Puvis De Chavannes in Boston

THE decorations by Puvis de Chavannes in the Boston Public Library are now completed, the last panels of the cycle are in place, and he who enters this great civic building, whether for business or for enjoyment, is greeted by the sight of one of the noblest decorated staircases known to modern art. For distant readers, a brief description, alike of place and of theme, may be helpful, if not necessary.

Of the nine pictures composing the cycle, the well-known large panel, generally called Apollo and the Muses, fills the whole windowless wall of the upper landing, leading into Bates Hall. The other eight pictures, recently put in place, fill the eight large upper compartments, or panels, of the staircase proper; they are set in the same rich gold Siena marble that forms the paneling of the lower more workaday portion and the balustrade of the staircase, and are well lit from the mighty windows opposite the upper landing. Of these eight panels, six fill the two side walls, two the compartments on either side of the windows. These panels being practically on a level with the long picture under the arches, the eye takes in the scheme of the whole at one comprehensive glance; and in few other places, nowadays, can it rest on an ensemble that has a nobler sensuous charm, and more monumental quality of conception and treatment.

The subjects are best explained in the master’s own words in the printed leaflet of description, with brief supplementary indications as to the way the painter has conceived these subjects and put them on the wall.

“ Having been entrusted,” says Puvis de Chavannes, “with the honor of decorating the staircase of the Boston Library, I have sought to represent under a symbolic form and in a single view the intellectual treasures collected in this beautiful building. The whole seems to me summed up in the composition entitled The Muses of Inspiration hail the Spirit, the Harbinger of Light.” This large panel represents, as most of us know, Apollo and the Muses floating in mid-air, robed in white, against a background of early morning landscape ; little hills, sparsely wooded, softly graygreen, against a distance of deep blue sea and pale luminous sky.

“ Out of this composition,” continues the master, “ others have developed which answer to the four great expressions of the human mind, Poetry, Philosophy, History, Science. On the righthand wall of the staircase, as you enter, appear in three panels: 1. Pastoral Poetry (Virgil). 2. Dramatic Poetry (Æschylus and the Oceanides). 3. Epic Poetry (Homer crowned by the Iliad and Odyssey).”

In the first panel, Virgil, robed in white, with a cool purple mantle drapery thrown over his left shoulder, stands pensive in an idyllic landscape of plain and grove and river, in dull greens and olives. In the second, the poet reclines by the seashore, scroll in hand. There is a foreground of rocky shore, pale mauve in color, with one solitary low-spreading pine to give depth to the water; a distance in blues and pale hyacinths of classical sea-girt cliffs, peopled by the white figures of the poet’s dream ; a few happy gulls in the upper air. The third shows an old man seated and two female figures standing, — one in the helmet and trappings of war, one soberly clad in a long-sleeved dun garment; a landscape of dull tawny cliffs, with an arm of the sea beyond, the deep blue, stirring Ægean ; in the background warm purple rocks, hinting at roving and adventure.

“ On the left-hand wall: 1. History, attended by a Spirit bearing a torch, calls up the Past. 2. Astronomy. The Chaldean Shepherds observe the stars and discover the law of numbers. 3. Philosophy. Plato sums up in an immortal phrase the eternal conflict between Spiritualism and Materialism: 1 Man is a plant of heavenly, not of earthly growth.’ ”

History is a female figure, attended by a naked boy, evoking the past from a chasm or grotto showing the upper part of a Doric column. The tones are russets and browns in full quiet daylight ; dead leaves are on the oak scrub, and there is no grass on the rocky slope, but an almond-tree in rich pink blossom. Some grass and a massive grove are seen on the brow of the hill beyond. In the Astronomy panel two or three halfclad shepherds are shown observing the stars in a rocky wilderness ; one figure, stretched prone on the ground under a rough hut or canopy of branches, is engaged in simple computation. The third of these panels is a combination, such as the painter loves, of spreading lawns, gleaming white colonnades, and (French) classic groves of full dark foliage. In the background is a shapely Greek mountain crowned by a Doric temple, radiant in the sunlight against the greenish afternoon sky. Plato, in the foreground, robed in white, with a mantle of full rich blue, fronts the spectator, while the young disciple, leaning his elbow on a marble pedestal, shows his handsome back. There are smaller figures on the steps of the semicircular colonnade or scattered over the lawn.

“ On the end wall to the right and left of the windows: To the left, Chemistry (mineral, organic, vegetable). A process of mysterious change evolves itself under the magic wand of a fairy surrounded by watching spirits.”

The mystic process takes place in a kind of open grotto, with walls so high that the pearly white of the robe of the genius and the naked little bodies of the cherubs that stand eagerly looking on are relieved throughout against soft shaded purples and blues of twilit rock.

“ To the right, Physics. By the wondrous agency of Electricity, Speech flashes through space, and swift as lightning bears tidings of good and evil.”

A hilly pass by the sea, simple and severe in character ; background of sea and cloudy sky streaked with pale yellow at the horizon. The genius of good tidings soars aloft, carrying a joyous branch. The messenger of evil, darkly robed, follows the lines of the telegraph wire closely, swiftly, veiling her eyes with her hand. The tragic force is intense ; there is not one unnecessary item in the picture.

To those who have not seen the designs, but who know the work of Puvis in France, these hints may convey some idea of characteristic passages, familiar yet never cheapened themes, mingling with deep and original motives. Readers who do not know the art of Puvis de Chavannes will have gathered, I hope, a general impression that the color is subdued, but not poor; that subjects and composition alike are severely simple, consisting of as few figures as possible, quietly posed in a background of landscape; that this landscape, mostly classical, is an integral part of the thought and design. They should be told further that the color presents delicate harmonies of pale blues and violets, or contrasts of shimmering whites and deep-toned greens set off by more sober and neutral tints. To those who have not seen any of the painter’s work before, these panels will at first bring an impression of strangeness. Some will find in them a reminder of the Greek world they had dreamt of,—not the same, but equally convincing, in its own dreamlike way, equally charged with farreaching suggestion. Others will be perplexed : so different from any other kind of painting they know are these large pictures in their flatness and dullness of surface, in their lack of modeling and bareness of accessories, so puzzling in the incorrectness that every tyro in art is willing to point out; so remote from our habits is this reticent grandeur of utterance. Yet crowds continue to come and be puzzled, and thus testify to the interest and curiosity awakened.

In the judgment of artists and artlovers the value of works of art like these in a place like this cannot he rated too highly. There is an unmistakable awakening among us of an instinctive craving for art in some tangible form, art which requires to be nourished by something more solid than discussions and more satisfactory than museums. Museums and galleries are all very well in their way, but we are beginning to find out that it is rather a devious way, leading only students to the desired goal. Galleries are unquestionably more civilizing than saloons, and many among us doubtless owe their awakening to a real and fruitful taste for art to the revelation made by a first acquaintance with the New York Rembrandts or some of the Greek or Japanese treasures of the Boston Museum. But the action of museums and galleries is necessarily slow and fragmentary, never direct and as it were living. The objects in them are like a collection of wildflowers on exhibition in a horticultural show. No horticultural show, however well classified and “ artistically ” arranged, can give us any notion of the charm and fragrance of nature; and all students of early Italian art know the difference between weeks of assiduous study in the galleries and a single morning with the Fra Angelicos in the convent of St. Mark’s or the Luinis at Saronno. Sometimes five minutes are enough to clear the mind of cobwebs painfully accumulated during years of poring over books, or months of gallery study ; or to make one see things at a glance that one had long labored in vain at understanding. Sometimes the process is slower : the first impression is one of half-repellent and certainly confusing strangeness, which slowly gives place to a sense of unreasoning wellbeing, almost physical, as the sensuous charm dispels the bookish cobwebs, and the firm construction of the whole makes itself quietly felt. Meanwhile, the beauties of impersonation, so to say, of rendering and knowledge, are unfolding themselves one by one in their full significance, until study is forgotten in communion, and the air seems warm with whispers, as from a living presence. Later comes the season of study, when one analyzes the means employed, discovers how great is the reinforcement of effect gained by unity, observes and acknowledges the impression of durability due to coöperation with architecture which is the birthright of mural decoration. But the main thing, from first to last, about these invaluable impressions is always the directness and deep quiet objectivity of appeal, as of something inherent in the thing itself, which communion brings out, but which no amount of study will put in. To commune with pictures in galleries at all means a concentration of mind, and hence a strain, a tension, the very opposite of the effect produced by the chapel or loggia ; while neither the gallery picture nor the picture gallery can ever offer us the incidental teachings and subtle suggestive pleasures of the thing in place. So closely related are all great works of art to their natural setting that when we find ourselves enjoying any one picture with any depth of appreciation, we generally find ourselves also mentally reconstructing the surroundings from which it has been torn and putting it back in its birthplace, — the portrait by Titian in the dusky splendor of the Venetian sola, the Madonna in the dim light of the convent chapel of the Tuscan or Umbrian hillside.

It is evident that an appeal of this kind, at once direct and full, is of as much value to latent susceptibilities as to trained susceptibilities. We may even reckon it as more valuable, since it puts the spectator on the right track from the beginning, and shows him at once and definitely how great and comprehensive a thing is art; not a mere little cup of æsthetic pleasure, but a deep draught of spiritual joy, offered out of a goblet of pure delight. It is only another aspect of the old case — more than once debated in these pages — of masterpieces of literature contrasted with textbooks or selections. But literature and art have this wide difference : single-minded reading has not, after all, become so dissociated from our daily habit as deep and thorough enjoyment of art has, for the simple reason that books penetrate everywhere, while it is not every one who can travel to the Old World and plunge into the glorious books of the “thing in place.” Therefore it is, I repeat, that all lovers of art feel it to be hardly possible to overestimate the value, for America, of works of art like these decorations by Puvis in the Boston Public Library, at this time of new stir in the feeling for art.

It is instructive to glance, in passing, at the direction taken by this reawakening of the art instinct in the two countries nearest to us in culture and geographical position. In England, the leaders of the new movement have labored successfully to put an end to the unnatural separation of art from craft brought about by academies and commercialism, knowing well and feeling warmly that art will never thrive until we all understand (as people have done in all epochs when art was alive) that beauty is a thing for human nature’s daily food, and art a quality that is as much at home in a footstool as in a statue. In France, there is growing up a conviction, mainly due to the initiative of one great and stubborn man, that painting dissociated from the dignity and grandeur of monumental art has but a relative value and an incomplete effect. It is evident that the two issues tend to the same great end, and are necessary to each other. Monumental art without the lesser arts is insubstantial and remote ; the lesser decorative arts without monumental art become sapless and ephemeral. It is only by the interaction of the two that art can again contribute to give dignity and charm to civic life. It is in this way only that the immediate end which we must now first of all keep in view can be reached, and the reawakening art instinct find the full nourishment and thorough guidance which are now so necessary.

What then is monumental art, or, to narrow the question down to the branch of it that we are considering here, what is mural decoration ? Different artists, representing the recent attempts at revival of this form of art, have answered the question in different ways. There are those who represent the picture-book ideal, and consider the wall merely as a place for unrolling pictures or “ histories,” painted according to the technic acquired in the school of easel-painting. There are those who, misled by the false current use of the word “ decorative,” think of the wall mainly as an opportunity for showy and shallow display, meaningless in itself, and unrelated to its surroundings. Others have felt, and felt rightly, that no amount of brilliancy of painter’s craft, of eloquence or even pathos of story, can compensate us for the lack of the sense of repose and durability which belongs to true monumental painting; painting, that is, which is part and parcel of the monument it decorates. To have rediscovered this fundamental axiom of mural painting is the great achievement of Puvis de Chavannes as far as France is concerned. And it does not detract from the originality of Mr. John Sargent to point to his superb work in Boston as a gratifying instance of the teachings of Puvis, applied in the service of a talent that differs widely from his in scope and temper. It was on the walls of the Pantheon in Paris that Puvis de Chavannes first “published his discovery ” in an entirely satisfactory and convincing form ; all the more so, alas, that his treatment of the legend of Ste. Geneviève is there confronted with large, ambitious, loud-voiced panels by famous painters of the day. No one can spend a little while in the Pantheon and not feel how effectually and grandly he silences them all, until his deep, quiet note is the only one heard. In Boston there is, fortunately, not this opportunity for immediate comparison. But the great calm of Puvis does not need this to make itself felt. It takes time to reach us, we are so unaccustomed to calm; it is even possible for us to go away at first unconvinced, though, it may be, vaguely troubled. But no one can give Puvis his due time, or come back to him after having looked at some of the ambitious or well-meaning efforts that go by the name of mural decoration, and not thankfully acknowledge the benignant influence of the architectural repose of the great spaces, the sober charm of the color, the noble and subtly expressive rhythm of the line, the sincere truthfulness, the personal conviction, the spiritual serenity of the man. In the case of Puvis de Chavannes, the qualities of outward practical craft, in themselves so valuable, are thus complemented by the rarest qualities of inner creative poetry.

Art such as this is not obtained without sacrifice, and in a double sense is this true of Puvis de Chavannes, whose own favorite saying is, indeed, “ L’art décoratif ne vit que de sacrifices.” There are, first, the sacrifices to the unity of his conception and his sense of mural requirements, visible to all in his severe elimination and suppression, in certain mannerisms or parti-pris of drawing, in certain minor awkwardnesses of gesture and arrangement.¹ In connection with this it may be well to mention, however, that he gave nine years of unremitting study to drawing from the model, and that no more exquisite pleasure can be offered the lover of art than to spend an hour or two turning over the Puvis portfolios. Here significant first or second thoughts for compositions — charming in themselves as mere arabesques of lovely line, and deeply interesting as showing that what he first of all feels for are the lines — lie scattered among hundreds of careful drawings from life, showing us a world of beautiful women, strong men, and lovely children, seen and felt with a deep human synthesis, rendered with a mastery that alone would suffice to give him the highest rank in contemporary art. There are, further, the countless sacrifices of a life of devotion to his ideal. The narrative of his life discloses years spent in finding his way ; in rediscovering the right principles of mural decoration, unaided and alone ; in learning by experience what is fitted to be painted on the wall, and what is not; in giving up, one by one, technical excellencies, tempting detail, attractive episode.² Nor have material sacrifices to his ideal been lacking, arising both from the general indifference of painters and the public to art of this kind and quality, and from his own stubborn allegiance to his ideal and convictions. Thus several of the Amiens panels were given by the painter, when there was not money forthcoming to pay for them, and he has been known to refuse a large commission (in 1879, for the staircase of the Exchange of Bordeaux) when the committee wished to impose a scheme of their own upon him. From the first conception to the final painting of the huge canvases the work is the painter’s own. This alone represents an almost incredible amount of work, mental and manual, and a wellnigh unparalleled singleness of mind and fixity of purpose. In his life as in his work Puvis is an example to all who aspire to serve art.³

These sacrifices have not been without their compensation in the deepening of his synthesis and the widening of his grasp. Color, for instance, was not, to begin with, one of his characteristics ; but it has come late in life to this man, who began developing his inner qualities when other men ceased to grow, and who has found the clue to one beauty after another as he has penetrated deeper and deeper into communion with nature.

I should give an incomplete idea of Puvis if I did not refer to one aspect of his art. In common with the great American decorator, John La Farge, with Albert Besnard, and with one or two others, he has deeply felt the importance of nature for the spiritual life of to-day. With him it is thus never a mere pleasing and conventional background ; it is an integral part of his composition in line, color, and character. He feels it as we do, as reflecting and expressing our human moods, as soothing our sorrows and enhancing our joys. In his treatment he shows the most delicate observation of many of the beauties and gradations of atmosphere and tone, of light and color, that have come to seem in our modern spirit so full of meaning, and it is well known to those who are familiar with his art that his grandest pages are those where the genius loci, the character of the surrounding scenery, has suggested and inspired his theme.

But naturalism,be it never so inspired, expresses only one side of this great dual phenomenon that we call art. There is always the other side, which has been given different names at different times, when names were necessary, and has been practiced without a name in all the greatest periods. This is the side of art which is not merely a record and an interpretation, but also a creation of beautiful ideals in forms that appeal to the same kind of susceptibilities as are touched by the harmony of music or the rhythm of verse. Periods of so-called naturalism are always succeeded by periods of idealism ; the word is vague, but useful. The staircase of the Boston Public Library shows us that great masters combine both.

Cecilia Waern.