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THE MENTOR 1918.06.15, No. 157, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

LEARN ONE THING EVERY DAY

JUNE 15 1918 SERIAL NO. 157

THE MENTOR

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

DEPARTMENT OF VOLUME 6 FINE ARTS NUMBER 9

TWENTY CENTS A COPY

DOES ART PAY?

"Art is a vain pursuit," says the shop-keeper. In that conviction many an immortal painter, like Corot, has, in his youth, been packed off from home by a shop-keeping parent, and made to shift for himself. "The stomach must be filled," exclaims the shop-keeper, "let Art wait on that." To which the young painter answers, "Art must find expression first. Let the stomach wait." And so the shop-keeper and painter pursue their separate ways, and it often happens, in the course of time, that they come together again. The painter gains recognition, and his pictures make him famous. The shop-keeper rises to be a millionaire merchant--and becomes a patron of Art.

It is all very well to talk, as some cultured people do, about Art as a kind of goddess that calls into existence paintings, statues, temples, and museums, but, as William C. Prime observed some years ago, "Art is, after all, a practical work. Her noblest products and her homeliest always did and do cost money. That was a wise thought, in the earliest days of Art, of the monarch who recorded on the Great Pyramid the quantity of onions, and radishes, and garlic consumed by its builders."

There are still left some who ask, 'What is the use of beauty? What is the practical good of increasing art production? How does it pay?' The life blood of modern commerce and industry is the love of beauty. A great city, its wealth and power, rest on this foundation--trade in beauty, buying and selling beauty. Is there any exaggeration in this? Begin with the lowest possible illustration and ask the questioner, 'Why are your boots polished? Why did you pay ten cents for a shine? How many thousand times ten cents are paid every day in a city for beauty of boots?'

Take from the people their love of color, their various tastes in cotton prints, and one factory would supply all the wants supplied by fifty. Consider for one instant what is the trade that supports your long avenues of stores crowded with purchasers, not only in holiday times, but all the year around. Enumerate carpets, upholstery, wall papers, furniture, handsome houses, the innumerable beauties of life that employ millions of people in their production, and you will realize that, but for the commercial and industrial love of beauty, a city would be a wilderness, steamers and railways would vanish, wealth would be poverty, population would starve. Yes, there is money in teaching people to love beautiful things.

ONE

Though Francia can hardly be ranked with the giants of Italian art, he has given us a number of placid altarpieces and a few exceptionally attractive portraits. The portrait of Federigo Gonzaga is one of the best from his brush. Francia, a shortening of Francesco, was born in Bologna, Italy, in the year 1450 or thereabout. He took the family name of the goldsmith, Raibolini, to whom he was apprenticed at the beginning of his artistic career. As a worker in metal he did some die-cutting for medals, and designed some highly decorative pieces of jewelry. We have an indication of his interest in this phase of art in the necklace worn by Federigo Gonzaga. When Lorenzo Costa, later known as the head of the Bolognese School of painters, settled in Bologna, Francia became his intimate friend, and from that time on seems to have devoted his attention to painting. As regards the graceful pose and expression of his figures, he belonged among the followers of Perugino, a painter who had a strong influence upon the work of his most illustrious pupil, Raphael. Francia's earliest dated altarpiece was completed when he was about forty-five, but he had probably been working in conjunction with Costa for a number of years before that time. Professor John C. Van Dyke, in his "History of Painting," tells us that Francia's "color was usually cold, his drawing a little sharp at first, as showing the goldsmith's hand, the surfaces smooth, the detail elaborate." Francia died in the year 1517.

The tale of the way in which the commission was received to paint the portrait shown in this gravure is interesting. Federigo was the son of Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, and Isabella d'Este, the famous art patron. While fighting in the company of the Milanese against the Venetians at Legnago, the Marquis was captured, but through the intervention of the pope was liberated. However, the pope demanded as a hostage Francesco's son, Federigo, then ten years of age, stipulating that he be sent to the papal court at Rome. The boy's mother, on being parted from him, insisted that she have a portrait of him, and on the journey to Rome, in July, 1510, he halted at Bologna, where his father was, and visited the studio of Francia. In ten days the artist had completed the portrait with the exception of the background, which was finished later. The noble mother was much pleased with the result, and in expressing her gratification to the painter sent him thirty ducats of gold. We have in her own words the statement that "it is impossible to see a better portrait or a closer resemblance."

The panel, a singularly perfect example of Francia's careful manner of painting, passed from Isabella d'Este to a gentleman who had done her a service, and thereafter remained in obscurity until, over three centuries later, it appeared in a London auction room in the collection of Prince Jerome Bonaparte. Later it came into the possession of Mr. Altman, who bequeathed it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

TWO

The keeping of a few dates in mind greatly aids in understanding Rembrandt's pictures. His birth date has been variously given as 1605, 1606, and 1607. Rembrandt's story has been told at length in previous numbers of The Mentor. It is said that "whatever he turned to was treated with that breadth of view that overlooked the little and grasped the great." His earliest work dates from 1627. In 1632 came his first great success, the famous "Lesson in Anatomy." He was at that time living in Amsterdam, having moved there from his birth city, Leyden, Holland. Pupils and patrons flocked to his studios, and the world was very bright. He became the best-known portrait painter of the richest art and commercial center of Holland. In 1634 he married Saskia van Uylenborch, daughter of an aristocratic family and a young girl of attractive qualities, who brought him many friends and bore him four children. Rembrandt loved his wife devotedly. He made many portraits of her, including one of her with himself that hangs in the Royal Gallery at Dresden. In 1641, the fourth child was born, a son, whom they named Titus. A portrait of this "Golden Lad," as his father liked to call him, hangs in the Metropolitan Museum. It was painted when he was fourteen: "The wide-set eyes and full upper lids mark his artistic inheritance, but the far-away haunting expression seems a premonition of his death in early manhood." Saskia's death came in 1642, when Titus was less than a year old.

Broken by the loss of his wife, Rembrandt continued to paint under increasingly bitter circumstances, but his work showed no diminution in merit, only a deeper feeling. When he was about thirty-five he received an order to paint Captain Banning Cock's company of Dutch musketeers. His manner of handling the lights and shadows of this renowned masterpiece was misunderstood by French writers of a later period, who called it "The Night Patrol," and Sir Joshua Reynolds, falling into the same error, named it "The Night Watch," instead of "The Day Watch." Great dissatisfaction followed the original exhibition of this sortie of the civic guards through the jealousy of those that thought they had been slighted in the composition of the grouping. This dissatisfaction cost Rembrandt much subsequent patronage, and thereafter he was no longer the darling of Amsterdam, but a man saddened by personal griefs and overwhelmed by adversity.

"The Mill," now in the Widener Collection in Philadelphia, was executed during this dark period of Rembrandt's life. Under the same influences he painted "The Old Woman Cutting Her Nails," judged one of the rarest gems of all the Rembrandt pictures owned in this country. It portrays the sympathetic feeling of the artist for old age, and is "typical of the careworn, sorrow-wrecked woman of all time." Says a critic, "This picture is simply of a poor old woman intent on cutting her nails, with a pair of sheep-shears it seems, yet we are overcome with the power of it--no details, dull in color, homely in subject, but bathed with a light that never was on land or sea. Rembrandt's light! What cared he for poverty or neglect with such a comforter at hand?" The "Portrait of Rembrandt" in the Museum was painted by himself when he was fifty-four, and is one of about sixty self-portraits. In 1668, he painted the "Man with a Magnifying Glass." This, too, hangs in the Museum, and also the grim "Pilate Washing His Hands." The last picture purchased by Mr. Altman, whose entire collection was obtained in the space of a few years, was "The Toilet of Bathsheba," thought by many judges to be the loveliest of Rembrandt's pictures that tell a story. It was painted in 1643.

Rembrandt died in 1669. Twelve years before, he had been sold out of house and home. It is said that there are in America today more paintings by this greatest of Dutch masters than in any one country of Europe. Thirteen pictures signed by him became a part of the Altman Collection. There are now about one hundred Rembrandt paintings owned in this country. The "Orphan Girl at Window" is in the Art Institute, Chicago. Mr. Frick, of New York, acquired the so-called "Polish Rider" and "Rembrandt Seated." Other examples of Rembrandt's genius are in galleries in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Cincinnati.

THREE

The Metropolitan Museum offers an unusual chance for the study of Van Dyck's portraits, though it possesses none of his figure subjects. In point of time, the "Portrait of a Man" from the Marquand Collection in the Museum is probably the earliest of the eight portraits attributed to him. For a long time it was attributed to Van Dyck's master, Rubens. The "Portrait of a Lady" from the same source, seems also to belong to the first Antwerp period. Van Dyck was born in Antwerp on March 22, 1599. In 1621, when he was twenty-two years of age, Rubens advised him to visit Italy. Aside from some occasional journeys, he seems to have spent his time at Genoa, and for nearly five years he painted the nobility of that thriving port. It was during these years that the "Marchesa Durazzo" of the Altman Collection was done, as was also the portrait of his friend and fellow-townsman, Lucas van Uffel, whose activities as a merchant had brought him to Genoa. Upon his return Van Dyck worked for five years in Antwerp, painting during that time many altarpieces and religious subjects for the churches and chapels of the city. The portrait of Baron Arnold Le Roy was probably painted within this period.

The portraits of the famous art patron, The Earl of Arundel and his grandson, and of James Stuart, Duke of Lennox, came in this period, when the artist's short life of forty-two years was drawing to a close. The Duke of Lennox was a cousin of the king, who created him first Duke of Richmond. The Duke is said to have offered to ascend the scaffold in the place of his noble cousin when Charles I was condemned. Whether the rank of the sitter prevented Van Dyck from allowing his assistants to have anything to do with the portrait we cannot know positively, but seldom has a more superb portrait come from his brush. How remorselessly the weakness of his character is given! Note the mastery in the placing of the star of the Order of the Garter, and the emphasis given to the devotion of the superbly painted greyhound.

There came into the market a few years ago a number of portraits from one of the old Genoese palaces, where they had hung since Van Dyck painted them. A majority of these pictures passed into American collections. Two were secured by Mr. Frick, and three more became a part of the Widener Collection in Philadelphia, where they hang in the company of two others of this master's fine canvases.

FOUR

Less than two score of Vermeer's pictures are known to us today, and, of these, eight or nine are now in the United States. Any one of them is worth a fortune. In this case artistic and commercial values go together. Little is known about Vermeer. The dates of his birth and death have been found in his native Delft. There he lived and worked for forty-three years. An early traveler, describing Delft, mentions Vermeer, and states that his pictures were much sought after. They were originally valued at six hundred livres, equivalent to about one hundred and fifty dollars, in those days considered a large sum. Vermeer's family was large, and he was fairly prosperous. But after his death, for some unknown reason, he seems soon to have been forgotten. Houbraken, the chronicler of the Dutch painters, did not mention him, and this neglect possibly accounts partly for the oblivion into which his work sank.

The reason why Vermeer's contemporary fame was not greater is not far to seek. The Dutch artists were all finished craftsmen. De Hooch, Terborch, and Metsu are painters of the same high rank as Vermeer. Jan Steen, the Van Ostades, and some of the lesser men were hardly inferior. Moreover, not only was there little traveling on the part of the art patrons in those days, but the artist could seldom think of moving from one town to another because he would have had to purchase burgher-rights and guild-rights in each new place of residence. After settling, and having once established a demand for their pictures, we seldom find the Dutch artists moving on to evils they knew not of in other cities. In consequence, the artist's fame, however well-deserved, rarely spread beyond a very limited range. Vermeer's early death and the small number of pictures finished by him prevented his work from being widely known, and contributed more than anything else to its being soon forgotten.

In 1866, interest in Vermeer revived through the publications of E. T. J. Thore, who wrote under the pen name of W. B?rger. The greater part of Vermeer's pictures consist of light-flooded interiors, with usually but a single figure. Sometimes a "Music Lesson" will show master and pupil, but seldom are there more than three or four figures. There are two famous outdoor scenes--the smaller in the Jan Six Collection at Amsterdam, the larger in the Maritshuis at The Hague. Then there are three or four portraits, surrounded by atmosphere, and brilliant in lighting. Lastly there are a few canvases very different from any of these others, painted with a broad brush on a larger scale and with great fluency. This seems to be the style towards which Vermeer was changing when he died. Five of this artist's pictures were shown at the Hudson-Fulton Exhibition. The one in the Altman Collection has suffered seriously through cleaning and restoration, and is not so fine as the subject of this gravure.

FIVE

His love of color is well shown in the "Salome." The model was an Italian gypsy girl of the Campagna , and it was not until the picture was well advanced that this title was given to it. It is hardly as a characterization of the light-footed daughter of Herodias that the painting charms, though the naming was apt. Its attraction lies in the marvelous harmony of yellows, and in its daring reversal of the Rembrandt method. Rembrandt surrounded his light with shadow--here there is the shining black of the touseled head in the midst of gleaming silk and radiant spangles.

Everything superfluous has been eliminated. What detail there is,--the chest, the salver, the rug, is all in keeping with the design as a whole. No description can do justice to the handling of the textiles, or suggest the accuracy of their values. The marvel of it is how so many tones of yellow could be heaped one upon the other without wearying the eye.

Two of his pictures, a portrait of General Prim and the "Execution without Judgment under the Caliphs," are in the Louvre. One of his finest canvases, "Automedon with the Horses of Achilles," is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. A study for the Boston picture is in a private gallery in Philadelphia.

That the Metropolitan Museum should have so splendid an example of Constable's style is most fortunate. For it is just the richness and glow of color that are seen in the "Glebe Farm" that make the "Cornfield," the "Hay Wain" and the "Valley Farm" of the London National Gallery so supremely fine. While not so ambitious as these or the much larger "White Horse," shown at the time the paintings of the J. Pierpont Morgan Collection were on exhibition, it is quite in the same class.

Constable's struggle for recognition was long and arduous. After persistent opposition on the part of his fianc?e's family, he was married when forty years old. There followed twelve years of happiness; the death of his wife at the end of that time was a blow from which Constable never recovered. His election as an Academician came within three months of her death, but his reply to the announcement was, "It has been delayed until I am solitary and cannot impart it."

Constable was born in Suffolk County, England, June 11, 1776, and lived to be sixty-one years of age. He became a student at the Royal Academy when he was twenty-three. Three years later he exhibited his first picture. Strangely enough, his work was appreciated in France before it won its way at home. He exerted a marked influence upon the rising school of French landscape painters. A medal was awarded him for pictures exhibited at the Salon in 1824, and the next year the "White Horse" won another for him at Lille. During the early years of his career, commissions for portraits were undertaken as a temporary relief to his finances. One of the best of these portraits hangs in the Hearn Collection at the Metropolitan Museum.

Constable's pictures are very uneven in merit, but whether successful or not, there is always evident a sturdy love for nature and a faithful effort to record her moods. He never painted anything but his beloved England, and few of her artist-lovers have surpassed him in depicting her rural beauties. Many of his canvases are as glowing with color as a hillside after a shower. His compositions are seldom grandiloquent, as are some of Turner's, but even Turner did not have a better eye for the dramatic placing of a thunder-cloud. Like Corot, Constable portrayed again and again a few scenes and localities that he knew thoroughly, painting first from one angle and then changing to a new point of view. The sincerity of the artist speaks from even the hastiest sketch. England no longer withholds her admiration for his work; his pictures now command the prices brought by "old masters."

THE MENTOR ? ? JUNE 15, 1918

DEPARTMENT OF FINE ARTS

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

PORTRAIT OF FEDERIGO GONZAGA

OLD WOMAN CUTTING HER NAILS

JAMES STUART, DUKE OF LENNOX

YOUNG WOMAN WITH A WATER-JUG

SALOME

GLEBE FARM, WITH THE TOWER OF LANGHAM CHURCH

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among all the art collections in our country, undoubtedly has the best claim to first importance, and is becoming more and more a place of pilgrimage for the hosts that visit New York each year.

The Metropolitan Museum has grown so that it is no longer to be compassed in a morning visit. The pictures alone require more than that, many times more, and they form but one department. Much greater benefit will come from part of a day or a whole day spent with a single school of painting. As far as possible, this is the way in which the pictures are hung, but several bequests have been conditional upon their being kept intact, and a trip from one end of the building to the other is sometimes necessary to compare pictures by the same artist. The paintings now owned number about twelve hundred. Not all of these are on exhibition, but loaned pictures bring the total to about that figure.

New York was founded by the Dutch, and it is a singular coincidence that the Dutch School is the strongest at the Metropolitan Museum. Both Hals and Rembrandt, the leaders of this school, are well represented, and in few European museums can Rembrandt and his school be studied to better purpose. Hals was born in 1584, Rembrandt in 1606. Rembrandt worked in Amsterdam, Hals at Haarlem, only fourteen miles away. There are several pictures attributed to Hals, the elder and younger, and the number is sometimes increased by loans. "The Merry Company," in the Altman Collection, is more pretentious than the others, but if it could be hung between the two portraits in the Marquand Room at the head of the main stairway, it would seem garish alongside the masterly treatment of the blacks in the "Portrait of a Man," or the wonderful drawing of the hands in the "Portrait of a Woman."

The pictures by Rembrandt and his school are the chief glories of the Museum--no less than sixteen pictures are attributed to his hand. In an earlier number of The Mentor, Rembrandt's three styles have been clearly distinguished. It is to the first or "gray" period that the "Portrait of a Man" belongs, and most admirably does it represent the class. "The Man with a Steel Gorget" falls in the middle or "golden" period. The greater part of the pictures belong to the late period--the years in which fortune no longer smiled, and sorrow succeeded sorrow. The portrait of Titus, his son, while still a lad, must have come early in this period, and before troubles thickened. A few years later comes the "Old Woman Cutting Her Nails," hailed by many as the finest of the Museum's Rembrandts, but different from anything else by him there. Hanging beside it is the "Lady with a Pink"--a portrait with an overpowering sense of reserve force. What luminous shadows and what living color it has! So also with its companion piece, though to a lesser degree. Compare them with the two portraits of men in the Dutch Room at the other end of the building. They too come in the late period. What tremendous dignity and poise show forth from these canvases!

Gerard Dou worked under Rembrandt in the "gray" period. The small, crisp "Portrait of the Artist" shows his change of style after leaving the studio. Dou trimmed his sails to catch the wind of fashion, a thing that Rembrandt refused to do. Another pupil, Nicolaes Maes, worked with Rembrandt during the "golden" period. He gives us a brilliant piece of color, a "Young Girl Peeling Apples," in which the glow of red warms all the panel. Aert de Gelder portrays a sturdy "Dutch Admiral," and there is one of the far-stretching Dutch landscapes by Philip de Koninck.

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