of director of the Academy. His pictures are remarkable for
their originality and almost brutal force, and differ very widely
from the conventional productions of historical painters. At
the close of the 19th century Axentowicz, Olga Hojnanska,
Mehoffer, Stanislawski and Wyotkowski attracted attention.
Although apparently laying much less stress on their Polish
nationality than their Russian countrymen, their works proclaim
the soul of the Polish nation, with its chivalrous gallantry and
mute resigned grief, in a much purer form.
Hungary in the spring of 1899 lost him whom it revered as the greatest of its painters—Michael Munkacsy. Long before his death his brush had become idle. To the younger generation, which seeks different aims, his name has become almost synonymous with a wrongly-conceived old-masterly coloration, and with sensation painting and hollowness. “The Last Day of the Condemned Prisoner,” his first youthful picture, contained the programme of his art. Then came “The Last Moments of Mozart,” and “Milton dictating Paradise Lost.” These titles summon up before our eyes a period of all that is false in eclectic art, dominated by Delaroche and Piloty. Even the simple subjects of the Gospel were treated by Munkacsy in Piloty’s meretricious style. “Christ before Pilate,” “Ecce Homo,” “The Crucifixion”—all these are gala representations, costume get-up, and, to that extent, a pious lie. But when we condemn the faults of his period, his personal merit must not be forgotten. When he first came to the fore, ostentation of feeling was the fashion. Munkacsy is, in this respect, the genuine son of the period. He was not one of those who are strong enough to swim against the stream. Instead of raising others to his level, he descended to theirs. But he has the merit of having painted spectacular scenes, such as the period demanded, with genuine artistic power. Like Rahl, Ribot, Roybet and Makart, he was a maître-peintre, a born genius with the brush. Von Uhde and Liebermann were disciples of his school. And if these two painters have left that period behind them, and if independent natural sight has followed upon the imitation of the old masters, it is Munkacsy who enabled them to take the leap. (R. Mr.)
Italy
Modern Italy has produced one artist who towers over all the others, Giovanni Segantini (q.v.). Segantini owes as little to his period of study in Milan as Millet did to his sojourn at Delaroche’s school. Both derived from their teachers a complete mastery of technique, and as soon as they were in possession of all the aids to art, they discarded them in order to begin afresh. Each painted what he had painted as a youth. They dwelt far from the busy world—Millet in Barbizon, Segantini at Val d’ Albola, 5000 feet above the sea-level. They are equally closely allied in art. Millet, who rejected all the artifice of embellishment and perceived only beauty in things as they are, learned to see in the human body a heroic grandeur, in the movements of peasants a majestic rhythm, which none before him had discovered. Although representing peasants, his works resemble sacred pictures, so grand are they in their sublime solemn simplicity. The same is true of Segantini’s works. Like Millet, he found his vocation in observing the life of poor, humble people, and the rough grandeur of nature, at all seasons and all hours. As there is in Millet’s, so also is there in Segantini’s work a primitive, almost classical, simplicity of execution corresponding to the simplicity of the subjects treated. His pictures, with their cold silvery colouring, remind us of the wax-painting of old times and of the mosaic style of the middle ages. They are made up of small scintillating strokes; they are stony and look hard like steel. This technique alone, which touches in principle but not in effect, that of the pointillistes, permitted of his rendering what he wished to render, the stony crags of Alpine scenery, the thin scintillating air, the firm steel-like outlines. Finally, he passed from realistic subjects to thoughtful. Biblical and symbolical works. His “Annunciation,” the “Divine Youth,” and the “Massacre of the Innocents” were products of an art that had abandoned the firm ground of naturalism and aimed at conquering supernatural worlds. This new aim he was unable to realize. He left the “Panorama of the Engadine,” intended for the Paris Exhibition, in an unfinished state behind him. He died in his 42nd year, his head full of plans for the future. Modern Italy lost in him its greatest artist, and the history of art one of the rare geniuses.
Few words will suffice for the other Italian painters. The soil that had yielded down to Tiepolo’s days such an abundant harvest was apparently in need of rest during the 19th century. At the Paris Exhibition of 1867 About called Italy “the tomb of art,” and indeed until quite recent times Italian painting has had the character of mere pretty saleable goods. Francesco Vinea, Tito Conti, and Federigo Andreotti painted with tireless activity sleek drapery pictures, with Renaissance lords and smiling Renaissance ladies in them. Apart from such subjects, the comic, genre or anecdote ruled the fashion—somewhat coarse in colour and of a merrier tendency than is suitable for pictures of good taste. It was not until nearly the end of the 19th century that there was an increase in the number of painters who aim at real achievement. At the Paris Exhibition of 1900 only Detti’s “Chest” and Signorini’s “Cardinal” pictures reminded one of the comedy subjects formerly in vogue. The younger masters employ neither “drapery-mummeries” nor spicy anecdote. They paint the Italian country people with refined artistic discernment, though scarcely with the naturalism of northern nations. Apparently the calm, serious, ascetic, austere art initiated by Millet is foreign to the nature of this volatile, colour-loving people. Southern fire and delight in brilliant hues are especially characteristic of the Neapolitans. A tangle of baldacchinos, priests and choir boys, peasants making obeisance and kneeling during the passing of the Host, weddings, horse-races and country festivals, everything sparkling with colour and glowing in Neapolitan sunlight—such are the contents of Paolo Michetti’s, Vincenzo Capri’s, and Edoardo Dalbono’s pictures. But Michetti, from being an adherent of this glittering art, has found his way to the monumental style. The Venetians acknowledge and honour as their leader Giacomo Favretto, who died very young. He painted drapery pictures, like most artists of the ’eighties, but they were never lackadaisical, never commonplace. The Venice of Canaletto and Goldoni, the magic city surrounded by the glamour of bygone splendour, rose again under Favretto’s hands to fairylike radiance.
The older masters, Signorini, Tito Tommasi, Dall ’oca Branca, who depict the Piedmontese landscape, the light on the lagoons, and the colour charm of Venetian streets with so refined a touch, have numerous followers, whose pictures likewise testify to the seriousness that again took possession of Italian painters after a long period of purely commercial artistic industry. Side by side with these native Italians two others must be mentioned, who occupy an important place as interpreters of Parisian elegance and French art-history. Giuseppe de Nittis (born in Naples; died in Paris 1884) was principally known by his representations of French street life. The figures that enlivened his pictures were as full of charm as his rendering of atmospheric effects was refined. Giovanni Boldini, a Ferrarese living in Paris, also painted street scenes, full of throbbing life. But he excelled, besides, as a portrait-painter of ladies and children. He realized the aim of the Parisian Impressionists, which was to render life, and not merely mute repose. He understood in a masterly fashion how to catch the rapid movement of the head, the fleetest expression, the sparkling of the eye, a pretty gesture. From his pictures posterity will learn as much about the sensuous life of the 19th century as Greuze has told us about that of the 18th.
Among those who have been the leaders of modern Italian art, not already mentioned, are Domenico Morelli, Giovanni Costa, landscape painter; Sartorio, an Italian Pre-Raphaelite; Pasini, painter of the East; Muzzioli, a follower of Alma-Tadema; Barabino, historical painter; and most striking and original of all, Monticelli, whose glow of colours was often
