they say. Her grandfather himself sits in a new and delightful little studio, where he draws now and then when his trembling old hand permits, and at other times it would be difficult to say of which "Marg'rite" he talks the most. C. L. Watkins. THE PATHFINDER. The searching blast of the prairie, The chill of the starlight evening I fear not. I defy The thirst and the hunger and danger, The gray wolf wails in vain. Though the heat and the cold and the wild wind May roughen and toughen and tan, They give you the form of a savage But the strength and the soul of a man. H. S. Lovejoy. BORN FRANZ VON LENBACH. ORN one of seventeen sons of a master mason, of an out of the way Bavarian town, he died, the greatest portrait painter of modern Germany. This was Franz von Lenbach. A veritable Lysippus, absolute in his own country, with scarce a superior in all Europe, he has added a bright chapter to the history of his time. In it sovereigns and sinuous snake charmers, fellow artists and airy ballet girls, men of letters and dark-eyed vaudeville dancers, all have their page-three thousand of them. How he did this we understand when we see in these portraits the very essentials by which portraiture has been raised to its present position in the world of art-“a grave and noble style." Accordingly, whatever success he acquired he owed entirely to his art. Thus it is we see him-for his was no dual personality—a true artist. Lenbach, as the raw-boned boorish lad, copying old masterpieces in quiet corners of high galleries, as the companion of Piloty in Italy, and as the renowned portrait painter, ever held, for the grand "motif" of his art, that, by learning what the works of the great masters had to teach he in turn might become one of them. So great was his reverence for the genius of these masters that only part of his works are original while the rest are out and out copies of great painters. Nowadays it is as portrait painter that we know Lenbach. Of his original paintings, his landscapes and architectural pieces are but rarely talked about. As a realist in this line he never excelled his youthful "Shepherd Boy"; as a colorist, he attained the summit of his art in the "Arch of Titus," of which we hear said that it was painted with mud and shaded with ink. Except for the original handling of light and shade-in which we see proof of his great love for sunlight, these, his early works, contain little of interest, surely give no indication of his great power as a portrait painter. From the time, however, when in 1867, Lenbach, by a picture of himself, surprised critics by the simplicity and truth of his art, he has been an important figure, although not a factor, in the art affairs of the world. By reason of his portraits of Bismarck, William I, Leo XIII, Moltke, Liszt and Wagner, he acquired his present widespread popularity. He appears before us above all as a painter of personality. Large in body and mind, he is proportionately large-hearted. This quality stood him in great stead, for, by the sympathetic and humane way in which he expressed the feeling and character of his sitters, he has pleased not only the critical world, but also those whom he has painted. He sees Gladstone "as the prince of a church," and Leo XIII "as a true messenger of God to man," Bismarck "a fatherland in himself." Bismarck, with unusually good grace, allowed Lenbach to sketch him and by his subsequent favoring of the painter, has helped name him as his Boswell. Once, upon seeing the finished portrait, the Chancellor said: "Just as I most wish to appear in future times." Moltke had so much confidence in Lenbach that he sat for him without his wig. A prominent German critic has said of Lenbach, the idealist, in a rather unqualified, yet nearly correct way, "He paints not only the features of the sitter but even the soul that gives them life. The human face, as the mirror of the soul, was to him the most important problem. Accordingly we see the genial genius of Paul Heyse, the "concentrated wisdom and shrewdness" of Doctor Döllinger, the intensity of expression and extreme thoughtfulness of Liszt, the nobility and exalted intellect of Wagner. In this capacity, as portrayer of personality, he has painted very few women. For his part, he judged his power unsuited for the delineation of feminine loveliness. "Your beauty," he said, to a very handsome friend, "contains nothing which inspires my art; if you were an old man on whom time and suffering had left its mark, how much more willingly would I have undertaken the task." If we may liken Franz von Lenbach, this painter of personality, to any particular portraitist, it would certainly be to the Englishman Watts. Watts has attained his success by showing the soul of the persons he painted. Lenbach has not gone so far as this. He portrays the character of the sitters as it would be noticed by an ordinarily intelligent observer. In considering the effect of this personal element in his canvases, we are at the same time conscious of the honesty of his art. He has no specious strokes to deceive the eye into seeing what is not there. On the contrary, most of his paintings are of a simplicity that almost approaches bareness. The celebrated portrait of Giapello shows how Lenbach has sought for what he thought to be the truth. Obviously he has shown no fear in reproducing it. The large features softened by the lines of the mouth, and the thoughtful eyes, in which the light has been centered, remind us of the portraits of Rembrandt. Has not Lenbach held for a principle that "important features only should be preserved and that all others may be ignored?" Therefore, he does not claim for himself, nor even aspire to, the grace and subtlety of the French painters, as Bastien Lepage, Bonnat, nor the airiness and charm of Whistler. He has Michael Angelo's horror of details, without his character to master it. Consequently, he paints his heads splendidly. In the portrayal of these heads, critics have claimed that his art is but part his own, partly another's. Lenbach admitted this when he said it was "tact" to glean the best from the great masters and to concentrate it all into his painting of the head. These, very frequently, wonderful heads, however, are set into a background of nothingness. It is here we see his greatest fault as a portraitist. He is deficient in the faculty of composition. Indeed, his portraits containing more than one person have received but meagre praise. Even in the single-figure portraits, the outlines run off into the background and shadow, and thus manifest a lack of definition which is but rarely pleasing. Rather dearly, yes, at the expense of grace and subtlety, Lenbach has obtained this art of his, conspicuous for the masterful portrayal of the head as "the mirror of the soul," as well as for its honesty. Curiously enough this generalization finds exceptions in the two portraits commonly admitted to be his greatest triumphs. In Germany, Italy and Austria, his portrait of Leo XIII has been pronounced the greatest painting of a Pope since Raphael painted Julius II and Velasquez Innocent X. Here Lenbach has caught the minutest details and among them the sheen of satin-—which had usually been disregarded by him-with the eye of a great master. How powerful is the long supple hand of the pontiff, tapering off from its broad base! How noble is he as he sits majestically erect and gracefully benign! This, to be sure, is a great painting, a painting which for its historical value alone is destined to be seen and praised for many years. Now, let us look at one of the many superb "Bismarcks." Da Vinci has done a warrior in silver point, now in the British Museum. The free handling, the modelling and the lighting in Lenbach's pastel and chalk drawing of the helmeted Bismarck is very much the same. Besides his customary dignity, Lenbach has presented us with a sketch, the facile and graceful expression of which is certainly not usual for him. Thus, we cannot help noticing that rigid and severe as were the tenets of his art, Lenbach has pleased us most when he has passed beyond them. It is comparatively easy with his life-work in portraiture as a working basis to determine his position among portraitists. He does not belong in the list of "splendid painters" of portraits d'apparat. He has little in common "with the majesty and outward magnificence of Titian, with the exuberance and cheerful brilliancy of Rubens, or with the aristocratic charm and gentle melancholy of Van Dyck.” Neither does he belong to that class of portrait painters whose highest aim it is to seize upon salient characteristics and infuse into their creations the suggestion of life and movement—Velasquez, Gainsborough, Franz Hals and the pastelliste Quentin de la Tour. Rather amidst the names of Messina, Bellini, Holbein and Moroni, Lenbach will have a place. With these we have a school, whose purpose it is to |