Théophile Gautier
Travels in Russia (Voyage en Russie, 1858-59, 1861)
Part V: Schchukin Market-Yard, Mihály Zichy
Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved
This work may be freely reproduced, stored and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.
Conditions and Exceptions apply.
Contents
- Chapter 13: Shchukin Dvor (Shchukin Market-Yard, later the Mariinsky Market).
- Chapter 14: Mihály Zichy (The Hungarian Painter and Graphic Artist).
Chapter 13: Shchukin Dvor (Shchukin Market-Yard, later the Mariinsky Market)
Every city has its mysterious depository, distant from the centre, which one may fail to come across even after a long stay, though your habits lead you among the same network of aristocratic streets; its ossuary that is, where the soiled, muddy, unrecognisable debris of luxury is heaped, though still capable of attracting customers at fifth or sixth hand. There, are piled the charming hats, delicate masterpieces made by fashionable hatters, now hunched, withered, greasy, and good only for crowning learned donkeys; the black tailcoats of expensive cloth, formerly decorated with medals and stars, which had the honour of appearing at splendid balls; evening dresses thrown one morning to the maid; yellowed fabrics, frayed lace, bald furs, and unusable furniture, the soiled stratum of civilisation. Paris has its Temple quarter, Madrid its El Rastro, Constantinople its flea-market, and St. Petersburg the Shchukin Dvor, a place for odds and ends, which provides a most interesting visit.
Take a sleigh up Nevsky Prospekt, past Gostiny Dvor, a sort of Palais-Royal its arcades lined with elegant boutiques; at that point, utter the sacramental na leva (to the left) to your isvochtchik, and, having traversed three or four blocks, you are at your destination.
Enter, if your olfactory nerves are not too delicate, via the market for shoes and animal hides; a strong smell of leather combining with a smell of sour cabbage to produce a very local perfume, more unpleasant to foreigners than Russians, and one to which it is difficult to become accustomed; but, if one wishes to see everything, one must not be too precious.
The booths of the Shchukin Dvor are made of planking; sordid nooks, with the immaculate white snow which silver their roofs this day granting them a hue dirtier yet, and more rancid.
Garlands of old greasy leather boots (and what boots!) with hardened uppers, recalling by their species of sinisterly caricatured silhouettes, the form of the animals their skin once clad, and ragged tulups (sheepskin coats) retaining a vaguely human imprint, constitute the composite adornments of the storefronts: all this, suspended in the air and enhanced with a few touches of snow, takes on, beneath a lowering yellowish-grey sky, a wretchedly gloomy appearance; the merchants are hardly cleaner than their merchandise: and yet, if Rembrandt had wished, he might, by scoring and hatching a varnished copper plate, have made, from these bearded men swaddled in sheepskins, some miraculous etching, and found, with his burin, character amidst ugliness. Art takes its spoils everywhere.
A large number of alleys intersect the booths of the Shchukin Dvor. Each area is dedicated to a particular type of business; several small chapels, whose interiors of which reveal, by the light of their lamps, the vermeil and silver plate of their miniature iconostases, gleam at the corners of the intersections. Elsewhere in Shchukin Dvor, it is forbidden to strike a light; a spark would set fire to the piles of old planks and goods. Only the glorification of these icons merits the risk.
The ornate golden masses in this wretched, sombre place seem uniquely flamboyant. A multitude of customers and traders, passing in front of these chapels, cross themselves in the Greek manner. Some, the most fervent or least hurried, bow their foreheads to the snowy ground, murmur a prayer, and, rising once more, throw a kopek into the chest placed at the door. One of the most interesting streets in Shchukin Dvor is the one occupied by the icon painters — if one was not sure of the date, one might think oneself back in the Middle Ages, since the style of the paintings, the majority created but yesterday, is archaic. Here, Russia continues, in her imagery, the Byzantine tradition with absolute fidelity. Her illuminators appear to have served their apprenticeship on Mount Athos, at the monastery of Agia Lavra, painting according to the precepts penned by a monk there, a student of Manuel Panselinos, the Raphael of this unique art, wherein the over-precise imitation of Nature is seen as a species of idolatry.
The shops are covered with images from floor to roof. Here are Madonnas with brown faces, copied after the portrait of the Virgin painted by Saint Luke, on a gold or silver ground; depictions of Christ and the saints, appreciated the more by devotees the more primitive and barbarous they appear; paintings portraying scenes from the Old and New Testaments displaying a multitude of figures in symmetrical and stiff poses, deliberately dark in colour, and coated with yellow varnish like reed cases and Persian mirror-frames, to simulate the smoky deposit of centuries; bronze plaques hinged like Japanese screens or triptych panels, framing a series of pious bas-reliefs; oxidised silver crosses, of a charming Graeco-Byzantine form, on which a whole world of microscopic figures, crowded between inscriptions in Old Church Slavonic, play out the sacred drama of Golgotha; historical book covers, and a thousand other small devotional objects.
Some of these images, more carefully finished, more richly gilded or plated, command fairly elevated prices. They have no great artistic value; but all, even the crudest, are of an astonishing character. The primitive nature of their shapes, the rawness of their colours, the mixture of goldsmith’s work and portraiture grant them a hieratic and solemn stamp more suited perhaps than skilful representation to the stimulation of piety. These images are identical to those the artists’ ancestors revered. Immutable as dogma, they have been perpetuated from century to century; artistic fashion left them unaffected, since to correct them, despite their barbarity and naivety, would have seemed like sacrilege. The darker, smokier, and stiffer the Madonna, the more she inspires trust among the faithful on whom her great dark eyes, still as eternity, gaze.
It is true to say that the images of Schchukin Dvor, are like our wood-block engravings from Épinal (in the department of Vosges, where prints were manufactured, depicting topical subjects in bright colours): the primitive style finds refuge there among popular subjects. In Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, and other modern churches or chapels, while maintaining the general appearance and sacred attitude, the artists were not afraid to grant their Madonnas all the ideal beauty they could — they also cleansed the savage bearded saints of their dark-brown varnish to restore a human colouring. From the point of view of technique, the result is undoubtedly better, but the religious effect is perhaps diminished. The Russo-Byzantine style, with its gilded backgrounds, symmetrical shapes, and its applications of metal and gemstones, lends itself admirably to the adornment of churches, achieving a mysterious and supernatural air, totally in harmony with its location.
In one of these booths, I found a small copy of the Virgin Adoring the Host (in the Musée d’Orsay), by Ingres, depicting her as a Greek Madonna. Hands joined for prayer, fingertips delicately touching each other, it was quite well-done, despite the difficulty of the pose, while the head portrayed the character of the subject quite well. I had scarcely expected to encounter, in the Schchukin Dvor, the memory of that illustrious master. How and by what route had his masterpiece managed to serve as the source for a Russian image? — I bargained for it. It was sold to me for only ten rubles, because it was not plated or gilded. The picture-sellers are more neatly dressed than their neighbours the resellers of leather-goods. They generally wear the traditional Russian costume, a kaftan of blue or green cloth, fastened with a button near the shoulder and tightened at the waist with a narrow belt, and tall black leather boots; their hair, separated by a median line, is worn long at the sides and cut short at the nape of the neck, leaving the neck clear; their bushy curling beards, are blond or hazel in colour. Many have handsome, serious, intelligent, and gentle faces, and might pose for the depictions of Christ which they sell, if Byzantine art allowed the imitation of nature in sacred images. When they see you halt in front of their displays, they ask you to enter, politely, and though you might only buy a few trivial things, they have you review their whole store and, not without pride, draw your attention to the richest and finest pieces.
Nothing is more intriguing to the foreigner than these profoundly Russian booths. Once can easily be deceived into buying a completely modern item thinking it antique; but in Russia the antique is dated to only yesterday, and the same forms, as regards religious representation, are invariably repeated. What connoisseurs, even experts, take to be the work of some Greek monk of the ninth or tenth century, often derives from the neighbouring workshop, and its yellow varnish is barely dry.
It is interesting to witness the naive and pious adoration displayed by the moujiks as they traverse this street, that one might term the Sacred Way of Schchukin Dvor. Despite the cold, they stand in ecstasy before the madonnas and saints, and dream of owning a similar painting to hang, illuminated by the light of a lamp, in a corner of their fir-wood cabin. In the end they walk on, regarding it as beyond their means. A few who are wealthier, enter, having felt the little book of paper rubles squeezed in their purse, to see if they have enough, and exit after much discussion, with their carefully-wrapped purchases. The bill is calculated in the Chinese manner, on an abacus frame with balls strung on iron wires and moved about depending on the numbers you wish to add.
Not everyone visiting Schchukin Dvor is a customer; one visits to stroll about the alleys, and those who make up the crowd vary greatly in nature: the moujik in his tulup, the soldier in his grey greatcoat elbows the man of the world in his fur coat and the antique dealer hoping for some increasingly rare find, since naivety has fled the place and, for fear of making a mistake, the traders there ask an extravagant amount for the least trinket. The regret of having once sold for a low price some rare object of whose value they were unaware has made them more cautious than the Auvergnats on the Rue de Lappe (thrifty scrap-merchants, and ultimately antique-dealers of the Temple district in Paris, see Balzac’s character Remonecq in ‘Le Cousin Pons’). One can find everything amidst this bazaar; the books have their own area; French, English, German, the books of every country in the world, come to rest on this snowy shore among the Russian ones, all mismatched, wrinkled, stained, and worm-eaten. Sometimes patient investigators encounter some incunabulum among the jumble there, a first edition, a volume lost from circulation, arrived at Schchukin Dvor by a series of adventures which could provide the subject of a humorous Odyssey. Some of these booksellers have never learned to read, which does not prevent them from knowing their merchandise thoroughly.
There are also sellers of black and white, or coloured, prints and lithographs. One frequently comes across portraits of Alexander I, of the Emperor Nicolas, Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses, high dignitaries and generals of previous reigns, drawn by hands more zealous than skilful, and which give a strange idea of their august models. One sees there The Four Corners of the World, The Four Seasons, The Marriage Proposal, The Wedding, The Coucher and Lever of the Bride; every crude sketch and daub of our Rue Saint-Jacques (in the Latin Quarter of Paris, and home to the Paris printshops) is found there in many a copy.
Among the strollers and shoppers, women are in the minority; it is the opposite with us. Russian women seem to have retained the oriental habit of seclusion though nothing obliges them to do so; they rarely go out. Now and then, one sees a moujik far off with her kerchief tied under her chin, a coat of cloth or felt, like a man's frock coat, over her thick skirts, in her big boots of shiny leather, trampling the snow, where they leave prints that one would not think belonged to the more delicate half of the human race; the other women who shop the stalls are German or foreign — in the booths of Schchukin Dvor, as in the bazaars of Smyrna and Constantinople, the sellers are men. I don’t recall seeing a Russian tradeswoman.
The second-hand furniture alley might provide the material for a domestic economics course, and grant more than one insight into Russian domestic life to one who could decipher, based on those more or less well- preserved remnants, the history of their previous owners: every style is there; fashions that have fallen into disuse form regular stratifications; each era superimposes on the rest those designs which are now deemed ridiculous. What dominates the whole are the large green leather sofas, a truly Russian item of furniture!
In another area, are the trunks, suitcases, korzinas (baskets) and other travel items, stacked to the middle of the path, and half buried under the snow; then come old cooking-pots, scrap-metal, dirty containers, split wooden bowls, worn utensils, and things which no longer possess a name in any language, cloths now merely lint and fit only for the ragpicker. If the temperature was not fourteen or fifteen degrees below, a walk through such a place would have its perils, but the swarms of insects have perished of cold.
Warmer weather would have increased still further the risk of my finding myself in the neighbourhood of the hand-organ player who would stubbornly follow me in hopes of gaining the few kopeks that the trouble of half-opening my coat would cause me to refuse him for some time. This barrel-organ player had a characteristically wan expression. A filthy, frayed rag circled his head like a derisory diadem; an old bearskin, once the apron of a droshky, covered his shoulders and, cloaking the organ case, gave the poor devil a rump of the most singular shape which contrasted with his leanness. At first, I was at a loss to explain this hump which overlapped his kidneys, because only the crank of the instrument passed through the frayed fur, and the hand that turned it recalled the gesture of a monkey scratching itself greedily.
A kind of homespun sackcloth with a saw-toothed border, and felt boots, completed this costume worthy of Jacques Callot’s burin.
The boots alone were a poem of misery and disrepair. Slumped, deformed, folded in pleats, they half rose from his feet, their toe-ends pointed like a Chinese roof, so that his legs appeared to bow under the weight of his torso and hand-organ as if they lacked shinbones. The wretched fellow seemed to be walking on two scythes.
As for his face, nature had been pleased to model it after the visage of Thomas Vireloque, that powerful creation by Paul Gavarni (see the numerous prints extant): a dodecahedron of a glowing nose, between two prominent cheekbones, above a broad grin, amidst a swarm of wrinkles, was the most perceptible feature, since the bushy hair and beard stiff with ice hid the contours of the face; however, beneath the straggling eyebrows sparkled steel-blue eyes expressing a kind of picaresque and philosophical mischief, while the Russian winter illuminated with northern rouge the flesh and rags of this copy of a Parisian lithograph; one might have termed him a tomato in oakum,
The hand-organ buried beneath the bearskin, as its master turned it with the crank, whined sadly, seeming to beg for mercy, giving forth asthmatic sighs, coughing and moaning like a dying man; it picked out, here and there, with the few teeth remaining on its barrel, two or three tunes from another century, quavering, ancient, obsolete in style, of a most comically dismal nature, with enough false notes to make dogs howl, but touching in their way, after all, like those refrains of the past whispered in a broken voice, and with wheezing breath, by a centenarian grandmother reverting to infancy — those phantoms of songs that, ultimately, scare us.
Certain of the efficacy of his instrument, and finding that he was dealing with a foreigner, for he would not have permitted himself his insistent manner where a Russian was concerned, the drole fellow, with the volubility of a macaque, turned the crank as if he had supported Pierre-Theodore Mengin, by grinding out those tunes which backed the eloquence of that famous seller of gold-coloured pencils. When he had rendered himself sufficiently intolerable, a large handful of small change silenced him; he received my kopeks smilingly, and, to show his gratitude, stopped the waltz, abruptly, that he had begun. The organ sounded a vast sigh of satisfaction.
I have described the picturesque side of Schchukin Dvor, which to me was the most entertaining — the market also contains covered arcades lined with shops selling foodstuffs of all kinds, smoked sudaks (pikeperch, a ray-finned fish) for the long Greek Orthodox Lent, olives, white butter from Odessa like that of Constantinople, green apples, and cranberries with which one fills pies; there are also vendors of new furniture, clothing, shoes, fabrics, and the usual vulgar goldsmith’s trinkets: these places are still of interest, but no longer as singular as that Oriental bazaar scattered amidst the snow.
Chapter 14: Mihály Zichy (The Hungarian Painter and Graphic Artist)
If, in St. Petersburg, you walk on Nevsky Prospekt, which it is as hard to avoid doing as visiting Venice and not strolling about the Piazza San Marco, or in Naples ignoring the Rue de Toledo, or in Madrid the Puerta del Sol, or in Paris the Boulevard des Italiens, you will without any doubt note Beggrov’s store. The pavement outside is always crowded with curious people contemplating the paintings, watercolours, engravings, photographs, statuettes, and even boxes of pigments, often in seven or eight degrees of frost. Above them their breath condenses in a cloud and forms something akin to a permanent fog; be sure to mingle your breath with theirs, and be ready to take the place of some spectator who remembers suddenly and fortuitously that he has business at the other end of the city beyond the Anichkov Bridge, in the Ligovka, or on the other side of the river at the far end of Wassili-Ostrow. But if you are not yet well-enough acclimatised, and the harshness of the cold bothers you, turn the door-knob boldly, and enter the sanctuary fearlessly. Beggrov is a young man with accomplished manners, a perfect gentleman, who though you may buy nothing, will receive you with exquisite politeness and show you its riches willingly. Artists, men of the world, men of letters, and connoisseurs enter his store as one enters Desforges’ shop in Paris: they leaf through the albums looking at recently arrived engravings, they exercise their aesthetic taste, and learn the news of the world of art.
While I was there one day, looking at the heliographic prints, a large imperious watercolour set on an easel in a corner, attracted my gaze, by its warm and brilliant appearance, though the evening shadows dimmed its brightness; yet often paintings, especially when they are excellently done, possess, at that hour, a magical phosphorescence. One might say they retain for a moment, and concentrate, the departing light.
I approached and found myself face to face with a masterpiece which I was unable to attribute to any known master yet one to which all would have felt proud to add their signature. It was not by Richard Parkes Bonington, or Louis Boulanger, nor was it by Eugène Lami, George Cattermole, John Frederick Lewis, Eugène Delacroix, or Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, or any other of those who achieve in watercolour the force and richness of oil-painting; it was in a brand new style, a completely original work, a surprise, a discovery, an unclassifiable wine from the winery of art, but equal to the most famous cru, unusual but exquisite in its body, flavour, and bouquet.
It depicted a Florentine orgy, of the sixteenth century. Old noblemen, noted libertines, relics of ancient elegance, were supping with young courtesans. On the table gleamed pillaged and ravaged ewers, vases, drageoirs, and salt-cellars like that by Benvenuto Cellini, while the dregs of wine shed ruby and topaz hues among the bottles and glasses, and the various items of fruit, which had had rolled, amidst leaves, from the enamelled trays. In the background could be glimpsed, among transparent shadows which highlighted the group of figures, frescoes and faded tapestries, sideboards, dressers and carved cabinets, their form betrayed by some bluish ray or other. Ample brocade curtains fell powerfully in folds, displaying their warm, dull, rich tones, and the various ceiling partitions, obliged one rather to divine than inspect their gilded and painted arabesques. The figures, by their ease of movement, the variety of their attitudes, their poses captured in flight, their bold foreshortening, and the free, pure flowing lines of the drawing, proclaimed an assured talent, nurtured by lengthy study, possessing a feeling for high art, and portraying the human body in all its aspects, even those his models lack, with that powerful ease which only belongs to the true master. The young women, in their loose, somewhat dishevelled dresses, laughed and cavorted, with the artificial glee of the courtesan, and only half-opposed the sallies they knew involved little risk to themselves; though, beneath the makeup and false laughter, fatigue, disgust and boredom were evident. One, a little apart, seemed to be dreaming of her young lover, or of her former innocence, the other seemed, in her ironic abandonment, desirous of tearing the wig from the ancient libertine kneeling painfully at her feet in his show of gallantry from another age; but the power of wealth tamed and quelled all such fantasies, and, in their complacent poses full of hidden deference, one perceived that women of this type never find rich men wholly ridiculous, even though they be old and ugly. Moreover, the noble lords, despite the marks of age and debauchery, rendered more evident perhaps by the efforts made to conceal them, still looked well in their clothes of an outrageous elegance, recalling the beautiful costumes in paintings by Vittore Carpaccio, yet whose youthful cut seemed to distort the heavy or bony limbs of their dilapidated bodies. Their wrinkled brows hinted at more than one deep thought worthy of Machiavelli and the wicked satisfaction of jaded old men, desecrating, at the cost of their gold coins, the delicate flowers of youth and beauty. Some seemed as happy as greenfly on roses; others declared, by their gloomy air, and the irreparable sadness displayed by an exhausted nature, their burden of vice; and all this with a use of colour, a spirit, a sureness of touch, a skill to marvel at; with a light trace of caricature arrested just in time, for painting is a serious thing and a motionless grimace soon becomes unbearable.
In one corner of this masterpiece was written a strange name, in Hungarian lettering, but possessing an Italianate resonance: Zichy.
Artist's Love - Mihály Zichy, 1861
Picryl
When I expressed my warm admiration for the work Beggrov simply replied: ‘Yes, it’s a Zichy,’ finding it quite natural that Zichy had produced a magnificent watercolour, and opened a drawer which contained several works in sepia by the young (thirty-year old) master, of a character so varied, so contrasting, that one might easily have attributed them to different hands.
Then came a scene achieving a most pathetic and heartbreaking effect: a poor family lost in the steppe. At the foot of a block of ice, an unfortunate woman exhausted with fatigue, gripped by the cold, scourged by the wind, blinded by snow, had sought temporary and insufficient shelter. Seized by the intense cold, death has succeeded that irresistible desire for sleep, which is rather the effect of freezing than the onset of slumber; the nose is pinched, the eyelids distorted, the mouth frozen in its last breath, having yielding a final chilled sigh. Beside the mother, lies a small child extended in death, half wrapped in rags, and drawn in foreshortened view, with incredible boldness and success. A more robust young lad of thirteen or fourteen years, whose lively young veins have better resisted the fatal torpor, bends over his mother; anxious, distraught, he is shaking her in wild terror, and calling to her with passionate tenderness, attempting to wake her from this stubborn slumber beyond comprehension. One feels that he has never before witnessed death, and yet from his inward fear, from his secret horror, one may guess that he has scented its presence. His beloved mother has suddenly scared him as a spectre might, a corpse has replaced her body, and a white shroud will soon have covered all.
Next is Doge Marino Faliero’s wife, listening with dreamy interest to a young virtuoso playing the dulcimer before her, in a rich Venetian apartment opening onto a balcony with columns and trefoils in the Lombardic or Moorish style. Zichy, like Gustave Doré, has a lively feeling for the Middle Ages; he knows the architecture, furnishings, armour, costumes, and proportions, and reproduces them not by a painful and laborious imitation of the antique, but in a free and light way, as if the models were posed in front of his eyes, or as if he had lived in intimate familiarity with them. He does not emphasis, as Doré does, the grotesque and fantastic element, but renders all the more willingly the elegant aspects of his subject, while avoiding that genre involving troubadours and chivalry à la Louis de Marchangy.
A third design confused me utterly. The previous two recalled, one the sentimental pathos of Ary Scheffer and Octave Tassaërt, the other Théodore Chassériau’s etchings of The Moor of Venice, while neither resembled the large watercolour of the Florentine orgy. That which was before my eyes gave me the illusion of viewing one of the best, most lively and most spiritual sepias produced by Gavarni. Here was an officer of the Spahis or the Chasseurs d’Afrique at the moment of receiving with a most martial indifference, the farewell words of a tender beauty, who cried and sobbed on his shoulder in a dolorous pose guaranteed to move one; the Spahi, a Ulysses forever leaving, and well-accustomed to the complaints of Calypso abandoned on her garrisoned island, suffered the warm dew of tears, falling upon his arm like rain, with a bored, patient, dreary air, flicking with the nail of his little finger at the white ash formed at the end of his cigarette, his foot curved inward like a man who no longer has any regard for elegance. One cannot imagine the spirit, finesse, and sparkle of this light colour-wash, drawn from the end of the brush with an incredible sureness of hand, on the finest piece of textured watercolour-paper available.
From Gavarni we pass to Goya, that whimsical creator of Los Capricos, with The Wedding Night, another of Zichy’s drawings. An old man has married a beautiful but poor young girl, and it is time for bed; the husband is unfastening piece by piece, not only his clothes, but several portions of his body. The wig, once removed, has revealed a bald and gleaming skull, such as Trappist monks polish beneath their fingers (apocryphally); a glass eye, placed in a glass of water, has left a black cavity like to that in which the graveyard worm makes its home; the imitation jaws of his false teeth, set on the night table, yawn hideously, and simulate Death’s naked sneer. Nothing is more frightening than this ivory grimace, separated from its mouth, lipless and smiling all alone in its corner. It makes one think of that dreadful vision of Edgar Allan Poe’s imagining: ‘the teeth of Berenice’ (see his short story ‘Berenice’).
The poor child, who had thought she was simply marrying an old man, and had overcome her virginal repugnance by thinking of her old mother who would be granted an easier life, and her younger sister saved from vice, recoils in terror at the sight of this spectre, a picture of lust and senility, bony and more than ready to join the host of the dead, extending trembling gouty hands towards her. She has leapt from the bed, and the reflection of the lamp betrays beneath the veil of her cambric nightgown the sweet, pure contours of her charming body, bathed in a modest shadow which nevertheless fails to hide her beauty. While, if executed by another hand, the subject of the ‘marriage bed’ might prove vulgar, any crudeness vanishes here in its sombre imaginative details, producing a powerful and original effect. If I have been forced to provide analogues, so as to grant Paris some idea of a painter unknown there, it is not a question of pastiche, copying, or imitation. Zichy is a spirited character who finds all within himself; he has never encountered, on the path of art, the masters whom he seems to resemble. He is unaware, even, of some of those names.
— ‘How is it that Zichy failed to send anything to the Universal Exposition (the first of the ten World Fairs held in Paris, that of 1855)’ I asked Beggrov, ‘such that we have seen neither compositions engraved by him, nor encountered a single one of his paintings or drawings in any collection? Has jealous Russia kept the secret to herself and retained her monopoly on a talent so fine, new, and strange.’
— ‘Yes’, Beggrov replied, calmly, ‘Zichy works mainly for the court and the city; none of his drawings remain long in my shop, and if today you have viewed a few gathered together, it is mere coincidence. The officials were not ready to receive them. The Florentine Orgy will be removed this evening, and your visit is most timely.’
I left the store, and like La Fontaine who, amazed by a recent reading of Baruch (the Book of Baruch is part of the Biblical apocrypha, supposedly written by the prophet Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch ben Neriah), stopped everyone he met crying; ‘Have you read Baruch?’ I began every conversation with the question: ‘Do you know Zichy?’
— ‘Certainly’, my interlocutor always replied, and one day Monsieur Lvov, the director of the Conservatory of Drawing and Painting, said: ‘If you wish to meet him, the thing is easily arranged.’
There is a sort of club in St. Petersburg called ‘the Friday Society’ composed of artists, which meets, as its name suggests, every Friday. Its location varies, each member receiving the rest in turn until the list of names is exhausted; then the honour of hosting the event passes to the next. Lamps with mantles are ranged on a long table, covered with vellum or canvas, cardboard, pencils, pastels, pots of watercolours, sepia, Indian ink, and, as Eugène Scribe might say in a stage-direction, ‘all that is necessary for drawing.’ Every member attending must execute a line-drawing, a plain or tinted sketch, or a watercolour during his visit, which remains with the Company and whose sale, directly or by lottery, augments an emergency fund for unfortunate or temporarily embarrassed artists; cigars and papirosi, as cigarettes are called in St. Petersburg, bristle, like arrows in their quivers, from holders made of carved wood or varnished earthenware, placed between the desks, so that each artist, without interrupting his labours, can obtain a Havana, or a papirosa, whose smoke soon blurs the landscape or figure being executed. Glasses of tea are passed around along with a few petit-fours; one swallows the hot drink in small sips and rests for a while in conversation. Those who feel less than inspired rise and observe the work of others, and often return to their seat spurred on by emulation, and illuminated with a sudden glow.
At about one in the morning a light supper is served, at which the frankest cordiality reigns, inspiring discussions on art, travel stories, ingenious paradoxes, mad jests or one of those drawings, verbal caricatures truer than comedy, the secret of which the constant observation of nature grants to artists, and which provoke irresistible laughter, then each person departs, having produced a fine piece of work — sometimes a masterpiece — and having
been entertained, which is rarer still. I would like to see a similar society established in Paris, where artists, generally meet each other so infrequently and know each other only through their rivalry.
I was granted the honour of being admitted to the Friday Society, and it was at one of these meetings that I saw Zichy for the first time.
That evening, the Friday gathering, in Wassili-Ostroff, took place at the home of Andrei Lavezzari, a cosmopolitan painter, who had seen and drawn everything. Watercolours covered the walls, in which I recognised the Alhambra, the Parthenon, Venice, Constantinople, the pylons of Karnak, and the tombs of Lycia; walls often half-hidden by the gigantic leaves of tropical plants, with which the greenhouse temperatures reigning in Russian apartments allow the decoration of interiors.
A young man, aged thirty or so, with long blond hair, falling in disorderly waves; bluish-grey eyes, full of fire and spirit; a lightly curling beard, and pleasant and gentle features, was standing near a table, arranging his paper, his colouring brushes, and glass of water; he responded with a silvery laugh, a truly childish laugh, to a joke that one of his comrades had just addressed to him. It was Zichy.
We were introduced. I expressed to him, as best as I could, the deep admiration inspired in me by his Florentine Orgy and the other drawings of his I had seen at Beggrov’s. He listened with a visible air of pleasure, unable to doubt my sincerity, combined with a modest surprise which was assuredly unfeigned, as if he were saying to himself: ‘Am I indeed so great an artist as that?’ Zichy is not unaware of his talent, but he fails to attach to it the importance that he should. He believes easy that which he achieves easily, and is a little surprised when one enthuses about something that only cost him three or four hours of work while smoking and chatting. A stroke of genius is swiftly dealt — when one possesses genius, and Zichy does.
He did me the honour of improvising a design on a subject taken from Le Roi Candaule (Gautier’s short story published in 1844) not unprecedented for a tale that has already inspired a statue by James Pradier and a painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme. The moment selected was that in which Nyssia, unable to endure the fact of two living mortals knowing the secret of her charms, introduces Gyges to the bridal chamber, and directs his dagger towards the breast of the sleeping King Candaules. Beneath the swift and sure hand of the artist, a splendid Graeco-Asian interior was created as if by magic. The Heraclid monarch, muscular as an athlete, was shown as already collapsed on the cushions, while Nyssia, pale and slender, like a statuette carved from a column of Parian marble, let fall her last garment, in a voluptuous gesture, rendered terrible by its meaning, being the agreed signal for murder; the doryphore (knife-bearer) Gyges is advancing as stealthily as a tiger, convulsively clutching the cold steel against his chest. The pencil moved unhesitatingly, as if it copied an invisible model.
Meanwhile, the other members of the Friday Club were also working with astonishing ardour and alacrity: Nikolai Sverchkov drew, in coloured crayon, a horse resting its head, amicably, against its companion’s neck. Like Horace Vernet, Alfred de Dreux, and Achille Giroux, Sverchkov excels at delineating the patterns on the satiny rumps of thoroughbred horses; he has an admirable knowledge of the taut muscles of their hocks; he knows how to weave the veins on their hot necks, and make flame glow from their pupils and nostrils, but has a weakness for the little horses from the Ukraine, dishevelled, hairy, ungroomed, the little servants of the moujiks; he paints them harnessed to a povoska (cart), telega (dray) or sled, hauling it along, amidst snow and ice, through fir woods whose branches are bent by frost. One feels that he loves these brave animals, so sober, so patient, so courageous, so hard to weary; he is a Laurence Sterne to these good beasts, and the pages of A Sentimental Journey concerning the dead ass are no more touching than one of his sketches. I found there, delineating, in sepia, the foamy waters of a little waterfall bubbling over stones, an old friend of mine, Pharamond Blanchard, whom I had not encountered in Paris, but had passed many an hour with in Madrid, Smyrna, and Constantinople; it was necessary for me visit St. Petersburg in order to meet with him again, after six years apart.
Andrei Popov, the Russian Teniers, was sketching, with charming naivety, a scene of peasants drinking their tea; Andrei Lavezzari was attempting an araba (carriage), harnessed to oxen, navigating the narrow streets of an oriental city; while Adolf Charlemagne (Sharleman), the artist who created those just and true views of St. Petersburg which may be admired in Daziaro’s shop-window, had added, on his own authority, an island to Lake Maggiore and was covering it with enchanting buildings, the construction of which would ruin the Borromeo princes, despite their wealth. A little further on, Lvov, the director of the Conservatory of Drawing and Painting, had illuminated, with a warm ray of sunlight, the public square of Tbilisi. Prince Maxintoff was portraying a squad of firefighters, in foreshortened aspect, from whom sped droshkys, hugging the walls with their wheels in haste. An Italian, Luigi Premazzi, who knew how, in his watercolours, so transparent and so warm, to transfer the level of interest provided by the traghetto (landing-stage) of the Piazetta in Venice to St, Peterburg’s equivalent in front of the Admiralty, was working on a sketch of the Fontanka Canal that Canaletto or Guardi would have been happy to sign; while, to render, in wholly oriental and magical hues, the Byzantine magnificence of the Kremlin and its colourful churches like to Hindu pagodas, Premazzi, had shown the elegant columns of a monastery’s porch, highlighting its white facade against the blue background of a lake. Hans Hoch was completing the head of a woman, combining the pure Roman type, beloved by Louis-Léopold Robert, with a measure of Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s grace. Ludwig Ruhl, with a lead pencil and a piece of cotton wool, was merging the vaporous seascapes of Théodore Gudin with those of Ivan Aivazovsky; Ruhl who, when supper is over, knows how to appear before his friends as, in turn, Macaluso (the illusionist) or Henry Monnier (the caricaturist and actor), if he is not running his agile fingers over the keyboard, playing a tune from the latest opera or improvising some other.
I, in turn, was obliged to draw something, since no non-artist is normally admitted to the society, with the exception of Monsieur Eugene I. Mussard (secretary to Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, and founder of an arts club), who is exempted from having to do so, in recognition of his taste, spirit, and learning, and on the express condition that he will converse. A head in pencil, with a few flowers and strands of straw in the hair, was seen to pass for an Ophelia and indulgently admitted as an offering, and in that little Friday group I preferred not to be thought a philistine; at each meeting I attended, I had a place at the painter’s table, and my scribbles became additions to the common portfolio.
However, Zichy was moistening his paper thoroughly and beginning to create those plays of light and shadow, that he contrasts so skilfully, when supper was announced. A macaroni dish of exquisite succulence and irreproachable local flavour appeared in the place of honour. A charming profile of an Italian lady, hanging on the wall, perhaps explained its classic perfection.
Next day I received a letter from Zichy in which he told me that having re-read Le Roi Candaule he had torn his drawing into a thousand pieces — the barbarian, the vandal! At the same time, he invited me to dinner at his house, in order to show me, while waiting for the soup, works more worthy of being seen, and capable of justifying somewhat the good opinion of him I had expressed. To the letter a little plan was attached, in his hand, intended to help me find his residence, a precaution which was in no way superfluous, given my perfect ignorance of the Russian language. Following the plan, and employing the four words which form the basis of any dialogue between the foreigner and the isvochtchik: pryama (forward), leva (left), prava (right), and stoy (stop) I arrived, successfully, at the Voznesensky Bridge, not far from Zichy’s dwelling.
Despite the reserve that I have always imposed on myself during my travels, I will introduce the reader beside me to Zichy’s house, without seeking to abuse the hospitality offered: if we halt at the threshold of the inner vestibule, we can, it seems, half-open the workshop door. Zichy will pardon us for bringing him visitors who have not been presented to him in the customary manner.
Every Russian apartment in Russia starts with a cloakroom of some kind, where each guest hands their overcoat to a servant who hangs it on a coat rack; then one takes off one’s galoshes, as in the Orient one removes one’s slippers at the entrance to a mosque or selamlik (reception room). The line of slippers in the foreground, which so surprised Parisians on first viewing Jean-Léon Gérôme’s painting Prayer in the House of the Arnaut Chief (shown at the Paris Salon of 1857), may be found, in St. Petersburg, in every anteroom, where the master of the house is wealthy and powerful, famous, or simply kind; which tells you that there is always an abundant line of footwear in Zichy’s cloakroom. However, that day not a single pair of galoshes, fur-lined boots, or felt-slippers was present beneath the rack of overcoats. Zichy had closed his door to others so that we might talk freely.
First of all, I crossed a fairly large living-room, in which a fine exhibit of hunting trophies occupied one of the walls. There were guns, rifles, knives, game-bags, and powder horns suspended from stag’s heads, grouped alongside the pelts of lynxes, wolves, and foxes, Zichy’s victims or models. One might have thought oneself in the home of a dedicated hunter, or at the very least a sportsman, if a painting full of shadows à la Rembrandt and representing a prophet in his cave; a preliminary sketch of the Hémicycle des Beaux-Arts by Paul Delaroche, engraved by Louis Pierre Henriquel-Dupont; and a copy of The Capture of the Smala by Horace Vernet, in black and white, had not attested, along with some empty picture-frames awaiting their canvases, that one was in fact in the home of an artist.
Vases containing broad-leaved hot house plants were lined up against the window, undoubtedly to maintain the memory of green, a colour that vanishes from Russia for eight months of the year, which a painter, more than any other, has need of doing. In the middle of the room was a large work-table, ready for the Friday gatherings.
A second much smaller room followed. A double-sofa furnished its two sides, and towards the back of the room met, at a blunt angle, one of these elegant openwork partitions similar to a choir or parlour grille, a masterpiece of traditional carpentry, where wood, rather than wrought-iron, had been carved to form foliage, volutes, trellises, columns, clover-leaves, arabesques and caprices of all kinds; ivy and other climbing plants, whose bases were hidden in planters, trailed their natural foliage alongside the sculpted kind, to produce the most charming effect in the world.
By means of such pretty partitions, punched out with an implement, as is a fish-slice or paper-lace, one can semi-isolate oneself in the centre or corner of a living room; one can make of the space a bedroom, an office, a boudoir; a retreat, as the writers of Gothic novels say; one sets oneself apart without being secretive, and can immerse oneself in the general atmosphere of the apartment.
On the consoles formed by ornamental projections, stood copies of those two slender statuettes by Joseph- Michel-Ange Pollet, Morning Star and Night, moulded in stearin, and, behind the grille, we saw, attached to the wall, costumes characteristic of the Cherkessians, Lezgins, Circassians, and Cossacks from the Caucasian border, which composed, in the shadows, with their varied colours, a rich and warm background, against which the fine trellis-work of the partition was highlighted.
On the side walls, I noted The Battle of the Huns and The Destruction of Jerusalem, magnificent German engravings based on the Wilhelm von Kaulbach frescoes (not extant), that adorn the walls of the Neues Museum staircase, in Berlin, placed above a row of medallions in pastel, portraits of the members of the Friday Club, drawn by Zichy and, opposite them, The Assassination of the Duke de Guise, depicted by Paul Delaroche, some studies, a few works in plaster and some other minor items.
In the room at the rear, where Zichy received us, my eye was first attracted by a suit of armour, made for a child of the sixteenth century, on the mantlepiece, where philistines would place a clock. The usual mirror had been advantageously replaced, to satisfy the same taste, by a cosmopolitan panoply of weapons: Toledan swords, Damascene blades, Kabylian flissas, Turkish yatagans, Javanese kriss, daggers, and rifles with long nielloed barrels and butts encrusted with turquoise and coral. A second exhibit, composed of quivers, bows, blunderbusses, pistols, Georgian helmets with chain-mail gorgets, steel hookahs from Khorasan, Persian support-forks for muskets, African assegais, and a host of other objects that a love of the picturesque had brought together, covered an entire wall of the room — Zichy is a habitué of the Schchukin-Dvor market in St. Petersburg, and that in Moscow; in Constantinople, he could scarcely bear to quit the market for weaponry; he has a passion for such things, he seeks them out, some he buys some he barters for, exchanging them for one of his sketches; he obtains them, and as long as he unearths some barbaric, ferocious, and singular means of destruction he eventually makes his way home. By displaying all this bric-a-brac, Zichy proclaims like Rembrandt: ‘Behold my collection of antiquities.’
The other wall, at right angles to the first, is occupied by a polyglot library, testifying to the artist’s taste and learning; those of one who has read, in the original, almost all the masterpieces of European literature. The other two walls are pierced by windows, since the room occupies an angle of the house. They present, in the space between the windows, only minor objects unworthy of description.
Yet bored perhaps with this somewhat overlong description, you will doubtless say: ‘You promised to show us Zichy’s workshop, and up to now have only inventoried three more or less picturesquely furnished rooms.’ This is not for lack of good will on my part, but rather that Zichy has no studio, neither he nor any other St. Petersburg artist. The practice of painting was unforeseen in this city, which is nevertheless the Athens of the North; the house-builders failed to consider it; art must lodge where it can, and often seeks in vain, in some bourgeois apartment, the place to set up an easel, and a suitable patch of daylight; though neither the space nor means to construct a studio are lacking.
Zichy was working at a lectern, at the corner of a table near the window, hastily profiting from the pale remains of the day. He was finishing a large drawing in Indian ink, destined to be engraved. It portrays Werther (see Goethe’s epistolatory novel ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’) at the supreme moment of suicide. Charlotte’s virtuous lover having condemned his love as culpable and impossible of success, is preparing to carry out the sentence he has handed himself. On a table with a tapestry covering, a kind of tribunal before which Werther is seated, deliberating over his case, of which he himself is the judge, a half-exhausted lamp is burning, witness of this nocturnal debate. The artist has represented Werther upright, like a magistrate passing verdict, his mouth closed, its lines severe after having pronounced judgement, his delicate hand, that of a dreamer and idler, seeking among his papers for the butt of his pistol.
His face, illuminated from below by the glow of the lamp, has the disdainful serenity of expression of a man certain now of escaping moral torment, already looking at life as if from beyond it. We know how little the long, powdered, brushed-back hair, and fashions of seventeen eighty-nine, lend themselves to tragic expression. However, Zichy has found a way to make of his Werther, despite the vignettes of that age, and the celebrated blue tailcoat, an ideal, poetic and stylish creation. The vigorous effect is worthy of Rembrandt; the illumination from below, in striking the objects depicted, produces unexpected plays of light and shadow, imbuing everything with a truly magical air of fantasy; behind Charlotte’s lover a shadow, like that of a phantom, rises to the ceiling The spectre seems to stand ready to replace the man about to vanish. One cannot imagine, apropos this drawing, the powerful depth of colour obtained with Indian ink, usually so cold in hue.
As we said, Zichy’s genius is multi-faceted: you believe you know him, assign him a ranking, manner, genre; suddenly he sets before your eyes a new work that confounds you, and renders your appreciation of him incomplete. Who would have expected, after Werther, three large still lifes in watercolour, representing a fox, a wolf and a lynx, whose skins hang in his living room, and which he himself has slain? Neither Antoine-Louis Barye, nor Louis Jadin, nor Eugène Delacroix could do better. This skill alone would be enough to render him illustrious in Paris, and it is one of Zichy’s lesser talents; here is a truth of tone, a scientific apprehension, a freedom of touch, a happiness of execution, an understanding of the nature of each subject, of which one had no idea. Each creature has, in death, retained its character. The fox, eyes blinking, the muzzle more tapered than usual, with a few fine wrinkles at the corners of its jaws, seems to be meditating on a supreme ruse which has failed. The wolf bares its fangs, the gums visible, as if it seeks, as a wild animal will, to bite at the bullet which has pierced it through. The lynx is sublime in its ferocity, aggression, and impotent rage: its horrible grimace, its convulsed rictus smile, reaches to the eyes where glazed pupils show, forming furrows in the flesh like those carved by sardonic laughter; it is like some heroic savage, treacherously slain by a white hunter wielding an unknown weapon, whose death throes express its contempt.
Each of these watercolours has occupied no more than a day’s work. The rapid putrefaction of his models’ carcasses demands this celerity of Zichy, which forces him, however, to sacrifice or relinquish nothing. His eye is so sure, his hand so certain, that every stroke of the brush counts.
If, on this showing, you thought to classify Zichy as a painter of animals, you would be strangely in error; he is just as much a painter of history: examine, instead, these magnificent compositions in pen, representing ancient Muscovite battles and the establishment of Christianity in Russia, works of his youth, where one feels, as yet, the German influence of his master, Ferdinand Waldmuller. If I were to claim that these drawings beautiful in style, heroic in manner, abundant in their inventiveness, were works of Kaulbach himself, it would not surprise you. I doubt that even Kaulbach could have displayed such vivid and ferocious barbarity in such a composition of Tartar warriors, where a lack of historical evidence allows the artist’s imagination complete latitude. These drawings, most precise in their detail, would only need to be increased in size to act as excellent cartoons for the execution of frescoes on the walls of some palace or public building.
What say you to those severe compositions which, exhibited in Jean-Baptiste Goupil’s window, engraved in the manner of Peter von Cornelius, or Fritz Overbeck, appearing as if they had originated from the serious Dusseldorf school, are followed by an airy fantasy, a dream of impossible love, flying through the sky, borne, by a chimera with curly black hair, from a pencil as delicate, as light as that of Vincent Vidal? A pink cloud, sculpted on the azure by the capricious breath of libertines? ‘Fine!’ you would exclaim, ‘our young artist is a modern Watteau, a Boucher with an English elegance and the charm of the Book of Beauty (an annual edited by the Countess of Blessington); the burin of John Robinson or Edward Finden demands his presence.’ That would certainly be a rash judgment because Zichy, laughing with that characteristic fresh childish laugh of his, would immediately take from his portfolio a dark sepia toned sketch, improvised one evening, by lamplight, which equals in sinister force the most violent and dramatic of masters.
The scene is set in a cemetery; it is night. Faint moonlight shines through banks of cloud heavy with rain. Black wooden crosses; funeral monuments; pillars truncated or surmounted by an urn veiled by mourning crepe; spirits of the dead extinguishing the torch of life beneath their feet; all the dismal variations on sepulchral architecture are silhouetted darkly against a horizon full of mysterious terrors.
In the foreground, in a deserted patch of earth, two pickaxes are planted in the clay. A monstrous trio busy themselves in nameless work, like the witches in Macbeth. Grave-robbers, hyenas with human faces, who pillage tombs to steal from the dead their last treasures, a woman’s gold ring, a child’s silver rattle, a medallion of a lover or his beloved, a reliquary of the faithful, have unearthed a rich coffin, whose lid, lined with black velvet trimmed with silver braid, has revealed, on opening, a young woman, her head resting on a lace pillow. The shroud drawn aside shows her with chin on chest, lost in one of these eternal meditations which inhabit the grave’s silence, an arm folded over a heart that has forever ceased beating and that the worm is dumbly invading. One of the thieves, with bestial mask, and a convict’s form, wearing a filthy cap on his head, holds a candle-stub which he shelters with his hand against the night wind. Its flickering light falls, wan and livid, on the pallid corpse. Another robber, half buried in the pit, whose fierce features produce the effect of a bestial head among snouting swine, raises in his paws the slender hand pale as wax that the corpse surrenders to him with spectral indifference. He pulls from her finger, separated from the others and broken perhaps by this sacrilegious act, a precious ring, her wedding ring, no doubt!
A third scoundrel, aloft the mound of earth dug from a recent gave, listens, making an acoustic horn of his cap, to the distant bark of some dog disturbed by the gang’s activity, or to the barely perceptible step of a guard making his rounds on the pavement. Ignoble fear grips his face darkened by shadows, while his trousers hanging in filthy folds, damp with dew, heavy with the soil of cemeteries, betray the limbs and joints of an ape. One can take the horrors imagined by Romanticism no further.
This drawing which I praise, all Paris shall see; it is done for myself: Zichy honours me with his masterpiece and a masterpiece it is (the work is now in the Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest). Contemplating it, I think of Rembrandt’s The Raising of Lazarus, The Suicide by Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, Hamlet and Horatio with the Gravediggers by Eugène Delacroix; and the memories of those dreadful images harm his not at all. What magical effects of light, of chiaroscuro, how powerful a result obtained by such simple means! In the foreground a little red sepia, in the background some shading in Indian ink. The richest palette could not produce so fine a work.
To this frightening scene, which one might take at first sight for a banquet of ghouls, the artist opposes a Bacchante surprised by a satyr, in a style so pure, so like that of antiquity, that you wonder from what intaglio, what cameo, what Pompeiian fresco, what Greek vase once studied, this beautiful group is drawn.
From antiquity we return to the Middle Ages with a composition entitled The Jewish Martyrs. In this drawing, of major importance, Zichy has depicted in a manner as picturesque as it is profound the political and religious persecution which, on the pretext of avenging the death of a deity, was waged so fiercely against the unhappy people of Israel. In the depths of some cellar or subterranean storehouse, an inadequate refuge, a precarious hiding place, a Jewish family is gathered, forming a group expressive of desolation and terror. The solid doors of the vault, despite their bolts, bars and locks, have burst under external pressure, and the panels thrown from their hinges have fallen across the stairs. A flood of light has entered the mysterious retreat and betrays its secrets. Representatives of the spiritual and temporal powers appear at the top of the steps lit by this dazzling brilliance; the cross and the sword gleam in the sudden light, which has dazed the eyes of the wretched Jews, driven to their last hiding place. Advancing quietly, impassively, as implacably and fanatically as dogma, amidst a tumultuous squad of soldiers and a procession of monks, comes the justiciary, the lord, the feudal baron who has lent to the Church the material force at his disposal, and delivered the bodies; the Inquisition will deal with their souls. He is haughty and proud, in his doublet stiff as a breastplate, a striking personification of the Medieval. A monk, broad and square of face, displays, despite a girth like that of Brother Jean des Entommeures (in Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel), a powerful and irresistible character, wearing his tonsure like a diadem: one feels that he represents something forceful indeed. Behind him the flat mask of a beadle, squashed by the fist of superficiality, bends forward, to look with an eye full of hatred and bestial curiosity upon the frail human brood surprised in its nest and trembling like doves beneath the gaze of a goshawk. This man, no less cruel than the others, will not fail to attend the auto-da-fé, and smile to see scorched flesh shrivel in the flames. But the truly frightening figure in the painting, on which the whole concept hangs, is a monastic spectre, shrouded in the folds of its robe, the hood engulfing, like the mouth of a Gothic worm, a wasted, emaciated head, livid in colour despite the shadow that bathes it, and as terrible as that of the monk, on the left, in Francisco Herrera the Elder’s Saint Basil (in the Louvre). A brightness like the gleam of a hawk’s beak reveals his thin, bony nose. A vague, dim phosphorescence lights the underpart of his hood, indicating the eyes, where the life of this dead face has taken refuge, of this living skull clothed with skin in which so many fierce passions coldly seethe, revealing for their part the unified idea which commands the whole.
The father of the family, a majestic Jew, whose large Oriental features recall the Biblical prophets, finding that all hope is lost, has risen to his full height; he refuses to stoop to useless lies, and his half-open simarre (flowing robe) allows a view of the pair of phylacteries over his heart, wherein are written in Hebrew lettering verses of the Old Testament and sentences from the Talmud. He will adhere to his faith, the ancient faith of Abraham and Jacob, and will die ignominiously, a martyr without a halo, for Jehovah, who is alike the God of his persecutors. His wife, once beautiful like Rachel, whom terror and sorrow have withered without defacing her noble features, bends backwards with arms clasped, her eyes closed, as if not to behold the dread reality; on her knees her grandson rests,
sleeping, amidst the tumult, the peaceful sleep of childhood, an infant as beautiful as the baby Jesus in the manger. The young mother, of celestial beauty, sinks against her father, hair dishevelled, head bowed upon her breast, arms inert, robbed of strength, thought, and will, fainting with terror. Her pure Hebrew features realise all that one might have dreamed Rebecca in Ivanhoe to be (see Walter Scott’s novel of that name).
In the foreground, in a daringly foreshortened pose, a thunderstruck young boy rolls about in fear. A little behind him on the right crawls his grandfather, in whom is concentrated the possessive instinct of his race; he seeks to defend, with aged trembling hands and arched body, the gold and silver vessels, that the Israelites did not neglect to take as they departed Egypt; at this supreme moment, he thinks only of one thing, to save what is his.
The execution of this drawing is broad yet finished; paper-stump and crayon are the means used. Bright, silvery whites are opposed to velvety blacks like those in the finest English engravings. The Jewish Martyrs would make a magnificent print, and that is what is it is destined for, unless I am mistaken.
If Ernest Meissonier practised the art of watercolour, he would take after none other than Zichy. I saw a work by Zichy depicting a lansquenet (a landsknecht, a German mercenary soldier), dazed with drink, his long grey moustaches drooping over the table, on which he has set down his helmet, beside a jug of beer and a large empty glass; a work which could well adorn one of those snuff-boxes the lids of which depict Frederick the Great; but this is not the patiently worked finish of a miniaturist, everything is indicated by touches, by flat strokes, with a rare ease and firmness of application. The hand stroking the moustache is a masterpiece; the phalanges, the ossicles, the nails, the nerves, the veins, even a soldier’s rough tanned skin, all are there. The cuirass creates a mirage of metallic reflections, while the friction of iron on its leather, abraded by long use, has left a bluish stain. In the soldier’s eyes, the luminous points, the pupils, the irises, barely as big as the head of a pin, are easily discernible; no detail of his face illuminated by the sun, and reddened by wine, is omitted or sacrificed. His microscopic visage possesses the powerful contours of an oil painting of regular size, and gazing at it for a few minutes one knows the character of this man through and through. He is brutal but good-natured with a touch of cunning, a hearty drinker, and a great marauder. He has slain a few enemies no doubt, but he is an Achilles of the chicken-run, and how often has his rapier been used merely as a spit!
No artist’s output looks less like Meissonier than that of Eugène Lami: Zichy reproduces the effects of both equally well, and what is singular is that he has never seen any of those two artists’ works, artists who are so different from one another. His innate flexibility and the requirements of the subject alone lead him to these differing styles. His watercolour sketches depicting coronation scenes are marvels of spirit, grace and aristocratic elegance. Never has a painter of the high life rendered processions, ceremonies and gala performances with greater brilliance, richness
and pomp; the artist’s brush is alive when expressing sparkling and joyful festive tumult; he is stylish when required to painting the interior of a Byzantine church with gold mosaics, and velvet curtains, against which august and sacred heads are highlighted, like icons. His sketch of the auditorium of the Bolshoi theatre in Moscow, during an official event, is one of the most difficult demonstrations of covert skilfulness, that can be seen; the lines of perspective extend from the balcony; the curves of the tiered galleries are full of women glittering with diamonds, and high dignitaries adorned with orders and crosses; points of white and yellow gouache prick the flat areas of wash, and create a scintillating arc of gold and precious stones to dazzle the eye. A few precise facial details have captured the official and historical nature of the event, and all these beauties, all these magnificent personages bathe in a golden, diamantine, fiery atmosphere; an atmosphere illuminated by bright lighting, so difficult to render by means of mere paint.
Now, to complete my description, let me indicate Zichy’s work in emulation of Francis Grant, Edwin Landseer, Louis-Godefroy Jadin, Alfred de Dreux and other illustrators of the hunt. For a magnificent book designed to record such outings, offered to the Emperor of Russia, the artist has produced decorative borders in the most exquisite taste. Each page provides space to enumerate the kills, arranged so as to leave an ample margin. In each of these margins the artist has drawn diverse hunting scenes, overcoming, in the most ingenious ways, the difficulties that the border’s limitations presented. Here is a bear hunt, there that of lynx, elk, wolf, hare, blackcock, grouse, thrush, or snipe, all with the particular equipment required, and set in whatever landscape usually serves as its background: now there is a snow effect, now that of fog, a dawn or a dusk, a thicket or a heath, according to the retreats and habits of the animals involved. The wild creatures, beings of fur and feather, the thoroughbred horses, the purebred hounds, guns, knives, powder-horns, spears, nets, all the hunting gear, are delineated with finesse, truth, and incredible accuracy in a light tone that does not exceed the bounds of effective ornamentation, and harmonises with the silvery, red, or bluish landscape. Every hunt is conducted by a high official, by a nobleman, whose head no bigger than a fingernail is a delightful portrait in miniature. The album concludes with a measure of wit in the best taste. Among all these Nimrods, mighty hunters before God, Count A…who does not follow the chase, needed to appear. Zichy depicts him descending the palace steps, and advancing to meet the emperor, who is returning with the hunt. He thus appears in the hunting album without the artist departing from the truth.
I am obliged to halt there, without saying all I might; this hunting book alone, of twenty pages or so, requires a whole article, and yet I realise I have said nothing about the witches at the stake, or of Omphale, wearing a lion's skin in the pose of the Farnese Hercules, a charming symbol of grace mocking strength; but Zichy, like Gustave Doré, is a monstrous genius, a portentum (a prodigy), to use the Latin expression, an ever-erupting volcano of talent. My article is sadly incomplete; but I have written enough to make it clear that Zichy is one of the most astonishing individuals I have encountered since 1830, during a crucial period for art.
The End of Part V of Gautier’s ‘Travels in Russia’