THE ETCHINGS OF FORTUNY
ByROYAL CORTISSOZ
Literary and Art Editor of the New YorkTribune
THE etchings of Fortuny make an inviting theme, inviting in itself and doubly sympathetic because it provokes talk about Fortuny. I have always had a weakness for that endearing personality and I cannot, for the life of me, go with foot-rule and a spirit of cold analysis through the twenty-five or thirty plates—twenty-nine, to be exact—recorded in the useful compendium of Beraldi. You cannot be pedantic about an artist whose work has meant to you an early enthusiasm and a lifelong sense of gaiety and brilliance. The first work of art I ever yearned to possess was a drawing by Fortuny. I did not get it into my hands. The spell faded, but it was revived, and long afterward it involved me in an enchanting task. In Paris, one summer, the late Philip Gilbert Hamerton asked me to write a memoir of Fortuny and for two years I spent a good deal of my leisure going hither and yon, collecting material. The book never got itself written, for reasons which I found both pathetic and comic. Too much of the “material” aforesaid proved too heart-breakingly expensive. Mr. Hamerton and I and his London publisher,the late Mr. Seeley, ruefully concluded as we counted up the figures, that, humorously speaking, ruin stared us in the face. We turned to other things.
Fortuny. Arab watching beside the Dead Body of his Friend(Beraldi No. 1)Size of the original etching, 7½ × 15¼ inches
Fortuny. Arab watching beside the Dead Body of his Friend
(Beraldi No. 1)Size of the original etching, 7½ × 15¼ inches
Fortuny. Idyll(Beraldi No. 4)Size of the original etching, 7⅝ × 5½ inches
Fortuny. Idyll
(Beraldi No. 4)Size of the original etching, 7⅝ × 5½ inches
That, as I have said, was years ago, but every now and then I go back to Fortuny, for old sake’s sake if for no other reason, though he was, of course, a remarkable artist to whom one would be bound, anyway, frequently to return. As a matter of fact, his genius has needed, of late, to be restored to the public consciousness. When the Impressionists came in, Fortuny, or perhaps I should more specifically say, the hypothesis for which he stood, went out. One of the results of my understanding with Mr. Hamerton was a series of visits to thepalazzoin Venice which is still the home of Fortuny’s family, and there you found a contrast that was full of meaning. On thepiano nobileFortuny’s art held its own in numerous unfinished pictures, sketches, and the like. But, up-stairs, in his son’s studio, all was changed. When young Marianito sought inspiration as a painter, he did not follow in his father’s footsteps, but went to Munich, and on his walls I saw huge canvases illustrating Wagnerian motives in a huge and splashy manner, strongly suggestive of Franz Stuck and his followers. I confess that at this distance of time I do not recall very accurately just what they were all about; but I can remember as though it were yesterday how extremely different they were from the paintings down-stairs. Of course no one could blame Marianito. An artist must seek salvation in his own way. But it is impossible not to feel a certain indignation over the ignorance of those who have tried to wave Fortuny aside as a painter of bric-a-brac.
We saw too much of that sort of thing when the works of Sorolla and Zuloaga were shown at the Hispanic Museum and people went into hysterics over them, talking especially about how the first of these painters was rejuvenating Spanish art. I used to hear such talk in Madrid, some fifteen years ago, amongst the younger men who were even then hailing Sorolla as a pioneer. They were right, and it is right, as I have argued elsewhere, to recognize in this painter’s work an influence of the highest value to the modern Spanish school. But there were great men before Agamemnon, and it is stupid to ignore what was done for Spanish painting by Fortuny long before any one ever heard of Sorolla. I have great respect and plenty of admiration for that accomplished technician, and yet I think that he himself, if pressed in the matter, would cheerfully admit that nothing he ever painted could quite touch the portrait in the Metropolitan Museum,A Spanish Lady, which Fortuny painted in 1865. Outside of France that was not a particularly good year amongst painters, but Fortuny, then twenty-seven years old, was proving himself not unworthy of Velasquez. He was drawing with mastery and he was painting blacks with amazing skill and taste, with amazing sensitiveness to the beauties lying entangled in one of the most difficult of a colorist’s problems. Indeed, I may note in passing that this picture alone would show Fortuny to have enforced lessons in tone which no Spaniard since his time, not even the prodigiously clever Sorolla, has begun to commence to prepare to equal.
Fortuny. The Serenade(Beraldi No. 10)Size of the original etching, 15½ × 12¼ inches
Fortuny. The Serenade
(Beraldi No. 10)Size of the original etching, 15½ × 12¼ inches
Fortuny. A Moroccan Seated(Beraldi No. 19)Size of the original etching, 5½ × 4 inches
Fortuny. A Moroccan Seated
(Beraldi No. 19)Size of the original etching, 5½ × 4 inches
There are many other paintings of his over which it would be pleasant to linger, but, having the etchingsin view, I forbear. At the same time I have driven at nothing irrelevant in speaking of Fortuny’s command over the brush, for that is very closely related to his command over the needle. It is important to remember, in the first place, that he was a born draughtsman. The fact was brought home to me when I made a pilgrimage to Barcelona, to see the big Moroccan battle-piece which he painted for the municipality not long after he had won the Prix de Rome. I saw in the spirited picture the Fortuny we all know, but I saw also, in some earlier pieces, the kind of academic work that he did under the influence of old Soberano, his master at Reus, where he was born in 1838. Yes, it was academic work, but it was the work of a youngster of genius who had aflairfor form and drew it with astonishing adroitness. There, to be sure, you have the essence of Fortuny, more even than in the glitter of light and color conventionally associated with his name. The artists and critics who think that the history of painting began with Manet are wont to damn Fortuny with faint praise, talking about his dexterity as though that were a very ordinary and perhaps specious gift. Well, there is a dexterity, there is a sleight of hand, as honest as anything that you will find in Manet, and Fortuny had it. There are moments, no doubt, in which it takes your breath away as though by some deceptive stroke of conjuror’s work. But at bottom there is a sterling sincerity about it, and this, I think, is sharply perceptible in the etchings.
Paradoxically, these do not proclaim Fortuny what the master of etching is wont to be—a lover of line for its own sake, a user of it as a language possessing itsown special character and charm. Rembrandt’s strength and Whistler’s exquisiteness were alike unknown to him. The truth is that Fortuny employed the needle somewhat as he employed the pen, simply for purposes of swift and free expression. There are some bewitching drawings of his, reproduced by the Amand-Durand process in the memoir by Baron Davillier, and there are others in the catalogue of the great sale of his studio effects in 1875, which, for the impression they leave, might almost be regarded as etchings. The impression in either category is very much one of “black-and-white.” Has not Fortuny been the master of a generation of illustrators? Nevertheless his drawings and his etchings are not absolutely interchangeable. In the latter there is too much of the painter for that; his figures are too closely modeled and his backgrounds are too transparent. Some of his plates, such asThe Serenade,The Anchorite, theKabyle Mort, andThe Farrier, are wonderfully rich in color such as no pen draughtsman could secure. He knew how to fill his backgrounds with deep warm tone, and he could use the same vivifying touch in his treatment of the figure. It is worth while to go carefully through the little collection of etchings that he left, looking more particularly for those rather thin staccato effects which his imitators affect—one is so delightfully disappointed. I have spoken of his sincerity, his honesty. Amongst all the plates there is only one,La Victoire, which hints a contradiction. There is something factitious about the composition, recalling the Sicilian nudities hawked about by the photographers in Southern Italy. But even this etching has undeniable brillianceas a piece of technique, and, for the rest, Fortuny is the quite artless connoisseur of picturesqueness, etching his Moorish types and his portraits in the mood of the serious observer of nature aiming at the truth. On two or three occasions he appears to have let his fancy rove. HisAmateur de Jardinand hisMéditationboth belong amongst those graceful studies of costume and pseudo-romantic sentiment with which his paintings have made us so familiar. And once he turned poet in a small way, etching that charmingIdyllewhich may reflect no emotion whatever, but has, at all events, a certain dainty elegance; but do not think that Fortuny was really a poet. It was not in his temperament. He was sensuous, mundane, in the soul of him; the very man to enjoy just the career that fell to his lot.
Fortuny. A Horse of Morocco(Beraldi No. 20)Size of the original etching, 4¼ × 6¼ inches
Fortuny. A Horse of Morocco
(Beraldi No. 20)Size of the original etching, 4¼ × 6¼ inches
Fortuny. Interior of the Church of Saint Joseph, Madrid(Beraldi No. 21)Size of the original etching, 5⅜ × 9¼ inches
Fortuny. Interior of the Church of Saint Joseph, Madrid
(Beraldi No. 21)Size of the original etching, 5⅜ × 9¼ inches
New Yorkers will recall the sale here of the collection formed by the late W. H. Stewart in Paris, the “Cher Monsieur Guillermo” of more than one of the artist’s letters printed by Davillier. It was full of Fortunys, which made a dazzling array when they were put up at auction. But it was better to see them scattered about in Mr. Stewart’s home by the Seine, and there they breathed the atmosphere of a clearly defined character. You did not think of Fortuny in Spain, quietly painting at Granada; you did not think of him on the more adventurous soil of Morocco, nor did you dwell on thoughts of his days in Rome and on the beach at Portici. You thought, instead, of the Fortuny who took the collectors of Paris by storm, who moved Théophile Gautier to jeweled eloquence, who was young, successful, and happy, who had a great gift and used it truly with agaillardgrace. Hewas not the specious entertainer, bemusing his audience with incredible tricks. All his wizardry, all his diabolical cleverness, was quite natural to him, springing from his heart and in no wise diminishing his weight and seriousness as a student of nature. Beraldi applauds his etchings for their originality. Let us honor them too for their fidelity to life, for their simple strength, as well as for their light, vivacious charm.