Court painter

“ I gain a lot by it, of course, but I lose a lot, artistically speaking." "How did you first come into contact with the judges, then?" asked K., he wanted first to gain the painter's trust before he took him into his service. "That was very easy," said the painter, "I inherited these contacts. My father was court painter before me. It's a position that's always inherited. They can't use new people for it, the rules governing how the various grades of officials are painted are so many and varied, and, above all, so secret that no- one outside of certain families even knows them. ”

“ If I were a novelist I should seek my characters in the Divorce Court; if I were a painter I should study those superstitions which have grown up around human nudity so that the very word 'naked' has become invested with a covert significance and must very shortly be obsolete. I contemplate opening a new Pythagorean Institute for instruction of the artistic young. Above the portal I shall cause to be inscribed the following profound thought: 'Art does not pay; portrait and figure painting do.'"
"Some portrait painters are artists," said Don. ”

“ Court Painters and Others—LeBrun. Patronage of Seguier. Work under Louis XIV. and Colbert at Fontainebleau, Versailles, and Sceaux. Watteau, peintre des Fêtes Galantes. Artificial pastoral scenes. Reading from Pater's A Court Painter. Chardin. Only painter of humble life of his time. Neglect then; appreciation now. Why this change in opinion? Fragonard. Relation to Chardin. Greuze. Names of some of his court beauties. Are they true to life? ”

“ But as a portrait-painter, he took up the note struck by his master and continued it, leaving behind him a series of portraits which not only had their effect in determining the character of Court painting all over Europe, but, what is more to the point, a series of portraits most of which are works of art. As painting, it is true, they are hard, and often timid ”

“ Less experienced observers are often deceived by the title of pictures: "A Court Yard" (de Hooghe) sounds unpromising enough; but when it is seen that the painter has represented daylight with magical truth, and that all is subservient to this, his aim must be acknowledged to be dignified. It is to be observed too, that the influence of this high aim on the part of the artist, often extends itself to the treatment of the materials which constitute his ostensible subject. ”

“ Though the favourite painter of the court, he was no courtier, and though the aristocracy and many eminent men, such as Pennant and Hurd, Blackstone and Clive, came and sat to him, he seems to have made no attempt to cultivate their society. ”

“ In France, the artist has a better show than here, and he won. The lady paid the bill, but announced that as soon as she got home she intended to burn the portrait. Whereupon Meissonier’s counsel asked that the court forbid this, as such an act would establish a bad precedent. It would lie within the power of a wealthy man, wishing to revenge himself, to buy up all the work of a client more than seventy years old, and, by destroying it, render the artist’s life a vain and useless thing. ”

“ That an artist will find beauty in ugliness, le beau dans l’horrible, is now a commonplace of the schools, the argot of the atelier, but I strongly deny that charming people should be condemned to live with magenta ottomans and Albert blue curtains in their rooms in order that some painter may observe the side lights on the one and the values of the other. Nor do I accept the dictum that only a painter is a judge of painting. I say that only an artist is a judge of art ”

“ The attitude of the “portrait-painter” may be likened unto that of the “poet laureate,” whose verse is at the command of conditions he does not{245} control; who may, by accident, write a good thing,—but the rule is otherwise, with even the best.
To rightly place a human being on canvas, or in stone, or in marble, or in poetry, is the noblest achievement of art. On the technical side it exhausts the resources of the art; on the spiritual side it exhausts the genius of the artist. But “portrait-painting” as a profession, as an industrial and a commercial proposition, is a degradation of art. ”

“ This line reminds us of a well-known passage in Byron:—
"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;
'Tis woman's whole existence. Man may range
The court, camp, church, the vessel and the mart;
Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange
Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart,
And few there are whom these cannot estrange."]
[Footnote 15: This is the divine ideal, the realization of which will bring the true "Golden Age." "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him."—I John iv. 16.] ”

“ Those objects which once delighted him, he now despises—these, on the contrary, he formerly took no notice of, he now sees with rapture; and even goes so far as to admire the objects in nature, he has learnt to like in representation.—Now, it is this improved, tho’ artificial state of 42 the mind that constitutes the judge of painting—and it is the judge the painter is sollicitous to please.—He is to attain this end then, by departing as much as possible from what is our natural barbarous taste, and by conforming to that we have acquired. ”

“ A painter is no more a judge, I suppose, than another man of how people feel and look under certain passions and events. Every body sees as well as him whether certain figures on the canvas are like such a man, or like a cow, a tree, a bridge, or a windmill. All that the painter can do more than the lay spectator, is to tell why and how the merits and defects of a picture are produced. I see that such a figure is ungraceful and out of nature—he shows me that the drawing is faulty, or the foreshortening incorrect. ”

“ If this were otherwise the rule which has for years made the exhibitions of the National Academy of Design the poorest of their kind in the United States—that provision which exempts from the action of the jury certain pictures entered by Academicians and Associates—would long since have been abrogated; for, just as no man willingly or wittingly writes himself down an ass, so no painter would wittingly brand himself a duffer. ”

“ We are aware that it is the practice of many glass painters to employ artists to make their designs for them, and afterwards to pass them off as their own. And as our chief object would be to secure a fair trial, and to raise the character of glass painting as an art, we think that each competitor should be required himself to design, and execute some subject, under the inspection of competent judges. No true artist would shun this ordeal ”

“ The sculptor invariably goes over his plaster cast with utmost care, not only repairing any defects in the moulding, but defining more accurately the hair, finger nails, folds of the drapery, and outline generally, and, above all, perfecting the facial and general expression. These plaster of Paris models are known in commerce and in art as 'casts of sculpture.' They represent the artist's right and title to his creation, and unlike the merchandise in question here, are not painted and decorated, nor dealt in as ordinary commercial articles. ”

“ There is no better way to study painting historically than in the cabinet of an engraving collector. Furthermore, divested of bad or mediocre paint—many famous pictures by famous names are mere cartoons, the paint peeled or peeling off—the student and amateur penetrates to the very marrow of the painter's conception, to the very skeleton of his technical methods. ”

“ On the way to the studio, however, he tardily remembered, and it rather scared him.
"Do you know any painters or sculptors?" he asked, keeping impatient pace beside her.
"I know a woman who makes casts of hands and arms," she said shyly. "She stopped me in the street once and asked permission to cast my hands. Would you call her a sculptor?"
"N—well, perhaps she may be. We sculptors often use casts of the human body." He plunged into it more frankly: "You know, of course, that to become a sculptor or a painter, one has to model and paint from living people." ”

“ Only think what a task it must be to get every tint and shade just right, and you know an unnatural painting is a most ugly thing to look at."
"That's true. One ought to have a natural gift for it like Michael Angelo when he saw a divine form imprisoned in a block of marble. As for the labor, an artist must enjoy it, thus being able to create from the resources of his own mind, and never can suffer for want of any thing to kill thought."
"Then I suppose you will be an artist," replied his companion.
"Oh no, I am going to be a lawyer."
"You a lawyer! impossible! ”

“ In partial compensation for the depression is born of the knowledge of this ruthless law, is the further knowledge that the artistic personality of a painter must be chiefly credited to the working of this same law—for our sense of color is primarily due to the varying number of color-cones with which each of us is endowed. It is in color, more than in any other artistic attribute, that the temperamental quality of a painter’s product shows itself most clearly. ”

“ In charging the jury in the case of Muller, Judge Brady said:
"It does not follow that because a photograph or engraving, or representation of an engraving or picture, is exhibited in a salon in France or the United States that it is not an indecent or obscene one. The object in art, as we understand it, is high and ennobling. It aims at the reproduction and presentation of the beauties of nature, and its chief design should be the development of every form of the beautiful in nature, although it may be employed to exhibit the horrors of vice. ”

“ Why should I not take advantage of this unforeseen permission to paint portraits at my ease, and so be free from the ever-trammelling thought that my sitter was being victimized through being obliged to stare stolidly at the antics and flourishes of an uninspired and uninspiring painter? Are there not enough stark and stiff upright figures looking down at us from the walls of every public and private gallery in the universe, that I should add one more senseless effigy to the number, unless commissioned to do so by a wife who avers that her husband is always upright and his eyes brilliant? ”

“ As long as a painter is a painter merely, he should not be allowed to talk of anything but mediums and megilp, and on those subjects should be compelled to hold his tongue; it is only when he becomes an artist that the secret laws of artistic creation are revealed to him. ”

“ It would be ridiculous for a painter of domestic scenes, of portraits, landscapes, animals, or still life, to say that he despised those qualities which has made the subordinate schools so famous. The art of colouring, and the skilful management of light and shadow, are essential requisites in his confined labours. If we descend still lower, what is the painter of fruit and flowers without the utmost art in colouring, and what the painters call handling; that is, a lightness of pencil that implies great practice, and gives the appearance of being done with ease? ”

“ But at length, as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret; for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his visage from the canvas rarely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sate beside him. And when many weeks had passed, and but little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye, the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame within the socket of the lamp. ”

“ The law under which his striving proceeds is the fundamental one of balance, and the critical artist obeys it whether he be the maker of vignettes for a newspaper, or the painter who declares for color only, or the man who tries hard to produce naivete by discarding composition. The test to which the sensitive eye [pg 26] subjects every picture from whatsoever creed or camp it comes is balance or equipoise, judgment being rendered without thought of the law. ”

“ The painter, who is, like most of the figures in these pigmy caricatures, very scantily clothed, is occupied with the portrait of another, who, by the rather exaggerated fulness of the gathering of his toga, is evidently intended for a dashing and fashionable patrician, though he is seated as bare-legged and bare-breeched as the artist himself. ”

“ Indeed, where portraiture is practised on the principles of grand art, as in this country, there must be excellence in all the departments of the profession; and the opinion so prevalent, that portrait is an inferior branch, has seriously prejudiced both divisions of the art. It has withdrawn the historical painter, as, by way of exclusive eminence, he was solicitous to be named, from the careful study of nature in her individual modes and forms—the only true source of ideal [Pg 198] perfection ”

“ In sculpture, a mould taken from the living features is that which gives the most faithful representation of the model; but a well-moulded bust is far from being equal to a good statue. Photography is in many respects more accurate than painting; but no one would rank a photograph, however exquisitely executed, with an original picture. And finally, if exact imitation were the supreme object of art, the best tragedy, the best comedy, and the best drama would be a stenographic report of the proceedings in a court of justice, in a family gathering, in a popular meeting, in the Rump Congress. ”

“ It is sufficiently accurate, however, for this case, to say that the definition embraces such works of art as are the result of the artist's own creation, or are copies of them, made under his direction and supervision, or copies of works of other artists, made under the like direction and supervision, as distinguished from the productions of the manufacturer or mechanic. The definition does not limit the professional productions to those of the sculptor's creation. ”