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Bartolozzi and Henry James's "Mora Montravers" The joke was at all events In Its having befa I I en them, him and his admirable anxious, conscientious wife, who, living on their sufficient means In their discreet way, liked, respected, and even perhaps a bit envied, In the Wimbledon world (with so much good old mahogany and so many Bartolozzis, to say nothing of their collection of a dozen family miniatures) to have to pick up again as best they could— which was the way Jane put It—the life that Miss Montravers, their unspeakable niece, though not, absolutely not and never, as every one would have It, their adopted daughter, had smashed Into smithereens by leaving their roof, from one day to the other, to place herself Immediately under the protection, or at least under the Inspiration, of a little painter-man commonly called Puddlck, who had no pretensions to being a gentleman and had given her lessons ("Mora Montravers," p. 268).' ************ Henry James's skill In illuminating character and situation by relating them to particular artists has long been accepted. One admires the major structural function assigned to Bronzino In The W lngs of the Dove and to Lambinet In The Ambassadors; one pauses with respect before the subtlety which substitutes, between the original 1881 edition of The Portrait of a Lady and the New York Edition, Schubert for Beethoven as the composer whose music Madame Merle Is playing on the piano when Isabel Archer first comes upon her in the drawing-room at Gardencourt. A striking example of this skill appears In "Mora Montravers," a late tale which deserves a good deal more attention than it has been given since it contains a most fascinating presentation of a late Jamesian hero. In the passage reprinted above from the second paragraph of the tale, James uses the name of the engraver Bartolozzi—a name which now requires a footnote but which would have been familiar to any cultivated reader In 1909 when the tale first appeared—as a key to evaluation. While Sidney Traffle, the protagonist, analyzes the situation which confronts him and his wife after his wife's niece. Mora, has gone off with her painting teacher, James, by means of his tone, analyzes Traffle. How Bartolozzi functions as part of the tone becomes apparent when one is familiar with the nature of Bartolozzl's art and his reputation in the art world of 1909. Francesco Bartolozzi was an Italian engraver who, working in England between 1764 and 1802, brought the art of stipple engraving to Its highest point. He and his pupils were responsible for the tremendous vogue enjoyed by this form of engraving from about 1775 until 1810, when its popularity abruptly declined. Around the turn of the present century, stipple engraving In general and Bartolozzl's work in particular enjoyed another vogue. Although some of his pieces fetched high prices in the auction room and their snob appeal was high, critical enthusiasm for Bartolozzl's work was restrained. For example, Arthur Mayger Hind, a leading historian of engraving, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum In the early part of the century and Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, commented trenchantly In 1912, "Stipple engraving Is an essentially feminine art. Its essence, the method of shading In dots (la manière polntl I lee) has appealed to few artists of robust genius as a direct means of expression."2 Fifteen years earlier, another expert, Frederick Wedmore, had written more expansively, "The fashions of the wise are not wholly without reason, but the fashions of the foolish have also to be reckoned with. As an Instance, the very generation that has seen the most just appraisement of original Etching has witnessed too the exaltation of Bartolozzi and his nerveless school." Wedmore goes on: "The Bartolozzis, then, which have been puffed so absurdly—what is their real place? To begin with . . . they are the work of an engraver who interpreted the theme of 1. All quotations from "Mora Montravers" are taken from The Complete Ta les of Henry James, ed. Leon Edel (Philadelphia and New York: Llpplncott, 1964), XII, 267-333. 2. Bartolozzi and...

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