Letters of a Traveller; Or, Notes of Things Seen in Europe and AmericaBryant, William Cullen
General
Letters of a Traveller; Or, Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America
Bryant, William Cullen
Cuba -- Description and travel; Europe -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
At Düsseldorf, which is the residence of so many eminent painters, we
expected to find some collection, or at least some of the best specimens,
of the works of the modern German school. It was not so, however—fine
pictures are painted at Düsseldorf, but they are immediately carried
elsewhere. We visited the studio of Schröter—a man with humor in every
line of his face, who had nothing to show us but a sketch, just prepared
for the easel, of the scene in Goëthe's Faust, where Mephistophiles, in
Auerbach's cellar, bores the edge of the table with a gimlet, and a stream
of champagne gushes out. Köhler, an eminent artist, allowed us to see a
clever painting on his easel, in a state of considerable forwardness,
representing the rejoicings of the Hebrew maidens at the victory of David
over Goliath. At Lessing's—a painter whose name stands in the first rank,
and whom we did not find at home—we saw a sketch on which he was engaged,
representing the burning of John Huss; yet it was but a sketch, a painting
in embryo.
But I am wandering from the American artists. At Cologne, whither we were
accompanied by Leutze, he procured us the sight of his picture of Columbus
before the Council of Salamanca, one of his best. Leutze ranks high in
Germany, as a young man of promise, devoting himself with great energy and
earnestness to his art.
At Florence we found Greenough just returned from a year's residence at
Graefenberg, whence he had brought back his wife, a patient of Priessnitz
and the water cure, in florid health. He is now applying himself to the
completion of the group which he has engaged to execute for the capitol at
Washington. It represents an American settler, an athletic man, in a
hunting shirt and cap, a graceful garb, by the way, rescuing a female and
her infant from a savage who has just raised his tomahawk to murder them.
Part of the group, the hunter and the Indian, is already in marble, and
certainly the effect is wonderfully fine and noble. The hunter has
approached his enemy unexpectedly from behind, and grasped both his arms,
holding them back, in such a manner that he has no command of their
muscles, even for the purpose of freeing himself. Besides the particular
incident represented by the group, it may pass for an image of the
aboriginal race of America overpowered and rendered helpless by the
civilized race. Greenough's statue of Washington is not as popular as it
deserves to be; but the work on which he is now engaged I am very sure
will meet with a different reception.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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