Part 5

In these stray notes I had meant to set down nothing in dispraise of this picture or that, but merely to say of such as I found good the best I had to say; passing by of necessity many well worthy of praise or blame, and many more not wholly worthy of either. Of these indeed the main part of an exhibition must usually be made up; of mediocrities and ingenuities which art must on the whole ignore and put aside without rebuke, though they may not call aloud for fire to consume them. But a word may here be said of M. Édouard Frère; a name that carries weight with it. He has been likened to Wordsworth; it must be a Wordsworth shorn of his beams. In the large field of the poet there are barren and weedy places enough; he may at times, with relaxed hand and bedimmed eye, drop from the hills to the quagmires, and croak there to children, instead of singing to men; but the qualities which at such times a great poet may have in common with a small painter are not the qualities which make him great. When we find in M. Frère the majesty and music of thought, the stately strength and high-toned harmonies, the deep sure touch and keen-edged pathos of the poet, then only we may grant the kinship. To the rags and tatters, the stubble and sweepings of Wordsworth, he meantime is more than welcome. What is there in this year’s picture well conceived, well composed, well painted? what of effect, of harmony, of variety in these crude monotonous figures? A great artist in verse or in colour may assuredly make some great thing out of the commonest unwashed group of dull faces; but the workman must first be great; and this workman, without force of hand or delicacy, without depth or grace of painting, would pass off on us, in lieu of these, such mere trickeries of coarse and easy sentiment, fit only to “milk the maudlin” eyes of M. Prudhomme and his wife. Turn from his work to that of M. Legros, and compare the emasculate with the masculine side of French art.

Among the drawings here are two studies by Mr. Sandys, both worthy of the high place held by the artist. One is a portrait full of force and distinction, drawn as perhaps no other man among us can draw; the other, a woman’s face, is one of his most solid and splendid designs; a woman of rich, ripe, angry beauty, she draws one warm long lock of curling hair through her full and moulded lips, biting it with bared bright teeth, which add something of a tiger’s charm to the sleepy and couching passion of her fair face. But of that which is not here I have also something to say. Exclusion and suppression of certain things in the range of art are not really possible to any academy upon earth, be it pictorial or literary. It is natural for academies to try, when any rare or new good thing comes before them in either kind; witness much of academic history in England as in France; but the record of their ill-will has always been the record of their impotence. Mr. Sandys’ picture of “Medea” is well enough known by this time, wherever there is any serious knowledge of art, to claim here some word of comment, not less seasonable than if it were now put forward to grace the great show of the year. Like Coriolanus, the painter might say if he would that it is his to banish the judges, his to reject the “common cry” of academics. For this, beyond all doubt, is as yet his masterpiece. Pale as from poison, with the blood drawn back from her very lips, agonized in face and limbs with the labour and the fierce contention of old love with new, of a daughter’s love with a bride’s, the fatal figure of Medea pauses a little on the funereal verge of the wood of death, in act to pour a blood-like liquid into the soft opal-coloured hollow of a shell. The future is hard upon her, as a cup of bitter poison set close to her mouth; the furies of Absyrtus, the furies of her children, rise up against her from the unrisen years; her eyes are hungry and helpless, full of a fierce and raging sorrow. Hard by her, henbane and aconite and nightshade thrive and grow full of fruit and death; before her fair feet the bright-eyed toads engender after their kind. Upon the golden ground behind is wrought in allegoric decoration the likeness of the ship Argo, with other emblems of the tragic things of her life. The picture is grand alike for wealth of symbol and solemnity of beauty.

The present year has other pictures to be proud of, not submitted to the loose and slippery judgment of an academy. Of one or two such I am here permitted to make mention. The great picture which Mr. Whistler has now in hand is not yet finished enough for any critical detail to be possible; it shows already promise of a more majestic and excellent beauty of form than his earlier studies, and of the old delicacy and melody of ineffable colour. Of three slighter works lately painted, I may set down a few rapid notes; but no task is harder than this of translation from colour into speech, when the speech must be so hoarse and feeble, when the colour is so subtle and sublime. Music or verse might strike some string accordant in sound to such painting, but a mere version such as this is as a psalm of Tate’s to a psalm of David’s. In all of these the main strings touched are certain varying chords of blue and white, not without interludes of the bright and tender tones of floral purple or red. In two of the studies the keynote is an effect of sea; in one, a sketch for the great picture, the soft brilliant floor-work and wall-work of a garden balcony serve in its stead to set forth the flowers and figures of flower-like women. In a second, we have again a gathering of women in a balcony; from the unseen flowerland below tall almond-trees shoot up their topmost crowns of tender blossom; beyond and far out to west and south the warm and solemn sea spreads wide and soft without wrinkle of wind. The dim grey floor-work in front, delicate as a summer cloud in colour, is antiphonal to the bluer wealth of water beyond: and between these the fair clusters of almond-blossom make divine division. Again the symphony or (if you will) the antiphony is sustained by the fervid or the fainter colours of the women’s raiment as they lean out one against another, looking far oversea in that quiet depth of pleasure without words when spirit and sense are filled full of beautiful things, till it seems that at a mere breath the charmed vessels of pleasure would break or overflow, the brimming chalices of the senses would spill this wine of their delight. In the third of these studies the sea is fresher, lightly kindling under a low clear wind; at the end of a pier a boat is moored, and women in the delicate bright robes of eastern fashion and colour so dear to the painter are about to enter it; one is already midway the steps of the pier; she pauses, half unsure of her balance, with an exquisite fluttered grace of action. Her comrades above are also somewhat troubled, their robes lightly blown about by the sea-wind, but not too much for light laughter and a quivering pleasure. Between the dark wet stair-steps and piles of the pier the sweet bright sea shows foamless here and blue. This study has more of the delight of life than the others; which among three such may be most beautiful I neither care to guess nor can. They all have the immediate beauty, they all give the direct delight of natural things; they seem to have grown as a flower grows, not in any forcing house of ingenious and laborious cunning. This indeed is in my eyes a special quality of Mr. Whistler’s genius; a freshness and fulness of the loveliest life of things, with a high clear power upon them which seems to educe a picture as the sun does a blossom or a fruit.

It is well known that the painter of whom I now propose to speak has never suffered exclusion or acceptance at the hand of any academy. To such acceptance or such rejection all other men of any note have been and may be liable. It is not less well known that his work must always hold its place as second in significance and value to no work done by any English painter of his time. Among the many great works of Mr. D. G. Rossetti, I know of none greater than his two latest. These are types of sensual beauty and spiritual, the siren and the sibyl. The one is a woman of the type of Adam’s first wife; she is a living Lilith, with ample splendour of redundant hair;

She excels All women in the magic of her locks; And when she winds them round a young man’s neck She will not ever set him free again.

Clothed in soft white garments, she draws out through a comb the heavy mass of hair like thick spun gold to fullest length; her head leans back half sleepily, superb and satiate with its own beauty; the eyes are languid, without love in them or hate; the sweet luxurious mouth has the patience of pleasure fulfilled and complete, the warm repose of passion sure of its delight. Outside, as seen in the glimmering mirror, there is full summer; the deep and glowing leaves have drunk in the whole strength of the sun. The sleepy splendour of the picture is a fit raiment for the idea incarnate of faultless fleshly beauty and peril of pleasure unavoidable. For this serene and sublime sorceress there is no life but of the body; with spirit (if spirit there be) she can dispense. Were it worth her while for any word to divide those terrible tender lips, she too might say with the hero of the most perfect and exquisite book of modern times--_Mademoiselle de Maupin_--“Je trouve la terre aussi belle que le ciel, et je pense que la correction de la forme est la vertu.” Of evil desire or evil impulse she has nothing; and nothing of good. She is indifferent, equable, magnetic; she charms and draws down the souls of men by pure force of absorption, in no wise wilful or malignant; outside herself she cannot live, she cannot even see: and because of this she attracts and subdues all men at once in body and in spirit. Beyond the mirror she cares not to look, and could not.

“Ma mia suora Rahel mai non si smaga Dal suo miraglio, e siede tutto ’l giorno.”

So, rapt in no spiritual contemplation, she will sit to all time, passive and perfect: the outer light of a sweet spring day flooding and filling the massive gold of her hair. By the reflection in a deep mirror of fervent foliage from without, the chief chord of stronger colour is touched in this picture; next in brilliance and force of relief is the heap of curling and tumbling hair on which the sunshine strikes; the face and head of the siren are withdrawn from the full stroke of the light.

After this faint essay at an exposition, the weighty and melodious words in which the painter has recast his thought (words inscribed on the frame of the picture) will be taken as full atonement for my shortcomings; I fear only that the presumption and insufficience of the commentator will now be but the more visible.

LADY LILITH.

Of Adam’s first wife, Lilith, it is told (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve) That, ere the snake’s, her sweet tongue could deceive, And her enchanted hair was the first gold. And still she sits, young while the earth is old, And, subtly of herself contemplative, Draws men to watch the bright net she can weave, Till heart and body and life are in its hold.

Rose, foxglove, poppy, are her flowers: for where Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare? Lo! as that youth’s eyes burned at thine, so went Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent, And round his heart one strangling golden hair.

The other picture gives the type opposite to this; a head of serene and spiritual beauty, severe and tender, with full and heavy hair falling straight in grave sweet lines, not like Lilith’s exuberant of curl and coil; with carven column of throat, solid and round and flawless as living ivory; with still and sacred eyes and pure calm lips; an imperial votaress truly, in maiden meditation: yet as true and tangible a woman of mortal mould, as ripe and firm of flesh as her softer and splendid sister. The mystic emblems behind her show her power upon love and death to make them loyal servants to the law of her lofty and solemn spirit. Here also the artist alone should first be heard; and I, having leave to act as his outrider, give him the due precedence.

SIBYLLA PALMIFERA.

Under the arch of life, where love and death, Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe, I drew it in as simply as my breath. Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath, The sky and sea bend on thee,--which can draw, By sea or sky or woman, to one law, The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.

This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise Thy voice and hand shake still,--long known to thee By flying hair and fluttering hem,--the beat Following her daily of thy heart and feet, How passionately and irretrievably, In what fond flight, how many ways and days!

After these all weaker words must fall flat enough; but something of further description may yet be allowed. Behind this figure of the ideal and inaccessible beauty, an inlaid wall of alternate alabaster and black marble bears inwrought on its upper part the rival twin emblems of love and death; over the bare carven skull poppies impend, and roses over the sweet head with bound blind eyes: in her hand is the palm-branch, a sceptre of peace and of power. The cadence of colour is splendid and simple, a double trinity of green and red, the dim red robe, the deep red poppies, the soft red roses; and again the green veil wound about with wild flowers, the green down of poppy-leaves, the sharper green of rose-leaves.

An unfinished picture of Beatrice (the Beata Beatrix of the Vita Nuova), a little before death, is perhaps the noblest of Mr. Rossetti’s many studies after Dante. This work is wholly symbolic and ideal; a strange bird flown earthward from heaven brings her in its beak a full-blown poppy, the funereal flower of sleep. Her beautiful head lies back, sad and sweet, with fast-shut eyes in a death-like trance that is not death; over it the shadow of death seems to impend, making sombre the splendour of her ample hair and tender faultless features. Beyond her the city and the bridged river are seen as from far, dim and veiled with misty lights as though already “sitting alone, made as a widow.” Love, one side, comes bearing in his hand a heart in flames, having his eyes bent upon Dante’s; on the other side is Dante, looking sadly across the way towards Love. In this picture the light is subdued and soft, touching tenderly from behind the edges of Beatrice’s hair and raiment; in the others there is a full fervour of daylight. The great picture of Venus Verticordia has now been in great measure recast; the head is of a diviner type of beauty; golden butterflies hover about the halo of her hair, alight upon the apple or the arrow in her hands; her face has the sweet supremacy of a beauty imperial and immortal; her glorious bosom seems to exult and expand as the roses on each side of it. The painting of leaf and fruit and flower in this picture is beyond my praise or any man’s; but of one thing I will here take note; the flash of green brilliance from the upper leaves of the trellis against the sombre green of the trees behind. Once more it must appear that the painter alone can translate into words as perfect in music and colour the sense and spirit of his work.

VENUS VERTICORDIA.

She hath it in her hand to give it thee, Yet almost in her heart would hold it back; She muses, with her eyes upon the track Of that which in thy spirit they can see. Haply, “Behold, he is at peace,” saith she: “Alas! the apple for his lips--the dart That follows its brief sweetness to his heart-- The wandering of his feet perpetually!”

A little space her glance is still and coy; But if she give the fruit that works her spell, Those eyes shall flame as for her Phrygian boy; Then shall her bird’s strained throat the woe foretell, And her far seas moan as a single shell, And through her dark grove strike the light of Troy.

Another work, as yet incomplete, is a study of La Pia; she is seen looking forth from the ramparts of her lord’s castle, over the fatal lands without; her pallid splendid face hangs a little forward, wan and white against the mass of dark deep hair; under her hands is a work of embroidery, hanging still on the frame unfinished; just touched by the weak weary hands, it trails forward across the lap of her pale green raiment, into the foreground of the picture. In her eyes is a strange look of wonder and sorrow and fatigue, without fear and without pain, as though she were even now looking beyond earth into the soft and sad air of purgatory: she presses the deadly marriage-ring into the flesh of her finger, so deep that the soft skin is bloodless and blanched from the intense imprint of it. Two other studies, as yet only sketched, give promise of no less beauty; the subject of one was long since handled by the artist in a slighter manner. It also is taken from the Vita Nuova; Dante in a dream beholding Beatrice dead, tended by handmaidens, and Love, with bow and dart in hand, in act to kiss her beautiful dead mouth. The other is a design of Perseus showing to Andromeda the severed head of Medusa, reflected in water; an old and well-worn subject, but renewed and reinformed with life by the vital genius of the artist. In the Pompeian picture we see the lovers at halt beside a stream, on their homeward way; here we see them in their house, bending over the central cistern or impluvium of the main court. The design is wonderful for grace and force; the picture will assuredly be one of the painter’s greatest.

Wide and far apart as lie their provinces of work, their tones of thought and emotion, the two illustrious artists of whom I have just said a short and inadequate word have in common one supreme quality of spirit and of work, coloured and moulded in each by his individual and inborn force of nature; the love of beauty for the very beauty’s sake, the faith and trust in it as in a god indeed. This gift of love and faith, now rare enough, has been and should be ever the common apanage of artists. _Rien n’est vrai que le beau_; this should be the beginning and the ending of their belief, held in no small or narrow sense, but in the largest and most liberal scope of meaning. Beauty may be strange, quaint, terrible, may play with pain as with pleasure, handle a horror till she leave it a delight; she forsakes not such among her servants as Webster or as Goya. No good art is unbeautiful; but much able and effective work may be, and is. Mere skill, mere thought and trouble, mere feeling or dexterity, will never on earth make a man painter or poet or artist in any kind. Hundreds of English pictures just now have but these to boast of; and with these even studious and able men are often now content; forgetful that art is no more a matter of mere brain-work than of mere handicraft. The worship of beauty, though beauty be itself transformed and incarnate in shapes diverse without end, must be simple and absolute; hence only must the believer expect profit or reward. Over every building made sacred to art of any sort, upon the hearts of all who strive after it to serve it, there should be written these words of the greatest master now living among us:--

La beauté est parfaite, La beauté peut toute chose, La beauté est la seule chose au monde qui n’existe pas à demi.

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