DOI Heft:
Nr. 46 (January 1897)
DOI Artikel:Little, James Stanley: Maurice Greiffenhagen and his work
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17298#0251
Maurice Greiffenhagen
beautiful country in which we live, and listening to has caused me to ask myself whether Mr. Greiffen-
outpourings expressive of his intense feeling for its hagen's powers would not ultimately be devoted to
loveliness, have wondered whether in landscape registering the fashions and foibles of the age to
painting he would find his true metier; though I which he belongs, and whether he would live in
never seriously entertained the thought. Again history as the foster brother of Hogarth, Gillray and
Rowlandson. Possibly this might have
come about had not the medium in which
the artist was called upon to work, and the
crippling of his powers by reason of this
fact and by reason of the conditions of time
and place under which the work had to be
produced, acted as a serious deterrent.
Doubtless these adverse conditions ope-
rated to prevent the growth, in the artist's
breast, of the ambition to become a painter
of genre—a comedian in paint. Indeed
from the first it is fairly obvious what was
Mr. Greiffenhagen's real ambition. He
recognised wherein his greatest strength
lay, and he knew wherein was his greatest
desire. As a black and white draughtsman,
Mr. Greiffenhagen had achieved a well-de-
served reputation. The ordinary amateur,
who knew him as an ingenious and deft
illustrator only, as a powerful delineator of
modern life, drawing with great originality
and conspicuous power the lissome girls
and stalwart men of society ; catching as if
by an inspiration the salient features of the
village swain, and the field labourer, were
full of surprise when at the Royal Academy
Exhibition of 1890, Mr. Greiffenhagen
sprung upon the world as a naturalistic
idealist of remarkable power and originality.
But although they were all unprepared, it
must be allowed that they welcomed the
new comer in no ungenerous and halting
manner. In this respect the young painter
was at least fortunate, though he has reason
to complain that the necessity imposed
upon him to make his living almost before
he was out of his teens, prevented him from
devoting himself earlier in his career to the
decorative work in which he has since
achieved so much distinction.
As concerning the outside facts of his
life Mr. Greiffenhagen is, perhaps, right
the extraordinary facility with which Mr. Greiffen- when he asserts that there is not much to be said,
hagen grasped the pictorial possibilities of a situa- Questioned as to when he first found himself
tion, a scene, or a story; his peculiar adroitness in drawn towards the art which in later years he was
delineating character, whether demonstrated in to embrace as a profession, Mr. Greiffenhagen
sketches drawn or derived from nature, and con- laughingly replied that he had a pencil in his hand
tributed by him to the comic journals and illustrated from the earliest time his memory could recall,
magazines, or by his illustrations to works of fiction, " When at the University College," says Mr.
236
A PORTRAIT BY MAURICE GREIFFENHAGEN
beautiful country in which we live, and listening to has caused me to ask myself whether Mr. Greiffen-
outpourings expressive of his intense feeling for its hagen's powers would not ultimately be devoted to
loveliness, have wondered whether in landscape registering the fashions and foibles of the age to
painting he would find his true metier; though I which he belongs, and whether he would live in
never seriously entertained the thought. Again history as the foster brother of Hogarth, Gillray and
Rowlandson. Possibly this might have
come about had not the medium in which
the artist was called upon to work, and the
crippling of his powers by reason of this
fact and by reason of the conditions of time
and place under which the work had to be
produced, acted as a serious deterrent.
Doubtless these adverse conditions ope-
rated to prevent the growth, in the artist's
breast, of the ambition to become a painter
of genre—a comedian in paint. Indeed
from the first it is fairly obvious what was
Mr. Greiffenhagen's real ambition. He
recognised wherein his greatest strength
lay, and he knew wherein was his greatest
desire. As a black and white draughtsman,
Mr. Greiffenhagen had achieved a well-de-
served reputation. The ordinary amateur,
who knew him as an ingenious and deft
illustrator only, as a powerful delineator of
modern life, drawing with great originality
and conspicuous power the lissome girls
and stalwart men of society ; catching as if
by an inspiration the salient features of the
village swain, and the field labourer, were
full of surprise when at the Royal Academy
Exhibition of 1890, Mr. Greiffenhagen
sprung upon the world as a naturalistic
idealist of remarkable power and originality.
But although they were all unprepared, it
must be allowed that they welcomed the
new comer in no ungenerous and halting
manner. In this respect the young painter
was at least fortunate, though he has reason
to complain that the necessity imposed
upon him to make his living almost before
he was out of his teens, prevented him from
devoting himself earlier in his career to the
decorative work in which he has since
achieved so much distinction.
As concerning the outside facts of his
life Mr. Greiffenhagen is, perhaps, right
the extraordinary facility with which Mr. Greiffen- when he asserts that there is not much to be said,
hagen grasped the pictorial possibilities of a situa- Questioned as to when he first found himself
tion, a scene, or a story; his peculiar adroitness in drawn towards the art which in later years he was
delineating character, whether demonstrated in to embrace as a profession, Mr. Greiffenhagen
sketches drawn or derived from nature, and con- laughingly replied that he had a pencil in his hand
tributed by him to the comic journals and illustrated from the earliest time his memory could recall,
magazines, or by his illustrations to works of fiction, " When at the University College," says Mr.
236
A PORTRAIT BY MAURICE GREIFFENHAGEN