III

PLATE--DANIEL

This wonderful painting is a part of the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. The picture of the prophet tells so much initself, that a description seems absurd. It is enough to call attention to the powerful muscles in the arm, the fall of the hand, and then to speak of the main characteristics of the artist's pictures.

It is extraordinary that there is no blade of grass to be found in any painting by Michael Angelo. He loved to paint but one thing, and that was the naked man, the powerful muscles, or the twisted limbs of those in great agony. He loved only to work upon vast spaces of ceiling or wall. Look at this picture of Daniel and see how like sculpture the pose and modelling appear to be. First of all, Michael Angelo was a sculptor, and most of the painting which fate forced him to do has the characteristics of sculpture.

One critic has remarked that he loves to think of this strange man sitting before the marble quarry of Pietra Santa and thinking upon all the beings hidden in the cliff--beings which he should fashion from the marble.

It was said that in Michael Angelo's hands the Holy Family became a race of Titans, and where others would have put plants or foliage, Angelo placed men and naked limbs to fill the space. When his subject made some sort of herbage necessary, he invented a kind of mediæval fern in place of grass and familiar leaves. Everything appears brazen and hard and mighty, suggestive of Angelo's own throbbing spirit and maddened soul. Mostof his work, when illustrated, must be shown not as a whole but in sections, but one can best mention them as entire picture themes. On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are nine frescoes describing "The Creation of The World," "The Fall of Man" and "The Deluge." "The Last Judgment" occupies the entire altar wall in the same chapel of the Vatican. "The Holy Family" is in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

(Pronounced Bek'-lin)Modern German School (Düsseldorf)1827-1901

This splendid artist is so lately dead that it does not seem proper yet to discuss his personal history, but we can speak understandingly of his art, for we already know it to be great art, which will stand the test of time. His imagination turned toward subjects of solemn grandeur and his work is very impressive and beautiful.

He was born in Basel, "one of the most prosaic towns in Europe." His father was a Swiss merchant, and not poor; thus the son had ordinarily good chances to make an artist of himself. He was born at a time when to be an artist had long ceased to be a reproach, and men no longer discouraged their sons who felt themselves inspired to paint great pictures.

When Böcklin was nineteen years old he took himself to Düsseldorf, with his merchant father's permission, and settled down to learn his art, but in that city he found mostly "sentimental and anecdotal" pictures being painted, which did not suit him at all. Thenhe took himself off to Brussels, where again he was not satisfied, and so went to Paris. But while in Brussels he had copied many old masters, and had advanced himself very much, so that he did not present himself in Paris raw and untried in art.

At first he studied in the Louvre, then went to Rome, seeking ever the best, and being hard to satisfy. He found rest and tranquillity in Zürich, a city in his native country, but it was Italy that had most influenced his work.

He loved the Campagna of Rome with its ruins and the sad grandeur of the crumbling tombs lining its way, and therefore a certain mysterious, grand, and solemn character made his pictures unlike those of any other artist. He loved to paint in vertical (up-and-down) fines, rather than with the conventional horizontal outlines that we find in most paintings. This method gives his pictures a different quality from any others in the world.

He loved best of all to paint landscape, and it is said of him that "as the Greeks peopled their streams and woods and waves with creatures of their imagination, so Böcklin makes the waterfall take shape as a nymph, or the mists which rise above the water source wreathe into forms of merry children; or in some wild spot hurls centaurs together in fierce combat, or makes the slippery, moving wave give birth to Nereids and Tritons."

Muther, art-critic and biographer, calls ourattention to the similarity between Wagner's music and Böcklin's painting. While Wagner was "luring the colours of sound from music," Böcklin's "symphonies of colour streamed forth like a crashing orchestra," and he calls him the greatest colour-poet of the time.

In appearance Böcklin was fine of form, healthy and wholesome in all his thoughts and way of living. In 1848 he took part in revolutionary politics and later this did him great harm. Only the influence of his friends kept him from ruin. After the Franco-Prussian war he was made Minister of Fine Arts. In this office he rendered great service; but because he had to witness the wrecking of the Column Vendôme in order to save the Louvre and the Luxembourg from the mob, he was censured; indeed so heavy a fine was imposed that it took his whole fortune to pay it; and he was banished into the bargain. From 1892 to 1901 he lived in or near Florence, and he died at Fiesole, January 16th, 1901.

PLATE--THE ISLE OF THE DEAD

This picture is perhaps the greatest of the many great Arnold Böcklin paintings, and it is both fascinating and awe-inspiring.

It best shows his liking for vertical lines in art. The Isle of the Dead is of a rocky, shaft-like formation in which we may see hewn-out tombs; and there, tall cypress trees are growing.

The traces of man's work in the midst of this sombre, ideal, and mystic scene add to the impressiveness of the picture. The isle stands high and lonely in the midst of a sea.

The water seems silently to lap the base of the rocks and the trees are in black shadow, massed in the centre. It looks very mysterious and still. There is a stone gateway touched with the light of a dying day. It is sunset and the dead is being brought to its resting place in a tiny boat, all the smaller for its relation to the gloomy grandeur of the isle which it is approaching. One figure is standing in the boat, facing the island, and the sunlight falls full upon his back and touches the boat, making that spot stand out brilliantly from all the rest of the picture.

Among Böcklin's paintings are "Naiads at Play," which hangs in the Museum at Basel, "A Villa by the Sea," "The Sport of the Waves," "Regions of Joy," "Flora," and "Venus Dispatching Cupid."

(Pronounced Rosa Bon-er)French School1822-1895Pupil of Raymond B. Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur, Landseer, and Murillo maybe called "Children's Painters" in this book because they painted things that children, as well as grown-ups, certainly can enjoy. To be sure, Murillo was a very different sort of artist from Rosa Bonheur or Landseer, but if the two latter painted the most beautiful, animals--dogs, sheep, and horses--Murillo painted the loveliest little children.

Rosa was the best pupil of her father; Raymond B. Bonheur. In Bordeaux they lived together the peaceful life of artists, the father being already a well known painter when his daughter was born. She became, as Mr. Hamerton, who knew her, said, "the most accomplished female painter who ever lived ... a pure, generous woman as well and can hardly be too much admired ... as a woman or an artist. She is simple in her tastes and habits of life and many stories are told of her generosity to others."

After a time the Bonheurs moved to Pariswhere young Rosa could have better opportunities; and there she put on man's clothing, which she wore all her life thereafter. She wore a workingman's blouse and trousers, and tramped about looking more like a man than a woman with her short hair. This, made everybody stare at her and think her very queer, but people no longer believe that she dressed herself thus in order to advertise herself and attract attention; but because it was the most convenient costume for her to get about in. She went to all sorts of places; the stockyards, slaughter houses, all about the streets of Paris, to learn of things and people, especially of animals, which she wished most to paint. She could hardly have gone about thus if she had worn women's clothing.

Rosa Bonheur exhibited her first painting at theSalonin 1841, and this was twelve years before her beloved father died; thus he had the happiness of knowing that the daughter whom he had taught so lovingly was on the road to success and fortune. He knew that when fortune should come to her she would use it well. The year that she exhibited her work in theSalonshe painted only two little pictures--one of rabbits, the other of sheep and goats--but they were so splendidly done that all the critics knew a great woman artist had arrived.

It was then that her enemies, those who were becoming jealous of her work, said thatshe was wearing men's clothing in order to attract attention to herself.

Soon her work began to be bought by the French Government, which was a sure sign of her power. She was already much beloved by the people. In the meantime we in America and others in England had heard of Mademoiselle Bonheur, but we heard far less about her painting than we did about her masculine garb. We thought of her mostly as an eccentric woman; but one day came "The Horse Fair," and all the world heard of that, so the artist was to be no longer judged by the clothes she wore but by her art. Finally, she received the cross of the Legion of Honour, and also was made a member of the Institute of Antwerp.

She lived near Fontainebleau; her studio a peaceful retired home, till the Franco-Prussian war came about. Then she and others began to fear that her studio and pictures would be destroyed, so the artist was forced to stop her work and prepared to go elsewhere. But the Crown Prince of Prussia himself ordered that Mademoiselle Bonheur should not even be disturbed. Her work had made her belong to all the world and all the world was to protect her if need be.

Rosa Bonheur had a brother who, some critics said, was the better artist, but if that were true it is likely that his popularity would in some degree have approached that of hissister. Rosa Bonheur did not paint many large canvases, but mostly small ones, or only moderately large; but when she painted sheep it seems that one might shear the wool, it stands so fleecy and full; while her horses rampage and curvet, showing themselves off as if they were alive.

PLATE--THE HORSE FAIR

This picture was exhibited all over the world very nearly. It was carried to England and to America, and won admiration wherever it was seen. Finally it was sold in America. It was first exhibited in 1853, the year in which the artist's father died. Mr. Ernest Gambart was the first who bought the picture, and he wrote of it to his friend, Mr. S.P. Avery: "I will give you the real history of 'The Horse Fair,' now in New York. It was painted in 1852, by Rosa Bonheur, then in her thirtieth year, and exhibited in the nextSalon. Though much admired it did not find a purchaser. It was soon after exhibited in Ghent, meeting again with much appreciation, but was not sold, as art did not flourish at the time. In 1855 the picture was sent by Rosa Bonheur to her native town of Bordeaux and exhibited there. She offered to sell it to the town at the very low price 12,000 francs ($2,400). While there, I asked her if she would sell it to me, and allow me to takeit to England and have it engraved. She said: 'I wish to have my picture remain in France. I will once more impress on my countrymen, my wish to sell it to them for 12,000 francs. If they refuse, you can have it, but if you take it abroad, you must pay me 40,000 francs.' The town failing to make the purchase, I at once accepted these terms, and Rosa Bonheur then placed the picture at my disposal. I tendered her the 40,000 francs and she said: 'I am much gratified at your giving me such a noble price, but I do not like to feel that I have taken advantage of your liberality; let us see how we can combine in the matter. You will not be able to have an engraving made from so large a canvas. Suppose I paint you a small one from the same subject, of which I will make you a present.' Of course I accepted the gift, and thus it happened that the large work went travelling over the kingdom on exhibition, while Thomas Landseer was making an engraving from the quarter-size replica.

"After some time (in 1857 I think), I sold the original picture to Mr. William P. Wright, New York (whose picture gallery and residence were at Weehawken, N.J.), for the sum of 30,000 francs, but later I understood that Mr. Stewart paid a much larger price for it on the breaking up of Mr. Wright's gallery. The quarter size replica, from which the engraving was made, I finally sold to Mr. Jacob Bell, who gave it in 1859 to the nation,and it is now in the National Gallery, London. A second, still smaller replica, was painted a few years later, and was resold some time ago in London for £4,000 ($20,000). There is also a smaller water-colour drawing which was sold to Mr. Bolckow for 2,500 guineas ($12,000), and is now an heirloom belonging to the town of Middlesbrough. That is the whole history of this grand work. The Stewart canvas is the real and true original, and only large size 'Horse-Fair.'

"Once in Mr. Stewart's collection, it never left his gallery until the auction sale of his collection, March 25th, 1887, when it was purchased by Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt for the sum of $55,000, and presented to the Metropolitan Museum of Art."

And thus we have the whole story of the "Horse-Fair." The picture is 93-1/2 inches high, and 197 inches wide, and it contains a great number of horses, some of which are ridden, while others are led, and all are crowding with wild gaiety toward the fair where it is quite plain they know they are about to be admired and their beauty shown to the best advantage. Other well-known Rosa Bonheurs are "Ploughing," "Shepherd Guarding Sheep," "Highland Sheep," "Scotch Deer," "American Mustangs," and "The Study of a Lioness."

(Pronounced Ah-lays-sahn'dro Bo't-te-chel'lee)Florentine School,1447-1510 (Vasari's dates)Pupil of Filippo Lippi and Verrocchio

Botticelli took his name from his first master, as was the fashion in those days. The relation of master and apprentice was very close, not at all like the relation of pupil and teacher to-day.

Botticelli's father was a Florentine citizen, Mariano Filipepi, and he wished his son to become a goldsmith; hence the lad was soon apprenticed to Botticelli, the goldsmith. As a scholar, the little goldsmith had not distinguished himself. Indeed it is said that as a boy he would not "take to any sort of schooling in reading, writing, or arithmetic." It cannot be said that this failure distinguished him as a genius, or the world would be full of genius-boys; but the result was that he early began to learn his trade.

Fortunately for him and us, Botticelli, the smith, was a man of some wisdom and when he saw that the lad originated beautiful designs and had creative genius he did not treat the matter with scorn, as the master of Andrea delSarto had done, but sent him instead to Fra Filippo (Lippo Lippi) to be taught the art of painting. So kind a deed might well establish a feeling of devotion on little Alessandro's part and make him wish to take his master's name.

Fra Filippo was a Carmelite monk, merry and kindly; simple, good, and gifted, but his temperament did not seem to influence his young pupil. Of all unhappy, morbid men, Botticelli seems to have been the most so, unless we are to except Michael Angelo.

After studying with the monk, Botticelli was summoned by Pope Sixtus IV. to Rome to decorate a new chapel in the Vatican. Before that time his whole life had been greatly influenced by the teachings of Savonarola who had preached both passionately and learnedly in Florence, advocating liberty. From the time he fell under Savonarola's wonderful power, the artist grew more and more mystic and morbid. In Rome it was the custom to have the portraits of conspirators, or persons of high degree who were revolutionary or otherwise objectionable to the state, hung outside the Public Palace, and in Botticelli's time there was a famous disturbance among the aristocrats of the state. In 1478 the powerful Pazzi family conspired against the Medici family, which then actually had control. It was Botticelli who was engaged to paint the portraits of the Pazzi family,which to their shame and humiliation were to be displayed upon the palace walls.

One peculiarity of this artist's pictures was that he used actual goldleaf to make the high lights upon hair, leaves, and draperies. The effect of the use of this gold was very beautiful, if unusual, and it may have been that his apprenticeship as a goldsmith suggested to him such a device.

Also it was he who created certain characteristics of painting that have since been thought original with Burne-Jones. This was the use of long stiff lily-stalks or other upright details in his compositions. Examples of this idea, which produced so weird an effect, will be found in his allegory of "Spring," where stiff tree-trunks form a part of the background. In the "Madonna of the Palms" upright lily-stalks are held in pale and trembling hands. Like Michael Angelo, who came years afterward, Botticelli was a guest of the great Lorenzo the "Magnificent," in Florence. It was by Botticelli's hand that the greater painter sent a letter to Lorenzo from a duchess friend who was also his patron. This was in Angelo's youth; in Botticelli's old age.

All his life was a drama of morbid seeking after the unattainable, and finally he became so poor and helpless that in his old age he would have starved had Lorenzo de' Medici not taken care of him. Lorenzo and other friends who in spite of his gloominess admiredhis real piety, gathered about him and kept him from starvation.

On his "Nativity," Botticelli wrote: "This picture I, Alessandro, painted at the end of the year 1500 in the troubles of Italy, in the halftime after the time, during the fulfilment of the eleventh of John, in the second woe of the Apocalypse, in the loosing the devil for three and a half years. Afterward he shall be chained according to the twelfth of John, and see him trodden down as in this picture." All of this is interesting because Botticelli himself wrote it, but it is not very easily understood by any child, nor by many grown people.

Botticelli did some very extraordinary things, but whether they are beautiful or not one must decide for himself. They are paintings so characteristic that one must think them very beautiful or else not at all so.

PLATE--LA PRIMAVERA(Spring)

In this picture we have the forerunner of a modern painter, because we see in it certain, qualities that we find in Böcklin. Look at the effect of vertical lines; the tree trunks, and the poses of the slender women. Over all hovers a cupid who is sending love-shafts into the hearts of all in springtime.

Notice the lacy effect of the flowers thatbestar the wind-blown gown of "La Primavera," the fern-like leaves that fleck the background; the draperies that do not conceal the forms of the nymphs of the lovely springtime.

The very spirit of spring is seen in all the half-floating, half-dancing, gliding, diaphanous figures of the forest. The flowers of "La Primavera's" crown are blue and white cornflowers and primroses. She scatters over the earth tulips, anemones, and narcissus. The painting is allegorical and unique. Never were such fluttering odds and ends of draperies painted before, nor such fascinating effects had from canvas, paint, or brush. The picture hangs in Florence in the Uffizi Gallery. A German critic tells us that the "Realm of Venus," is a better title for this picture, and that it was painted after a poem of that name.

Other pictures by this artist are: "The Birth of Venus," "Pallas," "Judith," "Holofernes," "St. Augustine," "Adoration of the Magi," and "St. Sebastian."

(Pronounced W. A'dolf Bou-gair-roh)French (Genre) School1825-1905Pupil of Picot and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts

Bouguereau's business-like father meant his son also to be business-like, but he made the mistake of permitting him to go to a drawing school in Bordeaux and there, to his father's chagrin, the youngster took the annual prize. After that there seemed nothing for the father to do but grin and bear it, because the son decided to be an artist and had fairly won his right to be one.

Young Bouguereau had no money, and therefore he went to live with an uncle at Saintonge, a priest, who had much sympathy with the boy's wish to paint, and he left him free to do the best he could for himself in art. He got a chance to paint some portraits, and when he and his uncle talked the matter over It was decided that he should take the money got for them, and go to Paris. It was there that he sought Picot, his first truly helpful teacher; and there, for the first time he learned more than he already knew about art.

All Bouguereau's opportunities in life were made by himself, by his own genius. No onegave him anything; he earned all. He longed to go to Italy, and in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts he won the Prix de Rome, which made possible a journey to the land of great artists. The French Government began to buy his work, and he began to receive commissions to decorate walls in great buildings; thus, gradually, he made for himself fame and fortune.

When this artist undertook to paint sacred subjects, of great dignity, he was not at his best; but when he chose children and mothers and everyday folk engaged about their everyday business, he painted beautifully. Americans have bought many of his pictures and he has had more popularity in this country than anywhere outside of France.

Some authorities give the birthplace of Bouguereau as La Rochelle; at any rate he died there at midnight, on the nineteenth of August, 1905.

PLATE--THE VIRGIN AS CONSOLER

The main distinction about this artist's pictured faces is the peculiarly earnest expression he has given to the eyes. In this picture of the Virgin there is great genius in the pose and death-look of the little child whose mother has flung herself across the lap of Mary, abandoned to her agony. This painting is hung in the Luxembourg. Others by the same master are called "Psyche and Cupid" "Birth of Venus," "Innocence," and "At the Well."

English (Pre-Raphaelite) School1833-1898Pupil of Rossetti

This artist has been called the most original of all contemporaneous artists. He has also been called the "lyric painter"; meaning that he is to painting what the lyric poet is to literature. His work once known can almost always be recognised wherever seen afterward. He did not slavishly follow the Pre-Raphaelite school, yet he drew most of his ideas from its methods. He was, in the use of stiff lines, a follower of Botticelli, and not original in that detail, as some have seemed to think.

PLATE--CHANT D'AMOUR(The Love-Song)

This is a picture in the true Burne-Jones style: a beautiful woman in billowy draperies, playing upon a harp forms the central figure of the group of three--a listener on either side of her. There is the attractiveness of the Burne-Jones method about this picture, but after all there seems to be no very goodreason for its having been painted. The subject thus treated has only a negative value, and little suggestion of thought or dramatic idea.

Another picture of this artist, in which his use of stiff draperies is specially shown, is that of the women at the tomb of Christ, when they find the stone rolled away and, looking around, see the Saviour's figure before them. The scene is low and cavern-like, with a brilliant light surrounding the tomb. This artist also painted "The Vestal Virgin," "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," "Pan and Psyche," "The Golden Stairs," and "Love Among the Ruins."

English School1776-1837Pupil of the Royal Academy

John Constable was the son of a "yeoman farmer" who meant to make him also a yeoman farmer. Mostly we find that the fathers of our artists had no higher expectations for their sons than to have them take up their own business; to begin as they had, and to end as they expected to. But in John Constable's case, as with all the others, the father's methods of living did not at all please the son, and having most of all a liking for picture-making; young John set himself to planning his own affairs.

Nevertheless, the foundation of John's art was laid right there in the Suffolk farmer's home and conditions. He was born in East Bergholt, and the father seems to have believed in windmills, for early in life the signs of wind and weather became a part of the son's education. He learned a deal more of atmospheric conditions there on his father's windmill planted farm than he could possibly have learned shut up in a studio, French fashion. As a little boy he came to know all the signs ofthe heavens; the clouds gathering for storm or shine; the bending of the trees in the blast; all of these he loved, and later on made the principal subjects of his art. He learned to observe these things as a matter of business and at his father's command; thus we may say that he studied his life-work from his very infancy. All about him were beautiful hedgerows, picturesque cottages with high pitched roofs covered with thatch, and it was these beauties which bred one other great landscape painter besides Constable, of whom we shall presently speak, Gainsborough.

At last, graduating from windmills, John went to London. He had a vacation from the work set him by his father, and for two years he painted "cottages, studied anatomy," and did the drudgery of his art; but there was little money in it for him, and soon he had to go into his father's counting house, for windmills seemed to have paid the elder Constable, considerably better than painting promised to pay young John.

John doubtless liked counting-house work even less than he had done the study of windmills and weather in his father's fields. He was a most persistent fellow, however, and finally he returned to London, to study again the art he loved, this time in the Royal Academy, which meant that he had made some progress.

His father gave him very little aid to dothe things he longed to do, but after his father's death he found that a little money was coming to him from the estate--£4,000. He had already triumphed over his difficulties by painting his first fine pictures; he now knew that he was to become a successful artist, and be able to take care of himself and a wife. Though in love, he had hitherto been too poor to marry. His first splendid work was "Dedham Vale."

Though things were going very well with him, it was not until Paris discovered him that he achieved great success. In 1824 he painted two large pictures which he took to Paris, and there he found fame. The best landscape painting in France dates from the time when Constable's works were hung in the Louvre, to become the delight of all art-lovers.

He received a gold medal from Charles X., and became more honoured abroad than he had ever been at home.

Constable had many enemies, and made many more after he became an Academician. Some artists, who would have liked that honour and who could not gain it for themselves, declared that Constable painted "with a palette knife," though it certainly would not have mattered if he had, since he made great pictures.

He painted things exactly as he saw them, and was not a popular artist. Most of all, he loved to paint the scenes that he had known sowell in his youth, and he did them over and over again, as if the subject was one in which he wished to reach perfection.

When he died he left a picture, "Arundel Castle and Mill," standing with its paint wet upon his easel for he passed away very suddenly, on April 1st, leaving behind him many unsold paintings.

He was a sensitive chap, and throughout his youth was greatly distressed by the differences of opinion between himself and his father. He was torn asunder between a sense of duty and his own wish to be an artist; and his greatest consolation in this situation was in the friendship he had formed for a plumber, who, like himself, dearly loved art. The plumber's name was John Dunthorne, and the two men wandered about the country, when not employed at their regular work, and together, by streams and in fields, painted the same scenes. At one time they hired a little room in the neighbouring village which they made into a studio. Constable was a handsome fellow in his youth and was known to all as the "handsome miller." His father, the yeoman farmer with the windmills, was also a miller.

In London he became acquainted with one John Smith, known as "Antiquity Smith," who taught him something of etching. After he was recalled to his father's business, his mother wrote to "Antiquity Smith," that she hoped John "would now attend to business,by which he will please me and his father, and ensure his own respectability and comfort"--a complete expression of the middle-class British mind. Her satisfaction was short-lived, for her son soon returned to London.

When his first pictures were rejected by the Royal Academy he showed one of them to Sir Benjamin West, who said hopefully: "Don't be disheartened, young man, we shall hear of you again; you must have loved nature very much before you could have painted this."

About that time he tried to paint many kinds of pictures, such as portraits and sacred subjects, but he did not seem to succeed in anything except the scenes of his boyhood, which he truly loved. Hence he gave up attempting that which he could do only passably, and kept to what he could do supremely well.

When his friends wished him to continue portrait painting, the only thing that was well paid at that time, Constable wrote: "You know I have always succeeded best with my native scenes. They have always charmed me, and I hope they always will. I have now a path marked out very distinctly for myself, and I am desirous of pursuing it uninterruptedly."

About the time he fell in love and before his father's death, his health began to fail, and the young woman's mother would have none of him. Her father was in favour of Constable,but he could not hold out against the chance of his daughter losing her grandfather's fortune by marrying the wrong man.

The lady was not so distractingly in love as young Constable was, and she did not entirely like the idea of poverty, even with John, so she held off, and with so much anxiety Constable became downright ill. For five years the pair lived apart, and then the artist and the young woman, whose name was Maria Bicknell, lost their mothers about the same time, This drew them very closely together; and to help the matter on, John's attendance upon his father in his last illness brought him to the same town as Miss Bicknell. After his father's death, he urged the young lady so strongly to be his wife that she consented They were married and her father soon forgave her, but not so her grandfather, who declared that he never would forgive her, but he really must have done so from the first, for when he died it was found that he had left her a little fortune of £4,000. This was about the same amount the artist had received from his father, so that they were able to get on very well.

After Constable's marriage he went on a visit to Sir George Beaumont, and there an amusing incident occurred which is known to-day as the story of Sir George's "brown tree." It seems that Constable's ideas of colour for his landscapes were so true to nature that a good many people did not approve of them, and oneday while painting, Sir George declared that the colour of an old Cremona fiddle was the best model of colour tone that a landscape could have. Constable's only answer was to place the fiddle on the green lawn in front of the house. At another time his host asked the artist, "Do you not find it very difficult to determine where to place your brown tree?" "Not at all," was Constable's reply, "for I never put such a thing into a picture in my life."

In painting one picture many times he declared, "Its light cannot be put out because it is the light of nature." A Frenchman called attention to one of his pictures thus: "Look at these landscapes by an Englishman. The ground appears to be covered with dew."

Notwithstanding the little fortune of his wife and himself, Constable was not quite carefree, because he had to raise a good sized family of six children so that when his wife's father died and left his daughter £20,000 he said to a friend: "Now I shall stand before a six-foot canvas with a mind at ease, thank God!" In the very midst of this happiness, his beloved wife became ill with consumption, and was certain to die. He no longer cared very much for life and wrote very sadly:

"I have been ill, but am endeavouring to get work again, and could I get afloat upon a canvas of six feet, I might have a chance of being carried from myself." When he becamea member of the Royal Academy, he said: "It has been delayed until I am solitary and cannot impart it," meaning that without his dear wife to share his good fortune, it seemed an empty honour to him.

Strange things are told which show how little his work was valued by his countrymen. After he had become a member of the Academy one of his small pictures was entered but rejected; nobody knowing anything about it. It was put on one side among the "outsiders." Finally, one of his fellow members glancing at it was attracted.

"Stop a bit! I rather like that. Why not say 'doubtful'?" Later Constable acknowledged the picture as his, and then they wished to hang it, but he refused to let them. Another Academy story is about his picture "Hadleigh Castle." On Varnishing Day, Chartney, a brilliant critic, told Constable that the foreground of the picture was "too cold," and so he undertook to "warm it," by giving it a strong glaze with asphaltum with Constable's brush which he snatched from the artist's hand. Constable gazed at him in horror. "Oh! there goes all my dew," he cried, and when Chartney's back was turned he hurriedly wiped the "warmth" all away and got back his "dew."

Even the amusing things that happened to him, seem to have a little sadness about them. He wrote to a friend: "Beechey was here yesterday, and said: 'Why d--n it Constable,what a d--n fine picture you are making; but you look d--n ill, and you've got a d--n bad cold!' so," added Constable, "you have evidence on oath of my being about a fine picture and that I am looking ill."

An illustration of his painstaking and truthfulness to nature is that he once took home with him from a visit bottles of coloured sand and fragments of stone which he meant to introduce into a picture; and on passing some slimy posts near a mill, he said to his host, "I wish you could cut those off and send their tops to me."

Constable was a loyal friend, the most persistent of men, and several anecdotes are told of his characteristics. His friend Fisher said to him:

"Where real business is to be done, you are the most energetic and punctual of men. In smaller matters, such as putting on your breeches, you are apt to lose time in deciding which leg shall go in first."

PLATE--THE HAY WAIN

This picture was first called "Landscape," and it was painted in 1821. In his letters about it, however, Constable also called it "Noon," and others wrote of it as "Midsummer Noon." This tells us what a wealth of hot sunlight is suggested by the painting.

It shows a little farmhouse upon the bank ofa stream, a spot well known as "Willy Lott's Cottage." The owner had been born there and he died there eighty-eight years later, without ever having left his cottage for four whole days in all those years. Upon the tombstone of Lott, which is in the Bergholt burial ground, his epitaph calls the house "Gibeon Farm." It was a favourite scene with Constable, and he painted it many times from every side. It is the same house we see in the "Mill Stream," another Constable painting, and again in "Valley Farm." In this last picture he painted the side opposite to the one shown in the "Hay Wain."

The stream near which the house stands spreads out into a ford, and in the picture the hay cart, with two men upon it, is passing through the ford. The horses are decked out with red tassels. On the right of the stream there is a broad meadow, golden green in the sunlight, "with groups of trees casting cool shadows on the grass, and backed by a distant belt of woodland of rich blues and greens." On the right is a fisherman, half hidden by a bush, standing near his punt.

Constable wrote to his friend, Fisher, "My picture goes to the Academy on the tenth." This was written on April 1st, 1821. "It is not so grand as Tinney's." This shows us, that Constable had not vanity enough to interfere with his self-criticism. Again in a letter written to him by a friend: "How does the'Hay Wain' look now it has got into your own room again?" adding that he wished to see it there, away from the Academy which to him was always "like a great pot of boiling varnish."

Later Fisher wrote: "I have a great desire to possess your 'Wain,' but I cannot now reach what it is worth;" and he begged Constable not to sell it without giving him a chance to try once more to raise the money to buy it. He wrote that the picture would become of greater value to his children if the artist left it hanging upon the walls of the Academy, "till you join the society of Ruysdael, Wilson, and Claude. As praise and money will then be of no value to you, the world will liberally bestow both."

Later a Frenchman wished to buy it for exhibition purposes, and when Constable wrote to Fisher of this, his friend replied that he had better sell it to the Frenchman "for the sake of theéclatit may give you. The stupid English public, which has no judgment of its own, will begin to think there is something in it if the French make your works national property. You have long lain under a mistake; men do not purchase pictures because they admire them, but because others covet them."

Finally, the "Hay Wain" was sold to the French dealer for £250, and Constable threw in a picture of Yarmouth for good measure. Later a friend declared that he had created agood deal of argument about landscape painting, and that there had come to be two divisions, for he had practically founded a new school. He received a gold medal for the "Hay Wain," and the French nation tried to buy it. In the Louvre are "The Cottage," "Weymouth Bay," and "The Glebe Farm." Elsewhere are "Hampstead Heath," "Salisbury Cathedral," "The Lock on the Stour," "Dedham Mill," "The Valley Farm," "Gillingham Mill," "The Cornfield," "Boat-Building," "Flatford Mill on the River Stour," besides many others.

English School1737-1815

A little boy with a squirrel was the first picture that pointed this artist toward fame and that was painted in England and exhibited at the Society of Arts.

This American-born Irishman had no family or ancestry of account, but he himself was to become the father of Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, and he did some truly fine things in art.

About the same time America had another painter, Benjamin West, marked out for fame, but he got his start in Europe while Copley had already become a successful artist before he left Boston, his native place.

He liked best to paint "interiors"--rooms with fine furniture and curtains, women in fine clothing and men in embroidered waistcoats and bejewelled buckles.

In 1777 he got into the Royal Academy, and on the whole had considerable influence on European art. If we study the portraits that he painted while in Boston, we can get a very complete idea of the surroundingsof the "Royalists" at the time of our colonial history.

PLATE--THE COPLEY FAMILY GROUP

In this picture there are seven figures with an open landscape forming the background. The baby of the family plays, with uplifted arms, upon grandfather's knee. The mother on the couch, surrounded by her three other children, is kissing one while another clings to her. Before her stands a prim little maid, gowned in the fashion of grown-folks of her day. A little lock of hair falling upon her forehead suggests that when she was good she was very, very good, and when she was bad she was horrid! She wears a little cap. At the back is the artist himself in a wig and other fashions of the time. A great column rises behind him, forming a part of the architecture or the landscape, one hardly knows which in so artificially constructed a picture.

Copley painted also John Hancock, Judge Graham, Jeremiah Lee, and General Joseph Warren.

(Pronounced Zhahn Bah-teest' Cah-mee'yel Coh'roh)Fontainebleau-Barbizon School1796-1875Pupil of Michallon

About three hundred years before Corot's time there was a Fontainebleau school of artists, made up of the pathetic Andrea del Sarto, the wonderful Leonardo da Vinci, and Cellini. These painters had been summoned from their Italian homes by Francis I., to decorate the Palace of Fontainebleau. The second great group of painters who had studios in the forest and beside the stream were Rousseau, Dupré, Diaz, and Daubigny; Troyon, Van Marcke, Jacque; then Millet, the painter of peasants.

Corot was born in Paris and received what education the ordinary school at Rouen could give him. He was intended by his parents for something besides art, as it would seem that every artist in the world was intended. Corot was to grow up and become a respectable draper; at any rate a draper.

The young chap did as his father wished, until he was twenty-six years old, and dreary years those must have been to him. He didnot get on well with his master, nor did the world treat him very well. He found neither riches nor the fame that was his due till he was an old man of seventy. At that age he had become as rich a man as he might have been had he remained a sensible draper.

Best of all, Corot loved to paint clouds and dewy nights, pale moons and early day, and of all amusements in the world, he preferred the theatre. There he would sit; gay or sad as the play might make him, weeping or laughing and as interested as a little child.

After he had anything to give away, Corot was the most madly generous of men. It was he who gave a pension to the widow of his brother artist, Millet, on which she lived all the rest of her days. He gave money to his brother painters and to all who went to him for aid; and he always gave gaily, freely, as if giving were the greatest joy, outside of the theatre, a man could have. Everyone who knew him loved him, and there was no note of sadness in his daily life, though there seems to be one in his poetical pictures. Because of his generous ways he was known as "Pere Corot." He sang as he worked, and loved his fellowmen all the time; but most of all, he loved his sister.

"Rousseau is an eagle," he used to say in speaking of his fellow artist. "As for me, I am only a lark, putting forth some little songs in my gray clouds."

It has been noted that most great landscape painters have been city-bred, a remarkable fact. Constable and Gainsborough were born and bred in the country, but they are exceptions to the rule. Corot's parents were Parisians of the purest dye, having been court-dressmakers to Napoleon I.; and when Corot finally determined to leave the draper's shop and become a painter, his father said: "You shall have a yearly allowance of 1,200 francs, and if you can live on that, you can do as you please." When his son was made a member of the Legion of Honour, after twenty-three years of earnest work, his father thought the matter over, and presently doubled the allowance, "for Camille seems to have some talent after all," he remarked as an excuse for his generosity.

It is told that when he first went to study in Italy, Corot longed to transfer the moving scenes before him to canvas; but people moved too quickly for him, so he methodically set about learning how to do with a few strokes what he would otherwise have laboured over. So he reduced his sketching to such a science that he became able to sketch a ballet in full movement; and it is remarked that this practice trained him for presenting the tremulousness of leaves of trees, which he did so exquisitely.

One learns something of this painter of early dawn and soft evening from a letter he wrote to his friend Dupré:

One gets up at three in the morning, before the sun; one goes and sits at the foot of a tree; one watches and waits. One sees nothing much at first. Nature resembles a whitish canvas on which are sketched scarcely the profiles of some masses; everything is perfumed, and shines in the fresh breath of dawn. Bing! the sun grows bright but has not yet torn aside the veil behind which lie concealed the meadows, the dale, and hills of the horizon. The vapours of night still creep, like silvery flakes over the numbed-green vegetation. Bing! bing!--a first ray of sunlight--a second ray of sunlight--the little flowers seem to wake up joyously. They all have their drop of dew which trembles--the chilly leaves are stirred with the breath of morning--in the foliage the birds sing unseen--all the flowers seem to be saying their prayers. Loves on butterfly wings frolic over the meadows and make the tall plants wave--one sees nothing--yet everything is there--the landscape is entirely behind the veil of mist, which mounts, mounts, sucked up by the sun; and as it rises, reveals the river, plated with silver, the meadow, the trees, cottages, the receding distance--one distinguishes at last everything that one had divined at first.

In all the world there can hardly be a more exquisite story of daybreak than this; and so beautiful was the mood into which Corot fell at eventime, as he himself describes it, that it would be a mistake to leave it out. This is his story of the night:

Nature drowses--the fresh air, however, sighs among the leaves--the dew decks the velvety grass with pearls. The nymphs fly--hide themselves--and desire to be seen. Bing! a star in the sky which pricks its image on the pool. Charming star--whose brilliance is increased by the quivering of the water, thou watchest me--thou smilest to me with half-closed eye! Bing!--a second star appears in thewater, a second eye opens. Be the harbingers of welcome, fresh and charming stars. Bing! Bing! Bing!--three, six, twenty stars. All the stars in the sky are keeping tryst in this happy pool. Everything darkens, the pool alone sparkles. There is a swarm of stars--all yields to illusion. The sun being gone to bed, the inner sun of the soul, the sun of art awakens. Bon! there is my picture done!

In writing those letters, Corot made literature as well as pictures. That little word "bing!" appears also in his paintings, as little leaves or bits of tree-trunk, some small detail which, high-lightened, accents the whole.

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