Chapter XXIX: Part 29

By reference to “men” we do not at all exclude women, for there is no sex in art, and women of our time paint as well as men, folding equal rank in the exhibitions, equal places on the juries of selection, and receiving equal honors and awards. One of the foremost women of the day is a Philadelphian, Miss Cecilia Beaux, whose portraiture ranks among the highest. Miss Mary D. Cassatt is also a Philadelphian, although long resident in Paris, and highly esteemed there. Her name is mentioned in a recent notice of a Salon exhibition among those of distinguished men, which concluded with the words “and other strong men,” meaning thereby no grain of disrespect to the woman, but only honor to the artist, classifying her as among the first painters of the time. Important exhibitions nowadays are likely to contain strong works by many women, such as portraits by Mrs. Sarah Sears of Boston or Mrs. Rosina Emmet Sherwood of New York, child studies by Ellen K. Baker, or animal studies by Mrs. Helen C. Hovenden, widow of the late master of modern genre, Thomas Hovenden, whose untimely death the art-loving public of this country has not ceased to mourn. His faithful studies of American domestic life have touched the people, who are, after all, the final art critics, despite the claims of those who feel themselves especially qualified by taste and training to tell others what they must and must not like. Many times public opinion has been unduly slow in setting the seal of its approval on worthy works, but once established in the heart of the populace, immortality is assured, and that place belongs preëminently to Thomas Hovenden, as proved by the throngs that stood before his picture “Breaking the Home Ties,” at the World’s Fair in Chicago. That cosmopolitan collection showed, among other interesting developments, a strong school of vigorous young Norsemen, hardy vikings of art from Scandinavia, of whom Anders Zorn was the leader, with a variety of figure subjects, studied indoors and out, with an unconventional freedom and dash as inspiring as the breezes of his native fjords. Prince Eugene, the handsome popular second son of the King of Sweden, was no mean contributor to this school. Fritz von Thaulow is a Norwegian by birth, but being well recognized in France he has taken up his abode at Dieppe, although still finding inspiration in his native land. He is an exponent of the theory of tone in painting, as it is technically termed. This refers to the quality of harmony, or perfect balance of light and shade and color. It does not depend upon the key of the picture, whether light and bright or dark and sombre, but consists in keeping the relations of the different masses of color true to each other, the small details subdued to their proper places, yet each having its correct value in the whole.

The Scotch painters, stimulated no doubt by the success of their literary brethren, have established the Glasgow school of art, most original in its methods, and in some cases highly peculiar in its results, but with unquestionable strength in its more serious and less fantastic work. John Lavery is a leader among these men. Germany prides herself on one of the greatest painters of modern times in the person of Adolph Friedrich Menzel, a Prussian, born 1815, contemporary with Meissonier. As the latter was devoted to the Emperor of the French, so was Menzel to his hero, Frederick the Great, and their vivid portrayals of their respective sovereigns will keep the personality of these conquerors fresh as long as art lasts. For many years Menzel has been artist laureate to the court at Berlin, painting Hohenzollern family portraits, battle pieces and scenes of court splendor in the most masterly manner. The Hungarian, Munkacsy, has been widely known by his huge religious works, lately exhibited in this country,—“Christ before Pilate” and the “Crucifixion.” His work shows great power and much originality in conception, although often somewhat morbid, a not unnatural condition, as the unfortunate artist has become hopelessly insane. The opposite extreme of expression is to be found in the gorgeous coloring and superb compositions of Hans Makart of Vienna, notably his “Coronation of Catherine Cornaro at Venice.” A revival of interest in religious subjects has recently appeared, possibly stimulated by the work of Mr. James Tissot, a Parisian, who has given ten years to the production of a series of careful studies of the life of Christ. These little paintings, numbering some five hundred in all, are the result of close research in the Holy Land into the conditions of life and customs which prevailed at the time of Christ, and are a tribute of religious devotion. Whether through this influence or not, Dagnan-Bouveret has been inspired to paint a number of strong scenes of biblical subjects, two conceptions of the Last Supper being very powerful. A young colored man, H. O. Tanner, has achieved success on similar lines, an “Annunciation” recently shown giving evidence of deep and original thought. Curiously enough, the women painters of distinction do not seem to be given to religious subjects. One serious lack in most of the work exhibited in recent years is the absence of any importance in subject. The artists have been so concerned to express what they saw in the simplest manner, that they have carefully avoided seeing or thinking about anything but the simplest things to be expressed. While some powerful work has resulted, it has often been labor worthy of a better cause, for the pictures produced have had little to tell beyond the skill of the painter. A nobly painted cabbage field, or a superbly handled stone wall with the tail of a woman’s skirt disappearing around a corner, may be masterly painting, but it is not great art; and it is to be hoped that the day of meaningless canvases will soon pass, and the coming painters will not be content to discourse grandly about nothing.

Among the leaders of current art in America, the place of honor in portraiture belongs to John S. Sargent, who easily ranks with Boldini and Benjamin Constant in Paris. He is closely followed by Edmund C. Tarbell, John H. Alexander, with his love for long flowing graceful lines of drapery, Robert Vonnoh, and William M. Chase. John McClure Hamilton has made some striking studies of some of the most prominent people of our time, among them Gladstone and Pope Leo XIII. Elihu Vedder, John LaFarge, Will H. Low, Carroll Beckwith, Abbott Thayer, and E. H. Blashfield are figure painters whose subjects are frequently of a decorative or semi-religious character. The latter is noted for his literary as well as artistic ability. George H. Boughton, though called an American, really belongs to England, where he paints interior genre subjects usually of olden times. John Swan, the animal painter, is also English. The names of Moran and Sartain are distinguished in the history of American art, each family having contributed several generations of talented painters. The elders were contemporary with Daniel Huntington, long president of the National Academy of Design, and Eastman Johnson, whose “Old Kentucky Home” was famous. William T. Dannat, Herbert Denman, Frederick Bridgman, and F. L. Weeks are all strong figure painters, the last two being especially given to Oriental subjects. Winslow Homer includes figures with his marine studies, often presenting groups of peasants on a stormy shore, while Alexander Harrison and W. T. Richards usually confine themselves to marines pure and simple. The ragged, dirty little street Arabs of J. G. Brown have been exceedingly popular, and so have the landscapes of H. Bolton Jones. The list of modern landscape painters really deserving of mention is far too long to give in anything like complete mention. A few leaders, such as Charles H. Davis, Homer Martin, the late William T. Picknell, and George Inness must suffice to close our talk on the painters of this century.

II. SCULPTURE.

Human progress seems to advance in waves, sending forerunners to announce the gathering tide; and the ebb and flow of force is felt in all manner of endeavor, but in nothing so instantly or accurately as in the fine arts, the most sensitive and subtle forms of human expression. The plastic arts are as keen to record these changes as the pictorial, and the coming power of the nineteenth century found a few prophets in the dying years of the century passing away. Antonio Canova (1757–1822), born near Venice, left many graceful and delicately finished works. His “Three Graces” and group of “Cupid and Psyche” are well known, also his colossal bust of Napoleon and seated statue of Washington for the State of Carolina. France produced a master in Jean Antoine Houdon (1741–1828), more vigorous than his contemporaries, as seen in his powerful work, the seated statue of Voltaire. His statue of Washington, in the state capitol of Virginia, while preserving a faithful likeness, has a singular air of French elegance. Despite his strength, Houdon was not more accurate in study than the great Dane Thorwaldsen, born at Copenhagen, 1770. His famous “Lion of Luzerne” is known to all tourists, and his bas-reliefs are familiar the world over. His chief religious works, the colossal figures of Christ and the twelve apostles, are in the church at Copenhagen, where he died in 1844. The greatest name of this period in England was John Flaxman (1755–1826), who was as successful a teacher as he was a worker in his art. He was the originator of the cameo designs on the Wedgwood ware, being particularly happy in delicate reliefs. Christian Daniel Rauch (1777–1857) achieved the place of honor among German sculptors of this time by his heroic imperial monuments, of which the most important is the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great.

Although, for many generations, Rome was the Mecca of artistic pilgrims, and most of the great names have at one time or another been enrolled upon the list of students sojourning within her gates, the race characteristics of each strong mind were liable to find expression in spite of classic training; and when the mature artist brought forth his own creations independent of the touch of school or master, they were likely to present his own national tendencies of thought. Of late years, with increased facilities for studying other art centres, of intercommunication of ideas by travel and increasing duplication of works of art by various reproductive processes, the “art atmosphere” seems to have extended so as to absorb, and in a great measure obliterate, distinct lines of racial difference in manners of expression, the fundamental principles of truth being more generally sought for and applied. Thus, the unmistakably Teutonic aspect of German sculpture in the early half of this century shows in the great monument to “German Unity,” by Schilling, at Niederwald on the Rhine, and the Walhalla decorations, by Ludwig Schwanthaler, for King Louis of Bavaria. German seriousness of purpose lends a dignity of appearance, even if it becomes somewhat grandiose at times, and German painstaking accuracy perfects the technique even to the finish of small details. During the same periods, in Italy, the classic influence was more dominant where the Roman school still held sway, and delicacy deteriorated into insipidity, and finish became finical. Religious and classic subjects were most frequently produced, beside more vital work in portraits, statues, and busts. Some there were who struggled for freedom, among them Lorenzo Bartolini (1777–1850), a Florentine professor, whose group, entitled “Charity,” is in the Pitti Palace. Luigi Pampaloni achieved a surprising fame for his figures of children, one of which, from a monument on a Polish sepulchre, has been widely copied in cheap plaster under the erroneous title of “The Praying Samuel.”

In France, the advance of sculpture has been more continual and consistent, the national artistic temperament finding abundant means of expression in the plastic art. The French dramatic instinct has a sure perception of the effect of a pose, the value of graceful or vigorous lines and the balance of proportion, so that whether under bonds to academic tradition in matters of technique, or broken loose and working under individual inspiration, the French sculptor is likely to create an artistic result. The minds of the common people are more awakened to artistic impressions through the general excellence of the public monuments and sculptural decorations, so freely displayed throughout the land, than are the masses in countries where art is at a low standard. Until after the middle of the century, French sculpture, like the rest, was mainly of smooth and delicate finish and inclined to be romantic, though François Rude was powerful and vigorous, as shown in his patriotic group “Le Chant du Départ” on the Arc de Triomphe. In England, the seeds of Flaxman’s sowing slowly began to bear fruit in an awakening public interest, though the earlier efforts were sedate and conventional rather than spirited, the most important works being dignified and stately monuments and memorials. Westmacott (1777–1856), Francis Chantrey (1782–1841), whose large fortune was bequeathed to the Royal Academy as the “Chantrey Fund;” John Gibson (1791–1866), a pupil of Canova; Henry Weeks (1807–1877), who made the first bust of Victoria as Queen; and Alfred G. Stevens (1817–1875), are a few of the more notable men of the past generation. Thomas Woolner (1825–1892) expressed the feeling of the pre-Raphaelite movement in sculpture, as did Hunt, Burne-Jones, and Rossetti in painting.

American sculpture began with the new century and, like most American growths, began in a very small way; for although Rush had made a few figures, notably a fountain now in Fairmount Park, one of the first pieces of sculptural work in the country was that of a poor New Jersey stone-cutter, John Frazee, who tried to comfort himself for the death of his child by making a memorial figure of him, although he had never seen a statue. From this meagre beginning started a line of ever-increasing strength, until now, in the plastic arts, as in all others, we can hold our own with the best in the world. Of course the earlier students, led by Horatio Greenough, of Boston, Hiram Powers, of Vermont, and Thomas Crawford, of New York, made their way to Rome, where they applied the traditional methods to traditional subjects with conventional results. Greenough’s colossal statue of Washington is in the Capitol grounds; Powers’s “Greek Slave” is owned by the Duke of Cleveland; and Crawford’s “Orpheus seeking Eurydice,” now in the Boston Museum, and “Colossal Liberty” in the Capitol, are his best-known works. Erastus Palmer, of Albany, contemporary with these, developed his talent at home, and secured models and subjects from his own neighborhood, giving a distinctly American character to his work. Among the most noted of the American colony at Rome, although not particularly given to American subjects, was William Wetmore Story, of Salem, Mass., born in 1819. Thomas Ball, born in the same State in the same year, was of the same class in Rome; but his themes are more patriotic, notably the “Emancipation” group in Washington. Harriet Hosmer is the first feminine name on the American list of sculptors. She also settled in Rome, where she completed many works. William Henry Rinehart and Randolph Rogers were both of the idealist school, the latter completing Crawford’s unfinished Washington monument at Richmond. The name of Rogers is more commonly connected with the familiar little statuette groups of every-day domestic scenes so appealing to the popular taste. The sculptor John Rogers, of Massachusetts, has also made a few large works, among them the equestrian statue of General Reynolds, before the City Hall, Philadelphia. Henry Kirke Browne (1814–1886) made a number of equestrian statues of note, one of Washington being the first bronze actually cast in America. His figure of General Scott was cast from captured cannon, relics of the Mexican war. His pupils, Larkin Meade and J. Q. A. Ward, both attained high places, the latter being especially prominent in the progress of American sculpture through such works as his colossal Washington for the New York Treasury Building, and his “Indian Hunter,” “Pilgrim,” and “Shakespeare,” in Central Park.

After the middle of the century, French art became emotional and dramatic, the notorious “Dance” for the Paris Opera House, by J. B. Carpeaux, being one of the first of the new utterances. Paul Dubois was less astonishing in manner, and Henri Chapu was still more restrained, although far more vital than the old conventional school. The name of Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi should be known to every American by reason of his colossal statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World,” now standing sentinel in New York harbor. This, and his figure of Lafayette offering his services to Washington, were presented to America by the French government. Antoine Louis Barye (1795–1875) was a sculptor _sui generis_, a law unto himself of his own development; and though he has many followers, as a sculptor of animals he has no rivals. In many branches of art he was proficient, but his best-known works are the marvelous studies of animal life, modeled with infinite skill.

When the great wave of impressionism rose and flooded the land, carrying music, literature, and the drama before it, plastic art as well as pictorial was caught up too, and whirled into a variety of strange forms. Auguste Rodin led the new movement in sculpture, his manner being copied with varying degrees of success by lesser lights, and like all new movements run to foolish extremes by incompetent followers. His heroic group, “The Bourgeois of Calais,” will indicate his style. From extreme realism on one side, with portrait statues in the last detail of modern costume, silk hats, kid gloves, and in one case holding a cigar, to the vague suggestions of a shapeless mass of marble, out of which protrude unfinished limbs and half-developed heads, sculpture has been pushed from side to side, but is settling into a vigorous, steady, onward movement, in which the best men of all nations stride along together. In the limits of a short article it is impossible to mention all deserving names, but a few will serve as types, and the Americans are well worthy to head the list.

Daniel French’s grand majestic golden figure of Liberty, towering above the Court of Honor, the imperial hostess of the World’s Fair at Chicago, placed him at once on a pedestal of fame. From the prominence of his beautiful Columbian Fountain opposite the golden Goddess, Frederick MacMonnies became known the land over. His greatest late work is the crowning of the soldiers’ and sailors’ memorial arch for Prospect Park, Brooklyn, with a colossal quadriga of Triumph and groups of the army and navy. Augustus St. Gaudens, though a cosmopolitan, is truly an American sculptor of the first rank, whose statues of Admiral Farragut in New York, Lincoln in Chicago, and the sturdy Puritan, Chapin, in Springfield, Mass., are well known. Olin Warner is another distinctively American product, although he had the advantage of some training in Paris. His work is French in technique but not French in spirit, having the native traits of freedom and originality, as shown in his figure of William Lloyd Garrison, and later in his relief portraits on the art building at the Columbian Fair. This great occasion offered opportunities to American sculptors of which they took full advantage, showing the high rank to which they were entitled. It made an American of Carl Bitter, the talented Austrian, whose decorations on the Pennsylvania Railroad Station, Philadelphia, are well known. It added further lustre to the name of John J. Boyle, whose heroic “Indian Mother” in Fairmount Park, and seated statue of Benjamin Franklin, are matters of just pride to Philadelphians. It gave prominence to such men as Lorado Taft, with his graceful work on the Horticultural Building; Philip Martiny, on the Agricultural Building; the great Columbus quadriga, by E. C. Potter and Daniel French, whose beautiful relief of “Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor” is a masterpiece. All visitors to the White City will remember the vigorous animal studies by Edward Kemys, and the Indian figures of A. C. Proctor. The sculptural commissions of the Congressional Library in Washington have produced a remarkable collection of works by talented Americans, and every great exhibition brings interesting examples from those already named, and such others as Herbert Adams, Edwin Elwell, Bessie Potter, with her dainty little statuettes, portrait work by Charles Grafly, Catherine Cohen, C. E. Dallin, strange visionary suggestions, in the Rodin manner, by George Bonnard, and an array of lesser names too numerous to mention.

For this reason, but few of the notable names of modern foreigners can be given. However, Hamo Thornycroft, of England, must not be overlooked, whose famous “Mower” is much admired; nor Onslow Ford, more youthful and romantic in style. John Henry Foley, of Dublin, has had a pronounced effect on English sculpture, being a successful teacher, including among his pupils several distinguished women, among them the Princess Louise and the Earl of Elgin’s granddaughter, Miss Grant. George Tinworth’s terra cotta reliefs must conclude the list of English works. A few Russians have reached eminence, mainly by animal studies. Antocolski, a Jew of Wilna, of poorest parentage, has done powerful figure work of a serious, rather melancholy sort, the most important being a “Christ Bound.” What is best in modern Italian and German work is practically French, and of the French themselves the list is too long to complete. A few must suffice, such as Jean Alexandre Falguière, who aspires, like Carpeaux, to give vitality by means of vigorous action to his figures. Emanuel Frémiet has worn with some distinction the mantle descended from Barye’s shoulders. Vidal, another pupil of Barye, was blind for twenty years, yet gained two medals for correct anatomy in his modeling. Carrier Belleuse’s “Hebe Asleep” is an example of the delicate style, and Alfred Boucher shows the other extreme in his rendering of sturdy masculine figures, toiling or racing, striving to present in sculpture the picture of human struggle for existence, as did Millet in his paintings. These materialistic studies represent the fight for the bread and breath of life, while the impressionist contortions of the Rodin school try to suggest the conflict of emotions, good and bad, and the battle of spiritual and physical desires and development.

III. CERAMICS AND GLASS WORK.

From time immemorial to the present day men have been fashioning shapes of clay, experimenting with different kinds, different degrees of heat, and different chemical combinations to form glazes and colorings. The fundamental processes of pottery making have changed but little since prehistoric times, and wall pictures of the days of the Ptolemies show the potter’s wheel whirling much as it does at present, although, of course, many modern inventions have been made to facilitate different forms of work. In the famous Sèvres factories in France, established under royal patronage and still remaining government property, a modern device has rendered possible the making of large vases of extremely thin ware. To prevent the delicate paste of which these are made from collapsing by its own weight before it can harden, the vase or jar is moulded in an air-tight chamber, the mouth of the object sealed, and the air exhausted from the chamber, leaving the object in a vacuum. The air contained in itself is sufficient to hold up the sides until they harden and danger of collapse is over, when it can be fired. Attempts were made in vain to equal the delicacy of the Chinese egg-shell ware, when, one day an educated Chinese visitor to the factories observed the method employed, and exclaimed, “This is the way we make those cups,” and, taking a mould, he dipped it into the liquid paste, rinsed it around and emptied it at once. A thin film like a soap bubble remained in the mould, which hardened enough to form the dainty ware the workers had been trying without success to produce; so the Chinese method was at once adopted. About the middle of the last century an impetus of development in ceramic art appeared all over the continent of Europe and in England. This was probably due to the discovery, in different places, of kaolin or the fine clay of which porcelain is made, which stimulated the pottery industry and caused the establishment of many factories which are still working to-day. The Dresden works, founded in 1700, were hidden in an old fortress, and their secrets jealously guarded. After about a century they went into decay, but in 1863 were revived and reëstablished in large new buildings of their own, where dainty flowered ware is produced, which has again come into popular favor. Italian ceramics are apt to be florid and overloaded with decoration, that called “majolica” deriving its name from the island of Majorca, where it was first made. “Fayence” comes from Faenza, and the French form of the name, “faïence,” has been used to designate porcelain in general. The town of Limoges, in France, has been a centre of ceramic art since 1773, when a French firm established a factory for the production of a peculiarly fine ware, made possible by the superior quality of the kaolin found in the neighborhood. In 1839 a lady in New York showed the Haviland firm a cup of delicate ware, asking them to match it for her. It was so much finer than anything they had seen that they desired to import some for their own business. With this end in view, Mr. David Haviland took the cup and went to France trying to find where it had been made. He was directed to Limoges and, in the factories there, he tried to have English shapes and decorations copied in the exquisite ware. The conservatism and slow methods of the place were not equal to his demands, and he therefore established a factory of his own, which, since the middle of the century, has been the most important in the town.

In England, the most celebrated potteries are all over a century old, and the ceramic art has been developed to the highest degree both in technical and artistic directions. The works of the Doulton firm, who own many potteries, are particularly rich in color, and decoration, those from their factory at Lambeth being especially fine. So also are the Coalport wares, celebrated for their rich blue color, the Royal Worcester and the Crown Derby. In these English factories, and also in those on the Continent, artists of great skill are employed as decorators, and in the Wedgwood works the delicate cameo figures in white relief on a tinted ground were originated by the famous sculptor, John Flaxman. In America, the Trenton potteries turn out a vast quantity of wares of varying degrees of artistic excellence, and one factory has the secret of an old Irish ware, the Belleek, of indescribable delicacy, like an iridescent sea shell, long thought to be a lost art. The Rookwood pottery, of most artistic quality in design and color, is made in Cincinnati, and was the invention of a woman who has trained a school of girls as decorators; as has also the Tiffany firm in New York for their marvelous glass work. An adequate description of the work of this firm would fill a book, as they have developed undreamed-of possibilities in the use of glass for decorative purposes. They have revived forgotten arts of coloring and invented new processes of treatment, that give results like fairy work, no two pieces being alike. These and many other forms of industrial art products are brought to a high plane of perfection nowadays, although the word “art” is grievously abused, being applied to everything salable, from writing paper to soap. The great schools and institutions which teach the arts and industries combined are doing vast good, however, in improving public taste and teaching the world to discriminate between true art and false, and their influence can already be felt in higher standards of decoration in articles of common daily use.

IV. INDUSTRIAL ARTS.

Closely following painting comes black and white art in various forms, either reproductive or original work, and it is difficult to discriminate between fine art and handicraft in the many processes employed. Engraving on metal has long been known, and steel was considered an especially valuable method of reproducing paintings until within a generation. Etching is another old form of black and white work, and is still popular, though less so than formerly. Wood engraving during this century has passed through many stages of development, and in the illustrations of books and magazines has been brought to a high standing as a fine art. It is still used in many ways, but all those processes that require line work by hand are being superseded by the photo-type processes, of which there are many kinds. The making of plates or blocks for printing required skilled hand work, and the engravers and wood-cutters were necessarily artists themselves, so that while they were copying the work of others they were also producing works of art themselves. The plates and prints were, therefore, valuable and expensive, and, as modern haste grew more and more to demand cheap quick work, the old careful style of working gave way to mechanical methods of greater speed. With the development of photography and its application to the engraver’s art, while a certain individual artistic character in the work was lost, the actual copying of painting in all the details of light, shade, and half tones has been carried to a high degree of perfection. By what is known as photogravure, every tiny brush mark and every different tint of color is reproduced with scientific accuracy in black and white. This is accomplished by having a photograph of the painting taken on a gelatine film, which is suspended in a bath of acid in the line of an electric current. This current, playing over a sheet of copper, sets free the molecules of metal that are deposited upon the film, and filling all the little inequalities of the surface, produce what is practically a cast of the photograph in copper. The plate, thus secured, is gone over by hand and finished here and there with engraver’s tools, and from this prints may be duplicated to any extent. In engraved plates the design is cut into the metal, incised lines being either drawn by hand with a sharp point, called “dry point” work, or eaten in by acids, the remaining surface of the plate being protected from the acid by a greasy film. In wood-cutting, the blocks show a reverse process, the design being left standing in fine lines, while the remaining surface is cut away, so that a wood-cut is in reality a carving in low relief. The modern electrotype processes produce a similar result on a metal block by the action of acid, a method capable of most speedy work and therefore in demand among the multitude of daily publications illustrating current events. Of course these hasty results can scarcely be called fine art, but they are developments of artistic industries, calculated to meet certain needs of our busy civilization.

For more artistic effects, various forms of lithography have given beautiful results. This valuable process was accidentally discovered in 1796, by a young Bohemian, Aloys Senefelder, of Prague. Desiring to write a list, and having no paper, he scrawled on a fine stone floor tile a few words, and later on, coming to remove them, he bethought him of an experiment with acid on the stone. This he tried, finding the stone eaten away all around his writing, leaving that raised in sufficient relief to print from, the lettering being done with a greasy writing substance that repelled the acid. Later experiments proved that the eating away of the stone was not necessary if the design were made with an oily material and the rest of the surface kept moist with a weak solution of acid. A greasy printing ink being applied would stick only to the oily design and not to the acidulated surface, which process made possible the printing from flat stones, which were not so liable to wear out as the relief designs. Senefelder died in 1824, living long enough to see his invention in use throughout the world, although of course he could not know the improvements that photography would bring. On the centennial anniversary of this great discovery in 1896, exhibitions of lithographic works were held in London and Paris, and the possibilities and developments shown. Mr. James McNeill Whistler has made many very interesting experiments with it, as have also Mr. Joseph Pennell and Mr. Hubert Herkomer. The latter has made innumerable experiments and inventions in his busy artistic career, and has just recently perfected an improvement on lithography which he calls “plate printing,” and which has been dubbed by the irreverent the “Herkotype” process. It is simply painting in a peculiar oily ink on a metal plate, which, while the ink is moist, is dusted over with a fine powder which adheres to every brush mark on the surface. One ingredient of this powder is a metal that is electrically conductible, and, after the excess of powder is brushed off, the plate, with what remains sticking on the oily surface, is placed in an electrotype bath. The copper deposited thereon by the electric current hardens and forms a negative of the original painting, which can be stripped from the plate and used in a printing-press, giving an absolutely faithful reproduction of the artist’s handiwork. A similar process, called “algraphy,” has been invented by Mr. Scholz, of Mayence, who has developed the possibilities of aluminum for plate work, the advantage of this material over stone or other metal being its extreme lightness. These processes are especially valuable to artists who can work in black and white, as their own original conception is perfectly reproduced without the possibility of misconception by some copyist, as exists where a painting is interpreted by an etcher or engraver.

Of the new processes or improvements on the old, that have arisen because of the discovery of photography, it may be said their name is legion. Photography itself is rapidly being developed into a fine art, and has become one of the most important factors of modern existence. It combines science, art, and industry, and is equally necessary to all these occupations. While it is difficult to state what was the first attempt that led to the suggestion of photography, it may be supposed the experiments of the Swedish scientist Scheele were among the first. He found that the action of the sun’s ray blackened silver chloride, and others experimenting after him, at the beginning of the century, had glimmering ideas of the possibility of a new art. As has so often happened with the dawning of some great idea, some new appreciation of a great natural law, the thought was working in many minds, and the discovery seemed to be almost simultaneous in several places. As early as 1802 Wedgwood published in the “Journal of the Royal Institute” an “account of a method of copying paintings on glass and of making profiles by the agency of light on nitrate of silver, with some remarks by Sir Humphry Davy.” These gentlemen were, however, unable to fix the impressions they procured, and a Frenchman, De Niepce, seems to have been the first to succeed in this direction. In 1826, learning that M. Louis Jacques Daguerre was experimenting on the same lines, he conferred with him and they formed a partnership. The latter seems to have been the more businesslike of the two, and the process they evolved became known as the “Daguerreotype.” De Niepce died in 1833, and Daguerre continued the partnership with his son Isidore, making many improvements, and becoming really the pioneer of modern photography. The extent of advance may be calculated from Daguerre’s own remark, that “a landscape requires seven or eight hours to be photographed, but a single statue or monument, if strongly lighted, can be taken in about three hours.” Comparing this with the instantaneous camera work of to-day, that gives us the lifelike moving figures of the kinetoscope, will illustrate the change wrought in two thirds of a century. The earliest portrait work was slow and tedious, the first portrait in New York probably being produced by Dr. Draper, the scientist, although the celebrated Professor Morse was vastly interested in the new science or art, and advanced its cause in this country.

From the beginning of photographic experiments, the greatest desire has been felt to photograph in color, and numberless attempts with more or less success have been made, but the processes are mainly slow and very expensive. A new method of photo-printing in color, however, has recently developed very artistic possibilities. This is accomplished by means of three plates, one for each of the three primary colors; the negative having been made and the plate prepared for printing in each color, the inks of each color are applied separately. One printing produces a red impression, directly on this comes a yellow impression, and on top of that is put a blue; and as all gradations of color are composed of various proportions of these three primary tints, the “overlaying” of the three inks produces a picture containing all the variety of the original subject. A still more recent discovery makes an impression upon a glass plate that gives all three colors on the same plate; but this process is a secret, and is too new to be classed among the successes of industrial art as yet.

One of the later and more notable uses of photography is found in its application to the purposes of astronomy, an evolution in modern science, which, although still in its infancy, has already produced wonderful results. About the middle of the century photographs of the moon were secured by Warren De la Rue and other astronomers, which greatly facilitated studies of the earth’s satellite, and these were followed by photographs of the sun and the sun’s corona during eclipse. It was not, however, until Professor Henry of the Smithsonian Institute originated the idea of uniting the camera with the telescope that the marvelous possibilities of stellar photography were discovered. It is not too much to say that this discovery has revolutionized the science of astronomy, extending the field of human observation into the realm of the infinite. By the aid of clockwork attachments, the telescope is made to follow the apparent motion of the star to which it may be directed, throughout the night, if desired, and the sensitive photographic plate is exposed to the action of light during a corresponding period. “Each image, however faint, has a comparatively long time on the sensitive surface, and therefore exerts a cumulative action.” The result is that stars are pictured by the camera which no human eye has ever seen. It is estimated that the camera has revealed double the number of stars discovered by the most powerful telescopes. In 1887, at a convention of astronomers held in Paris, it was resolved to photograph the entire skies, with the purpose of making a new stellar atlas to include the latest discoveries among the heavenly hosts. With this object the firmament was charted in squares, and each observatory of importance throughout the world was assigned certain of these squares to work on. This monumental labor is still going on, and it will necessarily be extended well into the first quarter of the twentieth century.

The epoch-marking paper of Dr. Röntgen, in which he announced the discovery of the X-ray, was made public in the latter part of 1895. It immediately attracted the attention of the scientific world, and, since that date, endless successions of experiments have been made with the marvelous ray in all civilized countries. The X-ray produces no noticeable effect on the retina of the eye, and we therefore acquire knowledge of it through indirect agencies. One of these agencies is the photographic plate, on which, under certain conditions, the ray acts somewhat in the same manner as does a ray of light. It is not a ray of light, in the ordinary sense, as it penetrates opaque bodies which light cannot traverse. Just what it is scientists are not yet ready to state, but its discoverer defines it as “a longitudinal vibration of luminiferous ether.” This vibration will traverse many substances opaque to light, as wood, paper, vegetable and animal tissues and fabrics, as wool, cotton, silk, etc.; and, if then directed upon a photographic plate, will produce an image there. The resulting picture is not of the object traversed by the ray, but of any intervening object which it does not pass through. As a consequence, the picture is the image, so to speak, of a shadow, and, hence has been called a “shadowgraph.” To illustrate, if the ray is directed through a human body, it will give a “shadowgraph” of the bones, or of a bullet or piece of metal, if such foreign substance be encountered on its way. Again, the ray will traverse a diamond and cast no shadow, but it will not pass through the finest imitation ever made, the “shadowgraph” showing the manufactured article.

THE CENTURY’S ADVANCE IN SURGERY

BY J. MADISON TAYLOR, M.D., and J. H. GIBBON, M.D.,

_Surgeon in Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospitals_.

AT THE DAWN OF THE CENTURY.—In the year 1579 the celebrated French surgeon, Ambroise Paré, probably the greatest of his day, in completing his work on “Chirurgery,” made the following statement, which to us of to-day is both amusing and pathetic. He says: “For God is my witness, and all good men know, that I have labored fifty years with all care and pains in the illustration and amplification of Chirurgery; and that I have so certainly touched the work whereat I aimed that antiquity may seem to have nothing wherein it may exceed as beside the glory of invention, nor posterity anything left but a certain small hope to add some things.” This great man had scarcely passed away when the practice of surgery of his day was a thing of the past, due to the realization of that “certain small hope” which he allowed as possible to posterity. Every reader, when he reflects upon the crude surgery practiced in those days, when the operations were those of necessity and not election,—that is, were done for injuries and not for disease, done to relieve and not to cure; when he remembers that not only antiseptics but also anæsthetics were unknown, must be filled with sympathy for this old gentleman, and wonder what he would think _now_ were he to see what progress posterity has made and is still making.

It is not our purpose, however, to carry our researches so far back as Paré’s time, but to begin with our own century and bring before the reader the advances in surgery since the day of our grandfathers.

In the beginning of this century surgery was practiced by many great men, men who did not enjoy the self-satisfaction of their predecessor, Paré, but who accomplished much by constant endeavor and faithful application to advance this art and science. They, too, realized manifold “hopes,” and their children and grandchildren have moved on, and to-day are still pressing forward in the line of invention and discovery. But to us, the art of an hundred years ago appears widely different from that of our day. Anæsthesia had not then been discovered, no germ theory had been evolved, and, consequently, no such thing as antiseptic or aseptic surgery was known. The abdomen was opened for disease only, and rarely; and brain surgery consisted solely in trepanning for fractures of the skull. Surgery was not regarded as a specialty, but every surgeon was also an obstetrician and a practitioner of general medicine. Outside of the treatment of broken bones, dislocations, gunshot wounds and injuries, the surgeon at that time operated for strangulated hernia, for stone in the bladder—“cutting for stone,” as it was called; for cataract and for cancer. Dentistry was just beginning to be taken up as a specialty, and all medical men extracted teeth, and many filled their cavities. Ophthalmic surgery consisted largely in operations for cataract, and was done by the general surgeon. One department of the surgeon’s education at this time was well attended to, and that was his anatomic knowledge. Our bodies were the same then as now; and although the surgeon dared not trespass in anatomical fields which are familiar ground to the student of to-day, he did study the body after death, and was quite as well informed regarding the gross anatomy of the human body as the surgeon of to-day; and, had anæsthesia been known to him, he would probably have accomplished nearly all that was done during the middle of the century by his successors.

During the first quarter of the century no great advance was made in surgery, that is, nothing revolutionizing; but many minds and hands were at work perfecting old methods of operation and devising new ones. They had to trust to whiskey and opium to control the pain of the patient, and consequently operations requiring much time in their performance were avoided when possible, and, when necessary, had to be performed with such rapidity that the essential object aimed at was often missed. The patient was given a large dose of laudanum and a huge drink of whiskey or brandy, and was then held or tied on the table while the surgeon proceeded with his work. One can readily understand the torturing pain the poor patient had to endure, and the hurried and often unsatisfactory operation which the surgeon had to perform. The endurance of pain was not the worst part of the patient’s lot, for afterward he ran the greatest risk of blood-poisoning and gangrene, which were common complications in those days. It was the rarest thing for even the simplest operation wounds to heal by “primary union,” as it was called,—that is, without the formation of pus. Every wounded surface was expected to go through a certain amount of suppuration. Many patients lost their lives from compound fractures of their bones; and a compound fracture, that is, where there was a wound connecting the seat of fracture with the skin, usually meant many months in bed, and very often the loss of the limb.

Excepting for the purposes of removing a fœtus from the womb (the so-called Cæsarian operation, because Cæsar was from “his mother’s womb untimely ripped”), the abdominal cavity was practically never opened, and when it was the patient nearly always died. The operation for the radical cure of hernia was seldom resorted to, excepting when strangulation of the intestine necessitated operative interference to save the patient’s life. During the latter part of the eighteenth century the quacks, calling themselves “rupture cutters,” were not scarce; but the great mortality of their practice produced a wholesome fear among the people. The operation was so often fatal that most of the best surgeons would only perform it under unusually urgent circumstances. What caused the deaths was peritonitis, or gangrene of the intestine, and not the method of operating; for at this time nearly every method of operating had been devised that was in vogue fifty years later.

Bone surgery, the treatment of fractures, dislocations, and diseases of the bones, was greatly improved in the first half of the century, this subject receiving more attention at the hands of surgical writers than any other.

ANÆSTHESIA.—Anæsthesia may, certainly from the patient’s point of view, be looked upon as the greatest advancement ever made in surgery. It was great not only for the reason that it gave the patient absolute unconsciousness during the time of the operation, but because it enabled the surgeon to work with greater exactness and less hurry. The conception of the anæsthetic state did not, however, come into being for the first time in our century, for, like most great ideas, it agitated the minds of medical and scientific men for centuries. Gross tells us that Theodoric, in the thirteenth century, recommended the inhalation of a certain combination of opium, hemlock, and other vegetable derivatives for the purpose of producing sleep, and that in India similar combinations were for centuries in use. It is needless, however, to say that the effect produced was nothing like that following the use of nitrous oxide, “laughing gas,” ether, or chloroform, and that their use never became general. Toward the close of the last century Sir Humphry Davy and others performed repeated experiments with nitrous oxide gas, but finally gave up in despair. In the early part of our own century several methods of producing insensibility to pain were recommended, such as pressure on nerves and bleeding to the degree of producing unconsciousness, but none of them was ever sufficiently successful to render their adoption general; and it remained for a New England dentist, Dr. Horace Wells, in 1844, to first use satisfactorily upon himself and his patients the complete state of unconsciousness produced by nitrous oxide gas. This poor man, however, failed signally when he endeavored to demonstrate its powers before a body of medical men, and was subjected to the most unwarranted ridicule. However, a pupil of this man, another dentist, named Morton, two years later, experimented with ether, and finally proved upon himself and on patients the wonderful power of the vapor. He exhibited his discovery at the Massachusetts General Hospital at Boston, where Dr. Warren performed an operation upon a patient etherized by Dr. Morton. The fame of this man and his great discovery spread rapidly over the continent and into the Eastern Hemisphere, and in 1847 Sir James Y. Simpson in Edinburgh discovered the anæsthetic powers of chloroform. These two agents, ether and chloroform, have existed as rivals for professional favor for nearly half a century, one being more popular and more generally used in one country and the other in another. There is, however, a field for the use of both, the operator choosing the anæsthetic to suit the individual case. In our own country ether is more generally used in the North and East and chloroform in the South and West. Chloroform has had more deaths attributed to its use, but in many cases is a much safer anæsthetic than ether. It is most amusing to observe the attitude of the so-called conservative surgeon toward the use of anæsthetics soon after their discovery; this is particularly true of their employment in obstetric practice, many eminent obstetricians maintaining that the parturient woman was intended to suffer, and referring triumphantly to the Bible for authority. It is, however, needless to say that although many men were at first uneasy in the use of these new-found agents, those who did not take advantage of their wonderful powers found themselves rapidly becoming out of date and deserted by their patients, who preferred unconsciousness to the older method of using opium and whiskey.

Notwithstanding the great step made by the introduction of ether and chloroform, the medical man is to-day still dissatisfied and is continually endeavoring to discover some agent or combination of agents which will produce insensibility to pain without unconsciousness and without the slight danger and the uncomfortable after effects of chloroform and ether. An ideal anæsthetic then must be a local anæsthetic, one that will render the field of operation insensible and be without the slightest danger to the patient.

LOCAL ANÆSTHESIA.—At the beginning of our century freezing with ice alone, or with ice and salt, was the only method employed for producing local insensibility. Freezing as a local anæsthetic was, however, not extensively used until fifty years later, when Dr. Richardson of London showed the anæsthetic effect of spraying the surface of the tissues with ether. During the late sixties this method of freezing became quite popular for producing local anæsthesia for small operations such as extraction of teeth, removing nails, opening abscesses, etc., and occasionally was employed for more protracted operations, Cæsarian section having been performed a number of times by the aid of this agent. The rhigolene spray was found later to be more satisfactory than ether in many respects, and the two together were frequently used.

Another freezing agent which is now used very extensively and has entirely supplanted those just mentioned is the chloride of ethyl. This, when applied to the dry skin, produces in a few seconds complete freezing, and renders the surface comparatively painless for many of the minor surgical operations.

The properties of cocaine as a local anæsthetic were known thirty years ago, but it was not until 1884 that Dr. Kohler of Germany demonstrated its practical applicability. To-day most of the operations on the eye, nose, and throat are performed under the pain prevention afforded by this drug, and in general surgery it has an extensive field, being found satisfactory where freezing is inapplicable or general anæsthesia not desired, as, for instance, in removing small tumors, splinters, ingrowing nails, etc. In the eye, nose, and throat it is applied simply in solution to the mucous membrane, but where anæsthesia of the skin is desired, it is necessary to inject it under the skin with a hypodermic syringe. When used in strong solutions this remedy is dangerous, and it has lately been shown that weaker solutions when used in larger quantities are just as satisfactory and less dangerous.

A recent substitute for cocaine is eucaine; but, although less dangerous, it is less satisfactory and not harmless to the tissues themselves.