Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/27

 KAULBACH 17 of his death. The training, experience, and opportunity of Kaulbach had been extraordinary ; he became a prime mover in one of the most signal of art manifestations known in modern times ; he matured, after the example of the masters of the Middle Ages, the practice of mural or monumental decoration ; he once more conjoined paint ing with architecture, and displayed a creative fertility and readiness of resource scarcely found since the era of Raphael and Michelangelo. Early in the series of his multitudinous works came the famous Narrenhaus, the appalling memories of a certain madhouse near Diisseldorf ; the composition all the more deserves mention for points of contact with Hogarth. Somewhat to the same category belong the renowned illustrations to Reineke Fuchs. These, together with oc casional figures or passages in complex pictorial dramas, show how dominant and irrepressible were the artist s sense of satire and enjoyment of fun ; character in its breadth and sharpness is depicted with keenest relish, and at times the sardonic smile bursts into the loudest laugh regardless of the propriety and solemnity appropriate to high art. Thus occasionally the grotesque degenerates into the vulgar, the grand into the ridiculous, as in the satire on &quot; the Pigtail Age &quot; in a fresco outside the New Pinakothek. Yet the genius of Kaulbach was far too transcendent to be marred by these exceptional extravagances : such exaggera tions came not of weakness but from excess of power ; they are as the sturdy traits and lawless forces of the Teutonic and northern races whence the Westphalian painter had sprung. Kaulbach tried hard to become Grecian and Italian ; but he never reached Phidias or Raphael ; in short the blood of Diirer, Holbein, and Martin Schongauer ran strong in his veins. The art products in Munich during the middle of this century were of a quantity to preclude first-rate quality, and Kaulbach contracted a fatal facility in covering wall and canvas by the acre. He painted in the Hofgarten, the Odeon, the Palace, and on the external walls of the New Pinakothek. His perspicuous and showy manner also gained him abundant occupation as a book-illustrator : in t!i 3 pages of the poets his fancy revelled ; he was glad to take inspiration from Wieland, Goethe, even Klopstock ; among his engraved designs are the Shakespeare gallery, the Goethe gallery, and a folio edition of the Gospels. All these signal examples of what may be called &quot; the Munich school,&quot; though by the many applauded to the skies, were yet subjected to censorious criticism. In a volume entitled Soci .d Life in Munich it was with some show of reason urged that Kaulbach had been unfortunate alike in having found Cornelius for a master and King Louis for a patron, that he attempted &quot;subjects far beyond him, believing that his admiration for them was the same as inspiration &quot; ; the lack of real imagination lie supplied by &quot;a compound of intellect and fancy &quot; ; he &quot; thinks his feelings,&quot; and his creations are but &quot;the triumph of intellect.&quot; Nevertheless no one appreciating at their worth such master compositions as the Destruction of Jerusalem and the Battle of the Huns can deny to Kaulbach creative imagination. As a dramatic poet he tells the story, depicts character, seizes on action and situation, and thus as it were takes the spectator by storm. The manner may be occasionally noisy and ranting, but the effect after its kind is tremendous. Within the whole range of modern art no h ner composition can be named than the Battle of the Huns, no bolder conception than the fierce fight in mid air between the spirits of the warriors slain in combat. The drawing, the foreshortening, the grouping and lines of com position, are almost as a matter of course masterly. The cartoon, which, as usual in modern German art, is superior to the ultimate picture, was executed in the artist s prime at the age of thirty. At this period, as here seen, the knowledge was little short of absolute ; subtle is the sense of beauty; playful, delicate, firm, the touch; the whole treatment artistic. Ten or more years were devoted to what the Germans term a &quot; cyclus,&quot; that is, a series of pictures which, as successive chapters or essays, illustrate one theme, as Raphael in the Vatican gave pictorial exposition to universal knowledge under the distinctive titles of Theology, Philo sophy, Jurisprudence, and Poetry. The fundamental idea whereon Kaulbach discoursed was civilization or the pro gress of the human race as displayed in the following historic epochs : the Tower of Babel, the Age of Homer, the Destruction of Jerusalem, the Battle of the Huns, the Crusades, and the Reformation. These major tableaux, severally 30 feet long, and each comprising over one hundred figures above life-size, are surrounded by minor compositions making more than twenty in all. The idea is to congregate around the world s historic dramas the prime agents of civilization ; thus here are assembled allegoric figures of Architecture and other arts, of Science and other kingdoms of knowledge, together with lawgivers from the time of Moses, not forgetting Frederick the Great. The chosen situation for this imposing didactic and theatric display is the Treppenhaus or grand staircase in the new museum, Berlin ; the surface is a granulated, absorbent wall, specially prepared ; the technical method is that known as &quot; water-glass,&quot; or &quot; liquid flint,&quot; the infusion of silica securing permanence. The same medium was adopted in the later wall-pictures in the Houses of Parlia ment, Westminster. The painter s last period brings no new departure ; his ultimate works stand conspicuous by exaggerations of early characteristics. The series of designs illustrative of Goethe, which had an immense success, were melodramatic and pandered to popular taste. The vast canvas, more than 30 feet long, the Sea Fight at Salamis, painted for the Maximilianeum, Munich, evinces wonted imagination and facility in composition ; the handling also retains its large ness and vigour; but in this astounding scenic uproar moderation and the simplicity of nature are thrown to the winds, and the whole atmosphere is hot and feverish. The painter verily had within him a fire which burnt fiercely ; and, when past the age of sixty he received visitors within his spacious studio, he looked the perfect impersonation of his art. On the walls, upon easels, even on the floor, were large cartoons, rolls of canvas, piles of drawings fruits of a restless and inexhaustible intellect. Kaulbach in the midst moved to and fro impulsively and discoursed volubly on the creations he was about to call out of chaos. But his career was drawing to a close ; seized by the cholera, he died in 1874, at the age of sixty-nine. Kaulbach can scarcely be counted among religious painters ; yet the range of his thought is most lofty. Whatever is noblest in humanity, whatever has raised the human race, freed or enlightened the mind, given dignity and beauty to life, or reared the body into godlike frame, falls within the province of his art. Nothing small or mean finds a place ; the accidents and crudities of common nature are cast out ; typical forms are selected and matured : and all is brought into harmony with beauty. Kaulbach s was indeed a beauty-loving art. He is not supreme as a colourist ; he belongs in fact to a school that holds colour in subordination ; but he laid, in common with the great masters, the sure foundation of his art in form and composition. Indeed, the science of composition has seldom if ever been so clearly understood or worked out with equal complexity and exactitude ; the constituent lines, the relation of the parts to the whole, are brought into absolute agreement ; iu modern Germany painting and music have trodden parallel paths, and Kaulbach is musical in the melody and harmony of his com positions. His narrative too is lucid, and moves as a stately march or royal triumph ; the sequence of the figures is unbroken ; the arrangement of the groups accords with even literary form ; the picture falls into incident, episode, dialogue, action, plot, as a drama. The style is eclectic ; in the Age of Homer the types and the treatment are derived from Greek marbles and vases ; then XIV. 3