The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1886-10-13

king he could take unlimited time for his
work and demand equivalent compensation,
and if A king had passion for art he was
not limited in his indulgence of his taste
since he never troubled himself where the
money came from to pay the bills
The French Kings were most lavish in
their expenditures in this department, so
that today there are hundreds of paintings
in the store-rooms at Versailles, which have
never been placed in the halls for which
they were designed. When we were there
we were shown two large pictures of much
merit, which had been hung within
few months. They were the work OF an
artist in the prime of his manhood, VINO mas
lived to see his four score years. lie knew
if the labor of his hands was not honored IN
his life, it would be left to the mold or TO
the rats in neglected attic, when he had
passed away and left behind him no friend
at court to present his claim for preferment.
1t was only by the most persistent and earn
est appeals to the officials that his petition
was received and granted. All the artists
are much pleased to receive calls from their
patrons in America, which they regard as
the great garner house of their works. Each
year America absorbs more and more of
European products in art and sculpture
We were astonished to learn of the num-
bers of costly paintings and sculptures
which are being scattered in the private
homes of the young cities of our western
States. In the vestibule of the Glyptothek
stands the plaster cast of the bronze group
which surmounts the Siegesther This and
another figure of Bavaria are the grandest
bronzes we saw in Europe We admired so
much this group in the Glyptothek, in which
an Amazonian figure of Bavaria is standing
in her chariot and driving four mammoth
lions, that we thought we must see the real
bronze group IN stu. We were much dis
appointed at finding all the grand effect lost
by the immense height at which it was
placed One has to stand at such a distance
to see the whole of the figures that the de-
tails are dwindled and the entire beauty sac
rificed. That mistake has often been made
in putting works of art so completely above
the range of human vision as to render them
almost worthless. The other figure of Ba-
yaria at the Propylaeun is not so high and
presents from various points of view most
commanding aspect. A stair case leads to
the head in which man may sit down.
The modern pictures of domestic, historic
or scriptural incidents at Munich did not
lack ideality, but at the same time were so
true to nature that they touched the heart and
presented before you the display of the emo
tions of living beings rather than the artifi-
cial figures and impossible scenes of ancient
art In an exhibition of Holman Hunts
work, we were obliged to wade through
pages of descriptions in the catalogue, be-
fore we could get one clue to the meaning of
the incidents in his pictures, and even then
when each figure was labelled like the old
painting of Daniel in the Lions Den we had
to refer again and again to our text book or
we got of the track and were lost in the
mazes off doubt Two or three in the num-
Der were fairly good-of these the best was
his Light of the World. Many of his paint
ings looked as rude and patchy as the paint
ed dissected pictures we buy for our chill
dren.
Pilottys and Schraudolph's pictures are
vastly superior. They need no tag to tell
their story. The experiences of life time
are written in a few graphic touches in
Pilotty's painting of the visit of Leni, the
astrologer before the corpse of Wallenstein.
We carried away with us lasting impressions
ofanother of his pictures The subject was
an old one, and would have had no power
had it not been real thing and not modelled
from lay figures and made up story. The
central figure has young woman bolstered
up on couch, the candle Of her life just
Pickering. Beside her sat the husband,
overcome with grief as he watched for the
last flash of light in the eye. A nurse con-
sci0us of her own strength and full of pride
in her tiny charge, holds before the mother
her first born, hoping, by arousing the ma
ternal instinct of love to quicken the waning
pulse. The mother languidly strokes the
velvet cheek, as a tear steals down her
own.
The next day we returned to this gallery
and CHANGED to meet the owner of the pic
ture, who told us the story and its happy Sc
quel. The young mother was Pilotty's own
sister, who was brought to deaths door. The
event so deeply affected Pilotty that it i'm
pressed itself indelibly on his brain, and he
had only to transfer it in tangible color and
form on canvas. The mother recovered and
the babe is a manly boy, upon whose arm
she may yet lean ii old age His experience
was one of millions to pose on the very
threshold of his existence for his portrait.
When he looks at this picture, and sees his
mother giving her life for his, he must be
filled with strange and deep emotions.