Modern art, particularly American art, owes much to Velasquez and something to Goya, and modern painters have been prompt to acknowledge their indebtedness. But there has been a prevailing impression that with Goya's rich and unique achievement Spanish art stopped in its own country so completely as to be incapable of revival. The impression was disturbed in this country by the appearance in the galleries of the Hispanic Museum in New York, and also in Buffalo and in Boston, of the work of two modern Spaniards, one a painter who demonstrated by his methods and choice of subjects that the old Spanish traditions and ideals had not been forgotten, the other a singularly isolated individual who illumined for us a side of Spanish life which art previously had ignored. Both spoke a racy idiom and conveyed a sense of quickened vitality by freedom of gesture, unhackneyed arrangement, intensity of color, reality of type, yet in their influence upon the public they were as far as might be asunder.

Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida was born at Valencia, Spain, in 1863, and began seriously to study art at the age of fifteen. He studied at the Academy of his birthplace for several years and won there a scholarship entitling him to a period of study in Italy. He visited Paris also, where he was profoundly impressed, it is said, by two exhibitions in the French capital, one of the work of Bastien LePage, the other of the work of the German Menzel. The modern note is clearly felt in all his later painting, but certainly not the influence of either Bastien LePage or Menzel. The painter to whom he bears the most marked resemblance is Botticelli. The spiritual languor, the melancholy sentiment, the mystical tendency, the curiosity and interest in the unseen which are important characteristics of the Florentine who read his Dante to such good purpose do not appear in the work of this frank and lusty Valencian, but where else in modern painting do we find the gracile forms, the supple muscles, the buoyancy of carriage, the light impetuosity of movement, and the draperies blown into the shapes of wings and sails, which meet us here as in the pagan compositions of Botticelli?

If we glance at Sorolla's young girls and young boys racing along the hot beach, or his bathers exulting in their "water joy," we recall at the same moment the "Primavera" with its swift-stepping nymphs, the wind gods in the "Birth of Venus," or the "Judith" with her maid moving rapidly along a flower-strewn path. This joy of motion and this continual suggestion of youth and vitality form the link that binds together the so dissimilar ideals of the old and the modern master. Sorolla's inspiration is by far the simpler. His art reflects the brilliant sunshine of the Mediterranean coast, the tonic quality of the fresh air, and the unconventionality of life by the sea. All his people use natural gestures and express in their activity the untrammeled energy of primitive life. In looking at these children, and there is hardly a figure that has not the naÏvetÉ of childhood, we think less of the individuals portrayed than of the outdoor freshness of which they are a part. They are much more spirits of nature than the dryads and nereids and mermaids conceived by the Germans to express in symbol the natural forces. Nothing suggests the use of models, all has the look of spontaneity as though the artist had made his notes in passing, without the slightest regard to producing a picture, with only the idea of reproducing life. Life, however, appears in his canvases in a sufficiently decorative form, although not in the carefully considered patterns of those artists with whom the decorative instinct is supreme.

Observe, for example, the painting entitled "Sea Idyl." Two children are stretched on the beach, their bright bodies wet and glistening and casting blue shadows on the sands. They are lying so close to the water's edge that the waves lap over them, the boy's skin shines like polished marble under the wet film just passing across it, and the girl's drenched garments cling with sharp chiseled folds to the form beneath like the draperies of some young Greek goddess just risen from the sea. The insolence of laughing eyes, the idle fumbling of young hands in the wet sand, the tingling life in the clean-cut limbs, the buoyancy of the waves that lift them slightly and hold them above the earth,—all are seen with unwearied eyes, and reproduced with energy.

The management of the pigment in this picture as in many of the others can be called neither learned nor subtle. Apparently the artist had in mind two intentions, the one to represent motion, the other to represent light, and he set about his task in the simplest way possible, with such simplicity, indeed, that the extraordinary character of the result would easily be missed by a pedant. It has not been missed by the public, who have entered with enthusiasm into the painter's mood, perceived the originality of his vision and the joyousness of his art, and have radiated their own appreciation of this vitalized, healthful world of happy people until they have increased the distrust of the pedant for an art so helplessly popular.

The distrust is not unnatural. To follow the popular taste would lead us into strange errors in our judgments of art, and only rarely would produce a predilection capable of lasting over a generation. How is it, then, that we fearlessly may range ourselves on the side of the public in admiration of Sorolla's art? Because the painter has cast off the slavery of the conventional vision. He sees for himself, the rarest of gifts, and thus can well afford to paint like others. He spends, apparently, but little thought upon his execution, letting it flow easily according to his instinct for the appropriate. It is not a safe example to follow for painters who do not see with unusual directness. Often in searching out refinements of execution the eye discovers refinements of fact in the scene to be portrayed and makes its selection with greater distinction than would be possible at first sight. But Sorolla's prompt selective vision flies to its goal like a bee to a honey-bearing flower. He takes what he wants and leaves the rest with the dew still on it. His forces are neither scattered nor spent. His freshness is overmastering, and with our eyes on his creations we have that curious sense of possessing youth and health and freedom which we get sometimes from the sight of boys at their games. We are cheated into forgetfulness of the world's great age and our own lassitudes and physical ineffectiveness. This illusion is agreeable to the most of us, hence our unreserved liking for Sorolla's art which produces it.

The art of Ignacio Zuloaga, on the contrary, produces the opposite impression of complete sophistication. In place of adolescent exultations and ebullient physical activities, we find in it the strange sorceries of a guileful civilization. There are smiling women with narrowed eyelids and powdered faces, old men practising dolorous rejuvenations, laughter that conceals more than it expresses, motions that are as calculated as those of the dance, serpentine forms, fervid passions, and underneath the sophistries a violent primeval temper. In spite of the flowerlike gaiety of the color in rich costumes, the glint of silver, the sweet cool blues, the pale violets, in the painter's versions of the typical toreador of Spain the types are bold, cruel, and sullen. In spite of the fragility and elegance of the women on balconies under soft laces the prevailing note is that of undisciplined ferocity of emotion. This too is Spain, but not the Spain of the beach and sea life.

The rather numerous examples of what Mr. Christian Brinton has called Zuloaga's "growing diabolic tendency" make it clear that his art holds no place for spontaneity and the innocence due to ignorance, but where he keeps to Spanish subjects his work remains healthy. There is the picture entitled "The Sorceresses of San Milan" in which three old women are seen against a dramatic landscape. These haggard jests of nature bring before us a Spain from which the American finds it impossible not to shrink with horror, but they are rich in dramatic quality and recall the power of Goya to endow the abnormal with imaginative splendor while holding to essential truth. They are diabolic, if you will, but not Mephistophelian. There is the abstract horror in them which we associate with unknown powers of darkness, but not the guile with which we endow a personal devil. In striking contrast to this group are the balcony pictures in which women of ripe aggressive beauty lounge gracefully in the open-air rooms with the same freedom of pose as within doors, haughty yet frank, opulent, languid yet animated, flowers that could have bloomed nowhere else than under a scorching sun.

Then there is the group of dancers and actors and singers in each of which we find the adroit mingling of the artificial with the real, and the appreciation of the fact that with the people of the stage much that is artificial to others becomes their reality. The most vivid of them all is Mlle. Lucienne BrÉval as "Carmen." The sinuous figure is wrapped in a shawl apparently of a thousand colors; actually, a strong combination of yellow, green, and red. The skirt which the singer gathers in one hand and lifts sufficiently to show the small foot in its red slipper has a dark vermilion ground on which is a pattern of large flowers of paler vermilion, boldly outlined with blue.

Over it droops the dark fringe of the shawl. A crimson flower is in the dark hair, and the footlights cast an artificial amber glow on the face. This tawny harmony is seen against a background of slightly acid green; at the other side of the canvas is a little table with two men seated at it. They look "made up," in the theatrical sense, and the table looks rather light and rickety; there is one solid natural stage property, the yellow jug on the table with its dull blue figure. The whole life and reality of the picture are in the Carmen smiling and muffled in the curious shawl, as if she were about to move in a fiery dance in which her brilliant wrappings would take a part as animated and vital as her own. No one but a Spaniard could invest a garment with such expressiveness.

"Paulette as Danseuse" is another stage figure. Here again the costume speaks with extraordinary eloquence. The colors are green and pink, and play delicately within a narrow range of varied tones. Under the short green jacket the low-cut bodice shows a finely modeled throat and a chest that seems almost to rise and fall with the breath, so palpitating with life is the fleshlike surface. The poise of the figure suggests that the dance has that moment ended, and the eyes and mouth are slightly arched. The undulating line of the draperies, now tightly drawn about the figure, and again billowing into ampler curves, suggests the rhythm of the dance.

In another canvas we see Paulette once more, this time in walking costume, standing with her hands on her hips in a daintily awkward pose. Her lips, in the first picture upturned at the corners, mouselike, have widened in a frank smile, her eyes have lost their formal archness and look with detached interest upon the passing show, she still is supple, clear cut, with a flexible silhouette, but her gown would find it impossible to dance, and, as before, she and her gown are one.

In "The Actress Pilar Soler," on the other hand, Zuloaga dispenses as far as possible with definite aids to expression. The costume is undefined; the half-length figure, draped in black and placed high on the canvas, is seen against a dark greenish-blue background. The mass of the silhouette, unbroken as in an Egyptian statue, but with tremulous contours suggesting the fluttering of life in the dimly defined body, is sufficiently considered and distinguished; but it is the modeling of the face that holds the attention, a mere blur of tone, yet with all the planes understood and with a certain material richness of impasto that contributes to the look of solid flesh, the dark of the eyebrows making the only pronounced accent—a face that becomes more and more vital as you look at it, with that indestructible vitality of which, among the Frenchmen, CarriÈre was master.

In several other canvases, notably in the first version of "My Cousin Esperanza," and the second version of "Women in a Balcony," Zuloaga has caught this effect of vague fleeting values, changes in surface so subtle as to be felt rather than seen, a kind of floating modeling that suggests form rather than insists upon it. And he has done this in the most difficult manner. Whistler long ago taught us to appreciate the effect, but he worked with thin layers of pigment, a sensitive surface upon which the slightest accent made an impression. Zuloaga, on the contrary, works with a full brush, and consequently a more unmanageable surface. He attains his success as a sculptor does against the odds of his material, but he seems better to suggest his special types in this way.

Often he makes his modeling with the sweep of his brush in one direction and another. "Candida Laughing" shows this method, and so does the "Village Judge," in which the pigment is still more freely swept about the bone of the cheek and the setting of the eye, telling its story of the way the human face is built up in the frankest and briefest manner. With the lovely "MercedÈs," a fragile figure, elegant in type, the workmanship becomes again less outspoken. The haughty, graceful carriage, and the intense refinement of the features that glow with a pale light beneath the fine lace of the scarf, demand and receive a daintier, more fastidious interpretation. In the portrait of Mrs. F Jr. there is a fresher manner, a breezier, crisper feeling throughout. The color harmony of gray and green is cool and lively, the poise of the figure lacks the touch of languor that is present in the fieriest of the typical Spaniards. We seem to have passed into another and cooler air.

The composition of this picture too, is especially admirable. The subject stands, bending forward a little, the left hand resting on the hip, the other fingering a string of pearls, a gauzy scarf is about the shoulder and floats away from the figure at the hips, the sky is atmospheric and there is a background of trees, river, and bridge. At the left of the canvas an iron balustrade, bent into free, graceful curves, comes into the composition, beautifully drawn and painted in a just value, adding in the happiest manner to the decorative effect.

This is the class of pictures in which Zuloaga is at his best. The types offer him adequate opportunity for exercising the faculty of astute discrimination with which he is gifted, without calling into play the ironic temper that broods with cold amusement over such a canvas as "The Old Boulevardier" than which cynicism can go but little farther. It might reasonably be argued that it is only in subjects which call forth as many evidences as possible of the artist's temperament and character that we can fully measure his force. The impulse, however, that turns his gaze toward those physiognomies that offer the richest reward to the investigating scrutiny is a part of his force, as also his choice of subjects about which he can talk, as one of his French critics has put it in his own language.

Transcriber's Notes:

The word esthetic left as is throughout text. Compound words left as is throughour text. Alternative and original spelling has been maintained including Rijksmuseum and Rijks Museum.

Spelling and punctuation, by page number:

Page

3 - Tiger devouring a Gavial of the Ganges changed to Devouring.

12 - the patine of commerce[inserted . period] "The ideal

27 - fluent handling and the mystery of tone changed to mastery.

44 - In Les MÂitre Contemporains, M. Paul MongrÉ thus changed to MaÎtre.

45 - but the abounding enthusisam of the latter changed to enthusiasm.

61 - the Gobbi, the Beggars?" inserted question mark and closing quotation marks.

74 - Years 1827 and 1828 changed to 1627 and 1628 respectively.

82 - (StÄdel Gallery) in the Museum of Brussels, changed to (StÄdel Gallery), in the Museum of Brussels,

84 - those set in the Virign's changed to Virgin's.

85 - physical anguish that mark the figure changed to marks.

92 - his most temperate moods, the Pieta changed to PietÀ.

100 - 1831 changed to 1631.

132 - of the two painters, Jordaen's silvery Jordaen's left as is. Corrected it would have been Jordaens'. Jordaens was the painters name.

138 - In the "Frohliche Heimkehr" at Amsterdam changed to FrÖhliche.

174 - slightest accent made an impresssion changed to impression.

174 - With the lovely "Mercedes," changed to MercedÈs.