He Insisted
Upon Showing Us Every Thing Remarkable In Utrecht, And Finally Walked Us
Tired.
The same evening the diligence brought us to Arnheim, a neat-looking town
with about eighteen hundred inhabitants, in the province of Guelderland,
where the region retains not a trace of the peculiarities of Holland.
The
country west of the town rises into commanding eminences, overlooking the
noble Rhine, and I feel already that I am in Germany, though I have yet to
cross the frontier.
Letter XXIX.
American Artists Abroad.
Rome, _October_, 1845.
You would perhaps like to hear what the American artists on the continent
are doing. I met with Leutze at Duesseldorf. After a sojourn of some days
in Holland, in which I was obliged to talk to the Dutchmen in German and
get my answers in Dutch, with but a dim apprehension of each other's
meaning, as you may suppose, on both sides; after being smoked through and
through like a herring, with the fumes of bad tobacco in the railway
wagons, and in the diligence which took us over the long and monotonous
road on the plains of the Rhine between Arnheim and Duesseldorf - after
dodging as well as we were able, the English travellers, generally the
most disagreeable of the travelling tribe, who swarm along the Rhine in
the summer season, it was a refreshment to stop a day at Duesseldorf and
take breath, and meet an American face or two. We found Leutze engaged
upon a picture, the subject of which is John Knox reproving Queen Mary. It
promises to be a capital work. The stern gravity of Knox, the
embarrassment of the Queen, and the scorn with which the French damsels
of her court regard the saucy Reformer, are extremely well expressed, and
tell the story impressively.
At Duesseldorf, which is the residence of so many eminent painters, we
expected to find some collection, or at least some of the best specimens,
of the works of the modern German school. It was not so, however - fine
pictures are painted at Duesseldorf, but they are immediately carried
elsewhere. We visited the studio of Schroeter - a man with humor in every
line of his face, who had nothing to show us but a sketch, just prepared
for the easel, of the scene in Goethe's Faust, where Mephistophiles, in
Auerbach's cellar, bores the edge of the table with a gimlet, and a stream
of champagne gushes out. Koehler, an eminent artist, allowed us to see a
clever painting on his easel, in a state of considerable forwardness,
representing the rejoicings of the Hebrew maidens at the victory of David
over Goliath. At Lessing's - a painter whose name stands in the first rank,
and whom we did not find at home - we saw a sketch on which he was engaged,
representing the burning of John Huss; yet it was but a sketch, a painting
in embryo.
But I am wandering from the American artists. At Cologne, whither we were
accompanied by Leutze, he procured us the sight of his picture of Columbus
before the Council of Salamanca, one of his best. Leutze ranks high in
Germany, as a young man of promise, devoting himself with great energy and
earnestness to his art.
At Florence we found Greenough just returned from a year's residence at
Graefenberg, whence he had brought back his wife, a patient of Priessnitz
and the water cure, in florid health. He is now applying himself to the
completion of the group which he has engaged to execute for the capitol at
Washington. It represents an American settler, an athletic man, in a
hunting shirt and cap, a graceful garb, by the way, rescuing a female and
her infant from a savage who has just raised his tomahawk to murder them.
Part of the group, the hunter and the Indian, is already in marble, and
certainly the effect is wonderfully fine and noble. The hunter has
approached his enemy unexpectedly from behind, and grasped both his arms,
holding them back, in such a manner that he has no command of their
muscles, even for the purpose of freeing himself. Besides the particular
incident represented by the group, it may pass for an image of the
aboriginal race of America overpowered and rendered helpless by the
civilized race. Greenough's statue of Washington is not as popular as it
deserves to be; but the work on which he is now engaged I am very sure
will meet with a different reception.
In a letter from London, I spoke of the beautiful figure of the Greek
slave, by Powers. At Florence I saw in his studio, the original model,
from which his workmen were cutting two copies in marble. At the same
place I saw his Proserpine, an ideal bust of great sweetness and beauty,
the fair chest swelling out from a circle of leaves of the acanthus. About
this also the workmen were busy, and I learned that seven copies of it
had been recently ordered from the hand of the artist. By its side stood
the unfinished statue of Eve, with the fatal apple in her hand, an earlier
work, which the world has just begun to admire. I find that connoisseurs
are divided in opinion concerning the merit of Powers as a sculptor.
All allow him the highest degree of skill in execution, but some deny that
he has shown equal ability in his conceptions. "He is confessedly," said
one of them to me, who, however, had not seen his Greek slave, "the
greatest sculptor of busts in the world - equal, in fact, to any that the
world ever saw; the finest heads of antiquity are not of a higher order
than his." He then went on to express his regret that Powers had not
confined his labors to a department in which he was so pre-eminent. I have
heard that Powers, who possesses great mechanical skill, has devised
several methods of his own for giving precision and perfection to the
execution of his works.
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