talent might be, and resolved to do his best to
unlearn much that he had acquired. In order to do so with any chance
of success, but one course was open to him--that of studying the works
of the Italian masters. It has been stated that he went to Italy when
very young. With this view I do not concur. In all cases where there
is an absence of direct evidence, opinions can only be formed from
particular analogies bearing on the case under consideration. Now in
the case of Stainer we have nothing to guide us but his variations of
style, and dates of time and place. What is the result of a careful
investigation of every particle of evidence that we can glean? The
style is ever German, although the great maker is head and shoulders
above all his countrymen who followed his art. I am thus forced to
believe that had so excellent an artist visited Italy in his youth, as
reported, there would have remained but the faintest trace of its
origin. That men of less ability should be unable to entirely sever
themselves from their national style of work, even under circumstances
most favourable for such a release, I can readily understand; it is an
incapacity which has been exemplified over and over again; but Jacob
Stainer was not one of these ordinary men; he had not his superior in
the school of Cremona as a finished workman, with the single exception
of Antonio Stradivari. I believe, therefore, that the German style was
deeply rooted within him when he ceased to be young, and that if he
went to Cremona or Venice, it was not until he recognised the
inferiority of the school in which he had been bred, as compared with
that of Cremona or Venice. That he did not go far enough in his
"second thought" is pretty well acknowledged on all sides. His
originality was conceived in the German School, amid the worst
examples, and it was too late to undo what had gone before. Here,
then, lies, I consider, the key to the seeming anomaly that so great a
maker as Stainer should have adopted and clung to so clumsy a model.
That he became acquainted with much of the best work of the Italians
is evidenced by his improved style. The varnish he used furnishes even
stronger evidence of his having possessed a knowledge of the subject
equal to that of the Cremonese makers. Whether he acquired this
knowledge in Cremona or Venice cannot be stated with certainty, but I
am inclined to believe that he gained it in the first-named city. Who
but an artist acquainte