The Shadow of Death

William Holman Hunt, 1827

ANY an artist has wasted infinite labor, the courage and devotion of a hero and talents more than respectable, to attain results far beneath the outlay, and inferior to the achievements of lesser men. Holman Hunt, one of the most zealous of the English so-called pre-Raphaelite school,

a most industrious and faithful workman, at great cost and with unwearying toil, spent about four years in Palestine making the studies, and gathering the material, of which this picture was the chief result.

Jesus, already a mature man, is conceived as rising erect after being bent at a day's toil in the carpenter's shop of Joseph, and finding relief for his cramped muscles with outstretched arms. His shadow on the wall behind is supposed to suggest the figure of a man crucified, and thus to foreshadow the violent death to come. Mary, the Mother, has been examining the treasured gifts of the Magi, but her attention seems now drawn to the ominous portent before her.

Great stress is laid on the fact that all the accessories, the carpenter's tools, the costumes, the Hebraic type of the figures have been laboriously copied from originals now found in Palestine. For the arrangement of a group in wax for a museum of biblical archæology, all this would have been excellent, and slightly instructive. Starting with a lofty and pathetic idea, the artist's choice of an incident seems trivial, and the labored accessories, even to the disturbing lights of the painfully wrought shavings, appear as impertinences, if we must consider them, instead of the central figure.

This picture is in the gallery of Manchester, England.

Constant Troyon (troi'-on), (French, trwä'-yon), 1810-1865

BOUT 1860 the importation of modern French paintings into America began, soon to assume large importance. The carlier collectors had either brought in so-called old masters, or had contented themselves with the productions of native artists, whom they laudably strove to encourage. Some effort, centering in the old Düsseldorf Gallery, was made to introduce German art here, but the Frenchmen soon won the ascendency, and with the growth of large fortunes after the Civil War, vast numbers of the best works of the Parisian artists found their way here.

The fine Troyon, "Holland Cattle," one of the choicest pictures of this great cattle painter, was bought in 1860 by John Wolfe, a noted New York collector, sold at his first sale in 1863, and after a sojourn in other hands, was bought back into the family in 1876 by Miss Wolfe, and came with her grand bequest in 1887 to the Metropolitan Museum.

In the foreground of a beautiful landscape, Troyon has put one of his unsurpassed groups of cows. Over the placid water where boats idly rest, and across the peaceful fields where cattle like to feed, through the soft air, calmly radiant under the afternoon sun, our eyes and our fancies wander far away to the limitless horizon. In the warm haze of the distance is the hint of a town, which gratifies us even while we are glad rather to be here in the quiet and serenity of the pastures. There is no discordant note in the harmony of sea and sky, of the smooth fields where it is good to tread, and of the contented herds which share in the joy of the summer day.