Various - "Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881"

Innes Logan - "On the King's Service"

George T. Ferris - "Great Singers, Second Series"

Fanny Forester - "Effie Maurice"

Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. IV.--SEPTEMBER, 1859.--NO. XXIII.




THE LIFE AND WORKS OF ARY SCHEFFER.


No painter of this age has made so deep an impression on the popular
mind of America as Ary Scheffer. Few, if any other contemporary artists
are domesticated at our firesides, and known and loved in our remotest
villages and towns. Only a small number, indeed, of his original works
have been exhibited here,--yet engravings from them are not only
familiar to every person of acknowledged taste and culture, but are dear
to the hearts of many who scarcely know the artist's name. Young maidens
delight in their tender pathos, and the suffering heart is consoled and
elevated by their pure and lofty religious aspiration. An effect so
great must have an adequate and peculiar cause; and we shall not have
far to seek for it, but shall find it in the aim and character of the
artist. Scheffer has two prominent qualities, by which he has won his
place in the popular estimation. The first is his sentiment. His works
are full of simple, tender pathos. His pictures always tell their story,
first to the eye, next to the heart and soul of the beholder. His
admirable knowledge of composition is always subordinate to expression.
His meaning is not merely historical or poetical, but is true to life
and every-day experience. "Mignon regrettant sa Patrie" is felt and
appreciated by those who have never sung,

"Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen
bluehen,"--

and "Faust" and "Margaret" tell their story to all who have felt life's
struggles and temptations, whether they have read them in Goethe's
version or not. Added to this power of pathos and sentiment is the deep
religious feeling which pervades every work of his pencil, whatever be
its outward form. His religion is of no dogma or sect, but the inflowing
of a life which makes all things holy and full of infinite meaning.
Whether he paint the legends of the Catholic Church, as in "St.
Augustine" and "St. Monica," or illustrate the life-poem of the
Protestant Goethe, or tell a simple story of childhood, the same
feelings are kindled, in our heart's faith in God, love to man, the sure
hope of immortality. It is this genuine and earnest religion of humanity
which has made his works familiar to every lover of Art and sentiment,
and given us a feeling of personal love and reverence for the made
artist.

It is now nearly a year since his labors on earth terminated, and yet no
adequate account of his life and labors has appeared. It is very
difficult to satisfy the craving desire to know more of the personal
life and character of him who has been a household friend so long. Yet
it is rather the privilege of succeeding generations, than of
contemporaries, to draw aside the veil from the sanctuary, and to behold
the works of a man in his greatest art,--the art of life. But the cold
waters of the Atlantic, like the river of Death, make the person of a
European artist sacred to us; and it is hard for us to realize that
those whom we have surrounded with a halo of classic reverence were
partakers of the daily jar and turmoil of our busy age,--that the good
physician who tended our sick children so faithfully had lived in
familiar intercourse with Goethe, and might have listened to the first
performance of those symphonies of Beethoven which seem to us as eternal
as the mountains. Losing the effluence of his personal presence, which
his neighbors and countrymen enjoyed, we demand the privilege of
posterity to hear and tell all that can be told of him. We can wait
fifty years more for a biography of Allston, because something of his
gracious presence yet lingers among us; but we can touch Scheffer only
with the burin or the pen. So we shall throw in our mite to fill up this
chasm. A few gleanings from current French literature, a few anecdotes
familiarly told of the great artist, and the vivid recollection of one
short interview are all the aids we can summon to enable our readers to
call up in their own minds a living image which will answer to the name
that has so long been familiar to our lips and dear to our hearts.

Ary Scheffer was born about the year 1795, in the town of Dordrecht, in
Holland; but, as at that period Holland belonged to the French Empire,
the child was entitled by birth to those privileges of a French citizen
which opened to him important advantages in his artistic career. French
by this accident of birth, and still more so by his education and long
residence at Paris, he yet always retained traces of his Teutonic origin
in the form of his head, in his general appearance, and in his earnest
and religious character. He always cherished a warm affection for his
native land.

Many distinguished artists have been the sons of painters or designers
of superior note. Raffaello, Albert Duerer, Alonzo Cano, Vandyck, Luca
Giordano are familiar instances. It seems as if the accumulation of two
generations of talent were necessary to produce the fine flower of
genius. The father of Ary Scheffer was an artist of considerable
ability, and promised to become an eminent painter, when he was cut off
by an early death. He left a widow, many unfinished pictures, and three
sons, yet very young. The character of the mother we infer only from her
influence on her son, from the devoted affection he bore to her, and
from the wisdom with which she guided his early education; but these
show her to have been a true woman,--brave, loving, and always loyal to
the highest. The three sons all lived to middle age, and all became
distinguished men. Ary, the eldest, very early gave unequivocal signs of
his future destiny. His countrymen still remember a large picture
painted by him at Amsterdam when only twelve years old, indicating
extraordinary talent, even at that early age. His mother did not,
however, overrate this boyish success, as stamping him a prodigy, but
regarded it only as a motive for giving him a thorough artistic
education. He went, accordingly, to Paris, and entered the _atelier_ of
Guerin, the teacher then most in vogue.

It was in the latter days of the Empire that Ary Scheffer commenced his
studies,--a period of great stagnation in Art. The whole force of the
popular mind had for many years been turned to politics and war; and if
French Art had striven to emancipate itself from slavish dependence on
the Greek, it still clung to the Roman models, which are far less
inspiring. "The autocrat David, with his correct, but soulless
compositions, was more absolute than his master, the Emperor." Only in
the Saloon of 1819 did the Revolution, which had already affected every
other department of thought and life, reach the _ateliers_. It commenced
in that of Guerin. The very weakness of the master, who himself halted
between two opinions, left the pupils in freedom to pursue their own
course. Scheffer did not esteem this a fortunate circumstance for
himself. His own nature was too strong and living to be crushed by a
severe master or exact study, and he felt the want of that thorough
early training which would have saved him much struggle in after life.
He used to speak of Ingres as such a teacher as he would have chosen for
himself. From the pupil of David, the admirer of Michel Angelo, the
conservator of the sacred traditions of Art, the student might learn all
the treasured wisdom of antiquity,--while the influences around him, and
his own genius, would impel him towards prophesying the hope of the
future. His favorite companions of the _atelier_ at this time were
Eugene Delacroix and Gericault. Delacroix ranks among the greatest
living French artists; and if death early closed the brilliant career of
Gericault, it has not yet shrouded his name in oblivion. The trio made
their first appearance together in the Saloon of 1819. Gericault sent
his "Wreck of the Medusa," Delacroix "The Barque of Dante," and Ary
Scheffer "The Citizens of Calais."[1]

The works of these friends may be considered as the commencement of the
modern French school of Art, still so little known, and so ill
appreciated by us, but which is really an expression of the new ideas of
Art and Humanity which have agitated France to its centre for half a
century. Their hour of triumph has not yet come; but as the poet sings
most touchingly of his love, neither when he rejoices in its happy
consummation, nor in the hour of utter despair, but when doubt still
tempers hope,--so does the artist labor with prophetic zeal to express
those sentiments of humanity and brotherhood which are not yet organized
into institutions. A careless eye might have perceived little departure
from the old models in these pictures, but a keener one would have
already discovered that Scheffer and his friends worked with a different
aim from that of their predecessors. Not merely to paint a well-composed
picture on a classical theme, but to give expression to thought and
feeling, was now the object. "The Wreck of the Medusa" of Gericault is
full of earnest, if niggling life. Delacroix has followed his own bent
with such independent zeal as has made him the object of intense
admiration to some, of bitter hatred to others. But Ary Scheffer has
taken his rank at the head of the Spiritualist school, and has awakened
a wider love and obtained a fuller appreciation than either of them. The
spirit which found in them its first expression is continually
increasing in power, and developing into richer life. The living artists
of France are the exponents of her genuine Christian democracy.

"The entire collection of Rosa Bonheur's works," says a French writer,
"might be called the Hymn to Labor. Here she shows us the ploughing,
there the reaping, farther on the gathering in of the hay, then of the
harvests, elsewhere the vintage,--always and everywhere labor." Edouard
Frere, in his scenes from humble life, which the skilful lithographer
places within the means of all, represents the incidents of domestic
existence among the poor. "The Prayer at the Mother's Knee," "The Woman
at her Ironing Table," "The Child shelling Peas," "The Walk to School
amid Rain and Sleet," are all charming idyls of every-day life. With yet
greater skill and deeper pathos does the peasant Millet tell the story
of his neighbors. The washerwomen, as the sun sets upon their labors,
and they go wearily homeward; the digger, at his lonely task, who can
pause but an instant to wipe the sweat from his brow; the sewing-women
bending over their work, while every nerve and muscle are strained by
the unremitting toil; the girl tending her geese; the woman her
cows:--such are the subjects of his masterly pencil. Do not all these
facts point to the realization of Christian democracy? If the king is
now but the servant of the people, so the artist who is royal in the
kingdom of the mind finds his true glory in serving humanity. What a
change from the classic subjects or monkish legends which occupied the
pencils of David and his greater predecessors, Le Sueur and Poussin!

And yet those students of the antique have done French Art good service;
they have furnished it with admirable tools, so that to them we are
indebted for the thorough drawing, the masterly knowledge, which render
Paris the great school for all beginners in Art. Such men as we have
named do not scorn the past, but use it in the service of the present.
While Scheffer always subordinated the material part of Art to its
expression, he was never afraid of knowing too much, but often regretted
the loss of valuable time in youth from incompetent instruction.

Encouraged by the success of his first essay, Scheffer continued to
paint a series of small pictures, representing simple and affecting
scenes from common life, some of which are familiar to all. "The
Soldier's Widow," "The Conscript's Return," "The Orphans at their
Mother's Tomb," "The Sister of Charity," "The Fishermen before a Storm,"
"The Burning of the Farm," and "The Scene of the Invasion in 1814," are
titles which give an idea of the range of his subjects and the tenor of
his thoughts at this time. The French have long excelled in the art of
composition. It is this quality which gives the greatest value to the
works of Le Sueur and Poussin. Scheffer possessed this power in a
remarkable degree, but it was united to a directness and truth of
feeling which made his art the perfection of natural expression. A very
charming little engraving, entitled "The Lost Children," which appeared
in "The Token" for 1830, is probably from a picture of this period. A
little boy and girl are lost in a wood. Wearied with their fruitless
attempts to find a path, the boy has at length sunk down upon a log and
buried his face in his hands; while the little girl, still patient,
still hopeful, stands, with folded hands, looking earnestly into the
wood, with a sweet, sad look of anxiety, but not of despair. The
contrast in the expression of the two figures is very touching and very
true to Nature;--the boy was hopeful so long as his own exertions
offered a chance of escape, but the courage of the girl appears when
earthly hope is most dim and faint. The sweet unconsciousness of this
early picture has hardly been surpassed by any subsequent work.
"Naturalness and the charm of composition," says a French critic, "are
the secrets of Scheffer's success in these early pictures, to which may
be added a third,--the distinction of the type of his faces, and
especially of his female heads,--a kind of suave and melancholy ideal,
which gave so new a stamp to his works."

These small pictures were very successful in winning popular favor; but
this success, far from intoxicating the young artist, only opened his
eyes to his own faults. He applied himself diligently to repairing the
deficiencies which he recognized in his work, by severe studies and
labors. He knew the danger of working too long on small-sized pictures,
in which faults may be so easily hidden. About the year 1826 he turned
resolutely from his "pretty jewels," as he called them, and commenced
his "Femmes Suliotes," on a large canvas, with figures the size of life.
M. Vitet describes the appearance of the canvas when Scheffer had
already spent eight days "in the fire of his first thought." It seemed
to him rather like a vision than a picture, as he saw the dim outlines
of those heroic women, who cast themselves from the rock to escape
slavery by death. He confesses that the finished picture never moved him
as did the sketch. Three years earlier Scheffer had sent to the Saloon
of 1824, in company with three or four small pictures, a large picture
of Gaston de Foix after the Battle of Ravenna. It was a sombre picture,
painted with that lavish use of pigment and that unrestrained freedom
which distinguished the innovators of that day. The new school were in
raptures, and claimed Scheffer as belonging to them. The public judged
less favorably; "they admired the noble head of Gaston de Foix, but,
uninterested in the remainder of the picture, they turned off to look at
'The Soldier's Widow.'" Scheffer did not listen to his flatterers; but,
remembering Michel Angelo's words to the young sculptor, "The light of
the public square will test its value," he believed in the verdict of
the people, and never again painted in the same manner. It was one of
his peculiar merits, that, although open to conviction, and ready to try
a new path which seemed to offer itself, he was also ready to turn from
it when he found it leading him astray. "Les Femmes Suliotes" did not
seem to have been designed by the same hand or with the same pencil as
the "Gaston de Foix." The first sketch was particularly
pleasing,--already clear and harmonious in color, although rather low in
tone. Many counselled him to leave the picture, thus. "No," said
Scheffer, "I did not take a large canvas merely to increase the size of
my figures and to paint large in water-colors, but to give greater truth
and thoroughness to my forms." In 1827 this picture was exhibited with
ample success, and the critics were forced to acknowledge the great
improvement in his style, although he had not entirely escaped from the
influence of his companions, and some violent contrasts of color mar the
general effect. The picture is now in the Luxembourg Gallery.

M. Vitet divides Scheffer's artistic life into three portions: that in
which he painted subjects from simple life; that devoted to poetic
subjects; and the last, or distinctively religious period. These
divisions cannot, of course, be very sharply drawn, but may help us to
understand the progress of his mind; and "Les Femmes Suliotes" will mark
the transition from the first to the second period. Turning from the
simple scenes of domestic sorrow, he now sought inspiration in
literature. The vigorous and hearty Northern Muse especially won his
favor; yet the greatest Italian poet was also his earnest study. Goethe,
Schiller, Byron, Dante, all furnished subjects for his pencil. The story
of Faust and Margaret took such hold of his imagination that it pursued
him for nearly thirty years. Their forms appeared before him in new
attitudes and situations almost to his last hour, so that, in the midst
of his labors on religious pictures, he seized his pencils to paint yet
another Faust, another Margaret. Nor can we wonder at this absorbing
interest, when we reflect on the profound significance and touching
pathos of this theme, which may wear a hundred faces, and touch every
chord of the human heart. It is intellect and passion, in contrast with
innocence and faith; it is natural and spontaneous love, thwarted by
convention and circumstance; it is condemnation before men, and
forgiveness before God; it is the ideal and the worldly; it is an
epitome of human life,--love, joy, sorrow, sin,--birth, life, death, and
the sure hope of resurrection. How pregnant with expression was it to a
mind like Scheffer's, where the intellectual, the affectional, and the
spiritual natures were so nicely blended! He first painted "Margaret at
her Wheel," in 1831,--accompanied by a "Faust tormented by Doubt." These
were two simple heads, each by itself, like a portrait, but with all the
fine perception of character which constitutes an ideal work. Next he
painted "Margaret at Church." Here other figures fill up the canvas; but
the touching expression of the young girl, whose soul is just beginning
to be torn by the yet new joy of her love and the bitter consciousness
of her lost innocence, fills the mind of the spectator. This is the
most inspired and the most touching of all the pictures; it strikes the
key-note of the whole story; it is the meeting of the young girl's own
ideal world of pure thought with the outward world. The sense of guilt
comes from the reflection in the thoughts of those about her; and where
all before was peace and love, now come discord and agony;--she has
eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and is already cast out
of her paradise. "Margaret on the Sabbath," "Margaret going out of
Church," and "Margaret walking in the Garden," are all charming idyls,
but have less expression. The last picture, painted just before
Scheffer's death, and soon to be engraved, represents "Margaret at the
Fountain." "It is full of expression, and paints the joy and pain of
love still struggling in the young girl's heart, while conscience begins
to make its chiding voice heard."

The "Mignons" are the best known of all Scheffer's works of this period.
The youngest one, "Mignon regrettant sa Patrie," is the most
satisfactory in its simple, unconscious expression. The wonderful child
stands in the most natural attitude, absorbed in her own thought, and
struggling to recall those dim memories, floating in beauty before her
mind, which seem almost to belong to a previous state of existence.
There is less of the weird and fantastic than Goethe has given to
her,--but the central, deep nature is beautifully reproduced. "Mignon
aspirant au Ciel," although full of spiritual beauty, is a little more
constrained; the longing after her heavenly home is less naturally
expressed than her childish regret; the pose is a little mannered; and
the feeling is more conscious, but less deep. "Mignon with the Old
Harper" is far less interesting; the old man's head does not express
that mixture of inspiration and insanity, the result of a life of love,
misery, and wrong, which Goethe has portrayed in this strange character.

A very different picture, painted at this period, is peculiarly
interesting to us as our first acquaintance among Scheffer's works. An
excellent copy or duplicate of it belongs to the Boston Athenaeum. The
original is in the Luxembourg at Paris. The subject is taken from
Schiller's ballad of "Count Eberhard." After the victory in which his
son has fallen, though the old Count has said to those who would have
paused to mourn his death, "My son is like another man; on, comrades, to
the foe!"--yet now he sits alone in his tent and looks upon the dead
body of his child. The silent grief of the stern old man is very
touching. This sorrow, so contrary to Nature, when old age stands by the
grave of youth, always moves the deepest feeling; and Scheffer, in the
noble old man and the brave and beautiful boy before him, has given it
its simplest and most appropriate expression. This picture was painted
in 1834. At that period Scheffer was engaged in some experiments in
color, and this sad subject led him to employ the dark tints of
Rembrandt. In 1850 he painted a duplicate of it, lighter and more
agreeable in tone. He painted "The Giaour" and "Medora," from Byron,
which pictures we have never seen. The wayward and morbid Muse of the
English Lord does not seem to us a fit inspiration for the pure pencil
of Scheffer.

The well-known composition of "Francesca da Rimini" may well conclude
our brief notice of the pictures of this second epoch. M. Vitet regards
it as the most harmonious and complete of all his works; but we think it
has taken less hold on the popular heart than the "Mignons" and
"Margaret." Yet it is a work of great skill and beauty. The difficult
theme is managed with that moderation and good taste which recognize the
true limits of the art. The crowd of spirits which Dante so powerfully
describes as driven by the wind without rest are only dimly seen in the
background. The horrors of hell are shown only in the anguish of those
faces, in the despairing languor of the attitude, which not even mutual
love can lighten. The love which made them one in guilt, one in
condemnation, is stronger than death, stronger than hell; but it cannot
bring peace and joy to these souls shut out from heaven and God.

"Se fosse amico il Re dell' universo,
Noi pregheremmo."

But even prayer is denied to him who feels that he has not God for a
friend. There is no mark of physical torture; it is pure spiritual
suffering,--restless, aimless weariness,--the loss of hope; it is
death,--and love demands life. How strangely appropriate is this
punishment of spirits driven hither and thither by the winds, with no
hope of rest, to those who reject the firm anchorage of duty and
principle, and allow themselves to float at the mercy of their impulses
and passions! The overpowering compassion and sympathy of the poets is
shown in their earnest faces. Neither here, nor in the well-known "Dante
and Beatrice," which is too familiar to need description, does Scheffer
quite do justice to our ideal of the sublime poet of Heaven and Hell;
but neither do the portraits which remain of him. The picture was first
exhibited in 1835. As it had suffered very much in 1850, Scheffer
painted a repetition of it, with a few slight alterations, in which,
however, his progress in his art during twenty years was very evident.
This copy is very far superior to the engraving.

About this period Scheffer seems to have wandered a little from the true
mission of Art, and to have esteemed it her province to represent
abstract theological truths. His religious feeling seems to have become
morbid, and his natural melancholy intensified. The death of his wife,
and consequent loneliness, may have given this ascetic tinge to his
feelings. But we must acknowledge, if it were so, that the sorrow which
oppressed did not embitter his heart, and that a brave and humane spirit
appears even in those works which have the least artistic merit to
recommend them. The "Christus Consolator" is the best known of this
class of pictures. It is cold, abstract, and inharmonious; but its
religious spirit and the beautiful truth which it expresses have won for
it a welcome which it seems hardly to merit. Yet it has touching beauty
in the separate figures. The woman who leans so trustingly on her
Saviour's arm has a very high and holy face, whose type we recognize in
more than one of his pictures; and the mother and her dead child form a
very touching group. But the various persons are not connected by any
common story or mutual relation, and we feel a want of unity in the
whole work. Perhaps the strongest tribute to its power of expression is
the story, that religious publishers found it necessary to blot out the
figure of the slave who takes his place among the recipients of Christ's
blessing, in order to fit their reprint for a Southern market. As a
companion to it, he painted the "Christus Remunerator," which is less
interesting. To this same class of pictures we should probably refer
"The Lamentations of Earth to Heaven," which we have never seen, but
which is thus described by M. Anatole de la Lorge:--

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