International studio (24.1904/1905(1905))

The Art of Carl Gutherz

T

HE ART OF CARL GUTHERZ.
BY LILIAN WHITING.

The story of Carl Gutherz is the story
of an ideal embraced in youth and fol-
lowed in manhood with increasing fidelity. It is
the story of a painter whose entire life, so far as he
has yet lived it, has been singularly responsive to
the artist’s vision and the poet’s dream. Born amid
scenery of incomparable beauty in the Swiss Alps,
the son of a somewhat noted instructor who spoke
three or four languages and was highly educated in
many other directions, the childhood of Mr. Gutherz
was that of the refined atmosphere of gentle birth
and breeding; and that intensely sensitive suscepti-
bility to colour and to harmony which is reflected
in his work, is a natural result of both his tempera-
ment and environment. In 1851 his father left
Switzerland for the United States, locating himself
in Ohio, where he founded Tell City—named with
true Swiss ardour for William Tell—and where he
designed the establishment of extensive terra cotta
works, for which he believed the native clay espe-
cially suitable. In this the elder Gutherz was ahead
of the time, and it is a striking commentary on the
usual fate of the hero and the pioneer that while, at
the present day, his dream is fulfilled and affords
a prosperous enterprise to those conducting it, Mr.
Gutherz only lost his entire fortune in this under-
taking, and soon betook himself to Memphis, Ten-
nessee, where he died while still in early middle life.
He was an artistic draughtsman, and it was evident
in the early childhood of his son, Carl, that the lad
had inherited something of the fine mechanical
technique that characterised his father’s hand, and
when about sixteen he was placed in the regular
work of mechanical drawing. It is he who designed
every part of the machinery of the warship “Ala-
bama.” This training undoubtedly had its ad-
vantage in the future artist. His power to see vis-
ions and to dream dreams was thereby subjected
to a little wholesome commingling with applied
conceptions; and the strong and beautiful sense of
family affection and duty were, also, a part of the
culture of the home life. Just as he was entering
on his earliest young manhood it became possible
for him to go to Paris for study, where he entered
the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and was subsequently a
pupil of Pils, of Jules Lefebre, and of Boulanger.
To the youth Paris was as a page de conti. The
brilliant city of art and letters and movement fas-
cinated his imagination. He watched the late after-
noon sunset glow lingering behind the twin towers
of Notre Dame and reflecting itself in a thousand


PORTRAIT OF MRS. JOHN DE LANCY IRELAND AND
MISS DAVIS. BY CARL GUTHERZ

shimmering lights in the Seine. He loitered in the
old Fauboug St. Germain; on the Isle of St. Louis;
and he lingered in the Pantheon; in the cloistered
shades of St. Sulpice, where that wonderful statue
of the Virgin smiles down in perpetual illumina-
tion ; and he caught the glory of light from the rose
window in Sainte Chapelle. Ideal creations beck-
oned to him from the ethereal realm; form and
colour emerged from behind the veil of dreams and
visions. To what degree his art took on its poetic
purity, its nervous energy of environment, its joy
in colour during this formative period, we may not
realise. Then came on the Franco-Prussian con-
flict. Mr. Gutherz was copying the Lost Illusions
of Glyre, in the Galleries of the Luxembourg, when
he heard the cries and excitement of the declara-
tion of war. M. Thiers opposed it, and he was
hooted and jeered by the excited populace. Mr.
Gutherz hastened from the brilliant French capital
just as the siege was declared, and only left Paris
on the last train which successfully reached Bel-

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