DOI issue:
No. 81 (November, 1903)
DOI article:American studio-talk
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26230#0110
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pense of the subject, which may be no better than
stylistic. The latter is an unpalatable word, but
convenient and perhaps unavoidaMe, to mark the
contrast which exists in fact between that great and
nremorabie thing " style" and the hundred and
one approaches to it, which faii to reach it. They
faii —- and it is a point worth the consideration of
our numerous clever young Anrericans, catching so
quickiy the deft use of the brush—because the
manipulative faciiity is apt to take possession of the
artist, body and soul, biinding him to the essential
secondariness of this trick, as compared with the
higher artistic gift of sympathetic and penetrating
comprehension. We know what a stränge bizarrerie
the personaiity of Beardsley offered, and can guess
how the nimbie-handed Boidini rnight have repre-
sented the subject. But in Blanche's portrait,
whiie just enough of unusuainess is admitted to
suggest the raiilery of Beardsley's spirit, the main
impression is of that sweetness and mysterious
depth of character which must have been present
in the man whose sense of beauty was so original
and real. Boidini would have brought out only the
devil in his nature, as he has done in his portrait
of Whistler, a not unusual trait in an artist; per-
haps we may not be far wrong in saying a neces-
sary quality to act as yeast to the sounder more
substantial ones, but by itself as incapable of pro-
ducing anything of considerable and permanent
value in art as in any other department of human
activity. In a word, Blanche's portrait reveals to
us the side of Beardsley's that was wholesomer and
sweeter than the and, whiie it might have
escaped a less sympathetic and penetrating Obser-
vation, was undoubtedly the real foundation of that
brilliant artist's power to aifect the worid of his day,
and, we may expect, of his successors for some time
to corne.
How frequently one hears the Studio phrase,
" devilish clever" ! It is a phrase worth ponder-
ing. To assert that devilry is a necessary ingre-
dient in the make-up of an artist might give offence ;
but less to the artist than to the public who look to
art as one of the purifying influences of life, and
might be shocked by the Suggestion that it has any
necessary connection with evil. Yet many an artist,
I suspect, is conscious of the devil within him, and
that in the struggle which ensues it acts as a reagent,
liberating the frner qualities of his composition ; in-
deed, that, but for the devilish within him, his work
might be lacking aitogether in vitality and worth.
But this is not the kind of work to which the refer-
ence of devilish cleverness is usually applied ; not,
in fact, that work in which only the Operation of
devilry is feit, but in which it leers from the picture
conspicuously as a motive and a thing to be desired
for itself. You may compare these two examples
of the devil in art in these portraits, respectively, by
Blanche and Boidini.
Blanche is so little known, except by reputation,
in this country, that this portrait of his should be
carefully studied. It can scarcely faii to strike us
how essentially sane and reserved it is; with abso-
lutely no parade of technique, and yet with such
tactfulness of vision and inevitableness of expres-
sion that it is to us as a thing that had to be.
Clearly it had to be, because that was the fittest
form of expression that the artist could select from
his equipment to suit the subject in hand; and,
to assure yourself of this, pray study his other pic-
ture, —AajwtZ A; TY??*-
and nbte how the artist has varied his
manner to express this very different subject. Here
there is a vigorous, out-of-door robustness, whiie in
Beardsley's portrait a certain demure subtlety, a
precise and very refined scheme of color, handled
with extreme of sensitiveness. In a comparison of
these two pictures there is a very full commentary
on the end and object and possibilities of style.
How completely an absence of style may be in
some measure compensated by inherent poetry of
conception may be observed in Professor George
Sauter's .SwMA?—The familyis
grouped around the grand piano in a dirnly lighted
chamber; the eldest son at the instrument, the
father sitting in the window absorbed in the music,
another son Standing with his violin to his shoulder,
as if echoing on his instrument the music of the
piano, whiie a little girl leans across the latter, lis-
tening. There is nothing " devilish clever " about
this picture ; the hgures, at any rate at first sight,
seern poorly realized, the painting is clumsy and
laborious ; a Suggestion of tentativeness — I had
almost said of atnateurishness — pervades the whole
canvas. But study it a little closer ; not for quali-
ties which it does not possess, but to discover, if may
be, what it is that the artist has sought to express.
Do you not gradually become conscious of a certain
clxxi
pense of the subject, which may be no better than
stylistic. The latter is an unpalatable word, but
convenient and perhaps unavoidaMe, to mark the
contrast which exists in fact between that great and
nremorabie thing " style" and the hundred and
one approaches to it, which faii to reach it. They
faii —- and it is a point worth the consideration of
our numerous clever young Anrericans, catching so
quickiy the deft use of the brush—because the
manipulative faciiity is apt to take possession of the
artist, body and soul, biinding him to the essential
secondariness of this trick, as compared with the
higher artistic gift of sympathetic and penetrating
comprehension. We know what a stränge bizarrerie
the personaiity of Beardsley offered, and can guess
how the nimbie-handed Boidini rnight have repre-
sented the subject. But in Blanche's portrait,
whiie just enough of unusuainess is admitted to
suggest the raiilery of Beardsley's spirit, the main
impression is of that sweetness and mysterious
depth of character which must have been present
in the man whose sense of beauty was so original
and real. Boidini would have brought out only the
devil in his nature, as he has done in his portrait
of Whistler, a not unusual trait in an artist; per-
haps we may not be far wrong in saying a neces-
sary quality to act as yeast to the sounder more
substantial ones, but by itself as incapable of pro-
ducing anything of considerable and permanent
value in art as in any other department of human
activity. In a word, Blanche's portrait reveals to
us the side of Beardsley's that was wholesomer and
sweeter than the and, whiie it might have
escaped a less sympathetic and penetrating Obser-
vation, was undoubtedly the real foundation of that
brilliant artist's power to aifect the worid of his day,
and, we may expect, of his successors for some time
to corne.
How frequently one hears the Studio phrase,
" devilish clever" ! It is a phrase worth ponder-
ing. To assert that devilry is a necessary ingre-
dient in the make-up of an artist might give offence ;
but less to the artist than to the public who look to
art as one of the purifying influences of life, and
might be shocked by the Suggestion that it has any
necessary connection with evil. Yet many an artist,
I suspect, is conscious of the devil within him, and
that in the struggle which ensues it acts as a reagent,
liberating the frner qualities of his composition ; in-
deed, that, but for the devilish within him, his work
might be lacking aitogether in vitality and worth.
But this is not the kind of work to which the refer-
ence of devilish cleverness is usually applied ; not,
in fact, that work in which only the Operation of
devilry is feit, but in which it leers from the picture
conspicuously as a motive and a thing to be desired
for itself. You may compare these two examples
of the devil in art in these portraits, respectively, by
Blanche and Boidini.
Blanche is so little known, except by reputation,
in this country, that this portrait of his should be
carefully studied. It can scarcely faii to strike us
how essentially sane and reserved it is; with abso-
lutely no parade of technique, and yet with such
tactfulness of vision and inevitableness of expres-
sion that it is to us as a thing that had to be.
Clearly it had to be, because that was the fittest
form of expression that the artist could select from
his equipment to suit the subject in hand; and,
to assure yourself of this, pray study his other pic-
ture, —AajwtZ A; TY??*-
and nbte how the artist has varied his
manner to express this very different subject. Here
there is a vigorous, out-of-door robustness, whiie in
Beardsley's portrait a certain demure subtlety, a
precise and very refined scheme of color, handled
with extreme of sensitiveness. In a comparison of
these two pictures there is a very full commentary
on the end and object and possibilities of style.
How completely an absence of style may be in
some measure compensated by inherent poetry of
conception may be observed in Professor George
Sauter's .SwMA?—The familyis
grouped around the grand piano in a dirnly lighted
chamber; the eldest son at the instrument, the
father sitting in the window absorbed in the music,
another son Standing with his violin to his shoulder,
as if echoing on his instrument the music of the
piano, whiie a little girl leans across the latter, lis-
tening. There is nothing " devilish clever " about
this picture ; the hgures, at any rate at first sight,
seern poorly realized, the painting is clumsy and
laborious ; a Suggestion of tentativeness — I had
almost said of atnateurishness — pervades the whole
canvas. But study it a little closer ; not for quali-
ties which it does not possess, but to discover, if may
be, what it is that the artist has sought to express.
Do you not gradually become conscious of a certain
clxxi