NEW SERIES.

VOL. XIX. No. 1.

F

ROM the time of Copley down to our own day the American school of art has always been strong in skillful portrait painters; and it is so still. Robert Gordon Hardie is one of the most conspicuously and deservedly successful of the contemporary practicians in this branch of the painter's calling, and to seek the sources of his power and explain the qualities which go to the perfecting of his work is the aim of the present paper.

The successful pursuit of portraiture demands a combination of intellectual, moral and physical faculties, the co-existence of which in any one individual is rare. Eugène Fromentin, the French painter and critic, thought that there were but eight really great portraitists in the world Titian, Rembrandt, Raphael, Sebastian del Piombo, Velasquez, Van Dyck, Holbein and Moro. I place the merit of likeness at the head of the list of qualities in a portrait. Without this the work may be, in various ways, of surpassing beauty and worth; but it is not a good portrait. Indeed, this is the very sine qua non. But what is a likeness? Not, as nine people out of ten might conceive it, an exact topographical chart of a countenance, such as we see but too often; not a deadand-alive image, which partakes of the character of a caricature, because it tells a part only of the truth and misses

the fine something which is of the most intimate significance; not a big colored photograph, nor a picture of fine clothes, furniture and other accessories, with a human being to play second fiddle to them. I might go on defining what is not a good likeness. What a good likeness is is not so easy to set forth. The painter must be a thoroughly competent draughtsman and a keen observer; he must be of an indomitable patience, and he must also be prompt to seize upon a transitory expression which reveals character. Executive ability of a high order must be allied with imagination and quick sympathies. The portrait painter relies upon his skill at first, but upon his intuitions at last. I do not think the blending of executive ability and imaginative power is so very rare as it might be supposed; in fact, I am inclined to think that first-rate executive ability implies a certain amount of imagination, that the faculty of managing, ordering, planning and shaping things and men, requiring foresight as it does, demands a temperament of the imaginative cast. It is a theory of mine that the conduct of great business enterprises to successful issues is based upon the active exercise of a bold imagination. Are we not too apt to credit the author, the artist and that ilk with the exclusive possession of imagination, because they do something "out of their own heads," as the

children say, and to ignore equal wonders in the creation of colossal commercial, manufacturing and trade establishments?

That the painter relies at first upon skill, but at last upon intuitions, illustrates the true normal method of his growth; and there is nothing more important for an artist than to begin at the beginning. It is all futile nonsense to try to talk high art into art students, who are trying to learn how to draw a nose so that it may not be mistaken for a view of Mont Blanc. What the art student wants to know, what he should be taught, is the tricks of the trade, the how to do it; for there is a way of doing everything, as all oldtimers know, and the art schools have no business to teach anything but methods and processes of doing things. The student who does not find this part of his education enough of a job while he is in school has yet to be born. A man does not become an artist by understanding Rembrandt first and learning to draw from the antique afterwards. Of course, there is no law against his indulging in patter about Botticelli and the Japanese by way of recreation during recess. The logical development of the painter should be from the A B C of art

gradually upwards. Most of the very best painters began by being what I may call dogged draughtsmen, like the pupils of J. L. Gérôme, for instance; - and this brings us back to Hardie.

To break away from generalities, let us refer briefly to the facts in the history of our artist which may have some bearing upon the specialization of his talent, the formation of his style, and the direction of his powers. Robert Gordon Hardie was born in Brattleboro, Vt., March 29, 1854, being the only son of the late Major Robert Gordon Hardie and Frances Hyde Hardie. His grandfather was a Virginia planter of English descent. It is probable that more of his forbears were Scotch. His boyhood does not seem to have offered any very salient singularities, his attendance at the "district" school and the high school having been more or less desultory, and his predilection for the art of design having early shown itself by the

production of caricatures, maps and sketches of all sorts, of the crude and audacious character common to such juvenile efforts.

His bent for drawing having become more and more marked, he was finally allowed to go to New York, where, at the instance of Professor Elie Charlier, at whose house he lived, he

began a systematic course of study in drawing at

the schools of the Cooper Institute, the

Academy of Design and the Art Students' League. Then, acting on the advice of Professor Charlier, he went to

Paris to

continue his

studies

under the

"Our studio is on the second floor of a two-story building, is 20x20 feet, and about 18 feet high, being finished off to the gable roof. There is a skylight and high side-light to the northwest, and two ordinary windows on the opposite side. Our furniture is

exceedingly ordinary, and consists of two small iron bedsteads, two tables, three

or four chairs, three easels, a small stove, and a few other necessary articles. The tables, chairs some other things were purchased

and

of some students about leaving Paris, for

very little money, the stove

cost

ing only

nine francs,

tables five

francs each,

and the

great

French teachers at the Ecole

des Beaux

Arts. In the fall of 1878 we find him writing home that, after waiting nearly six weeks, he has been admitted to the school as a pupil of M. Gérôme. He tells about his way of living. He and a friend have a studio together in the rue Notre-Dame-desChamps, not far from the Luxembourg Gardens. Then follows a description of the place; it is a complete picture:

chairs only one and a

half francs. My part of the rent of

the studio is nearly six francs per week. I take my meals at a restaurant in the rue de Buci, where many of the students go, which costs me three francs per day, making the total cost of living twenty-seven francs, or $5.20 per week, which is the best I can do, and, as near as I can learn, is much less than that paid by the other students. Notwithstanding that we practice the greatest economy, we consider our

selves very pleasantly and comfortably situated."

In the same letter the young man alludes to his visits to the Louvre and the Luxembourg galleries, pronounces the French the greatest painters and sculptors of to-day, and mentions the kindness of M. Bartholdi, the sculptor. For five years Hardie worked diligently in the Ecole des BeauxArts, and

as early as July, 1879, he received an honorable mention. The year following he sent

a crayon portrait of a

woman to the Salon. I translate from the Moniteur des Arts, May 21, 1880:

"This portrait of a woman by Mr. Hardie, drawn with a rare affability, caressed by the artist's crayon as a

selves by his talent, it is to the United States of America that this distinguished pupil of M. Gérôme belongs."

Concerning the same crayon head, Octave Lacroix remarked in one of his articles on the Salon of 1880:

smiling infant is caressed with the hand, this portrait of a woman who must have beamed with joy in contemplating her effigy, happy to be so well understood. Mr. Hardie does honor to foreign art, for, if he is of our

"M. Hardie,

un

Americain. d'un grand

talent, est

l'auteur d'un

portrait de femme où le fusain a pénétré de même les

secrets, peu accessibles, croit-on,

able.

In the autumn of

1880 our young débutant made a journey down the River Loir, as he was feeling a little stale and needing a change of air. He passed nearly two months sketching in a little place called Vendôme, on the banks of this