  DÜRER'S DRAWINGSIPerhaps DÜrer is more felicitous as a draughtsman than in any other branch of art. The power of nearly all first-rate artists is more wholly live and effective in their drawings than in elaborated works. DÜrer himself says: An artist of understanding and experience can show more of his great power and art in small things, roughly and rudely done, than many another in his great work. Powerful artists alone will understand that in this strange saying I speak truth. For this reason a man may often draw something with his pen on a half sheet of paper in one day, or cut it with his graver on a small block of wood, and it shall be fuller of art and better than another's great work whereon he hath spent a whole year's careful labour. But it is possible to go far beyond this and say not only "another's great work," but his own great work. In the first chapter of this work I said that the standard in works of art is not truth but sincerity; that if the artist tells us what he feels to be beautiful, it does not matter how much or how little comparison it will bear with the actual objects represented. And from this fact, that sincerity not truth is of prime importance in matters of expression, results the strange truth that DÜrer says will be recognised by powerful artists alone (see page 227). Any one who recognises how often the sketches and roughs of artists, especially of those who are in a peculiar degree creators, excel their finished works in those points which are the distinctive excellences of such men, will grant this at once. Only to turn to the sketch (inscribed Memento Mei 1505) of Death on horseback with a scythe, or the pen-portrait of DÜrer leaning on his hand, will be enough to convince those who alone can be convinced on these points. For any who need to explain to themselves the character of such sketches--as the authoress of a recent little book on DÜrer does that of the pen drawing "in which the boy's chin rests on his hand" by telling us that "it is unfinished and was evidently discarded as a failure,"--any who must be at such pains in a case of this sort is one of those who can never understand wherein the great power of a work of art resides. Such people may get great pleasure from works of art; only I am content to remain convinced that the pleasure they get has no kind of kinship with that which I myself obtain, or that which the greatest artists most constantly seek to give. This marvellous portrait of himself as a lad of from seventeen to nineteen years of age is just one of those things "roughly and rudely done," of which DÜrer speaks. There is probably no parallel to it for mastery or power among works produced by artists so youthful. [Illustration: Study of a hound for the copper engraving "St. Eustache." B. 57 Brush drawing at Windsor] There is often some virtue in spontaneity which is difficult to define; perhaps it bears more convincing witness to the artist's integrity than slower and longer labours, from which it is difficult to ward all duplicity of intention. The finishing-touch is too often a Judas' kiss. "Blessed are the pure in heart" is absolutely true in art. (Of course, I do not use purity in the narrow sense which is confined to avoidance of certain sensual subjects and seductive intentions.) It is only poverty of imagination which taboos subject-matter, and lack of charity that believes there are themes which cannot be treated with any but ignoble intentions. But the virtue in a spontaneous drawing is akin to that single devotion to whatever is best, which true purity is; as the refinement of economy which results in the finished work is akin to that delicate repugnance to all waste, which is true chastity. A sketch by Rembrandt of a naked servant girl on a bed is as "simple as the infancy of truth"--as single in intention. A Greek statue of a raimentless Apollo is pre-eminently chaste. But it does not follow that Rembrandt was in his life eminently pure, or the Greek sculptor signal for chastity. Drawings rapidly executed have often a lyrical, rapturous, exultant purity, and are for that reason, to those whose eyes are blinded neither by prejudice nor by misfortune, as captivating as are healthy, gleeful children to those whose hearts are free. And while the joy that a child's glee gives is for a time, that which a drawing gives may well be for ever. We say a "spirited sketch" as we say "a spirited horse"; but works of art are instinct with a vast variety of spirits and exert manifold influences. It is a poverty of language which has confined the use of this word to one of the most obvious and least estimable. It can be never too much insisted on that a work of art is something that exerts an influence, and that its whole merit lies in the quality and degree of the influence exerted; for those who are not moved by it, it is no more than a written sentence to one who cannot read. IIMany people in turning over a collection of DÜrer's drawings would be constantly crying, "How marvellously realistic!" and would glow with enthusiasm and smile with gratitude for the perception which these words expressed. Others would say "merely realistic"; and the words would convey, if not disapprobation for something shocking, at least indifference. In both cases the word "realistic" would, I take it, mean that the objects which the pen, brush, or charcoal strokes represented were described with great particularity. And in the first case delight would have been felt at recognising the fulness of detailed information conveyed about the objects drawn--that each drawing represented not a generalisation, but an individual. In the other case the mind would have been repelled by the infatuated insistence on insignificant or negligible details, the absence of their classification and subordination to ideas. The first of these two frames of mind is that of Paul Pry, who is delighted to see, to touch, or behold, for whom everything is a discovery; and there are members of this class of temperament who in middle life continue to make the same discoveries every day with zest and a wonder equal to that which they felt when children. The second of these frames of mind is that of the man with a system or in search of a system, who desires to control, or, if he cannot do that, at least to be taken into the confidence of the controller, or to gain a position from which he can oversee him, and approve or disapprove. Now neither of these judgments is in itself aesthetic, or implies a comprehension of DÜrer as an artist. [Illustration: ME-ENTO MEI, 1505. From the drawing in the British Museum] The man who cries out: "Just look how that is done!" "Who could have believed a single line could have expressed so much?" judges as an artist, a craftsman. The man who, like Jean Francois Millet, exclaims: "How fine! How grand! How delicate! How beautiful!" judges as a creator. He sees that "it is good." An artist--a creator--may possess either or even both the two former temperaments; but as an artist he must be governed by the latter two, either singly or combined. DÜrer, doubtless, had a considerable share in all four of these points of view. He delighted in objects as such, in the new and the strange as new and strange, in the intricate as intricate, in the powerful as powerful. And above all in his drawings does he manifest this direct and childish interest and curiosity. He was also in search of a system, of an intellectual key or plan of things; and in the many drawings he devoted to explaining or developing his ideas of proportion, of perspective, of architecture, he shows this bias strongly. But nearly every drawing by him, or attributed to him, manifests the third of these temperaments. The never-ceasing economy and daring of the invention displayed in his touch, or, as he would have said, "in his hand," is almost as signal as his perfect assurance and composure. And when one reflects that he was not, like Rembrandt, an artist who made great or habitual use of the spaces of shade and light, but that his workmanship is almost entirely confined to the expressive power of lines, wonder is only increased. Of the fourth character that creates and estimates value, though in certain works DÜrer rises to supreme heights, though in almost all his important works he appeases expectation, yet often where he could surely have done much better he seems to have been content not to exert his rarest gifts, but rather to play with or parade those that are secondary. Not only is this so in drawings like the Dance of Monkeys at Basle, done to content his friend the reformer Felix Frey (see page 168), and in the borders designed to amuse Maximilian during the hours that custom ordained he should pretend to give to prayer; but there are drawings which were not apparently thrown as sops to the idleness of others, but done to content some half-vacant mood of his own (see Lippmann, 41, 83, 394, 4.20, 333). In such drawings the economy and daring of the strokes is always admirable, can only be compared to that in drawings by Rembrandt and Hokusai; but the occasion is often idle, or treated with a condescension which well-nigh amounts to indifference. There is no impressiveness of allure, no intention in the proportions or disposition on the paper such as Erasmus justly praised in the engravings on copper, probably recollecting something which DÜrer himself had said (see page 186). Yet in his portrait heads the right proportions are nearly always found; and in many cases I believe it is no one but the artist himself who has cut down such drawings after they were completed, to find a more harmonious or impressive proportion (see illustration opposite). And often these drawings are as perfect in the harmony between the means employed and the aspect chosen, and in the proportion between the head and the framing line and the spaces it encloses, as Holbein himself could have made them; while they far surpass his best in brilliancy and intensity. [Illustration: Drawing in black chalk heightened with white on reddish ground Formerly in the collection at Warwick Castle] [Illustration: Silver-point drawing on prepared grey ground, in the collection of Frederick Locker, Esq.] IIISomething must be said of DÜrer's employment of the water-colours, pen-and-ink, silver-point, charcoal, chalk, &c., with which he made his drawings. He is a complete master of each and all these mediums, in so far as the line or stroke may be regarded as the fundamental unit; he is equally effective with the broad, soft line of chalk (see illustration, page I.), or the broad broken charcoal line (see illustration, page II.), as with the fine pen stroke (see illustration, page III.), the delicate silver-point (see illustration, page IV.), or the supple and tapering stroke produced by the camel's hair brush (see illustration, page V.). But when one comes to broad washes, large masses of light and shade, the expression of atmosphere, of bloom, of light, he is wanting in proportion as these effects become vague, cloudy, indefinite, mist-like. His success lies rather in the definite reflections on polished surfaces; he never reproduces for us the bloom on peach or flesh or petal. He does not revel, like Rembrandt, in the veils and mysteries of lucent atmosphere or muffling shadow. The emotions for which such things produce the most harmonious surroundings he hardly ever attempts to appeal to; he is mournful and compassionate, or indignant, for the sufferings, of his Man of Sorrows; not tender, romantic, or awesome. Only with the tapering tenuity and delicate spring of the pure line will he sometimes attain to an infantile or virginal freshness that is akin to the tenderness of the bloom on flowers, or the light of dawn on an autumn morning. In the same way, when he is tragic, it is not with thick clouds rent in the fury of their flight, or with the light from shaken torches cast and scattered like spume-flakes from the angry waves; nor is it with the accumulated night that gives intense significance to a single tranquil ray. Only by a Rembrandt, to whom these means are daily present, could a subject like the Massacre of the Ten Thousand have been treated with dramatic propriety; unless, indeed, Michael Angelo, in a grey dawn, should have twisted and wrung with manifold pain a tribe of giants, stark, and herded in some leafless primeval valley. With DÜrer the occasion was merely one on which to coldly invent variations, as though this human suffering was a motive for an arabesque. Yet even from the days when he copied Andrea Mantegna's struggling sea-monsters, or when he drew the stern matured warrior angels of his Apocalypse fighting, with their historied faces like men hardened by deceptions practised upon them, like men who have forbidden salt tears and clenched their teeth and closed their hearts, who see, who hate; even from these early days, the energy of his line was capable of all this, and his spontaneous sense of arabesque could become menacing and explosive. There are two or three drawings of angry, crying cupids (Lipp., 153 and 446, see illustration opposite), prepared for some intended picture of the Crucifixion, where he has made the motive of the winged infants head, usually associated with bliss and scattered rose-leaves, become terrible and stormy. And the Agony in the Garden, etched on iron, contains a tree tortured by the wind (see illustration), as marvellous for rhythm, power, and invention as the blast-whipped brambles and naked bushes that crest a scarped brow above the jealous husband who stabs his wife, in Titian's fresco at Padua. Again, the unspeakable tragedy of the stooping figure of Jesus, who is being dragged by His hair up the steps to Annas' throne, in the Little Passion, is rendered by lines instinct with the highest dramatic power. These are a draughtsman's creations; though they are less abundant in DÜrer's work than one could wish, still only the greatest produce such effects; only Michael Angelo, Titian, and Rembrandt can be said to have equalled or surpassed DÜrer in this kind, rarely though it be that he competes with them. [Illustration: CHERUB FOR A CRUCIFIXION Black chalk drawing heightened with white on a blue-grey paper In the collection of Herr Doctor Blasius, Brunswick] It is for the intense energy of his line, combined with its unique assurance, that DÜrer is most remarkable. The same amount of detail, the same correctness in the articulation and relation between stem and leaf, arm and hand, or what not, might be attained by an insipid workmanship with lifeless lines, in patient drudgery. It is this fact that those who praise art merely as an imitation constantly forget. There is often as much invention in the way details are expressed by the strokes of pen or brush, as there could be in the grouping of a crowd; the deftness, the economy of the touches, counts for more in the inspiriting effect than the truth of the imitation. A photograph from nature never conveys this, the chief and most fundamental merit of art. Reynolds says: Rembrandt, in older to take advantage of an accident, appears often to have used the pallet-knife to lay his colours on the canvas instead of the pencil. Whether it is the knife or any other instrument, it suffices, if it is something that does not follow exactly the will. Accident, in the hands of an artist who knows horn to take the advantage of its hints, will often produce bold and capricious beauties of handling, and facility such as he would not have thought of or ventured with his pencil, under the regular restraint of his hand. In such a sketch as the Memento Mei, 1505, (Death riding on horseback,) all those who have sense for such things will perceive how the rough paper, combined with the broken charcoal line, lends itself to qualities of a precisely similar nature to those described by Reynolds as obtained by Rembrandt's use of the pallet-knife. Yet, just as, in the use of charcoal, the "something that does not follow exactly the will" is infinitely more subtle than in the use of the palette-knife to represent rocks or stumps of trees, so in the pen or silver-point line this element, though reduced and refined till it is hardly perceptible, still exists, and DÜrer takes "the advantage of its hints." And not only does he do' this, but he foresees their occurrence, and relies on them to render such things as crumpled skin, as in the sketches for Adam's hand holding the apple. (Lipp. 234). The operation is so rapid, so instantaneous, that it must be called an instinct, or at least a habit become second nature, while in the instance chosen by Reynolds, it is obvious and can be imagined step by step; but in every case it is this capacity to take advantage of the accident, and foresee and calculate upon its probable occurrences, that makes the handling of any material inventive, bold, and inimitable. It is in these qualities that an artist is the scholar of the materials he employs, and goes to school to the capacities of his own hand, being taught both by their failure to obey his will here, and by their facility in rendering his subtlest intentions there. And when he has mastered all they have to teach him, he can make their awkwardness and defects expressive; as stammerers sometimes take advantage of their impediment so that in itself it becomes an element of eloquence, of charm, or even of explicitness; while the extra attention rendered enables them to fetch about and dare to express things that the fluent would feel to be impossible and never attempt. [Illustration: APOLLO AND DIANA--Pen drawing in the British Museum, supposed to show the influence of the Belvedere Apollo] Lastly, it is in his drawings, perhaps, even more than in his copper engravings, that DÜrer proves himself a master of "the art of seeing nature," as Reynolds phrased it; and the following sentence makes clear what is meant, for he says of painting "perhaps it ought to be as far removed from the vulgar idea of imitation, as the refined, civilised state in which we live is removed from a gross state of nature"; I have supposed that a realistic perception was one which saw things with great particularity; and the words "a profound realistic perception" to Goethe's mind probably conveyed the idea of such a perception, in profound accord with human nature, that is where the human recognition, delight and acceptance followed the perception even to the smallest details, without growing weary or failing to find at least a hope of significance in them. If this was what the great critic meant, those who turn over a collection of DÜrer's drawings will feel that they are profoundly realistic (realistic in a profoundly human sense), and that their author enjoyed an affectionate human sympathy with all present conditions; and by these two qualities is infinitely distinguished from all possessors of so-called innocent eyes, whether quadruped or biped. It is well to notice wherein this notion of Goethe's differs from the conventional notions which make up everybody's criticism. For instance, "In all his pictures he confined himself to facts," says Sir Martin Conway, VFor the illustration of this volume I have chosen a larger proportion of drawings than of any other class of work; both because DÜrer's drawings are less widely known than his engravings on metal, and because, though his fame may perhaps rest almost equally on these latter, and they may rightly be considered more unique in character, yet his drawings show the splendid creativeness of his handling of materials in greater variety. One engraving on copper is like another in the essential problem that it offered to the craftsman to resolve; but every different medium in which DÜrer made drawings, and every variety of surface on which he drew, offered a different problem, and perhaps no other artist can compare with him in the great variety of such problems which he has solved with felicity. And this power of his to modify his method with changing conditions is, as we have seen, from the technical side the highest and greatest quality that an artist can possess. It only fails him when he has to deal with oil paintings, and even there he shows a corresponding sense of the nature of the problems involved, if he shows less felicity on the whole in solving them; and perhaps could he have stayed at Venice and have had the results of Giorgione's and Titian's experiments to suggest the right road, we should have been scarcely able to perceive that he was less gifted as a painter than as draughtsman. As it is, he has given us water-colour sketches in which the blot is used to render the foliage of trees in a manner till then unprecedented. (Lipp. 132, &c.) He can rival Watteau in the use of soft chalk, Leonardo in the use of the pen, and Van Eyck in the use of the brush point; and there are examples of every intermediate treatment to form a chain across the gulf that separates these widely differing modes of graphic expression. There can be no need to point the application of these remarks to the individual drawings here reproduced; those who are capable of recognising it will do so without difficulty. [Illustration: AN OLD CASTLE Body-dour drawing at Bremen] VIIn conclusion, DÜrer appears as a draughtsman of unrivalled powers. And when one looks on his drawings as what they most truly were, his preparation for the tasks set him by the conditions of his life, there is room for nothing but unmixed admiration. It is only when one asks whether those tasks might not have been more worthy of such high gifts that one is conscious of deficiency or misfortune. And can one help asking whether the Emperor Max might not have given DÜrer his Bible or his Virgil to illustrate, instead of demanding to have the borders of his "Book of Hours" rendered amusing with fantastic and curious arabesques; whether DÜrer's learned friends, instead of requiring from him recondite or ceremonious allegories, might not have demanded title-pages of classic propriety; or whether the imperial bent of his own imagination might not have rendered their demands malleable, and bid them call for a series of woodcuts, engravings or drawings, which could rival Rembrandt's etchings in significance of subject-matter and imaginative treatment, as they rival them in executive power? In his portraits--the large majority of which have come down to us only as drawings, the majority of which were never anything else--the demand made upon him was worthy; but even here Holbein, a man of lesser gift and power, has perhaps succeeded in leaving a more dignified, a more satisfying series; one containing, if not so many masterpieces, fewer on which an accidental or trivial subject or mood has left its impress. Yet, in spite of this, it is DÜrer's, not Rembrandt's, not Holbein's character, that impresses us as most serious, most worthy to be held as a model. It is before his portrait of himself that Mr. Ricketts "forgets all other portraits whatsoever, in the sense that this perfect realisation of one of the world's greatest men is worthy of the occasion." So that we feel bound to attribute our dissatisfaction to something in his circumstances having hindered and hampered the flow of what was finest in his nature into his work. From Venice he wrote: "I am a gentleman here, but only a hanger-on at home." Germany was a better home for a great character, a great personality, than for a great artist: DÜrer the artist was never quite at home there, never a gentleman among his peers. The good and solid burghers rated him as a good and solid burgher, worth so much per annum; never as endowed with the rank of his unique gift. It was only at Venice and Antwerp that he was welcomed as the Albert DÜrer whom we to-day know, love, and honour. FOOTNOTES:
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