The Studio dec. 15. 1905 [antikvár]

Franz von LenbachFranz von lenbach : anappreciation. by professor hubert von her-komer, c.v.o, r.a.Recently, on my arrival in Munich, I paid a visit to the collective exhibition of Lenbach's works. It offered most interesting and curious food for reflection. Modern times have seen no artist of this peculiar calibre.Passing through room after room, I was confronted with a collection of portraits that seemed veritable old mastersdark, brown, and yellow darker already than any collection of real old masters.Most extraordinary was the facility of the artist in making his modern work at once partake of the key, in an exaggerated form, of the old masters after their three hundred years' toning. With new conception of character, he could " dislocate," so to speak, his vision, and could not only build up an art in the characteristic convention of those ancient masters, but could add to it the further "development" (if you would call it so) which is caused by " time' and dirt on the pigmenta marvellous piece of virtuosity ! I cannot conceive what type of work he would have done if fate had brought him first into touch with the modern world, with its iconoclasm, its brutal disrespect of all that has gone before, and its aggressive insistence on ugliness ! His earliest efforts were copies of old masters for a patron! And his copies were "dangerously" like the originals. But it was always an intellectual copying. He would not have resorted to the trick of an Italian artist of my acquaintance, who copied the old masters in a cold tone of colour, giving his attention only to touch and texture, and then baked them in front of a strong fire until the oil of the colour was burnt, giving an old look to the new paint.Lenbach must rank as a clairvoyant artist, who could call up the spirits of the dead, hold communion with them, get hints from them and then express them through the medium of his idiosyncrasy. And that was so well illustrated in the fact that he, after all, only expressed what pleased him best in the works of the old masters. It was not merely an imitation of the past masters, it was a criticism. Yet I think he was only able to conjure up the spirits of three paintersHolbein, Rembrandt and Titian; but these were faithful and active spirits to him. And truly remarkable it was that he never confused themnever received the assistance of the wrong painter for the subject in hand.XXXVI. No. 153.December, 1905.Bismarck alone must have caused some discussion amongst the spirits, because it resulted in a compromisea very ingenious onebetween Holbein and Titian. Rembrandt looked in but very casually. Then in Dollinger's case Holbein had it all his own way, even down to the wooden panel on which his subject was painted. Our own Watts felt the aspect of the ancients, but there it stopped : Lenbach went further, and seemed to speak the actual technical language, even down to the vernacular ! Old-looking, brown, and yellow as his pictures look, no two works shown in this collective exhibition are manipulated in exactly the same method. To the painter's eye, some of the qualities he obtained are most fascinating. Nothing illustrates Lenbach's strong individuality more than this effect on painters. But perhaps not less remarkable is the way in which he forced the public to accept what he did. His work was always the antithesis of the accepted modern forms of painting. Yet he obtained the greatest name, not only in Germany but beyond its borders as well. His conceptions of the characters of his sitters varied considerably in taste, and, I would almost say, propriety. Now it is a great rendering of a great man; next it will be a caricature; but commonplace, hardly ever. Glancing round the rooms one is struck with the forcible insistence on extremes, either in pose or expression. To get at the cause for this we must take into consideration Lenbach's method of work. He first took a number of photographs of a sitter in all sorts of poses. From these he chose the one or two that offered him his best chances for his type of work. Then from an enlargement of such a photograph he made a pen-outline on the canvas which remained visible to the last. After this he " constructed" his picture in tone and colour, and when the sitter came for the first sitting the portrait was half done. For such a master, working in so strongly marked a groove, the method is eminently practicable, saves time, and the irritation of the invariably bad sitting at the start; and, in his case, it showed how the modern appliances can be used without disturbing the aspect of an old convention. Yet I see clearly in his art the side that has been fostered by photography. I see it in poses, but most clearly in his treatment of eyes. The glassy glitter of the Lenbach eyeso often mistaken for intellectuality of lookis the eye that has stared into a camera for several seconds, fixedly. The defects and inequalities of eyes, their wateriness, which causes so much of that glistening effect, are all exaggerated in the photograph. They are easy to copy ; and, if195