More of by his American guest as to what the neighboring squires "did," was able to an swer Well, let me see. Torold's rather an authority on church restoration; Nethercott keeps the pack; Of fley never misses a meeting at quarter-sessions; Rodeland's very keen on model villages. It would be hard to make out as good a showing at N**p*rt or T*x*d*. The retired millionaire who had laid up even one of these subsidiary interests might be accounted happy, much happier than the retired millionaire who had swallowed the gospel of strenuosity at a gulp, ignoring that its use, like Bacon's "some few powders," was to be chewed and digested. W Portmanteau Words HO does not recall with pleasure more than one passage in Alice's adventures both in Wonderland and after she passed through the looking-glass? It was in this second series of wanderings that she made acquaintance with Humpty Dumpty, who declared his ability to interpret any poem that ever had been written or that ever would be written. (It is a pity, by the way, that Alice did not promptly try him with "The Ring and the Book." It is also a pity that the late Browning Societies never elected Humpty-Dumpty— Alice's Humpty-Dumpty-as an Honorary Vice-President.) Alice propounded to this interpreter of lyric enigmas the immortal poem beginning "Twas brillig and the slithy toves." He promptly explained that slithy meant lithe and slimy. "Lithe is the same as active. You see, it's like a portmanteau-there are two meanings packed up in every word." And he later elucidated mimsy as made up of fimsy and miserable. It was of malice prepense that the narrator of Alice's marvellous misadventures manufactured these portmanteau words. And yet in real life they make themselves now and again, unconsciously, and often most felicitously. In the Reconstruction days of two score years ago a sable legislator of South Carolina howled back with scorn the insin uendoes of a political opponent. Insinuendo is a good word, handy on occasion and to be recommended to the dictionary-makers always in quest of the latest linguistic novelties. And the attention of these fishers of phrases may be called to another portmanteau word in Mr. Henry Arthur Jones's latest comedy, "Dolly Reforming Herself." The play is a charming example of light comedy, and Dolly is a charming heroine. She abounds in feminine fascination; and she is forever coaxing her husband into paying the debts she is continually incurring for the pretty frocks he likes to see her in. But she goes a little too far on occasion, and then her docile husband violently revolts. "I will not be sweedled!" he cries in energetic protest. And her father promptly asks, “What is sweedled?" To which the indignant son-inlaw responds hotly, "Sweedling is sweedling! It's part swindling and part wheedling! It's what every d-ee-d good-natured husband like me has to go through, when he's fool enough to put up with it." Now, sweedling is a good word, an excellent word, a muchneeded word. I thank thee, Jones, for teaching me that word! And yet this is the discovery of an Englishman, although one would have supposed that it might have been happened upon earlier by some American husband harassed by a thoughtlessly extravagant wife. Two other little-known linguistic inventions there are which descrve the praise of the advertisement in that each of them may be called A Felt Want Filled. One of these is despisery, as a differentiated synonym for contempt; it seems to convey a subtler shade of meaning. And the other is interruptious, which is credited to Lincoln. He is reported to have declared that a certain member of his cabinet was "a very interruptious man.” Dictionarymakers please copy. Indeed, the compilers of vocabularies ought to Get Busy, now that English is the mother-tongue of nearly a hundred and forty millions of human beings and now that it bids fair to become a world-language, the second speech of all educated men all around the globe. Words casily get used up, living as they do from hand to mouth. Theirs is a strenuous life, and their ranks must be constantly recruited if the supply is to be kept equal to the demand. SOME MODERN GERMAN PAINTINGS AT production in its present examples of this THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM N continuing these papers on modern pictures at the Metropolitan Museum, the German School, which will include those of Düsseldorf and Munich, will be reviewed at a moment when it is peculiarly illuminating to consider it; for in view of the recent temporary exhibition of the German Secessionists the works about to be discussed seem more or less remote in both subject and method. For it is indeed a fact that, as a nation, the Germans have been slow in developing on the practically artistic side; and when other countries had passed the period of pompous historical and mythological subjects, and those even of intimate and narrative genre, the highest names in German art were still pursuing the cut-and-dried themes of ancient history or contemporary romance. In consequence of this tendency, and because the Museum has not carried its collection into the immediate present, there is even less to note of vital, legitimate, painter-like VOL. XLV.-82 school than in the French or English departments which also are not brought up to date. The fact remains that as a race the Germans do not express themselves so fluently through the medium of paint as do some of their neighbors. They are more literary, philosophical, didactic. Nature does not exist for them as a beautiful fact to be interpreted emotionally by means of form and color. They have often mistaken their medium in delivering themselves of ideas through painting, and should have, in most cases, resorted to verbal expression. The outside world did not seem to stir them as a lovely thing of sight as it did the French or English, so that we find no such faithful recorders of nature as Constable, nor such imaginative creators as Turner in the whole range of German landscape art; nor in their figure painters do we discover, at a corresponding period, such searching definitions of character and form as have been left behind by Ingres. This comes, I think, from the fact that the 765 "A Wedding Procession in the Bavarian Tyrol," from the painting by Wilhelm Ludwig Friedrich Riefstahl. Property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. By permission. German mind employs painting to express an incident, a historical moment, rather than in its legitimate province as a purveyor of beauty. Indeed, in comparing German painting of this time with that of other lands, there appears to be a whole world of sensitive "seeing" of which these painters were not conscious. Let us note some of the important works and endeavor to show, from this standpoint, what is missing in these productions. To begin with, remark a picture by Wilhelm von Kaulbach, that successor of Peter Cornelius who, although he came later, did not become more sincere or more emancipating in his influence. This fact is in striking contrast to the progressive tendency in French art where Ingres, following David, struck a truer note, and laid the foundations of that noble school of drawing and of form which has been a blessing to the school of modern France. This work by Kaulbach, entitled "Crusaders Before Jerusalem," is symbolical in its idea, of studied composition and arbitrary coloring-academic, stilted and conventional; a literary subject; an illustration rather than an artistic conception nobly and competently carried out. It is not a conception-an invention would more correctly describe it; and in this it is essentially German. judging from his canvas, "Thusnelda at the Triumphal Entry of Germanicus into Rome"; and it is difficult to realize that he who painted it was regarded as the deliverer, the colorist who emancipated German art from the traditions of a cold classicism. Here is a picture of theatric composition, and of a pictorial, but not of a picturesque sentiment. He appears in no sense the liberator that Menzel was, who, born earlier, blazed the path of the German realists of to-day. It is with regret that we find no example of this prodigiously skilful and versatile painter in this collection; for in subject he was very modern, touching the industries, amusements and daily avocations of life with a vivacity and vigor which brought them vividly before you. Let us trust that it is a link here missing in the evolution of the art of this country which will soon be restored. A few good examples of this brilliant painter would add much to this section of the Museum. But, in default of such interesting work as this, let us continue our review of the material at hand, and to illustrate more fully our meaning give in reproduction examples of certain works. These canvases show talent of no mean order, many of them, and undoubted skill; but it is all of a studied character, lacking in spontaneity and feeling. Take, Piloty is of much the same class of mind, for instance, Carl Becker's "Adelheid and the Bishop of Bamberg." This is a scene from one of Goethe's plays, and it is literally a scene; in a note made before the picture and while in ignorance of its title I find these words: "another tableau-a 'mise en scène,' unfelt, perfunctory, and painted largely for its opportunity of still-life rendering." The fact of the scene appears trivial, but the sumptuousness of the interior and of the stuffs and textures displayed seems to warrant the impression which suggested the above note. Although painted with a certain address, it is in no way distinguished in its color sense, but of an obvious and heavy color scheme. There is more true freedom in stroke and action, and purer and finer color, in Adolf Schreyer's "Battle Scene, Arabs Making a Détour." This is spirited, of a knowing chiaroscuro, and rich in tone. Here one misses the vibrating charm of Fromentin's Arabs, but that is another story, and the work of another temperament and nationality. It may be enough to say that this is a handsome picture and a good Schreyer. Although a Hungarian by birth, Munkácsy is listed with the German school and is practically its product. His "Pawnbroker's Shop" is a sordid subject, but more "felt" than the examples of this school hitherto mentioned. It is, however, forced and false in its effects of values, but sober, quiet and of a powerful tone. Wilhelm Ludwig Friedrich Riefstahl gives us "A Wedding Procession in the Bavarian Tyrol." This is a little wedding scene "placed" as on a stage, showing a vista around the corner of a chalet-inn, in which the church shows in convenient proximity to the fact-sweetly colored mountains in the distance, but bearing no just relation to the crowd of villagers and building in the immediate foreground, and in front of which they are making merry. In the light of the painting of to-day as pursued almost everywhere for the past thirty or forty years except in Germany, and now beginning to be followed there, this picture is of the past, démodé, not so much because of its anecdotal story-telling side, but by reason of its artificial, obvious, unpainter-like and inartistic character. There immediately comes to mind the genre of Jules Breton, who, however much he painted rustic genre, he invested whatever he did with a true observation of nature, not only in a well-considered composition which partook of a kind of inevitable disposition of the scene, but in that close and happy recording of the tone and color of natural effects which re "Thusnelda at the Triumphal Entry of Germanicus into Rome," from the painting by Carl Theodor von Piloty. Property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. By permission. vealed a sincere love of the outside world of sight. It must be assumed, then, that the standards of painting in this country did not exact this, that the German vision was not so sensitive to, or had not yet entered, that realm of art where objects exist surrounded by the element of air which is the heritage of latterday painting. One notes a tendency to break from this arbitrary and purely pictorial sentiment in a landscape by Oswald Achenbach in his "Near Naples: Moonrise." This is an accomplished piece of painting with a premonition of presentday "seeing." The trees and herbage are not sufficiently differentiated, nor is the tone of the twilight road subtly felt; but there is an attempt to give the dull haze of a hot summer evening and the effect of a dusty roadway that bespeaks a temperament sensitive to the accidental effects of nature. It is all too heavy in touch to satisfy the close observer of to-day, but, as has been said, it hints at the finer vision that is the possession of modern painting. Moving on to still more modern work, may be mentioned "Gossip," by Carl Marr. Here is an interior in which is discovered some charming observation, particularly in the still-life accessories to the scene. These two peasant girls spinning, are seated in a room into which the light filters through a low window curtained with gauzy white. They are exchanging confidences and chatting, but it is the prevailing tone of silvery gray managed with considerable subtlety that suggests the modernity of the artist's vision. The pots of blooming flowers in the window, relieved against the white curtains, are of an observation that is distinctively fine, and were it not for a lack of mellowness in the general tone of these different passages of white, there would be little to detract from the beauty of this canvas as a whole. As it is, it indicates a wholesome step in the direction toward which German art is now tending. There is another picture here by Carl Marr which we fancy was painted earlier, and in any case it shows less of the modern spirit in its treatment, and was probably done while he was still under the domination of the school of Munich. It has more of the German literary and metaphysical inspiration and less of the newer sense of light. The title, "The Mystery of Life," is of itself, unless productive of splen did passages of painting such as Delacroix often displayed, a subject more for verbal description than for an essay in paint. The dramatic presentation of an old man tired of life discovering the lifeless body of a young girl which has been tossed up by the sea on a gloomy shore, may have moved the painter to some academic exercise in the studio; but the result is neither beautiful nor edifying, the painting not impressive because the splendid opportunities of a faithful study of natural effects have not been made use of. It savors of the studio and of false sentiment. To review somewhat our point of view, I would not be misunderstood by leaving the impression that I disapprove of German painting because of its disposition to be literary, anecdotal or illustrative in theme. All painting at all times has been illustrative story-telling, if you will. It is the lack of sound painting, sound observation, sound taste and judgment which marks most of these subjects, rather than the incidents they depict, which disappoint. It is with renewed regret that the absence is marked of such men as Leibl, Lenbach and Menzel in this collection; but doubtless this break in the sequence of German art will sooner or later be remedied. For it is through these more progressive men that we will the better understand the movement that is taking place in German painting to-day. Although late, this nation is now looking out with new vision on the natural world; and it may be indeed that of the recent exhibition of their work there will remain behind certain examples which the Museum or some public-spirited citizen may have acquired to more fully complete the story of an art which is too meagrely represented in this great conservatory of the painting of all nations. Such acquisitions cannot be urged too strongly; for we have so lately had proof that Germany is coming into its own, artistically, that it will become more interesting as time goes on to follow the development of a people so great in other intellectual fields, to note the inevitable capitulation of that citadel of art which, in spite of long years of attack, has not yet wholly yielded to the civilizing, persistent appeal of beauty to which other countries, not remote from her, have more readily done homage. FRANK FOWLER. |