England there were no native painters worthy the name. There was a demand for portraits from the King and the nobles; hence we find a Holbein serving Henry VIII.; an Antonio Moro, Queen Mary; a Cornelius Janssens, James I.; a Rubens and a Van Dyck, Charles I.; a Lely and a Kneller, Charles II. A year after Rubens passed away he was followed by his great pupil. Already shadows were beginning to fall thick and fast on that England where Charles and his narrow-minded nobles, unmindful of just mutterings from the people, had been living lives of too great dalliance. Early in 1641 the royal family were compelled to flee from London; later, one of Van Dyck's best friends and patrons, the Earl ANTHONY VAN DYCK. BY HIMSELF Uffizi, Florence. of Strafford, was led to the scaffold. His other royalist friends quickly scattered far and wide. The old, bigoted, kingly era was passing away, with the dogma of divine right. There was a kind of poetic justice that the delineator of so many defenders of aristocratic privilege should go too. It was an early death; Van Dyck was only forty-two years old, but he had accomplished the labors of a century. He left nearly a thousand canvases, most of them of exalted merit. Of these canvases, the earliest are largely religious in subject. What he was capable of doing in that field may be gathered from appreciations by high and low. On seeing the "Crucifixion " at Mechlin, Sir Joshua Reynolds declared it to be one of the first pictures in the world. When the farmers near the little village of Saventhem, Belgium, heard that the parish authorities had sold Van Dyck's "St. Martin Dividing his Cloak with a Beggar," they armed themselves with pitchforks and other weapons, surrounded the church, and would not allow it to be removed. Compared with the works of the early Flemings and Italians, however, our artist's religious pictures show a seeming lack both of spontaneity and of conviction. Sometimes we even carry away from his delineation of sacred scenes the impression of a clever and objective foreshortening rather than that of a subjective, deep-down, Hans Memling, Fra Angelico fervor. Contrasted with those painted in the ages of simpler, sincerer religious feeling, Van Dyck's altar pieces suffer, but they hardly suffer as much as do most similar attempts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Compared with the works of his actual contemporaries, our artist gives us fewer Dyck pictures thrill the soul, but all of them have what religious pictures often lack, a union of North and South, of robust dignity with refined grace. Take as examples "The Marriage of Saint Catherine" (Buckingham Palace, London), "The Madonna of the Donors (Louvre, Paris), "The Repose in Egypt (Pinakothek, Munich). BY ANTHONY VAN DYCK Albertina, Vienna. time to return to the field of his earlier labors. When we gaze upon his latest works, the splendid Adoration of the Shepherds" in the church at Termonde, or (what is sometimes thought to be his religious masterpiece) the Dead Christ Lying in the Lap of his Mother "(Museum, Antwerp), we regret that he had not more time. Indeed, we feel this even in viewing the earlier works. Some of the Van The Tribute Money (Brignole Palace, Genoa), and "The Betrayal" (Prado, Madrid). Van Dyck's greatest work was in portraiture. The criticism urged against him in this domain is the same criticism often brought against the fashionable portrait-painters of our own day, namely, that they flatter their subjects. While both Rubens and Van Dyck are sometimes open to this charge, no one will deny that rarely, if ever. have portrait-painters possessed more marked ability exactly to reproduce their subjects. If they did not disdain to increase their exchequers by means of occasional flattery, it only shows how widespread is this trick of the portrait-making trade, whether the artist be a painter or a photographer, whether he stand in the lowest or highest rank. There are artists in every rank, nevertheless, who are faithful to absolute truth and sincere simplicity. The heads and hands painted by Sir Anthony van Dyck belong in general to that first rank. If traces of flattery and of conventional mannerisms may be detected in some, in most the impression is one of minute and painstaking conscientiousness and perseverance as well as of genius. Indeed, the painter generally insisted on detaining his sitters to partake of lunch or dinner, so that he might, at his ease, study face and hand characteristics when his subjects were less conscious of being watched. If, as creative forces and all-round artists, Velasquez, Rembrandt, and Titian excel Van Dyck, at least in his particular domain, portraiture, the name of the Fleming is, with theirs, immortal. His name is naturally and must ever be associated with another's, his master's, and both constitute the proudest glory of Antwerp. In actual imaginative power, in brute force and fire, in virile energy, in brilliant color, in vigorous handling, and in versatility, Rubens was never equaled by his pupil. The latter, however, more quiescent and reserved by nature. outdistanced the former in harmony of compos.tion, in skill in subordinating accessories, in correctness and clearness of outline, in unob trusive handling, in delicacy of modeling and color, in sensitiveness of psychologic description. in an almost feminine touch in the power to charm; above all, in the ability to emphasize what was refined or elevated in his subject-that is to say, in distinction. The painter is often not so much in evidence as with Rubens; the artist more so. We know well how Van Dyck looked, for he painted no less than thirteen portraits of himself. The best of these hangs in the Uffizi at Florence. The artist glances at us over his shoulder. His features are clear-cut, his eyes bright and intelligent, his expression grave yet winning. He wears his hair long, he has a lace collar about his neck, and a gold chain over his black doublet. His extravagant and luxurious living was almost justified by his unbounded hospitality, liberality, courtliness, kindness. Even in his Italian days he was called "Il pittore cavalieresco." While his studio was crowded with the most aristocratic society of the day, every strolling player and musician knew that a mere painter was the most liberal lord in London. His was a handsome and fit figure for that courtly time, and his were noble portraits too. But little of his personality has come down to us, and he left his name to no particular school of art, save as he may have more or less affected a certain number of the English painters who came after him. What a pity that he left no school, and what a pity that he could not have lived to a Titian-like age! He died before his own character and career had been entirely developed and rounded and made. what both might have become. However, we may not despair at the early death of geniuses if they leave behind such works as those of Keats and Shelley and Chopin and Schubert and Giorgione and Van Dyck, above all of Raphael. This portrait shows the Rt. Hon. Joseph Chamberlain as he generally appears. namely, with his monocle, but without the accustomed accompaniment of an orchid buttonhole bouquet. Mr. Chamberlain is now sixty-three years old. but he looks at least ten years younger. His early career was that of a merchant and a manufacturer. His entry on politics was coincident with the revolt of political dissenters against official Liberalism. He was thrice Mayor of Birming ham, and thrice married. The present Mrs. Chamberlain is an American, the daughter of ex-Secretary Endicott. Twenty years ago Mr. Chamberlain was an ardent supporter of Gladstone's domestic and foreign policy. While Mr. Chamber lain was even then no Little Englander, he was not the Imperialist he is to-day. When he entered Parliament, and when he became a Cabinet member, he espoused the cause of the Boers, and later the justice of the Anglo-Boer Conventions which his chief had signed. It must be admitted, however, that, though he defended the Conventions, Mr. Chamberlain also defended Bechuanaland, and thus prevented the Boers from doubling their territory. When Gladstone became a Home Ruler, Mr. Chamberlain wavered for a moment, and then became a Unionist. In those troublous times, as now, when, as Colonial Secretary, he is a member of a Unionist Coalition Cabinet, his coolness and cutting sarcasm in debate made him perhaps the man most feared in the House of Commons. Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger President Kruger says of his early days: "I never had a chance to read books; I was always campaigning or fighting lions." When asked, in the light of present events, which he preferred, African or British lions, he replied: "No choice. They are both bad." He himself, however, has justly been called a slumbering lion. In physical appearance he stands six feet high, and has long legs, which must needs be long indeed if he once outran a fast horse for several hundred yards, as they say. He has also been a mighty horseman. His friends aver that, in hunting, if his saddle-girth ever snapped, he threw the saddle off while in motion, and continued the chase bareback. They add that he used to stand on his head in the saddle while his horse galloped, he holding on to the stirrup-straps. "Oom Paul," as the Boers love to call him, is very religious. Curiously enough, he was confirmed by an American missionary. The Bible is quite likely the only book he has read thoroughly. That he knows from beginning to end, and has a text for every circumstance in life. At the head of his grazing, pasturing fold, he seems like an Old Testament patriarch. At first sight he is not a particularly impressive person in his clumsy stovepipe hat and his misshapen coat and trousers, out of which come hands and feet of huge size, the whole an environment for ears, mouth, and chin also of huge size. After this preparation, however, the smallness of his head is as disappointing as is the shortsightedness of his unprogressive political policy; and the Outlanders say that the stolidity of his manner is only equaled in exasperation by the bigotry of that policy. The stolid manner may be emphasized by the fact that the President smokes constantly. As a boy, Mr. Kruger left Cape Town with the Great Trek of 1836. All his life has been a struggle for independence, and it has been a brave life. |