The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 52, February, 1862

As different as are the subjects he chooses are the bits of scenery Hamilton Wild introduces in his pictures of life as it now is. His are more truly historical paintings, although aspiring to no record of the greatly bad and sorrowful transactions of our age. They represent the joy and hope of youth, the cheerfulness and vivacity of the lowly, their pleasantest pursuits, their most primitive customs, their characteristic and often superb costumes; and wherever a passage of scenery occurs, it is always that which has aided in developing the human life with which it is associated.

There is never a discrepancy, nor is unison of sentiment ever achieved by any bending of the truth. His keen sense of harmony never fails to perceive, in the infinite range of tones and expressions of Nature, just that which better than all others supports the character and action of his group. With motives so healthful, it may be less difficult to find that sympathy which Nature cheerfully gives; yet there is a tendency with artists to be enticed away from Nature's joyousness, and especially from her simplicity.

To this temptation Mr. Wild can never have been subjected. The freedom which he manifests is not that which has been won, but into which he must have been born, and with that grew the ability which transfigures labor into play. Unto such a Nature the out-world presents unasked her phases of joy and brightness, her light and life.

Does he seek Nature? No. Nature goes with him; and whether he tarry among the Lagoons, where all seems Art or Death, or in the shadow and desolation of the Campagna, in the unclean villages of the Alban Hills, or where the shadows of deserted palaces fall black, broken, and jagged on the red earth of Granada, there she companions him. She shows him, that, after all, Venice is hers, and gives him the white marble enriched with subtilest films of gold, alabaster which the processes of her incessant years have changed to Oriental amber, a city made opalescent by the magic of her sunsets. At Rome she opens vistas away from the sepulchral, out into the wine-colored light of the Campagna, into the peace gladdened by larks and the bleating of lambs; above are pines,—Italian pines,—and across the path falls the still shadow of blooming oleanders. She leads away from squalid towns, and gathers a group of her children,—peasants, costumed in scarlet and gold, under the grape-laden festoons of vines, while the now distant village glows like cliffs of Carrara. How lavish she must have been of her old ideal Spain, the while he dwelt in Granada!—the dance of the gypsies; pomegranates heavy with ripeness hanging among the quivering glossy leaves; olives gleaming with soft ashy whiteness, as the south-wind wanders across their grove up to where the towers of the Alhambra lift golden and pale lilac against the clear sky.

We have dwelt thus lengthily upon this primitive and apparently less important branch of Landscape Art for several reasons: from a conviction that its importance is, and is only apparently less; from the fact that from it have been derived all other classes of landscape; and because a comprehension of its scope and purpose aids more than any other agency in understanding those of the pure and simple Landscape Art.

We have seen Nature ever ready with moods so related to the soul that no ideal worthy of Art might be conceived beyond the range of her sympathies. Even to that event involving all the intensity of human thought and feeling, the last refinement of all spiritual emotion, and a sense of mysteries more sublime than the creation of worlds,—even to the Crucifixion,—Nature gathered herself, as the only possible sign, the only expression for men, then and forever, of the awful significance. The joyfulness of festivals, the pomp of processions, the sublimity of great martyrdoms, the sorrow of defeats, the peace of holiness, the innocence and sweetness of childhood, the hope of manhood, and the retrospection of old age, when represented upon the canvas, find in her forms and colors endless refrain of response.

This truth, that Nature is capable of such cooperation with the human, that she confines herself to no country or continent, and that her expressions are not relative, depending upon the suggestiveness of the human action to which they correspond, but are positive and under the rule of the immutable, enables the artist to evolve the first great class of simple landscape-painting.

Had Art always been real and artists ever true, this consideration must have called forth this class. It being true that natural scenery readily allies itself with representations of the human figure in order to express more perfectly than otherwise possible the ideal, it must be through affinity with that which evolves the ideal, and only by indirect relation to its sign or visible manifestation in form-language. Then why not found a school of landscape by discarding the human figure as an element of expression? A man comes who is born to the easel, yet who feels no impulse to represent the practical effect upon human faces and limbs of the various emotions, passions, and sentiments which demand utterance. His thought is to hold himself to his kindred by more subtile and far more delicate bonds. He knows that any one can look upon the "Huguenot Lovers," by Millais, and feel responsive; for it occupies a great plane, a part of which may be mistaken for passion. But he feels that the love of Thekla and Max Piccolomini will permit no effigy but that sacred bank beyond the cliffs of Libussa's Castle, whither come no footsteps nor jarring of wheels, but only the sound of the deep Moldau and of remote bells. It is the essence of the ideal which compels his imagination, not the limited and restless circumstance which chanced to occur as its revelator. Then the day uprises as if conscious of his inner life and purpose. Then she gives him breadth after breadth of color, within which is traced her no longer mystic alphabet. How significant are the forms she gives him for the foreground, sweet monosyllables! There are pansies, and rue, and violets, and rosemary. Among these and their companions children walk and learn, and to the child-man, the artist to be, she proffers these emblems. Should he accept her gifts, then all this wonderful world of Art-Nature is open to him. He inherits, possesses beyond all deeds, above all statutes,—as does Mr. Gay, who painted that great, though unassuming, picture of "The Marshes of Cohasset."

Because Art was not held to the highest, few men have known the elevation of this department of landscape-painting. Too deep or too devoted a life seems to have been required, too constant communion with Nature, or too broad a study of her phenomena. Unfortunately, we have few representatives of this class, in Italy,—Mr. Wild producing only rarely works which to the principles hinted at are precious illustrations. After the remarks we have made, we fear that allusion to the existing facts of painting may be deemed disparaging. Not so; we deprecate such a conclusion. One great and living picture marks the man. To be true to himself and Nature is the first duty, even should he be compelled to stand lifelong with his face towards the west, in order to possess his soul in Art.

One of the pleasantest styles of landscape painting is that where the artist, in a mood of deep peace, sits down in the midst of scenes endeared by long and sweet association, and records in all tenderness their spirit and beauty. Such scenery Italy affords, and the Alban Hills seem to be the centre whence radiate all phases of the lovely and beautiful in Nature. There her forms have conspired with all the highest and rarest phenomena of light to render her state unapproachably glorious.

There has also been given such an artist,—a woman altogether truthful, strong, and nobly delicate; and although several years have passed since she left Italy, her representations of scenery peculiarly Italian are too remarkable to be passed unnoticed. Indeed, this lady, Miss Sarah Jane Clark, is the only artist whose works are illustrative of a style of simple Landscape Art which unites in itself the love and conscientiousness of early Art and the precision and science of the modern. Her picture of Albano is wonderful,—not from the rendering of unusual or brilliant effects, but from a sense of genuineness. We feel that it grew. The flower and leaf forms which enrich the near ground are such as spring up on days like the one she has chosen. Another month, and new combinations would have given another key to her work and rendered the present impossible. In that real landscape had wrought the secret vitality clothing the earth in leafage and bloom. In its representation we see that a still more refined, a diviner vitality, has evolved leaf, flower, and golden grain. Another fact associated with this painting, as well as with some of its companions, is its character of restraint.

Temperance in Landscape Art is very difficult in the vicinity of Rome. In this picture the scene sweeps downward, with most gentle and undulating inclination, over vast groves of olive and luxuriant vineyards, to the Campagna with its convex waves of green and gold, on which float the wrecks of cities, out to the sea itself, not so far away as to conceal the flashing of waves upon the beach. Daily, over this groundwork, so deftly wrought for their reception, are cast fields and mighty bands of violet and rose, of amber and pale topaz, of blue, orange, and garnet, upon the sea. It is as if an aurora had fallen from Arctic skies, living, changeful, evanescent, athwart sea, plain, and mountain. Here is sore temptation for the colorist; more, perhaps, than by the wealth and combination of tints, he is affected by their celestial quality. All is prismatic, or like those hues produced by the interference of rays of light as seen in the colors of stars. Gorgeous as are these phenomena, they are also as transitory; and although the scene is repeated, it is with such subtile and such great changes as to remove it from the grasp of the painter who wishes to study his work wholly from Nature. The eye must be quick and the brush obedient, to catch the fleeting glories of those Alban sunsets. Even the imperial hand of Turner could give us only reminiscences.

The allurements to adopt a style of coloring involving these effects must have been great to one whose love of color amounted to a passion. Only a still greater love could have drawn her of whom we speak to the more subdued, but higher plane upon which she stands,—and that must have been a love of truth, and of that which has appealed to her nature through repetition's sweet influences. This is the scene lying in deep repose in open, permanent day. Trees, hills, plain, and sea forget the flying hours. Yesterday they did not remember, serene and changeless as ivy on the wall. So gradual has been the transition, so slowly has the surface of the grain lifted from the rippling blade to the billowy stalk, so continually have the scarlet poppies bloomed since May came, that, to her, this is ever the same beneficent and dear spot, sacred to her soul, as well as fitting type and sign of her pure Art.

The class of landscape-painting which deals with morning and evening phenomena, and is based upon the fleeting and transitory, is the only one that finds representation at present in Italy. Mr. Brown has developed new and peculiar strength since his return to America, and must require place from his new stand-point. Abel Nichols, whose copies of Claude were so truthful, and whose original pictures ever strove to be so, who through surpassing sacrifice became great, who lived, if ever man has, the wonderful Christ-life, now sleeps the sleep of peace, the last peace, under the sod of the landscape of his nativity.

There remains to be considered a series of undeniably remarkable pictures, executed in Rome by John Rollin Tilton.

This artist's landscapes are remarkable for the conflicting effects which they have produced on the public. They have excited, as they have been exhibited in his studio in Rome, great enthusiasm, and admiration which would listen to no criticism. Until perhaps the present year, which is one of prostration in Rome, his works could not be purchased, each one being the fulfilment of a commission given long before. These commissions were given not by men merely wealthy, but by men widely known for cultivation, discrimination, and for refinement of that taste which requires the influences of Art. On the other hand, men equally as remarkable for their accomplishments in matters of taste have expressed their condemnation of all the paintings of Mr. Tilton, or rather for those executed prior to 1859, and there were those who heaped them with ridicule. In admiration and condemnation we have often shared;—in the sentiment of ridicule never; for in all attempts there have been the hintings of worthy purpose and a desire to excel.

Those who most despise Mr. Tilton's style and productions are men whose tendencies are to the theories of English pre-Raphaelism. Viewed in relation to those principles, his pictures have little value. The purchasers of them are the men who regard with enthusiastic admiration the evanescent splendors of Nature.

Mr. Tilton's early ambition was to be the painter to fulfil the demands of this latter class. He not only sympathized with it in its greater admiration for "effects" in Nature, but he found associated therewith an enthusiasm which inspired him with unbounded hope and energy.

When he came to Rome, the Campagnian sunsets were found to be representative of the peculiar class of effects which he regarded as the manifestation of his feeling; and so he forthwith took possession of that part of the day which was passing while the sun performed the last twelve degrees of his daily journey. Other portions of the twenty-four hours did not appear to excite even ordinary interest; and whenever conversation involved consideration of scenery under other than the favorite character, he was prone to silence, or to attempts to change the subject. Yet he has been known to speak in terms of commendation of certain sunrises, and once was actually caught by a friend making a sketch of Pilatus at sunrise across the Lake of Lucerne.

The objects in the immediate foreground shared in the neglect which attached to certain seasons. They were ignored as organized members of what should be a living foreground, and their places were concealed by unintelligible pigment. As to life there, he wanted none: light,—light that gleams, and color to reflect it, were his aim. As an inevitable attending result of these principles, or practices, the structure of the whole landscape was ambiguous. The essential line and point were evaded, and one perceived that the artist had watched far more attentively than he had studied Nature.

At the same time the pictures produced in this studio were marked by qualities of great beauty. The peculiarly ethereal character of the vast bands of thin vapors made visible by the slant rays of the sun, and illuminated with tints which are exquisitely pure and prismatic, was rendered with surprising success. On examination, the tints which were used to represent the prismatic character of those of Nature were found to present surfaces of such excessive delicacy, that the evanescence of the natural phenomena was suggested, and apprehensions were indulged as to the permanency of the effects. That noble north light of a cloudless Roman sky did not extend far, hardly to Civita Vecchia, certainly not to England, Old or New; and with a less friendly hand than his own to expose his work, under sight still less kind, there might be presented a picture bereft of all but its faults. Such has been the case.

We here dismiss willingly further recollection of the works to which we have called attention. They are marked by error in theory, inasmuch as they show neglect of the specific and essential, and by feebleness of system, inasmuch as under no other light than that in which they were painted could their finer qualities be perceived. Yet it is but just to add that these were produced during a state of transition from one method of applying pigments to another of totally different character.

This period of the painter's experience was brought to a close by the better one of a summer residence at Pieve di Cadore, a village among the Friulian Alps. Thither he might have gone merely to make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Titian; for other reason than that he stayed in Cadore. He stayed for life, truth, and correction, and he found all. No other place on the continent could have afforded Mr. Tilton the benefit that this mountain village did. Here was no ambiguity, no optical illusion, but frank; ingenuous Nature. The peaks which guarded the valley were clear and immutable. They suffered no conflicting opinions; accident had done little to disguise, their true character, but Nature held them as specimens of the essential in mountain structure. That the lesson of these peaks might not be forgotten, the student finds them copied accurately in nearly every landscape painted by Titian. The magnificent one in "The Presentation in the Temple" was his favorite. The sketches of this period show that the artist's attention was divided between the study of these hill forms and of the luxuriant vegetation of the sloping fields and pastures so characteristic of Swiss scenery. Cadore is most richly endowed in this respect. The hill-sides are burdened with flowers, many of which are large and of tropical splendor. The green of the broad fields is modified by the burden of blossoms. We have seen against the background of one of these steepest fields what seemed to be a column of delicate blue smoke wreathing up the hill-side. In reality it was a bed of wild forget-me-nots, which marked the course of a minute rill. Under such influences as these, a man born to be a painter, to whom Art is all, whose hand never fails to execute, and whose mind has risen above any erroneous combination of principles which may have checked his progress toward the greatly excellent, must find himself with new strength, a chastened imagination, and broader conceptions of his art.

The results of Mr. Tilton's labors since the summer in the Alps prove that such was the effect upon him. His pictures have of late occupied nearly every class of Landscape Art. The works now wrought in his Roman studio are indicative of great changes in feeling, and are marked by surprising improvements in execution. Yet the individuality of the artist is impressed upon every canvas. The changes to which we refer are these,—foregrounds suggested by or painted from living forms. In one view of Nemi we saw a superb black, gold, and crimson butterfly resting on a flower. Yet these foregrounds require more strength, more "body," more of that which artists achieve who achieve nothing else. We notice far more individualism in tree forms. The ideal tree, that is, the tree as it should be, and the conventional one coming against the sky on one side of the composition, the one bequeathed by Claude, have given place to Nature's homelier types. The question as to the meaning of passages no longer arises. The lines are drawn with a decision, with a sense of certainty, raising them above all doubt. In the rendering of distant mountains, Mr. Dillon evinces new knowledge of what such forms necessarily imply,—their tendency to monotone and to flatness, yet preserving all their essential surface markings, and their inevitable cutting outline against the sky,—which sharpness Mr. Tilton as yet has only hinted at, not represented. Positive edges are the true.—But we have no further space to devote to these particulars of landscape form. In these Mr. Tilton has many rivals and not a few superiors.

There is left us the pleasant privilege of alluding to an ability which we believe he shares with none, and which enables him to give his present pictures their great value. This is the power to discriminate accurately between the several classes of color,—the local, the reflected, and the prismatic. It will be found on reference to most landscapes, especially those of the English schools, that it is the understanding, already informed on the subject, which accepts as reflected the continual attempts to render this kind of color: they are regarded as indicative. But the eye, which should have been satisfied first, recognizes nothing more than local coloring. Near objects, under broad, open daylight, yield us their local coloring,—as the surfaces of stones, the trunks of trees, and the many tints of soil and vegetation,—yet even here all is modified by reflections. We remember a cliff at L'Ariccia, which, gray in morning light, became, as evening approached, a marvellous beryl green, upon which some large poppies cast wafts of purest scarlet. Farther away, both local and reflected color lose their power. The rays no longer convey information of surfaces as separate existences. Nature gathers up into masses, and these masses tide back to the foreground colors far removed in character from the near. Vast combinations of rays and atmospheric influences have wrought this change. As we have said, noon gives us the earth clean and itself; but, as the sun declines, flushes of color pass along the ground. Their character we have already described. The particles which fill the atmosphere just above the surface of the earth become illuminated and visible in radiant masses. Farther away there is floated over the mountains a miraculous bloom, a bloom like that upon virgin fruit; and still more remote, upon the far sea, there is a dream of amber mantling the sleeping blue. To render these effects, to give us the illuminated air, the soft green which the mossy sod casts upon the shaded cliff, the precious bloom upon the hills, and the tints diffused along the sea,—to achieve this so completely that there never shall be any doubt, to give us upon the canvas what shall be all this to the beholder, is great, and this Mr. Tilton has performed.

THE EXPERIENCES OF THE A. C

"Bridgeport! Change cars for the Naugatuck Railroad!" shouted the conductor of the New York and Boston Express Train, on the evening of May 27th, 1858. Indeed, he does it every night, (Sundays excepted,) for that matter; but as this story refers especially to Mr. J. Edward Johnson, who was a passenger on that train, on the aforesaid evening, I make special mention of the fact. Mr. Johnson, carpet-bag in hand, jumped upon the platform, entered the office, purchased a ticket for Waterbury, and was soon whirling in the Naugatuck train towards his destination.

On reaching Waterbury, in the soft spring twilight, Mr. Johnson walked up and down in front of the station, curiously scanning the faces of the assembled crowd. Presently he noticed a gentleman who was performing the same operation upon the faces of the alighting passengers. Throwing himself directly in the way of the latter, the two exchanged a steady gaze.

"Is your name Billings?" "Is your name Johnson?" were simultaneous questions, followed by the simultaneous exclamations,—"Ned!" "Enos!"

Then there was a crushing grasp of hands, repeated after a pause, in testimony of ancient friendship, and Mr. Billings, returning to practical life, asked,—

"Is that all your baggage? Come, I have a buggy here: Eunice has heard the whistle, and she'll be impatient to welcome you."

The impatience of Eunice (Mrs. Billings, of course) was not of long duration; for in five minutes thereafter she stood at the door of her husband's chocolate-colored villa, receiving his friend.

While these three persons are comfortably seated at the tea-table, enjoying their waffles, cold tongue, and canned peaches, and asking and answering questions helter-skelter in the delightful confusion of reunion after long separation, let us briefly inform the reader who and what they are.

Mr. Enos Billings, then, was part owner of a manufactory of metal buttons, forty years old, of middling height, ordinarily quiet and rather shy, but with a large share of latent warmth and enthusiasm in his nature. His hair was brown, slightly streaked with gray, his eyes a soft, dark hazel, forehead square, eye-brows straight, nose of no very marked character, and mouth moderately full, with a tendency to twitch a little at the corners. His voice was undertoned, but mellow and agreeable.

Mrs. Eunice Billings, of nearly equal age, was a good specimen of the wide-awake New-England woman. Her face had a piquant smartness of expression, which might have been refined into a sharp edge, but for her natural hearty good-humor. Her head was smoothly formed, her face a full oval, her hair and eyes blond and blue in a strong light, but brown and steel-gray at other times, and her complexion of that ripe fairness into which a ruddier color will sometimes fade. Her form, neither plump nor spare, had yet a firm, elastic compactness, and her slightest movement conveyed a certain impression of decision and self-reliance.