ART.
MUNKACSY'S "CALVARY."*
HERR MVNKACSY is a Hungarian painter whose work was till within the last few years unknown in England. About fiveyears ago, however, his Parisian reputation began to takeeffect in London ; and shortly afterwards a picture he sent to the Exhibition of the Royal Academy created great excitement.. in the fashionably-artistic and artistically-fashionable worlds. This picture, which was called "The Two Families," was assailed and defended with an amount of vehemence almost personal in its intensity, one class of critics maintaining that its method could not be called " painting " at all ; another, that it was supreme in every respect of technique. What struck all of us was, perhaps, if we had clearly analysed our feelings, not the excellence or deficiency of the work, but its strangeness, the manner in which all ordinary pictorial motives and methodshad been laid aside. Here was a picture of the most ordinary of genre subjects, a richly-furnished interior, with bric-kbrac, babies, and pug-puppies, and a graceful woman'sfigure in a fashionable dress, and it was somehow so vividly rendered, that the effect of the picture was of almost• tragic force. Never, perhaps, had silks and satins, carved furniture, and knick-knacks been painted so grimly; one might have fancied its painter to have been inspired by a keen hatred of luxury rather than a partiality. A strange texture,. such as that of ragged velvet ; a strange sebeme of colour in which black seemed to drop into every vacant corner ; a strangely broken-up and contrasted effect of light and shade,—these, coupled with strong dramatic instinct and great power of drawing, were some of the salient features of " The Two Families."
The success of this work (it was sold, if we recollect aright, for three thousand guineas) emboldened the artist to send another
genre tableau to the next 3 ear's Exhibition of our Academy, and shortly afterwards his great picture of "Milton dictating 4 Paradise Lost' to his Daughters," which was first exhibited and gained a inidaille d'honneur at the Paris International of 1878, came to England. Since then Herr Munkacsy has painted only two very important pictures, both of which have been incidents in the trial aad death of the Saviour. And the picture of which we speak to-day is the second of these—the one which was exhibited last year in Paris—and is entitled " Calvary."
It is a very large, long-shaped picture, in which Herr Munkacsy has treated the Crucifixion, and at first sight seems to differ little from the ordinary traditional renderings of the subject. Here are the same long robes for the -disciples and mourning women ; the same nailed hands and -feet, without any cords to support the body ; the same emaciated form and upturned gaze ; the same mounted centurion, argumentative high priest, and indifferent soldier. One would have thought six years ago that conventionality and Munkacsy were two words which never could have been mentioned together, and yet conventionality is the first idea suggested by the composition. Now, it is curious to remember that in the work of "Christ before Pilate," which was exhibited in London last spring, there was scarcely a trace of this formality of composition—indeed, the picture was blamed by many for its absence of dignity, its --crude literalness of interpretation. It is strauge that the public and the critics cannot distinguish between what is essential and what is accidental to a master's style ; that they should insist -upon only having one-shaped hat, and force men with round, long, and square heads, to fit it on. But so it is ; and if we are right in our idea of this picture, its failure is due to the voluntary surrender by its artist of his chief artistic .quality; that is to say, of his own strong, coarse interpretation of his subject. That the man who painted that 'marvellous " Dernier Jour d'un. Condamne " should have failed to grasp any of the elements of pathos or 'terror in such a scene as that of Calvary is hardly to be explained except upon the supposition either of failing powers -or upon that of a deliberate abandonment of his own instincts. 'The last is what has occurred here. The artist has striven to make a gigantic picture, which should be great, not only as his other pictures have been, despite their faults,hut which should have all the ordinary merits of the "grand style," as well as his own peculiar virtues. He has failed because the union -of these qualities was impossible; he has produced a kind of Siamese twin of a picture, in which crude tragic realism is imperfectly united to traditional renderings of costume, action, and personality.
The figures of St. John, the Virgin, Mary Magdalene, and Anna might, as far as their conception, type, and attitude are concerned, have been painted by our Haydon, so trite, conventional, and uninteresting is their conception. On the other hand, the figure, face, and attitude of the executioner are simply a wonderfully powerful study of natural fact,—a study so fine and expressive, that this one figure alone almost redeems the picture. And notice this curious fact. This executioner, whose face depicts a callous indifference to the pain he has inflicted, and the sufferings of -those around him,—nay, whose whole personality is as repulsive, and evidences as low a type of humanity as can well be conceived, -is, nevertheless, the one figure in the picture which has real -dignity—because it has real life. So powerful and complete is the victory of truth over tradition, that the nearest approach to -beauty in this composition is to be found in that actor whose part in. the 'scene has been the most repulsive. On the -right hand of the composition, beside the Saviour's cross, stands meek St. John, a yell-drawn figure in crimson drapery, and—that's all. We look on from one character to another, from the Virgin to the Magdalen, from the centurion to the high-priest, from the thief to the Saviour, and back comes our gaze always to this short, brutal -executioner and his wooden ladder. There, and in no other place in this, resides the art of the painter—there is the one little bit of nature and truth touched with all the skill, insight, and genius which it was given him to possess,—there, if anywhere, his praise must be gained.
Many other things might, and if our space permitted us, should, be said about this painting, not the least of which should be the reference to the great excellence of the drawing throughout. There is, too, about the work, taken as a whole, the same quality of impressiveness, which the present writer, at least, has always found in Munkacsy's painting. As we have
said, we consider it to be a failure as a great picture ; but it is, at all events, a failure of the highest kind. The painter has endeavoured to rise beyond the limits of his genius ; he has, so to speak, played all his best cards, and Fate has stepped in quietly and laid down a trump. Where in this painting Munkacsy is himself, the result is success ; where he has endeavoured to be Titian or Michael Angelo, the result is failure. It is not a great picture, because it is inconsistent with itself; it is not a religious picture, because it has been painted without any overmastering feeling, any necessity to do this subject rather than another, any clear vision as to the spiritual meaning and significance of the scene.
The temptation is overwhelming to compare it in these respects with Mr. Holman Hunt's Flight into Egypt," on which we wrote a fortnight ago, to note the curiously differing character of the realism of our pre-Raphaelite painter, and that of the great Hungarian artist; to see how near the men approach in such instances as the action of Joseph in the one picture, and that of the executioner in the other, and yet how many miles apart is the intention of the works. Interesting, too, is it to notice how the English artist seeks at every turn to introduce some beautiful thing into his composition from sheer pleasure in its beauty, and how indifferent is the other to the beauty or ugliness of his subject-matter. Last, it is worth noticing how the pictures differ in the sense of movement which we find in Hunt's work and in the quiescence, which is still not rest, of Munkacsy's ; how in the last-mentioned, all the drawing of the figures and of their gestures, fine as it is, conveys solely the impression of arrested movement, whereas, in the former, from beginning to the end of the work, we have one continuous flow of life.
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