Arts and Letters

What I am about to read is not a condensed biography with the usual statements of dates of birth and death, sources of education, accomplishments and honors. Everyone knows that Cecilia Beaux had an international reputation, that she painted portraits of prominent men and women and that her work was held in high esteem by her fellow artists who voted her many prizes. I am going to try to set down some of the impressions she and her work made upon me as a fellow artist and hope that some sort of picture of her will emerge.

About forty years ago a jury of painters was sitting at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh choosing pictures for the Annual Exhibition and allotting prizes. A picture by Thomas Eakins came up, a portrait now very well known, of a man standing awkwardly, in ill-fitting clothes. To one young juryman it was an ugly, clumsy picture. He, fresh from Paris, and the Old Masters of the European galleries, from the dignity of Velasquez and the delicacies of Whistler, could not understand why Miss Beaux, his fellow juror, voted a prize to that picture, but he was relieved and given confidence again when she said to him, "And now for the next one, let us look for beauty." That seemed more like her. It was beauty and beauty connected with elegance which she seemed to be thinking about and looking for and loving where she found it through all her life.

Both in appearance and in personal characteristics she seemed to resemble her own painting. She looked fresh and charming and well-dressed. She was direct and incisive in her ideas and her ways of stating them. She was open-minded and wished to help anyone interested in good painting.

At the end of what I choose to call the Aesthetic Period of American Art she was at the top of her reputation. We have now, of course, many schools of painting, but in representation, or, if you please, objective painting, have we not (if I may be allowed a broad generalization), gone for our inspiration to the Currier and Ives period? We have the subject matter emphasized illustratively and emphasized in the same sort of coarse color schemes which were made by Currier and Ives artists. This is very far from the distinguished art of Cecilia Beaux and of her followers and companions in art, for, although she was painting the quintessence of subject matter, that is to say, portraits, she at that time never painted one into which she did not put all she felt was important in composition of space relations, in color harmonies, in harmonies of line and in relation of light to dark. In expressing her idea of the character of her sitter's face she used the greatest economy of the planned brush stroke.

In the eighteen-nineties and early nineteen hundreds the aesthetic and decorative qualities in painting were insisted upon and loved and accepted as one of the highest aims of the painter. They were obvious to all. Whistler and Manet, two leaders in this school, painted (for the most part) only for the sake of making good painting. We do not feel that the great masters of Italy and Holland, those story tellers and delvers into the characters of their sitters, were at all preoccupied with the aesthetics of their art, but the pictures would not have been good, of course, if the aesthetics had not been there as a foundation. Those qualities were not held forward for the chief enjoyment of the beholder, but leading nineteenth century painters in America were preoccupied with those qualities, especially, and Cecilia Beaux belonged to her time and was borne along on the beautiful current. That current runs rather feebly now. She used the force of that current wisely so that lovers of fine painting were quick to enjoy the clarity of color, the elegance of composition, and the descriptive quality of her drawing of the faces, hands, and figures of the men, women, and children who sat to her.

In the summer of 1919, she went to Paris as one of a group of artists sent by a committee in the United States to paint portraits of the chief figures of the war and of the Peace Conference. To her were allotted Cardinal Mercier, M. Clemenceau, and Admiral Beatty. She threw herself into this task with a fervor almost devotional, giving the emotional side of her nature a free rein.

I have dwelt on the part played in her achievement by her love for the aesthetics of her art. Now she was so much impressed with the magnitude of her task and moved by the enthusiasm she felt for the character of her sitters, especially, of course, for that of Cardinal Mercier, that perhaps the aesthetic qualities of portrait painting seemed to her of less importance than formerly.

These paintings were made under great difficulties. The sitters, by their position in life, had little time to give. The great event in the life of a portrait painter could not seem to be of much importance to those who had been living through great events day by day. In fact, I think Clemenceau gave her no sittings at all, so that this portrait was made by means of observing him intently at his conferences, drawing sketches and then quickly bringing the visual memory back to the studio before it could fade—a fine achievement.

Her greatest achievement, a heroic one, came a few years later after the accident of a broken hip struck her down when she was in full career. Improper treatment by her doctors in Paris made impossible the mending of the injury. Because her method of painting had always been that of observing her sitter and her canvas from a distance and freely walking back and forth between her point of view and her easel, holding in her mind the image of what she was to put on the canvas, planning the brush stroke, placing it deftly on the picture, then going back to see whether the magic had come to pass, one can perhaps understand what was the result of her accident: a heartbreaking handicap, for now only by a clumsy device of steel braces and high stools could she continue to paint at all.

It is difficult to convey an idea of the calamity which had befallen her, for, excepting the affliction of blindness, there can hardly be a worse one to an active painter than a physical crippling (for a painter, in order to do his best, must be unconscious of himself). She faced this with indomitable courage and patience. She went on as well as she could. If she could not paint she could at least carry on the fine art of living; and this she did to the end of her long life without complaint and with gallant mirth.