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#0257
Mat trice Greiffenhagen
lating and destroying it. I have said before, and Millais had lost his cunning; Burne-Jones there
I say it again, that it is a misfortune for a painter of was, Walter Crane, and G. F. Watts ; while Water-
genius—considering the matter from a distinctly house and Edward Stott were coming through
artistic standpoint as affecting his work and the just in advance of Greiffenhagen. In portraiture,
place that work will take hereafter—to possess it is true, some of the younger men, and the
talents. They may aid him to make his lot in life best among them, were more in sympathy with the
easier, but they seriously jeopardise his chances of past; J. S. Sargent pre-eminently. These names
being included in the ranks of the immortals. are obviously classed together, solely because
A strong man, however, has a way of surmounting of a particular link between the art of the men
difficulties, if he is given anything like a chance, bearing them, and in this sense they are one.
and assuredly Mr. Greiffenhagen has not succumbed Greiffenhagen knows, as his great predecessors
to circumstance. It is as a decorative artist with knew, as Whistler and J. S. Sargent have demon-
a fine sense of colour, a keen eye for happy juxta- strated to-day, as Boll, Vandyke, and Velasquez
positions and pleasing equipoises in arrangement, knew in the past, which any one who has eyes to
balancing of masses and lines, an instinctive aptitude see and who spends a few reflective hours in the
in the blending and harmonising of colours, that National Gallery can perceive, that the great portrait
Mr. Greiffenhagen is pre-eminent. Whether we painter need not pick his subject, need not demand
consider him as a portrait painter, or as the painter physical beauty in his sitter ; though I will not
of beautiful designs in which
figures and landscape play
their particular parts, does
not matter. He is always
decorative. That in his day
and generation few have so
full a sense of what are the
requirements of decorative
art he began to demonstrate
when, in 1891, An Idyll
was exhibited, and he has
still further attested the
fact in his later produc-
tions—Eve, The Mermaid,
in his Judgment of Paris
in last year's Academy—as
he has in his portraits,
especially in those of Mrs.
Greiffenhagen and Miss
Bowles. He has the same
keen sense of what these
requirements are as had
Botticelli, Titian, Sodoma,
Bacchiacca and Cesare da
Sesto. And, truth to say,
at the time of his advent
there were few enough artists
among the men of the
younger generation who had
preserved this sense.
Naturalism, carried to a
point which endangered the
sanity of its devotees, while
it killed in them the real art
faculty, was responsible for
this. Rossetti was gone, portrait of miss mamie bowles by maurice greiffenhagen
241
lating and destroying it. I have said before, and Millais had lost his cunning; Burne-Jones there
I say it again, that it is a misfortune for a painter of was, Walter Crane, and G. F. Watts ; while Water-
genius—considering the matter from a distinctly house and Edward Stott were coming through
artistic standpoint as affecting his work and the just in advance of Greiffenhagen. In portraiture,
place that work will take hereafter—to possess it is true, some of the younger men, and the
talents. They may aid him to make his lot in life best among them, were more in sympathy with the
easier, but they seriously jeopardise his chances of past; J. S. Sargent pre-eminently. These names
being included in the ranks of the immortals. are obviously classed together, solely because
A strong man, however, has a way of surmounting of a particular link between the art of the men
difficulties, if he is given anything like a chance, bearing them, and in this sense they are one.
and assuredly Mr. Greiffenhagen has not succumbed Greiffenhagen knows, as his great predecessors
to circumstance. It is as a decorative artist with knew, as Whistler and J. S. Sargent have demon-
a fine sense of colour, a keen eye for happy juxta- strated to-day, as Boll, Vandyke, and Velasquez
positions and pleasing equipoises in arrangement, knew in the past, which any one who has eyes to
balancing of masses and lines, an instinctive aptitude see and who spends a few reflective hours in the
in the blending and harmonising of colours, that National Gallery can perceive, that the great portrait
Mr. Greiffenhagen is pre-eminent. Whether we painter need not pick his subject, need not demand
consider him as a portrait painter, or as the painter physical beauty in his sitter ; though I will not
of beautiful designs in which
figures and landscape play
their particular parts, does
not matter. He is always
decorative. That in his day
and generation few have so
full a sense of what are the
requirements of decorative
art he began to demonstrate
when, in 1891, An Idyll
was exhibited, and he has
still further attested the
fact in his later produc-
tions—Eve, The Mermaid,
in his Judgment of Paris
in last year's Academy—as
he has in his portraits,
especially in those of Mrs.
Greiffenhagen and Miss
Bowles. He has the same
keen sense of what these
requirements are as had
Botticelli, Titian, Sodoma,
Bacchiacca and Cesare da
Sesto. And, truth to say,
at the time of his advent
there were few enough artists
among the men of the
younger generation who had
preserved this sense.
Naturalism, carried to a
point which endangered the
sanity of its devotees, while
it killed in them the real art
faculty, was responsible for
this. Rossetti was gone, portrait of miss mamie bowles by maurice greiffenhagen
241