Books: Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6
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Elbert Hubbard >> Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6
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Turner and Corot trace back to the same artistic ancestor. It was
Claude who first fired the heart of the barber's boy, and it was
Claude who diluted the zeal of Camille Corot for ribbons and
haberdashery.
Turner stipulated in his will that a certain picture of his should
hang on the walls of the National Gallery by the side of a "Claude
Lorraine"; and today in the Louvre you can see, side by side, a
"Corot" and a "Claude." These men are strangely akin; yet, so far as
I know, Corot never heard of Turner. However, he was powerfully
influenced by Constable, the English painter, who was of the same
age as Turner, and for a time, his one bitter rival.
Claude had been dead a hundred years before Constable, Turner or
Corot was born. But time is an illusion; all souls are of one age,
and in spirit these men were contemporaries and brothers. Claude,
Corot and Turner never married--they were wedded to art. Constable
ripened fast; he got his reward of golden guineas, and society
caught him in its silken mesh. Success came faster than he was able
to endure it, and he fell a victim to fatty degeneration of the
cerebrum, and died of an acute attack of self-complacency.
It was about the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-two that Constable
gave an exhibition of his work in Paris--a somewhat daring thing for
an Englishman to do. Paris had then, and has yet, about the same
estimate of English art that the English have now of ours--although
it is quite in order to explain in parentheses that three Americans,
Whistler, Sargent and Abbey, have recently called a halt on English
ribaldry as applied to American artists.
But John Constable's exhibit in Paris met with favor--the work was
singularly like the work of Claude Lorraine, the critics said. And
it was, for Constable had copied Claude conscientiously. Corot saw
the Englishman's pictures, realized that they were just such
pictures as he would like to paint, and so fell down and worshiped
them. For a year he dropped Claude and painted just like Constable.
There was a time when Turner and Constable painted just alike, for
they had the same master; but there came a day when Turner shoved
out from shore, and no man since has been able to follow him.
And no one can copy Corot. The work that he did after he attained
freedom and swung away from Claude and Constable has an illusive,
intangible, subtle and spiritual quality that no imitator can ever
catch on his canvas. Corot could not even copy his own pictures--his
work is born of the spirit. His effects are something beyond skill
of hand, something beyond mere knowledge of technique. You can copy
a Claude and you can copy a Constable, for the pictures have well-
defined outline and the forms are tangible. Claude was the first
painter who showed the shimmering sunlight on the leaves, the
upturned foliage of the silver poplar, the yellow willows bending
beneath the breeze, the sweep of the clouds across the sky, the play
of the waves across the seashore, the glistening dewdrops on the
grass, the soft stealing mists of twilight.
Constable did all this, too, and he did it as well as Claude, but no
better. He never got beyond the stage of microscopic portrayal; if
he painted a dewdrop he painted it, and his blades of grass, swaying
lily-stems, and spider-webs are the genuine articles.
Corot painted in this minute way for many years, but gradually he
evolved a daring quality and gave us the effect of dewdrops, the
spider-threads, the foliage, the tall lilies, without painting them
at all--he gives you the feeling, that is all, stirs the imagination
until the beholder, if his heart be in tune, sees things that only
the spiritual eye beholds.
The pale, silvery tones of Corot, the shadowy boundaries that
separate the visible from the invisible, can never be imitated
without the Master's penetration into the heart of Nature. He knew
things he could never explain, and he held secrets he could not
impart. Before his pictures we can only stand silent--he disarms
criticism and strikes the quibbler dumb. Before a Corot you had
better give way, and let its beauty caress your soul. His colors are
thin and very simple--there is no challenge in his work, as there is
in the work of Turner. Greens and grays predominate, and the plain
drab tones are blithe, airy, gracious, graceful and piquant as a
beautiful young Quaker woman clothed in the garb of simplicity and
humility--but a woman still. Corot coquettes with color--with pale
lilac, silver gray, and diaphanous green. He poetizes everything he
touches--quiet ponds, clumps of bushes, whitewashed cottages, simple
swards, yellow cows, blowsy peasants, woodland openings, stretching
meadows and winding streams--they are all full of divine suggestion
and joyous expectancy. Something is just going to happen--somebody
is coming, some one we love--you can almost detect a faint perfume,
long remembered, never to be forgotten. A Corot is a tryst with all
that you most admire and love best--it speaks of youth, joyous,
hopeful, expectant youth. The flavor is Grecian, and if the Greeks
had left us any paintings they would all have been just like
Corot's.
The bubbling, boyish good-cheer that Corot possessed is well shown
in a letter he once wrote to Stevens Graham. This letter was
written, without doubt, in that fine intoxication which comes after
work well done; and no greater joy ever comes to a mortal in life
than this.
George Moore tells somewhere of catching Corot in one of these moods
of rapture: the Master was standing alone on a log in the woods,
like a dancing faun, leading an imaginary orchestra with silent but
tremendous gusto. At other times, when Corot captured certain
effects in a picture, he would rush across the fields to where there
was a peasant plowing, and seizing the astonished man, would lead
him over and stand him before the canvas crying: "Look at that! Ah,
now, look at that! What did I tell you! You thought I never could
catch it--Oho, aha, ohe, tralala, la, la, la, loo!"
This willingness to let the unrestrained spirit romp was strong in
Corot--and it is to be recommended. How much finer it is to go out
into the woods and lift up your voice in song, and be a child, than
to fight inclination and waste good God-given energy endeavoring to
be proper--whatever that may be!
Corot never wrote anything finer than that letter to his friend
Graham, and, like all really good things, it was written with no
weather-eye on futurity. The thought that it might be published
never came to him, for if it had, he would probably have produced
something not worth publishing. It was scribbled off with a pencil,
hot from the heart, out of doors, immediately after having done a
particularly choice bit of work. Every one who writes of Corot
quotes this letter, and there are various translations of it. It can
not be translated literally, because the language in which it was
written is effervescent, flashing, in motion like a cascade. It
defies all grammar, forgets rhetoric, and simply makes you feel. I
have just as good a right to translate this letter as anybody, and
while I will add nothing that the spirit of the text does not
justify, I will omit a few things, and follow my own taste in the
matter of paragraphing.
So here is the letter:
A landscapist's day is divine. You are jealous of the moments, and
so are up at three o'clock--long before the sun sets you the
example.
You go out into the silence and sit under a tree, and watch and
watch and wait and wait.
It is very dark--the nightingales have gone to bed, all the
mysterious noises of night's forenoon have ceased--the crickets are
asleep, the tree-toad has found a nest--even the stars have slunk
away.
You wait.
There is scarcely anything to be seen at first--only dark, spectral
shapes that stand out against the blue-black of the sky.
Nature is behind a veil, upon which some masses of form are vaguely
sketched. The damp, sweet smell of the incense of Spring is in the
air--you breathe deeply--a sense of religious emotion sweeps over
you--you close your eyes an instant in a prayer of thankfulness that
you are alive.
You do not keep your eyes closed long, though--something is about to
happen--you grow expectant, you wait, you listen, you hold your
breath--everything trembles with a delight that is half-pain, under
the invigorating caress of the coming day.
You breathe fast, and then you hold your breath and listen.
You wait.
You peer.
You listen.
Bing! A ray of pale yellow light shoots from horizon to zenith. The
dawn does not come all at once: it steals upon you by leaps and
subtle strides like deploying pickets.
Bing! Another ray, and the first one is suffusing itself across an
arc of the purple sky.
Bing, Bing! The east is all aglow.
The little flowers at your feet are waking in joyful mood.
The chirrup of birds is heard. How they do sing! When did they
begin? You forgot them in watching the rays of light.
The flowers are each one drinking its drop of quivering dew.
The leaves feel the cool breath of the morning, and are moving to
and fro in the invigorating air.
The flowers are saying their morning prayers, accompanied by the
matin-song of the birds.
Amoretti, with gauzy wings, are perching on the tall blades of grass
that spring from the meadows, and the tall stems of the poppies and
field-lilies are swaying, swaying, swaying a minuet motion fanned by
the kiss of the gentle breeze.
Oh, how beautiful it all is! How good God is to send it! How
beautiful! how beautiful!
But merciful easel! I am forgetting to paint--this exhibition is for
me, and I'm failing to improve it. My palette--the brushes--there!
there!
We can see nothing--but you feel the landscape is there--quick now,
a cottage away over yonder is pushing out of the white mist. To
thine easel--go!
Oh! it's all there behind the translucent gauze--I know it--I know
it--I know it!
Now the white mist lifts like a curtain--it rises and rises and
rises.
Bam! the sun is risen.
I see the river, like a stretch of silver ribbon; it weaves in and
out and stretches away, away, away.
The masses of the trees, of the meads, the meadows--the poplars, the
leaning willows, are all revealed by the mist that is reeling and
rolling up the hillside.
I paint and I paint and I paint, and I sing and I sing and I paint!
We can see now all we guessed before.
Bam, Bam! The sun is just above the horizon--a great golden ball
held in place by spider-threads.
I can see the lace made by the spiders--it sparkles with the drops
of dew.
I paint and I paint and I sing and I paint.
Oh, would I were Joshua--I would command the sun to stand still.
And if it should, I would be sorry, for nothing ever did stand
still, except a bad picture. A good picture is full of motion.
Clouds that stand still are not clouds--motion, activity, life, yes,
life is what we want--life!
Bam! A peasant comes out of the cottage and is coming to the meadow.
Ding, ding, ding! There comes a flock of sheep led by a bellwether.
Wait there a minute, please, sheepy-sheepy, and a great man will
paint you.
All right then, don't wait. I didn't want to paint you anyway
Bam! All things break into glistening--ten thousand diamonds strew
the grasses, the lilies and the tall stalks of swaying poppies.
Diamonds on the cobwebs--diamonds everywhere. Glistening, dancing,
glittering light--floods of light--pale, wistful, loving light:
caressing, blushing, touching, beseeching, grateful light. Oh,
adorable light! The light of morning that comes to show you things--
and I paint and I paint and I paint.
Oh, the beautiful red cow that plunges into the wet grass up to her
dewlaps! I will paint her. There she is--there!
Here is Simon, my peasant friend, looking over my shoulder.
"Oho, Simon, what do you think of that?"
"Very fine," says Simon, "very fine!"
"You see what it is meant for, Simon?"
"Me? Yes, I should say I do--it is a big red rock."
"No, no, Simon, that is a cow."
"Well, how should I know unless you tell me," answers Simon.
I paint and I paint and I paint.
Boom! Boom! The sun is getting clear above the treetops.
It is growing hot.
The flowers droop.
The birds are silent.
We can see too much now--there is nothing in it. Art is a matter of
soul. Things you see and know all about are not worth painting--only
the intangible is splendid.
Let's go home. We will dine, and sleep, and dream. That's it--I'll
dream of the morning that would not tarry--I'll dream my picture
out, and then I'll get up and smoke, and complete it, possibly--who
knows!
Let's go home.
* * * * *
Bam! Bam! It is evening now--the sun is setting. I didn't know the
close of the day could be so beautiful--I thought the morning was
the time.
But it is not just right--the sun is setting in an explosion of
yellow, of orange, of rouge-feu, of cherry, of purple.
Ah! it is pretentious, vulgar. Nature wants me to admire her--I will
not. I'll wait--the sylphs of the evening will soon come and
sprinkle the thirsty flowers with their vapors of dew.
I like sylphs--I'll wait.
Boom! The sun sinks out of sight, and leaves behind a tinge of
purple, of modest gray touched with topaz--ah! that is better. I
paint and I paint and I paint.
Oh, Good Lord, how beautiful it is--how beautiful! The sun has
disappeared and left behind a soft, luminous, gauzy tint of lemon--
lemons half-ripe. The light melts and blends into the blue of the
night.
How beautiful! I must catch that--even now it fades--but I have it:
tones of deepening green, pallid turquoise, infinitely fine,
delicate, fluid and ethereal.
Night draws on. The dark waters reflect the mysteries of the sky--
the landscape fades, vanishes, disappears--we can not see it now, we
only feel it is there.
But that is enough for one day--Nature is going to sleep, and so
will we, soon. Let us just sit silent a space and enjoy the
stillness.
The rising breezes are sighing through the foliage, and the birds,
choristers of the flowers, are singing their vesper-songs--calling,
some of them, plaintively for their lost mates.
Bing! A star pricks its portrait in the pond.
All around now is darkness and gloom--the crickets have taken up the
song where the birds left off.
The little lake is sparkling, a regular ant-heap of twinkling stars.
Reflected things are best--the waters are only to reflect the sky--
Nature's looking-glass.
The sun has gone to rest; the day is done. But the Sun of Art has
arisen, and my picture is complete.
Let us go home.
The Barbizon School--which, by the way, was never a school, and if
it exists now is not at Barbizon--was made up of five men: Corot,
Millet, Rousseau, Diaz and Daubigny.
Corot saw it first--this straggling little village of Barbizon,
nestling there at the foot of the Forest of Fontainebleau, thirty-
five miles southeast of Paris. This was about the year Eighteen
Hundred Thirty. There was no market then for Corot's wares, and the
artist would have doubted the sanity of any one who might have
wanted to buy. His income was one dollar a day--and this was enough.
If he wanted to go anywhere, he walked; and so he walked into
Barbizon one day, his pack on his back, and found there a little
inn, so quaint and simple that he stayed two days.
The landlord quite liked the big, jolly stranger. Hanging upon his
painting outfit was a mandolin, a harmonica, a guitar and two or
three other small musical instruments of nondescript pedigree. The
painter made music for the village, and on invitation painted a
sketch on the tavern-wall to pay for his board. And this sketch is
there even to this day, and is as plain to be seen as the splash of
ink on the wall at Eisenach where Martin Luther threw the ink-bottle
at the devil.
When Corot went back to Paris he showed sketches of Barbizon and
told of the little snuggery, where life was so simple and cheap.
Soon Rousseau and Diaz went down to Barbizon for a week's stay--
later came Daubigny.
In the course of a few years Barbizon grew to be a kind of excursion
point for artistic and ragged Bohemians, most of whom have done
their work, and their little life is now rounded with a sleep.
Rousseau, Diaz and Daubigny, all younger men than Corot, made
comfortable fortunes long before Corot got the speaker's eye; and
when at last recognition came to him, not the least of their claim
to greatness was that they had worked with him.
It was not until Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine that Jean Francois
Millet with his goodly brood was let down from the stage at
Barbizon, to work there for twenty-six years, and give himself and
the place immortality. For when we talk of the Barbizon School, we
have the low tones of "The Fagot-Gatherer" in mind--the browns, the
russets and the deep, dark yellows fading off into the gloom of
dying day.
And only a few miles away, clinging to the hillside, is By, where
lived Rosa Bonheur--too busy to care for Barbizon, or if she thought
of the "Barbizon School" it was with a fine contempt, which the
"School" returned with usurious interest.
At the Barbizon Inn the Bohemians used to sing songs about the
Bonheur breeches, and "the Lady who keeps a Zoo." The offense of
Rosa Bonheur was that she minded her own business, and sold the
"Horse Fair" for more money than the entire Barbizon School had ever
earned in its lifetime.
Only two names loom large out of Barbizon. Daubigny, Diaz and
Rousseau are great painters, and they each have disciples and
imitators who paint as well as they; but Corot and Millet stand out
separate and alone, incomprehensible and unrivaled.
And yet were ever two artists more unlike! Just compare "The Dancing
Sylphs" and "The Gleaners." The theme of all Millet's work is, "Man
goeth forth to his labors unto the evening." Toil, hardship, heroic
endurance, plodding monotony, burdens grievous to be borne--these
things cover the canvases of Millet. All of his deep sincerity, his
abiding melancholy, his rugged nobility are there; for every man who
works in freedom simply reproduces himself. That is what true work
is--self-expression, self-revelation. The style of Millet is so
strongly marked, so deeply etched, that no man dare imitate it. It
is covered by a perpetual copyright, signed and sealed with the
life's blood of the artist. Then comes Corot the joyous, Corot the
careless, Corot who had no troubles, no sorrows, no grievances, and
not an enemy that he recognized as such. He even loved Rosa Bonheur,
or would, he once said, "If she would only chain up her dog, and
wear woman's clothes!" Corot, singing at his work, unless he was
smoking, and if he was smoking, removing his pipe only to lift up
his voice in song: Corot, painting and singing--"Ah ha--tra la la.
Now I 'll paint a little boy--oho, oho, tra lala la loo--lal loo--
oho--what a nice little boy--and here comes a cow; hold that, bossy
--in you go for art's dear sake--tra la la la, la loo!"
Look at a Corot closely and listen, and you can always hear the echo
of the pipes o' Pan. Lovers sit on the grassy banks, children roll
among the leaves, sylphs dance in every open, and out from between
the branches lightly steps Orpheus, harp in hand, to greet the morn.
Never is there a shadow of care in a Corot--all is mellow with love,
ripe with the rich gift of life, full of prayer and praise just for
the rapture of drinking in the day--grateful for calm, sweet rest
and eventide.
Corot, eighteen years the senior of Millet, was the first to welcome
the whipped-out artist to Barbizon. With him Corot divided his
scanty store; he sang and played his guitar at the Millet
hearthstone when he had nothing but himself to give; and when, in
Eighteen Hundred Seventy-five, Millet felt the chill night of death
settling down upon him, and the fear that want would come to his
loved ones haunted his dreams, Corot assured him by settling upon
the family the sum of one thousand francs a year, until the youngest
child should become of age, and during Madame Millet's life.
So died Jean Francois Millet.
In Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine "The Angelus" was bought by an
American Syndicate for five hundred eighty thousand francs. In
Eighteen Hundred Ninety it was bought back by agents of the French
Government for seven hundred fifty thousand francs, and now has
found a final resting-place in the Louvre.
Within a few months after the death of Millet, Corot, too, passed
away.
Corot is a remarkable example of a soul ripening slowly. His skill
was not at its highest until he was seventy-one years of age. He
then had eight years of life and work left, and he continued even to
the end. In his art there was no decline.
It can not be said that he received due recognition until he was
approaching his seventy-fifth year, for it was then, for the first
time, that the world of buyers besieged his door. The few who had
bought before were usually friends who had purchased with the
amiable idea of helping a worthy man.
During the last few years of Corot's life, his income was over fifty
thousand francs a year--"more than I received for pictures during my
whole career," he once said. And then he shed tears at parting with
the treasures that had been for so long his close companions.
"You see, I am a collector," he used to say, "but being poor, I have
to paint all my pictures myself--they are not for sale."
And probably he would have kept his collection unbroken were it not
that he wanted the money so much to give away.
Of the painters classed in the Barbizon School, it is probable that
Corot will live longest, and will continue to occupy the highest
position. His art is more individual than Rousseau's, more poetic
than that of Daubigny, and in every sense more beautiful than that
of Millet. When Camille Corot passed out, on the Twenty-second of
February, Eighteen Hundred Seventy-five, he was the best-loved man
in Paris. Five thousand art-students wore crape on their arms for a
year in memory of "Papa Corot," a man who did his work joyously,
lived long, and to the end carried in his heart the perfume of the
morning, and the beneficent beauty of the sunrise.
CORREGGIO
What genius disclosed all these wonders to thee? All the fair
images in the world seem to have sprung forward to meet thee, and to
throw themselves lovingly into thy arms. How joyous was the
gathering when smiling angels held thy palette, and sublime spirits
stood before thy inward vision in all their splendor as models! Let
no one think he has seen Italy, let no one think he has learnt the
lofty secrets of art, until he has seen thee and thy Cathedral at
Parma, O Correggio!
--_Ludwig Tieck_
[Illustration: Correggio]
There is no moment that comes to mortals so charged with peace and
precious joy as the moment of reconciliation. If the angels ever
attend us, they are surely present then. The ineffable joy of
forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstacy that well might arouse
the envy of the gods. How well the theologians have understood this!
Very often, no doubt, their psychology has been more experimental
than scientific--but it is effective. They plunge the candidate into
a gloom of horror, guilt and despair; and then when he is thoroughly
prostrated--submerged--they lift him out and up into the light, and
the thought of reconciliation possesses him.
He has made peace with his Maker!
That is to say, he has made peace with himself--peace with his
fellowmen. He is intent on reparation; he wishes to forgive every
one. He sings, he dances, he leaps into the air, clasps his hands in
joy, embraces those nearest him, and calls aloud, "Glory to God!
Glory to God!" It is the moment of reconciliation. Yet there is a
finer temperament than that of the "new convert," and his moment of
joy is one of silence--sacred silence.
In the Parma Gallery is the painting entitled, "The Day," the
masterpiece of Correggio. The picture shows the Madonna, Saint
Jerome, Saint John and the Christ-child. A second woman is shown in
the picture. This woman is usually referred to as Magdalene, and to
me she is the most important figure in it. She may lack a little of
the ethereal beauty of the Madonna, but the humanness of the pose,
the tenderness and subtle joy of it, shows you that she is a woman
indeed, a woman the artist loved--he wanted to paint her picture,
and Saint Jerome, the Madonna and the Christ-child are only excuses.
John Ruskin, good and great, but with prejudices that matched his
genius, declared this picture "immoral in its suggestiveness." It is
so splendidly, superbly human that he could not appreciate it. Yet
this figure of which he complains is draped from neck to ankle--the
bare feet are shown--but the attitude is sweetly, tenderly modest.
The woman, half-reclining, leans her face over and allows her cheek,
very gently, to press against that of the Christ-child. Absolute
relaxation is shown, perfect trust--no tension, no anxiety, no
passion--only a stillness and rest, a gratitude and subdued peace
that are beyond speech. The woman is so happy that she can not
speak, so full of joy that she dare not express it, and a barely
perceptible tear-stain upon her cheek suggests that this peace has
not always been. She has found her Savior--she is His and He is
hers.
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