International studio (24.1904/1905(1905))

The Art of Carl Gut herz

medal awarded him at the Centennial Exposition
in 1876, was added a medal from France, and was
given the magic parchment certificate, enabling
him to be forever hors concours in the Salon. His
work began to assume that dignity and proportion
of colour symphonies, significant in mystic symbol-
ism, that is felt in his Lux Incarnationis, in which
the artist took the opal for his colour-scheme and
in which he endeavored, with a success that must be
recognized, to express the thought that up to the
moment of the birth of Christ the light of God
came from heaven to earth; but, since then, the
divine being incarnated in the human, the Light
glows back from earth to heaven, increasing in
glory as the ages go on. The Heavenly Host thus
unite in rejoicing over the redeemed world. In this
picture Mr. Gutherz represents the angels in sym-
bolic robes with emblematic flowers; the Creed of
Christ is symbolized by incense, bird and butterfly;
and the foreshadowing of Jesus is shown in the
dark group. The Crown of Thorns and the crown
of royal rank are side by side, suggesting the same
sublime lesson as that taught in the linesofTenny-
son:
“Knowledge by suffering entereth
And life is perfected by death.”
More and more Mr. Gutherz continued now to
mark by his work that liberation of temperament
which registers the artist’s power. There is an
amplitude of conception in The Evening of the
Sixth Day, which records a signal advance in his
art. This painting was suggested by the words in
Genesis: “And God saw everything He had made,
and behold, it was very good, and the evening and
the morning were the sixth day.” And also Milton’s
lines:
“From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran—
The diapason closing full in Man.”
The picture shows a warm sunset, the sun still
above the horizon veiled in clouds, which the looker-
on sees, gazing from a hilltop. The foreground is
all a luxurious growth of vegetation and the two
figures, Adam and Eve, are kneeling in awe and
adoration before the Divine Creator, receiving his
blessing. Afar on the horizon, “Seated on His
silent throne,” God blesses the newly created pair,
the blessing taking form in a rainbow, while the
space is filled with choirs of singing angels, whose
robes and halos give prismatic colour effects to the
sublime scene. Far in ethereal distance are phan-

tom mountains, and throngs and choirs of angelic
beings appearing, dissolving from view, as if from
the vibration of subtle emotions—of praise, of joy,
of wonder, of rapture. The entire conception of this
picture is a marvellous blending of the ideal and
the real, and it is one of the most impressive crea-
tions among great mystical paintings.
But portraiture and mural art also attracted Mr.
Gutherz. Possibly the strong influence of his
friends, Gabriel Ferrier and Puvis de Chavannes,
was a factor toward the latter. He came into close
relations with both, and the following little note to
Mr. Gutherz from M. Puvis de Chavannes—
translated into English for this article—indicates
the kindly nature of the great decorative artist:
“Monsieur: To my regret I find that the pleas-
ure I had promised myself from a visit to your
studio to-day must be postponed. Since you are
leaving the city I shall await the time of your re-
turn, a date with which I beg you to make me
acquainted.
“Pray accept the expression of my sentiments,
most distinguished.
“Puvis de Chavannes.
“Paris, Feb. 13, ’95.”
The art of Puvis de Chavannes in its exhilarat-
ing appeal to beauty of sense, and of insight into
spiritual currents, was undoubtedly a potent appeal
to the genius of Carl Gutherz. For his gift is a
largely inclusive and many-faceted power. It has.
much of that profound and lofty spirituality which
characterised George Frederic Watts; it is a gift
of golden, resplendent fantasy; of speculative de-
light in pure beauty of line and colour; and his
imagination is allured by such ingenious and con-
templative speculation as that of Flammarion, to
whom he dedicated an ideal figure-piece, the Ad
Astra, a painting which the French astronomer
viewed and regarding which he expressed great de-
light. The idealism of Mr. Gutherz found congenial
scope in mural painting, and the artist who had
been born half a portrait specialist and half a
painter of ideal creations, the portrait artist who
had yet made every portrait itself a picture, hold-
ing some unanalysed charm of atmosphere and
subtle suggestion, turned to mural art with all the
fervor of the mystic and the idealist. His Lux In-
carnationis and The Evening of the Sixth Day were
really closely bordering on decorative art; and in
The Temptation of St. Anthony the pictorial
subtlety is worthy of that master of mural art, Puvis
de Chavannes himself. For it is not the nude
kneeling figure that, in this composition, repre-
sents the “temptation” from which St. Anthony

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