Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. VII.--FEBRUARY, 1861.--NO. XL.







OUR ARTISTS IN ITALY.

WILLIAM PAGE.


Among artists, William Page is a painter.

This proposition may seem, to the great public which has so long and so
well known him and his works, somewhat unnecessary. There are few
who are not familiar with his paintings. Whether these seem great or
otherwise, whether the Venus be pure or gross, we may not here discuss;
the public has, and will have, many estimates; yet on one point there
is no difference of opinion, apparently. The world willingly calls him
whose hand wrought these pictures a painter. It has done so as a matter
of course; and we accept the title.

But perhaps the title comes to us from this man's studio, charged with a
significance elevating it above the simply self-evident, and rendering
it worthy of the place we have given it as a germ proposition.

Not every one who uses pigments can say, "I also am a painter." To him
who would make visible the ideal, there are presented the marble, the
pencil, and the colors; and should he employ either of these, just in
proportion to his obedience to the laws of each will he be a sculptor,
a designer, or a painter; and the revelations in stone, in light and
shade, or on canvas, shall be his witnesses forevermore,--witnesses of
him not only as an artist, in view of his relation to the ideal world,
but as possessing a right to the especial title conferred by the means
which he has chosen to be his interpreter.

The world has too much neglected these means of interpretation. It has
condemned the science which would perfect the art, as if the false could
ever become the medium of the true. The art of painting has suffered
especially from the influence of mistaken views.

Nor could it be otherwise. Color-manifestation, of all art-utterance,
is the least simple. It requires the fulfilment of a greater number
of conditions than are involved in any other art. He who has selected
colors as his medium cannot with impunity neglect form; light and
shade must be to him as important as they are to the designer in
_chiaro-scuro;_ while above all are the mystery and power of color.

There is perplexity in this. The science of form seems to be vast enough
for any man's genius. No more than he accomplishes is demanded of the
genuine sculptor. His life has been grand with noble fulfilments. We,
and all generations, hold his name in the sacred simplicity which has
ever been the sign of the consummate. Men say, Phidias, Praxiteles, and
know that they did greatly and sufficiently.

Yet with the science which these men had we combine elements equally
great, and still truth demands the consummate. Hence success in painting
has been the rarest success which the world has known. If we search
its history page by page, the great canvas-leaves written over with
innumerable names yield us less than a score of those who have overcome
the difficulties of its science, through that, achieving art, and
becoming painters.

Yes, many men have painted, many great artists have painted, without
earning the title which excellence gives. Overbeck, the apostle artist,
whose rooms are sacred with the presence of the divine, never earned
that name. Nor did thousands who before him wrought patiently and
earnestly.

We think that we have among us a man who _has_ earned it.

What does this involve? Somewhat more than the ability critically to
distinguish colors and to use them skilfully.

Although practice may discipline and develop this power, there must
exist an underlying physiological fitness, or all study and experience
will be unavailing. In many persons, the organization of the eye is such
that there can be no correct perception of the value, relation, and
harmony of hues. There exists often an utter inability to perceive
differences between even the primary colors.

The late sculptor Bartholomew declared himself unable to decide which
of two pieces of drapery, the one crimson and the other green, was the
crimson. Nor was this the result of inexperience. He had been for years
familiar not only with Nature's coloring, but with the works of the best
schools of art, and had been in continual contact with the first living
artists.

The instances of this peculiar blindness are exceptional, yet not
more so than is the perfection of vision which enables the eye to
discriminate accurately the innumerable tints derived from the three
primitives.

Nothing can be finer than the sense of identity and harmony resulting
from this exquisite organization. We have been told that there is a
workman at the Gobelin manufactory who can select twenty-two thousand
tints of the material employed in the construction of its famous
tapestries. This capability is, of course, almost wholly dependent upon
rare physical qualifications; yet it is the basis, the very foundation
of a painter's power.

Still, it is _but_ the foundation. An "eye for color" never yet made any
man a colorist.

Perhaps there can be no severer test of this faculty of perception than
the copying of excellent pictures. And among the few successful copies
which have been produced, Page's stand unsurpassed.

The ability to perceive Nature, when translated into art, is, however, a
possession which this painter shares with many. Nor is he alone in the
skill which enables him to realize upon his own canvas the effects which
some master has rendered.

It is in the presence of Nature itself that a power is demanded with
which mechanical superiority and physical qualifications have little to
do. Here the man stands alone,--the only medium between the ideal and
the outward world, wherefrom he must choose the signs which alone are
permitted to become the language of his expression. None can help him,
as before he was helped by the man whose success was the parent of his
own. Here is no longer copying.

In the first place, is to be found the limit of the palette. Confining
ourselves to the external, what, of all the infinitude of phenomena to
which the vision is related, so corresponds to the power of the palette
that it may become adequately representative thereof?

Passing over many minor points in which there seems to be an imperfect
relation between Nature's effects and those of pigments, we will briefly
refer to the great discrepancy occasioned by the luminosity of light. In
all the lower effects of light, in the illumination of Nature and the
revelation of colored surfaces, in the exquisite play and power of
reflected light and color, and in the depth and richness of these when
transmitted, we find a noble and complete response on the palette. But
somewhere in the ascending scale a departure from this happy relation
begins to be apparent. The _color_-properties of light are no longer
the first. Another element--an element the essential nature of which
is absorbed in the production of the phenomena of color--now asserts
itself. Hitherto the painter has dealt with light indirectly, through
the mediatorship of substances. The rays have been given to him, broken
tenderly for his needs;--ocean and sky, mountain and valley, draperies
and human faces, all things, from stars to violets, have diligently
prepared for him, as his demands have arisen, the precious light. And
while he has restrained himself to the representation of Nature subdued
to the limit of his materials, he has been victorious.

Turner, in whose career can be found almost all that the student needs
for example and for warning, is perhaps the best illustration of wise
temperance in the choice of Nature to be rendered into art. Nothing can
be finer than some of those early works wrought out in quiet pearly
grays,--the tone of Nature in her soberest and tenderest moods. In
these, too, may be observed those touches of brilliant color,--bits of
gleaming drapery, perhaps,--prophetic flecks along the gray dawn. Such
pictures are like pearls; but art demands amber, also.

When necessity has borne the artist out of this zone, the peaceful
domain of the imitator, he finds himself impelled to produce effects
which are no longer the simple phases of color, but such as the means at
his disposal fail to accomplish. In the simpler stages of coloring, when
he desired to represent an object as blue or red, it was but necessary
to use blue or red material. Now he has advanced to a point where this
principle is no longer applicable. The illuminative power of light
compels new methods of manipulation.

As examples of a thorough comprehension of the need of such a change in
the employment of means, of the character of that change, of the skill
necessary to embody its principles, and of utter success in the result,
we have but to suggest the name and works of Titian.

But the laws which Titian discovered have been unheeded for centuries;
and they might have remained so, had not the mind of William Page
felt the necessity of their revival and use. To him there could be no
chance-work. Art must have laws as definite and immutable as those of
science; indeed, the body in which the spirit of art is developed, and
through which it acts, must be science itself. He saw, that, if exact
imitation of Nature be taken as the law in painting, there must
inevitably occur the difficulty to which we have before referred,--that,
above a certain point, paint no longer undergoes transfiguration,
thereby losing its character as mere coloring material,--that, if the
ordinary tone of Nature be held as the legitimate key-note, the scope of
the palette would be exhausted before success could be achieved.

Any one of Turner's latest pictures may serve to illustrate the nature
of this difficulty. Although in his early practice he was remarkable for
his judicious restraint, it is evident that the splendors of the higher
phenomena of light had for him unlimited fascination; and he may be
traced advancing cautiously through that period of his career which was
marked by the influence of Claude, toward what he hoped would prove, and
perhaps believed to be, a realization of such splendors.

It must have been observed by those who have studied his later pictures,
that, while the low passages of the composition are wonderfully fine
and representative, all the higher parts, those supposed or intended to
stand for the radiance of dazzling light, fail utterly in representative
capacity. There is an abundance of the most brilliant pigment, but it is
still paint,--unmitigated ochre and white lead. The spectator is obliged
to recede from the picture until distance enables the eye to transmute
the offending material and reconcile the conflicting passages.

To accomplish the result of rendering the quality and effect of high
light was one of the problems to which Mr. Page years ago turned his
attention; and he found its solution in the transposition of the scale.
The pitch of Nature could not be adopted as the immutable in art. That
were impossible, unless art presumed to cope with Nature.

More than he, no man could respect the properties and qualities of the
visible world. His ideas of the truthful rendering of that which became
the subject of his pencil might seem preposterous to those who knew not
the wonderful significancy which he attached to individual forms and
tints. Yet, in imitation, where is the limit? What is possible? Must
there be any sacrifice?

Evidently there must be; and of course it follows that the less
important must be sacrificed. Nature herself has taught the artist that
the most variable of all her phenomena is that of _tone_. Other truths
of Nature have a character of permanency which the artist cannot modify
without violating the first principles of art. He is required to render
the essential; and to render the essential of that which art cannot
sacrifice, if it would, and continue art, he foregoes the non-essential
and evanescent.

Not only is this permitted,--it is demanded. It is a law through which
alone success is attainable. In obedience to it, Mr. Page adopts a key
somewhat lower than that of Nature as a point of departure, using his
degrees of color frugally, especially in the ascending scale. With this
economy, when he approaches the luminous effects of Nature, he finds,
just where any other palette would be exhausted, upon his own a reserve
of high color. With this, seeking only a corresponding effect of light
in that lower tone which assumes no rivalry with the infinite glory of
Nature, he attains to a representation fully successful.

We would not have it understood that a mere transposition of the scale
is all that is required to accomplish such a result; only this,--that in
no other way can such a result be secured. To color well, to color so
that forms upon the canvas give back tints like those of the objects
which have served as models, is only half the work. Quality, as well as
color, must be attained. Local, reflected, and transmitted color can be
imitated; but as in the attempt to represent light its luminousness is
the element which defeats the artist, so, throughout Nature, quality,
texture, are the elements which most severely test his power.

Could any indispensable truth be considered secondary, it might be
assumed that rendering truthfully the qualities of Nature is the first
and highest of art. The forms and colors of objects vary infinitely.
It might be said that the law of all existence is, in these two
particulars, that of change. From the time a human being is born until
it disappears in the grave, from the day when the first leaves break the
mould to that which sees the old tree fall, the form of each has been
modified hourly.

But that which differentiates objects more completely than any other
property is quality. The sky over us, and the waters of the earth, are
subject to infinite variations. Yet, whether in the tiny drop that
trembles at the point of a leaf or in the vast ocean-globe of our
planet, in the torpor of forest-ponds or in the wrath of cataracts,
water never loses its quality of wetness,--the open sky never that of
dryness. These two characteristics are of course entirely the reverse
of each other,--as unlike as are the properties of transparency and
opacity,--which they involve.

So, throughout Nature, one truth, that of texture, is the
distinguishing; and this distinctive element is that which cannot be
sacrificed; for through it are Nature's finest laws manifested. And the
painter finds in his obedience to her demands his highest power over
the material which serves him in his efforts to embody the true and the
beautiful.

It is, then, this which compels us to estimate Mr. Page a painter,--a
man especially organized for his profession,--chosen by its
demands,--set apart, by his wonderful adaptation to its requirements,
from all the world. In virtue of this specialty, the necessity arose
early in his life to seek excellence in his department of art,--to
search the depths of its philosophy and discover its vital
principles,--to analyze its methods and expose its errors. It led him to
investigate the relation between the phenomena of Nature and the
effects of painting; it guided him to a clear perception of the laws
of art-translation; above all, it compelled him to practise what he
believed to be the true.

Thus much of the painter;--now what of the artist?

It does not necessarily follow, that, because a man is a great painter,
he is also a great artist. Yet we may safely infer, that, if he has been
true in one department of the several which constitute art, he cannot
have been false in others. Should there be a shortcoming, it must be
that of a man whose mission does not include that wherein he fails.
Fidelity to himself is all we should demand. We say this for those who
are disposed to depreciate what an artist actually accomplishes, because
in some one point Turner or Overbeck surpasses him. Nor do we say it
apologetically. The man, who, basing his action upon the evident purpose
of the organization which God has given him, fulfils his destiny,
requires no apology.

We have seen something of the faithfulness which has marked Mr. Page's
pursuit of excellence in the external of his art. He has wrought that
which proves his claim to a broader title than that of painter. Were
it not for the vagueness which involves the appellation of historical
painter, it might be that. Even were we obliged to confine our interest
and study to the portraiture which he has executed, we might, in view of
its remarkable character, designate it as historical.

Than a really great portrait, no work of art can be more truly
historical. We feel the subjectiveness of compositions intended to
transmit facts to posterity,--and unless we know the artist, we are at a
loss as to the degree of trust which we may place in his impressions.
A true portrait is objective. The individuality of the one whom it
represents was the ruling force in the hour of its production; and to
the spirit of a household, a community, a kingdom, or an age, that
individuality is the key. There is, too, in a genuine portrait an
internal evidence of its authenticity. No artist ever was great enough
to invent the combination of lines, curves, and planes which composes
the face of a man. There is the accumulated significance of a
lifetime,--subtile traces of failures or of victories wrought years ago.
How these will manifest themselves, no experience can point out, no
intuition can foresee or imagine. The modifications are infinite, and
each is completely removed from the region of the accidental.

But, although details and their combinations in the human face and form
cannot be wrought from the imagination, the truthfulness or falsity of
their representation is instantly evident. It is because of this, that
the unity of a portrait carries conviction of its truth and of the
unimpeachability of its evidence, that this phase of art becomes
so valuable as history. Compared with the worth of Titian's Philip
II.,--the Madrid picture, of which Mr. Wild has an admirable
study,--what value can be attached to any historical composition of its
period?

It has not been the lot of Mr. Page to paint a mighty man, so inlocked
with the rugged forces of his age. His sitters have come from more
peaceful, nobler walks of life,--and their portraits are beloved even
more than they are admired. Not yet are they the pride of pompous
galleries, but the glory and saintliness of homes.

Could we enter these homes, and discuss freely the character of their
treasures, we would gladly linger in the presence of the more precious.
But so inseparably associated are they with their originals, so much
more nearly related to them than to the artist, that no fitting analysis
can be made of the representation without involving that of the
individual represented.

Three portraits have, however, such wonderful excellence, and through
this excellence have become so well known, that we may be forgiven for
alluding to them. In a former paper, the writer spoke of the portrait of
a man in his divinest development. The first of these three works is the
representation of a woman, and is truly "somewhat miraculous." It is a
face rendered impressive by the grandest repose,--a repose that pervades
the room and the soul,--a repose not to be mistaken for serenity, but
which is power in equilibrium. No brilliancy of color, no elaboration of
accessories, no intricacy of composition attracts the attention of
the observer. There is no need of these. But he who is worthy of the
privilege stands suddenly conscious of a presence such as the world has
rarely known. He feels that the embodiment before him is the record of
a great Past, as well as the reflection of a proud Present,--a Past
in which the soul has ever borne on through and above all obstacles of
discouragement and temptation to a success which was its inheritance.
He sees, too, the possibilities of the near Future; how from that fine
equipoise the soul might pass out into rare manifestations, appearing
in the sweetness and simplicity of a little child, in the fearful
tumultuousness of a Lady Macbeth, in the passionate tenderness of a
Romeo, or in the Gothic grandeur of a Scotch sorceress,--in the love of
kindred, in the fervor of friendship, and in the nobleness of the truest
womanhood.

Another portrait--can it have been painted in this century?--presents a
widely different character. We have seen the rendering of a nature made
too solemn by the possession of genius to admit of splendor of coloring.
This picture is that of ripe womanhood, manifesting itself in the
fulness of summer's goldenest light. Color, in all its richness as
color, in all its strength as a representative agent, in all its glory
as the minister of light, in all its significance as the sign and
expression of plenitude of life,--life at one with Nature;--thus we
remember it, as it hung upon the wall of that noble room in the Roman
home of Crawford.

A later portrait, and one artistically the finest of Mr. Page's
productions, although executed in Rome, has found a home in Cambridge.
Here no grave subdual of color was called for, nor was there any need of
its fullest power,--but, instead thereof, we have color in the purity
of its pearl expression. A mild lustre, inexpressibly clear, seems to
pervade the picture, and beam forth the revelation of a white soul.
Shadows there are none,--only still softer light, to carry back the
receding forms. But interest in technicalities is lost in the nobler
sense of sweet influences. We are at peace in the presence of a peace
which passeth all understanding. We are holy in the ineffable light
of immortal holiness. We are blessed in the consciousness of complete
harmony.

Surely, none but a great painter could have achieved such success;
surely, no mere painter could thus have appealed to us.

These works we have chosen to represent the artist's power in the
direction of portraiture,--not only because of their wonderful merit as
embodiments of individualism, but to illustrate a law which has not yet
had its due influence in art, but which must be the very life of its
next revival, when painting shall be borne up until it marks the
century.

We refer to the expressional power of color,--not the conventional
significance whereby certain colors have been associated arbitrarily
with mental conditions. This last has often violated all the principles
of natural relation; yet no fact is more generally accepted than
this,--that colors, from the intensity of the primitives to the last
faint tints derived therefrom, bear fixed and demonstrable relations to
the infinite moods and phases of human life. As among themselves the
hues of the palette exist in immutable conditions of positive affinity
or repulsion, so are they all related to the soul as definitely in
harmony or in discord. There has been imperfect recognition of this at
various times in the history of painting since the age of Giotto,--the
most notable examples having occurred in the Venetian school.

But even in that golden age of art, this property of color was but
rarely perceived and called into use under the guidance of principles.
Still, the sense of the value and the harmonies of colors was so keen
among the Venetian artists, that, intuitively, subjects were chosen
which required an expression admitting of the most lavish use and
magnificent display of color.

Paul Veronese, the splendor of whose conceptions seemed ever to select
the pomp and wealth of banquets and ceremonies,--Giorgione, for whom the
world revolved in an atmosphere of golden glory,--each had a fixed ideal
of noble coloring; and it is questionable whether either ever modified
that ideal for the sake of any expressional purpose.

Titian, from whom no property or capability of color was concealed,
could not forego the power which he secured through obedience to the law
of its relation to the human soul. Were we asked which among pictures is
most completely illustrative of this obedience, we should answer, "The
Entombment," in the Louvre. Each breadth of color mourns,--sky and earth
and all the conscious air are laden with sorrow.

In portraiture, however, the great master was inclined to give the full
perfection of the highest type of coloring. That rich glow which is
bestowed by the Venetian sun did, indeed, seem typical of the life
beneath it; and Titian may have been justified in bringing thither
those who were the recipients of his favors. One only did he not
invite,--Philip II.; him he placed, dark and ominous, against a sky
barred with blood.

Is it in virtue of conformity to law, and under the government of the
principles of correspondence, that Mr. Page has wrought with mind and
hand?

Otherwise it cannot be; for, in the three portraits to which allusion
has been made, such subtile distinctions of character find expression in
equally subtile differences of tint, that no touch could have been given
from vague apprehensions of truth. No ambiguity perplexes the spectator;
he beholds the inevitable.

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