Chapter X: John S. Sargent 243 (6)

It was during 1902 that Chase conceived the remarkable idea of not only going to Europe himself for the summer months but taking with him his entire class of students. The first contingent went with him to Holland, and at Haarlem one night at dinner he gave me an account of the venture and its success. His pupils had not only profited by foreign scene and museum but he had taken them to see certain well-known painters in their studios and shown them the modern methods of painting. The next year he took the class to England, located it on Hampstead Heath, and introduced it at the studios of Sargent, Abbey, Lavery, Alma-Tadema, Shannon. The year of 1905 the class was in Madrid and after that for a number of years in Florence. Chase bought a villa in Florence, but apparently it was little more than a storehouse for objects of art which he was still collecting. He spent much time at Venice, and both there and at Florence would take his pupils to the great galleries and point out to them what was excellent in the old masters. It was a new method of art teaching and satisfactory results came from it.

Chase’s winters had been spent in New York and he kept moving in both his habitations and his occupations. He left the Fifth Avenue studio for a large rambling place on Fourth Avenue, where rooms opened into rooms, and where he continued painting people and fish. He again took up teaching at the Art Students League, sent pictures to the International Exhibition at Berlin, held an exhibition of his own at Cincinnati, went to California where he had a summer school at Carmel-by-the-Sea, served as a member of the Panama-Pacific Exposition jury. His energy and his interest were unflagging. He painted and taught and talked, he came and went and came again, as no other painter in American art-history. His industry alone would command respect. Even when he fell into his final illness and was taken to Atlantic City for change of air he had canvases and brushes packed and sent with him. He might be able to paint down there. At the last, when too weak to read, it pleased him to go over, with his wife, all the beautiful pictures they had seen together and compare their likings. His enthusiasm was always something to be remembered; and when in October, 1916, he died, there was a pronounced feeling in art circles that not only a torch-bearer, but a devoted lover of art had gone on.

There was nothing complicated or hidden or mysterious about either Chase or his art. He frankly stated his aim, faith, and practice more than once and adhered to his beliefs for more than forty years. He cared nothing about theories or philosophies or ideals and was not led off by realism, impressionism, or cubism. He talked much on art, not only to his classes but to miscellaneous audiences; but he indulged in no metaphysical flights and spoke a language that all could understand. As a practical painter his primary concern was with the ability to paint. The picture should be technically and mechanically a good piece of workmanship. The grammar of art first, and what you may have to say with it afterward. At times he intimated that things, by no means technical, could be said with the paint-brush, as, for example, this utterance: “The value of a work of art depends simply and solely on the height of inspiration, on the greatness of soul, of the man who produced it.” But, generally speaking, Chase cared not too much for “soul” in art and produced little of it in his own pictures. His creed of painting was better stated in another sentence. “The essential phases of a great picture are three in number, namely: truth, interesting treatment, and quality.” By truth he meant that the picture should give the impression of a thing well seen. By interesting treatment he meant verve, spirit, enthusiasm, the interest of the artist--an interest which should express itself in his manner of treatment. Regarding this he continued:

“To my mind, one of the simplest explanations of this matter of technique is to say that it is the eloquence of art. When a speaker has the gift of fine oratory we hang upon his words and gestures, we are spellbound by his intensity and his style, no matter on what subject he chooses to address us. I fear some people confuse technique with the use of a slashing brush and big rough strokes of paint. Let me refer them to the works of the Primitives or to Holbein, whose calm surfaces show us one of the world’s greatest masters of the technical side of art.”[13]

[13] “Notes from Talks by William M. Chase” in _The American Magazine of Art_, September, 1917.

It will be noted that Chase in his pertinent likeness of painting to oratory eliminates the content or thing said and puts the art and the oratory all in the manner of saying. And therein he is perhaps right so far as the matter can be separated from the manner. He puts the subject aside as one might say there is no poetry in Darwin, nothing æsthetic or artistic, though he says much of great value, whereas there is poetry in Swinburne though it is often difficult to find out whether he is saying anything at all or merely putting out a pretty run or rhythm of language. It was a pretty run of the brush that Chase fancied above everything else.

“Subject is not important. Anything can be made attractive. Not long ago I painted a pipe, a loaf, and a bowl of milk.... I would not be unwilling to rest my reputation on it.... Let your brush sweep freely. Better to lose it than to give way to timidity which soon becomes a habit.... Better be dashingly bad and interesting.”[14]

[14] _Ibid._

It was thus he talked to his pupils trying to convince them that art lay in an enthusiastic individual manner. He believed that--believed that the art of painting lay in clever manipulation, in gusto, in manual dexterity. But that did not mean a slashing about at haphazard with a heavily loaded brush.

“Too many are hurrying on to give what is called ‘finish’ before they have grounded their work in the truth which must inform and uphold the entire structure.... Digest the subject fully before beginning. See it fully done and well done--perhaps as some special painter whose work you admire would do it. To begin to paint without deciding fully what your sketch is to be, would be like a lecturer beginning to talk before knowing what he was going to say.”[15]

[15] _Ibid._

Now that is excellent doctrine and Chase himself followed it in his own practice. In 1890 I sat to him for a portrait and I recall his saying then before he put brush to the canvas: “I try to see you on the canvas all finished and then I start in to paint you as I see you in my mind.” Later on in the painting he was fussed by the collar being askew; he damned it, said it was not rightly seen or drawn, scraped it out and did it over again. He was concerned about getting a certain amount of realistic truth as well as easy brush-work, and talked much about the right seeing of the model. But there was a contradiction in temperament just here that came in to invalidate his aim only too often.

Enthusiasm is usually impatient of delay or restraint; it is always eager for action. Yet one cannot fully understand even so obvious an object as the model on the stand without reflection. It must be seen and thought over and contemplated before one takes up the brush. Nothing very great comes from dashing down on canvas something seen for an instant only. But Chase, in spite of his talk, was not one who reflected long or had the contemplative mind. He seldom fell into a revery or lost himself in a labyrinth of thought. He had virtuosity and was an _improvisateur_. The lilt and fling of his work were brilliant in the extreme; and it is perhaps foolish to criticise it because lacking in thought or reflection, and yet that is the comment oftenest heard regarding it. His pictures are declared to have neither depth of feeling nor depth of thought, and the works that are accounted his best are the exceptions that prove the rule.

It has been noted also that Chase’s paintings were never very elaborate in composition. He did nothing of a historical or academic nature--nothing even in figure-painting beyond two or three figures. Putting figures together with line and light, in plane and pattern, perhaps called for too much reflection. It was easier to place a model in a kimono against a screen or to arrange a fish in a plate or on a table, or to put together a pipe, a loaf, and a bowl. He was in a hurry to get at the canvas, and wanted none of the enthusiasm to evaporate. Just so with his color scheme. He would not think over it until he could feel it swell like a symphony, but instead put in unconsidered colors that were perhaps agreeable enough in themselves, and then added a dash of sharp red to catch the eye and make the picture “sing.” But it was usually a common enough song that it sang. Distinction of color is not obtained by merely arranging studio properties on canvas. Some instinct and a good deal of feeling go to the making of the finest color projects. So, again, we find that perhaps the common objection to Chase’s color that it has no quality is more or less well-founded.

He knew how to draw, for he had a severe enough schooling at Munich, but in later life he oftentimes ran over drawing, hid it under that easy brush-stroke which he liked so much and which he usually handled so effectively. Sometimes it went astray. It was not the premeditated sweep of Rubens or the infallible touch of Velasquez. It was more like Goya or Stevens or Vollon--painters whose brushes were not always impeccable. However, the brush of Chase was sure enough, and with its spirit and swift movement it certainly gave that oratorical effect to which he compared painting. It is vivacious and with its facility creates the feeling of knowledge and mastery. That was something achieved at least. A surface by Chase usually shows that a skilled workman has left his mark upon it.

His idea about quality in art was that it came: “As a result of perfect balance of all the parts and may be manifested in a color or tone or composition. In the greatest pictures it is found in all three, and then you may be sure you are before the most consummate of human works.”[16]

[16] _Ibid._

The definition is not a good one, and he apologized for his inability to define quality by saying that it is like trying to “tell the difference between music and mere sound.” But quality is not precisely either melody or harmony, though it _is_ the difference between music and mere sound. It is the difference also between silk and gingham, between an air blue and a baby-blue, between a luminous shadow and gray paint, between a forceful, telling line and a halting, rambling one. Quality is the badge of distinction--that something which puts a _cachet_ of authority upon a work of art and places it among the masterpieces of all time. Did Chase have it? Yes, occasionally. Such works as the “Woman with a White Shawl” possess it. From which it may be inferred that quality is more or less dependent upon thinking, reflection, mood--things which were not always apparent in Chase’s art.

Yet he did much thinking along certain paths and had something very important to say to his age and generation about sound technique, good workmanship. In a literary or illustrative sense he recorded no more romance, history, passion, power, or pathos than Whistler. He told no story in paint, indulged in no dramatic climaxes, was guiltless of emotion, and perhaps incapable of poetry. He was a workman, a consummate craftsman in a goldsmith sense, and he did his thinking about his work, put his storm and stress and soul into his palette and brush. As a workman he was distinguished by a manner of his own which is sometimes referred to as his style--his individual style. His method, rather than his style, he passed on to his pupils, and his influence upon them was perhaps greater than upon the community at large. He taught more young people how to handle a brush than any painter of any time, not excepting Rubens. Several thousand pupils came under his influence, were stimulated by his enthusiasm, and encouraged by his words. He was an excellent teacher, and American art is perhaps more beholden to him for what he taught than for the things he painted.

For the pupils now carry on the teaching, and perhaps from them may come a greater and a loftier art than Chase himself was able to produce. The force of good teaching is cumulative and eventually it develops into that body of belief and practice which I have called tradition. Chase, like Whistler, was not an inheritor of any American tradition, but he established one of his own and passed it on to his followers. He based his pupils in good technical workmanship and taught the fundamental value of craftsmanship. It was a teaching badly needed in his America; he gave it importance and place in the schools and became, perhaps without his knowing it, a master leader in the craft.

Chase’s painting is the concrete embodiment of his teaching--the illustration of it. It has the obvious limitations of his method and belief. To pass it by because it has not the romance of a Ryder or the poetry of a Martin or the significance of a La Farge is to miss its meaning entirely. He is just as frankly dealing with the surface as Whistler, with the mere difference that Whistler asks us to regard him decoratively and Chase desires to be looked at technically, as one might consider a Stevens, a Vollon, a Fortuny, or a Boldini. We surely are not so narrow in outlook as to deny admiration and high rank to such masters of the brush as these. They are artists in the narrow sense that they deal with art alone and consider painting only from the æsthetic point of view, but who shall say they are not precisely and exactly right? Each turn of the screw, each new generation in art, pins us down more narrowly and positively to the material. Perhaps Whistler and Chase were wrong only in being ahead of their time.

At any rate, the belief in material and method as art _per se_, however it may jar preconceived notions, will have to be reckoned with. And here in America its most considerable advocate will have to be taken seriously. By certain standards we may judge his art as merely clever, but he conceived it and wrought it in all seriousness. Does a sword-hilt by Sansovino, or a salt dish by Cellini, or a screen by Utamaro lack in either seriousness or art? Why not then a canvas, in the same spirit of the skilled workman, by Whistler or Chase? Why not?

IX

JOHN W. ALEXANDER

Chase and Alexander were of the same faith in art though they varied in ritual. They both believed in the finality of good workmanship decoratively displayed. They had differing views of what constituted design and color, their atmosphere and light were not the same, and each had his peculiar handling; but with all this latitude for variation in method there was no essential difference in æsthetic aim or purpose. The portrait of a lady was to both of them not primarily a revelation of the lady but a presentation of a decorative pattern in which the sitter and her garmenting held large place because conforming happily to an “arrangement.” This, of course, was the Whistlerian point of view with which Chase and Alexander were in sympathy. All three of them frequently rose above their creed and told tales of the lady’s charm, or womanly instincts, or perhaps gave suggestion that she was a lady and not merely a studio model dressed for the part; but usually they were content with arranging her in a pattern as an entomologist might spread and pin to advantage a golden butterfly on a blue-green ground.

To question their practice is to take sides in a very old quarrel in art. For they were the David and Ingres of the new dispensation. Their works were based in method, though the method was brush-work rather than drawing, and they were pronounced in arrangement though the arrangement was a pattern of light and color instead of line and group composition. Set over against them are the Delacroixs and Millets of to-day who are no longer romantic and dramatic, but lay stress on sentiment, feeling, significance, character, strength rather than mere pattern. It is not necessary to name them, for every one will recognize the species and call to mind the types. There are always two sides to a quarrel, and there are several sides to art. It may be a symphony of color as Whistler insisted, an arrangement of line or a matter of facile workmanship as Alexander and Chase contended. No one will deny that. In fact there is a modern disposition to locate the art of a picture strictly within the limits of craftsmanship. But a picture may express something more than the skill of the painter. Many of the craft have shown that it is a means of expressing moods, passions, feelings, sentiments, emotions; they insist that line and color, and all the what-not of technique, are merely the means to an end and not the end itself. Both arguments have merit and are abundantly exemplified in practice. And why not something worth while, something acceptable, in both?

There was good reason why Chase and Alexander should be accepted, because they came at a time when method in America was in sad need of reconstruction. Modern craftsmanship was practically unknown. They brought it into vogue, established it as the grammar of art, gave it the prominence it deserved. It was then, as now, the _sine qua non_ of art. One must know how before he can say very much of moment. There have been painters and poets with very limited skill who have said things the world is glad to remember, but they are the exceptions rather than the rule. The Shakespeares, Goethes, Titians, and Rembrandts were all highly trained craftsmen. They had great things to say, surely; but should we have heard them had they belonged to the unskilled? How many in all the arts have had

“The vision and the faculty divine
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse!”

We need not, then, think lightly of the craftsman in American art. He has proved a much-needed person in the school. And his work has also turned out to be a very agreeable factor in the home. Art of a decided quality does lie in the eye and the hand. It can be greatly enhanced in significance by the addition of a mind and a soul, but these latter must be approached through the former to attain their full expression. For, to repeat, technique or craftsmanship is at the bottom of all artistic expression.

Alexander learned to paint in practically the same roundabout way as Chase. He was born in Alleghany City in 1856, and as a child was reared by his grandparents, his father and mother having died early. At twelve he was a telegraph messenger, and shortly afterward, with the death of his grandparents, he came under the guardianship of Colonel Edward J. Allen. He was persuaded to give up the telegraph work and go to school, but at eighteen he broke away and went to New York. He had given signs as a boy of artistic tendencies, his drawings had attracted some attention, and he went to New York to make illustrations for the Harpers. There was some disappointment at first. The Harpers had not heard of him and did not want his artistic services, not even as an apprentice. But they needed an office boy. He accepted the place, and through it got into the art department, where he finally came to work upon blocks and plates. Charles Parsons was then in charge of the department, and E. A. Abbey, Stanley Reinhart, and A. B. Frost were there. Alexander learned much from their counsel and example. From 1875 to 1877 there appeared in _Harper’s Weekly_ an occasional political cartoon signed “Alexander,” and in 1877 during the great strike in Pittsburgh there were a number of large sketches and illustrations signed “J. W. Alexander.” Later on he did for the Harper publications and also for the _Century Magazine_ various illustrations signed “J. W. A.”; but this was after he had been to Munich and had had some exact training.

He remained with the Harpers three years, and then with Albert G. Reinhart he went to Europe. The pair had intended to study art in Paris at the _Ecole des Beaux Arts_, but on arrival there they found the school closed for the summer. With no French to their name, Paris was a little dreary, and they drifted on to Munich--because Reinhart understood a little German, it is said. The Munich Academy was open, and Alexander entered the classes of Professor Benzcur and remained there for some three months. The teaching proved too academic and the living in Munich too high for him, and he went to Polling, a small town in Bavaria, where there was an American art colony under the shepherding of Frank Duveneck. Shirlaw, Currier, Joseph De Camp, Ross Turner were of the group. Alexander fell into good company and began at once to profit by the association. While at Polling he sent sketches to the student’s exhibition at Munich and won for them a bronze medals--his first honor. Two years were passed in Bavaria and then he joined Duveneck’s class to study art in Italy. There were twenty-three in the class, and Alexander with Duveneck went ahead to Florence to engage studios for them.

Two winters were spent at Florence--the summer months being more agreeably put in at Venice. It was at Venice in the summer of 1880 that Alexander met Whistler and received counsel and direction from him. The advice was very potent in helping him out of the dark Munich rut and suggesting that the decorative was perhaps more important than the merely realistic or representative. Indeed the Whistler influence was the most compelling the young student had yet encountered. It made a decided impression upon him and changed perhaps the whole trend of his art. For while Alexander never imitated Whistler’s schemes or patterns, he accepted the decorative point of view, giving it out in his own way with many changes and modifications brought about by later observation in Paris. He was always impressionable and quick to adopt new ideas, and yet it is almost impossible in his work to trace home any feature to a given source. In that respect he was perhaps more original than Chase or even Whistler himself.

While in Florence he supported himself by sending drawings to the Harper publications and teaching a class of students; but he soon realized that he was holding back his own progress by such work, and in 1881 he decided to return to America. Arrived at Pittsburgh, he made a trip down the Ohio and the Mississippi with Fred Muller to illustrate an article on “King Coal’s Highway.” The article appeared in _Harper’s Monthly_ for January, 1882. The illustrations were realistic enough, but not remarkable in any way. They created no furor. Alexander came on shortly thereafter to New York, took a studio in the German Bank Building, at Fourth Avenue and Fourteenth Street, and soon was doing a portrait of a little daughter of Henry Harper. He moved to the Chelsea Studios in Twenty-third Street, continued with portraiture, and became interested in the art movements of the time. People looked upon him as a young man of ability. He had not Chase’s vogue but he, nevertheless, had his group of admirers.

In 1881 he was in Spain and Morocco, and in 1886 he went to England for the _Century Magazine_, having been commissioned to do certain portraits of literary men--George Bancroft, Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson. He did Stevenson at Bournemouth, stopping with him while sketching him. He also did Austin Dobson, and went to Ireland to draw some illustrations for articles by Charles de Kay. The portraits were apparently sketches in charcoal and gave only a summary of the heads. They were well done and rightly emphasized for reproduction. The illustrations for the Ireland articles were decidedly good in the landscapes--something for which Alexander had a talent, but which he never cared to follow up until late in life and then apparently for his own pleasure. This work and, in fact, that of the next half-dozen years did not bring Alexander into any great prominence in America. He had not found himself--he had not “arrived” in a large sense.

Up to 1890 his work had hardly so much as suggested his later bent or method. The “Head of a Boy” and “Sketch of a Boy,” shown in a recent memorial exhibition at the Century Club, are both of them early efforts done at Polling. They are in the dark Munich style of Duveneck and not unlike things that Shirlaw and Chase were doing a few years earlier. “Old Cole” in the same exhibition, done in 1881, again indicates Munich teaching. The lights are surrounded by darks and the darks are darkened by bitumen. There is no attempt at fine color or decorative pattern, but rather a desire for the realistic largeness of the model with a resultant brusque modelling and some dragging of a heavily loaded brush. The portrait of “Thurlow Weed” gives a big strong head relieved by being in high light and again surrounded by darks. One might think from a casual glance that it had been inspired by Lenbach. The portrait of “Jefferson as Bob Acres,” while it still shows Munich methods, is something of a departure. It is a costume and footlight portrait with the lights very high, the shadows pronounced, the color very gay. It was well set, well drawn, easily painted upon ordinary canvas, and in the usual oil medium. The portrait had spirit and life about it and yet gave small indication of what Alexander’s style would ultimately become. Just so with the rather fine portrait of “Walt Whitman,” now in the Metropolitan Museum. The hark back to Lenbach in the insistent relief of the head and hands as spots of white surrounded by dark is quite apparent. Perhaps here there is a pose of the figure and a sweep of the beard that suggest Alexander’s later swing and swirl of lines, but it is not very marked.

This work, done for the most part before he was thirty, was talked about and praised in New York art circles, but it was really Paris that gave Alexander rank. He had been married in 1887 to Miss Elizabeth Alexander, and in 1890 they went abroad for a few months that he might recuperate from an attack of the grippe. They remained away eleven years. The time was spent chiefly in Paris, and it was to the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts that he sent, in 1893, three portraits that made a decided hit. They were entitled “Portrait Gris,” “Portrait Noir,” and “Portrait Jaune.” The titles suggest color schemes, qualities of tone, garments arranged gracefully to fill space and make a decorative pattern--in short, the things that thereafter gave individuality to Alexander’s art. Paris immediately took notice of them; the Société elected him an associate member, and the next year, when he sent a panel of five portraits, he was elected a full member. His reputation and his commissions from that time increased rapidly. He was a success.

Alexander has been called “the most Parisian of the Americans,” and yet just why one hardly knows. His refined taste, his sensitiveness, his animation are less French than American, and it must be his method that suggests Paris. But whom in Paris? What painter can you point to as the original or even the inspiration of his style? Carrière, Besnard, La Touche--you think of them only to dismiss them from mind. Whistler, Albert Moore, Burne-Jones, the Japanese, afford little clew. Perhaps the obvious explanation is that Alexander merely followed his own inclination and developed a method and a style quite his own. Others have done so before him and why not he? Very likely some one suggested a coarse absorbent canvas with thin petroleum or turpentine as a medium, or he may have seen the results obtained by such materials in pictures at the Salon or elsewhere. Paris has always been replete with new mediums and methods and has had its generations of painters who could do no more with the new than with the old. But Alexander’s painting was something more than an absorbent canvas. He had an original point of view and the new materials merely helped him to reveal it.

Perhaps his originality grew out of many observations and developed from many sources. Duveneck in the realistic and Whistler with the decorative each had their day and sway with him. Something of the Japanese becomes apparent in a flattening of the canvas, in elimination of non-essential features, in gaining a sketchy effect by filling in large spaces with flat tones and throwing emphasis upon salient points of high light and color. Finally comes an unusual employment of dress in making a pattern of swirling lines which not only contrast with the angles of the canvas but lend movement and life to the figure. The use of drapery for line effect is, of course, apparent all through art. Alexander may have taken suggestions regarding this from Greek marbles or Italian pictures or Pre-Raphaelite glass. But so vague and shadowy are all these sources of influence that one cannot trace them home. Such pictures as “The Green Gown,” “A Rose,” “The Gossip,” “The Ring,” have no counterpart in any painting, ancient or modern. One comes back again to a former conclusion that they are Alexander’s own creations--his distinct contribution to art.

How far does the contribution carry? Well, little farther than the decorative face of the canvas. The handsome, well-gowned, and well-bred young woman who holds the rose or ring or bowl is only part of a color pattern on the canvas. She does not symbolize or signify much of anything beyond that. You could not guess if she has a brain or a heart or a soul. She is not a document or a problem or even a character. Alexander did not believe that painting was a means of epitomizing abstract ideas but merely a way of revealing graceful color patterns that please the eye and hang harmoniously upon the wall. There is nothing intensive or dramatic or even narrative about his work. It is not sentimental or emotional or passion-strung. A late canvas like that entitled “Husband, Wife, and Child” may suggest sentiment, but only as a superfluity. The painter meant to stop with the completed pattern.

Almost always the pattern is agreeable and sufficient in itself as art. The space is happily filled with one figure, sometimes two, but seldom more. The linear design meets the upright of the frame with flowing lines in which repetition plays more of a part than contrast. “The Blue Bowl” is a good illustration. The figure is placed diagonally upon the canvas, the bowl lines are repeated in the head and shoulders, the dress is spread in fan-like lines toward the far corner of the canvas. The whole design is unusual and extraordinary but very graceful. So, too, with “The Ring,” in the Metropolitan Museum, where a young woman seated on a lounge with a large straw hat in her lap is holding up a ring for admiration. The round hat somehow suggests a repetition of the round head, and the dress lines repeat its curves. Great care is taken with the linear arrangements of all these single figures. The composition is carefully thought out, wrought out, brought out.

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art.]

Just as important as the design is the color scheme. It is, in fact, so prominent that the title of the picture is often derived from it. “The Green Gown” or “The Blue Bowl” are hints that green or blue is the key in which the picture is pitched. The continuance or repetition or perhaps slight variance of the green or blue runs through the whole picture and produces what is called a tone or harmony or symphony in green or blue. The aim with Alexander is precisely as with Whistler. Neither of them harps on the one note to the exclusion of every other, but the one note nevertheless prevails throughout. The picture by Alexander called “The Rose” shows a young girl in dull green which would be monotonous if insisted upon everywhere. It is relieved by the pink of the flesh, the dark hair, the white linen, but above all by the rose which the girl holds in her hand. The rose hue is in the same tone of light as the green and emphasizes the latter because red is the complementary color of green.

The appearance of complementary or slightly varying colors in the central high lights argues the prevalence of a large half-tone in the background and intermediate spaces. This half-tone when prepared in a thin medium like petroleum and used upon a soft or absorbent canvas sinks into the canvas, becomes an atmospheric depth, becomes vague, indefinite, mysterious. To avoid too much monotony of half-tone Alexander very often introduced a burst of light upon the figure. This sounds like the old Rembrandt-Lenbach formula which he followed in his early student days at Munich, but his later practice diffused the illumination, made it less hard on the edges, and more atmospheric. Even in certain pictures where a ray of sunshine is shot into a dark room through an unlatched door the ray is not hard and the half-tone gives it an atmospheric setting quite extraordinary.

Under these peculiar conditions of canvas, of tone, of illumination, the drawing is often flattened, even abbreviated. The heads and costumes are brushed in broadly, the hands are sometimes passed over with a mere suggestion of form or value, the accessories are still more vague in line, in bulk, in texture. Nothing but things of vital importance are given. By suppression of the parts the painter gets concentration on certain salient features of surface, or light or color. With thin painting in the ground and shadows and fat painting in the high lights the picture takes on the look of a large and easily done sketch. A feeling of freedom, of spontaneity, is apparent, and with it life, spirit, gusto in the recital.

There was more or less variation of this sketch-appearance in all Alexander’s late canvases. Sometimes he drew with sharper edges and more protrusive modelling and produced a more realistic effect; but far oftener he gave merely a suggestion of form or created an atmospheric nimbus with his tone that surrounded and enveloped the figure. It has been frequently noted in these pages that almost every painter oscillates between too much drawing and not enough. When Alexander dismissed his form rather summarily for a tone or a texture, his critics declared him vague, shadowy, merely decorative; when he insisted upon the drawing and perhaps minimized his tone, he was declared prosaic. He did not have to be told that he was between the devil and the deep sea. Every painter knows it, or comes to know it, before he has struggled through many canvases.

A more frequent comment on Alexander was that he was a painter of attitudes and draperies--nature plus a pose. To avoid the conventional he chose the accidental and the momentary rather than the characteristic or permanent. He was seeking the decorative, and his girl in green or gray or yellow was just a little more elegantly disposed than in nature. It was frankly an “arrangement”--a placing of the figure and a disposition of the accessories to the best advantage. The robes were swung in gracefully with no sharp angle lines or crabbed pothooks to break the flow. The photographer of to-day seeks to produce the same graceful exaggeration but with less success. And the realist who depicts the charwoman bending over the ash-barrel usually exaggerates more positively the other way. If the beauty of the ugly in an awkward pose may be accounted art, why not the beauty of the charming in a graceful pose? Alexander got what he could out of his handsome model, making her a little more graceful than reality, to be sure, but did not Van Dyck, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence, do the same thing with marked success?

His portrait sitters differed from his abstract types holding a ring or a blue bowl or a rose chiefly in the matter of a facial likeness. The “arrangement” was carried out with the one as with the other, though it was usually not so conspicuous in the portrait as in the type. Perhaps because the costume and coloring of women were more adaptable to the “arrangement” than the costume and coloring of men, the painter achieved the reputation of being more successful with the former as sitters than with the latter. Certainly in his most attractive portraits of women he has not failed to use graceful composition, and has gotten much pictorial effect out of his color, tone, and light. The “Mrs. Hastings,” for instance, is both portrait and picture. It is expectant in look and lively in spirit. The pose in profile, which is repeated vaguely in the Winged Victory back of the figure, is complemented by a color and a tone quite in keeping. It is one of the painter’s best efforts. The “Mrs. Duryea” is perhaps a little more conscious in its formality. The space is not so well filled and the dress spreads too obviously. With the “Mrs. Ledyard Blair” the dress again spreads for decorative effect and becomes pronounced in importance. A similar result is apparent in the portrait known as the “Woman in Gray” now in the Luxembourg. All of these last-mentioned portraits have excellences quite aside from their decorative planning, and the “Woman in Gray” had much to do in creating Alexander’s vogue in Paris; but one turns from them to the refined simplicity of the “Miss Dorothy Roosevelt” with some relief. Sometimes nature is not the better for being “arranged.”

When it was necessary to insist upon characterization Alexander could do it, and do it well. The “Mrs. Wheaton,” an old lady with gray hair and lace cap, done in 1904, is excellent in its gentle (not brutal) realization of the model. It is quite in the class with the Whistler and Chase mother portraits, and in refinement is perhaps superior to either of the others. The children canvases of “Eleanor Alexander” with the doll in the chair or “Geraldine Russell” standing at full length are equally good.

It is true enough that the grace and charm belonging to women and children seemed to appeal to Alexander more than the sturdier qualities of men. He painted many men but they were not always as forceful as the “Fritz Thaulow.” That figure has bulk and body to it but again no brutality. It is more forceful than the “Walt Whitman,” which is just a little too much ironed out and smoothed down for the vociferous original. The beard and hair and _soi-disant_ look are those of a poet rather than Whitman--a distinction with a difference to some people. The “Dr. Patton” in academic robes as president of Princeton is probably as satisfactory as any of Alexander’s portraits of men. It is a simple, well-drawn, convincing presentation, not surprising in any way nor again falling short in any way.

All of this work is simple, large in design, not confused with detail or small objects, and always with ample breathing room. Alexander attempted no elaborate grouping or historical composition except in his designs for mural decoration. The earlier pictures such as “Pandora” and “The Pot of Basil” are merely single figures. “The Piano” is a single figure with a piano, the “Memories” is two figures, as is also the “Music Panel.” They are all spacious and do not crowd the canvas or the frame. Occasionally he did landscapes--some of them up in the hills about Cornish, New Hampshire--in which there is the same simplicity of design and feeling of space in hillside, valley, and sky. His landscapes have a decorative swing of line similar in kind to his figure pictures, and there is something of the same tonal effect, though less pronounced. In other words, the painter saw or read the decorative into landscape as into figures, which may be considered a mistake if one is looking for a realistic presentation, but is just as certainly a success if one is looking for something to hang upon the wall that shall not clash with every other object in the room.

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art.]

Therein lies a marked feature of Alexander’s work. It is art that can be lived with. It takes its place in the household and accommodates itself to almost any color scheme because of its neutral tone and lack of glittering notes. How many modern easel pictures are keyed up to the shrieking point, and are planned to outshriek their neighbors in an exhibition! They are Salon pictures--“machines” that make a clatter and having served their purpose go back to the studio and are faced against the wainscoting. But Alexander’s pictures could be taken home without danger of a family quarrel. They are delicate enough in pattern to go in the drawing-room and refined enough in manner to be seen and not heard.

Perhaps this very quality of refinement, so acceptable in his easel pictures, was something of a defect in his mural decorations. The greatly enlarged wall space of a public building called for more intensity of color, more sharp contrast of angle lines, more loftiness and elaborateness of composition than the painter dreamt of in his art philosophy. His attempts at mural painting were somewhat sporadic. It was not exactly his _métier_, and though he took it up with energy when asked to do so, he succeeded in producing little more than an enlargement of his easel pictures. The same tone, light, and color of his portraits and single figures went into the groupings in the Congressional Library, the Harrisburg Capitol, and the Carnegie Institute at Pittsburgh. The Library decorations gave the “Evolution of the Book” in six lunettes that illustrated the stages of book-making rather than symbolized or epitomized them. At Harrisburg the theme was the “Evolution of the State,” another set of fourteen lunettes. The decoration at Pittsburgh was the most ambitious performance of the three and sought to tell the story of Pittsburgh--the story of steel and labor. It is called the “Apotheosis of Pittsburgh,” with the city personified by a knight in armor with a flaming sword in his hand instead of the large female figure of conventional decoration. The panels carry over three stories of the entrance-hall of the Carnegie Institute and some five hundred figures are used. The first floor shows the half-naked furnacemen at work amid smoke, steam, and fire glare. The smoke and steam rise up and envelop, make an atmospheric setting for, the allegorical figures of the second floor that from all sides are bringing tributes to the mailed figure of Pittsburgh. The allegorical figures are winged, robed in long trailing garments, and drift lightly through the air or upon clouds. The third floor contains lunettes typifying the arts and sciences.

The whole decoration is well thought out, and is put together, within its framings of yellowish marble, with a distinctly decorative effect. The tone of it is quiet, subdued, restful--perhaps too much so. The figures are graceful, even the men--again, perhaps too much so. One is not sorry that Labor is shown with cheerful face and normal body rather than sad-browed, nerve-racked, and body-wrecked, after the Zola-Meunier formula. That exaggeration has become just as conventional and wearisome as the prettiness of Bouguereau, or the pettiness of Meissonier. But Alexander’s workers are perhaps too elegant for reality as his floating figures are too graceful for allegory. There is a feeling that there is not enough mental grip about them. It is paradoxical to say that the decoration is too decorative, but that states the case quite rightly. The pattern and the color that set off an easel picture appropriately fail to carry when employed on so vast a scale of wall decoration--fail to carry from sheer attenuation of motive and design. The Pittsburgh decoration has not enough strength behind it to spread over five thousand feet of painted surface. Strength was never a quality of Alexander’s art. He had skill, grace, refinement, charm, style, but he never attempted to win by force or power.

After his return from Paris in 1901 he took up his permanent residence in New York and immediately entered into the art life of the city and the country. He had received gold medals at Paris and St. Louis and the Legion of Honor from France, had placed his pictures in public galleries all the way from St. Petersburg and Odessa to Chicago, and had become a member of some twenty art societies. In addition to the McDowell Club and the School Art League he was the head of the Federation of Fine Arts, the Society of Mural Painters, and from 1909 the president of the National Academy of Design. His interest in art movements was great and the energy he gave to them was at the expense not only of his painting but his health. As president of the Academy of Design his devotion was unflagging even though it met with almost everything but encouragement and success. During his presidency he took up anew the problem of a building site which had been dragging along for years. There had been failure in Fifty-seventh Street in 1896, and over the Lenox Library plot in 1904, but Alexander failed four further times with the sites of the Arsenal, the Central Park, Bryant Park, and the Railroad Yard.

This with many other burdens he was carrying helped to wear him out. He had never been robust. On the contrary, he was of delicate, refined physique and possessed of a mental energy that far outran his bodily strength. Moreover, he never knew how to spare himself. In his last years with many overhead burdens to carry he could still take on new enterprises. At Onteora, where he had a summer home, he became much interested in costuming and decorative settings for the theatre, and later, with Mrs. Alexander, made many designs for Miss Maude Adams’s productions of “Jeanne d’Arc,” “Peter Pan,” “Chantecler,” and “The Little Minister.” In New York he presided over the National Institute of Arts and Letters, spoke at every gathering of art people, and was at the beck and call of society whenever anything of an artistic nature was desired. At the last--that is, in 1915--death came to him quite suddenly.

Both socially and artistically Alexander had become a man of distinction. Every one liked his refined, gentlemanly personality, admired his art, and listened to his counsel. For these reasons and because of his commanding position he came to have a strong influence in all art matters. He had set a pattern that many of the younger painters followed, and, like Chase, had helped to establish the latter-day tradition of craftsmanship here in America. It was not the exact craftsmanship of Chase or Alexander or Sargent that was established, though each of them has had his imitators. The movement for sound technical education in American art was of no one painter’s devising. The three were typical of the movement, but there were others--Weir, Twachtman, Beckwith, Blum, Brush, Thayer, Dewing, Cox, Blashfield--who were of the same faith and who added their quota of strength. All of them working together, with a common energy and enthusiasm, have created a body of belief as to what constitutes style and skill in art. They have established a tradition based in sound craftsmanship than which nothing could be safer or better for the future of American art. It was Alexander’s part to help lay the foundation-stones. War or national madness or economic change may prevent any splendid palace of art arising therefrom, but at least Alexander and his contemporaries builded the firm foundation--builded perhaps better than they knew.

X

JOHN S. SARGENT

The major events in Mr. Sargent’s life as we read them or hear them told to-day seem in no way striking or startling. He has moved along well-trodden paths, in a well-ordered career, responsive always to the teaching of his youth, and reflective of his social and intellectual surroundings. He did not wholly achieve art, for some of it was born to him and some of it, perhaps, was thrust upon him. He came to it early, grew up in its atmosphere, and was under its spell at an impressionable age. Which is to say that he is not a self-made painter in the Inness-Wyant sense, but something of a traditional painter in the La Farge sense. Training started him aright, but his great success is, of course, not wholly due to that. Genius alone can account for the remarkable content of his work.

He was born in Florence in 1856. His parents were Americans residing in Italy at the time of his birth. The father was from Gloucester, Massachusetts, and had studied medicine in Philadelphia, afterward remaining in the latter city to practise his profession. He had met and married a Miss Singer of an old Philadelphia family, and later they had gone to Florence to live. Legally, therefore, the painter is an American, but the legal tie is about all that binds him to us. We like to claim him because he is a celebrity, but in reality he is an American only in a nominal way. He was not reared or educated here, he has not lived here, he has not fought in our quarrels or failed in our failures or succeeded in our successes. The greater part of his life has been passed abroad amid other scenes and other peoples. As a boy he travelled about Europe with his parents, speaking German as his first acquired language, if I report him aright, and gaining the bulk of his schooling in Italy and Germany. At eighteen he went to Paris and entered the _atelier_ of Carolus Duran--at that time perhaps the most famous of the French portrait-painters. It was not until 1876, when Sargent was twenty years old, that he saw the shores of the United States. That was his first visit. He did not stay for any length of time, and what were his impressions of the land and the people we do not know. Several times since then he has been here for short periods, but one or another of the large European capitals has been his residence. Since 1884 his permanent abiding-place has been London, though he lived for a time in Paris, and just now (1918) he is again here in America.

It would seem then that however much pride we may take in Sargent’s achievements we can hardly be proud because he is peculiarly our own. He is not American in the sense of knowing the land and the people and reflecting our life and civilization. Just as little has his birth in Italy made him Italian or his residence in France and England made him French or English. No country can claim him, no people can appropriate him, for in reality he is a citizen of the world at large--the manner of man we sometimes call a cosmopolite. If there is one place above another that he can be traced to and said to emanate from it is Paris; and Paris is no longer merely the first city of France. It, too, has become cosmopolitan--the centre of modern life and the gathering-place of the world’s knowledge, intelligence, and fashion. Sargent reflects its taste and its skill, but not anything else that is peculiarly French, not anything that smacks of the French soil. The accomplishments of Paris are his, but without the sentiment or the feeling that is French.