve after the Fall 125
SCHRADER, JULIUS. Cromwell at Whitehall 333
SCHWIND, MORITZ. Portrait of Schwind 175 From the Wartburg Frescoes 176 From the Wartburg Frescoes 177 Wieland the Smith 178 From the Story of the Seven Ravens 179 A Hermit leading Horses to a Pool 181 Nymphs and Stag 184 Rübezahl 185 The Fairies' Song 187
SLINGNEYER, ERNEST. The Avenger 311
SOHN, CARL. The two Leonoras 163 The Rape of Hylas 166
STEINBRUCK, EDUARD. Elves 162
STEINLE, EDUARD. The Raising of Jarius' Daughter 131 "I have trodden the Winepress alone" 132 Portrait of Steinle 133
## Book Illustration 134
The Violin Player 135
SYLVESTRE, JOSEPH NOËL. Locusta Testing in Nero's Presence the Poison prepared for Britannicus 296
VEIT, PHILIP. Portrait of Veit 136 The Arts introduced into Germany by Christianity 137 The two Marys at the Sepulchre 139
WAPPERS, GUSTAV. Portrait of Wappers 303 The Sacrifice of Burgomaster van der Werff at the Siege of Leyden 305 The Death of Columbus 307
WATTEAU, ANTOINE. Portrait of Watteau 56 La Partie Carrée 57 The Music Party 73 The Return from the Chase 74
INTRODUCTION
The historian who wishes to relate the history of painting in the nineteenth century is confronted with quite other demands than await him who undertakes the art of an earlier period. The greatest difficulty with which the latter has to cope is the deficiency of sources. He manifestly gropes in the dark with regard to the works of the masters as well as to the circumstances of their lives. After he has searched archives and libraries in order to collect his biographical material, the real critical problem awaits him. Even amongst the admittedly authentic works, those which are undated confront those whose chronology is certain. To these must be added those nameless ones, as to whose history there is a doubt; to these again, those whose origin is to be ascertained. It needs a quick eye to separate the schools and groups, and finally to recognise the notes which are peculiar to the master.
With none of these difficulties is the historian of modern art confronted. The painters of the nineteenth century have very seldom forgotten to attach a name and date to their works, and the circumstances of their lives are related with an accuracy that was, earlier, rarely the lot of the foremost men in history. It is all the more difficult, face to face with such a chaos of pictures, to discover the spiritual bond which connects them all, to construct a building out of the immense supply of accumulated bricks, the piled-up mass of rough material. The evolution of modern painting is more complicated and varied than that of the art of an earlier period, just as modern life itself is more complicated and varied than that of any previous age.
How quietly, slowly, and surely was the evolution of that older period carried out. One simple proportion was maintained between art and the universal life of culture. Customs, views of life and art, were so intimately bound up together, that the knowledge of the age in general naturally comprises that of art. Standing before some old altar-piece of the school of Cologne, it is as though one were watching in some broad high dome; everything is quiet all round, and the august figures in the picture lead their calm, grave existence in illustrious grandeur. The message of Christianity, "My kingdom is not of this world," meets in art, too, with a clear expression. Humility and devotion are joined together, making for a refinement in the feeling of life that is unsurpassed in its hieratic tenderness and gracious innocence. In the fifteenth century, the age of discoveries, a new spirit entered the world. Commerce and navigation discovered new worlds, painting discovered life. The human spirit grew freer and more joyous; it was no longer satisfied with yearning for the other world alone, it felt itself at home also in this world, in the glory of the earth. Pictures, too, were inspired with some of those joyous perceptions with which the citizens of the fifteenth century issued from their narrow walls out under God's free heaven, something of that Easter Day mood in _Faust_. People still went on painting Madonnas and saints, subjects of a religion which had spread from the far East over the whole West; but with the severe simplicity of the heavenly, there was universal awakening of all the charm and roguery and energy of the earthly. It is the first virginal contact of the spirit with nature. On men's works there rests the first morning-dew of spiritual life; they remind one of woodlands in spring: Botticelli, Van Eyck, Schongauer.
After the Italians had become vigorous realists in the fifteenth century, they rose in the sixteenth, the century of inspired humanism, to majesty. The time of hard grappling with the overwhelming fulness of actuality is over. Those great masterpieces ensue in which the unlaboured effort shines forth in the most felicitous achievement: Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian. At the same time the German manner is most directly opposed to the Romance. They disdain to ingratiate themselves into men's minds by outward grace of form, but win the heart by their deep religious feeling and intimate sensibility. They are German to the core, racial even to the stiffness of the German character, but full of feeling and truth to life. Dürer in his woodcuts and copper engravings is "_inwendig voller figur_"; in them he offers the "concentrated, homely treasure of his heart." Holbein is great by the incomparably real art of his portraits. The century of that joyous revival of Paganism, the Olympian vivacity of the Renaissance, is followed by the age to which the Jesuits gave life and character. For those stately churches in the Jesuit style, with their _fortissimo_ effect, their huge, sculptured ornaments and their gleaming, gold decorations, the classic quietness of the old masters ceases to be appropriate. It is a question of a more stirring and impressive treatment of sacred subjects, wherein the whole passion of renewed Catholicism should be brought to expression. Spain, the country of the Inquisition, set the classic stamp on this enhanced religious feeling. Here all that monarchical and sacerdotal impulse which founded and aggrandised the Spanish nation, founded too its true representative in painting. Painters endowed their church pictures with a passionate fervour and a flush of extravagant sensuousness of the national, Spanish, local colour, such as are found united in the art of no other age or country. Necessarily, moreover, such a feudal system as that of Spain, with its grandees and princes of the Church, involved also an art of portrait painting which ranks with the highest that has issued in this kind from any country whatever: Murillo, Velasquez. In Flanders, the second stronghold of the Jesuits, we have the titan Rubens. A joyously fleshly Fleming, he seizes nature by the throat and drags her there where he stands erect, as though he were lord of the world. Freedom had found its way into victorious and Protestant Holland. Here there flourished an art neither courtly nor fostered by the Church. It stood in the closest connection with the burgesses, showed clear signs of the struggle through which country and people had won independence. In the first place, painting celebrated as its worthiest subject the free burgher, the tighter in the heroic struggle for freedom. At no time was portrait-painting practised to such an extent, and the sitters not aristocratic courtiers, but proud burgesses of a free community; the men grave, strong, self-reliant; the women faithful, pure, and modest. The workmanship is correspondent: simple, solid, domestic; and soon there followed the glorification of that which they prized the more after their struggles had been accomplished: the quiet, comfortable delight of hearth and home.
During the War of Independence the Dutch had learnt to love their fatherland, and they were the first, as artists, fully to grasp the poetry of landscape. Art now no longer shines only upon the eyes of Mary and the Hosts of Heaven: it settles upon arid country hills, streams upon the sea waves, is at home in peasants' houses and the dark woods, wanders through the streets and alleys, makes a temple of every market. The religious sentiments, however, which stirred Protestant Holland had to find appropriate expression; the living essence of biblical subjects was to be released from a narrow, ecclesiastical sphere, and approached anew with all the deep, German inwardness. These tendencies were all united in Rembrandt--perhaps of all masters, since the Christian era, the mightiest proclaimer of the great Pan; to him the cosmic powers of light and air signified the divinity that Michael Angelo had painted under a beautiful human form.
Finally, in the eighteenth century, comes _rococo_, with its rustling _frou-frou_ and its delicate charm. The whole life of that noble society, which exchanged court costume for silken pastoral garments, formality and rank for charm and grace, was a lively play, an extravagant game. The king played with his crown, the priest with his religion, the philosopher with his wisdom, the poet with the art of rhyme. They did not hear as yet the hoarse threatening voice of the disinherited, "_Car tel est notre plaisir_." What this age possessed of beauty and charm, its peculiar grace and wanton vivacity, its reckless, inassailable frivolity, was proper also to its art. Light and gracious as the whole life of that harmless, merry generation, it glided through the age untroubled, led by Cupidons, and kissed by the wandering winds. It is only to-day that we understand once more the charming masters of that elegant century.
The painters of every epoch looked at nature with their own eyes, and also with the eyes of their age and of their country. So the art of every period appears as "the mirror and abstract chronicle" of its age. With irresistible majesty, and conscious of its inspiration, it lays hold of the external world, and gives back to it its own picture infinitely exalted. It is the enlightened expression of the age, as upright, as fresh, as fanatic, or as unnatural as its generation. Therein lies the strength of the painters of _rococo_, that they painted the artificiality of the time with such unsurpassable naturalness. It is just these infinitely various manners of paying court to nature--unceasingly throughout the course of centuries, now violently, now softly and tenderly, at times, too, not without passing infidelity,--it is just these which determine the beauty and value, the mystery and essence of art, and are in the history of art all that tends to its variety and unsurpassable charm.
The nineteenth century not only shows a new age, but probably begins a new section of universal history. It is probable that in contrast with this epoch of stirring movement, during which the readjustment of all political and social relations, the new discoveries in the instruments of commerce, trade, and industry have given an entirely new aspect to the world, the next thousand years will sum up all the previous centuries as the "old world." New men require a new art. One would be inclined to surmise from this that the art of the nineteenth century presented itself as something essentially personal, with a sharply distinctive style. Instead of this it offers at first view, in contrast with those old ages of uniform production, a condition like that of Babylon. The nineteenth century has no style--the phrase that has been so often quoted as to have become a commonplace. In architecture the forms of all the past ages live again. The day before yesterday we built Greek, yesterday Gothic; here _Baroque_, there Japanese: but amidst all these products of imitative styles there rise up stations and market-places which, with the robust elegance of their iron colonnades, herald the greatness of fresh conquests. In the province of painting there are similar extremes. In no other age have minds so diverse flourished side by side as Carstens and Goya, Cornelius and Corot, Ingres and Millet, Wiertz and Courbet, Rossetti and Manet. And the existing histories excite a belief that the nineteenth century is a chaos into which it is possible only for some later age to bring order.
Perhaps, however, it is already quite possible, if one only resolves uncompromisingly to apply to the new age those principles which have been tested in the treatment of the _old_ histories of art, if one endeavours to study those artists who are in part still our contemporaries as objectively as though they were masters long dead. That is to say: one is wont, in a review of an older period in art, not to inquire what it had caught from an earlier age, but rather what it had introduced that was new. It was not because they imitated in their turn that the old masters became great; not because they looked backwards, but rather because they went forwards, that they made the history of art. We are not grateful, for instance, to the Dutchmen of the middle of the sixteenth century--Frans Floris and his contemporaries--that they forsook Dutch naturalism, and bootlessly exerted themselves in the way of Michael Angelo and Raphael. We can see no remarkable merit in the fact that the Bolognese at the beginning of the seventeenth century gathered their honey from the flowers of the Cinquecento. And we are even less inclined to see in the contemporaries of Adrian van der Werff, who endeavoured to refine the rugged, primeval Dutch art by the study of the Italians, more than clumsy imitators.
Just as much will the interest of the historian of the art of the nineteenth century be bestowed in the first degree upon the works which have really created something independent and transcending all the earlier ages. He will not give especial prominence to those domains which had their flowering-time in other days than our own, but he will ask: Where is that distinctive element which appertains to the nineteenth century only? What are the new forms which it has found, the new sentiments to which it has given expression? Not those whose
## activity lay in clothing--however cleverly--the artistic necessities of
the age in the store of already transmitted forms, but the pathfinders, who went forwards and created anew, require our attention. Even if, after the old masters, they can only be granted a place in the third or fourth class, they must nevertheless always take precedence of those others, because they exhibited themselves as they were, instead of making themselves large by standing on the shoulders of the dead. Many of those who were once valued highly, who, thriving on the inheritance of the past, accomplished what was apparently of importance, measured by this standard will arouse little interest, because their artistic speech, depending on a foundation of the established canonical works of old, is not their own but borrowed. In others, on the contrary, who, apart from the dominating tendency, had the courage rather to be insignificant, and yet remain themselves, observing with their own eyes nature which surrounded them, or naïvely abandoning themselves to the disposition of their artistic fantasy, in them will be seen the essential vehicles of the modern spirit. And then it will be apparent that the art of the nineteenth century as well as that of every earlier period had its peculiar garment, even if for official occasions it preferred to unpack from its wardrobe the state costumes of earlier ages. It is only because this distinction between the eclectic and the personal, the derived and the independent, has not yet been carried out with sufficient strictness, that it has hitherto, in my opinion, been found so difficult to discover the distinctive _style_ of modern art, and to make clear the logic and sequence of its evolution.
## BOOK I
THE LEGACY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
##