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HENRY OLCOTT RELATES WHEN SCHMIECHEN PAINTED THE MASTERS PORTRAITS

 

About this event, Colonel Olcott in chapter 12 of his book Old Diary Leaves, 3rd Series, told the following:
 
On 13th June [1884] I returned to London in company with Mr. Judge, who had come over from New York to see us on his way out to India, his intended future field of work.
 
A little while before this I had instituted a friendly competition between certain of our London associates who were either professional or amateur artists, to try an important psychical experiment.
 
My earlier readers will recall my description (see London edition, Old Diary Leaves, 1st Series, ch. xxiii, pp. 370-373) of the way in which my adept Guru [Morya] redeemed his promise that he would give me his portrait at a convenient time.
 

 
This was a profile likeness, drawn by an amateur who was not an occultist, either trained or untrained, and so, while the resemblance was unquestionable —as I verified later in personal intercourse— it did not show the soul-splendor that lights up an adept's countenance.
 
Naturally, I wanted to get a better portrait if possible, and bethought me to try whether my sympathetic artistic colleagues in London could get clearer, more life-like, spiritual glimpses of this divine face.
 
Upon broaching the subject, the five—three professionals and two amateurs—whom I addressed, very kindly and willingly consented, and I lent each in turn the photographic copy of the original crayon sketch that I had with me. The results were very instructive. One had got the right idea of his complexion, another of his profile and a third, my respected friend Mme. De Steiger, of the luminous aura that shimmers about his head. But neither of the five was, on the whole, a better likeness than the New York sketch by Monsieur Harrisse.
 
Before this competition was finished, Herr Hermann Schmiechen, a very well-known German portrait-painter, domiciled in London, joined the Society and, to my great delight, at once agreed to have the inspirational test tried with him. The photograph was handed him with no suggestion as to how the subject should be treated.
 
 
He began work on 19th June and finished it on 9th July.
 

 
 
Meanwhile I visited his studio four times alone and once with H.P.B., and was enchanted with the gradual development of the mental image which had been vividly impressed upon his brain, and which resulted in as perfect a portrait of my Guru as he could have painted from life.
 
Unlike the others, who all copied the profile idea of Harrisse, Schmiechen gave the face in full front view, and poured into the eyes such a flood of life and sense of the indwelling soul as to fairly startle the spectator. It was as dear a work of genius and proof of the fact of thought transference as I can imagine. In the picture he has got all — the face, complexion, size, shape and expression of eyes, natural pose of head, shining aura, and majestic character.
 
This is also true of the companion portrait which Schmiechen painted of our other chief Guru [Khuyumi], and one feels as if the grand eyes were searching his very heart. I have noticed the signs of this first impression in nearly every case, and the feeling of awe is enhanced by the way in which the two pairs of eyes follow one about the room, still seemingly reading one, no matter where he may take his stand.
 
Then, again, by some trick of the artist's brush, the shining aura about the two heads seems to be actually in a shimmery motion, just as it is in nature. No wonder the religiously-minded visitor finds himself, as it were, impressed with a sense of the holiness of the room where the two portraits hang, and meditative introspection is easier there than elsewhere.
 
(Note: After Schmiechen finished the two original portraits, Colonel Olcott took them to Adyar.)
 
Grand as they are by day, the pictures are even more striking by night, when properly lighted, and the figures seem as if ready to step out of their frames and approach one.
 
The artist has made two or more copies of the portraits, but they lack the life-like character of the original; he evidently lacking the stress of inspiration under which the latter were produced.
 
As for the photographs which were —against my passionate protest— permitted to be made from the copies, they are as inferior to the originals at Adyar, as a tallow candle to the electric light. And it has made me inexpressibly sad that these glorious faces, in cheap photographs, have been sold over the counter by Judgeites, and published in a magazine and a book by Dr. Hartmann.
 
 
Does it not seem as if this foregoing experiment threw a great light on the mystery of art-inspiration, and helped us to see what makes the difference between a great painter or sculptor and the general rabble of the professions?
 
The great artist must be a man whose lower mind is sensitive to the impressions that can be impressed on it by his higher, or spiritual, consciousness, and his best works would be produced in those so-called moments of "inspiration," when this transfer of consciousness is going on.
 
Is it not illustrated in the case in point, when the artist, guided and fired by an influx from without, paints such pictures as he cannot duplicate in his normal state of independent mortality? And is not the Titian, Rubens, Claude, Cellini, Leonardo, Praxiteles, or Pheidias, one who is open to the guidance of the Higher Self, capable of receiving in "flashes" those race-lifting glimpses of the divine reality behind these walls of flesh?
 
A point of interest in this instance is that the Schmiechen portrait of my Guru was the seventh attempt to get a worthy reflection of his image, for the helping of those who cannot as yet go in sukshma sharira [subtle body] to the Ashram and converse with him face to face.
 
(p.162-166)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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