Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/Studios in Florence - Part 2

by Isa Blagden

STUDIOS IN FLORENCE.

Part II.

The next studio I visited is that of J. J. Jackson, also an American, but, unlike Dr. Rimmer, he has lived some years in Italy. He is a young man, and possesses the enthusiasm of a true votary for art. How much enthusiasm it needs to pursue a career so thorny at its commencement, and so steep and arduous in its ascent, the biographies of all great artists will attest. To obtain recognition at all is more difficult than (recognition once obtained) to win success. In those cities which are more especially art-cities, Rome, Münich, and Florence, crowds besiege the gates of the temple, but few pass the threshold. So much persistence, courage, and self-denial, besides actual artistic capacity, are required to combat and overcome the obstacles which at first impede the entrance, that it is not surprising many are left behind and irrevocably shut out.

Mr. Jackson has made good his entrance, and all lovers of art will greet with pleasure the commencement of what promises to be a successful and brilliant career.

The woodcut which accompanies this notice is from a photograph taken of a small group in bronze of Titania and Bottom. The photograph gives very little notion of the delicacy and grace of the figure of the Fairy Queen, or of the stolid, half-humorous, half-brutal expression of the Weaver. It only copies the lines of the group and pose of the figures. In the bronze the work is charming, and most intelligibly interprets the subtle and profound thought which it embodies—Love depends on the loving, and not on the loved. A series of such illustrations of some of the principal "points" in the plays, in small groups, would be a great boon, I think, to all lovers of Shakespeare.

Mr. Jackson has several portrait and ideal busts in his studio. One of Dr. Lynam Beecher (the father of Mrs. Stowe and of Henry Ward Beecher), which, for truth and power, is worthy of Woolner. It is a most characteristic head: the brow is massive and deeply lined, and the face has a singular and striking individuality. It is a likeness which is not the idealisation of the countenance, but its realisation in all the breadth and force of nature.

But. Mr. Jackson's most ambitious work is a group of the heroic size—Eve, with the dead body of Abel in her lap. He has bestowed eight months' unremitting labour upon it, and the effort has been a successful one. The pyramidal form of the group, and the lines into which the two figures dispose themselves, are admirable. As Eve bends over Abel, there is less of sorrow or grief than surprise in her face. A mournful surprise, it is true, but too gentle and innocent in its nature to admit of a fiercer feeling. "Ere the first day of death is fled," there is nothing in the aspect Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/397 Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/398