Apropos to this. During the time I was in Paris, I formed the
acquaintance of Schoeffer, whose _Christus Consolator_ and
Remumrator and other works, have made him known in America. I went
with a lady who has for many years been an intimate friend, and whose
head has been introduced into several of his paintings. On the way she
gave me some interesting particulars of him and his family. His mother
was an artist - a woman of singularly ethereal and religious character.
There are three brothers devoted to art; of these Ary is the one best
known in America, and the most distinguished. For some time, while
they were studying, they were obliged to be separated, and the mother,
to keep up the sympathy between them, used to copy the design of the
one with whom she resided for the other two. A singular strength of
attachment unites the family.
We found Schoeffer in retired lodgings in the outskirts of Paris, and
were presented to his very pretty and agreeable English wife. In his
studio we saw a picture of his mother, a most lovely and delicate
woman, dressed in white, like one of the saints in the Revelation.
Then we saw his celebrated picture, Francisca Rimini, representing a
cloudy, dark, infernal region, in which two hapless lovers are whirled
round and round in mazes of never-ending wrath and anguish. _His_
face is hid from view; his attitude expresses the extreme of despair.
But she clinging to his bosom - what words can tell the depths of love,
of an anguish, and of endurance unconquerable, written in her pale
sweet face! The picture smote to my heart like a dagger thrust; I felt
its mournful, exquisite beauty as a libel on my Father in heaven.
No. It is _not_ God who eternally pursues undying, patient love
with storms of vindictive wrath. Alas! well said Jesus, "O righteous
Father, the world hath not known thee." The day will come when it will
appear that in earth's history the sorrowing, invincible tenderness
has been all on his part and that the strange word, _long-suffering_,
means just what it says.
Nevertheless, the power and pathos of this picture cannot be too much
praised. The coloring is beautiful, and though it pained me so much, I
felt that it was one of the most striking works of art I had seen.
Schoeffer showed us a large picture, about half finished, in which he
represents the gradual rise of the soul through the sorrows of earth
to heaven. It consisted of figures grouped together, those nearest
earth bowed down and overwhelmed with the most crushing and hopeless
sorrow; above them are those who are beginning to look upward, and the
sorrow in their faces is subsiding into anxious inquiry; still above
them are those who, having caught a gleam of the sources of
consolation, express in their faces a solemn calmness; and still
higher, rising in the air, figures with clasped hands, and absorbed,
upward gaze, to whose eye the mystery has been unveiled, the enigma
solved, and sorrow glorified.
