The company this evening included several men and women whom the world
has heard of, and many others, beyond all question, whom it ought to
know. It would be a pleasure to introduce them upon our humble pages,
name by name, and had we confidence enough in our own taste--to crown
each well-deserving brow according to its deserts. The opportunity
is tempting, but not easily manageable, and far too perilous, both in
respect to those individuals whom we might bring forward, and the far
greater number that must needs be left in the shade. Ink, moreover, is
apt to have a corrosive quality, and might chance to raise a blister,
instead of any more agreeable titillation, on skins so sensitive as
those of artists. We must therefore forego the delight of illuminating
this chapter with personal allusions to men whose renown glows richly on
canvas, or gleams in the white moonlight of marble.
Otherwise we might point to an artist who has studied Nature with
such tender love that she takes him to her intimacy, enabling him to
reproduce her in landscapes that seem the reality of a better earth,
and yet are but the truth of the very scenes around us, observed by the
painter's insight and interpreted for us by his skill. By his magic,
the moon throws her light far out of the picture, and the crimson of
the summer night absolutely glimmers on the beholder's face. Or we might
indicate a poet-painter, whose song has the vividness of picture, and
whose canvas is peopled with angels, fairies, and water sprites, done to
the ethereal life, because he saw them face to face in his poetic mood.
Or we might bow before an artist, who has wrought too sincerely, too
religiously, with too earnest a feeling, and too delicate a touch, for
the world at once to recognize how much toil and thought are compressed
into the stately brow of Prospero, and Miranda's maiden loveliness; or
from what a depth within this painter's heart the Angel is leading forth
St. Peter.
Thus it would be easy to go on, perpetrating a score of little
epigrammatical allusions, like the above, all kindly meant, but none
of them quite hitting the mark, and often striking where they were not
aimed. It may be allowable to say, however, that American art is much
better represented at Rome in the pictorial than in the sculpturesque
department. Yet the men of marble appear to have more weight with the
public than the men of canvas; perhaps on account of the greater density
and solid substance of the material in which they work, and the sort
of physical advantage which their labors thus acquire over the illusive
unreality of color. To be a sculptor seems a distinction in itself;
whereas a painter is nothing, unless individually eminent.