Part 8

The old age of artists was a theme on which Hazlitt wrote one of his best essays, and just now, were he to be still among us, he would find new subjects for study--for not only is there Harpignies at ninety-two in France, but Sir John Tenniel at ninety-two in London; while it is only a year or so since William Callow died at ninety-six, and W. P. Frith at ninety-one. An artist--particularly an open-air artist, like Harpignies and Callow--has, one would say, every opportunity of attaining to a great age. Given a strong constitution and the absence of such harassments as, for example, bowed prematurely the head of Haydon, there is little to put a strain upon his faculties or physique. By the conditions of his art he cannot work at night. He is a daylight man: he lives upon light and air; he is in direct _rapport_ with the sun; he watches the skies (and how few of us do that!); his eye, searching for beauty and knowing beauty when it sees it, is constantly being rewarded in the best way--and that must make for the content that in its turn must make for longevity. When the painter’s temperament has both placidity and simplicity, it must be the happiest of all.

Harpignies’ prices at Sir John Day’s sale were far in advance of anything he had previously made at Christies’. The largest picture produced 1800 guineas, and the eleven 6270 guineas. A week later, however, the old man’s English record rose to 2000 guineas at the Cuthbertson sale.

So far all the important work had been French, but now (the arrangement was alphabetical) came in an illustrious Dutchman, another Nestor--Joseph Israels, still happily active at the age of 87. Mr. Preyer, of Amsterdam, who hitherto had been silent, began now to be busy. For the most important picture, “Bonheur Maternel,” 1080 guineas were paid, and for five others 2470 guineas--among them “The Fisher,” which fell to Mr. Drücker and added yet another to a collection of Israels’ which has overflowed both into our National Gallery and into the City Museum at Amsterdam.

After the “Shepherdess” of Charles Jacque, who painted sheep more brilliantly than any hand ever before, had been sold for 1680 guineas, we entered upon a longer Dutch interlude, filled by the three Marises, Mauve, and Mesdag; and once again the room fluttered, for the name of Maris grows more powerful every year. There is, indeed, perhaps no recent prolific painter so certain of a great financial future as the late James Maris. On every sale his prices rise, both for oil and water-colour. His brother Matthew I do not set against him in rivalry, because Matthew stands apart. He is an exotic, the most fastidiously select painter of our day, beyond Whistler even. Matthew Maris is alone: a reserved, half-mystical exile, who has always painted as little rather than as much as possible, and has never taken his brush in hand but to produce a masterpiece unique and haunting. To him we come soon.

James Maris was as abundant as Matthew has been restrained; and this makes the huge figures that his work now commands, and will, I believe, increasingly command, the more interesting. Sir John Day had fifteen of his oils and thirteen of his water-colours, all of which he bought during the artist’s life (only recently ended) through dealers at modest enough sums, averaging for the oils something about £80, and for the water-colours £40. At the sale the oils averaged £1000 and the water-colours £400. The highest sum paid for a single oil was 1600 guineas for a view of Dordrecht. That was large, but the following week, at the Cuthbertson sale, a James Maris brought 4000 guineas.

These prices may sound absurd, but they are not. An artist now and then becomes the fashion and excites competition beyond his deserts; but not so James Maris. James Maris was a great painter of skies, a great painter of river-side towns, a great painter of his native land. He saw things largely and painted them largely (now and then a little in the manner of the most beautiful landscape in the world--Vermeer’s “View of Delft”), and these facts are now known. His future, I fancy, is as secure as that of Constable and Crome. It gave me immense pleasure to see the brave, candid painter so popular.

And then Matthew Maris, and the first thrill of the sale. James’s rich and buoyant canvases, one by one on the easel, and the competition of the bidders, had set pulses agreeably beating; but we had not broken into applause. The first applause--no small thing at Christie’s, where impassivity is cultivated not only as a gentlemanly English habit but also from motives of commercial self-protection--the first applause was won by Lot 77.

What was Lot 77? The quietest little red and brown picture you ever saw, 8½ by 11½ inches; “a town [in the words of the catalogue] on the farther bank of a river; standing well above the red roofs of the houses are seen four windmills; a bridge crosses the river on the right; a barge and raft lying against the bank; a peasant woman in the foreground.” Such is “The Four Mills” of Matthew Maris, that strange, exclusive genius, most remarkable of the three Maris brothers. Matthew was born in 1835, and is therefore now an old man. He lives in lodgings in London, far from Holland and its mills and canals and sweeping sky: solitary and sad, with a few marvellous classics to his name, and on the walls of his sitting-room some dreadful oleographs which he will not ask the landlady to remove for fear of hurting her feelings. Here he lives, painting a little every day,--but they are pictures for no one to see,--and writing (I am told) some of the best letters of our time. The old age of artists! Hazlitt truly knew what to write about.

Matthew Maris has lived in England ever since he left Paris after the war. He even carried a rifle in that struggle, but it is characteristic of his gentle nature that he refused to load it. When he gave up painting for the public I know not. But the latest work that I know--that exquisite picture entitled “Butterflies”--a little blue girl lying in the grass, which seems to make much of both Whistler and Albert Moore insincere and even unnecessary, is dated 1874. It was exhibited in London again in 1909, with sixteen other of his works, including the adorable “Enfant Couchée” and one of the low-toned Montmartre souvenirs.

Such is the painter of Lot 77, which left his easel in 1871 and was then sold with difficulty for 100 francs, or four English sovereigns, or twenty American dollars, to M. Goupil, of Paris, who, it is recorded, threw in a little friendly lecture on the folly of painting “such unsaleable stuff.” Well, here it was now, Lot 77, “The Four Mills,” thirty-eight years older, and beautiful beyond description, with an appeal to the deeper nature of the connoisseur such as I cannot put into words. “Why,” I asked an artist, as we stood before it on the day before the sale, “why is it so good?” “Partly,” he said, “because he never wanted to show how cleverly he could paint. Everything has its true value. It is so simple and so sincere.” But this, of course, is not all. There is also the curious and exquisite alchemy of the painter’s mind; and how much of the painter is in this particular masterpiece may be gathered from the circumstance that (as I happen to know) it does not represent any real Dutch town at all but was an invention of his own. The Four Mills exist only on this canvas and in Matthew Maris’s strange and beautiful brain.

Lot 77. We have seen what the dealer gave the artist for it--100 francs. It then passed to Lord Powerscourt, and it was from his collection that Sir John Day bought it for £120. It was now, therefore, being sold for the third time.

“Lot 77. What shall I say for a start, gentlemen?”

“A thousand guineas? Thank you. A thousand guineas for this picture.”

“Eleven hundred.”

“Twelve.”

“Thirteen.”

“Fourteen.”

“Fifteen.”

“Sixteen.”

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen fifty.”

“Eighteen.”

“Eighteen fifty.”

“Nineteen.” (The red roofs are getting redder, the brown mills browner! The peace of it all!)

“Two thousand guineas.”

“And one hundred.”

“Two hundred.”

“Three hundred.”

“Four hundred.”

“Five hundred.”

“Six hundred.”

“Seven hundred.”

“Eight hundred.”

“Nine hundred.” (How quiet and beautiful, and above all price, all struggle, all commercialism, the picture is!)

“Three thousand guineas.”

“And one hundred.”

“Two hundred and fifty.” (Strange reading for old Matthew Maris in his London lodgings to-morrow morning!)

“Three hundred.”

A pause.

“For three thousand three hundred guineas.”

A longer pause.

“For three thousand three hundred guineas.”

And the hammer falls and the room vibrates with the tapping of sticks and clapping of hands; and “The Four Mills” disappears, bound for the house of a dealer, who was to sell it, in time, to an English connoisseur, whom, upon my soul, I envy. He is the right kind of connoisseur, too; no Peer he, or National Gallery Trustee enamoured of American dollars, but a simple gentleman who has already given pictures to the nation and intends (I am told) to give more--perhaps this very Dutch masterpiece.

Lot 78. “Feeding Chickens.” This also is by Matthew Maris, and was painted in 1872. “A Girl in buff dress and blue cap, is feeding chickens with some grain which she holds in the fold of her white apron; foliage background.” Such is the Christie description, and it serves to recall the little enchanted scene to mind; but it says nothing of the mysterious romantic feeling of it, or the richness and delicacy and sweetness of it, or even of the fascinating mediæval city in the distance.

For this Sir John Day gave £300, and at the sale it began at a thousand guineas and reached three, falling also to a Scotch purse--and it is now, I hear, in Canada. Two hundred and sixty-four thousand six hundred saxpences never went bang to better purpose. This second picture, by the way, was painted from the same model that lends such charm to “The Girl at the Well,” feeding pigeons, in the McCulloch collection.

Six William Marises[1] follow, and then we come to another Dutch painter whose work is every year more and more desired of collectors--Anton Mauve, the pastoral poet of Holland, who did for its cows and sheep and blue-coated peasants what Israels has done for its fisher-folk and James Maris for its skies. The place that Mauve’s sincere and modest art has won in the eyes of the best connoisseurs is a refreshing proof that honesty in painting is ultimately the best policy, although the honest artist may have every opportunity of starving before the tide turns his way.

[1] William Maris also is coming to his own. On June 30, 1911, one of his pastoral scenes brought £3200, at Christie’s.

Sir John Day had eight Mauves in oil and seven in water-colour. The first oil, “Troupeau de Moutons sous Bois,” he bought in 1888, immediately after the artist’s death. It was a picture of which Mauve was very fond; Sir John Day gave £150 for it. At the sale it began at 500 guineas, and after fierce competition it was secured by Mr. Reinhart, of Chicago, for 2700 guineas. Pictures with sheep in them, it has been said, always find buyers; but when the sheep are painted as these are, not with the _brio_ of Jacque, but so quietly and lovingly...!

Mauve, like all the greatest painters, took what he found around him and made it beautiful. He was one of the artists of whom the Creator must be most proud, in whom He must take most delight, for his whole life was given up to the demonstration of how beautiful everything is--and never with the faintest whisper of the words, “and how skilful am I!” Never. Anton Mauve stands with the greatest in his sincerity, his genius, and his self-effacement. American collectors have always appreciated him, while his village of Laren, in Holland, has long been a settlement of American painters.

Our first thrill was with the Matthew Maris; the next was with J. F. Millet’s “Goose Maiden”--one of the most lovely pieces of colour that can ever have leaned against Christie’s historic post. The merest trifle in size--12¼ by 9½ inches--an old master--a jewel of paint--from the moment it was born. Millet was no less a great colourist than a great draughtsman and a great lover of the earth, and here, in this tiny canvas, all his virtues meet. Sir John Day paid heavily for it in his time, but its new owner paid more heavily still. The bidding began at 500 guineas and mounted by hundreds to 5000.

After the Millet the most beautiful picture was a little landscape by Rousseau, the painter who left his studio at Barbizon to the villagers as a chapel. “River Scene: with a man fishing from a punt” was the description; but that omitted the wonder of the work--the evening light and stillness. It literally hushed the room. This picture is now in the National Gallery, for all to see. A week later (observe what it is to have the Christie habit) I saw another Rousseau with a richer but not more beautiful afternoon light in it, and some trees painted as only Rousseau could paint them, which brought 4600 guineas. (If forests can think, if villages have thoughts, what must be the reflection of Fontainebleau and Barbizon when they receive the news of these Christie contests!)

And so the day finished, some £75,000 having changed hands in three hours--a large sum for a little paint. A little paint, do I say? That is true; but a new world, too--a world of wistful beauty. And that, of course, cannot be appraised: it is dear at a five-pound note, if you do not want it--if your taste is unlike Sir John Day’s; it is cheap at all you have, if you desire it sufficiently.

A Georgian Town

This little town may be said to consist of three things--a long, narrow, and not very straight High Street, an almost equally long and equally diverging street parallel with it, and the quay. Both the High Street and its parallel neighbour might as easily have been straight as not; but it is very much to their advantage to curve a little, for not only are curves more beautiful, but they remind one of the street’s human origin, since before there can be a High Street there must be a path, and every one knows that no one can walk straight for more than a very few paces. Blindfold a man and tell him to walk across a field, and he will unconsciously bear to the left, I believe; and he will oscillate too.

Between the High Street and its neighbour there could not well be a greater difference; for the High Street is all bustle and business, and its neighbour is all quietude and residential repose. But they have this in common, that both are Georgian and red. The High Street, it is true, has thrown out a few plate-glass shop-fronts in keeping with twentieth-century enterprise, and a few new facades are there too; but the character of the street is still Georgian none the less. Its residential neighbour has made no concessions; it is eighteenth century still. Old shipowners and merchants--yes, and maybe old smugglers too--who lived there when George III was King would yet be quite at home were they to revisit it under George V. Hence I like this street the better. I like its window-frames, flush with the wall, such as builders may no longer give us; I like its square dormer windows, its fanlights over the door, its steps, its knockers, its blinds; its town-hall, with a flight of steps on each side, which, after describing an elegant curve, meet at the imposing door on the first floor; and, more than anything, I like its almshouses, which are five hundred years old.--So much for the little street, where Miss Greenaway might have made studies.

No need for me to say that the houses no longer harbour the class of resident for which they were intended; you know that as well as I do. Successful business men have ceased to live in the hearts of towns. Either because they genuinely want more room and air, or because a visible token of success is a pleasant thing to have, they now build houses on the outskirts, and the humbler folk inhabit the old houses at a reduced rent. The town has scores of these villas dotted about just outside its walls. From a balloon the centuries could be divided accurately--sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth in the centre; then a fringe of early nineteenth, then an outer fringe of later nineteenth; and then the latest addition of all, the twentieth-century villas, spick-and-span, and surrounded with greenery. Meanwhile, behind the Kate Greenaway shutters in the town’s core the managers and clerks and shop-assistants and their families are happy--and long may they be so!

As for the High Street, I can tell you about that very quickly. The best house in it, a superb red Georgian mansion, is now the office of the Gas Company. That gives you the High Street, does it not? There are two book and paper shops, and both supply “Punch” only to order. That gives you the class of town, does it not? There are assembly-rooms where an occasional entertainment is given, and an electric theatre has just been opened. (The assembly-rooms, by the way, have a name pretty enough for a heroine in a novel by Mr. Hardy--Amity Hall.) At night, however, in spite of the absence of organized harmony, the High Street is full of melody from upper windows and tap-rooms, or from the white building at the foot, close to the Custom House--famous in history for a smugglers’ raid which led to the recapture of a tremendous haul of run-goods--where the town band practises. The little town is rich in small inns, as maritime towns always are; and it has also two large ones, with spacious yards, relics of the brave days when gentlemen posted, and billiard-tables whose cloth is yellow and whose cushions have some of the inflexibility of a sea-wall.

Such is the High Street of my little town, which, while always a scene of animation, rises to its greatest social height on Saturday nights, when the country people come in to market, and the town-people market too, and the youths walk up the middle four and five abreast, and the girls walk down the middle four and five abreast, and jokes are made, and hearts, I doubt not, are lost, and the little tap-rooms get fuller and fuller.

And now the third thing and the best--the quay. A little Georgian town with a quay cannot go far wrong. In its electric theatres the cinematoscope may buzz and dazzle; sixpenny-halfpenny bazaars may be opened; its beautiful old mansions may house gas clerks; the latest novelties may effloresce in its shop-windows; but the quay will keep it sweet. Ships and mariners will arrest the meddling hand of Time. For there is something about the sea that will ever refuse to come into line. Wherever wind-tanned men with level eyes live all day in blue jerseys, there the lover of ancient peace may safely abide. And the quay of my little town and the boats in her great, spreading harbour are populous with such men. They arrest progress. Even the arrival of petrol and the spectacle of a fishing-boat gaining the open sea in the teeth of a headwind at a rate of ten knots an hour has not injured them. The sea remains the sea in spite of petrol: still the capricious, dangerous mistress, never the same for two minutes together, never quite to be trusted, and so jealous that in no other direction may the eyes of her subjects rove.

Two little tugs trot in and out of the harbour all day long, often enough dragging in some three-master that they have found in the bay; and at the moment that I write a big German barque with a green hull lies at one wharf; a Dutch tjalck at another; and a variety of coasters thrust their masts and spars and cordage against the evening sky and make it more wonderful still. And in one of the shipwrights’ yards a huge schooner into whose way a man-of-war casually loafed in the Channel a month ago is being fitted with a new bowsprit and prow; and since the bowsprit that the man-of-war left her resembles a birchbroom, there is no doubt that she needs them.

I had a little talk with one of the blue jerseys about smuggling. He, like myself, thought of the past with some regret. “I’ve no quarrel with a little smuggling,” he said, in his caressing, rich Southern voice. “No harm in smuggling, I says. I don’t say but what I’ve done some in my time. I don’t say that I should have any objection to running over to Guernsey any day and bringing back a ton of tubs. But the difficulty is, what to do with them? And you would look so blue if you were caught.” “True,” I said; “but surely there are safe landings all about there?” waving my hand towards the southern borders of this vast and mysterious harbour, so rich in creeks and sandy shores. “Yes,” he said, “yes. But that’s not it. You couldn’t do it alone: that’s the real trouble. And in smuggling it doesn’t do to trust any one. No,” he said, “not even your own brother. Not in smuggling.”

Mus Penfold--and Billy

Every man, however unobservant or incapable of correlating experiences, must learn something in the course of his life. Some little thing. Circumstances will force it into his intelligence. And a truth that has just been forced into mine is this--that it is a foolish thing to lend your sheep-dog to a shepherd, for the simple reason that the shepherd will at once insidiously and surely make it his own. You may reclaim it in the evening, fondle it, call it “Good old Bob, then!” receive its half-hearted caresses, and feed it; but it will be yours no longer. That is to say, its soul will be yours no longer, however you may cherish the husk. The cause is twofold--first, that the sheep-dog is a noble animal, who prefers work to sloth and a master to an owner; and, secondly, that shepherds are clever men, hiding under a simple exterior much shrewdness and quite a little guile.

At any rate the shepherd to whom recently I made the mistake of lending my sheep-dog is a clever man, hiding under a simple exterior much shrewdness and quite a little guile; and the moment for which he is living I know perfectly well is the moment when I shall say to him (as surely I shall), “Well, shepherd, you’d better call Bob yours after this and keep him altogether.” He knows as well as I do that I shall say that, although Bob has a pedigree like a duke and the shepherd is accustomed to very plebeian assistants.

Just for fun I intend to postpone that announcement as long as I can, because the shepherd and I understand each other and we shall both subterraneously enjoy the suspense. He knows that he is a bit of a schemer, and he knows that I know it; I know that I am a bit of an ass, and I know that he knows it. As to bearing him any grudge for his act of subtle alienation--that is absurd. I like him too much, and I recognize too that he is fulfilling Nature’s wish, Nature having devised Bob to round up sheep, and every minute that he spends in idleness walking at my heels being a defiance to her.

This shepherd is the true breed. His father was a shepherd on the same farm; his grandfather was a shepherd on the same farm. His name is drawn from his calling: not exactly Penfold, but akin. He is sixty-six, and he has been out in all weathers on the South Downs ever since he was a child, and he has never had a cold in his life. His crook is never out of his hand. When it rains he carries also a faded green umbrella and an ancient military cloak lined with red. He still wears a smock. He has never been to London, but knows Brighton railway station. He cannot read or write.