which, when all is said, is more important to him than the minutiae of any single artist's history? If such ideas are present in the more elaborate works, like those of Mr. Davies and Mr. Berenson at which we have just glanced, they are necessarily incidental to analysis of a leading theme. The few new books in which masters or schools are discussed at large are interesting, but not momentous.

The Art of the Italian Renaissance,1 by Professor Wolfflin, offers a rational interpretation of a subject often enveloped by historians in a haze of metaphysics. The learned author has common-sense views of Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and the lesser masters; and in his explication of the significance of pure form in their work, he takes his reader close to the constructive principle underlying much of the most characteristic art of the Renaissance. He helps to clear the air of æsthetic cant; his artists, when he has completed his surveys of them, are seen more as artists in the true sense, less as the seers and high priests which loosethinking writers like to consider them. Yet the book wants gusto; it is a shade too professorial. Klaczo's Rome and the Renaissance,2 in the agreeable translation which has been made by John Dennie, is not so deeply pondered, and when the author gives rein to his fancy, inventing conversation with the hope of lending verisimilitude to his picture, he is more diverting than instructive. But the work embodies an excellent idea. It portrays Pope Julius in his artistic relations, and the pages on the masters he employed are written partly in exposition of their individual traits, but

1 The Art of the Italian Renaissance. By Professor HEINRICH WOLFFLIN. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1903.

2 Rome and the Renaissance. The Pontificate of Julius II. From the French of JULIAN KLACZO. Authorized Translation by JOHN DENNIE. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1903.

3 Isabella D'Este, Marchioness of Mantua,

still more with the purpose of reproducing the atmosphere in which they labored. We have here not a body of technical analysis, but a panorama drawn with scholarship, flexibility, and a constant feeling for the human aspect of artistic affairs.

Since they are not strictly works on art, I may only give a few words to Isabella D'Este, Marchioness of Mantua, by Julia Cartwright (Mrs. Ady), and to the new edition of Beatrice D'Este, Duchess of Milan, by the same author, but they are, as a matter of fact, worth a dozen textbooks as aids to an apprehension of the conditions under which art was produced in the time of which they treat. These great ladies of the Renaissance patronized the painters, sculptors, and artistic craftsmen of their day with ardor and intelligence, and their biographies contain many passages showing their relations with the masters, relations typical of a great epoch in civilization. The story, delightfully told by Mrs. Ady, of Isabella's efforts to secure for her collection certain marbles, an antique, and a Cupid of Michael Angelo's, that had fallen into the hands of Cesare Borgia, is exactly the kind of story to set the reader on a clearer notion of Renaissance taste and of those racial springs of high enthusiasm to which we owe such a wilderness of things of beauty. Some interesting sidelights on what the South has done to influence and color European culture are afforded by the Book of Italian Travel, a compilation in which Mr. Neville Maugham has put together the impressions recorded by famous travelers as far back as the sixteenth century, and by writers as

1474-1539. By JULIA CARTWRIGHT (Mrs. Ady). New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 1903. 4 Beatrice D'Este, Duchess of Milan, 14751497. By JULIA CARTWRIGHT (Mrs. Ady). New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 1903.

5 The Book of Italian Travel (1580-1900). By H. NEVILLE MAUGHAM. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 1903.

near our own time as Symonds and Henry James. The patchwork is the outcome of wide but judicious reading, and is deftly arranged. It may not overwhelm the reader with a flood of those general ideas for which he is looking, but it will put him in a frame of mind, giving him something of that glamour of Italy which never comes amiss in the study of Italian art. The efficacy of Cellini's Autobiography as a means of initiation into the spirit of the Renaissance is a commonplace of criticism. Miss Anne Macdonell has newly translated this classic of picaresque and artistic literature,' and though she has not shaken my loyalty to Symonds's version, I confess that her animated treatment of the text is very beguiling. She has a pointed note on Cellini's portrait, discrediting the familiar image of a "white-bearded, benevolent person," the one prefixed to Symonds's translation, and identifying with Cellini a certain head, which she reproduces, in a fresco by Vasari in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence. The portrait bears out her contention. It is of a "vigorous, fiery man," and readily persuades us that in it we have, as Miss Macdonell asserts, our Benvenuto to the life."

66

2

Mr. La Farge's Great Masters is a collection of papers on Michael Angelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Velasquez, Dürer, and Hokusai, which were originally written for a popular magazine, and have the qualities essential in discourse addressed to a large and miscellaneous audience. The author avoids technical jargon, and, though writing from the artist's point of view, gives to his fellows a perfect illustration of the way in which to appeal to laymen with no risk of being misunderstood. Indeed, if the book errs anywhere it is on the side of simplicity. The history of each

1 The Life of Benvenuto Cellini. Written by Himself. Translated out of the Italian with an Introduction by ANNE MACDONELL. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 1903.

artist is carefully traversed, and his salient characteristics are clearly indicated. Here and there an observation, reminding us that the author has views of his own, ripples the surface of the expeditious and businesslike narrative, but the tone of the book as a whole is neither as original nor as stimulating as Mr. La Farge's previous excursions into art criticism have caused one to expect. He has gained much in clearness of style, but while his book should prove beneficial when placed in quite inexperienced hands, it leaves the reader who has made any artistic investigations at all practically where it finds him. A popular introduction to the study of some of the masters, as well written as this is, could not but be a credit to any one, even to a painter who is himself a master. Yet it would be a great gain if Mr. La Farge were to give his pen to flights worthier of his powers, if he were to write a book taking a wider sweep and going deeper into the subject. In place of the rich banquet for mature minds which he might spread, he has set forth the mild fare suited to the naïve young reader, and, coming from him, it inspires gratitude tempered with regret. I cannot grudge the multitude of undisciplined seekers after artistic instruction the benefit and pleasure they will derive from these pages, but it is impossible to suppress a wish that Mr. La Farge might at least have given them a freer scope.

8

He is not the only American who has of late been occupied with the public dis cussion of artistic topics. Mr. Lorado Taft has written an excellent History of American Sculpture in a new series, treating of all the manifestations of art in this country, which is being edited by Mr. John C. Van Dyke. We have no other book covering the field so thor

2 Great Masters. By JOHN LA FARGE. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co. 1903.

3 The History of American Sculpture. By LORADO TAFT. New York: The Macmillan Co. 1903.

oughly. Mr. Taft treats in chronological order all of our sculptors down to the men who are still living, and he has given his book the more authority by taking pains to avoid too enthusiastic or too severe a tone. He is just to exploded reputations, he loses sight of nothing that is good in the work of artists generally so feeble as Hiram Powers, or Harriet Hosmer, and he does not lose his head when he is talking about either St. Gaudens or French. A truthful, sober book, which places the American school of sculpture in a clear light, and supplies the information that is needed about all its members, famous and obscure. With Mr. Whistler, of course, the makers of books are already busy, but not, so far as the first fruits of their labors go to show, to very good purpose. Mr. Arthur Jerome Eddy's Recollections and Impressions of James A. McNeill Whistler is an ill-formed collection of anecdotes and other miscellaneous data. It contains a quantity of raw material which some future biographer may find useful, but it is neither serious biography nor soundly reasoned criticism; it belongs in the category of distinctly ephemeral productions. The illustrations are good. photogravures. The Art of James McNeill Whistler,2 by Mr. T. R. Way and Mr. G. R. Dennis, has likewise the defects of the "occasional" publication; it is superficial and scrappy, but the authors keep to a dignified key, and one of them, Mr. Way, through his personal relations with Whistler, has been enabled to contribute some interesting information to the volume, especially with reference to his work in lithography. This book contains many illustrations that have not hitherto been accessible to the student. Whistler's own book, the Gentle Art of

Making Enemies, has just been brought out in a new edition with some additional matter, notably the catalogue of the famous exhibition of Nocturnes, Marines, and Chevalet Pieces, in which the artist repeated his trick of discomfiting his critics by reproducing, with ingenious malice, the comments on his work in which they had had the misfortune to indulge. I have so recently discussed the volume in these pages that I merely call attention now to the fact of its reappearance.

Mr. Whistler's brilliant fellow countryman, the painter whose fame not only equals but has threatened to overshadow his own, the painter whose Carmencita figures no less triumphantly in the Luxembourg than the famous Portrait of the Artist's Mother, has been made the hero of a book which for divers delightful reasons can only be characterized as astonishing. The Work of John S. Sargent, R. A. is, in a way, unique. Other modern men have been celebrated in books, and some of them have deserved the honor. Paul Baudry, for example, was the kind of artist to bear the severe test of an exhibition of his works within the covers of a book, and Ingres has more than deserved the beautiful tribute paid him not long ago through the devotion of M. Lapauze in getting his drawings reproduced. But Mr. Sargent's case remains an extraordinary one. He has withheld from this volume a great number of his paintings, and he still has years of activity before him. Yet in a selection from his works including many of his best things, but still only a selection there is enough genius to keep a dozen ordinary men going all their lives.

Mr. Sargent has something of the fecundity and the power of the old masters.

3 The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. By JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1903.

4 The Work of John S. Sargent, R. A. With an Introductory Note by Mrs. MEYNELL. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1903.

Whether or not he will ever attain to their rank is an interesting problem. If he falls short of it, it will be, I think, because of his limitations as a colorist, and because of his want of spiritual depth. On other grounds he moves us already as we are moved by the great executants of the historical epochs. This collection of sixty large photogravures is dazzling to the eye somewhat as the collection of paintings by Frans Hals in the little old building at Haarlem is dazzling. To keep the latter memorable assemblage of portraits in the mind's eye, as one considers the portraits in this book, is to revive dubiety as to Mr. Sargent's ever standing on equal terms with the Dutchman. The latter has a broader humanity. His art, for all that it is so thoroughly realistic, goes deeper. Yet it might fairly be argued that Hals's sincerity, as we see it, draws a great deal of its virtue from his models, and that the feverish flush on the modern man's work is there just because he is a modern man, -in other words, that the restless brilliancy so characteristic of Mr. Sargent is but the natural expression of the leading traits in the world he depicts. This much is certain, that no painter of his time could face the future with more confidence in its verdict than Mr. Sargent is justified in feeling. He knows what he wants to do, and he knows how to do it. He paints his sitters with a fluency that no other living artist can rival, and it is not the fluency of the merely clever man, it is that of a positive master.

His range promised at one time to be wider than it seems to-day. He painted canvases like the Carnation, Lily, Rose, and El Jaleo, and in them approved himself a true maker of pictures. But long after, when he undertook the decorations for the Boston Public Library, he got out of his depth, and it is perhaps fortunate that since he has aban

1 Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers. Edited by G. C. WILLIAMSON, Litt. D. New York: The Macmillan Co. 1903.

doned the pictorial ambitions of his earlier years he has devoted himself more to portraiture than to anything else. There he gives play to his inborn gifts with the ease and buoyancy of some giant exulting in his strength; he grasps, without apparent effort, one individuality after another, covers scores of canvases with seemingly inexhaustible fertility of design and unchanging sureness of hand, and never for a moment ceases to exert the fascination of an original and splendid style. He is spectacular, if you like, but there is not a trace of vulgarity in the spectacle. Like the giant aforesaid, he is a type of materialism triumphant. But his is a materialism wonderfully refined by intelligence and taste, and if on opening this book of reproductions one is seized with an emotion of unquestioning admiration, one closes it with feelings of the most thoughtful respect. It is a pity that the plates are accompanied by an essay by Mrs. Meynell, whose delicate affectations are totally inappropriate to the occasion. Mr. Sargent's work is too masculine, too brilliant, to be made the subject of pretty vaporings.

1

The half-dozen publications to which brief allusion remains to be made are works of reference or books of special interest to collectors. Two of the five volumes in which the new edition of Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers is to be completed have thus far appeared. A revision of the text has for some time been required, and many omissions have needed to be repaired. Dr. Williamson is bringing the book up to date with judgment, and the publishers are greatly enhancing its interest by filling it with full-page illustrations, though a rather arbitrary mode of selection slightly discounts their good intentions. Some of the plates seem only to reflect the editor's whim. The Sculptures of the Parthenon,2 by Dr.

2 The Sculptures of the Parthenon. By Dr. A. S. MURRAY. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 1903.

A. S. Murray, gives in a few terse chapters a vivid description of the marbles, with explanations, never idly speculative, of their significance. The illustrations have been prepared with solicitude for the interests of the student following his researches in his own library. They have been planned so that he may examine the sculptures in their decorative and architectural relations, no less than for their individual character, as nearly as possible as though he were looking at the Parthenon itself.

Mr. J. J. Foster's Miniature Painters, British and Foreign, with Some Account of Those who Practised in America in the Eighteenth Century,' a work in two handsome volumes, contains wellwritten text and some very useful lists, but for collectors the significance of the book lies largely in its plates, which reproduce more than two hundred examples. In the department of prints two good books have been issued. Mr. Cyril Davenport's Mezzotints 2 appears in the Connoisseur's Library, a series practical in aim and luxurious in form. The author of this volume writes with authority on the technical side of his subject, and discourses pleasantly on the engravers whose works he describes. The plates are beautiful photogravures. Samuel William Reynolds, by Alfred Whitman, deals at length with an English master of mezzotint, to whom, of course, Mr. Davenport can only give a limited amount of space. This volume also is fully illustrated. The two indirectly draw attention to a fashion of collecting which has become a fad. The high prices paid in the auction room for eighteenth-century mezzotints are out of all proportion to their intrinsic value. But the best plates of the best men have unquestionably great beauty, and appre

1 Miniature Painters, British and Foreign, with Some Account of Those who Practised in America in the Eighteenth Century. By J. J. FOSTER. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 1903.

ciation of them cannot fail to be greatly furthered by the books I have just mentioned.

Royal Cortissoz.

ONE of the latest evidences of growing The Tene- American civilization is the interest manifested in housing

ment House Problem.

reform.

Stimulated largely by the work of the New York Tenement House Commission of 1901, many cities are now investigating their slums and framing laws for their improvement. The importance of this awakening is emphasized by the growth of immigration and by the change in its character. The congested sections of our large cities are populated mainly from the immigrant ships. In New York the connection has always been so close that popular movements for tenement reform have almost invariably followed periods of the largest immigration. These uprisings against the physical shortcomings of the city have been about as frequent, and, as far as lasting results are concerned, almost as ineffectual, as the periodical outbursts against its governmental failings. The one commission that resulted in widespread and permanent betterment was that appointed by Governor Roosevelt in 1900. Its most active members were its chairman, Mr. Robert W. de Forest, and its secretary, Mr. Lawrence Veiller. They directed the investigations that formed the basis of the law; and the law itself, incorporating the new Tenement Department, was framed by them. They were promptly selected by Mayor Low as the organizers and administrators of the new department, which, under their supervision, was one of the strongest features of the reform government. Their most recent service to the cause of housing reform is two exhaustive volumes on the Tenement

2 Mezzotints. By CYRIL DAVENPORT. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1903.

8 Samuel William Reynolds. By ALFRED WHITMAN. New York: The Macmillan Co. 1903.