Charles H. Caffin

“ The patriarch’s half-figure, as he sits propped up by pillows, is clad in a splendid crimson robe; the gesture of the arms is full of dignity, and the head crowned with the majestic character of old age. And the aged face of Rebecca is reverently characteristic. The color throughout is rich, and the light and shadow are warm and luminous. It is an effective rendering of a grave incident, but the latter has been seen rather than felt, and certainly not with the depth and poignancy of feeling that Rembrandt would have suggested. ”

“ It was the human imagination, finding its free expression in art, that gave form and fabric to this Oriental dream of beauty. It is a visualised symphony, whose theme is life; the joy of life and beauty that irradiates the joy. And the inspiration is drawn from nature. To those who know the Alhambra it will not sound like freakishness of speech to say, that the imagination of the artist has ensnared a portion of the spirit of beauty which roams at large in the desert and sky and lurks in the silences of woods and gardens ”

“ To most of us, if we can recall our youth, the impressions that counted most came gradually, finding us often unprepared for them, and through circumstances or our own levity of soul unable to receive due profit at the time. But to the young Barnard, with a seriousness beyond his years, peering into the mystery of life, feeling after expression in form, the revelation of Michelangelo’s genius must have been like sudden light to a blind man, who, hitherto, had had but vague imaginings of light and form. ”

“ It is astonishing how few people do. Most people think of their voice only as a contrivance for uttering words: they turn it on and off like a faucet and let the words run. How frequently one sees a pretty girl or woman, tastefully dressed and of charming manners, who is altogether pleasing as long as she keeps her mouth shut. But the moment she opens it, half her charm vanishes. There is no tone in her voice; no varieties of light and shade in the pitch of the sounds, no varieties of quietness or warmth in her speech; no rhythm of effect. ”

“ I doubt if anywhere in modern art, except in that of Rodin, will you find busts of such vital power. They exhibit the same regard for the structural significance of the head; something more than the suggestion of form and bulk—a rich, strong, jubilant recognition of these facts as the ones of peculiar interest to the sculptor, offering him the opportunity of indulging his especial delight. They exhibit also, as do Rodin’s, the same delicately precise handling of details: like the obligato which a musician composes upon his basic theme, yet with a different range of motive. ”

“ The architecture is constructed in tones of pale brown and buff; the water in front is grayish white, and the ample sky admits a little rose amid the grayish blue. It is a picture of large feeling, and yet the details are still drawn in with that wriggling stroke of the brown brush which characterizes Van Goyen’s work, especially in the beginning and more or less to the end. It exhibits the feeling of one who is an engraver, as indeed he was; it is drawing rather than painting. ”

“ This colossal travesty of life, as nothing but inchoate, chaotic, brute nature, swayed by elemental lust, is painted with such amazing brutality, that the pigments seem as if they might have been laid on with a trowel. The crudity is intentional, producing a texture that fits the monstrous irony of the conception. Moreover, before this picture one loses sense of color, as consisting of specific hues. It is, in fact, an apt illustration of Goya’s own paradox, that color does not exist, that everything is light and shade of varying values. ”

“ And perhaps we begin to feel, as Rousseau himself did, that the oak is a symbol of the might of nature; and how she silently works on regardless of the changes that happen in the lot of comparatively short-lived men. Or we look at one of Corot’s pictures of the twilight, in which the trees seem to have sunk asleep in blurs of shade against the pale, faint light that is fading from the sky; and the hush and tenderness of the daily miracle of nature’s rest steals over our spirits. ”

“ Strength and stability{149} and the evidences of time confront us, just as they would in the forest itself; but like cathedral architecture when music is pulsing through it, they are for the moment secondary to the spiritual impression of the voice. Wyant heard it in the movement of the tree-tops, and in the stir of weeds and ferns that nestled in the hollows, and it whispered to him of peace, a quiescence that stirs the soul to gentle activity, gladsome by turns or subdued in the alternate sun and shadow, that inexhaustible mystery of nature’s peace that passeth man’s understanding. ”

“ In the swish of her tail and the droop and stiffening of the hind quarters, we are made to realise the force of the blizzard; while, is it the little mass of piled-up snow, or the whiteness of the marble, or the intensity of the sculptor’s imagination, that conveys to our own a sense of white, snowy desolation all around the two poor creatures? It is seldom in modern sculpture that one will find an expression of sentiment so unaffected and affecting. ”

“ In the vault of the sky Christ appears, enthroned upon a rainbow, his feet resting on a globe. He is encircled by clouds, below which a ring of angels supports a cross, while to the right and left are seraphs sounding their trumps, and all the distant air is aquiver with angelic forms. Hovering midway between earth and sky is St. Michael, the archangel. Down on the earth are the myriads of the risen: the good on one side, in orderly bands, lifting hands and heads toward heaven, and on the other the lost souls in a tumult of flames and smoke. ”

“ Now, as the light falls upon the flowers and shines through the petals, the whole bunch is transfigured. It has taken on a new appearance of beauty. Like a face that has suddenly lighted up with an expression of happiness, the flowers seem alive with radiance. They too, have their expression and it will change with the changing of light. For look at them again toward evening, when the light is low, and their faces, not less beautiful, will show a quite different expression. ”

“ But it was in his rendering of the nude that Warner exhibited the loveliest qualities of his art. He viewed it, as one views a flower, with single vision for its exquisite abstract beauty. Flower-like and fragrant, the “Psyche,” the “Dancing Nymph” and “Diana,” have the quivering sensibility of contour that one finds in the free growth of nature; united, however, to a firmness of texture and strength of structure and to a conscious play of movement, responding to the play of spirit, which in their perfect alliance are only to be found in the human form. ”

“ In the Berlin picture it sounds a note of liveliness that is exquisitely sustained in the silvery resonance of the lighted room; the effect of which is induced by the tones of olive in her skirt and the table-cloth, by a deep almost colorless blue drapery over the latter, and a shaft of dull yellow, formed by the velour of the window-curtain. The ensemble, in fact, is one of piquant decision and indescribable delicacy, illustrating Vermeer’s faculty of sight imagination, so that he not only renders what he sees, but actually creates. ”

“ To be indifferent to the genius and value of such a gift is to admit oneself a careless student of human nature. It is either that we refuse to be interested in what interests the masses, or that we underrate the virtue of the latter being thus interested. To-day, in our modern experience, there are thousands of illustrators; but if one looks back, say, twenty years, how many are there who have been leaders, in the sense that they have caught the spirit of the age for the first time and given it an expression which the educated and unlearned alike recognise as something vital? ”

“ Again, I am not speaking of the craftsmanship, but of the spirit that animates the artist. So long as he confines himself to fragments from the scenes and to subordinate persons, or to those whose character is very simple and direct, his old charm remains; but when he attempts a complex character, as that of Portia, he necessarily cannot please all comers; and when he essays to build up scenes, the old spontaneity of imagination seems to dwindle. It is as if the foliage of a tree were beginning to lose its freshness and twinkle of artless movement ”

“ But in the presence of the stupendous works of nature, as far as my experience goes, the feeling masters ourselves. Amid the vastness of the height and depth and breadth and the grandeur and glory and marvel of it all, our spirit is swept out of us. We see the mighty volume of water coming over Niagara and hear the roar of its might; but not as we gaze into the face of a friend and listen to the voice that we have learned to know and love so well. ”

“ Mounted on a stringy pony, the man himself lean and gaunt, the group counted very little as a mass, yet compelled attention by the keenness of the characterisation. Amid the extreme modernness of the scene and its variety of impressions, the impassiveness of this figure, survival of an age so remote, was strangely moving; a proud, stern figure, conscious of its dignity, in pitiful, solemn protest against the inexorable march of destiny; the last echo of an unrecorded epic. No sculptor has succeeded better in combining with complete naturalism the poetry of the Indian subject. ”

“ They have been roused out of sleep by the shock of the rending tomb and, still dazed, confront the miracle. One has fallen backward in his fear, some shield their eyes from the light, while others carve the air with their swords in frantic efforts. With the exception of one fine young figure that reaches up his hand, as if in acknowledgment of the miracle, they are all nude, the bodies wrought to extreme tension of expression. ”

“ RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM
feels the bigness in nature everywhere about us. For compare The Mill near Wyk-by-Duurstede, Ruisdael’s masterpiece in the Rijks Museum. Familiar enough in Holland are the ingredients of this scene: gray water, gray lowering sky, olive-green, brown, and pale-buff ground and trees, a gleam of light on the body of the mill; yet with what a majesty of conception they are clothed! ”

“ The big tree, although it is motionless in the quiet air, seems as if a breeze would stir it; the water has ripples of motion; some of the figures appear to be moving, while others are only still for the moment, and the sky—it is palpitating with the actual stir of the atmosphere, as the upper air gradually cools and draws up the warmer air from below, and this warmer air cools into mistiness. But the buildings stand immovable and solid. While all around them either moves or could move, they seem to suggest the force and permanence of what does not change. ”

“ Within the little enclosure of solemn greenery a bench, marble and of Greek design, invites to sit; the world is all outside, and here before us, raised upon a slight pedestal, enough to lift it above the level, but not too high for close and intimate communion, is the Presence: a woman’s seated figure, wrapped about in coarse drapery that shrouds her head and falls in long, loose, heavy folds at her feet. ”