Art

“WHEN I go to see any great house,” says Charles Lamb, “ I inquire for the china-closet, and then for the picture-gallery.” But in the collection of objects belonging or loaned to the Museum of Fine Arts, and now on exhibition at the Athenæum, the china-closet and picture-gallery may almost be found in one. That is, the collection of pottery and porcelain is by far in advance of the pictures ; and at the same time the potter’s art carries with it a certain reflection of the art of design. For both in Greece and in Italy it has been the custom to produce upon fictile wares more or less freely the compositions of distinguished masters of painting. The earliest specimens interest simply as examples of plastic art; but whether adorned with designs or not, the mere variety of forms exhibited in the vases here gathered together may be made to play no mean part in the education of the eye. If we regard points of ethnological interest, it would seem a matter for regret that the collection should include no examples of the early South American pottery, the delicate ware of the Mexican Cholulans, highly praised by the historian Herrera, or of the polished jars from Ohio and the gourd-like vessels found in New York. Something relating to the early history of the art on this continent would find a peculiarly fitting place in an American museum, where it might be contrasted with similar products of Asia and Italy. In respect to these last, the museum is well provided ; and some fine pieces of Majolica and of Japanese porcelain go far to complete a universality desirable in such collections. But we miss also any adequate representation of the Sèevres porcelain, or the flower-encrusted and beautiful shapes of Dresden, — two manufactures whose historical importance alone gives them a valid claim upon the best efforts of the committee to supply so serious a gap in their gallery. A most curious and valuable acquisition, however, they have, in the shape of three small Lacustrian vases of black earth, remains of the stone age. Produced without the aid of the potter’s wheel, they are rudely and irregularly formed, though directed by good taste: and despite their crudity we recognize in them a dim prophecy of the future, realized in the Græco-Etrurian vases which we must consider later on. The pottery from the tombs of Cyprus is next to these in point of time, and comprises Phœnician and early Greek work in unglazed clay. First in order, though probably not in antiquity, occur two or three of the common egg-shaped amphoræ ; but a more pleasing vessel to the sight than one of these long jars, with its pointed end stuck into the ground, and the aperture capped by the conical cover with central boss, in use for the purpose, it would perhaps be difficult to imagine, were not this other Greek amphora at hand, the cannellated body of which, and its twisted handles set akimbo to a slender neck, place it beyond competition. The use of pottery in the daily life of the ancients included the widest range of application. When it is considered that terra-cotta figured not only in the building of walls, as in the glazed brick walls of Babylon, but that it also furnished the material for large gilded statues, and for various architectural ornament, and that the records of the Assyrian monarchy, as well as the title-deeds and bills of exchange used among the people, were inscribed upon cylinders, tablets, and hexagonal prisms of the same material, it becomes possible to estimate its value to them. It would seem to have stood with them much in the relation of paper to the Japanese at the present day. The latter refine upon the uses of paper from its adaptation to a remarkable number of practical purposes, for which we consider more durable material necessary, until they apply it to the fans now common in this country, the decoration of which is often based on very excellent principles ; and with the ancients, vessels of earthenware, at first unpainted, were gradually decorated with incised lines, then zigzag, vertical, or horizontal lines painted in red and black, and finally became purely ornamental, greater skill being required in the designer of the compositions depicted, than in the modeller of the vase itself. This process is well displayed in the present collection. We soon become aware of life and color creeping into the objects, as we trace them in the order of the periods to which they belong. A pair of œnochoæ, or jugs, from Cyprus, show the lips of the opening compressed into a rude trefoil shape, the suggestion of a blossom being then curiously stimulated in quite another direction by the rough painting of a circle with the centre dotted, a bird’s eye, in fact, on either side of the nozzle. On another jug the handle mounts into an indefinite semblance of an animal’s head, with black horns, which gnaws perpetually into the edge of the opening. Here the painting on the body is probably taken from an Assyrian bas-relief. The introduction of figures marks a considerable advance, but they are still depicted with their eyes all askew, these being in profile faces just the same as if viewed from the front. The later pieces among the Cyprus pottery lead us over to the earlier ones among those loaned by Messrs. T. G. Appleton, Edward Austin, and G. W. Wales. Mr. Wales sends a small vase of black ware, with a gilded relief, which may not improbably represent the original Etruscan manufacture, in which, vases of metal being imitated in clay, relief frequently occurs. The singularity of the specimen gives it additional value. The loan collections illustrate the four epochs by which keramic art is marked from the period of its first decorative eminence when introduced by the Ionian Greeks, until the first century before the Christian era. Here we pass through the Asiatic epoch, where the gaunt figures with queer eyes still stalk through multitudinous lotus-flowers, or strange animals, with slender wings recurved, make procession primly around the vase, to the second period, distinguished by black figures on a red ground which are more in accord with nature. These yield to the red on black of the third and best epoch. Vase-painting is here no longer simply decorative, but has become graphic. The subjects of the designs are now wholly Greek, and both the drawings and the shapes of the vessels themselves are most pleasing and worthy of study. Next, the compositions fall into disorder and unreality, and white and yellow tints creep into the figures, marking a defection from simplicity of taste. Masks, leaves, and women’s heads sprouting out of wreaths of flowers abound. Under the influence of moulds, now in general use (200-100 b. c.), the art declines rapidly. Instead of the natural shapes which once reigned, with their fruit-like curves and chaste designs, we find a pleasure-palled taste embodying its feverish longing for novelty in exaggerated shapes and greater variety of coloring in the figures. Scared by these portentous appearances, beauty and grace shrink out of sight.

After the decline of the Roman Empire, pottery in its decorative aspect nearly disappeared from Europe. In the eighth century, however, the Arabs adorned the Alhambra with tiles of terra-cotta, one of which may be seen here, and practised a very beautiful pottery in some of the Mediterranean islands. In 1115 the Pisans successfully crusaded against Majorca, and brought home specimens of this ware, a brilliant piece of which (No. 406) is displayed here, a deep blue dish with arabesque design in coppercolor and covered with a dazzling glaze. This wonderful iridescence did not fully extend its illumination to the imitative Italian manufacture until in the sixteenth century. Then was produced in perfection the “ Majolica ” ware of which such excellent examples are to be seen in the museum. One fancies that he may find in the coloring a trace of the sea-origin of the fabric, the marine or pale blues, the lilac tints, the reddish and greenish yellows, all strongly resembling in effect those of the sea and its adjacent reedy marshes. A good Palissy dish, and two platters and bowls of Japanese porcelain, complete the list of beauties in this collection. Japanese porcelain presents one of the richest decorative phases of the art, but has never become graphic, save in rare instances. Nor is it perhaps desirable that it should. Ancient fictile ware passed on to this, and declined ; nor do we think that modern porcelain reaches its truest successes in representation, but rather in decoration. This, then, would seem to be its natural scope, as defined by the history of the art.

The name of Gilbert Stuart, usually relegated to the honorable retiracy of such collections as are fortunate enough to possess some of his work, has been brought into the records of contemporaneous picture-buying, through the purchase by a gentleman of this city of five portraits by Stuart, representing the first five Presidents of the United States, which were on exhibition last month at Messrs. Williams and Everett’s. It is, at first, difficult to choose among this resplendent show of heads that upon which one would bestow the premium. The sympathies of the larger portion of spectators will doubtless at once have been drawn to the portrait of Washington, for obvious reasons. But, indeed, the critic may safely give this the preference over its companions of the present series. Its completeness at once renders it more satisfactory to the eye than the original head in the Athenæum, while all the features are developed with a force and feeling quite equal to those of the former. The present portrait, too, is treated with a solidity of material and a more punctilious finish than are bestowed on the remaining pictures of the series. These are about equal in point of artistic merit ; but as a character - study the portrait of John Adams ranks next to the Washington. He is depicted in an ample coat of maroon velvet, which accords happily with the large broad face, smooth, open forehead, and full eyelids, marking the generous and sanguine, but also somewhat lymphatic, temperament of the second President. On exhibition with the Presidential portraits was an unfinished picture of Daniel Webster, when comparatively a young man. The head alone is executed, being relieved from the bare canvas only by a few dashes of brown. To our mind this takes its place beside the Washington and Adams for personal interest, and is very wonderfully painted as well. The grave, smooth - shaven, kindly face, with lightly and evenly colored cheeks, the lustrous and thoughtful eyes, and the pure, high forehead with deep black hair above, sink deep through the vision into our inmost consciousness.

These works are all marked by that fresh and vivid color which distinguishes the portrait of Washington and Martha Washington, in the Athenæum. The artist’s method of coloring is supposed to be explained by his remark that “good fleshcoloring partakes of all colors, not mixed so as to be combined in one tint, but shining through each other, like the blood through the natural skin.”This word “ shining,” taken apart from any suggestion it may have of glossiness or varnish, is descriptive of the quality of color in these portraits. So blooming is the hue, so penetrable to the eye, yet so firm and resisting, that it suggests the mysterious renewals of life in actual faces. It would seem that the painter had instilled into the pigments some invigorating principle, which, tingling ever freshly beneath the surface, should keep their exterior lifelike and beautiful. There are painters whose pictures achieve at their birth a ripe autumnal splendor that reminds one of the dusk and golden twilight in which Titian’s portraits steal upon us, after three hundred years. But though Stuart’s coloring might be made more soothing, the hale vigor which it has preserved through wellnigh a century may perhaps furnish the material best fitted to improve with age.

A writer in “The Nation" newspaper noticing our allusion to his criticism of Mr. Quincy Ward’s statues, says of the Indian Hunter : —

“ What we have said about the character of its flesh, to the dissatisfaction of the ‘ Atlantic’s ’ critic, was principally from our remembrance of how it compared, in 1867, with a crowd of the best modern statues of Europe. We discussed in that year with an artist out of one of the foremost ateliers in Paris the peculiar adipose look of its flesh, each muscle being well enough defined, but indicating in its separate body corpulence rather than fibre, a distinction plain enough to a student of anatomy. The treatment seemed to forbid the supposition that the flesh had been studied from an Indian model at all. The skin of Indians, as we believe, very much hides the play of the muscles, suggesting to sculpture a treatment like that of the Dying Gladiator, where the heavy cuticle covers the muscular system like canvas ; the limbs, too, are surprisingly slender in every case that we have examined.”

We have not now the time or space to enter into the discussion of this matter, and we have the less disposition to do so because “ The Nation ” in this case is the best answer to “The Nation.” In its criticism of the Indian Hunter when first exhibited, that journal said :

“ A finely made young man, slender, but solid and powerful, . . . . rather a gymnast than a boxer. His hands and feet are small, the feet especially beautiful, delicate as a woman’s, well arched up underneath. The limbs are rather slender in proportion to the trunk ; the legs, indeed, are as well strung and as well adapted to their uses as the tireless hind legs of his dog. Look at the face ; if that mask were shown you, fished up out of the Nile, you would say it was certainly the mask of an American Indian. . . . The formation of flesh [on Indians] is very slight and slow, the muscles appear to be different in quality from ours of the white race, and act without showing their action through the surface, except by the corded tendons of which every motion is visible. This . . . . is singularly confirmed by the statue before us. The extremities, of course, will show the difference most forcibly, and the right leg alone will demonstrate the whole matter to one who will take the trouble to compare it with models of established excellence of Greek or other work of a pure Caucasian type.”

It might be interesting to know which of its opinions of Mr. Ward’s statue “ The Nation ” prefers. Perhaps it is the temper of its own earlier notice that the newspaper means to describe as the “ sort of good-nature which is the bane of Anglo-Saxon artcriticism in general, and keeps that criticism in the unfortunate place it occupies among other more tractable and studious nations, — turning hand-springs and exhibiting its heels at the windows of the judgment-hall, where the legislation of art is going on by a patient study of old codes and comparison of lasting truths,” — a very extraordinary bit of contortionist’s English, by the way.