International studio (27.1905/1906(1906))

Franz von Lenbach

Franz von lenbach : an
APPRECIATION. BY PRO-
FESSOR HUBERT VON HER-
KOMER, C.V.O., R.A.
Recently, on my arrival in Munich, I paid a
visit to the collective exhibition of Lenbach’s
works. It offered most interesting and curious
food for reflection. Modern times have seen no
artist of this peculiar calibre.
Passing through room after room, I was con-
fronted with a collection of portraits that seemed
verkable old masters—dark, brown, and yellow—
darker already than any collection of real old
masters.
Most extraordinary was the facility of the artist in
making his modern wrork at once partake of the key,
inan exaggerated form, of the old masters after their
three hundred years’ toning. With new conception
of character, he could “ dislocate,” so to speak, his
vision, and could not only build up an art in the
characteristic convention of those ancient masters,
but could add to it the further “ development ”
(if you would call it so) which is caused by “time’
and dirt on the pigment—a marvellous piece of
virtuosity ! I cannot conceive what type of work
he would have done if fate had brought him first into
touch with the modern world, with its iconoclasm,
its brutal disrespect of all that has gone before, and
its aggressive insistence on ugliness ! His earliest
efforts were copies of old masters for a patron !
And his copies were il dangerously ” like the
Originals. But it was always an intellectual copy-
ing. He would not have resorted to the trick of
an Italian artist of my acquaintance, who copied
the old masters in a cold tone of colour, giving his
attention only to touch and texture, and then
baked them in front of a strong fire until the oil of
the colour was burnt, giving an old look to the new
paint.
Lenbach must rank as a clairvoyant artist, who
could call up the spirits of the dead, hold com-
munion with them, get hints from them and then
express them through the medium of his idiosyn-
crasy. And that was so well illustrated in the fact that
he, after all, only expressed what pleased him best
in the works of the old masters. It was not merely
an imitation of the past masters, it was a criticism.
Yet I think he was only able to conjure up the
spirits of three painters—Holbein, Rembrandt and
Titian; but these were faithful and active spirits to
him. And truly remarkable it was that he never
confused them—never received the assistance of
the wrong painter for the subject in hand.
XXVII. No. 107.—January, 1906.

Bismarck alone must have caused some discussion
amongst the spirits, because it resulted in a corn-
promise—a very ingenious one—between Holbein
and Titian. Rembrandt looked in but very casually.
Then in Döllinger’s case Holbein had it all his
own way, even down to the wooden panel on
which his subject was painted. Our own Watts
feit the aspect of the ancients, but there it stopped :
Lenbach went further, and seemed to speak the
actual technical language, even down to the ver-
nacular ! Old-looking, brown, and yellow as his
pictures look, no two works shown in this collective
exhibition are manipulated in exactly the same
method. To the painter’s eye, some of the quali-
ties he obtained are most fascinating. Nothing illus-
trates Lenbach’s strong individuality more than this
effect on painters. But perhaps not less remarkable
is the way in which he forced the public to accept
what he did. His work was always the antithesis of
the accepted modern forms of painting. Yet he
obtained the greatest name, not only in Germany
but beyond its borders as well. His conceptions
of the characters of his sitters varied considerably
in taste, and, I would almost say, propriety. Now
it is a great rendering of a great man; next it will
be a caricature; but commonplace, hardly ever.
Glancing round the rooms one is struck with the
forcible insistence on extremes, either in pose or
expression. To get at the cause for this we must
take into consideration Lenbach’s method of work.
He first took a number of photographs of a sitter
in all sorts of poses. From these he chose the
one or two that offered him his best chances for
his type of work. Then from an enlargement of
such a photograph he made a pen-outline on the
canvas which remained visible to the last. After
this he “ constructed ” his picture in tone and
colour, and when the sitter came for the first sitting
the portrait was half done. For such a master,
working in so strongly marked a groove, the
method is eminently practicable, saves time, and
the irritation of the invariably bad sitting at the
Start; and, in his case, it showed how the modern
appliances can be used without disturbing the
aspect of an old convention. Yet I see clearly in
his art the side that has been fostered by photo-
graphy. I see it in poses, but most clearly in his
treatment of eyes. The glassy glitter of the Len-
bach eye—so often mistaken for intellectuality of
look—is the eye that has stared into a camera for
several seconds, fixedly. The defects and in-
equalities of eyes, their wateriness, which causes
so much of that glistening effect, are all exaggerated
in the photograph. They are easy to copy ; and, if
195