ROBERT FREDERICK BLUM

AN APPRECIATION BY MARTIN BIRNBAUM

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NEW YORK BERLIN PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPANY 305 MADISON AVENUE 1013 ROBERT FREDERICK BLUM FROM A PAINTING BY WILLIAM M. CHASE CATALOGUE

OF A

MEMORIAL LOAN EXHIBITION OF THE WORKS OF ROBERT FREDERICK BLUM

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MARTIN BIRNBAUM

NEW YORK BERLIN PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPANY 305 MADISON AVENUE 1913 Thanks are due the institutions and col­ lectors who kindly consented to lend their possessions for this exhibition, and we are especially indebted to Mrs. Henrietta Haller, the sister of the artist, and William J. Baer, Esq., Robert Blum's devoted friend and executor, whose sympathetic co-operation made the collection of the works a possibility. It is hoped that from the proceeds of the sale of some of the pic­ tures a fund may be started with which to found a scholarship in memory of the artist, or to erect a suitable memorial.

Copyright, 1913, by Martin Birnbaum. ROBERT FREDERICK BLUM Born in Cincinnati, July 9,1857. Died at New York, June 8,1903. IN an unpublished letter to a friend who was about to enter an art school, Robert Blum wrote in a vein that is fashionable at this mo­ ment. "You know what I think of schools gen­ erally—they prove disastrous to the majority. I have come to look on them as I do on the schools where Spencerian penmanship is taught,—where you put up each letter in curl papers before you are expected to write a word. Good pictures are the best lessons you can get. My God! When I think of the few things I hugged to my heart and branded on my brain in those dark days when I was strug­ gling with appalling ignorance! Two pictures, —a Fortuny and a Boldini at an exhibition in Cincinnati, and which I saw probably three times,—the volume of Gazette des Beaux Arts in which cartoons of Baudry's work were reproduced, and which I was too timid to go to see more often than once in two weeks,—is all I can remember of cheering and helping me in that dreadful period of my life. They spoke to 3 me in a way that other canvases failed, and without knowing it then, I now realize that it was because they lacked that certain conven­ tionality of picture-making so apparent in all pictures. No sir! I can't help thinking that there is a great deal of nonsense in schools,— you are bound to come finally to the point of fighting out things for yourself and by your­ self. Why, then, not from the beginning by looking and searching out the lessons that any good picture contains, instead of having to do it after three or four years' schooling." This extract, quoted because it throws light on his career, is from one of his Japanese let­ ters, written in March 1891. He was then in his thirty-fourth year, and he recalls with bitter­ ness his boyhood days in Cincinnati, where his training began in a lithographic establishment. The experience gained there may have lent that touch of lightness which is essential for draw­ ing on stone, and which characterizes his su­ perb pastels. He attended the McMicken Art School of Design in his native city, and later, in 1876, he was a pupil of the Pennsylvania Acad­ emy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. For all practical purposes, however, Blum was an "auto-didakt," as one might infer from the above quotation. After Philadelphia, with its International Exposition, Cincinnati became impossible. He came to New York City in 1879, 4 and his original talent was warmly encouraged by Alexander W. Drake, in those days the art editor of Scribner's Magazine. In 188O he was enabled to make the first of many annual Eu­ ropean tours, and he reveled in the beauties of Venice, Madrid, Toledo, and Seville. Two years later the Society of Painters in Pastel, of which Blum became president, showed the first works in his favorite medium. Holland was visited in 1889, and in the same year "The Venetian Lace Makers," a painting now owned by the Cincinnati Museum, was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle and was crowned with a medal. The great dream of his life was realized on June 6, 1890, when he landed in Japan to carry out a commission to illustrate Sir Edwin Arnold's "Japonica." He was elected a member of the National Academy of Design in 1892, after the exhibition of "The Ameya," which is now owned by the Metropolitan Mu­ seum of Art. The "Letters from Japan" ap­ peared in Scribner's in 1893. His most famous works, the two friezes in old Mendelssohn Hall, were finished in 1898, and at the time of his death he was at work with A. B. Wenzell on what proved a fatal commission—a decoration for the New Amsterdam Theater. These are the main facts of a materially suc­ cessful and apparently unromantic life. But to his intimate and devoted friends, Robert 5 Blum's secluded career was a romance, with illness and suffering hanging like a great shadow over him, and the sensitive artist's dis­ satisfaction with even his finest achievements accentuating the pathos. His was a shy, affec­ tionate, boyish nature, playful and humorous, and it was with children that he felt most at home. He could only boast amusingly of being a godfather, for he never married, and in the midst of a voluminous correspondence he found time to make extended inquiries about the little Roberts and Robertinas named after him by admiring parents. He was never too busy to construct a balloon or draw caricatures for the Bacher and Chase children, and the enormous kite which he built and decorated while at sea on one of his European voyages is still remembered by those on board. He en­ tered into everything he did,—work or play,— with an intensity and enthusiasm which the Greeks appropriately called divine. When the Mendelssohn Hall friezes were being executed he was not satisfied with merely making innu­ merable studies from life, he modeled each of the figures and then shifted them about end­ lessly on an architectural setting before he could arrive at a final satisfactory decision. The same conscientious care was given to the decorations in Japanese style of his beautiful home in Grove Street, to the details of a mag- 6 azine article, or to the reproduction of a wash drawing. Reams of paper contain his minute instructions to the printers and process men who reproduced his letters from Japan. Small wonder that his instructions were religiously followed. He won their hearts with a genial humor which kept cropping out while he labor­ iously explained details to them. After de­ scribing, for instance, how the "Begging Priest" (Sir Edwin Arnold's "Japonica") was to be reproduced, he added: "Had him here all day, and after getting through with the draw­ ing he was asked to pray for the safe arrival of the picture in New York, which he did fervently and long . . . only I would ask as a favor, to cable the word yes when the drawings do reach you." From the very beginning, when Blum's Coney Island drawings were appearing in 1879, something definite and complete was recog­ nized in their quality. His best pencil draw­ ings, delicate, deft, and gemlike in their sharpness, were justly regarded as masterly. Every random stroke disclosed the artist. His admiration for the brilliant Spanish-French school, however, blinded many to the original and personal note in his work. "Blumtuny," he was chaffingly called. It is still pointed out that some of his scintillating Venetian canvases may pardonably be mistaken for Rico's. 7 Blum, however, was no slavish imitator. The virtuosity, freshness, and lively charm of the men he admired showed the young American what he was after, and he wisely accepted their accomplishment and tried to go further. At first he hoped that Japan would teach him the final lessons, but he soon saw his mistake. He signed his drawings with one or another of his various "jitsuin," but he never became as Jap­ anese as Emil Orlik, the gifted Bohemian artist who is now at work in the land of the cherry blossom. Blum undervalued everything he did, and his discontent is echoed in all his letters. "I have got away," he writes, "from being satis­ fied as I once was with merely the impression of a thing, and the worst of it is, I am no more satisfied with the result of what I am now doing." Originality was to come from within, and though Japan never taught him her great­ est lessons, she nevertheless gave him an op­ portunity to find himself in his pastels. These beautiful interpretations of the land he visited are very true and personal, and it is well to restore such works to the public consciousness at a time when we are in danger of forgetting that beauty and art existed before Gaugin, Van Gogh, or Cézanne. Blum had made original pastel sketches in Holland, he had copied the inimitable works of Degas, and the influence of Whistler, with whom he was intimate in 8 Venice, cannot be ignored. The two Americans went swimming and sketching together and used to take their coffee at Florian's, but Blum's originality was in no way affected. It may safely be claimed that his Japanese pastels were never excelled, if judged purely from the technical point of view—that is to say, from the way in which the medium is handled. With his little sticks of color he could make the flesh of a Geisha as silken as if he were using the precious oils of Bargue; he could breath, so to speak, on the tinted paper as gracefully and as delicately as Conder had done on ivory-colored silk; and he had the great Butterfly's taste and essential skill. Unexpected vivacious notes of brilliant intensity sparkle like jewels which are always magically placed, and the best of these works can be soberly described as delicious. A story is told which illustrates this quality. Once, when Blum was at work in the old Sher­ wood studios decorated by him with strutting peacocks, Oscar Wilde, then at the height of his celebrity, walked in and watched the progress of the artist. "Blum," he remarked, "your ex­ quisite pastels give me the sensation of eating yellow satin." The brilliant esthete would have felt flattered had he known that the Jap­ anese who saw Blum at work had experienced virtually the same original sensation. The ar­ tist tells about it in a long and intensely inter- 9 esting letter to his friend Jules Turcas, where he describes a day of his routine life in the lit­ tle house on "Being in Possession of Pleasure" Street in Tokio. Crowds used to collect while Blum made pastels in the open air. "After a long survey of both me and the work," he wrote, "I will hear them say, 'My!' or 'Oh! My!' It puzzled me at first, till Miake told me it was a term they use in admiration of a poem, picture, etc., and meant literally 'good enough to eat!' " Blum's handling of paint was not equally successful. In the first place the technique was too strongly reminiscent of the crisp flashing style of the Frenchmen and Spaniards whom we have already mentioned. Not infrequently a certain tightness which he disliked would creep into his finished canvases. The reason is not hard to discover. The artist disliked the medium. "Nasty," was the word he used, and a large painting was regarded by him as a piece of expensive oil-cloth. Nevertheless, if they will not rank with the best of his wonderful water-colors and pastels, the "Ameya" and the paintings once owned by Blum's devoted friend and patron, Alfred Corning Clark, are achieve­ ments worthy of great respect. Old Mendelssohn Hall, which, alas, had to be demolished to make way for a sky-scraper, contained the works which most people know 10 best, and it is to be hoped that the two friezes will find a permanent and appropriate resting- place. Their importance in the history of American mural decoration can certainly not be over-estimated. These great canvases dis­ play the patience, character, and talent of the man and much of his genius. He had studied his problem carefully, and his solution was eminently successful in many ways. It is ex­ traordinary that the note of joy should pre­ dominate in the work and life of a man who suffered such acute physical pain. His com­ positions are musical and rhythmical in feel­ ing, but the thrill of his smaller things is absent. His taste was perhaps too delicate and reserved for work on such a colossal scale. The lovely colors seem almost evanescent, and the charm­ ing freedom of the studies was often lost when the ultimate form of the first improvisation was determined upon or elaborated. Many of the single figures, however, possess tender idyllic grace and buoyancy and reflect the charm of their creator as nothing else does, ex­ cept his correspondence. In his charming letters to a host of friends we come most closely into touch with his rarely beautiful traits of character. He seems to have been a consistent idealist, with nothing mean in his make-up. When clever caricatures embellish the letters you know instinctively 11 that they are humorous little sketches inspired merely by a genial, witty nature. Friends bound him to his art and to his life, and when the short span allotted to him threatened to snap, it was the friends he would leave behind that he most thought of. In far-off Japan he would sit alone before his kerosene stove with Merry, his cat, on his lap, and talk to her, as old Sylvester Bonnard did to Hamilcar, about the distant loved ones, and especially about "Alf, the dear good fellow," who was "always doing things that go right plumb to the bottom of a fellow's heart!" His friends always feared that the curtain of death would fall prematurely, and it did. There was hardly time to bid him "Sayonara." Gelebt,—gestrebt, Gerungen,—bezwungen, Gestorben,—umworben.

That is the epitaph he would have chosen,— and perhaps it will some day be engraved on the monument which Robert Blum's admirers hope will be raised to his memory. MARTIN BIRNBAUM.

12 CATALOGUE

PASTELS

Lent by WILLIAM J. BAER, Esq. 1. Outskirts of Haarlem. 2. Girls Sewing. 3. Evening in Haarlem. 4. A Venetian Well.

Lent by ROBERT STERLING CLARK, Esq. 5. Canal in Haarlem, Holland. 6. Dutch Girl, Zandvoort. 7. A Landscape in Holland. 8. Little Dutch Girl. 9. Oude Mannen Huis, Zandvoort. (Old men's home.) 10. Living-room of the Oude Mannen Huis, Zandvoort. 11. Windmill, Haarlem. 12. The Gardens, Haarlem. 13. The Butcher, Haarlem. 14. Dutch Meadow-land. 15. In the Slaughtering Pen, Holland. 16. The Lagoons, Venice.

Lent by STEPHEN C CLARK, Esq. 17. Japanese Seascape. 18. A Geisha. 19. The Orange Fan. 20. Japanese Girl. 21. A Seascape. 22. The Actor. 23. Head of Japanese Girl. 24. On Japanese Waters. 25. A Geisha Making Up. 26. The Cherry Trees. 27. Study of a Japanese. 28. Study Head. 13 Lent by WALTER H. CRITTENDEN, Esq. 29. A Study.

Lent by N. E. MONTROSS, Esq. 30. A Gray Day in Venice.

Lent by MRS. JOHN JAY PHELPS. 31. Silvery Venice.

Lent by WILLIAM A. PUTNAM, Esq. 32. The Geisha. 33. A Scene in Holland.

Lent by Miss FLORENCE DE STEPHANO. 34. A Study Head. 35. A Portrait.

Lent by JULES TURCAS, Esq. 36. A Draped Figure.

PAINTINGS

Lent by MRS. OTTO BACHER. 37. Sewing. 38. Knitting, Holland. 39. The Gondolas.

Lent by MRS. WILLIAM M. CHASE. 40. Venetian Canal.

Lent by EDWARD S. CLARK, Esq. 41. Flower Vendor, Japan. 42. The Silk Merchant, Japan. 43. An Idyl of Summer.

Lent by STEPHEN C CLARK, Esq. 44. The Blind Man, Tokio. 45. The Court of a Spanish Inn, Madrid. 46. The Toy Vendor.

Lent by ROYAL CORTISSOZ, Esq. 47. Venetian Lace Makers. A Study. 14 Lent by WABTER H. CRITTENDEN, Esq. 48. Study of Two Heads. (For the decorations formerly in Mendelssohn Hall.)

Lent by ALEXANDER W. DRAKE, Esq. 49. A Japanese Girl.

Lent by WALTER C FLANDERS, Esq. 50. Spring. 51. Study for the Frieze in Old Mendelssohn Hall.

Lent by ALEXANDER M. HUDNUT, Esq. 52. Japanese Lady at her Toilet.

Lent by AUGUST F. JACCACI, Esq. 53. A Sketch in Venice.

Lent by WILLIAM MACBETH, Esq. 54. An Ideal Head.

Lent by CHARLES H. NIEHAUS, Esq. 55. A Spanish Scene. 56. A Study for the Lace Makers.

Lent by GEORGE D. PRATT, Esq. 57. Japanese Girl.

Lent by MRS. FRANK H. SCOTT. 58. Cà d'Oro; Grand Canal, Venice. Lent by Miss FLORENCE DE STEPHANO. 59. Cherry Blossoms. 60. A Japanese Temple. 61. The Library, Venice.

Lent by IRVING R. WILES, Esq. 62. A Study for the Lace Makers. 63. San Marco, Venice.

Lent by COOPER UNION MUSEUM FOR THE ARTS OF DECORATION, NEW YORK CITY. 64. Two paintings of Japanese Women.

Lent by MENDELSSOHN GLEE CLUB. 65. Decorative Circular Panel, "Allegretto." (Formerly in an anteroom of Mendelssohn Hall.) 15 WATER-COLORS

Lent by MRS. OTTO BACHER. 66. Purchasing Vegetables, Venice.

Lent by MRS. WILLIAM M. CHASE. 67. The Bead Stringer.

Lent by EDWARD S. CLARK, Esq. 68. Portrait of the Artist.

Lent by STEPHEN C. CLARK, Esq. 69. A Girl in Black. 70. A Spring Idyl.

Lent by the MISSES GERSON. 71. The Spinet.

Lent by MRS. WILLIAM H. GRAF. 72. The Opium Smokers. 73. The Boxers.

Lent by MISS CAROLINE C. HAYNES. 74. On the Beach. 75. A Japanese Dance. 76. A Glimpse of Japan.

Lent by ALEXANDER M. HUDNUT, Esq. 77. Venetian Boatmen. 78. A Japanese Street. 79. The Vase Decorator. 80. Algérienne.

4 Lent by MESSRS. M. KNOEDLER & Co. 81. At the Window.

Lent by GEORGE D. PRATT, Esq. 82. Wash-day.

Lent by MRS. ARTHUR WHITE SULLIVAN. 83. A Morning at Venice.

Lent by IRVING R. WILES, Esq. 84. A Look Toward the Sea. 16 DRAWINGS (Pencil, Wash, and Pen-and-ink)

Lent by MARTIN BIRNBAUM, Esq. 85. Sketch of Sir Edwin Arnold's Home in Japan. 86. Another view of the same. 87. Danjuro, the first actor in Japan, in various char­ acters. 88. The Tall Ladder of a Fire Station. 89. Where Saké is sold. (The above are reproduced in Sir Edwin Arnold's "Japonica.") 90. An early drawing from Scribner's. 91. A View of Athens. 92. The Gulf of Corinth. 93. A Grecian Landscape.

Lent by MRS. WILLIAM M. CHASE. 94. In a Rice-field. 95. A Little Clay Backyard. 96. A Street Scene, Enoshima. 97. "For it is Matsuri." 98. A Gateway. (The above are reproduced in Sir Edwin Arnold's "Japonica.") 99. Four drawings for "An Artist's Letters from Japan." 100. Illustrations for Scribner's Magazine.

Lent by RUFUS FRENCH, Esq. 101. A Japanese Lady.

Lent by the MISSES GERSON. 102. The Large Hood.

Lent by RORERT SCOVILLE, Esq. 103. A Japanese Tea-house.

Lent by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 104. Five early drawings for Scribner's Magazine. 105. Three drawings for "An Artist's Letters from Japan."

Lent by FREDERIC FAIRCHILD SHERMAN, Esq. 106. The Plank-way to Benten Cave—Enoshima. (Sir Edwin Arnold's "Japonica.") 17 Lent by Miss FLORENCE DE STEPHANO. 107. A Head.

Lent by JULES TURCAS, Esq. 108. Study of a Nude. 109. Portrait of Jules Turcas, Esq.

ETCHINGS

Lent by WILLIAM J. BAER, Esq. 110. The Hag.

Lent by MRS. WILLIAM M. CHASE. 111. A Difficult Place. (Signed and dated 1879.) 112. The Etcher. (William M. Chase, Esq., in his studio.) Lent by CINCINNATI MUSEUM ASSOCIATION, Cincinnati, Ohio. 113. Monday Morning, Holland. (Unsigned.) 114. Souvenir of Coney Island. (Signed and dated 1880.) 115. Head of a Girl, (unsigned.) 116. Men and Donkeys, Rome. (Signed and dated 1880.) 117. Profile of Japanese Girl. (Signed and dated 1879.) 118. An Illustration. (Signed and dated 1883.) 119. A Study Head. (Sketch of a gondola on the plate. Unsigned.) 120. Venetian Canal and Bridges. (Signed.) 121. Half-length Nude Figure of a Man. (Unsigned.) 122. Landscape with Trees. (Unsigned.) 123. Venetian Canal and Boats. (Unsigned.) 124. Lagune, with Steamers and Gondolas. (Signed, Venice, 1885.) 125. Gondola and Venetian Palace. (Signed.) 126. Profile, turned to the right. (Unsigned.) 127. The Lace Makers. (Signed and dated 1885.) 128. The Bead Stringers. (Signed and dated, Venice, 1886.) 129. Head of a Girl. (Unsigned.) Lent by Miss MINNIE GERSON. 130. Portrait of the Artist. Lent by Miss CAROLINE C. HAYNES. 131. The Connoisseur. 18 MISCELLANEOUS

Lent by WILLIAM J. BAER, Esq. 132. Group of Two Girls symbolizing "Summer." (Bronze in the Cincinnati Museum.) 133. Dancing Girl. (Study for "Moods of Music." Bronze in the Cincinnati Museum.)

Lent by WILLIAM M. CHASE, Esq. 134. Portrait of Robert Blum by William M. Chase.

Lent by CHARLES H. NIEHAUS, Esq. 135. Bust of Robert Frederick Blum by Charles H. Nie­ haus.

Lent by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 136. Caricature of Robert Blum by Sergeant Kendall.

137. The Case contains Original letters by Robert Blum addressed to his friends: Mrs. Otto Bacher, William J. Baer, Esq., Mrs. William M. Chase, Miss Minnie Gerson, Miss Virginia Gerson, and Jules Turcas, Esq. Many of these letters are embellished with drawings and caricatures. Manuscripts to Scribner's, dealing with the publication of his letters. Drawings made by Robert Blum for the Bacher children. Photographs of Robert Blum taken in his studio at various periods. Sir Edwin Arnold's "Japon­ ica." Scribner's Magazine containing "An Ar­ tist's Letters from Japan"; and various articles dealing with his work.

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