Modern French painters

Introduction

IF one wishes to explain house building to a child, it is best to show him how the foundations are laid and how the walls rise from them. So in trying to find an easy way to make a clear study of Modern Art, what it means and how it came about, I have tried to expose enough of the foundations to render easily intelligible the kind of house which has risen upon them. My intention has been to write a book not for the expert, but for the ordinary man who is interested in Art, or for the Art student who is still at the outset of his or her career.

I have tried to give the ideas which lie behind the modern manifestations which are shown in the development of the new Art in Paris ; and I want to show why Art has taken the new form which it has done. I have tried to include most of those artists who have made the most definite contributions to the movement, but I have tried also to exclude all judgment upon them and especially any expression of my own personal likings or dislikings. I question whether anybody can be infallible about the painters of his own day ; he is bound to be swayed by external elements, by fashion, by a hundred details which may pervert or distort even an Appolonian judgment. The number of Art critics who have been right about the artists of their own day, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. I have not the temerity to thrust myself amongst them. Ruskin himself, admitting the dangers of contemporary criticism.

viii INTRODUCTION

pushes up Turner to the detriment of Claude. Time has had her revenge and Turner has sUpped down below Claude again, to the detriment of our faith in Ruskin's foolhardy judgment.

I have tried merely to indicate how the various artists erect their aesthetic temples upon the foundations I disclose, and I try to show what forces govern, more or less, the architectural style of these temples. It is perhaps easier for the amateur to penetrate a novel form of art from the literary side, though no amount of knowledge can be a substitute for a genuine love of pictures, and a love of looking at pictures.

I would like to thank those artists who have lent me their pictures for reproduction, and especially those collectors who have allowed me to deprive them of their masterpieces during the appreciable period necessary to make a colour plate. I wish particularly to thank the French critics M. Fritz Vanderpyl and M. Alexandre Mercerau for valuable information, advice and the loan of publications which are now difficult to find.

Contents

PAGE CHAPTER

I. The Languages of Art *

. II. Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism '3

Chapter I The Languages Of Art

A TRAVELLER who wishes to make his way through a piece of country unknown to him, instead of plimging boldly into the first path which seems to lead in the right direction, may go out of his way somewhat and ascend a hill from the summit of which he can get a general survey of the country he would cross. The time lost may be time gained, for from thence he may see a path which, starting in an unlooked-for direction, will lead him to his destination more quickly than if he had taken the apparendy straight road.

We may equally at the outset of this inquiry clamber a litde amongst the shrubbery of a country which is not our proper province. We may make a short tour into some aspects of Uterature — ^particularly aspects of prose — from whence we may spy the openings of the road which we have to follow if we would come to a common-sense understanding of the most recent developments of the art of painting.

Words are the materials out of which literature is made. These words are a human invention with which to exchange ideas, one person with another. Everybody speaks prose, a faculty which has been learned so unconsciously that one is scarcely conscious of having learned it at all. It has been proved that words have no peculiar virtues apart from the ideas which they express, and the whole idea underlying the invention of words and of grammar is clarity. The

B chief idea of literature is to express oneself clearly, and anybody whc can thus write clearly is writing good literature. Literature is a means for conveying to others thoughts which they could not find foi themselves, and the beauty of the literature depends largely upon the beauty of the thought. The grammar of a language has not been made for the purpose of beauty, but for utility alone, and in this way differs from the grammar of painting or of music upon which beauty depends in the prime instance. Literature has three qualities with which to produce art ; these are (i) beauty of thought, (2) clarity of expression, (3) beauty of language. Without these three, writing remains merely a means of exchanging ideas, it does not become a work of art.

A piece of writing in a foreign language is to us a piece of foolishness until we have learned to understand the language in which it is written. The two prime qualities which make up art are lacking to us, while even the third, which depends more upon the ear alone than upon the understanding, has little virtue, or even beauty, until the intelligence shines its light upon the music of the language. As music alone it is monotonous, and if the language contains unusual sounds it may appear ugly.

must be hideous and can have no beauty of expression nor music of words to, say, an unlettered ItaUan.

We will acknowledge that it were mere impertinence to criticize a foreign work of literature as long as we cannot understand the language in which it is written. But, nevertheless, the three quahties by which written art is made are the same no matter what the language employed. Provided that we work within these limits we may say what we like. But in order to fulfil the second of the quaUties we cannot depart very widely from the rules of grammar, nor can we change the meaning of words. Language is so artificial a thing that if its rules are disdained the thought which the author would express is not handed on to his audience. Grammar is as artificial as is the

J THE LANGUAGES OF ART 3

Jlcoinage system ; neither can be depreciated without losing the means of exchange. We cannot follow Humpty-Dumpty's method, however fascinating it may appear. The discoveries of literature are discoveries in thought, discoveries in subtlety and in music of expression. But the bigger construction rules remain stable, changing perhaps slowly with use, but so gradually that it is almost impossible to say at what time any stated change begins.

Language imposes as rigid a method of expression as, say, that which Egyptians imposed upon their sculptors. The latter had, as it were, a grammar of sculpture. Within that grammar the artist was allowed liberty. The differences of technique which exist between two such writers as Defoe and Meredith are not greater than those which exist between Hokusai and Outamaro or between a middle and a late period of Greek statuary.

From a certain point of view painting and music are more instinctive arts than literature. The child delights in colour and in musical sounds before words have any meaning to it. It is imagined that no particular learning is needed to gain an appreciation of either art, for the delight in both comes by means of the senses, which are susceptible to education only in moderate degrees. The delight in literature comes largely through the understanding — a small part only, harmony of language, being purely of the senses.

It would be possible for an ingenious man to invent a language for himself. He might then write works of art in this language, but the work would remain of no value as art until another person had learned the language. Homer would have no value as art if the secret of Greek had been lost. No human production can have value as art or as beauty if the language in which it is expressed cannot be understood. If I remark : " Nye manye smertee od glahdee eema," or, perhaps, " Marcoussis arpiteh dye patra deressis," or, " Tye Tamee Te niye te ne-eh," I could ask the majority of my readers if these sentences were beautiful sense or idiotic nonsense without risking an authoritative reply. If we choose to perceive a certain beauty in one of them, it is clear, however, that this particular form of beauty could not be continued for more than twenty lines without the risk of sending th( listener to sleep. The same can be found to hold in one of th< parallel arts of music or of painting, more obviously perhaps in th( former. Chinese music has a language quite different from that oj European, and to the average Westerner is immitigated noise. Wc can come even closer to home and find in the style of Spanish gipsj singing a musical art of a different nature from that of ordinary European singing. This art, which has great charm and a voice production peculiar to itself, can only be appreciated by learning to hear it properly. Recently an exhibition of Spanish singing in London moved the audiences to mirth and the critics to derision ; but, curiously enough, a similar effect would be produced upon a Spanish village audience by an operatic singer.

Thus, though we may admit easily that there are in foreign languages forms of art to which the understanding does not react, we are slow to recognize that there are also forms of art which the senses do not recognize. The average literary critic would be slow to criticize a book presented to him written in a tongue which he did not understand ; but of the popular London musical critics I believe only one, when suddenly confronted with Spanish Flamenco singing, had the wit to perceive that here was a musical language which he did not understand and which was therefore not to be judged by his standards. The EngUsh yokel used to have the conviction that English is the only possible language, and foreign languages are foolish; and even in English he had a preference for his own dialect. We have become settled in the idea that there is but one language in art, and we tend to look upon the arts of other civilizations with some of the condescension of the yokel's attitude towards French. This was more true a hundred years ago than it is now. We have to some extent begun to learn the foreign languages of art, but the comments of the visitors at the National Gallery on the Italian primitives, who are the founders of our own artistic language, show a strange likeness to the comments of a schoolboy of eighteen who is shown Chaucer for the first time.

THE LANGUAGES OF ART

I

I; The three examples given above show that when the under- ' standing cannot play its part, the senses may be prevented from giving pleasure. It might be imagined that since painting and music are principally enjoyed by means of the senses, that this blocking on the part of the intelligence would not take place ; that the senses would rule and guide the intelligence. This would be the case if we allowed the senses the upper hand. If we were content simply to look at painting or listen to music, allowing its message to touch us at first by feeling only, we would get a more just estimate of the various kinds of art than we do. But this is difficult. It is a more easy way to recognize that there are several different languages, and to suspend judgment till the understanding of the new language has been reached. This can only be done by a certain amount of study.

In The Soul of Man under Socialism^ Wilde says that a man who comes to a new work of art " with authority " can get nothing from it ; that is, a man who expects to see a certain kind of effect will get nothing if the work is conceived otherwise. We can exaggerate this statement into this : that a man who comes to a work in French expecting it to be written in English, and who determines to judge it as if it were written in English, will get no good from the work — which is clear. It is equally true that the man who comes to a Post- Impressionist picture expecting it to be painted in the language of Velazquez or Rembrandt will get no benefit. The person who instinctively does not like Post-Impressionist pictures is in the position of the Italian peasant who, instinctively also, does not like the sound of German poetry.

There is, however, an essential difference between the arts of literature and of painting or music. Literature is the setting down of ideas, and even books of deliberate nonsense have a fantastic glamour of sense which makes them incredibly credible. In the expression of the idea there is an amazing flexibility. We can handle the symbols of words in a hundred diverse fashions to create the same sense out of them. That is, the thing expressed and the

6 MODERN FRENCH PAINTERS j

means of expression are to some extent separate from one another. This is less true of poetry than of prose ; but, in prose writings, even an able translation into another tongue can give the larger virtues of a foreign author ; indeed, a translation is as much like the original as a good photographic reproduction is of a picture ; in each the intimate colour is sacrificed, but the major virtues remain. But in painting or in music no paraphrase is possible, change but one colour in a painting or but one chord in a theme and the significance is altered. Indeed the musical variations of the sonata show how the same idea undergoes transformation by differences of treatment. In painting and in music the idea is the treatment. There is no suspicion of separability.

The public has, on the whole, quarrelled with painters far more than with writers, and these quarrels usually spring out of this unity or laxity of idea and treatment. The reasons for quarrel are, in general, four. First, quarrels about public morality ; secondly, quarrels about human vanity ; thirdly, quarrels about presentation of fact ; fourthly, quarrels about methods of presentation — or technique. In painting, the public has had quarrels on all four heads with artists. Limiting ourselves always to the European or scientific school, as we may call that development which stretches from Giotto to the Impressionist — for reasons which will appear later — in morality it has quarrelled with Manet (" Olympia," " Dejeuner sur Therbe," etc.) ; in vanity it has quarrelled with Rembrandt or with Millet ; in presentation of fact it has quarrelled with Corot, with Delacroix, with Turner, and a host of others ; and in technique it has quarrelled with Millet, with Delacroix, with Manet, with Monet and his followers, etc. On the part of literature, covering a similar period, one finds only two causes of quarrel : first, on the score of morahty such as with Flaubert or Ibsen or Baudelaire ; secondly, on the score of vanity as with Zola. Arguments concerning presentation of fact and concerning methods of presentation are rare. The reason for the lack of contest between pubUc and author on these latter two points is easy to find. In the

I THE LANGUAGES OF ART 7

first the public mind lacks sufficient imagination to translate an author's facts into reality ; it can perceive such an obvious mistake as Sancho Panza's donkey being stolen in one chapter and Sancho riding upon it in the next ; but more subtle misstatements it cannot check, it has no training in accuracy of mental perception, and in dreams itself it wanders in such fantastic impossibilities that the imagination is always ready to admit anything short of purely obvious mistakes. In the second count, the public cannot as a rule perceive change of technique, as long as technique remains within certain limits. Differences of technique are more difficult to perceive in writing than in painting because the effect must be cumulative, and the mind must gather up evidence until there is sufficient, while in painting the evidence is all presented at once. But the rules of grammar inflict a restraint which at once sets a model. It is as hard for the average reader spontaneously to perceive differences in style between two writers as it would be for him to notice the differences in style between Watteau and Fragonard, or between Reynolds and Romney. Also the flexibility of the literary medium allows an expression of the most contrasting ideas to be made without alteration of the idiom. But, in painting, idiom and meaning are indissolubly united. For instance, the idea expressed in Egyptian statuary is man as god. The Egyptian statues are not clumsy efforts of a people who could not do otherwise, they are deliberate efforts of an attempt to convey a certain order of truth, the presentation of the superman. When the Egyptian wishes to present man as man, he humanizes his technique. The Grecian technique aims at the glorification of man, of presenting God as man ; thus it is the reverse of Egyptian. The Gothic would present the spiritual rising out of the material.

We may then understand change in the technique of painting as change of language forced on the painter because the ideas which he wishes to express can only be expressed by the form he is using. If we consider these idioms as separate foreign languages which have to be studied, and which necessarily contain no beauty imtil the language has been mastered^ much of the difficulty presented modern manifestations of art will dwindle away.

In the history of the arts of painting we may roughly select following as the principal idioms :

The Babylonian

The Egyptian

The Chinese

The Greek

The Islamic

The Indian

The Negro

The Byzantine

The Gothic.

Each of these is a different idiom of the art of painting — with dialects or sub-idioms — and each represents a different development of man with his different civilization and ideals. Each had a permanency proportionate to the permanency of the civilization it decorated ; and each requires a separate study in order to be properly appreciated. Each gains in artistic interest if the mental outlook which produced it is comprehended. There is, however, a shorthand method of studying languages, which is employed by philologists— whose nature forces them to study languages — which is to divide languages into families ; so that one discovers that all languages spring from very few ancestors. For instance, almost all the languages of Europe spring from the family called Indo- Germanic ; that is, they have a large number of things in common. When the philologist has learned the characteristics of the Indo- Germanic, he has already a large amount of data concerning almost all the languages of Europe, and has lessened by that amount the labour in acquiring any new one. This is also true of painting.

There are certain root ideas beneath all varieties of the art of painting, and if one grasps these ideas the difficulty of appreciating any particular idiom is considerably lessened. What these root ideas are will appear in time.

THE LANGUAGES OF ART 9

Following after the Gothic comes a period which I have called the European period^ and which represents the time which elapsed between Giotto and the Impressionists. But it might have other names, it might be called the " nature " idiom or the " scientific " idiom, since it is characterized by what may be called a scientific curiosity in the physical appearance of nature, and comes to an end as soon as that inquiry is exhausted. As the other idioms corresponded to the permanency of their peoples, so does this scientific idiom, it changes its dialect and develops with the development of civilization. As it develops, man's vision of nature develops.

It may seem an absurd statement to make, that man did not always see " Nature " as he sees it now. Absurd, and probably from one point of view untrue ; but there is a difference between seeing and perceiving ; just as there is a difference between imagining and expressing.

The eye is a kind of camera. The rays of light passing into it stimulate nerves which carry a message to the brain, and the brain projects an image which we call nature. The world which we see is projected by us as by a magic lantern ; this must be clearly understood. In a certain disease of vision, the two eyes lose parallelism and we get a double vision of nature, one imposed on the other as if two magic lanterns were shining the same picture on the same sheet with the pictures overlapping. We do not normally recognize that the visions of sleep and the visions of wakefulness are due to the same cause — irritation of the optic nerve. If, however, we remember that vision lies in the brain, not in the eye, we can understand the development of the vision of nature by art. We do not perceive what is, but what the brain is looking for — or, rather, for general use we do not perceive with any clearness at all.

It is always difficult for the untrained mind to analyse or to present its thoughts accurately. How often do we have thoughts or impressions which seem quite vivid until we attempt to put them into language. At once they grow indefinite. But imagine that these could be put into language for us by a diviner. Then these ideas would remain with us clear and precise and we could giv^ expression to them ourselves. The perception of nature's appearance is as vague in the natural man as are his thoughts. He sees clearly what he has specialized himself to see — the Indian tracker who can tell from the grass how many foes have passed that road receives on the retina no more than the ordinary man — but outside of his specialized vision his perceptions are vague and indefinite.

Ask the ordinary man to draw from nature a tin pail. He will probably make this sort of figure. He is aware of the opening because he can see the inside ; he sees the curves of the top edge because he must account for his vision of the interior, he is also aware of the slopes of the sides. But he does not perceive the rounded ends of the ellipse, and his mind agrees that the pail stands flat on the ground. These two shapes he takes for granted, that is, they are seen but not perceived. But when the real appearance of these two facts is pointed out to him, he does not again make the same mistake : what was formerly invisible now is visible.

The history of European art is a history of the discovery of the reproduction of natural facts. When Whistler says that nature imitates art, he means merely that we do not become consciously aware of many of nature's aspects until more perceptive vision has pointed them out. The painter has been shaping nature for us : and when Vasari praises Ucello for his veracity to nature he is but telling the truth as he knows it. What to us now is the primitive grasping at realistic appearances was to his own century the very mirror of reality.

It will be noticed that at the opening of the European school a host of new and diverse visions of nature are acceptable to the public. Fra AngeUco, Botticelli, Ucello, Piero della Francesca, Pisanello, Raphael, Titian, each has a personal vision not only different in technique, but in fact — each is hailed as a master, each as a truthteller. The vision of nature was still in a fluid state, men's minds

THE LANGUAGES OF ART ii

were not yet fixed upon any particular aspect. Even the vision of Velazquez and of El Greco was passed over in a land where there was little tradition of art, and when the consciousness of nature had not yet become fixed into rules. The innovations of Watteau — forerunner of the Impressionists — were acceptable partly because he had enclosed his new technique in an old convention, and partly because of his subtle flattery. But the return of David and of Ingres refixed the vision which had developed from the Renaissance. Thus a certain definite teaching of a particular aspect of nature contrives, with time, to influence the conscious idea of nature — one gets a preconceived idea of nature and, as far as one perceives nature at all, perceives her in that mould. Nature becomes no longer vision, but dogma. When this point is reached we get a sudden resistance to the acceptance of new truths about nature.

This explains the outbursts which arose over the work of Corot, Millet and Delacroix in France, of Constable and Turner in England. To-day it seems incredible that Constable's pictures were considered too green ; that he had to place an old violin upon a lawn to show a connoisseur that landscape was not, in nature, the tint of a Stradivarius. ""

The study of nature comes to a natural climax in two ways : first, exhaustion of the visual method and, secondly, invention of a mechanical method — the photograph. The visual examination of nature comes to an end with Manet, and by a natural path develops into a study of the means by which nature is visible, that is, light. We can follow the steps thus. The first painters record external fact, beginning with man and gradually including other variations of nature ; in Chardin's still lives we have already reached nature with humanity left out : this is pushed farther until we are forced to an analysis of the means by which this external nature is perceived. This stage is Impressionism. The next stage is also a natural development. From the ways in which we perceive we pass to an examination of the thing which perceives^ that is, man. This is self-analysis. This stage is Post-Impressionism, as it has been called.

Analysis of the means of vision cannot be pursued withouj coming into contact with the processes of representation, so Post- Impressionism becomes not only conscious of how it understand! nature, but also of how works of art are made. It begins to analyse the subconscious from both aspects, and its work must be appreciated from this standpoint. It no longer pretends to represent external nature as the average man sees it, it tries to represent effects which nature produces in the inner consciousness.

One has been asked why not go on in the old road ? Why not be content to continue that matter-of-fact representation of external fact which was so easy to understand and under which we had so much pleasure in eating our dinners ? The answer is that one cannot stand still. It is contrary to the laws of nature. There is no such thing as lack of change. The mountain is falling into the valley, the earth never travels the same course twice, history, in spite of the old saw, never repeats itself. The artist is man brought to the highest point of sensitiveness to life. How, then, cannot he be the most ready to respond to the law of nature ?

Chapter II

RUSKIN has said as many true things about art as perhaps any other single man ; it is unfortunate that so many of his truths were packed into a chariot which was going • in the wrong direction, and that some even were dragged along behind in spite of themselves. But Ruskin's truths have been almost overlooked, while his cult of the " nature " idiom (often wrongly understood) has done much to deter the advance of pictorial appreciation in England. The great stumbling-block in the way of understanding of the art of to-day lies in the mistaken theory that art must copy nature ; must, that is, copy an almost dogmatic representation of external nature. Ruskin, however, himself says " good art rarely imitates ; it usually only describes or explains." Let us consider the last part of the statement. An explanation is not a description, nor is a description a statement of external fact. When one says that water is a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, both of which are gases, this gives no picture of water ; when Stephenson describes Villon, the mediaeval poet, by remarking that " the wolf and the pig struggled in his face," he is creating physical impossibilities. The one is explanation at one process below the fact, the other description at three thoughts away from the fact. Each is only possible as description or explanation, because the reader takes a certain mental step, or series of steps along with the writer. It is unnecessary for Stephenson to say : " There were certain indications in his face of a struggle between two forces, one of which by its rapaciousness could be symbolized by the wolf, etc., etc." Indication, symbol and ima| are wrought into one condensed statement which is artistic and whicj moves us because of the daring and the aptness of the condensatioi It is, in fact, the very untruth to nature which makes its art, tl horrible impossibility enlarges its descriptive force. Thus a truth of description may violate a truth of fact ; indeed, in literature the utmost licence is permitted to the writer with facts of description. Everything may be subjected to the inner sensations of the writer. Nature is seen as mirrored in a temperament, and as the mood passes from placidity to agitation the semblance of nature becomes reflected as in a looking-glass of flexible material which can be twisted this way and that, giving a hundred distortions to the same object.