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Meissonier
by
“So you do not care for the picture?” asked the great artist.
“Me? Well, I guess not–not that picture!”
“Very well, Madam. I think–I think I’ll keep it for myself. I’ll place it on exhibition!” And the great artist looked out of the window in an absent-minded way, and hummed a tune.
This put another phase on the matter. Mrs. Mackay winced, and paid the price, which rumor says was somewhere between ten and twenty-five thousand dollars. She took the little canvas in her carriage and drove away with it, and what became of the only portrait of a woman painted by Meissonier during his later years, nobody knew but Mrs. Mackay, and Mrs. Mackay never told.
Meissonier once explained to a friend that his offense consisted in producing a faithful likeness of the customer.
The Mackay incident did not end when the lady paid the coin and accepted the goods. Meissonier, by the haughtiness of his manner, his artistic independence, and most of all, by his unpardonable success, had been sowing dragons’ teeth for half a century. And now armed enemies sprang up, and sided with the woman from California. They made it an international episode: less excuses have involved nations in war in days agone. But the enemies of Meissonier did not belong alone to America, although here every arm was braced and every tongue wagged to vindicate the cause of our countrywoman.
In Paris the whole art world was divided into those who sided with Meissonier and those who were against him. Cafes echoed with the sounds of wordy warfare; the columns of all magazines and newspapers bulged with heated argument; newsboys cried extras on the street, and bands of students paraded the boulevards singing songs in praise of Mrs. Mackay and in dishonor of Meissonier, “the pretender.” The assertion was made again and again that Meissonier had fed sham art upon the public, and by means of preposterous prices and noisy puffing had hypnotized a world. They called him the artist of the Infinitely Little, King of Lilliput, and challenged any one to show where he had thrown heart and high emotion into his work. Studies of coachmen, smokers, readers, soldiers, housemaids, chess-players, cavaliers and serenaders were not enough upon which to base an art reputation–the man must show that he had moved men to high endeavor, said the detractors. A fund was started to purchase the Mackay portrait, so as to do the very thing that Meissonier had threatened to do, but dare not: place the picture on exhibition. To show the picture, the enemy said, would be to prove the artist’s commonplace quality, and not only this, but it would prove the man a rogue. They declared he was incapable of perceiving the good qualities in a sitter, and had consented for a price to portray a person whom he disliked; and as a result, of course, had produced a caricature; and then had blackmailed his patron into paying an outrageous sum to keep the picture from the public.
The argument sounded plausible. And so the battle raged, just as it has since in reference to Zola.
The tide of Meissonier’s prosperity began to ebb: prospective buyers kept away; those who had given commissions canceled them.
Meissonier’s friends saw that something must be done. They inaugurated a “Meissonier Vindication,” by making an exhibition of one hundred fifty-five “Meissoniers”–and the public was invited to come and be the jury. Art-lovers from England went in bodies, and all Paris filed through the gallery, as well as a goodly portion of provincial France. By the side of each canvas stood a gendarme to protect it from a possible fanatic whose artistic hate could not be restrained.
To a great degree this exhibition brought feeling to a normal condition. Meissonier was still a great artist, yet he was human and his effects were now believed to be gotten by natural methods. But there was a lull in the mad rush to secure his wares. The Vanderbilts grew lukewarm; titled connoisseurs from England were not so anxious; and Mrs. Mackay sat back and smiled through her tears.