more precipitous rise the heights above. The peak that, seen from its base in the valley below, seemed to tower into the sky above, proves, when we have reached its crest, to be but a trivial fragment in a mighty chain of mountains,-that cliff over cliff rise, towering beyond, and never do we reach a summit that does not dwarf all below, and open the way to loftier heights, to ideal Silberhörner, that dazzle and delight us with their unattainable splendors and inaccessible despairs. Then, again, in seizing one thing we lose another. What we gain in knowledge and facility we lose in naïveté and freshness of impression. It is difficult to keep up to the end that sustained enthusiasm which alone holds the keys of success in art; and in proportion as we lose our love we lose our power. Nothing good is done in art by trick or sleight-of-hand. The complete force of the man must be put forth, and his work must be done in absolute earnest. Bel. It is said that Thorwaldsen, in the latter part of his career, stood before one of his statues which he had just completed, and after looking sadly at it for a time, said, "I see I am growing old, and my powers are failing. This statue satisfies me." Mal. I know not whether the story is true, but the observation was just, and contains a great deal of philosophic truth. In age the temptation is to relax one's efforts, and to rest satisfied with achieving a certain excellence, within one's knowledge and power, instead of striving for more. So we see in the later works of distinguished artists more freedom of style and brush, but more carelessness of detail and execution, more mannerism, and but too often mere repetitions of themselves. Art is an imperious mistress, and we must give her all if we are to obtain her utmost favors. Nor is it so alone in Art. It is so in everything. Nature never gives. She exacts strict pay for all you take. She does not scatter her largesses to the idle and the careless. She only pays the wages of your work. Worse than that, her highest fruit she puts just beyond your reach to tempt you on to your extremest effort. If you will not strain to your utmost for it, you must be content to go without it: it does not drop into your hands of itself. Bel. Ah! I am afraid I do not quite agree with you. You take no account of genius, with which some few are dowered by nature, and into their hands the fruit sometimes does seem to drop without any pains and struggles on their part. And then, again, there is so great a difference. between men in their natural facility. Some seem to do with ease what others labor for in vain. Mal. True-but the strain comes somewhere with every one. Great natural facility at first is not always, if it be ever, a boon to be coveted by one who seeks to attain great excellence. Somewhere at some time the whole soul must be put into one's work, the whole powers strained to the utmost; and it is perhaps better that this should occur at an early period, otherwise the danger is that we may rest contented with those small achievements which are bounded by our facilities. There is a desperate wall somewhere or other to block our progress. It may be early in our course, when we are bold and fresh and enthusiastic, and then with will and energy we may overleap it; or it may be in the middle of the course, when fatigue has come on, and the mind is jaded, and we have been spoiled by praise, and then we lack the energy to surmount it, and prefer to canter about within the easy limits we possess. No man ever did his best without laying out all that was in him. There is nothing so dangerous and so tempting as facility, unless it come from hard study and long practice, and even then it is a temptation and a danger. Bel. That is very true. Facility is often mistaken for genius, but it generally leads to mediocrity. How many a person I have known who, with great promise at the beginning, soon faltered and then stopped; while others, with no early facility, strengthened themselves by study and will, and passed far beyond them at the end. So many are satisfied with doing pretty well what they can do easily, and want the energy to do very well when it costs labor and struggle. But at least four-fifths of genius is an indomitable will. Mal. Very true. Take Michel Angelo, for instance he had not a natural facility like Raffaelle, but he climbed to far higher regions by force of will, and an energy that ninety years did not tire; while Raffaelle had passed his culmination at thirtyseven, and his last works, young as he was, are far from being his best. How : ever, we need not go to great examples; common life and every day will furnish them. A thousand are pleased with dabbling in water-colors and toying with them as amateurs, to one who earnestly works with the determination to be an artist. After all, there is far greater difference between men in their will than in their talent. What we will to do, despite of obstacles and failures, we generally succeed in doing at last. Easy writing,' says Sheridan, makes damned hard reading" and we must make up our minds to work if we wish to win success. 66 "Nil sine magno Vita labore dedit mortalibus," says Horace. Bel. I remember years ago a little incident which amused me, and illustrates these remarks. An accomplished artist in water-colors in Rome was one day showing his portfolio to an English lady. She was delighted with them, as well she might be, and after many expressions of admiration, she turned to him and said, "They are perfectly beautiful. How I wish I could paint in this way! Pray, how long do you think it would take me to learn to paint thus ?" "I cannot tell," replied the artist, "how long it would take you, but it has taken me all my life." Mal. It shall be suffigance !" I will say no more. Dogberry also is right. There are gifts that God gives. If the creative power be wanting that moulds the material to its purpose, nothing great ever will be achieved. But without the additional gifts of courage and will, whatever is the power, it will come to nothing. Bel. It is a common notion that no general education or high culture is necessary to the artist, but that art is a special faculty, a handicraft, a gift requiring no education save in its practice. No mistake could, as it seems to me, be greater. It is only from the pressure of full and lofty streams that the fountain owes the exultant spring of its column. The imagination needs to be fed from high sources, and strengthened and enriched to fulness, before it can freely develop its native force. The mere drilling of hand and eye, the mere technical skill, nay, even the natural bias and faculty of the mind, are not sufficient. They are indeed necessary, but they are not all. It is from the soul and mind that the germs of thought and feeling must spring; and in proporMal. It is a very common thing to hear tion as these are nourished and expanded persons say, How I wish I could do this by culture do they flower forth in richer or that thing, but nine times out of ten it hues and forms. It is by these means is just the earnestness of wish or will that that the taint of the vulgar and common is wanting. The desire has no real root is eradicated, that ideas are purified and of determination. It is a momentary exalted, that feeling and thought are feeling. Such persons would not be will stimulated, and taste refined. Out of the ing to give laborious hours and days and fulness of the whole being each word is years to attain the end they covet; but spoken, and each act takes the force of they would like to reach out their hand the whole man. It is not alone the and pluck the fruit at once without trou- athlete's arm that strikes-it is his whole ble. I can't do this, means very com- body. The blacksmith's arm in itself monly, I don't choose to do it. I should may be stronger, but his blow is far less like to have it, but I won't pay for it. If effective. they do not succeed at the first trial they are discouraged. A true artist must make up his mind to fail a thousand times, and never be discouraged, but bravely to try again. I am always surprised to see how well most people begin, and how little way they go. They seem to think that to be an artist comes like reading and writing, as Dogberry has it, by nature. Bel. And so it does. But remember that Dogberry also says-and his judg Mal. Undoubtedly; but on the other hand, the public, on whose approbation the artist to a certain extent depends, requires equally to be educated, for without this the higher fruit of art cannot be tasted or appreciated. While the general education of the public in art is so deficient, criticism must necessarily be low and ignorant. All that we can ask is, that it be not also arrogant. Bel. There is no doubt that a taste and knowledge in art is rapidly growing in America. Mal. Very true; but as yet there is a very general idea prevalent that the big is the great, and that it is size that constitutes grandeur. I have heard it constantly boasted, for instance, that the so-called monument to Washington, in the city of Washington, was the tallest obelisk in the world-as if that was in itself a great recommendation of it as a work of art. To which I have ventured to answer, Yes, perhaps. But it is not, correctly speaking, an obelisk, to begin with, for an obelisk proper should be a monolith. But I am willing to own that it is the tallest chimney in the world, and, I will also add, the most useless-and the ugliest. And besides, it has not only no use, but no meaning and no appropriateness as a memorial to Washington. We are now also loudly called upon to admire the Eiffel Tower just erected at Paris, on the ground that it is the highest in the world, and has I know not how many steps and stories. But has mere size any claims on our admiration in a work of art? Some of the smallest are among the grandest that ever were made; some of the largest the most inane and empty. What rare Ben Jonson says of life is equally true of art "In small proportions we just beauties see, And in short measures life may perfect be." Bel. Yes; and, on the other hand, it is not minuteness of finish and elaboration of detail which are primarily to be desired. A great work can afford to be imperfect in detail. Where the grand conception and impression are, there is the great work. But between the claims of Realism on the one side and Idealism on the other, the true mean seems to be pretty hard to hit. Mal. Did I ever say art was easy? Nothing that is great is easy or common. There is no clearly defined road, more than for the bird in the air. One must know it by intuition and feel it by internal conviction. "What is it that makes your music Mozartish?" asked some one of that great composer. "I know not," he answered; "it is as it comes to me." And where does it come from? Ah! who knows? That which is force or power or individuality in any work is an unconscious effluence from the spirit of 66 the artist. He knows not how or whence He only knows that it is imperious, and he must obey. it comes. Bel. Which do you think the higher art-painting or sculpture? Mal. Neither or either. The cup is nothing. It is what you put into it that is of value. Each art has its great difficulties, and it is not easy to say which has the greater. Still, in one sense, sculpture is the higher art, in my estimationfor the reason that, while its means are far more limited, its requisitions are greater and higher. It is at once more positive and more ideal. It has the highest requirements and the poorest means. Its ends are more difficult, its beginnings far more easy. To mould the pliant clay into some sort of material resemblance to any form is not difficult-it is in the grasp of amost every one. But to conceive a great statue and embody a noble idea-not simply by imitation of the model, but by a grand treatment of form, and a noble character of design and expression,-this is doubtless as difficult a task as can be set to an artist. There is every grade, from a mud-pie of a child to the work of Phidias. But, on the other hand, painting has the great requirements of tone and harmonious coloring which are avoided in sculpture, so that these difficulties nearly balance each other. Again, painting is more illusory, more imitative, more literal in its aims. It may please and enchant by literal reproductions of actual facts in nature. The whole field of genre, the facts and incidents of daily life, and the wide range of landscape, are open to it; while in sculpture a higher and more restricted class of subjects is demanded, and a nobler treatment of forms. It cannot stoop to genre without losing its true characteristics. It has only form to deal with, it is true, but that form must be ideal in its character, and while in nature, must also be above nature. If it content itself with copying the model, it degenerates into commonplace, and abdicates its highest functions. The pure imitation which pleases in painting by creating a partial illusion, is denied to sculpture. Besides, a statue must be right, harmonious, and effective from every point of view and in every light and shade. And, last, sculpture is restricted for the most part to a single figure, or at most to two or three, and into this everything must be put. In a word, it is the most material and the most ideal art. Each, however, has its great difficulties, and it is idle to put one above the other. Bel. One thing at least is certain, that many more artists have attained great excellence in painting than in sculpture. The great sculptors are very few; the great painters many. Setting aside the Greeks, with whom the two arts seem to have been nearly balanced, as far as history informs us, there is no doubt that since then there have been scarcely any great sculptors to compare with the great painters. I do not speak of the present time, for that would be invidious; but up to our time there is scarcely a sculptor, except Michel Angelo, entitled to be called great, or whose works are to be placed beside those of the renowned painters. Nay, even Michel Angelo himself was perhaps greater in fresco than in marble. This would seem to show that sculpture is at least a more difficult art than painting. At all events, Michel Angelo, so excellent in both arts, gave the higher rank to sculpture. Mal. It is far less understood, and far less popular, certainly. A picture appeals to a much larger number than does a statue. To feel and understand the beauty of the statue requires more knowledge and more culture. Few are capable of criticising it in its execution with intelligence. Its refinements of treatment, its delicate modelling, its picked truth to nature, are for the most part lost on the crowd. The public appreciate neither its anatomical accuracy nor its subtle expression of the human form; because the naked figure is so rarely seen, and so unfamiliar, that few are able to say whether it is right or wrong. All the finest parts of the execution are caviare to the general." The public are only capable of understanding the expression and the pose. 66 water-color. The atmosphere is thick and humid, and obliterates form. Everything is saturated or washed in color. On the contrary, the American atmosphere is tense and dry, revealing the outlines of everything, and insisting on form. The distances are clear-the far-off hill is drawn sharply on the sky. The trees are not blotted as in England, but defined and etched upon it. The form asserts itself far more strongly than the color. So it is in Greece, where sculpture attained its largest proportions and its finest expression. Bel. That is ingenious-but is it true? Mal. I think so. You will see these characteristics in the minds and in the persons of the people, as well as in their art. The American is slenderer and more nervous in his material organization, more metaphysical in his intellect, more irritable in his temperament, than the Englishman. His sharp thin air acts always on him as a stimulus. It will not let him rest, but whips him on. The brilliant sunshine is like a wine that intoxicates him. It eats away his flesh, turns muscle into tendon, and refines and quickens his perceptions. So we find him always inquiring, investigating, questioning, inventing, working. His perceptions dominate his sentiments. He is always organizing and reorganizing, and inventing, and putting things into shape. Everything runs to form rather than to color in his mind. He must have things definite and decided. The Englishman has more equipoise. His susceptibilities are more blunted; he is less nervous and more contented, calmer-minded and steadier of purpose. He has his loyal sentiments, his fixed habits, his regular formulas of life and thought, his quiet prejudices, and, in a word, his inertia of nature. He is fonder of facts than of metaphysics. He is full of general impressions, and does not like to be disturbed in them. His sentiments dominate and color his perceptions and opinions. His face and figure are vaguer in outline than the American's, and fuller of color. is fitter for a picture than for a bust. Much of this difference undoubtedly is to be attributed to the influences of climate; for even the unmixed English blood in America has already lost its type, and developed a new one. Take an English girl, and put her beside an American girl whose ancestry is pure English, and there is a He remarkable difference between them in shape, nature, and color. The American, as a rule, is slenderer, fairer, and slighter limbed, thinner featured, and more vivacious and excited in manner. The English girl is fuller, rosier in color, heavier in build, and calmer. The voice of the American is thin and high, that of the English girl is rich and low. But where you will find the greatest physical difference is in the feet and hands. The American's foot is small, thin, high-arched, and tendonous in the ankle. The English girl's is plump, flat, and full in the ankle. There is the same difference in the hands. Take a cast from American and an English foot, and any one can distinguish them with half an eye. All the attachments, as they are called, are longer and more tendonous in the American than in the English. an Bel. You seem to make out your case. Certainly there is a great difference between the general appearance of the English and the American. There is something charming in the one as of a rose, and in the other of a lily. Where the English have the advantage over the Americans is in their voices and intonations. An Englishwoman's voice is a pleasure to hear-so sweet, and low, and pleasant in its modulations-while the Americans whine with a high-pitched voice. I wish they would correct this. You know them as the blind man knew the cuckoo by the bad voice." 66 Mal. They sing better than the English, because the English never can fully utter their voice and throw it out. Bel. Certainly the American girls are sometimes very handsome, and they gen erally have a refinement of look and feature, if not of manner. In their ways, too, there is a certain wild wilfulness and independence which, when it does not go too far (as it frequently does), is very attractive. Mal. The English have had at least one great sculptor-Flaxman. He was a man of rare genius and a most refined imag ination-almost a Greek born out of his time and country. His illustrations to Homer and Eschylus are full of restrained grace and simplicity, and admirable in their character and composition, His illustrations of Dante are very inferior to them, though full of talent. His life, however, was spent in making monuments and allegorical figures for which he had no taste, but which the public demanded. But he will be remembered by the ideal works which the public refused and rejected. I think, for only one of his outlined compositions did he ever receive a commission, and that was for the Mercury and Pandora which is among his drawings from Hesiod. Bel. His power seems to have been best exhibited on his outlines. In the technical parts of his art, and in his modelling and manipulation, he was as clumsy as he was refined and poetic in his conceptions. At least, so I should judge from the modelled bas-reliefs of his which I have seen. Mal. It is very true. He did not model well-at least, all the casts from his models that I have seen are carelessly executed, and, in fact, mere sketches. But perhaps I have not seen any of what he could consider his finished models. Bel. You were reproaching modern art the other day for its slavish following of nature, and saying that we could never attain a high development of art so long as we aimed simply at an imitation of nature. You promised at the same time that you would give me your notions of what true art is. Will it bore you to do this now? Mal. Not at all, if it won't bore you. Mal. In considering the true principles which govern art, we must first clear our minds of the notion that the object of art is illusion. Art is art because it is not nature; and could we absolutely reproduce anything by means of form, tone, color, or any other means, so as actually to deceive, it would at once fail to interest the mind and heart as art. However we might, on being undeceived, wonder at the skill with which it was imitated, we should not accept it as a true work of art. It is only so long as imitative skill is subordinated to creative energy, and poetic sensibility, that it occupies its proper place. Otherwise, if by any process we could fix on a mirror the reflection of anything, we should have a perfect picture. Yet, perfect as the reflection is in every respect, it is not a picture, and it does not interest us as art. The most perfect imitation of nature is therefore not art. It must pass through the mind of the artist and be changed. |