ART & ARCHITECTURE: The Art - Germany and Austria
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[34] - These galleries occupy the northwest corner of the great rectangle of the Fine Arts palace - Germany filling seven, and Austria only five. The German architectural exhibit, models and drawings, overflows into the West Court and the upper galleries on the north side of the same. Of course there is a considerable quality of officialism about all that is formally undertaken by this great military empire, but the heavy hand of Imperialism is not too strongly felt, and even the official portraits, military reviews, apotheoses, models of imperial palaces, etc., are not very numerous. The getting away from French influences is almost as complete as in the British galleries, nor are there any greater evidences of that heavy, metaphysical school of Cornelius and his "Nazarites," which accompanied and assisted the revolt against French ideas after the fall of Napoleon. In fact, the modern North German art, as represented in these galleries, seems to be infused, almost entirely, with those naturalistic tendencies which characterized the third movement of the great "revival" of Teutonic art and which began somewhere about 1830.

Great efforts were made to secure for the greater glory of this German art exhibit the cooperation of that veteran whose birth dates backward to the year of Waterloo, only five years after the arrival in Rome of Cornelius, Overbeck, Veit, Schadow and Schnorr, and the inauguration of their school of German Christian and Romantic Art. It was a very different doctrine that Menzel preached, and it is the triumph of his school and not of theirs that fills the galleries of Jackson Park. Absorbed in his numerous occupations the aged artist was at first indifferent to the claims of the distant Western Exposition, but was finally prevailed upon to contribute to the completeness of the national display. Several of his most important paintings, including some of his more recent ones which had never been exhibited, were promised, and were even said to be on their way to this country; but in fact only one painting in oil, the "Rolling Mill," dated 1875, and loaned by the National Gallery of Berlin, appears on these walls. The big canvas is, however, an eminently representative example, and well sets forth both the vigor and truthfulness of his work and the incompleteness of his "unsparing veracity," and also the fact that he does frequently "tire us with commonplace facts," which his admirers deny. In addition to this work there are in the upper galleries some seventeen watercolors, gouaches and pen drawings which represent another side of his talent, many of them, as the studies of armor, marvels of patient and most exact rendering. The set of little designs in color for a Table Set for their Royal Highnesses the Crown Prince and Crown Princess, loaned by the National Gallery of Berlin, has not much to commend it to any but German eyes, being frequently heavy both in conception and execution. In the outer gallery, North Court, may be seen Professor Reinhold Begas' famous and veracious bust of the distinguished painter, also the property of the National Gallery. When exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1878 this marble attracted great attention: - "It shows us," said the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, "a little man smothered in a muffler and overwhelmed in a great coat; a type of the purest German characteristics, bulging high [35] forehead, sunken eyes, a mouth unquiet, crabbed, willful, bizarre - everything that is intelligent and original. He is a sculptor of excellent parts, this Monsieur Begas."

Another distinguished name in the German records is that of Professor Max Liebermann, and the presence of some of his work was considered to be almost next in importance to that of Menzel's to complete this historic presentation of the contemporary national art. The period is long since past when this professor's talent was more appreciated abroad than at home and when his first picture produced such excitement and disapproval in the venerable and conventional art school of Weimar. His two exhibits at Chicago, the "Dutch Village Road" and the large "Flax Barn," both of them important compositions with many figures, are good examples of that conscientious study of nature, perhaps a trifle uninspired, to which - with the exception of his "Jesus Among the Doctors," of 1879 - he has devoted his talent. Of the portraits of Professor Lenbach of Munich, two distinguished representatives have been sent to Chicago, and of very distinguished sitters, Prince Bismarck and Pope Leo XIII., both of them loaned by the Bavarian Government. The singularly cadaverous appearance of His Holiness - contrasting so strongly with his portrait by Chartran in the adjoining French galleries - may be taken to be an evidence of that strong "conscientiousness" which, it is said, Lenbach brings to all his work. Of Professor Defregger, also of Munich, there are three examples, of which the study of a girl reading, "In Sunday Quietness," is probably the most sincerely artistic, while the "Dancing Begins" is the most representative of that school of Tyrolese genre at the head of which are generally recognized Defregger, Matthias Schmid and Alois Gabl. Schmid will be found in the Austrian galleries, and of Professor Gabl two excellent representatives are here shown, the "Inoculators' Room," loaned by the Bavarian Government, and the better "Brauschenke (Bavarian Inn)." The latter, with its long procession of fresh-faced Bavarian maids waiting, its knowing arrangement, and its touches of humor, is an admirable example of that method of taking your naturalistic studies and embellishing them with a little grace, a little wit and a good deal of color, in which the painter, when at his best, excels Schmid and far excels Defregger.

[36] - The learned Munich professors are well represented at Chicago. That very good cattle painter, Anton Braith, sends two pictures, of which the large and important study of calves, the "Pets of the Peasant's Wife," is loaned by the Bavarian State. Of Professor NIKOLAS GYSIS, born in Greece, but educated in Munich under Piloty and long an instructor in that school, we give an example, an etching of his spirited "CARNIVAL IN GREECE," - an excellent combination of the somewhat incongruous ingredients of Oriental theme and Munich methods. EDMUND HARBURGER, somewhat more of a realist, as befits his youthful training in a brewery, sends the admirable "AT THE SOURCE," also reproduced for this publication by an etching. Professor Eduard Grutzner, another pupil of Piloty, has long been famous for his slightly malicious studies of convent life, and is here represented by a characteristic "Monks at Supper," in the cloister kitchen. The toleration of the Munich school - a quality which is generally denied it outside its borders - is shown by the name of the mystical Czech painter, Gabriel Max, in its list of professors; and it is to be regretted that this artist is not represented here by one of his most important works. Of the two he sends, one, "Katharina Emerich," loaned by the Bavarian Government, is a carefully painted study of the figure of a young girl sitting up in her bed awed by the mysterious marks of the stigmata on her brow and her hands. The other, "Visions," is less important. Professor Hermann Kaulbach, son of the great William, and pupil of Piloty, is the only one of his family here represented; his solitary painting is a small, very carefully wrought, version of a mediaeval "Story-teller," a sort of jesting Aesop, amusing a little group of children and skillfully painted in varying tones of reds. The youngest, and much the most modern as he is the most famous, of these honored professors is FRITZ VON UHDE, born in Saxony and a pupil of Munkacsy. His "ANNOUNCEMENT TO THE SHEPHERDS" is reproduced for this work by an etching; his other contribution, "Christmas Evening," is one of the finest of those bringing of the Biblical stories down to the prosaic modern day that he has done. The heavy snowy twilight is settling down over the forlorn little village, [37] a woman, in great trouble, is leaning against a fence in the foreground and following apprehensively with her eyes the disappearing figure of her husband who has turned off the road to demand shelter at the door of the nearest cabin. The poverty and loneliness of the scene are rendered with true pathos, and without that touch of sordidness which characterizes another work in which he has treated the same theme, and in which the pair go wearily along a wintry road, he wearing the blouse and carrying the carpenter's box of tools of the modern workman. In the United States loan collection, from private galleries, this artist is also represented by a "Sewing Bee in Holland," loaned by Mrs. L. Christ. Delmonico.

The list of the works of these distinguished Munich professors is by no means yet exhausted. Among those whose names are best known in this country may be cited, in addition to those already enumerated, Professors Lindenschmidt, Seitz and Zimmermann, the first quite of Munich, although much of his education was obtained abroad. In these galleries he is represented by one of his historical studies, of the childhood of Anne Boleyn. Professor Anto Seitz sends a painting, "Music," marked by his characteristic appreciation of what might be defined as the subtle qualities of a comfortable genre; and Professor Otto Seitz, - more of a follower of the peculiar romantic school of Schwind - nine pencil drawings. Professor Ernst Zimmermann - who is to be distinguished from at least six other well-known painters of the same name - is represented by a "Still-life" study, loaned by the State of Bavaria, and a new, and somewhat disrespectful, version of Columbus and his egg, much in the manner of Anton Seitz. The great discoverer knocks out the bottom of his egg on the table, and then purses up his mouth and casts up his eyes in solemn enjoyment of the discomfiture of the courtiers.

Still of this school - as it may be broadly defined in this summary arrangement - is Professor August Holmberg, though in his case his Munich training and affiliations are sometimes tempered by the [38] influences of the older Dutch painters. To the Chicago Exposition he sends a "Genre," loaned by the Bavarian Government, and a portrait of the Prince-Bishop - as "Pensive." Professor Gotthold Kuhl strikes the same note with an entirely different subject, - a group of charity girls in a village church choir singing Luther's hymn, "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott;" that is to say, he approaches his theme with similar reservations and conventionalities and methods of apprehending, induced by similar academical training, or the inhalation of the same educational atmosphere. Professor Kuhl's picture, however, is well painted, and would even be approved of in some portions by the most zealous modern apostle of realistic painting. Less realistic, and more distinctly of the German academies, is Professor George Jacobides' "Afflictions," so well known by its many reproductions, the small child grimacing with pain at the grandmother's knee over the insertion of the first earring. There is also here a good portrait by this painter. The very modern note is struck by the two paintings of Professor PAUL HOECKER, the interior of a shoemaker's workshop and the scene between decks of a modern iron-clad, H. M. S. DEUTSCHLAND, with the crew in their white canvas suits scattered around the big guns inspecting their small-arms. On the contrary, his large painting of "The Nun" is inspired by a touch of pathos and imagination, - the grave, sweet-faced novice sitting telling her beads in the convent garden alley suggests many things to any but the most unimaginative spectator. A still higher flight has been attained by Professor Ludwig Herterich in his large canvas of "Saint George," one of the most distinguished works in the German exhibit, and one that strikes a sudden chord of rich and sombre color in these crowded and variegated galleries. The knight sits bareheaded and praying on his big gray horse in the twilight, in a thick wood of birch trees, - it does not need the dusky gold splendor around his head to designate him [39] as no common man-at-arms. This very important work is loaned by the Bavarian Government.

Professor Josef von Brandt, born in a quite unpronounceable Polish village, has long been known by his spirited and admirable studies of the picturesque horsemen of the Danube and the adjoining plains, and in his solitary contribution to the Chicago exhibit he brings all this spirit and courage to the rendering of an historical subject, - the gallant attack of a body of dragoons on a concealed enemy in some outhouses, some nameless skirmish of the Thirty Years' War. This canvas, "A Sudden Attack," is much the best battle picture in the whole German collection, and is also the property of the Bavarian state. And the most brilliant genre in this collection is the "Matinee" of Herr Paul Meyer-Mainz, who is, perhaps fortunately, not yet a professor. The salon here is a stately rococo apartment of some illustriously small German court of the last century. The piano, or the clavichord, is wheeled out into the centre of this spacious apartment, the accompanist takes his seat and die starke Hofdame, no longer in her first youth, leaning over him, her hand on her bosom and her eyes turned upwards, renders con expressione, "Adelaide," words by Matthiessen, music by Beethoven. Unfortunately, directly over the piano, you perceive in the distance, against the wall, two ladies giggling behind their fans; one of them with that redness of hair which is sometimes said to betoken maliciousness of disposition. In front of the singer are two rapt listeners, an elderly man and a young one, also rolling their eyes appreciatively upwards, - personifications of that ineffable German sentimentality which no other nation can quite attain and which has never been better rendered than here. Around in the corner, towards the foreground, this appreciation again disappears, and is succeeded by more discreetly veiled hilarity, one sprightly lady leaning over to confid her sentiments to her neighbor, and Ihre Durchlaucht, Her Transparency herself, in the centre, presiding with judicious gravity over both her own amusement and the less restrained merriment of her guests. And that no shade of appreciation may be wanting, one old gentleman, at the end of the line, sleeps the sleep of the just auditor. All this play of character and emotion as well as the handsome and well-considered entourage, is rendered with great technical skill, and the spectator is alternately divided between his appreciation of the literary, the purely human, presentation of the scene, and of the painter's skill with his materials.

Still of Munich is Professor Carl Seiler, whose "Tailor of Count Bruhl" shows us three gentlemen grouped around a little table and examining - apparently with more seriousness than the occasion calls for - the famous Dresden porcelain reproduction of that official astride of his goat, armed with his goos, his shears and his eye-glasses, and radiant with the applomb both of a clothier and of a new manifestation of art. Among the landscapes of these learned professors must not be omitted the large and solidly painted "Hay Time" of Franz Robaud, with its well grouped composition, the three horses, the towering hay cart, and the attendants; nor the high, luminous "Chalkstone Gatherers in the Isar River Bed," by Josef Wenglein, loaned by the Bavarian Government; nor the fine [40] "Landscape from Upper Italy," of Ludwig Willroider. Among the marines should also be seen the rocky coast scene, "Near Genoa," of Professor Alfred Zoff, and among the cattle pieces, the large canvas by Professor Heinrich Zugel, a group of sheep at a fence corner "Awaiting" the tardy shepherd. This picture is owned by the Bavarian Government, and, as will have been already perceived, the official galleries of this State seem to have been selected with more than the usual official discretion. In the department of watercolors, the Munich professors are represented by Hans von Bartels with three pictures, two of them being marines.

Berlin contests with Munch the supremacy as the art centre of the empire, and is strongly aided in this contest by official influence and power, but the list of the masters of the capital of the Spree is not yet quite as important as that of those on the Isar. The first of these, in popular appreciation at least, is, of course, Professor Ludwig Knaus, and he is very well represented in these galleries, by three canvases in the German ones and by two in the loan collection from private owners in the United States. Of the former, two are those portraits of Helmholz and Mommsen, painted in 1881 for the Berlin National Gallery, which did so much to enhance his reputation in this branch of his art, and the third is a very characteristic composition, "The Fight Behind the Fence." Though this combat was not sung by Homer, the silent obstinacy with which it is waged was worthy to have been, and the surrounding spectators, watching with boyish eagerness and appreciation, find it difficult to preserve their prescribed neutrality. The American pictures, both important and well-known examples, are both owned in Chicago, the "Country Festival" by Mrs. Charles T. Yerkes, and the "Potato Harvest" by Mrs. Henry Field. Historical importance would probably require that the honorable Court Painter and Director of the Royal Academy of Berlin, Professor ANTON VON WERNER, should precede Professor Knaus; and this distinguished artist has sent to this representative gathering one of his best known works, that smoothly and neatly rendered collection of portraits of the famous diplomats and premiers who gathered around the long red table, of the "CONGRESS OF BERLIN" to settle the sequences of the Russo-Turkish war, - Bismarck, Andrassy, Gortschakoff, Beaconsfield, Salisbury and the lesser lights. As a collection of portraits of the great ones of the earth few presentations could be more satisfying, - the spectator feels that he is fully informed, not only as to the personal appearance and characteristic attitude of each distinguished personage, but also as to the fit of his garments, the amount of bullion in his epaulettes and of varnish on his boots.

By Professor FRITZ WERNER, of Berlin, is that spirited restoration of the times of the great Frederick, "THE FEMALE SUTLER." The great Frederick himself, an almost imperceptible speck, may be seen reconnoitering in the doorway of the distant windmill on the hillside; his escort wait for him on [41] the slope below; and debouching around the hill and stretching off on the distant plain come the long lines of his army, the horsemen in their cocked hats trotting cheerfully along on their crop-tailed horses. Along in the foreground trails the famous regiment of tall foot guards, with their famous conical helmets, their drum corps at their head, and greeting with approving grins the cheerful one-toothed vivandiere who bounces along beside them on a hard-trotting old horse, her various stores bobbing around her as she goes. With the exception of the portentous length of leg in these grenadiers, which gives them an air of being out of all proportion, this amusing version of the pomp of war is edited with admirable skill and lightness of touch, - everything falls into place most naturally and is rendered most effectively.

Professor Eduard Hildebrand's historical works are more conventional and academical, as witness here his "Queen Louise," walking in the winter, the property of the National Gallery, and his immense "Tullia," the furious daughter of Servius Tullius driving her chariot over her father's body in the streets of Rome. And Professor Carl Becker is here, as natural as ever, his "Venetian Doge's Festivity," as the catalogue puts it, very much like a great many other Venetian scenes that we have all seen from his prolific brush, well-conceived, intelligently arranged, painted with breadth and decision, with a certain charm of fresh and warm color, and not without a certain texture of woolen goods over everything. The veteran Professor Friedrich-Paul Thumann sends one of his numerous studies in the pretty story of Psyche, - this time kneeling on the brink of a summer stream, perhaps that one in which she sought to drown herself after her abandonment by Cupid.

Others of the older, or better known men are also worthy of notice. Professor Hans Gude was born in Norway but has long lived in Berlin, and paints the sea and the rocky coast as a Norwegian should. Here he is represented by a vigorous marine, called only "Breakers," some hardy fishers or wreckers wading out into the surf to save some flotsam coming ashore. Frnaz Skarbina, professor of Anatomical Drawing in the Berlin Academy, is a much better painter than his official functions would seem to indicate, - as his contributions to this collection demonstrate. Of the two oil paintings, the young girl in blue, occupied with "A New Book," is very good in color; and the "Bitter Words" is an excellent lamp-lit interior, the speaker, the man, standing, while the woman sits and listens. Of his two watercolors, almost equally clever, the "Conversation" was loaned by the National Gallery. Also the property of this institution is Professor Paul Meyerheim's "Menagerie," well known by its may reproduction, and one of his most serious and elaborate compositions, - differing greatly in this respect from those sarcastic and malicious takings-off of humanity under the guise of monkey and baboon actors by which he has won so much of his popular reputation. The professor also sends an important cattle piece, milking time in the Alps. And among the portraits of the Emperor one of the most striking and lifelike is that of Professor MAX KONER, justly given a post of honor at the head of the long gallery, - a brilliant effect of color being obtained [42] by the displayed scarlet lining of the gray coat.

The official "Delegate for Fine Arts" to the Columbian Exposition is HERR HUGO SCHNARS-ALQUIST, and he demonstrates his artistic qualifications for this honorable position by two large and important marines, - one, a distant view of the steamship City of Paris in mid-ocean, and the other, reproduced by an etching, a big and effective moonlit study, "A NARROR ESCAPE," - a small sailing vessel just saving herself from under the bows of a great paddle-wheel steamer that comes lurching along in the mysterious light. Another large, vigorously and admirably rendered marine is the "HAMBURG PILOTS' by HANS BOHRDT, still of Berlin, his only contribution, - the big boat with its sturdy oarsmen laboring in the trough of the sea and towering high over them, flat and violet in the misty light but full of inexpressible grace and swiftness and lightness, the great ship crowded with canvas. The poetry of the sea has seldom been better rendered than in this most intelligent and sympathetic work..

Two or three more of the better Berlin painters may be found represented in the illustrations to this publication. An etching is given of the only contribution of that very clever animal painter, RICHARD FRIESE, who, a few years ago, made a successful debut at the Paris Salon with an imposing study of a lion and a lioness carefully stalking down the mountain side, the sleeping caravan below. In his "LIONS IN THE LAGOON" he shows us two more of these bloody-minded tyrants pulling down a buffalo among the reeds. A full-page photogravure is given of the very well-rendered "FISHMART IN AMSTERDAM," by HANS HERMANN, in which the solid and judicious plein air painting, the ingenious choice of aspect of the shifting scene, is enlivened by the touch of feminine grace in the comely serving maid in the foreground. Among those works in which certain technical methods lend themselves to certain sought-for spiritual qualities may be cited Walther Leistikow's "Ave Maris," - the quiet little church-yard over which the twilight and the sound of the bells sift down so softly, and the three paintings by J. Alberts in which a curious, naive, thinly painted, high-keyed technique translates admirably aspects of the peasant life of the far North. Of these three, the "Confession on the Hallig Ohland" is the largest and, on the whole, the best; and the "Captain's Wife," sitting in deep thought in her neat cottage, possibly the least worthy, though all are good. "Alone" is another domestic interior, with an old woman seated at her window, but in the "Confession" we are admitted into the village church, and to the most solemn sacrament. A high, thin, clear and cold light pervades this scene and searches in all its corners; the attentive congregation, the earnest Scandinavian minister, the timber altar and platform and the quaint sacred paintings and furnishing, are all delivered with singular sincerity and truthfulness. It is impression in painting with its highest claim realized and its affectations ignored.

Another painter of the North is Hans Dahl, Norwegian born and one of three or four artists of that family name, probably all more or less connected. He was formerly of Dusseldorf, but now resides [43] in Berlin, and still paints Norwegina themes - as in his "Sunday Morning" here, with its cheerful sunshine lighting up the mountain lake and the crowd of worshippers who have just crossed its depths, their boats drawn up on the shore. Another Berliner, J. FALAT, sends a vivid snow scene owned by the National Gallery, a long line of bear hunters ranged across the dazzling plain, their aspect, their dogs, and their frosty breaths all excellently well painted. MULLER-KURZWELLY give us three notable landscapes, among them the fine "WINTER" one here reproduced, with its great trees and the deer beneath them, and Fr. Stahl, the sombreness of winter in his big "Cemetery," which does not need the text he attaches to preach its lesson of the futility of human life.

Dusseldorf still claims to be one of the three chief art centres of Germany, but the transfer of its gallery to Munich in 1871 was a very serious blow to a declining reputation and the future of the city seems to promise to be one rather of commercial and manufacturing prosperity than of artistic. The name of Achenback, so long identified with this school, is still represented by the veteran, Professor Oswald, brother and pupil of Andreas, and one of his characteristic works, a moonlit scene near Naples, in which a good deal of the fine old classic, romantic theme appears, is here in evidence. Another of these elders is Professor Albert Baur, but he has found better inspiration in his antique themes than is here shown in the "Martyr's Daughter." The young Christian maiden, piously adorning her father's tomb in the Catacombs, is surprised by the sudden appearance of a band of Roman soldiers, apparently led by a traitor. And by Vautier, born in Switzerland but for many years a professor at Dusseldorf where he received his training, there is one of those considerate studies of German domestic life, "At the Sick Bed," in which he is considered to rival Knaus himself. This painting is loaned by the Berlin National Gallery.

Many of the younger and less famous men are also worthy of record. By Ferdinand Brutt is a large view in a public picture gallery in which the selection and representation of various [44] German types - students, copyists, peasants and officials - is as ingenious and effective almost as that of the two masters just cited. FRITZ ROEBER is represented by a "Holy Family" - not unlike a Knaus in treatment, and a large canvas depicting an outbreak of the murderous ferocity of KING WENZEL, who one day rode through the streets of Prague, accompanied by his hangman, and caused to be immediately executed every one whom he met and whose aspect did not please him. This picture is reproduced for these pages by an etching. THEODORE ROCHOLL is a military painter, the most important of whose two pictures here gives us the unsuccessful chase of a German hussar by French cuirassiers. Among the very best of the landscapes of these Dusseldorf artists should be mentioned Heinrich Herrmann's big view near Dordrecht; Professor Kroner's edge of the forest with its noble stage challenging his rival in the foreground; Angeln Petersen's beach at sunset, very large in feeling and quite different from his equally well rendered Dutch girls on the beach in the sun, and F. von Schennis' fine, imaginative rendering of a glad in the park of Versailles with its mysterious darks.

The lesser art centres, Dresden, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe and Weimar are also well represented in these galleries. At the end of one of the most important hangs the immense canvas of Professor Ferdinand Keller of Karlsruhe, the Apotheosis of Emperor Wilhelm I., or of United Germany. The painter has secured an artistic unity to this very large and crowded composition by the burst of whiteness and light which occupies all its central portion. The old emperor, in his state robes of ermine, drives through the Bradenburg gate in a fine chariot drawn by four white horses led by sylvan men, preceded by Truth and Justice and a prancing mailed champion displaying the imperial banner, and accompanied by a tremendous allegory of flying Fame that bursts in the air just above his head without, however, attracting his attention. Immediately behind him rides the Crown Prince, bearing his marshal's baton, on a magnificent black horse; in the background are seen Bismarck and Von Moltke, and, on the farther side of the white horses, the Red Prince. This very difficult union of metaphor and realism is not very well accomplished, but the result, as a whole, is a big, triumphal work that will probably rank among the most important of these official documents. Very different indeed are the two marines of Professor Gustavus Schonleber that hang, one on each side of a centre, on a long wall, beautiful in color. In one, "High Tide, Clovelly," we see a number of boats at anchor, in the other a great-sailed [45] Venetian boat drifts slowly across the lagoon. Also of Karlsruhe is HERMANN HUISKEN, whose wholesome German girl with the "Pet Dog" in her arms in the gateway is here reproduced, as are MRS. MARGARETHE HERMUTH's "CHINE ASTERS." From Dresden the most striking composition is a very large upright canvas in which the Cyclops, Polyphemus, is seen standing thigh deep in the sea, in the orange evening light, catching in his net the unfortunate Naiads who have ventured too near him. One of these he holds high in the air, with an immense grin of malice, while a group of the sea maids watch him in dismay from the neighboring rocks. This bizarre subject is treated with all the courage demanded, and not without some very effective rendering of water and of sunlit clouds, by the painter, Max Pietschmann.

Of the two or three military parades which here represent the German army the largest and most effective is that by Hans W. Schmidt of Weimar, - big, sunny, giving the facts of the case with the greatest clearness and circumspection. Also of Weimar is FRITZ FLEISCHER, whose eccentric old peasant wife with her too-numerous charge of dogs, is also illustrated. Of the canvases devoted to the present emperor one of the most important is that in which Professor CARL SALTZMANN, of Neubabelsberg, shows him whaling on board the "DUNCAN GREY" in Arctic waters, - the unhappy leviathan burying himself in the immediate foreground with an immense shaft sunk in his side from the still smoking gun on the bow of the vessel, and the emperor, leaning over the forward rail, watching him. Notwithstanding this unpromising subject the painter has secured a very effective and well-rendered marine, a curious and very important note of color being furnished by the volume of ginger-colored smoke pouring out of the steamer's funnel.

Three or four of the most important works by Munich men remain to be noticed before closing this condensed review of these numerous and crowded galleries. One of these pictures, that appeals to us as strongly by its technical excellence as by the discretion with which the pathetic story is told is August Dieffenbacher's "Heart-rending Return," - the dead poacher brought back to his cottage on a sled, the wife sinking in the snow with her head on the little work-bench, and the anxious children and grandmother pressing behind her. Karl Hartmann sends two well-painted canvases, an upright, decorative "Autumn Evening" and a very interesting "Apple Fight." In the latter, in addition to the three contestants falling over each other in their desperate efforts to grasp the coveted fruit there was originally a fourth boy, his pockets already bulging with plunder, running to lay hands on it ere the others could [46] reach it, and, in the background, another youth carrying a ladder and a third child at the distant tree. By suppressing these accessories the artist has very much improved his composition and his picture, at the slight expense of some loss to his story-telling. Karl Knabl's brush work is more vigorous and equally intelligent, - in both his pictures, the chamois hunter watching the dawn and the perilous "Rafting on the River Isar," may be found excellent workmanship. Franz Simm exposes two pictures each in these galleries and in the Austrian, - in these two small genres, "Pride of the Family," a baby, and "Birds of Ill Omen," two elderly spinsters watching the lovers. Reproductions are given of JOSEF BLOCK's married couple quarreling "IN THE TWILIGHT," and FERDINAND BREDT's `TWO GAZELLES." The color of the Orient, so dear to painters, is suggested in the green bodice and bluish turban of the taller of these "gazelles," but still more brilliantly in the admirable head of a "Soudanese Girl" by the same artist.

Messrs. Frnaz Stuck and OTTO FRIEDRICH go still farther afield, the former - one of the most versatile and ingenious of contemporary German artists - exhibits among the oil paintings a large "Pieta," the Virgin standing by the side of her dead Son her face buried in her hands; and the latter, a restoration of Dante's death chamber, more or less in accord with the obscure legends of the end of the poet. Friedrich lives in Paris, and his painting is given by an etching. To return to contemporary themes, we have Franz Adams' "Battle of Orleans" and Jan Rosen's "Battle of Stolzek, 1831," among the best of these military pieces, - the former giving a sort of panoramic view of the long rush of the Bavarian infantry by the side of the causeway, and the latter rendering with great spirit the details of the attack of the Russian lancers on a battery at the edge of a wood in midwinter, and how they are in turn taken in their rear by Polish hussars. And, finally, after all these excursions, the great peace and solemnity of Anders Andersen-Lundby's beautiful "Winter Evening."

The exhibit of German sculpture numbers a hundred and thirteen pieces, of which a large proportion are life-size figures in marble and bronze, and in which there are evidences of a greater liberty of spirit and of invention than among the paintings. Two or three of the smaller groups, and even of the larger ones, are indeed among the most hardy in the whole are palace. To begin with the more decorous elders, we have already seen the famous bust of Menzel by Professor Reinhold Begas, and this collection includes also his bust of Moltke and Professor Carl Begas' marble group of the seated faun and the baby Bacchus, both the property of the National Gallery and both reckoned among the classics of contemporary German sculpture. Professor Carl exhibits also his life-size, marble group [47] of two sisters, the little girl maintaining the big baby in her lap. The National Gallery also contributes Professor Eberlein's creditable version in marble of the antique theme of the boy who looks for the thorn in his foot, Professor Paul Otto's somewhat conventional, draped vestal priestess, Toberentz's bronze "Resting Herdsman," Adam Brutt's marbel "Eve," and proposed to send three equestrian statues of Bismarck, Moltke and the Crown Prince Frederick, by Professor Siemering. At least, these works appear in the earlier catalogues of the fine arts galleries. Professor Siemering is represented by a life-size, bronze figure of a warrior exultant in the flush of victory and assailed by a serpent below. Brutt's "Eve" is a medaled statue, of the size of life, not without a certain charm and distinction of simplicity. The mother of mankind advances slowly, carrying an infant on each arm, her face, however, veiled in a curious vagueness as though the sculptor had not felt quite sure of his theme. This artist exhibits three other important works, bronzes, all marked by a high degree of technical excellence, - a bathing girl, hesitating on the brink of her stream, an upright "Phryne," nude except for some clinging drapery around her legs, and the popular groups of an old fisherman in his oilskins bearing the body of a drowned girl, her round young form veiled only in a scanty bathing dress. All these are of the size of life.

Very similar in his methods, but with somewhat more imagination and daring, is Professor E. HERTER, also of Berlin. His life-size statue in oakwood of Moses breaking the tables of the Law is forcible without being quite convincing; his fisherman holding in his net a writhing and smiling mermaiden whom he has just brought to land is amusing, and his mother mermaid, assailed in the "DEPTHS OF THE SEA" by an octopus, is realistically unpleasant. The second of these is in bronze and the third in plaster, and both are life-sized. Max Klein is also a departer from conventions, - his life-size bronze group of a man struggling with a lion is rendered with curious energy and originality, and his very pretty, marble head of a lady, the hair tinted, has been justly rewarded with the Berlin gold medal. E. WENCK, still of Berlin, sends a bronze head of an "Amorous Faun," set up in the outside gallery that is a wonder of loutish, sylvan, persuasive and very funny expression; Rudolf Maison, of Munich, furnishes a tinted plaster statuette of a nude negro undertaking to ride a protesting donkey that contrives to reconcile a certain decorous sculpturesque quality with great freedom of expression, and Professor August Sommer, of Rome, a small bronze figure of the Fiend catching flies on his leg that has the real mediaeval grotesqueness.

An old theme rendered with a truly lively modern originality may be found in the "Siesta" of the Berlin sculptor, Max Baumbach, a terminal statue of Silenus sleepy, admirably modeled. The same artist's two small dancing figures of the "Violin Player and His Love" are, on the contrary, very good [48] examples of the mantle-piece department of sculpture. Franz Stuck of Munich furnishes a well-studied figure of an athlete putting up a heavy ball; Carl Piper, a very good bronze bust of a pilot, and the number of acceptable life-sized nudes or nearly nudes is too great to specify, as Max Kruse's "Messenger from Marathon," T. Gotz's balancing boy on ball and his female water drawer, Franz Tubbecke's boy drinking from an amphora, Johann Wind's female juggler, etc. etc.

The Austrian sculptors are only eight in number, and furnish only sixteen works, big and little. There is of course a bust of his Majesty the Emperor - there are two of William II. And a statuette in the German exhibit - busts or reliefs of Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner and von Fuehrich, and a very good terra-cotta head of an old man by Arthur Kaan, of Vieena. By Josef Mylsbeck, of Prague, is a vigorous half length bronze portrait of "Graf Franz Thun-Hohenstein," leaning on his portfolio. Otto Jarl of Vienna furnished a good study of a creeping tiger, and Stefan Schwarz, of the same capital, four small groups in bronze, a boy with a snake, a Hercules in his fatal Nessus garments, and two amusing pieces in one of which a wily faun lures two silly geese up to hiss him and in the other suddenly reaches out and captures the astonished and vociferous birds.

In the Austrian exhibit of paintings in oil and watercolors many of the names which have contributed the most to the fame of this somewhat small but brilliant school are represented, - Munkacsy, Makart, Brojik, von Angeli, Eugen Jettle, Mathias Schmid, Canon, Charlemont, von Thoren, Pettenkofen, von Blaas and Defregger. These works, loaned for the Exposition, are from the most important private and public galleries in the empire, - those of the Emperor, the Imperial Museum, the National Gallery, Prince Liechtenstein and other distinguished art collectors. Several of the most important canvases have come from private collections in this country. Munkacsy's only contribution, "The Story of the Hero," an easel painting, was not hung till late; in this work, dated 1889, may be seen evidences of that modification of his technical methods which took place about this date and the partial abandonment of those tones of sticky and bituminous blackness which characterize his earlier paintings. The subject has been found in "Othello," - the Moor relating his adventures has become a somewhat later Teutonic adventurer. Makart's [49] reputation is but illy sustained by his great screen of the "Five Senses" which occupies so large a wall space, and which was first exhibited in 1879. The abundance of invention and detail and the smooth, suave color displayed in these paintings scarcely atone for the lack of distinction, the looseness of design and construction. In the narrow, long corridor that leads down to the Italian galleries may be found another work, quite different in conception and execution, a half-length figure of a bold-eyed girl in seventeenth century costume, holding aloft a falcon on her hand. Much better work by this "Veronese of Vienna" has been seen in this country, some years ago, and it is to be regretted that something more justificatory of this proud title has not been furnished here.

BROZIK's immense canvas of the historical "FENSTERSTURZ" of Prague treats the difficult subject with as judicious a combination of the unities and the necessary vehemence of rendering as could be expected. The unfortunate counsellor who is being actually pushed through the open window at the left only furnishes a secondary point of interest, the real hero of the crowded composition being his companion who, resisting violently in the centre of the field, offers by the abundance of his white linen as his garments give way in the struggle that desirable point which is to first catch the eye and attention. This tragical occurrence was one of the incidents that led to the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, - a deputation of Bohemian Protestants who had vainly petitioned the counsellors of their king Ferdinand to withdraw the decrees destroying their churches and banishing the new faith from him dominions suddenly rose in wrath at the contemptuous refusal they received and hurled the ministers from the palace windows, May 23, 1618. In addition to this important work Brozik is here represented by a much smaller historical composition, the "First Communion of the Hussites," rather conventional in treatment, and a smoothly finished genre, "The Duo." By HUGO CHARLEMONT, pupil of Makart and considered by the Viennese to have succeeded to many of the most brilliant qualities of that master, are a couple of canvases showing a strong feeling for good color qualities, and a much more exact sense of realism and of construction than that generally displayed by the older painter. The largest of these works is a "Still Life," lent by the Society of Patriotic Art Amateurs, of Prague. The other [50] owned by Mr. C. T. Yerkes of Chicago, - the group of handsome court pages, their rich costumes and the hounds beside them furnishing a motif which the painter has perfected sympathetically. This artist contributes, moreover, two small, carefully finished genres, the "Geographer" and "The Artist in His Studio," and a larger composition, "Planning the Campaign," lent by Mr. P. C. Hanford of Chicago. The latter is a large study, of the picturesque costumes of the seventeenth century, after the manner of Roybet.

Heinrich von Angeli, the brilliant Vieennese portrait painter, whose very successful forays into other countries have frequently carried resentment and jealousy into the bosoms of other court painters, is here represented by only two portraits, of Stanley and of Architect Schmidt, both worthy, though the average spectator - caring but little for portraits in general - would probably have preferred to have seen one or two of those clever historical figure compositions which the painter seems to have abandoned of later years. The large full-length figure of the "Master of the Hounds," by Hans Canon is apparently a portrait in costume, and his fellow ex-cavalry officer, born like him in Vienna in 1829, Otto von Thoren, sends his best-known work, "A Wolf," painted in 1870 and owned by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. In this picture the everlasting cattle piece suddenly takes on a new interest to the most jaded eyes, - here are all the too-familiar incidents, landscape, flock of sheep and goats, herdsman or two, and, added, a new dramatic touch, a sense of excitement and danger which arouses the attention at once. The scene is one of those level tracts of marsh-land so common in Hungary, the herd, grazing peacefully towards the thickets on the other side is suddenly seized with a panic and comes clustering around the shepherd's legs, the shaggy watch dog, growling, pricking up his ears and ruffling his coat, advances slowly but bravely towards the invisible enemy and his master, cocking his gun, watches his advance for the appearance of this foe. Even the patient donkey shows the whites of his eyes in the universal apprehension. This is a pastoral with a tragic interlude. Another well-known picture is Mathias Schmid's "Edelweiss Picker," exhibited at the Munich International Exhibition of 1883 and elsewhere, and in which the drama is almost equally well managed. A comely young peasant girl, plump and barefooted, lies unconscious on a narrow ledge of rock on the edge of the cliff in the foreground, having evidently fallen from above and only been saved from going still further over the brink to destruction by the skirt of her dress having caught in a ragged stump of pine tree. Her hand still clutches a bunch of the flowers [51] she has been gathering, and her pleasant countenance shows no signs of disturbance at the fearful plunge she has just taken - this owing to a little conventionality which the artists permit themselves in these circumstances. Carefully approaching her around the edge of the cliff, clinging with both hands and spiked feet to the perilous pathway, is a stout young hunter with a rope around his body, and whom, we will hope, is at least her lover. This picture has also been called "The Rescue," and the denouement of course is to be a cheerful one.

In color this painting maintains a certain medium between the cooler, grayer tones of Schmid's earlier works and those warmer, richer colors which he is considered to have adopted in his later ones, but the Austrian and Hungarian painters never offend by too obtrusive realism, and never, as in this case, get too far away from certain safe conventionalities. This is true even of Schmid's countryman and rival, DEFREGGER, through whose efforts he was enabled to enter the atelier of Piloty in his youth, and who is here represented by two pictures in the Austrian galleries as well as by his three in the German ones, both of the former characteristic works. That from the gallery of Prince Liechtenstein is however the most acceptable, all things being considered, and the group of small children surrounding one who sits on the doorstep with the dog's head on her knee is sincerely and seriously rendered while it is difficult not to entertain some doubts as to the verities concerning the suspiciously clean and handsome Tyrolean peasants who turn from their drinking your health, if you please, to make at you eyes of a remarkable sweetness and blueness. This latter work is from the collection of Her L. Lobmeyr, of Vienna.

Very few of the Austrian artists enjoy a higher European reputation as painter, colorist, than AUGUST VON PETTENKOFEN, of Vienna, Italy, Salzburg and Paris, and one of the many advantages offered to the untraveled critic by this Exposition is that of comparing the actual canvases of this painter with the somewhat glowing accounts of his works and his successes in the Continental art journals. Here are five, none of them very large and some of them apparently unnecessarily small, but all of character. Possibly most appreciators will prefer, of these five, for general good qualities of color and of breadth of treatment, the "Farmhouse," from the galleries of Prince Liechtenstein, or the "Market Day at Szolnok, Hungary," from those of Mr. Marshall Field of Chicago. Another "Market," with its study of patient horses, is reproduced on page 34; Prince Liechtenstein also lends a small but well-known painting, the "Gypsy on the Hearth," with its luminous white chicken for a high note, and Herr Lobmeyr, a "Gypsy Hut in the Forest." EUGEN VON BLAAS, famous for his devotion to scenes of modern Venetian [52] life, mostly of the life of the lower orders, is represented, on the contrary by one large canvas, reproduced for these pages in a full-page plate for the benefit of other "GOOD BROTHERS" and for that of painters who may wish to see how the tritest subject may be given sudden fresh and original interest. There are not many, artists or laymen, who can resist the charm of this very little maid, with her very scanty raiment, awaiting the slow division of the big orange by her generous elder brother.

Among the etchings for this work will be found one, nearly the size of the original painting, of the elderly suitor importuning a somewhat impassive listener to divert very well, painted by FRANZ SIMM of Munich. This sly satire, whose title has been translated into "INDIAN SUMMER," is owned by the Austrian Emperor. At the head of this chapter will be ofund a reproduction of the second of the painter's contributions to these galleries, a "DUET," restoration of the manners and customs of a certain epoch not long since disappeared, - or rather of the costumes, etc., the customs on these musical occasions being much the same in all civilizations. Another of these restorations is given in "THE CONSULTATION" of CARL PROBST, born in Vienna and a pupil of Angeli, who takes his theme much more seriously than the former, not because his incident is a more serious one but because the proper historical atmosphere demands it, the careful Netherlands painters of this epoch having viewed their themes much as Herr Probst would have us think he has treated his. Whereas the social side of the life of the latter part of the last century and of the early part of this is nearly always taken by the painters irreverently and as a vehicle for their pictorial humor or satire, - there being something inviting to malice in the curled wigs, the laced coats, the scanty skirts and the abundant affectations of the period. Among the full-page photogravures will be found a very vivid reproduction of a detail of our own modern civilization, - so lively that it might at first be taken for the work of the instantaneous camera did not a closer inspection reveal that ingenious and most careful bringing together of characteristic types and details which the artist does and the lends does not. This view in the "GRABEN." one of the main arteries of Viennese life, by KARL KARGER, is lent by the Emperor, and in the background of the picture may be seen His Majesty himself in his closed carriage, answering the salutations of his loyal subjects. The painter is one of the younger of the prominent Viennese artists, and has assisted in the decoration of the new museums and opera houses of that gay capital. His theory of realism may well be contrasted with that of Menzel's gouache, the "Beer Garden."

[53] - The only serious attempt to go back to classic themes in this collection has been made by Adolph Hirschl, who is represented by a long painting of a Greek wedding procession - varied, intelligently worked out, not too archaeological to lose the human interest, but somehow not very interesting - and a much larger one in which the Oceanides lament anew at the foot of the crag to which Prometheus is chained. The unfortunate Titan, his brow knit in his agony, is seen extended on the top of his rock, the great wings of the vulture cutting out the sky, and in the foreground the sea nymphs - half veiled in the grayish, pale blue foam - weep over the tyranny of Zeus. Excepting in a certain thinness and unsatisfactoriness of technique this painting has a fine air of character and distinction, worthy its noble theme. And the fine old monastic themes - equally valuable in the domain of art - are represented in an important painting by Wilhelm Bernatzik, also of Vienna, Saint Bernard on his knees in the cloister garden seeing the Virgin in a pale pink robe drifting slowly towards him on a little cloud. The Virgin's figure seems somewhat small, and not altogether convincing, but the composition is well ordered and the pleasant green enclosure well painted. This picture, which has been medaled, is the property of the Emperor, as is also a much more imposing presentation of the sanctity and peace of the Church, Schlindler's rock-hewn convent cemetery set between the dark and towering cliffs, dusky, silent, peaceful as the grave should be.

At the head of the younger Viennese landscape painters stands EUGEN JETTLE, Ed. von Lichtenfels and Robert Russ, the former having completed his artistic education in France and under Pettenkofen. In these galleries he is represented by seven excellent canvases, one contributed by its Chicago owner and one by Prince Liechtenstein. Lichtenfels contributes only one, a broad view of the Gulf of Quarnero, edged with russet stained rocks, form the Emperor's collection; and Russ, one of his most important works, the "Early Spring" of the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts. In this grove of very tall trees, still gray and sad colored, the promise of the summer is just beginning to stir, and against the clear grayish sky the infinite multitude of leafless twigs - defined with infinite care and patience - still show bare and apparently lifeless. FRANZ VON PAUSINGER, of Salzburg, paints a fine "LATE AUTUMN," with a noble stag bellowing in the foreground, and Karl Moll, of Vienna, an interesting study of the Roman ruins in Schoenbrunn, contributed by the Emperor. Of the few marines, much the best rendered are the two by Benes Knuepfer who paints in Rome - both long stretches of grayish and yellowish white tossing seas, seen from the shore, over which the light sifts down from a broken and luminous sky. [54] - In one of them, the "Triton's Fight," a mermaiden sits on a rock, her cheek on her hand, and watches thoughtfully a fierce contest in the breakers below her, two strangely shaped, half-human swimmers battling fiercely for the mastery. It would be difficult to render in a better way the mystery of the sea.

The smooth, conventional, old-fashioned religious painting with a human touch, or an academical cleverness, introduced here and there, may be seen exemplified in JULIUS SCHMID's "SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME," - the small group of wayfarers with the Saviour at their head coming suddenly, at a corner of the way, upon a judiciously arranged group of Oriental women and children. The hasty Peter motions back the inquisitive youngsters with a wave of his hand, and his Master checks his forwardness with an almost similar motion. These two contradictory gestures have been rendered by the artist with great neatness, and there is something also in the character of the two heads, and in the presentation of that elusive, impossible, always tempting, characterization of babyhood that shows the artist to be something more than conventional academic. Of the profane subjects, we give a reproduction of "THE KISS" of EDUARD LEBIEDZKI, also of Vienna, - very similar to a like subject rendered by Carlus Duran of Paris, and, like that, lacking in something or other. HANS SCHWAIGER, of Prague, paints the "PEASANTS" of his native Bohemia with a certain insistence of detail that does not always prevent his rendering the salient characteristics of their picturesqueness, and LUDWIG DEUTSCH, living in Paris, Oriental scenes, of which we give his "HOLLY GATE, CAIRO."