based. It is the key also to the expression of the picture, fixing at once in simplest and directest terms the artist's complex conception of Death, that unites with resistless force a tender and grave compassion; emphasizing also the frantic, ineffectual desperation, expressed in the figure of Love. Again in the full-length group "Orpheus and Eurydice," what a force of despair and helplessness is expressed in the vertical lines of the legs the man's stiffened with the vehemence of the strain, the others limp and drooping! What a magnificent languor in the lines of the sleeping "Endymion" and rapidity of whirlpool movement in those of the Diana! How in finitely moving the purity and anguish of his Psyche, and tremulously virginal that bud of maidenhood by which he has symbolized Life in the picture presented by the artist to this country! It has aroused some, no doubt, honest indignation on the score of being indecent. Except that there is a dislike in many people's minds of the use of the nude, a confusion, indeed, of nude and naked, and that the majority are quite unable to read and enjoy the language of line, the objection would be inconceivable, for not only is the figure clothed with purity, but its appeal for protection is so piteous as to shame even a libertine. It is treated, indeed, in a way that not only represents, but admonishes to purity. Corresponding with Watts's eloquence of line are his use and rendering of form. It is used with symbolical intent, but in a way as far removed as possible from the conventionalities of so-called symbolic painting. To paint a woman and put a mirror in her hand, and call her Truth, would have been impossible for him; probably not a single such object to point the meaning occurs in all his pictures; he had a horror of the conventional, the superficial, the accidental. Always it was the fundamental, the abiding, the perennially understandable thing that he sought to express; so that all his pictures arouse at once certain well-felt sensations of emotion, for his thought has become embodied in flesh. His constant practice of portraiture kept his use of figures very real and human, yet he had a dread of drifting into realism. We have noted that his portraits were strongly tinged with idealism, and he kept his subject pictures idealistic by never painting from the model. Draw from it he did, to discover the secret of some movement or gesture by means of which his imagination had planned to express itself. But the secret once mastered, he put even the drawings aside and let nothing come between the mutual working of his brain and hand. This habit may explain certain passages of indifferent drawing, of which, however, too much has been made by some critics, who overlook on the one hand the examples of beautiful drawing and modelling that abound in his works, and also the still more important facts that these blemishes were incidental to his mode of working, the price that he had to pay, consciously we must believe and regretfully, for what he deemed to be the pearl of great price. And let us not forget that impeccability in art, as in life, is a rather tedious and middle-class virtue; and that daring to be wrong for a greater right is not the least honorable element of genius. Aloof from the turmoil of contending schools, serenely poised amid the reeling of beliefs, sane and strong in his confidence that human life was fundamentally beautiful, with a hatred of sordidness and sin, and a huge, wholesome sympathy with human efforts and yearnings, for nearly seventy years he lived and worked upon the mountains of Imagination, a signal figure in the world of art. A creator he certainly has been, and of types so fundamentally intelligible, symbols of facts so inseparable from human experience, and wrought with a craftsmanship which, at its best, has such grandeur and impressiveness that it seems more than probable the desire of his life will be achieved. CHARLES H. CAFFIN. T. SEP I In the youth of men who are still in middle life the stock-company system had not yet passed away, and the scene-painting artisan was a member of the staf of most of the theatres of importance in the larger cities, along with the stage carpenter, the gas-man," and the stock actors. When the great tragedian arrived at the theatre, with at best a leading actor or two to support him, he expected to find there the trappings and the suits of woe. Some weeks before his coming, the local manager received (together with the "parts" to be taken by the local actors) the plans of the requisite settings. IVE me three boards and a passion," said the elder Dumas, "and I will give you a play!" Until quite lately that saying voiced the theory of the playwright. But it was on some other plan that M. Victorien Sardou proceeded when he made "Dante" for Sir Henry Irving, and Mr. Stephen Phillips when he made "Ulysses" for Mr. Beerbohm Tree. Instead of three canvas-covered frames propped together so as to stand for a room, with doors so flimsy that in opening and shutting, they sent a quiver through the entire apartment, the point of departure of the modern playwright is a mimic presentation of Earth, Heaven, and Hell, with all their beauties and awe-inspiring horrors embodied in solid detail, or suggested in pictorial atmosphere. The last quarter of the nineteenth century has witnessed such a diffusion of artistic taste and the love of luxury as has never been known before in the history of civilization; and nowhere has the change been more thorough and more obvious than on the stage. The scene-painter of old, who was a touch above the sign-painter, has developed into an artist who takes himself quite seriously, and who deserves to be so taken. The scenic aspect of the drama, which Aristotle reckoned the least important, and which Shakespeare, Molière, and their followers largely ignored, has become a factor of prime importance. But what of the passion with which the elder playwright illuminated his three boards? Most of all, what the resulting play? Upon the stage, thirty, forty, even fifty Copyright, 1904, by Charles Scribner's Sons. All rights reserved. VOL. XXXVI.-59 Then began a strenuous life for the scenepainter. If he had luck, the attractions leading up to the visit of the star were what is known as one-week bills, so that after preparing the regular weekly outfit, he could give the rest of his time to the many sets needful for a season of repertory. Morning and afternoon he worked with feverish haste, on the paint-bridge far aloft in the flies. His palette was a long table on wheels, upon which his pigments were heaped in brilliantly variegated mounds, or were dissolved in vessels ranging from a cup to a half-gallon measure. When he had to cover a large surface, such as the blue sky on a back drop, the pigment, mixed with sizing in buckets, was slapped on with brushes nine inches wide. In his gayer moments he called his paint-bridge the bridge of size. the actors would catch a few moments for rehearsing their scenes in a tragedy. Out of the din would rise the sharp, penetrating voice of the stage manager, whose temper was as short as the time at hand for rehearsal. To the chorus he would shout, "Sing out, can't you! You said you could sing when I engaged you." To the ballet his constant cry was, "Keep your legs up! Keep your toes out! If you can't kick, there are plenty of girls waiting for your places who can!" All this with a plentiful mingling of profanity. The shuffle of tired feet would begin again, to the insistent No wonder only the harridans among them endured the life! For the racket of rehearsal the old scenepainter had to have deaf ears. Eight o'clock on Monday night often found him working feverishly on the last scene of the play that was just ringing up. And when the final act of "Othello" was off, it might be necessary to transform the drop showing the seashore of Cyprus by daylight into the midnight scene on the platform at Elsinore, for the matinée of "Hamlet" next day. The pigments the scene-painter used are the lightest, but with successive repaintings |