Chapter 8

Among the compositions in which many figures in a complicated environment tax the artist's technical skill to the utmost, are several representations of the bean feast, that saturnalia of Germany, upon which abundant eating and drinking are in order. One of the most beautiful of these pictures is in the Cassel Gallery. Steen himself, portly and flushed, sits at the table, grimacing good-naturedly at the racket assailing his ears. His handsome wife is in the foreground, her large free gesture and unrestrained pose bringing out the opulent beauty of her form draped in shining silken stuffs. Her face, turned toward the little urchin who has found the bean in the cake and thus won the right to wear a paper crown as king of the revels, is dimpled with smiles. The two children are babyish in figure and expression and the little dog is more serious than is his wont upon these occasions. A couple of men are making a din with bits of brass and iron, and the place is in complete disorder with eggshells and kitchen utensils scattered about on the floor, yet the aspect of the scene is curiously removed from vulgarity. Both beauty and character have been ideals of the artist. He has not only grasped the loveliness of external things but he has delved rather deeply into the individualities of these roistering Hollanders. You do not feel as you do with Jordaens that excess of flesh and the joys of the palate are all the world holds for the revelers. The world holds, for one thing, appreciation of rich accessories. The columned bedstead, the handsome rugs, the carved furniture, the glint of gold in the ornate picture frame, especially the sheen of the silk skirts, the soft thick velvet and fur of the sacques and bodices, these, while they are not uncommon in the Dutch interiors of the period combine to produce an impression of esthetic well-being that tempers the unctuous physical satisfactions of a merry-making class. With Jordaens it is the satyr in man that sets the standard of enjoyment, except in his religious pictures which often are filled with genuine and noble emotion, and in which he rises superior to Steen where the latter works in the same kind. Nothing could be more commonplace or characterless in color and form than Steen's rendering of the dinner at Emmaus. Occasionally, however, he is equally without inspiration in his lustiest subjects. In the "_Fröhliche Heimkehr_" at Amsterdam, a merry enough scene of people returning from a boatride in high spirits, there is neither charm of color (save in the yellow jacket of a girl who leans over the side of the boat) nor subtlety of characterization.

Fully to appreciate Steen, we should know his pictures in the Louvre and at Amsterdam. They cover a wide range and comprise a considerable number of masterpieces. The life he depicts in them is not of a very high order, but he has seen the possibilities for pictorial representation in his surroundings as almost no other painter of his time. His people are alive and their living is active and fervent. What they do they do with zest. There is energy in the painter's line and vitality in his color. Nothing is dull or tame in his family drama. All has a touch of moving beauty. In the "_Schlechte Gesellschaft_" of the Louvre or the more vulgar "_Nach dem Gelage_" of the Rijks Museum--least rewarding of pictures for the moralist--how rich in beauties of color and line is the composition, how tender in modeling are the forms, how bewitching to the eye the fine enamel of the surface!

In the Metropolitan Museum, in New York, is one characteristic example: "The old rat comes to the trap at last," which badly needs cleaning, and one new purchase attributed to Steen in the lists of his work but hardly typical or even characteristic. The subject is a kitchen scene. In it we have neither Steen's charm of color nor his perfection of finish. Yet the turn of the woman's head, the unaffected merriment of her expression and that of the youth, and the type to which her face belongs sufficiently recall such examples of the artist's work as "_Das Galante Anerbieten_" at Brussels with which indeed it has more in common than with any other of Jan Steen's pictures known to me.

Steen's own portrait, painted by himself and hanging now in the Amsterdam Museum, shows a face upon which neither wild living nor ardent toil has left unhappy marks. His serious eyes look frankly out from under arched brows. His mouth is firm though smiling slightly. The high, bold nose and strong chin, the well-shaped head and thoughtful brow indicate a character more decided and more praiseworthy than the legends adrift concerning his life would lead us to expect in him.

ONE SIDE OF MODERN GERMAN PAINTING

XI

ONE SIDE OF MODERN GERMAN PAINTING

The best substitutes for the judgments of posterity are the judgments of foreigners. A group of pictures by the artists of one country, taken to another country for exhibition and criticism, is subjected to something the same test as the pictures of one generation coming under the scrutiny of another generation.

When a collection of pictures by modern German artists was exhibited in America in 1909, the American people were prompt in their recognition of a certain quality which they termed national. The critics--many of them--saw this quality from the adverse side and were far from complimentary to the Germans in their comparisons between American art and German art, but a general impression was given of a vitality sufficiently marked to make itself felt by the least initiated observer. A number of the pictures by the older men had little enough of this vitality, but where it existed it was so decided as to leaven the mass. And there was almost none of the sentimentality characterizing the Teutonic ideal as it had manifested itself in the pictures formerly brought to this country.

Compared, then, with the paintings of American artists and with those of the Frenchmen, whose work we have known so much better than that of any other country, compared also with the work of the modern Spaniards, whose paintings were on exhibition the same winter at the Hispanic Museum, we find the special character of the German painting to exist in a resolute individualism, a determination to express the inner life of the artist, his temperament and predilections and his mood at whatever cost of technical facility. Expressiveness, getting the idea into circulation, getting something said, this appears to be the common goal of the German painter of the present day.

In such case, of course, the idea is of particular importance. If it is to take precedence over purely esthetic qualities it is reasonable to expect it to be an idea of no little importance. Let us examine some of the painters represented in the exhibition arranged for America, and see whether in most cases the idea is emotional as with the artists of China and Japan, and therefore peculiarly appropriate to translation by rhythms of line and harmonies of color, or intellectual, and therefore demanding a complex and difficult expression and the solution of technical problems that do not come into the question at all when nothing else is required than to evoke an especial mood or temper of soul.

The oldest of the painters represented was Adolf von Menzel, who was born in 1815 and died in his ninetieth year. As he began work at an early age his accomplishment practically covers the period of the nineteenth century. He has been designated by one of his German critics as three Menzels in one: the first, the historian of the Freiderician period; the second, the historian of his own time, recording the court life in which he played his part; the third, the acute observer of the life of the streets and workrooms and a commentator on the amusing details of the passing show.

A number of his sketches were shown at the exhibition, a couple of landscapes, a ballroom scene and a theater subject, beside a little mediaeval subject in gouache. These displayed his dexterity of hand which was truly astounding, and also his memory, as the "Théâtre Gymnase" was painted fully a year after he left Paris. The ballroom supper was painted in an ironic mood and the gluttony of his fellow humans, their unattractive personalities, their curious aspect of the educated animal, appear with an intense and pitiless fidelity to the fact which is of the essence of intellectual realism, but which could equally have been achieved through the medium of words. In spite of a cultivated color sense and a fine control over his instrument he was from first to last essentially an illustrator. It was difficult for him to omit any detail that would add to the piquancy or fulness of his story, however much the omission might have done for his general effect. He said himself, "There should be no unessentials for the artist," and he advised his pupils to finish as much as possible and not to sketch at all. This passion for completeness rarely accompanies a strong feeling for the romantic aspects of nature or for atmospheric subtleties. Neither does the painter who observes human nature closely and represents it with a detailed commentary upon its characteristics usually convey the impression of any subjective emotion.

Menzel is no exception to this rule. In his work he appears as emotionless as a machine, but his accomplishment is not mechanical. It is, on the contrary, the record of a busy, highly individualized, accurate mind. A Berlin man, he had the alertness, the clear-cut effectiveness, the energy, and the coldness typical of a cosmopolitan product. If we compare his "Ball Supper" in which the glare of lights, the elaboration of costume, the rapacity and shallow glittering superficiality of a Court festivity are presented almost as though in hackneyed phrases, so devoid is the picture of any meaning beyond the obvious, with the "Steel Foundry" in which the unsentimental acceptance of labor as a necessary factor in civilization is conspicuous, it is clear that his mind was free from dreams and visions whichever side of society he looked upon. In this respect his influence is salutary. It is like a cool and wholesome breeze blowing away all miasmic vapors, and there is a positively exhilarating quality in his firm assumption of the power of the human being over his material. His workmen are men of strong muscle and prompt brain. In the "Steel Foundry" we see their efficient handling of the great bars of metal with admiration as we should in life, and we note what in modern times is not always present for notation, the intelligence and interest in their faces. In one corner of the room, behind a screen or partition, a little group is devouring luncheon. Here we strike once more the note of the ballroom supper in the munching eagerness of the eaters, but seen in juxtaposition with the physical force and effort of the workers it ceases to be revolting, and seems to symbolize the lusty joy of living with a sympathetic zest of realization.

In all of Menzel's work we have this sense of physical and mental competency. It shows nothing of the abnormal or decadent, and it must also be admitted that only in a few instances does it show anything of esthetic beauty. He was able to paint crowds of people and he managed to get a remarkable unity of effect in spite of his devotion to detail, but his masses of light and shade are not held in that noble harmonious relation achieved by the peasant Millet who was Menzel's contemporary, his lines have no rhythmic flow, his color, though often charming, is seldom held together in a unified tone. Some one has called him "the conscience of German painting," but he is more than that. He is both conscience and brain. It is always possible to obtain an intellectual satisfaction from his point of view. What is lacking is emotion.

We feel this lack in other Berlin masters. Professor Max Liebermann is one of the most distinguished of the modern group, and his large, cool, definite art is innocent of the moving quality. He was represented in the exhibition by a portrait of Dr. Bode, a vigorous little composition called "The Polo-players," the "Flax Barn at Laren," and "The Lace Maker." The last two were especially typical of his steady detachment from his subject. The old lace maker, bending over her bobbins, suggests only absorption in her task. There is no ennobling of her form, no idealizing of her features, no enveloping of her occupation with sentiment, nothing but the direct statement of her personality which is neither subtle nor complex and the description of what she is doing. But she is intensely real, more real, even, than Menzel's closely observed individuals. Liebermann, born in 1847, was the leader of the new tendency characterizing the Germany of the seventies, the tendency toward constant reference to nature as opposed to the old-fashioned conventionalism and Academic methods. There could have been no safer leader for a band of rebels since he was the sanest of thinkers and worked out a style in which the classic qualities of nobility in the disposition of lines and spaces and remarkable purity of form played a prominent part.

Observing his "_Flax Barn_," in comparison with the work of his compatriots, its fine freedom from triviality of detail was apparent, and the beauty of its cool light, spread over large spaces and diffused throughout the interior of the low shed, made itself felt. One noted also, as elements of the picture's peculiarly dignified appeal, the severe arrangement of the figures with the long row of workers under the windows, the long threads of flax passing over their heads to the women in the foreground, and the almost straight line formed in turn by these women. The composition, quite geometrical in its precision, gave a sense of deep repose in spite of the vitality of the individual figures and the impression they made of being able to turn and move at will, an impression nearly always missed by Leibl, Liebermann's great forerunner in the painting of humble life. We get much the same austere effect from the almshouse pictures of old men and women on benches in the open square, always arranged in a geometrical design, and always calm in gesture and mild in type, which appear from time to time in the foreign exhibitions of Liebermann's work.

Liebermann has done for the Germans something of what Millet did for the French. He has built his art upon the daily life of the poor, but while, like Millet, he has introduced a monumental element into his work, it is clearer, more closely reasoned, more firmly knit than Millet's art, and at the same time less emotional. Liebermann's hospitality to purely technical ideas, his interest in problems of light and air, his diligent analysis of motion, his ability to translate a scene from the life of the laboring class without sentimentality, without prettiness or eloquence or any of the attributes that catch the multitude, give to his art a touch of coldness that is not without its charm for those who care for a highly developed orderly product of the mind.

Most of the Berlin men who are in any degree notable share somewhat in this attribute. Arthur Kampf, although he has less than Liebermann of cool detachment, has both elegance and gravity. He could hardly have had a better representation by any one or two canvases than by the "Charity" and the "Two Sisters" of the American exhibition. In the first he depicts a street scene with its contrasts of poverty and wealth. A man and woman in evening dress, returning from their evening's pleasure, are besought by poor people clustering around a soup stall and drop coin into the insistent hands. The smoking caldron of soup in the center and the circle of sharply differentiated faces form an admirable composition, the apparently accidental lines of which play into a dignified linear scheme. The "Two Sisters" reveals the influence of Velasquez in its flat modeling and subtle characterization, and in its atmospheric grays enlivened with geranium reds. Both of these pictures indicate a modern temper of mind in the fluency of their technique and the realism of their treatment together with the attention paid to the tonal quality and to the character of the space composition. Kampf, however, although a young man--he was born in 1864--has passed through many phases of development which are recorded in his many-sided art. His subjects range from the historical themes of his wall decorations at Magdeburg and Aachen through portraiture in which he grasps characters essentially diverse and suggests with unerring instinct the dominant quality, scenes of labor as in his "Bridge-Building," scenes of brutality and excitement as in his "Bull-fight," scenes from the drama of the Biblical story, scenes of domestic life as in his delicately humorous picture of the absorbed reader eating his breakfast with the morning paper propped up in front of him, and scenes of peaceful holiday-making among the poor as in his idyllic "Sunday Afternoon" which shows a peasant boy playing his harmonicum under the trees, with his old father and mother sitting by in placid enjoyment. Various as these pictures are and closely as the manner has in each case been adapted to the special subject, we nowhere miss the note of individuality, although in such a portrait as that of the Kaiser, which was shown in America, it unquestionably is subdued. Neither do we miss the note of locality. Born at Aachen, Kampf is a true Rheinlander and one of his German critics notes that we must look to this fact for the explanation of his special qualities, declaring that without the Rheinlander's cheerfulness and energetic temperament, and without the background of the ancient Rhenish culture, he would be inconceivable. On the other hand his turning to drama and romance for his inspiration speaks of his Duesseldorfian training and his realism of representation allies him to Menzel. At forty-two he was made president of the Royal Academy of Art in Berlin, and it is probable that the wholesome Rhenish energy of which his critic speaks will save him from sinking into the formalism of the academic tradition.

In his art, however, as in that of his compatriots, it is apparent that the world of ideas is the world in which he lives, and he works to express his mind rather than his soul, his thoughts rather than his emotions, if we follow the indefinite and arbitrary division between thought and feeling that does service as a symbol of a meaning difficult to express clearly.

There were other interesting painters represented in the Berlin group at the American Exhibition, Otto Engel, Fritz Berger, Hans Hartig--and of all it is more or less true that the idea in their work is more important than the feeling. It is true also that the tradition of the peasant Leibl, a great painter, but invariably cold, rests upon most of them. His wonderful manipulation of pigment is equaled by none of them, but his accurate, detached observation, his balanced rendering, the firmness of his method, have entered more or less into their scheme of art. And it is to be noted that his ideas and theirs are ideas appropriate to the painter's medium. Menzel's literary bent is not shared by them, his predilection for a story to illustrate almost never appears among the younger Berlin painters, and he cannot in any real sense be considered their prototype.

When we turn to the older members of the modern Munich school we find the influence of Boecklin dominant. Arnold Boecklin, a Swiss by birth, and possessed of the Swiss ingenuity of mind, has been the subject of endless discussion among the Germans of the present day. He exhausted his very great talent in painting a symbolic world, and by his appreciation of the value of coherence he made his paintings impressive. They are each a perfectly coherent arrangement of parts, making a whole which has the appearance of simplicity, however numerous the elements composing it may be. By a combined generalization and intensity he turned the actual world which he studied closely enough, into his own unreality. Thus, in his Italian landscapes, he reveals the architectonic structure of his scene stripped of all incidental ornament, the upright and horizontal lines left severe and uncompromised, and the blue of the heavens and the sea, and the dark green of the cypresses, pushed to an almost incredible depth. Everything is more significant than in nature, yet nature has provided the elements of significance. It is in his ability to see things whole and to co-ordinate the selected details that Boecklin is most an artist. This largeness of generalization gives him power over the imagination, and is, perhaps the only, certainly the chief source of his power. His color by its very intensity overdoes the intended effect. The imagination instead of being stimulated is sated, and his obvious symbolism fails to pique the curiosity. Moreover, his handling of paint lacks sensitiveness. He has something of the disregard shown by the English painter Watts for the beauty inherent in his material which might as well be clay or textile as pigment in his hands. But his appreciation of the effect upon the mind of noble arrangements of space and mass raises him to a much higher place as an artist than he can be said to occupy as a painter.

Franz von Stuck is Boecklin's most distinguished follower. When we turn from the examples of Boecklin's work, by no means the most impressive examples, exhibited in America, to Stuck's "Inferno" we perceive both the influence of Boecklin and the powerful individuality that mingles with it.

There is Boecklin's insistence upon the symbol, and upon the bodying forth of things unseen, there is the solid violence of color, there is the pompous statement of the half-discerned truths which more sensitive artists are content to whisper. But there is also a splendid arabesque of line and a deeper reading of the spiritual content of the subject.

If we compare Stuck with William Blake whose fancy also was haunted by Dantesque conceptions, we see how much more impressive Blake's visions of the unreal world are and we find the reason in their swift energy of conception and in the artist's tenacity in holding his conception. With both Boecklin and Stuck we feel that the manner of rendering the conception becomes more important than the initial conception, and this seldom, if ever, is true of Blake. In spite of Boecklin's superb restraint in the disposition of his masses, when it comes to color he is at the mercy of the material pigment and permits it to obliterate where it should enhance and reveal. His forms, also, and even more than Stuck's, lose vitality under the weight of significance forced upon them, while Blake's emerge from the blank panel clean and strong and unencumbered. We feel that Blake, with all his struggle to utter truth by means of symbol, never allows his mind to lose the idea that "Living form is eternal existence," but in Boecklin's pictures "living form" is often buried beneath his colored clays.