AINTING 
 
 WILL ARD HILNTLNGTOK WRIC. 
 
Modern Painting 
 
 Its "Tendency and Meaning 
 By 
 
 TVillard Huntington JVright 
 
 With four subjects in colour 
 and twenty-four reproductions 
 
 New York: fohn Lane Company 
 London: John Lane^ The Bodley Head 
 MCMXF 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1915 
 BY JOHN LANE COMPANY 
 
 THE • PLIMPTON' PRESS 
 NORWOOD - MA SS-U>8-A 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 THAT beneath all great art there has 
 been a definite animating purpose, a 
 single and profound desire to reach a 
 specific goal, has been but vaguely 
 sensed by the general public and by the great 
 majority of critics. And there are, I believe, 
 but very few persons not diredlly and seriously 
 concerned with the produ<flion of pictures, who 
 realise that this animating purpose has for its 
 aim the solution of the profoundest problems of 
 the creative will, that it is rooted deeply in the 
 aesthetic consciousness, and that its evolution 
 marks one of the most complex phases of human 
 psychology. The habit of approaching a work 
 of art from the nai'f standpoint of one's personal 
 temperament or taste and of judging it hap- 
 hazardly by its individual appeal, irrespective 
 of its inherent aesthetic merit, is so strongly 
 implanted in the average spedlator, that any at- 
 tempt to define the principles of form and 
 organisation underlying the eternal values of 
 art is looked upon as an ad: of gratuitous ped- 
 antry. But such principles exist, and if we are 
 to judge works of art accurately and consist- 
 ently these principles must be mastered. Other- 
 wise we are without a standard, and all our 
 opinions are but the outgrowth of the chaos 
 of our moods. 
 
 Any attempt to democratise art results only 
 in the lowering of the artistic standard. Art 
 cannot be taught; and a true appreciation of 
 
8 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 it cannot grow up without a complete under- 
 standing of the aesthetic laws governing it. 
 Those qualities in painting by which it is ordi- 
 narily judged are for the most part irrelevan- 
 cies from the standpoint of pure aesthetics. 
 They have as little to do with a picture's infixed 
 greatness as the pundluation in Faust or the 
 words of the Hymn to Joy in the Ninth Sym- 
 phony. Small wonder that modern art has 
 become a copious fountain-head of abuse and 
 laughter; for modern art tends toward the 
 elimination of all those accretions so beloved by 
 the general — literature, drama, sentiment, sym- 
 bolism, anecdote, prettiness and photographic 
 realism. 
 
 This book inquires first into the function and 
 psychology of all great art, and endeavours to 
 define those elements which make for genuine 
 worth in painting. Next it attempts to explain 
 both the basic and superficial differences between 
 "ancient" and "modern" art and to point out, 
 as minutely as space will permit, the superiority 
 of the new methods over the old. By this 
 exposition an effort is made to indicate the 
 raison d'etre of the modern procedure. After that, 
 modern painters are taken up in the order of 
 their importance to the evolution of painting 
 during the last hundred years. I have tried to 
 answer the following questions: What men and 
 movements mark the milestones in the develop- 
 ment of the new idea.? What have been the 
 motivating forces of each of these schools.? To 
 what extent are their innovations significant: 
 what ones touch organically on the vital prob- 
 lems of aesthetics; and what was their influence 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 9 
 
 on the men who came later? Out of what did 
 the individual men spring; what forces and 
 circumstances came together to make their exist- 
 ence possible? What were their aims, and what 
 were their adlual achievements? What relation 
 did they bear to one another, and in what way 
 did they advance on one another? Where has 
 modern art led, and what inspirational possi- 
 bilities lie before it? 
 
 Before setting out to solve these problems, 
 all of which have their roots in the very organ- 
 isms of the science of aesthetics, I have posed 
 a definite rationale of valuation. My principles 
 are based on the quickening ideals of all great 
 art, and, if properly understood, I believe, they 
 will answer every question which arises in the 
 intelligent spectator when he stands before a 
 piece of visual art, be it a Byzantine mosaic, a 
 complicated organisation by Rubens, a linear 
 arrangement by Picasso or an utterly worthless 
 anecdote in paint by an English academician. 
 Necessarily preoccupied with the application of 
 my critical standard, I have had but little time 
 and space to devote to its elucidation. Yet I 
 have striven in this indired: process of state- 
 ment to make my fundamental postulate suffi- 
 ciently clear to enable the reader to recognise 
 its truth and unity. Two years ago when I 
 crowded my hypothesis into 7000 words in the 
 Forum, and early last winter when I stated it 
 in even briefer space in the New Age, I found 
 that, although it took a new and difficult stand, 
 there were many who grasped its essentials. 
 Therefore I feel myself entitled to hope that in 
 its present form it will be comprehensible even 
 
lO 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 to those whose minds are not trained in the 
 complexities of aesthetic research. 
 
 In stripping art of its intriguing charm and 
 Its soothing vagueness it is not my intention 
 to do away with its power to dehght. To the 
 contrary, I believe that only by relieving paint- 
 ing of its dead cargo of literature, archaeology 
 and illustration can it be made to fundion 
 freely. Painting should be as pure an art as 
 music, and the struggles of all great painters 
 have been toward that goal. Its medium — 
 colour — is as elemental as sound, and when 
 properly presented (with the same scientific 
 exadness as the harmonies of the tone-gamut) 
 it is fully as capable of engendering aesthetic 
 emotion as is music. Our delight in music, 
 no matter how primitive, is not dependent on 
 an imitation of natural sounds. Music's pleas- 
 urable significance is primarily intelleaual. So 
 can painting, by its power to create emotion 
 and not mere sensation, provoke deep aesthetic 
 feeling of a far greater intensity than the delight 
 derived from transcription and drama. Modern 
 painting strives toward the heightening of emo- 
 tional ecstasy; and my esthetique is intended to 
 pave the way for an appreciation of art which 
 will make possible the reception of that ecstasy. 
 With this objed ever in view I have weighed 
 the painting of the last century, and have 
 judged it solely by its ability or inability to 
 call forth a profound aesthetic emotion. Almost 
 any art can arouse pleasing sentiments. Only 
 great art can give us intelledual rapture. 
 
 Paris, 1915 
 
 W. H. W. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Ancient and Modern Art 17 
 
 11. Precursors of the New Era 34 
 
 III. Edouard Manet 64 
 
 IV. The Early Impressionists 83 
 
 V. AuGUSTE Renoir 107 
 
 VI. Paul Cezanne 129 
 
 VII. The Neo-Impressionists 164 
 
 VIII. Gauguin and the Pont-Aven School . . . 187 
 
 IX. Degas and His Circle 207 
 
 X. Henri-Matisse 222 
 
 XI. Picasso and Cubism 237 
 
 XII. Futurism 263 
 
 XIII. Synchromism 277 
 
 XIV. The Lesser Moderns 305 
 
 XV. Conclusion 327 
 
 Index 343 
 
REPRODUCTIONS 
 
 La Montagne Victoire (Cezanne) [colour^ . . • Frontispiece 
 Les Femmes d' Alger dans Leur Appartement (Delacroix) 
 
 Facing page 38 
 
 L'Enterrement a Ornans (Courbet) 54 
 
 Le Bain (Daumier) 60 
 
 Le Dejeuner sur I'Herbe (Manet) 78 
 
 Waterloo Bridge (Monet) 98 
 
 Paysage (Guillaumin) 104 
 
 La Femme au Miroir (Renoir) ^colour} 108 
 
 Le Dejeuner des Canotiers (Renoir) 114 
 
 Baigneuses, 1B85 (Renoir) 126 
 
 Baigneuses, 1902 (Renoir) 126 
 
 Baigneuses (Cezanne) 138 
 
 Pommes sur une Table (Cezanne) 1 56 
 
 Les Tours Vertes a la Rochelle (Signac) 174 
 
 Un Dimanche a la Grande-Jatte (Seurat) 180 
 
 Portrait de 1' Artiste (Van Gogh) 184 
 
 Le Gue (Gauguin) [colour] 194 
 
 Deux Tahitiens (Gauguin) 204 
 
 Danseuses a Leur Toilette (Degas) 212 
 
 Baigneuses (Henri-Matisse) 226 
 
 Portrait de Famille (Henri-Matisse) 234 
 
 Femme a la Mandoline (Picasso) 246 
 
 Fumeur et Paysage (Leger) 256 
 
 Dynamisme d'une Auto (Russolo) 268 
 
 Hieroglyphe Dynamique du Bal Tabarin (Severini) . . 274 
 
 Synchromie Cosmique (Morgan Russell) 294 
 
 Arm Organisation in Blue-Green (Macdonald -Wright) 
 
 tcolour'] 300 
 
 Composition No. 2 (Kandinsky) 310 
 
 Le Jardin (Bonnard) 3^8 
 
Modern Painting 
 
 I 
 
 ANCIENT AND MODERN ART 
 
 THROUGHOUT the entire history of the 
 fine arts, no period of aesthetic inno- 
 vation and endeavour has 'suffered from 
 public mahgnity, ridicule and ignorance 
 as has painting during the last century. The 
 reasons for this are many and, to the serious 
 student of art history, obvious. The change 
 between the old and the new order came swiftly 
 and precipitously, like a cataclysm in the serenity 
 of a summer night. The classic painters of the 
 first half of the nineteenth century, such as 
 David, Ingres, Gros and Gerard, were busy with 
 their rehabilitation of ancient traditions, when 
 without warning, save for the pale heresies of 
 Constable, a new and rigorous regime was ushered 
 in. It was Turner, Delacroix, Courbet and 
 Daumier who entered the sacred temple, tore 
 down the pillars which had supported it for cen- 
 turies, and brought the entire strudure of estab- 
 lished values crashing down about them. They 
 survived the debacle^ and when eventually they 
 laid aside their brushes for all time it was with 
 the unassailable knowledge that they had accom- 
 plished the greatest and most significant meta- 
 morphosis in the history of any art. 
 
 But even these hardy anarchists of the new 
 order little dreamed of the extremes to which 
 
i8 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 their heresies would lead. So precipitous and 
 complex has been the evolution of modern paint- 
 ing that most of the most revolutionary moderns 
 have failed to keep mental step with its develop- 
 ments and divagations. During the past few 
 years new modes and manners in art have sprung 
 up with fungus-like rapidity. "Movements" and 
 "schools'* have followed one another with as- 
 tounding pertinacity, each claiming that finality 
 of expression which is the aim of all seekers for 
 truth. And, with but few exceptions, the men 
 who have instigated these innovations have been 
 animated by a serious purpose — that of master- 
 ing the problem of aesthetic organisation and 
 of circumscribing the one means for obtaining 
 ultimate and indestrudlible results. But the 
 problems of art, like those of life itself, are in 
 the main unsolvable, and art must ever be an 
 infinite search for the intractable. Form in paint- 
 ing, like the eternal readjustments and equilib- 
 ria of life, is but an approximation to stability. 
 The forces in all art are the forces of life, co- 
 ordinated and organised. No plastic form can 
 exist without rhythm: not rhythm in the super- 
 ficial harmonic sense, but the rhythm which 
 underlies the great flucfluating and equalising 
 forces of material existence. Such rhythm is 
 symmetry in movement. On it all form, both in 
 art and life, is founded. 
 
 Form in its artistic sense has four interpreta- 
 tions. First, it exhibits itself as shallow imita- 
 tion of the surface aspedls of nature, as in the 
 work of such men as Sargent, Sorolla and Simon. 
 Secondly, it contains qualities of solidity and com- 
 petent construction such are as found in the 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN ART 
 
 paintings of Velazquez, Hogarth and Degas. 
 Thirdly, it is a consummate portrayal of objeds 
 into which arbitrary arrangement has been intro- 
 duced for the accentuation of volume. Raphael, 
 Poussin and Goya exemplify this expression of 
 it. Last, form reveals itself, not as an objec- 
 tive thing, but as an abstrad: phenomenon cap- 
 able of giving the sensation of palpability. All 
 great art falls under this final interpretation. 
 But form, to express itself aesthetically, must be 
 composed; and here we touch the controlling 
 basis of all art: — organisation. Organisation is 
 the use put to form for the produdion of rhythm. 
 The first step in this process is the construdlion 
 of line, line being the diredion taken by one or 
 more forms. In purely decorative rhythm the 
 lines flow harmoniously from side to side and from 
 top to bottom on a given surface. In the greatest 
 art the lines are bent forward and backward as 
 well as laterally so that, by their orientation in 
 depth, an impression of profundity is added to 
 that of height and breadth. Thus the simple 
 image of decoration is destroyed, and a micro- 
 cosmos is created in its place. Rhythm then be- 
 comes the inevitable adjustment of approaching 
 and receding lines, so that they will reproduce 
 the placements and displacements to be found in 
 the human body when in motion. 
 
 To understand, and hence fully to appreciate, 
 a painting, we must be able to recognise its in- 
 herent qualities by the process of intelledual 
 reasoning. By this is not implied mechanical 
 or scientific observation. Were this necessary, 
 art would resolve itself into a provable theory 
 and would produce in us only such mental pleas- 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 ure as we feel before a perfed piece of intricate 
 machinery. But once we comprehend those con- 
 stitutional qualities which pervade all great works 
 of art, plastic and graphic, the sensuous emotion 
 will follow so rapidly as to give the effeA of 
 spontaneity. This process of conscious observa- 
 tion in time becomes automatic and exerts itself 
 on every work of art we insped. Once adjusted 
 to an assimilation of the rhythmic compositions 
 of El Greco and Rubens, we have become sus- 
 ceptible to the tadile sensation of form in all 
 painting. And this subjedlive emotion is keener 
 than the superficial sensation aroused by the 
 prettiness of design, the narrative of subjedl-matter, 
 or the quasi-realities of transcription. More and 
 more as we proximate to a true understanding 
 of the principles of art, shall we read to those 
 deeper and larger qualities in a painting which are 
 not to be found in its documentary and technical 
 side. Also our concern with the transient senti- 
 ments engendered by a picture's external aspeds 
 will become less and less significant. Technique, 
 dramatic feeling, subjedl, and even accuracy of 
 drawing, will be relegated to the subsidiary and 
 comparatively unimportant position they hold in 
 relation to a painting's esthetic purpose. 
 
 The lack of comprehension — and consequently 
 the ridicule — which has met the efforts of mod- 
 ern painters, is attributable not alone to a mis- 
 understanding of their seemingly extragavant 
 and eccentric mannerisms, but to an ignorance of 
 the basic postulates of all great art both ancient 
 and modern. Proof of this is afforded by the 
 constant statements of preference for the least 
 effedual of older painters over the greatest of 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN ART 
 
 the moderns. These preferences, if they are 
 symptomatic of aught save the mere habit of a 
 mind immersed in tradition, indicate an imma- 
 turity of artistic judgment which places prettiness 
 above beauty, and sentimentahty and documen- 
 tary interest above subjedivity of emotion. The 
 fallacies of such judgment can best be indicated 
 by a parallel consideration of painters widely 
 separated as to merit, but in whom these different 
 qualities are found. For instance, the prettiness 
 of Reynolds, Greuze and Murillo is as marked as 
 the prettiness of Titian, Giorgione and Renoir. 
 The latter are by far the greater artists; yet, 
 had we no other critical standard save that of 
 charm, the difference between them and the 
 others would be indistinguishable. Zuloaga, 
 Whistler, Botticelli and Bocklin are as inspira- 
 tional of sentiment as Tintoretto, Corot, Raphael 
 and Poussin; but by no authentic criterion are 
 they as great painters. Again, were drama and 
 simple narrative aesthetic considerations, Reg- 
 nault, Brangwyn, and Antonino Molineri would 
 rank with Valerio Castello, Rubens and Ribera. 
 
 In one's failure to distinguish between the 
 apparent and the organic purposes of art lies 
 the greatest obstacle to an appreciation of what 
 has come to be called modern painting. The 
 truths of modern art are no different from those 
 of ancient art. A Cezanne landscape is not dis- 
 similar in aim to an El Greco. The one is merely 
 more advanced as to methods than the other. 
 Nor do the canvases of the most ultra-modern 
 schools strive toward an aesthetic manifestation 
 radically unlike that aspired to in Michelangelo's 
 Slaves. Serious modern art, despite its often 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 formidable and bizarre appearance, is only a 
 striving to rehabilitate the natural and unalter- 
 able principles of rhythmic form to be found 
 in the old masters, and to translate them into 
 relative and more comprehensive terms. We 
 have the same animating ideal in the pidlures 
 of Giotto and Matisse, Rembrandt and Renoir, 
 BotticeUi and Gauguin, Watteau and Picasso, 
 Poussin and Friesz, Raphael and Severini. The 
 later men differ from their antedecents in that 
 they apply new and more vital methods to their 
 work. Modern art is the logical and natural 
 outgrowth of ancient art; it is the art of yester- 
 day heightened and intensified as the result of 
 systematic and painstaking experimentation in 
 the media of expression. 
 
 The search for composition — that is, for per- 
 fedly poised form in three dimensions — has 
 been the impelling didate of all great art. Giotto, 
 El Greco, Masaccio, Tintoretto and Rubens, the 
 greatest of all the old painters, strove continually 
 to attain form as an abstrad emotional force. 
 With them the organisation of volumes came 
 first. The pidlure was composed as to line. Out 
 of this grew the subjedt-matter — a demonstra- 
 tion a posteriori. The human figure and the 
 recognisable natural objed were only auxiliaries, 
 never the sought-for result. In all this they were 
 inherently modern, as that word should be under- 
 stood; for the new conception of art strives more 
 and more for the emotion rather than the appear- 
 ance of reality. The objects, whether arbitrary 
 or photographic, which an artist uses in a piAure 
 are only the material through which plastic form 
 finds expression. Thej are the means, not the 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN ART 
 
 end. If in the works of truly significant art 
 there is a dramatic, narrative or illustrative in- 
 terest, it will be found to be the incidental and 
 not the important concomitant of the pidture. 
 
 Therefore it is not remarkable that, with the 
 introdudlion of new methods, the illustrative side 
 of painting should tend toward minimisation. 
 The elimination of all the superfluities from art is 
 but a part of the striving toward -defecation. 
 Since the true test of painting lies in its sub- 
 jedtive power, modern artists have sought to 
 divorce their work from all considerations other 
 than those directly allied to its primary fundiion. 
 This process of separation advanced hand in 
 hand with the evolution of new methods. First 
 it took the form of the distortion of natural 
 objed:s. The accidental shape of trees, hills, 
 houses and even human figures was altered in 
 order to draw them into the exad: form demanded 
 by the pidlure's composition. Gradually, by the 
 constant pradlice of this falsification, objedls be- 
 came almost unrecognisable. In the end the 
 illustrative obstacle was entirely done away 
 with. This was the logical outcome of the ster- 
 ilising modern process. To judge a pi(5lure com- 
 petently, one must not consider it as a mere 
 depidlion of life or as an anecdote: one must 
 bring to it an intelligence capable of grasping a 
 complicated counterpoint. The attitude of even 
 such men as Celesti, Zanchi, Padovanino and 
 Bononi is never that of an illustrator, in no 
 matter how sublimated a sense, but of a com- 
 poser whose aim is to create a polymorphic 
 conception with the recognisable materials at 
 hand. 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 Were art to be judged from the pidorial and 
 realistic viewpoint we might find many metic- 
 ulous craftsmen of as high an objediive efficiency 
 as were the men who stood at the apex of genuine 
 artistic worth — that is, craftsmen who arrived 
 at as close and exad: a transcription of nature, 
 who interpreted current moods and mental as- 
 pedls as accurately, and who set forth superficial 
 emotions as dramatically. Velazquez's Philip IV, 
 Titian's Emperor Charles V, Holbein's The Am- 
 bassadors, Guardi's The Grand Canal — Venice, 
 Mantegna's The Dead Christ and Diirer's Four 
 Naked Women reproduce their subjedls with as 
 much painstaking exactitude as do El Greco's 
 The Resurrection of Christ, Giotto's Descent from 
 the Cross, Masaccio's Saint Peter Baptising the 
 Pagans, Tintoretto's The Miracle of Saint Mark, 
 Michelangelo's Creation of the Sun and Moon, 
 and Rubens's The Earl and Countess of Arundel. 
 But these latter pictures are important for other 
 than pictorial reasons. Primarily they are or- 
 ganisations, and as such they are of aesthetic 
 value. Only secondarily are they to be appraised 
 as representations of natural objects. In the 
 pictures of the former list there is no synthetic 
 co-ordination of tactile forms. Such paintings 
 represent merely "subject-matter" treated capably 
 and effectively. As sheer painting from the 
 artisan's stancipoint they are among the finest 
 examples of technical dexterity in art history. But 
 as contributions to the development of a pure art 
 form they are valueless. 
 
 In stating that the moderns have changed the 
 quality and not the nature of art, there is no 
 implication that in many instances the great 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN ART 25 
 
 men of the past, even with limited means, have 
 not surpassed in artistic achievement the men of 
 today who have at hand more extensive means. 
 Great organisers of plastic form have, because 
 of their tremendous power, done with small 
 means more masterly work than lesser men with 
 large means. For instance, Goya as an artist 
 surpasses Manet, and Rembrandt transcends 
 Daumier. This principle holds true in all the 
 arts. Balzac, ignorant of modern literary meth- 
 ods, is greater than George Moore, a master of 
 modern means. And Beethoven still remains 
 the colossal figure in music, despite the vastly 
 increased modern scope of Richard Strauss's 
 methods. Methods are useless without the cre- 
 ative will. But granting this point (which un- 
 consciously is the stumbling block of nearly all 
 modern art critics), new and fuller means, even 
 in the hands of inferior men, are not the proper 
 subject for ridicule. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that the division 
 between old and modern art is not an equal one. 
 Modern art began with Delacroix less than a 
 hundred years ago, while art up to that time had 
 many centuries in which to perfect the possi- 
 bilities of its resources. The new methods are 
 so young that painters have not had time to 
 acquire that mastery of material without which 
 the highest achievement is impossible. Even in 
 the most praiseworthy modern art we are con- 
 scious of that intelle(5lual striving in the handling 
 of new tools which is the appanage of immaturity. 
 Renoir, the greatest exponent of Impressionistic 
 means, found his artistic stride only in his old age, 
 after a long and arduous life of study and exper- 
 
26 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 imenting. His canvases since 1905 are the first 
 in which we feel the fluency and power which 
 come only after a slow and sedulous process of 
 osmosis. Compare, for instance, his early and 
 popular Le Moulin de la Galette with his later 
 portraits, such as Madame T. et Son Fils and La 
 Fillette a I'Orange, and his growth is at once 
 apparent. 
 
 The evolution of means is answerable to the 
 same laws as the progressus in any other line of 
 human endeavour. The greatest artists are always 
 culminations of long lines of experimentations. 
 In this they are ecledic. The organisation of 
 observation is in itself too absorbing a labour to 
 permit of a free exercise of the will to power. 
 The blinding burst of genius at the time of the 
 Renaissance was the breaking forth of the accrued 
 power of generations. Modern art, having no 
 tradition of means, has sapped and dispersed the 
 vitality of its exponents by imposing upon them 
 the necessity for empirical research. It is for 
 this reason that we have no men in modern art 
 who approximate as closely to perfedlion as did 
 many of the older painters. But had Rubens, 
 with his colossal vision, had access to modern 
 methods his work would have been more power- 
 ful in its intensity and more far-reaching in its 
 scope. 
 
 However, in the brief period of modern art 
 two decided epochs have been brought to a close 
 through this accumulation and eruption of exper- 
 imental adtivities in individuals. Cezanne brought 
 to a focus the divergent rays of his predecessors 
 and incorporated into his canvases both the as- 
 pirations and achievements of the art which had 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN ART 
 
 preceded him. This would have been impossible 
 had he been born — even with an equally great 
 talent — fifty years before. And a more recent 
 school of art, by making use of the achievements 
 of both Cezanne and Michelangelo, and by add- 
 ing to them new discoveries in the dynamics 
 of colour, has opened up a new vista of possibil- 
 ities in the expressing of form. This step also 
 would have been impossible without Cezanne and 
 the men who came before and after him. Once 
 these new modes, which are indicative of modern 
 art, become understood and pass into the common 
 property of the younger men, we shall have 
 achievement which will be as complete as the 
 masterpieces of old, and which will, in addition, 
 be more poignant. 
 
 Although the methods of the older painters 
 were more restricted than those of the moderns, 
 the adiual materials at their disposal were fully 
 as extended as ours of today. But knowledge 
 concerning them was incomplete. As a conse- 
 quence, all artists antecedent to Delacroix found 
 expression only in those qualitites which are 
 susceptible of reprodudlion in black and white. 
 In many cases the sacrifice of colour enhances the 
 intrinsic merit of such reprodu(5lions, for often 
 the charadleristics of the different colours oppose 
 the purposes of a picture's planes. Today we 
 know that certain colours are opaque, others 
 transparent; some approach the eye, others 
 recede. But the ancients were ignorant of these 
 things, and their canvases contained many con- 
 tradidlions: there was a continuous warring 
 between linear composition and colour values. 
 They painted solids violet^ and transpicuous 
 
28 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 planes yellow — thereby unconsciously defeating 
 their own ends, for violet is limpid, and yellow 
 tangible. In one-tone reproductions such in- 
 consistencies are eliminated, and the signification 
 of the pid:ure thereby clarified. It was Rubens 
 who embodied the defined attributes of ancient 
 art in their highest degree of pliability, and who 
 carried the impulse toward creation to a point 
 of complexity unattained by any other of the 
 older men. In him we see the culmination of 
 the evolution of linear development of light and 
 dark. From his time to the accession of the 
 moderns the ability to organise was on the de- 
 crease. There was a weakening of perception, 
 a decline of the aesthetic faculty. The chaotic 
 condition of this period was like the darkness 
 which always broods over the world before some 
 cleansing force sweeps it clean and ushers in a 
 new and greater cycle. 
 
 The period of advancement of these old 
 methods extends from prehistoric times to the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century. On the 
 walls of the caverns in Altamira and the Dor- 
 dogne are drawings of mammoths, horses and 
 bison in which, despite the absence of details, 
 the ad:ual approach to nature is at times more 
 sure and masterly than in the paintings of such 
 highly cultured men as Botticelli and Pisanello. 
 The adlion in some of them is pronounced; and 
 the vision, while simple, is that of men conscious 
 of a need for compactness and balance. Here 
 the art is simply one of outline, heavy and prom- 
 inent at times, light and almost indistinguishable 
 at others; but this grading of line was the result 
 of a deeper cause than a tool slipping or refusing 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN ART 
 
 to mark. It was the consequence of a need for 
 rhythm which could be obtained only by the 
 accentuation of parts. The drawings were gen- 
 erally single figures, and rarely were more than 
 two conceived as an inseparable design. Later, 
 the early primitives used symmetrical groupings 
 for the same purpose of interior decorating. Then 
 came simple balance, the shifting and disguise 
 of symmetry, and with it a nearer approach to 
 the imprevu of nature. This style was employed 
 for many generations until the great step was 
 taken which brought about the Renaissance. 
 The sequential asped: of line appeared, permitting 
 of rhythm and demanding organisation. Cima- 
 bue and Giotto were the most prominent expon- 
 ents of this advance. From that time forward 
 the emotion derived from a6lual form was looked 
 upon by artists as a necessary adjund: to a pict- 
 ure. With this attitude came the aristocracy 
 of vision and the abrogation of painting as mere 
 exalted craftsmanship. 
 
 After that the evolution of art was rapid. In 
 the contemplation of solidly and justly painted 
 figures the artist began to extend his mind into 
 space and to use rhythm of line that he might 
 express himself in depth as well as surfacely. 
 Thus he preconised organisation in three dimen- 
 sions, and by so doing opened the door on an 
 infinity of aesthetic ramifications. From the be- 
 ginning, tone balance — that is, the agreeable 
 distribution of blacks, whites and greys — had 
 gone forward with the development of line, so 
 that at the advent of depth in painting the 
 arrangement of tones became the medium through 
 which all the other qualities were made manifest. 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 In the stridl sense, the art of painting up to 
 a hundred years ago had been only drawing. 
 Colour was used only for ornamental or dramatic 
 purposes. After the first simple copying of 
 nature's tints in a wholly restridled manner, the 
 use of colour advanced but little. It progressed 
 toward harmony, but its dramatic possibilities 
 were only dimly felt. Consequently its primitive 
 employment for the enhancement of the decora- 
 tive side of painting was adhered to. This was 
 not because the older painters were without the 
 necessary pigments. Their colours in many in- 
 stances were brighter and more permanent than 
 ours. But they were satisfied with the effeifls 
 obtained from black and white expression. They 
 looked upon colour as a delicacy, an accessory, 
 something to be taken as the gourmet takes 
 dessert. Its true significance was thus obscured 
 beneath the artists' complacency. As great an 
 artist as Giorgione considered it from the con- 
 ventional viewpoint, and never attempted to 
 deviate toward its profounder meanings. The 
 old masters filled their canvases with shadows 
 and light without suspecting that light itself is 
 simply another name for colour. 
 
 The history of modern art is broadly the his- 
 tory of the development of form by the means 
 of colour — that is to say, modern art tends 
 toward the purification of painting. Colour is 
 capable of producing all the eff^edls possible to 
 black and white, and in addition of exciting an 
 emotion more acute. It was only with the advent 
 of Delacroix, the first great modern, that the 
 dramatic qualities of colour were intelligently 
 sensed. But even with him the conception was 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN ART 
 
 so slight that the effedls he attained were but 
 meagrely effecflive. After Delacroix further ex- 
 periments in colour led to the realistic translation 
 of certain phases of nature. The old static 
 system of copying trees in green, shadows in 
 black and skies in blue did not, as was commonly 
 believed, produce realism. While superficially 
 nature appeared in the colours indicated, a close 
 observation later revealed the fad: that a green 
 tree in any light comprises a diversity of colours, 
 that all sunlit skies have a residue of yellow, 
 and hence that shadows are violet rather than 
 black. This newly unearthed realism of light 
 became the battle cry of the younger men in the 
 late decades of the nineteenth century, and 
 reached parturition in the movement erroneously 
 called Impressionism, a word philologically op- 
 posed to the thing it wished to elucidate. The 
 ancients had painted landscape as it appeared 
 broadly at a first glance. The Impressionists, 
 being interested in nature as a manifestation in 
 which light plays the all-important part, trans- 
 ferred it bodily onto canvas from that point of 
 view. 
 
 Cezanne, looking into their habits more coolly, 
 saw their restridlions. While achieving all their 
 atmospheric aims, he went deeper into the me- 
 chanics of colour, and with this knowledge 
 achieved form as well as light. This was another 
 step forward in the development of modern 
 methods. With him colour began to near its 
 true and ultimate significance as a functioning 
 element. Later, with the aid of the scientists, 
 Chevreul, Bourgeois, Helmholtz and Rood, other 
 artists made various departures into the field 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 of colour, but their enterprises were failures. 
 Then came Matisse who made improvements 
 on the harmonic side of colour. But because he 
 ignored the profounder lessons of Cezanne he 
 succeeded only in the fabrication of a highly 
 organised decorative art. Not until the advent 
 of the Synchromists, whose first public exhibition 
 took place in Munich in 1913, were any further 
 crucial advances made. These artists completed 
 Cezanne in that they rationalised his dimly fore- 
 shadowed precepts. 
 
 To understand the basic significance of paint- 
 ing it is necessary to revise our method of judg- 
 ment. As yet no aesthetician has recorded a 
 rationale for art valuation. Taine put forth 
 many illuminating suggestions regarding the fun- 
 dam.entals of form, but the critics have paid 
 scant heed. Prejudice, personal taste, meta- 
 physics and even the prediledlions of sentiment, 
 still govern the world's judgments and apprecia- 
 tions. We are slaves to accuracy of delineation, 
 to prettiness of design, to the whole suite of ma- 
 terial considerations which are deputies to the 
 organic and intelledual qualities of a work of 
 art. It is the common thing to find criticisms 
 — ever from the highest sources — which praise 
 or condemn a picture according to the nearness 
 of its approach to the reality of its subje(5l. Such 
 observations are confusing and irrelevant. Were 
 realism the objeA of art, painting would always 
 be infinitely inferior to life — a mere simulacrum 
 of our daily existence, ever inadequate in its 
 illusion. The moment we attach other than 
 purely aesthetic values to paintings — either an- 
 cient or modern — we are confronted by so exten- 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN ART 33 
 
 sive and differentiated a set of tests that chaos 
 or error is unavoidable. In the end we shall find 
 that our conclusions have their premises, not in 
 the work of art itself, but in personal and ex- 
 traneous considerations. A pidlure to be a great 
 work of art need not contain any recognisable 
 objed:s. Provided it gives the sensation of rhyth- 
 mically balanced form in three dimensions, it 
 will have accomplished all that the greatest 
 masters of art have ever striven for. 
 
 Once we divest ourselves of traditional integu- 
 ments, modern painting will straightway lose its 
 mystery. Despite the many charlatans who clothe 
 their aberrations with its name, it is a sincere 
 reaching forth of the creative will to find a me- 
 dium by which the highest emotions may most 
 perfectly be expressed. We have become too 
 complex to enjoy the simple theatre any longer. 
 Our minds call for a more forceful emotion than 
 the simple imitation of life can give. We require 
 problems, inspirations, incentives to thought. 
 The simple melody of many of the old masters 
 can no longer interest us because of its very 
 simplicity. As the complicated and organised 
 forces of life become comprehensible to us, we 
 shall demand more and more that our analytic 
 intelligences be mirrored in our enjoyments. 
 
II 
 
 PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 
 
 THE nineteenth century opened with 
 French art in a precarious and de- 
 cadent condition. To appreciate the 
 prodigious strides made by Gericault 
 and Delacroix, even by Gerard and Gros, one 
 must consider the rabid antagonism of the public 
 toward all ornament and richness in painting and 
 toward all subject-matter which did not inspire 
 thoughts of inflexible simplicity. This attitude 
 was attributable to the social readlion against 
 the excesses of the voluptuous Louis XVL Vien 
 it was who, suppressing the eroticism of Boucher, 
 instigated the so-called classic revival founded on 
 Graeco-Roman ideals. The public became so vehe- 
 ment in its praise of this hypocritical and austere 
 art, that Fragonard, that delicious painter of 
 boudoirs, was dismissed as indecent. Even the 
 demure Greuze, who tried to rehabilitate himself 
 by making his art a vehicle for a series of parental 
 sermons, died a pauper. He too lacked the arid- 
 ity requisite for popular taste. Chardin, the Le 
 Nains and Fouquet were set aside: they were 
 considered too trivial, too insufficiently archae- 
 ological. Watteau's canvases were stoned by Reg- 
 nault, Girodet and the other pupils of David. 
 Lancret, Pater, Debucourt, Olivier, Gravelot, 
 La Tour, Nattier and others met similar fates 
 at the hands of the new classicists. 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 35 
 
 Such men as these could not find approbation 
 in a pubHc which demanded only allegorical, 
 political and economic art. But David met all 
 its requirements. He represented the antithesis 
 of the sound freedom of the French tempera- 
 ment; and forthwith became the Elija of the 
 new degeneracy. He apotheosised all that is 
 false and decadent in art. But the adulation 
 of him was short-lived. The French imagina- 
 tion is too fecund for only thorns. Ingres super- 
 ceded him. This new idol, going to the Greeks 
 for inspiration, made David fluent and charming. 
 He studied the Italian primitives and simplified 
 them with Byzantine and Raphaelic addenda. 
 He had a genuine instin(5l for silhouette entirely 
 lacking in his forerunner, and soon struck the 
 first blow which marked the disintegration of 
 David's cult. 
 
 Gerard and Gros took a further step by loos- 
 ening slightly Ingre's drawing; and Gericault 
 and Guerin completed the disruption of the 
 David tradition. Gericault's Radeau de la 
 Meduse brought its young and highly talented 
 creator immediately into the public gaze, not 
 only because of its implied blasphemy in deviat- 
 ing from the methode David, but because the 
 tragedy of its subjecft was still fresh in the na- 
 tional mind. Was this a clever device on the 
 part of the painter to circumvent hostile criti- 
 cism by clothing his innovations with a sympa- 
 thetic theme.? Perhaps; but the pidure's value 
 to us lies in that it foreshadowed the new idea 
 in art. It forced the gate which made easier 
 Delacroix's entrance several years later. 
 
 In retrospedl the readlion against an established 
 
36 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 order appears simple, but the world's innovators 
 have required for their task an intelledual cour- 
 age amounting to rare heroism. Heretics are 
 regarded as dangerous madmen, and generally 
 their only reward is the pleasure of revolt. The 
 credit for greatness falls on those later men who 
 avail themselves of the principles of past reac- 
 tionary enterprise. So much of the energy of 
 pioneers is spent in combating hostile criticism 
 and indifference, that their fund of creative force 
 is depleted. This was true in the case of Dela- 
 croix. Like all the greater painters he was self- 
 taught. The essence of knowledge is untrans- 
 mittable. True, he occasionally visited the studio 
 of Guerin, but his real education came from the 
 Louvre where he copied Veronese, Titian and 
 Rubens. His insight was keen but not deep, 
 and at first he did little more than absorb the 
 surface aspeds of others, though he did this 
 with intelligence. Later, by devious steps both 
 forward and back, he became the bridge from 
 the eighteenth century to Impressionism, just 
 as Cezanne became the stepping stone from Im- 
 pressionism to art's latest manifestations. 
 
 In 1822 Delacroix exposed his first canvas, 
 Dante et Virgile aux Enfers, one of the finest 
 debut pidures ever recorded. Superficially it 
 is his most obvious influence of Rubens whom 
 he deeply respeded; and in it are also discov- 
 erable the exaggerations and disproportions of 
 Michelangelo. Thiers lauded it, and so great 
 was its popularity that the government bought 
 it for 2,000 francs. Rubens still held him firmly 
 two years later in the Massacre de Scio, although 
 there were in the pidlure indubitable indications 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 37 
 
 of the advent of Venice. This pidure was to 
 be hung in the famous Salon of 1824, where 
 Lawrence, Bonington, Fielding, and Constable 
 (who were to have such a great influence on his 
 later work) exposed. The Massacre de Scio was 
 ready for shipment when, just before the vernis- 
 sage, Delacroix saw a canvas by Constable done 
 in the divisionistic method. At once he felt the 
 necessity for colour expression, and going home 
 he entirely repainted his picture. 
 
 This was the turning-point in his art. He had 
 admired the green in Constable's landscape, and 
 had spoken of it to the other. Constable ex- 
 plained that the superiority of the green in his 
 prairies was due to the fadl that he had composed 
 it with a multitude of different greens. Here 
 Delacroix's keen perception got to work. In 
 his Journal he wrote: "What Constable says 
 of the green of his prairies can be applied to all 
 the other tones as well." By this method, prim- 
 itive as it seems today, he beheld a way of 
 augmenting the dramatic significance of his con- 
 ceptions. The next year, 1825, he went to Lon- 
 don to study the English painters at closer range. 
 There he learned much from Bonington, as he 
 did from Constable, and in one of his letters 
 he wrote: "Grey is the enemy of all painting. 
 . . . Let us banish from our palette all earth 
 colours." And later he forecasted the Impres- 
 sionistic methods by writing: "It is good not to 
 let each brush stroke melt into the others; they 
 will appear uniform at a certain distance by the 
 sympathetic law which associates them. Colour 
 obtained thus has more energy and freshness. 
 The more opposition in colour, the more brilliance." 
 
38 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 Delacroix's intelligence, reconnoitring along 
 these lines, formulated other principles. Among 
 many observations concerning colour, he wrote: 
 "If to a composition, interesting in its choice 
 of subject, you add a disposition of lines, which 
 augments the impression, a chiaroscuro which 
 seizes the imagination, and a colour which is 
 adapted to the charaders, it is then a harmony, 
 and its combinations are so adapted that they 
 produce a unique song. ... A conception, haying 
 become a composition, must move in the milieu 
 of a colour peculiar to it. There seems to be a 
 particular tone belonging to some part of every 
 pidure which is a key that governs all the other 
 tones. . . . The art of the colourist seems to 
 be related in certain ways to mathematics and 
 music." That he believed in the exad science 
 of colour is further attested to by the fadl that 
 he made a dial on which noon represented red, 
 six o'clock green, one o'clock blue, seven o'clock 
 orange — and so on through the hours with the 
 opposition of complementaries. 
 
 Evidences of these experimentations are dimly 
 discerned in a number of his minor canvases 
 done between 1827 and the Revolution. In 1832, 
 after he had painted the admirable La Liberte 
 Guidant le Peuple sur les Barricades, he visited 
 Morocco. Before this event his work had con- 
 tained many of the elements of sumptuousness 
 and sensuality; but in this eastern land his 
 colour reached maturity. Studying the produc- 
 tions of the native crafts in their relation to 
 colour, he dreamed of making pictures as varie- 
 gated as rugs and vases. In this he was tres- 
 passing on the precindls of Veronese who had 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 39 
 
 made pidorial use of the produdls of the Orient 
 and of Africa. On his return he painted Les 
 Femmes d' Alger dans Leur Appartement. This 
 pidlure, one of his best, embodies most of his 
 colour theories. In it we find cold shadows 
 opposed to hot lights, and the contiguous placing 
 of complementaries. 
 
 Delacroix looked upon himself as a colourist. 
 But while his theories were in the main sound 
 they did not go far enough. They were impor- 
 tant only as a starting point. His colour is hardly 
 noticeable today, and in no wise does it sum up 
 his artistic interest for us. Gauguin once said 
 that we get Delacroix's full significance in black- 
 and-white reprodudlion. This comes perilously 
 near being true. Today his pidlures appear as 
 devoid of brilliancy as those of the Venetians. 
 Yet, when he first exhibited, he was reproached 
 for his raucous tones. The critics called his 
 Massacre de Scio the "massacre of painting," 
 and added, "2/ court sur les toits." His men and 
 women, the shadows of whose flesh were coloured 
 with blues and greens, were stigmatised 
 "corpses," and he was accused of having used the 
 morgue for his studio. 
 
 All this mattered little. Delacroix's real sig- 
 nificance as an artist lay in his drawing which 
 was his greatest asset. What raised him above 
 the general run of painters, baroque and other- 
 wise, was his slight talent for composition. Often 
 in his Journal he speaks of the "balance of 
 lines." He knew that with the masters of the 
 Renaissance it was common property, and that 
 modern painting had lost it; and he strove to 
 reintroduce it into art. But he never got beyond 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 the simplest synthesis of the least compounded 
 of Rubens's figure pieces. For instance, in the 
 Bataille de Taillebourg — an excellent example 
 of his dramatic method — it will be noted 
 that the canvas opens at the bottom-centre 
 to form a triangle of struggling forms, and 
 that in the breach thus made the rearing 
 charger looms white. The identical composition 
 can be found in La Justice, La Liberte, the 
 Janissaires a I'Attaque, La Lutte de Jacob avec 
 i'Ange, the Enlevement de Rebecca and the 
 Entree des Croises a Jerusalem. In this last 
 canvas, his most masterful, the triangle is com- 
 plicated by a curved line running inward from the 
 centre. This pi(5lure recalls, almost to every 
 detail, Rubens's The Adoration of the Wise Men 
 of the East, in the Antwerp Museum. However, 
 it marks a great progress from the symmetricality 
 of his toile de debut, and though in it Rubens is 
 consciously imitated — if not indeed plagiarised, 
 Delacroix gets nearer to the spirit of Veronese 
 than to that of the Flemish master. 
 
 Among the paintings wherein the simple, three- 
 sided composition does not appear, the most 
 notable are his animal pi(5lures (in which he sub- 
 stituted the S design) and those canvases in which 
 his momentary admiration for others (as for 
 Veronese in the Retour de Christophe Colomb, and 
 for the Dutch in Cromwell au Chateau de Wind- 
 sor) made him forget himself. Even this primitive 
 comprehension of linear balance had passed out 
 of French painting with the death of Poussin, 
 and its reapparition in Delacroix is analogous 
 to the impetus toward rhythm which was given 
 to the stiff Byzantine painting of Venice by 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 41 
 
 Nicolo di Pietro and Giovanni da Bologna in the 
 fourteenth century. 
 
 In Rubens we find turbulent movement, as 
 great as in life itself, organised in such a way 
 that all the emotions, exalted, depressive, dra- 
 matic, are expressed. But in Delacroix there 
 is merely co-ordinated adlion. And this adion, 
 even in the busiest centres of his canvases, is 
 more suggestive of unrest than of movement. 
 However, the real cause for his failure to express 
 a spirit as modern as Rubens's lay in his inability 
 to understand the opposition in rhythmic line- 
 balance of three dimensions which is to be found 
 in even the slightest of Rubens's canvases. His 
 details are always interesting, but he never suc- 
 ceeded in welding them into a sequacious and 
 interrelated whole. His high gift of invention 
 was inadequate equipment for so difficult a feat. 
 Compare Rembrandt's exquisite bathing girl in 
 the London National Gallery and Delacroix's 
 La Grece Expirant sur les Ruines de Missolonghi. 
 In technical treatment these two paintings are 
 not unlike, but the scattered feeling and lack of 
 plastic concentration in the latter emphasises the 
 superior force of the Dutchman. 
 
 Delacroix's work fell between flat decoration 
 and deep painting. Although in his small draw- 
 ings and details he exhibits a genuine feeling for 
 volume, as his Lion Dechirant un Cadavre shows, 
 his constant refinements of reasoning nearly 
 always resulted in his form being flattened out 
 until it sometimes became commonplace. Simple 
 balance of line defined the limits of his ability 
 for organisation. If he had carried out in other 
 pidlures the compositional elements of his Pieta, 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 which had distind: movement, his work would 
 have taken a higher place in the history of art. 
 In many canvases his seeming fullness of form 
 is only a richness of line — a richness, however, 
 which had seldom been found in painting since 
 Masaccio. This voluptuousness in Delacroix 
 (analogous to Wagner's music) results from the 
 balance of large dark and light masses — the 
 fullness of chiaroscuro. It is particularly appre- 
 ciable in La Justice de Trajan, La Captivite de 
 Babylone, Repos (reminiscent of Goya's La Maja 
 Desnuda) and his animal compositions. 
 
 Delacroix's greatest deficiency lay in his in- 
 ability to recognise the difference between the 
 inventive intelligence and the imaginative in- 
 stind:. Had he understood this he could have 
 seen that his limitless ambition was incom- 
 mensurate with his comparatively small capa- 
 bilities. But this mind was not sufficiently open. 
 In fadl his viewpoint at times was a petty one. 
 Even his patriotism was chauvinistic. He was 
 rabidly anti-Teutonic and attempted to compress 
 all the great masters of art into the French mould. 
 He inveighed against style in painting because 
 France had always been barren of it. He pre- 
 tended to detest Wagner, his musical prototype, 
 and ignoring the latter's dramatic undulations, 
 criticised him severely for his methods. Beet- 
 hoven was too long for Delacroix, and II Trova- 
 tore too complicated. However, he had a pro- 
 found admiration for Titian and Mozart; and 
 in these preferences we have the man's psychol- 
 ogy. Both were great classicists, but both lacked 
 that genuine and magistral fullness which was 
 the propre of Beethoven and Michelangelo. 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 43 
 
 Delacroix's thoughts were on deep things 
 rather than deep in themselves. Among the 
 romanticists he was at home: all his life Byron 
 and Walter Scott provided him with themes. And 
 though he had sufficient foresight to see the hope- 
 less trend of the painting of his day, and com- 
 bated it, he did not advance. His muse was the 
 corpse of Venetian art. He was the brake which 
 put an end to the readionary tendencies of art. 
 His discoveries did not reach fruition until Im- 
 pressionism, twenty years after his death. 
 
 In all his struggles destiny seemed to con- 
 spire to bring about his fame. In 1824, the very 
 year he brought colour into his painting, Geri- 
 cault, who gave promise of outstripping him, 
 died. Constable and Turner came forward with 
 their achievements. David's influence had died 
 out, and the painter himself was an exile in 
 Brussels. Fromentin tells us that Gericault 
 helped paint Delacroix's first canvas. Certain 
 it is that several of the great Englishmen painted 
 some of his second. This, no doubt, taught 
 Delacroix much. In 1827 the government ordered 
 Justinien Composant les Institutes. All France 
 rallied round his standard. He was decorated 
 by Louis Philippe; and at the age of thirty he 
 was proclaimed a great master by one of the 
 leading critics of the day. 
 
 From the first he had had the backing of men 
 respeded as authorities. But though they 
 helped make his position tenable, they obfus- 
 cated his true significance by their purely liter- 
 ary appreciations. Gautier, Dumas, Baudelaire, 
 Stendhal and Merimee — there was none whose 
 temperament was not either romantic or ideal- 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 istic. They could not see that, though he strove 
 with them for modernity of expression, his lan- 
 guage was unmodern. However, Ernest Ches- 
 neau, Theophile Silvestre, Eugene Veron and 
 C. P. Landon have all given us side-lights on his 
 methods, and, in this, their expositions are of 
 value. 
 
 But, though the men of letters did not under- 
 stand him thoroughly, several of his fellow 
 painters recognised his ecledicism. Among them 
 was Thomas Couture who, in his highly instrud- 
 ive booklet, Methodes et Entretiens d' Atelier, 
 had the audacity to point out the painter's se- 
 ledlive habits. In the main his charge was just. 
 Delacroix's first canvas contains influences of 
 both Rubens and Michelangelo. His second 
 piAure echoes Rubens, the Venetians and Goya. 
 Later came more prominent evidences of Titian 
 and Veronese. Delacroix was museum-bred. He 
 absorbed impressions avidly, and did his best 
 work only after he had undergone an intelledlual 
 experience. Had his art been truly expressive of 
 all that was within him, he would have been in 
 turn — diluted, to be sure — a Giotto, a Car- 
 avaggio, a Rubens, a Rembrandt. He felt the 
 call of these men, but instead of halting at appre- 
 ciation, he tried to use them. But the old 
 masters, like the lords of the earth, are not amen- 
 able to high-handed demands. 
 
 The diversity of his pursuits, which sprang 
 from a desire to compete with Leonardo da 
 Vinci, smacks of the dilettante. His great mis- 
 take was that he did not separate his capabil- 
 ities from his desires. Had he done so he would 
 have produced small figure pieces of gem-like 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 45 
 
 richness and voluminous composition. Enthu- 
 siasm is not the proper equipment for extended 
 labour. It burns out too soon, and is kept alive 
 only by quick and brilliant results. For this 
 reason his pictures are viewed to better effedl 
 framed and in galleries than as mural decorations. 
 In trying to paint monumental subjed:s on exten- 
 sive canvases he lost that spirit of organisation 
 which would have been his on more limited sur- 
 faces. One of his finest expositions of colour, 
 La Lutte de Jacob avec I'Ange, in a chapel at 
 Saint Sulpice, is ineffective because its surface is 
 too large for his treatment of the theme. Dela- 
 croix in reality was a painter of still-life in the 
 broad meaning of the term, just as Rembrandt 
 and Cezanne were still-life painters. He failed 
 in the accomplishment of his larger programme 
 because his vision was too restridled to permit 
 him to weld his details into great ensembles, as 
 Rubens did. His ambition outstripped his power, 
 and strive as he might, he could not make up 
 the discrepancy by reasoning. Undoubtedly he 
 sensed his own weakness, for all his days he was 
 in continual pursuit of system. System was to him 
 what law was to the old masters. Herein he was 
 reflecfting the rationalistic philosophers of his day 
 who substituted theory for observation. 
 
 Were all Delacroix's paintings destroyed and 
 his Journal and drawings saved, his apport to art 
 would be but imperceptibly decreased. We should 
 still possess his linear compositions and his colour 
 theories — his two significant gifts to modern 
 art. Without the liberation of draughtsmanship 
 expressed in the former, Courbet's struggle would 
 have been more difficult, and rhythm in drawing 
 
46 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 would have had to wait for another resuscitator. 
 Without his colour theories Impressionism would 
 have been postponed for half a century; Van 
 Gogh could not have done his best pictures; and 
 the Pointillists, with their system of comple- 
 mentaries, might never have existed. Delacroix 
 was the first to speak of simultaneity in painting, 
 on which phrase has recently been founded a 
 school; and he sketched a dictionary of art terms 
 and definitions which even now, after fifty years, 
 is far more intelligent than present-day academic 
 precepts. 
 
 Let us regard Delacroix as a great pioneer who 
 fought against the zymotic formalism of his day 
 and by so doing opened up a new era of expres- 
 sion. He is the link in the chain which holds 
 the brilliant gems of painting. If he himself fell 
 short of genius, he nevertheless fulfilled a destiny 
 which intrinsically is in many ways more fine: he 
 made genius possible for those who were to come 
 after him. 
 
 The other man who contributed vitally to 
 modern colour theories was J. M. W. Turner, 
 born in 1775, one year before Constable. Like 
 Delacroix he had ardent and influential defenders; 
 and the coincidence is emphasised by the fad: 
 that between these two great colour innovators 
 there existed a striking thematic similarity. 
 Ruskin took care that Turner should taste those 
 beneficent honours which the world generally 
 withholds from a painter during his lifetime. He 
 accomplished this feat by praise which was largely 
 enthusiasm and by criticism which spelled par- 
 tiality. But a panegyric not founded on accuracy 
 and authenticity defeats its own objed: in the 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 47 
 
 end. Turner himself remarked that Ruskin dis- 
 covered recondite points in his painting of which 
 he, as the artist, was ignorant. This might have 
 been true, or it might have been sarcasm. But 
 whether Ruskin or Turner knew more about the 
 latter's art, the fadl remains that the author of 
 Modern Painters overestimated the painter for a 
 reason totally inapposite to aesthetic considera- 
 tion: — the almost photographic perfedlion of his 
 canvases. Later, when the spirituel Whistler 
 tarnished this English didadlician's reputation for 
 infallibility, the latter's pronunciamentos were 
 questioned, in some quarters ridiculed. And 
 Turner, accepted because of Ruskin's assurances, 
 became suspe(^l. 
 
 But no amount of effulgent literary criticism 
 can obscure the authentic accomplishments of 
 this poor barber's son. Turner's contributions 
 to the colour methods of the eighties were too 
 large, and his imitators too bold, for the fadl to 
 be longer ignored. In his Ulysses Deriding Poly- 
 phemus, The Fighting Temeraire and especially 
 in Rain, Steam and Speed, he had begun to divide 
 the surfaces of his objecls into minute touches of 
 different colours — not, perhaps, for the purpose 
 of heightening the emotional qualities of the 
 paintings as a whole, but for the primitive reason 
 that the device gave accuracy to them as repre- 
 sentations of nature. These pictures Monet and 
 Pissarro studied closely during the Franco-Prus- 
 sian War, and there is no doubt that the result of 
 this study determined the direc5lion taken by the 
 Impressionists. Turner's earlier pidiures had been 
 too sombre to meet the demand for brilliancy 
 in that first great modern school, and the can- 
 
48 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 vases in which his vision of sunlight began to take 
 form had not yet been painted. These later 
 pidlures, with their light tonality and their full 
 use of misty blue and gold, had a further influ- 
 ence on the Impressionists' conception of colour. 
 
 When Monet and Pissarro went to London in 
 1 871 they had been habituated to the use of 
 broad flat tones, and were astonished at Turner's 
 extraordinary snow and ice effedls which were 
 obtained by juxtaposing little spots of diverse 
 colour and by the gradating of tones. On their 
 return to France they both made use of this 
 striking artifice, and developed it, in conjundlion 
 with Delacroix's theories, into what later an 
 unknown humorist of the Charivari named Im- 
 pressionism. This process was given further 
 impetus by another Frenchman, Jongkind, called 
 the European Hiroshige. There is more than a 
 superficial analogy between Jongkind and Turner; 
 and the Impressionists, first under the influence 
 of Corot and Courbet, found the effedls they 
 sought by using the purity of Turner with the 
 jaClure of Jongkind. It was thus they were 
 brought back to the theories of Delacroix which 
 they had partially abandoned. This return had 
 a profound raison d'etre, for between the last 
 phase of Delacroix and the later sketches of 
 Turner there is a similarity which was apparent 
 even to their contemporaries. But though the 
 resemblance was as pronounced as that between 
 Turner and the Impressionists, the eulogists of 
 that movement chose to ignore and, in some cases, 
 to deny it. 
 
 This new method of using colour did not con- 
 stitute the only debt the Impressionists owed 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 49 
 
 Turner. They also found in him an added in- 
 spiration toward freedom of arrangement and 
 unconventionahty of design. The landscape 
 painters before Turner's day conceived their out- 
 of-door pidlures in more or less definite moulds. 
 A tree in one man's canvas, being an idealistic 
 conception, was difficult of differentiation from 
 a tree in another's. All their pidures were per- 
 meated by the same motif. But Turner, along 
 with Constable and Bonington, began putting 
 character into landscapes. As a consequence 
 their pidures exuded a new freedom of arrange- 
 ment. 
 
 To appreciate Turner fully we must overlook 
 his astonishing ability for transcription — a heri- 
 tage from his architedural days — and consider 
 him as a man who loved nature so ardently that 
 it was impossible for him to approach it intel- 
 ledually. His sketches, both in water-colour and 
 oil, were, unlike those of the Impressionists, rarely 
 done in the open. He conceived them in pencil, 
 wrote upon his clouds, trees and stones the 
 colours he saw in them, and later, in the solitude 
 of his studio, "worked them up." Had the 
 Impressionists, after their frenzied seances before 
 models, taken their canvases home, organised and 
 modified them, they would no doubt have pro- 
 duced greater net results artistically. Organisa- 
 tion, in its finest sense, comes only through 
 contemplation and refledion; and while Turner 
 did not possess the genius for rhythm in any of 
 its manifestations, he nevertheless realised that 
 mere truth does not make a pidure. The Sun of 
 Venice Going to Sea is as excellent as anything 
 Monet or Sisley has ever done. In Turner there 
 
50 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 is a feeling for the grandiose such as few moderns 
 possess. Did this gift come from Claude whom 
 he delighted in imitating? Even Constable spoke 
 of a Turner canvas as the most complete work of 
 genius he ever saw. But this was the heau geste 
 of a contemporary who wished to appear broad- 
 minded. The truth lay further down the slope. 
 Turner undoubtedly showed genius in his com- 
 petent copying of even the most insignificant of 
 of nature's accidents. The composition of The 
 Devil's Bridge is the foundation on which are 
 built many of Monet's pidures; and the Rain, 
 Steam and Speed canvas can hang beside La 
 Gare St. Lazare without loss to either. 
 
 Delacroix re-established an Italian mode of 
 expression and tried to make of it a modern lan- 
 guage. Turner, in a new language, spoke of 
 ancient things. But Courbet ignored all method, 
 and withal became the father of latter-day art. 
 In him was the embryo of that distindlly modern 
 spirit which demands visible proof before believ- 
 ing. Like William of Orange, he arose trium- 
 phant above every opposition. His art stemmed 
 temperamentally from the Dutch and Spaniards, 
 for while he imitated no one, he was uncon- 
 sciously influenced by many. So complete was 
 his assimilation of great men that in his expres- 
 sion they all had a place. He himself says that 
 he studied antiquity as a swimmer crosses a river. 
 The academicians were drowned there. So was 
 Delacroix. Courbet learned in his passage that 
 in adaptation is the confession of sterility. But 
 though he avoided paraphrasing and copying the 
 old masters, we find throughout his life recur- 
 ring traces of Van Dyke, Zurbaran, Delacroix, 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 51 
 
 Rembrandt, El Greco, Gericault, Ribera, Velaz- 
 quez and that little known Valencian master, 
 Juan de Juanes. 
 
 Courbet was considered an ignorant, vulgar 
 and brutal peasant. But this judgment was the 
 outgrowth of public miscomprehension rather 
 than of any authentic evidence in the man him- 
 self. Courbet was the epitome of that unstudied 
 naturalism which is antipodal to the hypocrisies 
 of society. France, during his day, was governed 
 by the dictates of theatricalism. Its ideals were 
 those of Renaissance Italy, and its artistic atti- 
 tude reflected a refinement of vision approaching 
 decadence. Courbet's deportmental crudities 
 alone were a source of antagonism, and when to 
 these were added scorn and indifference the hos- 
 tility against him became violent. But tem- 
 peramentally he was aristocratic. The peasant 
 mind is fundamentally traditional: Courbet was 
 violently revolutionary. Nor did he lack fineness 
 of mind. His early portraits embodied the sub- 
 tleties of modelling in Rembrandt as well as the 
 extraordinary niceties of charadlerisation in El 
 Greco. The compositions of his pictures alone 
 belie any coarseness of fibre in the man. They 
 are founded on a weakened S which, since the 
 decay of Byzantine art, had done valiant service 
 for the most exalted painters such as Rubens and 
 Tinteretto. This compositional figure appears, 
 either exad: or varied, in his Le Combat de 
 Cerfs, Le Retour de la Conference, Chien et 
 Lievres, and L'Enterrement a Ornans. 
 
 Courbet's reputation for vulgarity was derived 
 more from his lack of facile fluency, so common in 
 the French tradition, than from a basic under- 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 standing of the stru(5lural synthesis of his work. 
 And this misconception of him was aggravated by 
 his being the first painter unwilUng to accept 
 praise as the public chose to dole it out. He 
 was a self-advertiser, and such men as George 
 Bfernard Shaw are but echoes of his methods. He 
 pushed his way to the front unceasingly, and 
 continually theorised as a means of silencing his 
 adversaries. He regarded all public demonstra- 
 tion as blague, and later in life carried this atti- 
 tude into politics. Whistler, his pupil, was quick 
 to sense the advantage of his teacher's methods; 
 and it is the irony of fate that this ineffedual 
 American was believed and resped:ed while Cour- 
 bet was abused and ridiculed and forced to die 
 in exile. He had carried his assaults too far. 
 **To be not only a painter but a man," he wrote 
 at one time. "To create a living art — this is 
 my aim." It is a masterly statement of his real 
 ambitions. He was intensely interested in life, 
 as were Rubens and Cellini. "You want me to 
 paint a goddess.?" he exclaimed. "Show me 
 one!" In this mot he summed up the very spirit 
 of modern times. It expressed the new realism 
 found in such widely separated men as Dos- 
 toievsky, Zola, George Moore, Conrad, Andreiev, 
 Theodore Dreiser, Gerhart Hauptmann, Richard 
 Strauss, Debussy, Korngold, Sibelius, Manet, Re- 
 noir, Sorolla and Zorn. 
 
 It is strange how Courbet, so far removed 
 from the French temperament, should, at the 
 crucial period of his life, have reverted to a 
 French gesture by refusing the cross of the Legion 
 of Honor. But in that famous letter of rejedion, 
 written in a cafe and mailed with a grandiloquent 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 53 
 
 toss in the presence of Fantin-Latour, he summed 
 up aptly the man of genius who, though avid 
 for honour, throws it away at the moment of 
 attainment. Not even Napoleon was more 
 concerned with the thoughts of posterity than 
 Courbet, and some of the artist's letters are not 
 dissimilar in tone to the bombastic manifestos of 
 certain ultra-modern schools. At the time of his 
 first exhibition he wrote to Bruyas: "I stupefy 
 the entire world. I am triumphant not only 
 over the moderns but the ancients as well. Here 
 is the Louvre gallery. The Champs Elysees does 
 not exist, nor the Luxembourg. There is no 
 more Champs de Mars. I have thrown con- 
 sternation into the world of art." This spirit 
 of monumental self-confidence, so startling to a 
 generation whose taste was measured by the 
 decadent poetry of Baudelaire, brought frantic 
 sarcasm hurtling about his head. This troubled 
 Courbet little. He valued friendships only in 
 so far as they were useful. It was Meissonier who 
 said in a Paris salon, when standing before the 
 famous Femme de Munich which Courbet had 
 painted in a few hours for Baron Remberg: "It 
 is no longer a question of art, but of dignity. 
 From now on Courbet must be as one dead to us." 
 
 Charles Baudeliare, who helped fight the battle 
 for Wagner, Poe, Delacroix, Manet and Monet, 
 tentatively praised him at first, but later aUied 
 himself with the public and became his bitterest 
 assailant. It was not surprising. A poet so 
 superficial as to call Delacroix ''a haunted lake 
 of blood" could not be expeded to appreciate 
 the terre a terre qualities of this master of Ornans. 
 And Courbet was so little French that he was 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 incomprehensible to his national contemporaries. 
 He disclaimed all tradition, swore he had no 
 forerunners, and struck blindly into the unknown. 
 For a man without genius this would have been 
 fatal, but, after all, only a genius would attempt 
 such things. 
 
 Courbet was disgusted with the allegory and 
 romance of his time. His nature cried aloud for 
 a pose that was natural, for a landscape that re- 
 sembled the out-of-doors, for objedls in which 
 life was discernible. Consequently the critics 
 and painters of his day put him aside either 
 indifferently or insolently. They could not under- 
 stand a work of art which did not delineate a 
 literary episode or in which the postures were 
 not taken diredl from the theatre. Courbet 
 needed no literature to paint great piAures. He 
 went straight to nature, and his compositions 
 grew out of his sheer enjoyment in visible objeds, 
 whether they were dramatic or not. To the 
 public his pidlures appeared ugly, even repellent. 
 Here was a man who painted a funeral realistic- 
 ally — Dieu men garde! With only the example 
 of canvases filled with familiar gods and goddesses 
 and melting nudes in golden pink, he dared set 
 forth, in a sacred theme, peasants' faces and 
 peasants' shoes, cloudy skies, and holes in the 
 brown earth. To those who had come to look 
 upon art as something ethereal and evanescent, 
 L'Enterrement a Ornans was more than blas- 
 phemy. It was this picture, falling like a bomb 
 into the midst of the vagaries of his time, that 
 sounded the death knell of romanticism. It was 
 the last spade of earth on the graves of the clas- 
 sicists. The mere piAure was sensation enough, 
 
C 
 U 
 
 o 
 
 Pi 
 Pi 
 
 H 
 w 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 55 
 
 but Courbet was not content to let the matter 
 rest there. At the time of his exhibition in 1855, 
 held in a barrack of his own building on the 
 Rond Point de I'Alma, he wrote a defensive and 
 provocative preface to his catalogue. In it he 
 proclaimed himself not only the first realist, but 
 realism itself. 
 
 Gericault's Radeau de la Meduse and Dela- 
 croix's Dante et Virgile aux Enfers were accept- 
 able to the public, the one because of its dramatic 
 interest, the other because of its literature. But 
 L'Enterrement a Ornans entirely lacked the pop- 
 ular qualities of these two other pidures. It was 
 full of rugged and hardy precision. Its insolent 
 ugliness of subjed-matter and its implied indif- 
 ference to all tradition, seemed to express the 
 quintessence of artistic degradation and sordid- 
 ness. At first view the pidure appears to have 
 been inspired by El Greco's Obsequies of the 
 Count of Orgaz, but it is more likely that these 
 peasants of Ornans, each a notable of the town, 
 with their indifferent expressions and awkward 
 gestures, were attributable to The Martyrdom of 
 Saint Bartholomew of Ribera and La Folle of 
 Gericault, rather than to the master of Toledo. 
 But that the Spanish helped paint it is evident: 
 some parts of the landscape are taken bodily 
 from their canvases. Meier-Graefe states that 
 this funeral pidure, like most of the representa- 
 tive pidures of the nineteenth century, is not 
 representative of the artist himself. But did 
 Meier-Graefe understand more profoundly the 
 synthesis of composition found in individual 
 painters, he would have seen that here was the 
 famous S composition which was used throughout 
 
56 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 the painter's life. Instead of being set on end, 
 as was the pradice of the ItaHans, it is used later- 
 ally and extends from left to right in depth. 
 
 In colour also this pidlure is representative of 
 Courbet, for it shows his limitations in that 
 medium. Delacroix brought a new palette to 
 painting, but could not use it. Courbet con- 
 tented himself with a palette as meagre as that 
 of Caravaggio and Guercino. And yet, though 
 colour has come latterly to mean tactile form in 
 its highest sense, this black canvas, when placed 
 beside either an Ingres, a David, a Delacroix or 
 a Gerard, appears less flat and inconsequential 
 than the latter. The form is even suggestive of 
 Rembrandt, Giotto, Cezanne and Renoir. 
 
 Champfleury was the only friend of Courbet 
 who dared defend him. Delacroix was set against 
 him, and the critics, without undertsanding him, 
 obscured the true importance of his art by talking 
 of his want of transcendentalism and sentiment. 
 Especially were his landscapes the butt of their 
 ridicule, for painters up to that time had made 
 use of conventional arrangements of dainty trees 
 copied for their drawing and tone. In Courbet 
 all this was changed. He organised landscapes 
 as he did still-lives and nudes. Objedls, as such, 
 meant nothing to him. In this he struck a new 
 and modern note which the good people of his 
 day considered not only bad art but a slur upon 
 the spiritual meanings of nature. Even in Les 
 Baigneuses, where the figures are unimportant, 
 the trees are superb. In La Grotte he went 
 further, for here the figure was part of the whole. 
 His paintings of the hills about Ornans had a 
 movement which gave off a sensation of weight 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 57 
 
 entirely new in painting. In Les Grands Cha- 
 taigniers he reached his apogee in landscape 
 painting. This piAure is greater than those of 
 any of the Englishmen. 
 
 Though many critics have written that Mil- 
 let influenced Courbet, the reverse is the truth. 
 The former's life work was largely a repetition 
 of the lights and darks found in Courbet's earlier 
 pidlures. Les Casseurs de Pierres is far greater 
 than anything Millet has ever done, despite the 
 vast popularity of such purely sentimental pict- 
 ures as The Angelus and The Man with the Hoe. 
 Courbet could never have been satisfied with 
 the angularity and absence of rhythm in the 
 other's work. In Millet's best canvases one 
 finds at most only a parallelism of lines, and in 
 his lesser piAures even this amateurish attempt 
 at organisation is lacking. But in Les Casseurs 
 de Pierres the arrangement is one which recalls 
 the competency of linear balance and develop- 
 ment in Tintoretto's Minerva Expelling Mars. 
 
 When Courbet entered painting, he had neither 
 prejudices nor a parti pris. He tested his ability 
 before engaging his full complement of resources. 
 Though untutored, he had that cast of intel- 
 ligence which no amount of study can produce 
 and no amount of adverse criticism influence. 
 Delacroix, on the other hand, was the archetype of 
 the highly cultured and educated man. He fore- 
 saw the necessity for radical reform, but was 
 unable to bring it about significantly. Courbet 
 instinctively projected himself into that void at 
 the brink of which tradition halts and the un- 
 known begins. And because he was a man of 
 genius he did not return empty-handed. 
 
58 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 The art of Courbet was too aristocratic to be 
 appreciated. Not aristocratic in the Delacroix 
 sense, but isolated and superior. Rejedling the 
 colour discoveries of his day, he created his own 
 materials. Delacroix foreshadowed the medium 
 which was to serve as a vehicle for the achieve- 
 ment of future generations, but it was Courbet 
 who brought to art a new metal attitude without 
 which there would be no excuse for modern 
 painting. By turning men's thoughts from 
 ancient Italy to the adlualities of their own day, 
 and by expelling the literary canvas from art, 
 he left those who came after him free to evolve 
 a medium which would translate the new vision. 
 Delacroix's heritage to art was intellectual, Cour- 
 bet's dynamic. And though objedlively the 
 work of Courbet is the uglier and less gracious, 
 in it there is more of the sublime. But both men 
 are indispensable, and have a just claim to the 
 eternal resped: of posterity. 
 
 The construction of form as voluminous phe- 
 nomena — that integer of modern painting which 
 was lacking in Delacroix, Turner and Courbet, 
 but which has become one of the leading pre- 
 occupations of present-day artists — was intro- 
 duced by Honore Daumier. This painter who, 
 unlike his three great contemporaries, fought for 
 the pure love of the fight, was celebrated as a 
 caricaturist at twenty-five. Such fame was war- 
 ranted, for he was unquestionably the greatest 
 and most trenchant caricaturist the world has 
 ever produced. From 1835 to 1848 he made 
 capital of all those many catastrophes which 
 overtook France. Only the curtailing of the 
 freedom of the press on December 2, 1848, put an 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 59 
 
 end to his career as publicist. This culmination 
 of his editorial activities was a beneficial thing 
 for both Daumier and the world, for it permitted 
 him freedom to devote himself wholly to the 
 development of the larger side of his genius. He 
 endeavoured to interest his friends in his painting; 
 but too long had he been known as a critic of 
 current topics for them to look with serious eyes 
 upon his more solid endeavours. 
 
 But though neglected by his friends, Daumier 
 holds a position of tremendous importance in 
 relation to the moderns. His work developed 
 along lines unthought-of by either Delacroix or 
 Courbet. Even his cartoons were more than 
 clever pictorial comments on national events. 
 Intrinsically they were great pieces of rugged 
 flesh which had all the appearance of having been 
 chiselled out of a solid medium with a dull tool. 
 The richness of his line is as complete as in 
 Rembrandt's etchings; and his economy of means 
 reached a point to which painters had not yet 
 attained. His significance, however, lies more 
 especially in his new method of obtaining volume 
 than in the flexibility of his line drawings. He 
 built his pictures in tone first. The drawing 
 came afterward as a direct result of the tonal 
 volumes. This new manner of painting permitted 
 him a greater subtlety and fluency than Courbet 
 possessed. In fact, Daumier's comprehension of 
 form in the subjective sense was greater than that 
 of any Frenchman up to his time. Compare, 
 for instance, Daumier's canvas, Les Lutteurs, 
 with Courbet's picture of the same name. The 
 massiveness of the one is monumental. One feels 
 the weight of the two struggling men, heavy and 
 
6o MODERN PAINTING 
 
 shifting, clinging and panting. They are mod- 
 elled by a craftsman who can juggle deftly with 
 his means. In Courbet's pidure the figures are 
 seen carefully copied in a strained pose by one 
 who has not the complete mastery of his tools. 
 In Daumier's picture we also sense that elusive 
 but vital quality called mental attitude. Su- 
 perficially it is almost indistinguishable from 
 it negation, but to those who know its significance, 
 it is of permeating importance. 
 
 Contour and shading to his forerunners had 
 meant two separated and distind: steps in the 
 construdlion of form. Daumier created both 
 qualities simultaneously as one emotion. Depth 
 with other painters was obtained by carrying 
 their figures into the background by the means 
 of line and persped:ive. With Daumier it meant 
 a plastic building up of volume from the back- 
 ground forward. The feeling we have before his 
 canvases that we are looking at form itself and 
 not merely an excellent representation of it, is as 
 strong as it is in a greater way when we stand 
 before a Leonardo da Vinci. In this he gave 
 proof that he was a draughtsman in the most 
 vital sense. Unless he had felt form uniquely, 
 Le Repos des Saltimbanques and Le Bain would 
 have been impossible of creation. This last 
 pidlure sums up what Carriere aspired to but 
 failed to attain. 
 
 Recalling the great masters of form we instinc- 
 tively visualise Michelangelo first. For this rea- 
 son perhaps Michelangelo is regarded the major 
 influence in Daumier. avait du Michel Ange 
 
 dans la peau,'' say the French: and certain it 
 is that Daumier's colossal simphcity and feeling 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 6i 
 
 for tadility were derived from the Renaissance 
 master. But only in one pidlure, a composition 
 called La Republique — 1848, do we find any 
 diredl and conscious influence. Frankly this is 
 but a modernisation of one of the sibyls on the 
 ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The truth is 
 Daumier is more akin to Rembrandt than to 
 Michelangelo. But there is in him none of the 
 conscious copying of Rembrandt that we find, 
 for instance, in Joshua Reynolds. The latter, 
 admiring Rembrandt, essayed to equal his power 
 by imitating his externals with academic pro- 
 cesses. Daumier, temperamentally affihated with 
 his master, went deeper. Putting aside the 
 results of Rembrandt's final brush strokes, he 
 studied the very fundlioning procedure of his 
 art. Both used the human figure as a terrain 
 for the unceasing struggle of light against dark. 
 In the process of painting the infinite play and 
 by-play of opposed values on a given theatre, 
 they produced form as an inevitable result. 
 
 A critic has stated of Daumier: *'He left 
 hardly anything but sketches, splashes of colour 
 that resolve themselves into faces. ..." It is 
 said without attempt at profundity. Neverthe- 
 less the remark unsuspectingly touches the crucial 
 point of Daumier's significance. The very reso- 
 lution of those "splashes of colour" into faces is 
 the prefiguration of the modern conception of 
 form. In this particular Daumier, even more 
 than Rembrandt, was the avant-courier of 
 Cezanne. This latter artist, through his concern 
 with the play of one colour on another, gave 
 birth to form more intensely than did either 
 of the older men. Too much stress cannot be 
 
62 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 laid on Daumier's contribution to modern paint- 
 ing. ^ By regarding the two drawings, La Vierge 
 a I'Ecuelle and Renaude et Angelique — the one 
 by Correggio in chalk, the other by Delacroix 
 in water-colour — we perceive the attainment of 
 form by less profound methods. But neither 
 possesses the significance of Daumier's work. 
 
 Of Daumier's colour little need be said. At 
 times it emerges from its sombreness and blossoms 
 forth in all the hot softness of now the Venetians, 
 of again the Spainards; but compared with the 
 artist's genius for plastic form it is of subsidiary 
 importance. 
 
 Although the inception of Daumier's greatness 
 can be traced to Rembrandt, he readied to many 
 influences. Suggestions of Monnier and Gran- 
 ville are to be found in his work. Decamps's 
 Sonneurs de Cloches was studied by him and 
 emulated. His simplifications stemmed from 
 Ingres, and his caricature of Guizot had the same 
 qualities as that master's portraits. Delacroix 
 also had some trifling influence on him in such 
 paintings as Don Quichotte. But Daumier's 
 influence on others is more diredl and far-reaching 
 than his own garnerings of inspiration. He fore- 
 shadowed the formal abbreviations of Toulouse- 
 Lautrec, Forain and Steinlen, and he affedled, 
 more than is commonly admitted, the works of 
 Manet, Degas, and Van Gogh. In his sculptured 
 pieces, Ratapoil and Les Emigrants, he paved 
 the way for Meunier and Rodin. Even such 
 minor men as Max Beerbohm learned much from 
 him without understanding him. And apart from 
 the vital new methods he brought to painting, 
 the originality of his subject-matter led modern 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 63 
 
 men to copy him thematically. Le Drame fath- 
 ered a whole series of Degas's paintings. 
 
 Daumier is only beginning to receive the intel- 
 ligent appreciation which in time may engulf 
 his eminent contemporary, Courbet. For if 
 choice there is between the intrinsically artistic 
 achievements of the painter of L'Enterrement a 
 Ornans and the creator of Silene, the preference 
 rests with Daumier. 
 
 The forces underlying the development of 
 genius, working in conjundlion with the right 
 circumstances, produce the fertilising methods 
 which nature uses to bring about a final flower- 
 ing of a long period of intense germination. 
 Before the greatest eras of all art the battles 
 have been fought and won. The descendants 
 of the pioneers become the introspective and 
 creative souls who open, free from the stain of 
 combat, to the sun of achievement. Delacroix, 
 Turner, Courbet, Daumier — these are the men 
 who cleared the ground and thereby made pos- 
 sible a new age of aesthetic creation. To Dela- 
 croix belongs the credit for giving an impetus to 
 the vitalisation of colour, and for freeing drawing 
 from the formalisms of the past. Turner raised 
 the tonality of colour, and introduced a new 
 method for its application. Courbet heightened 
 uniformly the signification of objeds in painting, 
 and handed down a mental attitude of untra- 
 ditional relativity. And Daumier conceived a 
 new vision of formal construdion. These men, 
 were the pillars of modern painting. 
 
Ill 
 
 EDOUARD MANET 
 
 THE purely pidlorial has always been rel- 
 ished by the pubKc. The patterns of 
 the mosaicists and very early primitives, 
 the figured stuffs of the East and 
 South, the vases of China and Persia, the 
 frescos on the walls of Pompeii, the drawings 
 and prints of old Japan — all are examples of 
 utilitarian art during epochs when the pubhc 
 took delight in the contemplation of images. 
 Even the delicate designs on Greek pottery, the 
 rigid and ponderous arts of architedural Egypt 
 and the drawings and adorned totem poles of 
 the North American Indians are relics of times 
 when the demand for art was created by the 
 masses. For the most part all these early crafts 
 were limited to simple designs, wholly obvious 
 to the most rudimentary mind. The ancients 
 were content with a representation of a natural 
 object, the likeness of a familiar animal, the 
 symmetry of an ornamental border, an effigy of 
 a god in which their abstract conceptions were 
 given concrete form. At that time the artist 
 was only a craftsman — a man with a commun- 
 istic mind, content to follow the people's dictates 
 and to refled: their taste. Art was then demo- 
 cratic, understood and admired by all. It did 
 not raise its head about the mean level; it was 
 abecedary, and consequently comprehensible. 
 
^DOUARD MANET 
 
 6S 
 
 When the Greek ideal of fluent movement took 
 birth in art and became disseminated, drawing, 
 painting and sculpture began to grow more 
 rhythmic and individual. Slowly at first and 
 then more and more swiftly, art became insulated. 
 The popular joy in the native crafts, despite the 
 impetus of centuries behind it, decreased steadily. 
 The antagonism of the masses to the artist sprang 
 up simultaneously with the disgust of the artist 
 for the masses. It was the inevitable result of 
 the artist's mind developing beyond them. He 
 could not understand why they were no longer 
 in accord with him; and they, finding him in 
 turn unfathomable, considered him either irra- 
 tional or given over to fantastic buffoonery. So 
 long had they been the didator of his vision that 
 his emancipation from their prescriptions left 
 them astounded and angered at his audacity. 
 The nobles then, feeling it incumbent upon them 
 to defend this new luxury of art, stepped into the 
 breach, and for a time the people blindly pat- 
 terned their attitude on that of their superiors. 
 Later came the disintegration of the nobility; 
 its caste being lost, the people no more imitated 
 it. From that time on, although there were a 
 few connoisseurs, the large majority was hostile 
 to the artist, and made it as difficult as possible 
 for him to live. He was looked upon as a mad- 
 man who threatened the entire social fabric. 
 His isolation was severe and complete; and while 
 many painters strove to effedt a reinstatement in 
 public favour, art for 300 years forced its way 
 through a splendid evolution in the face of neg- 
 ledl, suspicion and ridicule. 
 
 For so many generations had the public looked 
 
66 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 upon art as the manifestation of a disordered 
 and dangerous brain that they found it difficult 
 to recognise a man in whose work was the very 
 piAorial essense they had originally admired. 
 This man was Edouard Manet. Instead of 
 being welcomed for his reversion to decoration, 
 strangely enough he was considered as dangerous 
 as his contemporary heretics, Delacroix and 
 Courbet. Courbet was at the zenith of his un- 
 popularity when Manet terminated his appren- 
 ticeship under Couture. The young painter 
 had had numerous clashes with his academic 
 master, and the latter had prophesied for him a 
 career as reprehensible as Daumier's. Spurred on 
 by such incompetent rebukes, Manet determined 
 to launch himself single-handed into the vortex 
 of the aesthetic struggle. This was in 1857. For 
 two years thereafter he put in his time to good 
 purpose. He travelled in Holland, Germany 
 and Italy, and copied Rembrandt, Velazquez, 
 Titian and Tintoretto. These youthful prefer- 
 ences give us the key to his later developments. 
 In 1859 he painted his Le Buveur d' Absinthe, 
 a canvas which showed all the ear-marks of the 
 romantic studio, and which exemplified the pro- 
 pensities of the student for simplification. It was 
 a superficial, if enthusiastic, piece of work, and 
 the Salon of that year was fully justified in re- 
 jedling it. Two years later Manet had another 
 opportunity to expose. In the meantime he had 
 painted his La Nymphe Surprise which, though 
 one of his best canvases, contained all the influ- 
 ence of a hurriedly digested Rembrandt and a 
 Dutch Titian. 
 
 In 1 861 these influences were still at work, 
 
EDOUARD MANET 67 
 
 but the Salon not only accepted his Le Guitarrero 
 but, for some unaccountable reason, awarded it 
 with an honourable mention. In this pidure, 
 Manet's first Spanish adaptation, are also traces 
 of other men. Goya and even Murillo are here 
 — the greys of Velazquez and Courbet's modern 
 attitude toward realism. In this canvas one sees 
 for the first time evidences of its creator's tech- 
 nical dexterity, a characteristic which later he 
 was to develop to so astonishing a degree. But 
 this pi<flure, while conspicuously able, is, like 
 L'Enfant a I'Epee and also Les Parents de I'Ar- 
 tiste, the issue of immaturity. Such paintings 
 are little more than the adroit studies of a highly 
 talented pupil inspired by the one-figure arrange- 
 ments of Velazquez, Mazo and Carreno. Where 
 Manet improved on the average student was in his 
 realistic methods. While he did not present the 
 asped: of nature in full, after the manner of 
 Daubigny and Troyon, he stated its generalisa- 
 tions by painting it as seen through half-closed 
 eyes, its parts accentuated by the blending of 
 details into clusters of light and shadow. This 
 method of visualisation gives a more forceful 
 impression as an image than can a mere accurate 
 transcription. As slight an innovation as was 
 this form of painting, it represented Manet's one 
 point of departure from tradition, although it 
 was in truth but a modification of the traditional 
 manner of copying nature. The public, however, 
 saw in it something basically heretical, and 
 derided it as a novelty. The habit of ridicule 
 toward any deviation from artistic precedent had 
 become thoroughly fixed, ever since Delacroix's 
 heterodoxy. 
 
68 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 It was not until 1862 that Manet, as the in- 
 dependent and professional painter, was felt. Up 
 to this time his talent and capabilities had out- 
 stripped his powers of ideation. But with the 
 appearance of Lola de Valence the man's solidar- 
 ity was evident. This piAure was exposed with 
 thirteen other works at Martinet's the year follow- 
 ing. It was hung beside the accepted and fam- 
 iUar Fontainbleau painters, Corot, Rousseau and 
 Diaz; and almost precipitated a riot because of 
 its informalities. In these fourteen early Manets 
 are discoverable the artist's first tendencies 
 towards simplification for other than academic 
 reasons. Here the abbreviations and economies, 
 unlike those in Le Buveur d' Absinthe, constitute 
 a genuine incHnation toward emphasising the 
 spontaneity of vision. By presenting a picture, 
 free from the stress of confusing items, the eye 
 is not seduced into the by-ways of detail, but 
 permitted to receive the image as an ensemble. 
 This impulse toward simplification was prefigured 
 in his Angelina now hanging in the Luxembourg 
 Gallery. Here he modelled with broad, flat 
 planes of sooty black and chalky white, between 
 which there were no transitional tones. While 
 in this Manet was imitating the externals of 
 Daumier, he failed to approach that master's 
 form. Consequently he never achieved the plas- 
 ticity of volume which Daumier, alone among the 
 modern men, had possessed. However, despite 
 Manet's failure to attain pliability, these early 
 paintings are, in every way, sincere efforts toward 
 the creation of an individual style. It was only 
 later, after his first intoxicating taste of notoriety, 
 that the arriviste spirit took possession of him and 
 
EDOUARD MANET 69 
 
 led him to that questionable and unenviable 
 terminus, popularity. One can imagine him, 
 drunk with eulogy, reading some immodest dec- 
 laration of Courbet's in which was set forth that 
 great man's egoistic confidence, and saying to 
 himself: " Tiens! II faut que faille plus loin:' 
 
 The famous Salon des Refuses, called by some 
 critics of the day the Salon des Reprouves, gave 
 Manet his chance to state in striking fashion his 
 beliefs in relation to aesthetics. For whereas 
 mere realism could no longer excite the animosity 
 of the official Salon jury, as it had done twenty 
 years before, immorahty — or, as Manet chose 
 to put it, franchise — could. Therefore Manet 
 was barred from the company of the Barbizon 
 school and the other favourites of the day. In the 
 Salon des Refuses, which must be held to the 
 credit of Napoleon III, those painters who had 
 suffered at the hands of the academic judges 
 were allowed a hearing. Whistler, Jongkind, 
 Pissarro and Manet here made history. Manet 
 sent Le Bain, which, through the insistence of 
 the public, has come to be called Le Dejeuner 
 sur I'Herbe. But despite the precedent of Gior- 
 gione's Rural Concert (the Concert Champetre 
 in the Louvre), it was looked upon only as the 
 latest manifestation of degeneracy in a man who 
 gave every promise of becoming a moral pariah. 
 The nude, contrasted as it was with attired fig- 
 ures, was too suggestive of sheer nakedness. Had 
 the nude stood alone, as in Ingres's La Source, 
 or among other nudes, as in Ingres's Le Bain 
 Turc, the pidure would have caused no com- 
 ment. Its departures in method were not extrav- 
 agant. The scene is laid out of doors, yet it 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 bears all the evidences of the studio conception; 
 and those lights and reflexions which later were 
 brought to such perfedion in the pidures of the 
 Impressionists and Renoir, are wholly absent. 
 But in one corner is a beautifully painted still- 
 life of fruits, a basket and woman's attire, which 
 alone should have made the pidure acceptable. 
 This branch of painting Manet was to develop 
 to its highest textural possibilities. 
 
 From this time on Manet no longer used the 
 conventional chiaroscuro of the academicians. 
 Instead he let his lights sift and dispel themselves 
 evenly over the whole of his groupings. This 
 mode of procedure was undoubtedly an influence 
 of the Barbizon painters who had done away 
 with the brown sauce of the soi-disant classicists. 
 In his rejedion of details and his discovery of a 
 means whereby effeds could be obtained by broad 
 planes, Manet was forced by necessity to take 
 the step toward this simplification of light. Were 
 colour to be used consistently in conjundion with 
 his technique, it must be spread on in large flat 
 surfaces. By diffusing his light the opportunity 
 was made. He might have omitted the element 
 of colour from his work and contented himself 
 with black and white, as in the case of Courbet; 
 but he was too sensitive to its possibilities. He 
 had observed it in the Venetians and Franz 
 Hals, as weU as in nature; and in its breadth 
 and brilliance he had recognised its utility in 
 enhancing a pidure's decorative beauty. Even 
 the colour of Velazquez was at times sumptuous. 
 Manet, because his simplicity of manner per- 
 mitted a liberal application of colour, was able 
 to augment its ornamental power. It is true 
 
EDOUARD MANET 
 
 71 
 
 that today his large and irregular patches of 
 tints appear grey, but, to his contemporaries, their 
 very extension made them seem blatant and 
 bold. 
 
 Courbet remained in great part the slave to 
 the common vision of reality. In his efforts to 
 attain results he sacrificed little. This, in itself, 
 delimited his accompKshments. Nature to him 
 appeared nearly perfed:, and he painted with 
 all the wonderment of a child opening its eyes 
 on the world for the first time. On the other 
 hand, Manet realised that nature's forces become 
 objedlive only through an intelledlual process. 
 This attitude marked a decided step in advance 
 of Courbet. Manet painted single figures and 
 simple images devoid of all anecdotal significance, 
 out of his pure love of his medium and his sheer 
 delight in tone and contour. In other words, he 
 represented the modern spirit which repudiates 
 objedls conducive to reminiscence, and cares 
 only for ''qualities" in art. His intentions were 
 those of Courbet pushed to greater freedom. 
 Unlike his master he was a virtuoso of the brush. 
 His very facility perhaps accounts for his satisfac- 
 tion with flat decoration, for it concentrated his 
 interest on the adual pate and thereby precluded 
 a deeper research into the psychology of aesthetic 
 emotion. But in his insistence on the aesthetic 
 rather than the illustrative side of painting he 
 carried forward the ideals which were to epitomise 
 modern methods. 
 
 In this lay the impetus he gave to painting. 
 Even with Rubens the necessities of the day 
 forced him, in his choice of themes, to adopt 
 a circumscribed repertoire, the subjedls of which 
 
72 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 he repeated constantly. In him we have mastery 
 of composition with the substance as an after- 
 thought. Delacroix conceived his canvases in 
 the romantic mould, and adapted his composi- 
 tions so as to bring out the salient chara(fleristics 
 of his chosen theme. This was illustration with 
 the arriere pensee of organisation. Daumier 
 struck the average between these two and con- 
 ceived his subjecft in the form he was to use. 
 Courbet minimised the importance of objedls as 
 such by raising them all to the same level of 
 adaptability: but he invariably chose, as with an 
 idee fixe, his subjects from the life about him. 
 Manet cared nothing for any subjedt whether 
 traditional or novel. That he generally chose 
 modern themes was indicative of that new mental 
 attitude which recognises the unimportance of 
 subje6t-matter and urges the painter to abandon 
 thematic research and utilise the things at hand. 
 He made his art out of the materials nearest him, 
 irrespective of their intrinsic topical value. 
 
 This was certainly an important step in the 
 liberating of art from convention. It proclaimed 
 the right of the artist to paint what he liked. 
 Courbet would have painted goddesses if he had 
 seen them. Manet would have painted them 
 without having seen them, provided he had 
 thought the result warranted the effort. Courbet, 
 the father of naturalism, extended the scope of 
 subjedl-matter, while Manet tore away the last 
 tie which bound it to any tradition, whether 
 Courbet's or Titian's. After him there was 
 nothing new to paint. It is therefore small 
 wonder that artists should now have become 
 interested in the forces of nature rather than in 
 
EDOUARD MANET 
 
 73 
 
 nature's mien. Manet, by his consummation of 
 theme, foreshadowed the concern with abstrac- 
 tions which has now swept over the world of 
 aesthetics. Zola, like him in other ways, never 
 equalled him in this. L'Assommoir and Fecon- 
 dite portrayed only the extremes of realism. 
 Manet painted all things with equal pleasure. 
 Here again is evident the continuation of that 
 mental attitude which Courbet introduced into 
 painting. The qualities in Manet which inclined 
 toward abstra(5tion have secured him the reputa- 
 tion for being a greater generaliser than Courbet 
 whose brutal naturalism could not be disso- 
 ciated in the public mind from concrete and 
 stridl materialism. For this contention there is 
 substantiation of a superficial nature. But a 
 mere tendency toward generalisation, with no 
 other qualifications, does not indicate greatness. 
 In fac^, were this purely literal truth concerning 
 Manet conclusive, it would tend to disqualify him 
 in his claim to an importance greater than Cour- 
 bet's. Carriere is an example of a painter who 
 is general and nothing more. Manet had other 
 titles to consideration. 
 
 What Manet's enduring contributions to paint- 
 ing were have never been surmised by the public. 
 His recognition, coming as it did years after his 
 most significant works had been accomplished 
 and set aside, was due to a reversion of the pub- 
 lic's mind to its aboriginal admirations. Manet 
 is popular today for the same reason that the 
 lesser works of Hokusai and Hiroshige are popu- 
 lar, namely: they present an instantaneous image 
 which is at once flat and motionless. As in the 
 days of the mosaicists and early primitives, the 
 
74 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 appreciation of such works demands no intel- 
 ledual operation. Their recognisable subjeds 
 only set in motion a simple process of memory. 
 The Olympia, Manet's most popular painting, 
 illustrates the type of pidure which appeals 
 strongly to minds innocent of aesthetic depth. 
 Its mere imagery is alluring. As pure decoration 
 it ranks with Puvis de Chavannes. But in it 
 are all the mistakes of the later Impressionists. 
 Manet consciously attempted the limning of 
 light, but brilHance alone resulted. He did not 
 realise that, in order for one to be conscious of 
 illumination, shadow is necessary. This latter 
 element, with its complementary, produces in 
 us the sensation of volume. True, there is in 
 the Olympia violent contrast between the nude 
 body, the bed and the flowers, on the one hand, 
 and the background, the negress and the cat, on 
 the other; but it is only the contrast of dis- 
 similar atmospheres. The level appearance of 
 the pidlure is not relieved. 
 
 The cardinal shortcoming in a painting of 
 this kind is that it fails to create an impression 
 of either the aspeds or the forces of nature. 
 Such pidures are only flat representations of 
 nature's minor charaderistics. The most resilient 
 imagination cannot endow them with form: the 
 intelligence is balked at every essay to penetrate 
 beyond their surface. In contemplating them 
 one is irritated by the emptiness, or rather the 
 solidity, of the neant which lies behind. Courbet 
 called the Olympia "the queen of spades coming 
 from her bath." Titian, had he lived today, 
 would have styled it a phogotraph. Goya (who 
 is as much to blame for it as either Courbet or 
 
EDOUARD MANET 75 
 
 Titian) would have considered its shallowness an 
 inexcusable vulgarity. In painting it undoubt- 
 edly Manet's intention was to modernise Titian's 
 Venus Reclining now hanging in the Uffizi; just 
 as later it was Gauguin's intention, in his La 
 Femme aux Mangos, to endow the Olympia with 
 a South Sea Island setting. Such adaptations are 
 indefensible provided they do not improve upon 
 their originals. There is no improvement in 
 Gauguin's Venus; and Manet's pidure, while it 
 advances on Titian in attitude, is a decided 
 retrogression viewed from the standpoint of 
 form. 
 
 In such picftures as the Olympia, Nana and La 
 Jarretiere we recognise Manet's effort to obtain 
 notoriety. He was not an aristocrat as was 
 Courbet or Goya or Titian. It was not a need 
 for freer expression that induced him to paint 
 pictures which shocked by their unconvention- 
 ality, but a desire to ahasourdir les bourgeois. In 
 choosing his subjedl-matter he always had a 
 definite end in view in relation to the public; 
 but his conceptions were spontaneous and were 
 recorded without deliberation. He painted with 
 but little thought as to his method. This fadt 
 is no doubt felt by the public and held in his 
 favour by those who believe in the involuntary 
 inspiration of the artist. But art cannot be 
 judged by such childish criteria. Can one ima- 
 gine Giotto, Michelangelo or, to come nearer 
 our day, Cezanne painting without giving the 
 closest and most self-conscious study to his 
 procedure .f* Credence in the theopneusty of the 
 painter, the poet and the musician, should have 
 passed out with the advent of Delacroix; but 
 
76 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 the seeming mystery of art is so deeply rooted 
 in public ignorance that many generations must 
 pass before it can be eradicated. 
 
 The truth is that Manet himself had no precise 
 idea of what he really wished to accomplish. 
 Up to the last year of his life he groped tenta- 
 tively toward a goal, the outlines of which were 
 never quite distindl. We today, looking back 
 upon his efforts, can judge his motivating influ- 
 ences with some degree of surety. In bringing 
 about the paradox of staticising Courbet, Manet 
 feminised him. He turned Courbet's blacks and 
 greys into pretty colours, and thereby turned his 
 modelling into silhouette and flattened his 
 volumes. Thus was Courbet not only made 
 effeminate but popularised. Compare the super- 
 ficiaUy similar pi(5lures, Le Hamac of Courbet 
 and Manet's Le Repos. In the former the move- 
 ment in composition accords with the landscape 
 and is carried out in the pose of the woman's arms 
 and in the disposition of the legs. The figure 
 in the latter pidlure is little more than an orna- 
 ment — a symmetrical articulation. Manet has 
 here translated the rhythm of depth into hnear 
 balance. In this leveUing process aU those quali- 
 ties which raise painting above simple mosaics 
 are lost. A pidlure thus treated becomes a pat- 
 tern, incapable of embodying any emotional 
 significance. Manet's paintings are remembered 
 because they are so instantaneous a vision of 
 their subjedls. For this same reason Goya is 
 remembered; but beneath the Spaniard's broad 
 oppositions of tone is a limpid depth in which 
 the intelligence darts like a fish in an aquarium. 
 In Manet the impassable barrier of externals 
 
EDOUARD MANET 
 
 77 
 
 shuts out that world which exists on the further 
 side of a pid:ure's surface. 
 
 In Manet we have the summing up of the 
 pidlorial expression of all time. His love for 
 decoration never left him long enough for him 
 to experiment with the profounder phases of 
 painting. In many of his canvases he was little 
 more than an exalted poster-maker. His Rendez- 
 vous de Chats was frankly a primitive arrange- 
 ment of flat drawing, as flat as a print by Mit- 
 suoki. Even details and texture were eliminated 
 from it. It was a statement of his theories re- 
 duced to their bare elements. Yet, though exag- 
 gerated, the piAure was representative of his 
 aims. A pattern to him was form. Courbet's 
 ability to model an eye was the cause of Manet's 
 repudiating the painter of L'Enterrement a Ornans. 
 The two men were antithetical; and in that 
 antithesis we have Manet's aspirations fully 
 elucidated. Even later in life when he took the 
 figure out of doors he was unable to shake off^ 
 the influence of the silhouette. But the silhouette 
 cannot exist en plein air. Light volatilises design. 
 This knowledge accounts for Renoir's early sun- 
 light effects. Manet never advanced so far. 
 
 The limitations and achievements of Manet 
 are summed up in his painting, Le Dejeuner sur 
 I'Herbe. This pidure is undoubtedly interest- 
 ing in its black-and-white values and in its free- 
 dom from the conventions of traditional composi- 
 tion. At first view its theme may impress one 
 as an attempt at piquancy, but on closer inspec- 
 tion the ad:ual subjedl diminishes so much in 
 importance that it might have been with equal 
 effed: a simple landscape or a still-life. There 
 
78 
 
 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 is no attempt at composition in the classic sense. 
 Even surface rhythm is entirely missing: the 
 tonal masses decidedly overweigh on the left. 
 But the pidlure nevertheless embodies the dis- 
 tinguishing features of all Manet's arrangements. 
 It is built on the rigid pyramidal plan. From 
 the lower left-hand corner a line, now light, now 
 dark, reaches almost to the upper frame at a 
 point dire(5lly above the smaller nude; and an- 
 other line, which begins in the lower right-hand 
 corner at the reclining man's elbow, runs upward 
 to his cap, and is then carried out in the shadow 
 and light of the foliage so that it meets the line 
 ascending from the other side. The base of these 
 two converging lines is formed by another line 
 which runs from the man's elbow along his ex- 
 tended leg. This is the picflure's important tri- 
 angle. But a secondary one is formed by a line 
 which begins at the jun(5lure of the tree and 
 shadow in the lower right-hand corner, extends 
 along the cane and the second man's sleeve to 
 his head, and then drops, by way of the large 
 nude's head and shoulder, to the basket of fruit 
 at the bottom. This angularity of design is 
 seen in the work of all primitive-minded peoples, 
 and is notably conspicuous in the early Egyptians, 
 the archaic Greeks and the Assyrians of the eighth 
 century B.C. It is invariably the produdl of the 
 static intelligence into which the comprehension 
 of aesthetic movement has never entered. It is 
 the result of a desire to plant objedls solidly and 
 immovably in the ground. Those artists who 
 express themselves through it are men whose 
 minds are incapable of grasping the rhythmic 
 attributes of profound composition. Manet re- 
 
EDOUARD MANET 
 
 79 
 
 peats this triangular design in the Olmypia where 
 the two adjoining pyramids of contour are so 
 obvious that it is unnecessary to describe them. 
 The figures in canvases such as La Chanteuse 
 des Rues, ^La Femme au Perroquet, Eva Gon- 
 zales and Emile Zola are construd:ed similarly; 
 and in groups like En Bateau and Les Anges au 
 Tombeau (the latter of which recalls, by its 
 arrangement and lighting, the Thetis et Jupiter 
 of Ingres) is expressed the mental immobility 
 which charadlerised Conegliano, Rondinelli, Ro- 
 busti and their seventeenth-century exemplars, de 
 La Fosse, Le Moyne and Rigaud. 
 
 If, however, Manet failed in the larger tests, 
 he excelled in his ability to beautify the surfaces 
 of his models. His painting of texture is perhaps 
 the most competent that has ever been achieved. 
 In his flesh, fruits and stuffs, the sensation of 
 hard, soft, rough or velvety exteriors reaches its 
 highest degree of pidlorial attainment. These 
 many and varied textures are reunited in his 
 Le Dejeuner — a canvas which must not be con- 
 fused with Le Dejeuner sur I'Herbe. Here we 
 have a plant, a vase, four different materials in 
 the boy's clothing, a straw hat, a brass jug with 
 all its reflections, a table cloth, a wall, an old 
 sword, glassware, fruit and liquid It is an orgy 
 of textures, and Manet must have gloried in it. 
 One critic of the day wondered why oysters and 
 a cut lemon lay on the breakfast table. But we 
 wonder why a cat with fluffy fur is not there 
 also. Castagnary suggested that Manet, feeling 
 himself to be the master of still-life, brought 
 every possible texture into a single canvas for 
 purposes of contrast and because he delighted 
 
8o MODERN PAINTING 
 
 in the material quality of objedls. But the reason 
 goes deeper. Manet was a superlatively con- 
 scious technician, and that sacre commodite de la 
 brosse, so displeasing to Delacroix, was his great- 
 est intoxication. Hals also was seduced by it. 
 Later, when the new vision of light was com- 
 municated to Manet by the Impressionists, his 
 obsession for the purely technical diminished in 
 intensity. In that topical bid for popularity, 
 the Combat du Kerseage et de I'Alabama, we 
 dete(5l his interest in a new economy of means 
 which would facilitate his search for broader 
 illumination. This method took a step forward 
 in Le Port de Bordeaux, and later reached matur- 
 ity in his canvases painted in 1882, of which Le 
 Jardin de Bellevue is a good example. But 
 despite his heroic efforts, these last pictures, 
 painted a year before he died when paralysis 
 had already claimed him and he was devoting 
 his time almost entirely to still-life, were without 
 fulgency, and never approached the richness of 
 even so slight a colourist as Monet. 
 
 Repose is a word used overmuch by modern 
 critics to designate the dominant quality of 
 Manet's painting. From an entirely pictorial 
 point of view the word is applicable, but in the 
 precise aesthetic sense it is a misnomer. The 
 illusion of repose in Manet is accounted for by 
 his even use of greys, as in Le Chemin de Fer, 
 Le Port de Bordeaux, the Execution de Maxi- 
 milien and the Course de Taureaux. Even in Les 
 Bulles de Savon, the Rendez-vous de Chats, Le 
 Clair de Lune and Le Bar des Folies-Bergere 
 — canvases in which is exhibited Manet's great- 
 est opposition of tones — the ensemble is expres- 
 
EDOUARD MANET 8i 
 
 sive of monotony. Real repose, however, is 
 something much more recondite than uniformity 
 or tedium. It is created by a complete harmon- 
 ious organisation, not by an avoidance of move- 
 ment. Giotto's Death of Saint Francis and El 
 Greco's Annunciation have a simultaneity of pre- 
 sentation as unique as in Manet; but, because their 
 compositions are so rhythmically co-ordinated, they 
 present an absolute finality of movement and thus 
 engender an emotional as well as an occular repose. 
 
 Manet's acflual innovations are small, smaller 
 even than Courbet's. However, many critics 
 credit him with grotesque novelties. There are 
 very few books dealing with modern painting 
 which do not assert that he was the first to 
 note that flesh in the light is dazzlingly bright 
 and of a cream-and-rose colour. But in this 
 particular there is no improvement in Manet on 
 the pictures of Rubens. He may have unearthed 
 this illustrative point; certain it is he did not 
 originate it. Yet no matter how slight his depar- 
 tures, we enjoy his piAures for their inherent 
 aesthetic qualities, and not for their approximation 
 to nature. Manet made many mistakes, but this 
 was natural when we remember that in the whirl- 
 pool of new ambitions one is prone to forget the 
 lessons of the past. Only by profiting by them 
 can one go on toward the ever advancing goal 
 of achievement. We must not forget that this 
 new spirit of endeavour is only an impulse towards 
 something greater, a rebellion against arbitrarily 
 imposed obstacles. If men like Manet lost track 
 of the fundamentals of the great art which had 
 preceded them, it was only that their vision was 
 clouded by new experiments. 
 
82 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 The actual achievements of Manet epitomise 
 the secondary in art. His attempt to combine 
 artistic worth with popularity restricfted him. 
 That he was misunderstood at first was his own 
 fault in continually changing his style. But 
 acceptance or rejedion by popular opinion does 
 not indicate the measure of a painter's signifi- 
 cance. And Manet is to be judged by his contri- 
 butions to the new idea. His importance lay in 
 that he took t-he second step of the three which 
 were to exhaust the possibilities of realism. In 
 art every genuine method is consummated before 
 a new one can take its place. Michelangelo 
 brought architedure to its highest point of de- 
 velopment; Rubens, linear painting; the Impres- 
 sionists, the study of light; Beethoven, the classic 
 ideal in music; Swinburne, the rhymed lyric. 
 In fadl, only after the epuisement of a certain 
 line of endeavour, is felt the necessity to seek for a 
 new and more adequate means of expression. 
 Manet helped bring to a close a certain phase of 
 art, thus hastening the advent of other and 
 greater men. His accomplishments now stand 
 for all that is academic and student-like; and 
 although his interest as an innovator passed out 
 with the appearance of Pissarro and Monet, 
 men go on imitating his externals and using his 
 brushing. In the same sense that Velazquez is 
 a great painter, so is Manet. His influence has 
 served the purpose of helping turn aside the 
 academicians from their emulation of Italian 
 painting. 
 
IV 
 
 THE EARLY IMPRESSIONISTS 
 
 COURBET was the first painter to turn 
 his attention to naturalism. Manet 
 carried forward Courbet's standard. Im- 
 pressionism toolc the last step, and 
 brought to a close the objeAively realistic con- 
 ception in painting. By this final development 
 of naturalistic means unlimited opportunities 
 for achievement were offered. Impressionistic 
 methods are now employed by a vast army of 
 painters in all parts of the world, and the num- 
 ber of canvases which owe their existence to these 
 discoveries is countless. Specifically Impression- 
 ism is occular realism. It represents that side of 
 actuality which has to do with light expressed 
 by colour; and deals with a manner of approach- 
 ing natural valuations whereby the painter is 
 permitted to transfer a scene or subjeA to his 
 canvas in such a way that it will give the 
 spedator the sensation of dazzling light, broad at- 
 mosphere and truthful colours. To accomplish 
 this Impressionism confines itself to the play of 
 a light from a given source — its reflections and 
 distributions on an objedl or a landscape. There- 
 fore, it is the restrided study of the disappearance 
 of the local colour in a model, and of the lumin- 
 osity and divergencies of tones to be found in 
 shadow. It approximates to a nature which be- 
 comes, for the moment, a theatre of chromatic light 
 
84 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 sensations. Subjed-matter gave the Impression- 
 ists no concern. They advanced materially on 
 the spirit in Manet which led him to paint any 
 objed at hand because of its susceptibility to 
 artistic treatment. The Impressionists painted 
 anything, not alone for aesthetic reasons, but 
 because all objeds make themselves visible by 
 means of light and shadow. This manner of 
 painting was the ultimate divorce of the pidure 
 from any convention, whether of arrangement, of 
 drawing or of a fixed palette. Herein it was an 
 elastic process par excellencey with no defined 
 limitations. 
 
 Impressionism, though analytic and self-con- 
 scious, was not based on science. One may look 
 in vain for parallels between its theories and those 
 of Dove, Thomas Young and Chevreul. It was 
 the imitation, pure and simple, of the disintegra- 
 tions of colour in nature's broad planes. And this 
 achievement of diversity in simplicity was brought 
 about by the only method possible: — the juxta- 
 position of myriad tints. In other words, Ini- 
 pressionism was a statement that vision is 
 the result of colour forces coming into contad 
 with the retina. However, the men of the move- 
 ment did not see nature as an agglomeration of 
 coloured spots, but as a series of planes made 
 vibrant by light. To reproduce this vibration 
 they were necessitated to use nature's methods: 
 they broke up surfaces into sensitive parts, each 
 one of which was a separate tint. There are 
 no broad planes of unified colour in nature. In 
 each natural atom are absorption and refledion; 
 and the preponderance of either of these two 
 attributes results in a specific colour. Before 
 
THE EARLT IMPRESSIONISTS 85 
 
 the advent of this new school painters had made 
 warm or cold green by combining green with 
 yellow ochre or raw sienna, or by the admixture 
 of blues and purples. But the Impressionists 
 laid on these colours, pure or modified, side by 
 side, and let the eye do the work of blending. 
 They discovered not only that in green the 
 shadow is tinged with blue, but that blue is the 
 direct result of the yellow-orange of light. Every 
 one nowadays has noticed that, in looking fixedly 
 at a green, it appears now bluish, now yellowish; 
 just as in listening to an orchestra we can, by 
 focusing our attention, hear predominantly the 
 bass or the treble. So the Impressionists ob- 
 served that in the most luminous colour there is 
 a proportion of absorption, and that in the 
 darkest shadow there exists some refle(5lion. The 
 association of these molecular properties is what 
 produces vibration in nature. By the application 
 of these observations the Impressionists generated 
 a feeling of grouillement; — the movement by 
 contrast in the smallest parts. 
 
 In attempting to explain their canvases many 
 commentators have credited them with systems 
 of complementaries which resulted in grey, and 
 with other exorbitant theories of oppositions. But 
 one may look in vain in their work for any 
 synthesis of scientific discoveries. Colour, not 
 neutrality, was their aim; and, as they themselves 
 admitted, they painted comme roiseau chante. 
 Birds are not conscious of the metallic dissonance 
 of diminished fifths; and the Impressionists were 
 equally unaware of the harshness of red with 
 green, blue with orange, yellow with violet. They 
 only substituted a balance of cold and warm 
 
86 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 colours for the balance of lines which the older 
 painters had used. They copied the tints they 
 found in nature after analysing nature's processes, 
 in order to arrive closer to its visual effedl. In 
 one way they almost achieved colour photography, 
 for their study, in its narrow charadler, was deep, 
 and their vision was highly realistic. But whereas 
 they depided nature, they could call it up only 
 in its instantaneous aspedls. In this ephemerality 
 alone were they impressionists; indeed, their 
 methods were the most exa6l and probing of any 
 painters of that time. Each hour of the day 
 raises or lowers the colour values in nature; and 
 he who would copy nature's form as a permanent 
 interpretation must ignore the exactitude of its 
 reflexions and approximate only to its local 
 colours. This latter method is more truly im- 
 pressionism than the theories of the Impressionists. 
 They repudiated local colours as being too 
 illusory, holding that the most highly coloured 
 objed modifies its tint under the influence of the 
 least variation of light. The point is technically 
 true, but it is an observation in objedlive re- 
 search, and the word Impressionism must not 
 be accepted as explanatory of the methods of 
 the school it designates. 
 
 By decomposing the parts of a surface, in order 
 to represent objedls in their atmospheric material- 
 ity, the Impressionists were impelled by a force 
 stronger than a mere desire for superficial accu- 
 racy: they felt the need for complete and minute 
 organisation in a work of art. In landscape, 
 where the many accidentals appeared to lack 
 cohesion, the Impressionists achieved co-ordina- 
 tion by a unity of light which welded all the 
 
THE EARLY IMPRESSIONISTS 87 
 
 objects into an interdependent group. Plasticity 
 of form had resulted from the efforts of preceding 
 painters, but here for the first time was a plastic- 
 ity of method which moulded itself like putty 
 with the slightest change of illumination. Pre- 
 occupation in this new compositional element 
 made its users forget, for the time being, the 
 older precepts for obtaining composition. This 
 forgetfulness however was not due entirely to 
 exuberance over a novel procedure. The painters 
 antecedent to Delacroix had used landscape as 
 unimportant backgrounds for figures, and there was 
 no precedent for its adaptation to organisation. 
 Courbet had composed landscape by the linear 
 balance of black and white volumes. The Barbi- 
 zon artists had brought out-of-door painting into 
 more general notice; but their greys were in- 
 sufficient to give it more than a factitious and 
 purely conventional unity. The Impressionists, 
 feeling the urgency for a more virile expression 
 in landscape work, saw a solution to their problem 
 in the depidlion of light through colour. Thus 
 their conceptions took birth. 
 
 Their technique, like Manet's, was wholly con- 
 sistent with their objec^live. To the Impression- 
 ists this objedlive seemed possessed of the merit 
 of finality. Since Corot had carried painting 
 out of doors and Manet had portrayed studio 
 light from every vantage point, what indeed 
 was left for this new group of men? They might 
 have organised Manet or Corot, but even the 
 most competent of such modifications would have 
 presented an appearance like that of a Rubens or 
 a Tiepolo. They were too avid for genuine 
 novelty to content themselves with slight innova- 
 
88 
 
 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 tion; and they were too modern to derive satis- 
 fadiion from the stereotyped teachings of an 
 antiquity whose tones were unemotional and 
 whose themes were hackneyed. The spirit of 
 servility which is willing to learn second-hand 
 lessons and adopt indoor conceptions spelled 
 decadence to them. Their attitude was a healthy 
 and corredl one, for the cup of linear tone- 
 composition had been drained. They were wrong 
 in that they threw aside the cup: they should 
 have filled it with more powerful concepts. Their 
 attitude was indicative of immaturity. The Im- 
 pressionists in truth were the adolescents of the 
 modern art which was born with Delacroix and 
 Turner, and which only recently has become a 
 concrete engine for the proje(5lion of inspiration 
 into an infinity of possibilities. 
 
 Impressionism was more important than any 
 preceding departure, for it turned the thoughts 
 of artists from mere results to motivating forces, 
 from the ripples on the surface to the power which 
 causes the tides. It foreshadowed the philosoph- 
 ical idea in art which concerns itself with causes 
 rather than effed:s, and thereby brought about a 
 fundamental reform which made of painting, not 
 a mere vision, but an idea. The Impressionists, 
 it is true, worked from the surface down, but they 
 had the depths ever in mind; and the posing 
 of their problem set in motion in all serious 
 painters that intelled:ual process which eventually 
 would begin with foundations and build upward. 
 Impressionism was the undeniable implication 
 that the possibilities of the older art methods 
 had been exhausted, and that a substitution of a 
 new method, however fragmentary, was of greater 
 
THE EARLT IMPRESSIONISTS 89 
 
 importance than the sycophantic imitations of 
 an unapproachable past. Beneath this attitude 
 we feel the broadness of mind which, when a 
 mistake has been made, does not ignore causes 
 but attaches to them different interpretations in 
 an effort to arrive at the truth. The Impression- 
 ists kept their palette intadf; but they employed 
 its parts in a way that made new combinations 
 possible. By doing this they unconsciously re- 
 adied against the mere dexterity of brushing with 
 which so many painters, like Hals, Velazquez 
 and Raeburn, became obsessed and, as a con- 
 sequence, failed to heed the deeper demands of 
 aesthetic research. By thus facilitating technique 
 they not only reduced the difficulties attached 
 to the produAion of a pidure, but made the thing 
 expressed of greater relative significance. 
 
 Pissarro, Monet, Sisley and Guillaumin who, 
 with Bazille, composed the original group of 
 Impressionists, had all been influenced in youth 
 by the revolutionary dodrines of Corot and 
 Courbet, and to a great extent had adopted the 
 palette of these two men. Landscape painting 
 at that time was almost a new development, and 
 these four readily succumbed to its inspiration. 
 There is little of the stridlly picturesque and still 
 less of the grandiose in the French landscape. 
 Consequently a school which worked along the 
 line of old conventions could not have existed 
 in France. But when Rousseau and Diaz, strik- 
 ing out in a new diredlion, poetised the charm 
 of the hills and forests about Fontainbleau, the 
 painting of the out-of-doors was liberated both 
 as to purpose and to freedom of arrangement. 
 The objed of Turner's work had been to astonish 
 
90 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 and charm the spedator with nature's vastness 
 and complexity. But, with the men of 1830, 
 landscape art took on softness, introspedlion, 
 stillness, solemnity. In fine, it became more 
 intimate. Each tree and stone hid a nymph; 
 each stream and hill, a mystery. With the 
 Impressionists all this was changed. They had 
 seen and admired the work of Manet. They 
 applauded his reactions against studio lighting, 
 and later became his personal friends. Manet 
 was then the cynosure of all eyes in the art world 
 of Paris, and it was only natural that he should 
 have been the dominating figure in a sort of 
 cenacle held in the Cafe Guerbois in the quarter 
 of the Batignolles. Here the revolutionists of 
 the day forgathered, and, by their uncompromis- 
 ing spirit, inspired one another to practical pro- 
 testations against the routine of the academies. 
 Manet's eloquence argued away the older idea 
 of lighting as a type; and the younger men, using 
 this negotiation as a starting point, gave birth to 
 the methods which congealed into Impressionism. 
 
 Although Monet and Pissarro were the first 
 to profit by Manet's teachings, there is no definite 
 history to tell who was the first of the group to 
 blossom into colour. However, there is little 
 doubt that Pissarro was the man. He was a Jew 
 with a philosophic turn of mind, and possessed 
 more genuine intelligence than his confreres. 
 Monet was the cleverest and the most enthusi- 
 astic, and when the new process was outlined it 
 was he who first developed it to its ultimate 
 consequences. Pissarro, compared with Monet, 
 was conservative, and his pradicality did not 
 permit him so great an elan. His canvases beside 
 
THE EARLT IMPRESSIONISTS 
 
 those of Monet's appear almost tentative, and 
 the greys he had adopted from Corot never 
 entirely forsook him. Both these painters went 
 to London during the Franco-Prussian War, and 
 we may take it for granted that the works of 
 Turner had an enormous influence on them. 
 They had already seen Jongkind who, despite his 
 adherence to the sombre greys of the older men, 
 had, five years previous, more than foreshadowed 
 the later divisionistic technique. But in Turner 
 they discovered not only all that Jongkind had 
 to offer, but the additional quality of joyous and 
 dazzling colour. After their return their palettes 
 became rapidly cleaner. 
 
 In 1874, in an effort to bestir the pubhc, the 
 Impressionists held an exhibition. The excite- 
 ment was all they could have desired, but it 
 led rather to obloquy than to sales. Again and 
 again they exposed in the hope of obtaining 
 recognition, but not until 1888 were they success- 
 ful. The average spedator did not recognise 
 nature in their canvases. The vision was an 
 unusual one, and bore but slight resemblance 
 to what had gone before. But gradually things 
 underwent a change. Friends of the Impression- 
 ists launched a campaign of proselytising. Now 
 and then a pidure was sold to a coUedor; form- 
 erly restaurant keepers and bricklayers had been 
 the only buyers of their work. The popular 
 press softened its criticisms and in many instances 
 went so far as to defend their pidures. As a 
 result of these numerous indications of a growing 
 approval among connoisseurs, the public, that 
 almost immovable mass of readionary impulses, 
 began to look with favour on the new works it 
 
92 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 had so recently ridiculed. The great majority 
 of people had cared only for such canvases as 
 those in which the intelled: might jump from one 
 familiar objed to another, recognising it wholly, 
 comprehending its uses, but without giving 
 thought to its meaning. Being thus interested 
 primarily in a pidure's conventionally painted 
 details, they were opposed to any innovations 
 which tended to obscure the adualities of deline- 
 ation. Later their attitude, influenced by ads 
 of authoritative sandion, relaxed. Instead of 
 seeing, as formerly, only a series of raucously 
 coloured spots in these new pidures, the public 
 began to sense the deep reverence for nature 
 that emanated from them. Thus has it always 
 been the case with art: appreciation for anything 
 newly vital lags far behind the achievement. 
 
 The true significance of Impressionism, however 
 — like the true significance of all emotion-pro- 
 voking art — remained undiscovered to the gen- 
 eral. When the mean intelligence of mankind 
 brings itself to bear on a work of art, it applies 
 itself through the channels of literature, archae- 
 ology, photography, botany, mineralogy and 
 physiology. To be a popular artist a painter 
 must be something of a professor in all these 
 sciences. With all other considerations — such 
 as psychology and aesthetics — he need not 
 trouble himself. The public, even after centuries 
 of rigorous training and constant association 
 with art, is no nearer a comprehension of rhythmic 
 ensembles — perfectly synthesised form in three 
 dimensions — than it was during the Renaissance. 
 The two major requisites to an understanding 
 of the formal relations in momentous art are a 
 
THE EARLT IMPRESSIONISTS 93 
 
 highly developed sensitivity and an adlive in- 
 telligence. An eye and a nervous system are 
 not enough. Society as a whole may, after a 
 long course of training and sedulous study, reach 
 that perceptive point where it can grasp the 
 simple aesthetic hypothesis founded on two dimen- 
 sions. But such a hypothesis is but a beginning. 
 It embraces only the rudimentary aesthetic or- 
 ganisations that are found in Japanese art, 
 the works of the Byzantine masters, the primi- 
 tives of France and the pidures of Botticelli, 
 Manet and Gauguin. The form in art of this 
 kind is, stridly speaking, not form at all. It is 
 balance, harmonious rhythm, linear adjustment, 
 parallelism, co-ordinated silhouette, sensitive ar- 
 rangement, outline melody — in fad:, whatever 
 is possible in two dimensions. Significant form 
 must move in depth — backward and forward, 
 as well as from side to side. Furthermore it 
 must imply an infinity of depth. This third 
 (and sometimes fourth) dimension informs all 
 truly great art. 
 
 While the Impressionists did not attain to 
 depth in the aesthetic connotation of the word, 
 they nevertheless went beyond mere linear 
 balance, for by the means of a higher emotional 
 element — light — they organised, in a superficial 
 manner, all the objeds in their canvases. There 
 were no dissevered objeds, unrelated backgrounds, 
 no concessions to the hagiographa or other 
 literature. What chance, therefore, had they of 
 being understood.? Their subjed-matter was 
 too abstrad; their effeds were too general. No 
 line was accentuated above another. There were 
 no modifications to achieve vastness or splendour. 
 
94 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 Impressionism was the unadulterated reprodudion 
 of atmosphere, the smile or frown of a mood in 
 nature. It is small wonder that the unaesthetic 
 found it obscure: in it there was too much rap- 
 ture, too much frankness, too much exultation 
 in mere living, and too little restraint. It was 
 the false dawn in the great modern Renaissance 
 of colour — the most ecstatically joyful style of 
 painting the world has ever seen. It was fem- 
 inine in that it was a refledion, and its hysteria 
 may also be attributed to this fadl. The Im- 
 pressionists seated themselves, free from all tram- 
 mels, before the face of nature. Nature didated: 
 they transcribed. Nature smiled; and they, 
 completely blent with it, smiled also. This very 
 enthusiasm is what kept them young and held 
 them to their initial path. To paint as they did 
 was an intoxication, subtler and stronger than 
 a drug and more elating than young love. 
 
 The vital history of the individual men who 
 formed this group reduces itself to a record of 
 their temperamental tastes in subjed selection 
 and to a statement of the degree to which each 
 developed the new method. The individualities 
 of the units of an experimental school are always 
 unimportant. Temperament can didate to the 
 artist only two phases of variation: what he is 
 to use in his composition, and those tran- 
 scendental qualities, such as joy and sorrow, 
 drama and comedy, which refled the timbre of 
 his predispositions. Rhythm, form, balance, 
 organisation, drawing — all these aesthetic con- 
 siderations spring from deeper matrices in a 
 man's nature than do his temperamental 
 predileAions. Whether one man is intrigued 
 
THE EARLT IMPRESSIONISTS 95 
 
 by sunlight or another by mist, mankind is, after 
 all, so similar in externals, that one individual's 
 slight departure from a predecessor, or his trifling 
 deviation from a contemporary, is of little mo- 
 ment. The true key to a man's genius lies in 
 his ability to organise as well as, or better than, 
 others. The compositional figure on which he 
 builds will alone give us the substance of his 
 chara(5ter. We are all capable of receiving 
 sensations: we have our personal likes and 
 dislikes for subjedls, even for adions and smells. 
 But these choices are the outgrowths of our 
 instindls, mere habits of association. In nowise 
 are they fundamental. They are the physio- 
 logical recognition of pleasant or unpleasant 
 impressions. Their importance is limited to the 
 individual who experiences them. Being the 
 results of receptivity, they have no more to 
 do basically with the aesthetic expression of an 
 artist whose work is pure creation, than phono- 
 graph disks with the sounds they receive. By 
 the intelligence alone can a man be judged. Here 
 there is order, extensive in artists like Michelangelo, 
 partially restricted in such painters as El Greco 
 and Giorgione, and severely limited as in the case 
 of the Impressionists. However, it must not be 
 implied that the intelligence alone can create. Such 
 a contention would be preposterous; but it is true 
 that impressions must first be consciously organ- 
 ised before they can be given concrete expression. 
 
 The intelligence of Pissarro was synthetic to a 
 small extent, but not once did it exhibit signs of 
 extended apperception. He thought clearly up 
 to a certain point beyond which his art never 
 went. His temperament was not an uncommon 
 
96 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 one among Hebrews. He viewed life as a social 
 reformer who regards the world as a sad place, 
 but one susceptible of improvement. From this 
 psychological standpoint he painted. His pidlures 
 depid: ubiquitous greys, occasionally brightened 
 by a stream of lurid light; sombre scenes in which 
 the impression is one of late afternoon; peasants 
 who seem wearied of their unceasing and thankless 
 labours; gaunt trees which epitomise the decay 
 of the year. His technique is not dissimilar to 
 that of Jongkind, and his drawing is allied to the 
 construAion found in the Dutch landscapists of 
 the early nineteenth century rather than in those 
 of his own group. That he was the transition 
 from Jongkind to Monet is a plausible conten- 
 tion; in him are found qualities of both these 
 other painters. But he was too conscientious 
 ever to attain to the technical heights Monet 
 reached. If one aspires to innovation of means, 
 graphic traits have to be sacrificed: steps must 
 be taken in the dark. Those who cling with 
 one hand to the old while groping toward the 
 new can never reach their desires. Pissarro's 
 lack of constru6tive genius was too evident, his 
 timidity too great, his intelligence too literal 
 for him ever to effedluate new plastic forms. His 
 instindls were those of a teacher, and he displayed 
 indubitable traits of an exalted doctrinaire. But 
 his art, with these limitations, was able and 
 complete. Cezanne says he learned all he knew 
 of colour from him. This is not wholly true; 
 but it is certain that Guillaumin and Sisley are 
 greatly indebted to his clarity of reason. 
 
 Although Pissarro is the greater artist, Monet 
 is the finer craftsman. He is widely credited 
 
THE EARLT IMPRESSIONISTS 
 
 with the invention of divisionistic methods; but 
 in this conclusion an inaccurate syllogism has 
 played havoc with the fads. None of the 
 Impressionists invented the procede de la tdche; 
 and not having invented it detrads nothing 
 from their achievement. Liszt did not invent 
 the pianoforte, yet he was its greatest master. 
 The practice of crediting Frenchmen with the 
 invention and development of methods has scant 
 authority with which to justify itself. Poussin 
 was an offshoot, and a weak one, of the great 
 Titian. Watteau and Boucher come to us dired: 
 out of the corners of Rubens's pidures. Daumier 
 and Courbet, temperamentally unrelated to the 
 French tradition, stem from the Dutch and the 
 Spaniards. Cezanne emanated from the Dutch 
 and the Italians via Impressionism. Matisse's 
 procedure is little more than a modification of 
 that of the Persians and the early Italians. 
 Cubism was imported from Spain by a Spaniard. 
 Futurism is stridly ItaHan: there is not a French 
 name among its originators. Synchromism was 
 brought into the world by Americans. And 
 Impressionism, which, like all these other 
 departures, has come to be looked upon as 
 French, is incontrovertibly of English parentage. 
 True, there is small credit due the inventor. 
 The man capable of employing new discoveries 
 (as Marconi employed the principles of wireless 
 telegraphy) is the truly important figure. But we 
 should not confuse discovery with employment. 
 Since Monet was French, France has a perfed 
 right to claim the results of colour division. The 
 honours attaching to its discovery are Turner's 
 and Constable's. 
 
98 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 Monet, like many great men, had little school- 
 ing. He went direct to nature, impelled by the 
 new impetus toward landscape. His first pidures 
 in the Impressionist manner resemble Manet's 
 except for trivial innovations in the differentiation 
 of shadows; but in this difference we divine the 
 later Monet. Viewed cursorily these paintings 
 appear to be conventional figure pieces. But they 
 are more than that. The figures have no other 
 significance than that which attaches to^ a vase 
 or a landscape. "Facial expression," "sympa- 
 thetic gestures," the "appeal" — all are absent 
 from them. In these pictures the costume plays 
 the hero's part. La Japonaise is representative 
 of that treatment of subjed wherein the figure is 
 only an excuse for a pattern of colour. The 
 modern attitude tov/ard theme which Manet 
 handed down is again in evidence in Monet. 
 Its redudio ad ahsurdum was the late epidemic 
 of illustrative pidures by such men as Whistler, 
 Shannon, Sargent, Zuloaga and Alexander, the 
 titles of which were derived from the flowers held 
 in the hands of the principals, a bowl of goldfish 
 in the background, or the colour of a lace shawl. 
 
 Monet, however, soon tired of figure pieces. 
 His true penchant lay toward landscape. In this 
 field he found an infinity of colour possibilities, 
 innumerable subtleties of light gradation, and 
 ready-to-paint arrangements as appealing as the 
 ones he had formerly had to pose in his interiors. 
 At first his technique was broad and radiant, 
 much like a dispersed Manet. The large flat 
 planes of unified colour which later were to 
 disintegrate into a thousand touches, were laid on 
 silhouetted forms. His boat pieces in the Cail- 
 
THE EARLY IMPRESSIONISTS 99 
 
 lebotte colledlion in the Luxembourg gallery, 
 appear, in their simplicity and breadth of treat- 
 ment, like the unfinished underpainting of a 
 Turner or a Rembrandt. Much of the bare 
 canvas is visible; and in them one feels the 
 presence of the experimenter. At this time the 
 war drove Monet to London, and his exile proved 
 a salutary one. On his return his pidlures 
 bloomed with a new brilliance, and his flat 
 surfaces became fragmentised. Racial charac5ler- 
 istics no doubt establish a bond between Sisley 
 and the English landscapists, but nothing less 
 than an adiive influence could have made so 
 typical a Frenchman as Monet paint a canvas 
 like L' Eglise a Varengeville in which Turner is so 
 much in evidence. Turner is also unmistakably 
 present in Pissarro at times, as witness Sydenham 
 Road, but never to any great extent. 
 
 Despite his great debt to Turner, Manet and 
 Pissarro, Monet owed even more to the Japanese. 
 They influenced his style and his selection of 
 subje6ls. From them he lifted the idea of paint- 
 ing a single objedl many times in its varied 
 atmospheric manifestations. But where the Jap- 
 anese shifted their vantage-ground with each 
 successive pi<5lure, Monet's observation point 
 remained stationary. His composition too, 
 superficial as it is, is frankly Japanese. It is 
 generally represented by a straight line which 
 runs near the lower frame from one side to the 
 other of the canvas, and which supports the 
 principal objedls of the work. This line slants, 
 now up to the left, now up to the right; but 
 seldom is it curved as in the more advanced 
 drawings of Hiroshige or Hokusai. His kinship 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 to the Japanese is, after all, a natural one, for 
 the temperaments of France and Japan are as 
 similar as is possible between east and west. The 
 Japanese artists presented atmospheric conditions 
 by means of gradating large colour planes into 
 white or dark. The consequent effe(5ls of rain, 
 snow, wind and sun are as vivid as Monet's, 
 but they differ from the Frenchman's in that 
 they are concerned principally with nature's dec- 
 orative possibilities. Monet adheres to graphic 
 transcription for the purpose of presenting the 
 dynamics of a mood-producing phase of nature. 
 But though differing as to aims, they both reach 
 very similar visual results. Compare, for instance, 
 Monet's suite of Les Peupliers with Hiroshige's 
 series of the Tokaido or with Hokusai's Views of 
 Fuji. Many of the pictures are alike in composi- 
 tion and choice of subject; but the European has 
 achieved a living light, while the Oriental has 
 presented a more lucid and intensive vision. 
 These differences of purposes and similarities of 
 appearance are again discernible in Monet's 
 Coins de Riviere and Shiubun's Setting Sun. A 
 further proof of this Impressionist's affinities with 
 the Japanese will be found by collating Monet's 
 figure pieces with those of Utamaro. 
 
 There is one important point of divergence, 
 however, between the arts of Japan and Monet's 
 canvases. Whereas the Japanese ignored texture, 
 Monet at all times devoted himself more or less 
 sedulously to its portrayal. The Falaise a Etretat 
 and The Houses of Parliament — London are 
 examples of his freedom from a rigid system of 
 scientific application. In both pidlures the sky 
 is drawn with broad intersedling strokes in order 
 
THE EARLT IMPRESSIONISTS loi 
 
 to achieve transparency and vastness. The water, 
 in the former, is painted with long curved strip- 
 pings to give the wave effed:, as in Courbet's 
 La Vague; and, in the latter, ripples are formed 
 by minute touches. Monet's architecflure is often 
 built up with colour-spots as a man lays bricks; 
 and the cliffs in the Falaise a Etretat are cor- 
 rugated in exactly the same way the strata lie 
 in nature. Later this preciosity of style disap- 
 peared, except in his treatment of slightly ruffled 
 water. His brushing became irregular and 
 elongated, and he applied his stroke so that it 
 would merge into the other innumerable touches 
 of diverse colour. His eyesight was highly 
 trained, and after years of labour in the conscious 
 analysis of colour planes, he was able to divide 
 these planes unconsciously. 
 
 Monet was artistic in that he felt deeply what 
 was before him. Henri Martin, on the other 
 hand, who painted with independent touches 
 in the hope of obtaining flickering sunlight, and 
 who knew his palette fully as well as Monet, 
 laboured mechanically. His work is more optical 
 than emotional. He is a realist in the same sense 
 that Roll is a realist; but both these men present 
 only the husk of reality. Monet, to the contrary, 
 experienced and expressed nature's ecstasy. He 
 is like a string which vibrates to any harmony: 
 Martin is little more than an eye. Both finished 
 their work in the open; and both stippled. But 
 here the parallelism ends, for where Monet com- 
 pleted the effedls of the Japanese, Martin only 
 took light into the academies. Perhaps this 
 is why Martin was at once acclaimed by the 
 publiC;, and why Monet, during those first dark 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 years of struggle and poverty, was compelled 
 to sell his canvases for praAically nothing. Duret 
 confesses to having obtained one for eighty francs. 
 Martin was early accorded academic honours, and 
 received numerous government orders. 
 
 Monet found himself at home wherever there 
 was light and water. His canvases describe 
 scenes from all over Europe. But his most 
 famous pidlures are his two series, Les Meules 
 and Les Nympheas. In the first, a single hay- 
 stack is set forth in a diversity of illuminations 
 and seasons; and the second repeats a small pond 
 of water-lilies, in shade and in sun, ruffled and 
 calm. His La Cathedrale, Venice and London 
 series are also widely known. These represent 
 acute observation and an implacable inspiration 
 to work, for they had to be finished simultane- 
 ously. Their accomplishment was a stupendous 
 tour de force. At sunrise Monet would go forth 
 with twenty blank canvases so that the changes 
 of sunlight and mist might be caught from hour 
 to hour. They seem infantile to us today — 
 these imitations of the subtleties of light, these 
 meteorological histories of haystacks and lilies, 
 these atmospheric personalities of cathedrals and 
 canals. Yet it is by just such self-burials in 
 data that one exhausts the aesthetic possibilities 
 of nature's adualities. And not until this probing 
 to the bottom has been accomplished does the 
 artist possess that complete knowledge which 
 impels him to push forward to something newer 
 and more vital. 
 
 Sisley was the last of the original five to adopt 
 Impressionistic methods. He had long had an 
 admiration for the exploits of the more revolu- 
 
THE EARLT IMPRESSIONISTS 103 
 
 tionary painters, but a comfortable income had 
 a(5led as a sedative on his ambitions. He did 
 not feel the necessity for difficult endeavour. But 
 when, at the death of his father, he found himself 
 penniless and with a family to care for, he joined 
 the ranks of Pissarro, Monet, Guillaumin and 
 Bazille. He had talent and an accurate eye, 
 and his earlier academic work, done in the sixties, 
 served as a practical foundation. After he had 
 adopted the more modern technique of Pissarro 
 and Monet, he was prepared for the achievement 
 of new art. If we had no other proof that 
 Impressionism at its inception was a shallow 
 craft, Sisley's immediate mastery of it would be 
 conclusive, for his appropriation of its means was 
 not an aesthetic impulse but a financial expedient. 
 But more extensive corroboration can be found 
 in a score of academies where Impressionism is 
 taught and taught conclusively. 
 
 There is no more or less adual composition in 
 Sisley than in other of the Impressionists. He 
 supplied no innovations, and he differed from his 
 fellows only in so far as his temperament indicated 
 variation. In Monet and Guillaumin there is a 
 concentration and precision which the English- 
 man fell short of. His nature was less akin to 
 these Impressionists than to the Turner of wide 
 and open skies, of the softness and dreaminess of 
 summer, of that perfedl satisfadion which is 
 content with inadlion. Sisley's very colour pref- 
 erence for which the public reproached him — 
 light lilac — indicates his penchant for prettiness 
 and repose. His choice of theme was invariably 
 didated by a poetical and sentimental need for 
 the intimate. 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 In Guillaumin we have a man who gave 
 promise of good work but who, up to the last, 
 failed in its fulfilment. Indubitably talented, he 
 never succeeded in reaching that point where 
 talent is only a means to an end. But neverthe- 
 less there was in him a solidity of modelling, a 
 real feehng for the ponderous hardness of hills 
 and plains. He was a friend of Cezanne, and 
 undoubtedly learned much from that master of 
 form. At first he had painted in sombre tones, 
 but later, after meeting Cezanne and Pissarro in 
 the Academie Suisse, he adopted their lighter and 
 more joyous colour schemes. There is a canvas 
 in the Caillebotte Colledion in the Luxembourg 
 which, in its broadness of treatment and extensive 
 planes, suggests Gauguin both as to gamut and 
 conception. Guillaumin was the most masculine 
 talent of the early Impressionist group. He cared 
 less for the transient views of nature than for its 
 eternal aspedl. His colour, by its liberality of 
 application, counts more forcibly than that of 
 Pissarro, Monet or Sisley. His contributions to 
 the new idea, however, were comparatively small. 
 He was not an explorer, but followed diligently 
 in the path others had marked out. Only after 
 he had won a fortune in a lottery did he break 
 away from his environment. But this release 
 came to him too late. His formative period of 
 development had passed, and his work, from that 
 time on, did not alter in technique. Only in his 
 pidluresque and bizarre subjedl-matter is notice- 
 able any deviation from his habitual routine. 
 
 The individual achievements of the Impression- 
 ists, however, no matter how competent, are of minor 
 importance. Impressionism was a new weapon in 
 
THE EARLT IMPRESSIONISTS 105 
 
 the hands of art's anarchists. It has come to be 
 regarded as a faultless faith whose devotees can do 
 no wrong. There has been little or no adequate 
 literature devoted to its exposition, its causes and 
 influence; and the exaggeration of its attainments 
 are as grotesque as the calumny with which it was 
 at first received. It was not an ultimate and 
 isolated movement, but a simple and wholly- 
 natural offshoot in the evolution of new means. 
 The artists who fathered it were, except in one 
 instance, men whose enthusiasm outstripped their 
 abilities as composers. Their greatest good lay 
 in that they turned the thoughts of painters 
 toward colour, and outlined, summarily to be 
 sure, the uses to which this new and highly 
 intense element might be put. They expressed 
 just what their desires permitted them: — nature 
 in all its visible changes. Those exquisite mo- 
 ments of full sunlight on land and water, of cloud 
 shadows over the hills, of the warm brilliancy of 
 a blue sky on the upturned faces of flowers; the 
 stillness of summer amid the woods; the cold 
 serenity of snow-clad fields — all were seen and 
 captured and immortalised by these men. They 
 were the greatest painters of effedls the world 
 has ever known. They never strove to evoke 
 the sensation of weight in the objedls they 
 painted; and that organisation of parts, which 
 is a replica of the cosmos, they were too busy to 
 attempt. Their very deficiencies were what per- 
 mitted them so complete a vision of the only side 
 of realism which still remained for painting to 
 investigate. 
 
 The Impressionists did not embody concretely 
 the teachings of their forerunners, but used them 
 
io6 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 all in the abstradl. Delacroix had sacrificed 
 photographic truth in drawing in order to present 
 a more intense impression of truth. Daumier 
 had built form as nature builds it, colour aside. 
 Courbet had turned painters from the poetic 
 contemplation of a great past to the life about 
 them. Manet had made images of whatever 
 was at hand for the pure love of painting. The 
 Impressionists turned to the things nearest them, 
 paid scant heed to scholastic drawing, translated 
 Daumier's doctrine of form into light, and like 
 Manet painted for the joy of the work. As 
 experimenters they were valuable; but their 
 pictures, to those unsentimental persons whose 
 appreciations of art are wholly aesthetic, mean 
 little more than records of how a cabbage patch 
 appears at sunrise, a lily pond at midday, or a 
 country lane at twilight. The Impressionists did 
 not amalgamate and express the dreams of their 
 forerunners. They were one of those transitional 
 generations whose vitality is spent in a stupendous 
 endeavour to conceive before the time is ripe. 
 The need for a great birth had not yet made 
 itself felt; for only when the period of embryo 
 is complete can great art be born. Renoir 
 brought forth that issue; and with him evolution 
 seems to halt a moment before plunging onward. 
 The meagre aesthetics of the early Impressionists 
 could not lead to the highest artistic results. 
 Indeed, their animating aims had to be abandoned 
 before Renoir could attain to true significance. 
 
V 
 
 AUGUSTE RENOIR 
 
 THE entire past progress of painting is 
 condensed and expressed in each of its 
 great men. The creation of new art 
 cannot be accompHshed overnight, any 
 more than that of a new organism; it must 
 stem from first impulses and be formed on the 
 differentiations of the past. Those men who 
 declare themselves primitives and seek to acquire 
 the eyes and minds of the Phoenicians or Aztecs 
 are as conscious of their inability to create new 
 art forms as are those visionaries who live in a 
 mythical future and try to prophesy the forms 
 that are to come. No man is born too soon or too 
 late. There are those who strive toward classic 
 intelledual ideals, toward Utopian economic states, 
 toward new orders of society: but such reformers 
 are only the malcontents. The truly great and 
 pradlical men quickly assimilate the impulses of 
 their ^ own epochs and push the frontiers of the 
 mind's possibilities further into the unknown. 
 These latter comprise the maligned vanguard of 
 heroic thinkers who fight the battles for their 
 weaker followers. Often, however, these followers 
 rise to great heights, for in the world of endeavour 
 two conspicuous types exist — the man who 
 experiments and the man who achieves. Dela- 
 croix, Manet and the Impressionists belong to 
 the first; Courbet and Renoir are of the second. 
 
io8 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 In Renoir's life story, as in that of Titian, 
 Rubens and Rembrandt, we see in miniature the 
 evolution of all the painting that preceded him — 
 the bitter struggles with the chimeras of con- 
 vention, and each slow change that came over 
 drawing, style, colour and composition. In the 
 end, after a life full of near defeats, strife, yearn- 
 ing and anxiety, we behold the great man emerge 
 triumphantly from his broken fetters and take his 
 place beside the masters of the past. Some 
 painters have more arduous fights than others, 
 for the odds against them are greater. Rubens 
 and Delacroix seemed the pampered favourites of 
 a high destiny: Courbet and Renoir had to cleave 
 and chisel each step of the way through the 
 adamant of public suspicion. The world appears 
 incapable of recognising either an intensification 
 or a modification of an old and accepted formula. 
 Hence Courtois and Puget were preferred to 
 Delacroix; Ribera and Rembrandt to Courbet; 
 the Avignon painters to Manet; Corot, Diaz 
 and Rousseau to the Impressionists; and Rubens 
 and Ingres to Renoir. In all of these parallelisms, 
 the latter had their roots in the former. They 
 were complications and variations of their fore- 
 runners — dissimilar only in method and manner. 
 
 Renoir began to paint at an early age. The 
 poverty of his family necessitated him to make 
 his own living, and at the age of thirteen he was 
 in a fadory painting porcelains. Five years later 
 he applied for work at a place given over to the 
 decoration of transparent screens. Here his un- 
 usual facility permitted him to paint ten times 
 as fast as his fellow decorators, and since he was 
 paid by the piece, he soon saved enough money 
 
AUGUSTE RENOIR 
 
 to give himself an education in the art which 
 had now become with him a conscious instindl — 
 painting. From his earliest youth he had evinced 
 a discontent with the slow-moving minds about 
 him, and it was natural that he should first look 
 upon art through the eyes of his great revolution- 
 ary contemporary, Courbet. His earliest work, 
 of which Le Cabaret de la Mere Anthony and 
 Diane Chasseresse are the best-known examples, 
 reflected Courbet in both palette and conception. 
 Even later, when Manet claimed him, he clung 
 to his first influence. For while his work now 
 reached out toward the substance of light to be 
 found in La Musique aux Tuileries, it revealed 
 at the same time all the form of the Ornans 
 master. Le Menage Sisley and Lise strikingly 
 combine these two early influences. 
 
 Since humanity has emerged from the darkness 
 of unconsciousness and the individual from the 
 darkness of the womb, it is consistent with nature 
 that in a man's creative development — the 
 route of which lies between dark and dark — the 
 use of black should be his first instinct. Renoir, 
 like all painters of great promise, started with 
 this negation of colour. But wherein his intel- 
 le(5lual distin(flion manifested itself was his innate 
 proclivity for the rhythm of surface lines which 
 he alone of all his contemporaries recognised in 
 Courbet. In Lise, painted in 1867, a year after 
 his Diane Chasseresse, both of these early pen- 
 chants are evident. Black is the keynote of his 
 sunlight; and while in conception the canvas is 
 akin to Manet, it is a Manet made dexterous and 
 masterly. It contains a balance and a linear 
 rhythm of which that painter was ignorant. Lise 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 is one of the few Renoirs into which the influence 
 of Velazquez and Goya can be imagined. Even 
 in its pyramidal form, which when used by most 
 painters becomes a static figure, there is a move- 
 ment at its apex which opens into a shape like a 
 lily. This is brought about by the tilt of the 
 sunshade and the continuation of the line of the 
 sash outward in the tree trunk. By just such 
 obvious and simple signs as these in early works, 
 can we foretell an artist's later developments. 
 
 The next year, 1868, Renoir's work is more 
 net, more able in its balance, more sure in its 
 effed:. Le Menage Sisley is one of his finest 
 early examples of how this rhythmic continuity 
 of line obsesses a mind avid for form, colour, 
 vitality. At first glance we see only an irregular 
 pyramid formed by the outline of the two figures; 
 but after a minute's study we notice that on the 
 right the line of the skirt curves gracefully inward 
 to the waist-line, sweeps up to the woman's neck, 
 then begins an outward flexure, and finally dis- 
 perses itself amid the tree's slanting branches in 
 the right-hand upper corner. On the left, the 
 outline of the man's right leg and arm and hair 
 forms another curve which bends back the line 
 of the opposing curve of the woman's dress, and 
 completes the figure of the pyramid. But the 
 first curve, the force of which is seemingly ended 
 at the woman's waist, is continued in the outline 
 of the light tonality which begins at the man's right 
 elbow, curves outward to the frame, then inward, 
 and ends on the upper frame a little to the left of 
 the man's head. Furthermore, the volume made 
 by the light tonality in the upper left-hand corner 
 serves as a balance to the form of the woman's 
 
AUGUSTE RENOIR m 
 
 tunic. This composition is, in all essentials, the 
 same as in Lise, and embraces that rhythm in 
 two dimensions which Manet did not know, and 
 that balance of tonal form of which Manet was 
 never capable. Manet's mind was that of the 
 lesser Dutch and Spaniards. Renoir's was the 
 plastic and flowing mind of the Latin races, never 
 satisfied with angularity and immobility, but need- 
 ful of the smooth progression of sequence and 
 movement. 
 
 The recognition of the artistic necessity for 
 linear rhythm led Renoir to search for it in others 
 than Courbet. Among the painters by whom he 
 might profit, Delacroix stood nearest his own 
 time. To him Renoir turned; and it was out of 
 him that Renoir's greatness was to grow. Dela- 
 croix's organisations appealed to him — especially 
 the triangular one which opens at the top. His 
 admiration for this artist's talent led him to paint 
 in 1872 a canvas called Parisiennes Habillees en 
 Algeriennes, an ambitious essay to compete with 
 Les Femmes d' Alger dans Leur Appartement. In- 
 trinsically the pidure was a failure, but it taught 
 its creator more than he had heretofore learned 
 concerning colour and drawing. In it are dis- 
 cernible indications of the formal unconvention- 
 alities and the chromatic brilliancies which later 
 were to be such dominant qualities in Renoir's 
 work. Although for two years he had used 
 Impressionistic methods, it was through this 
 pidure that Delacroix introduced him to the 
 Impressionists' colour. Manet had already in- 
 troduced him to Ingres: and these two incidents 
 went far toward laying the foundation for his 
 greatness. On neither the Impressionists nor 
 
112 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 Ingres did he build a style; but from both he 
 learned something of far more value: — freedom 
 from the didates of style. Here again Delacroix 
 had a hand, for by studying this artist's uses of 
 Ingres's simplifications, Renoir was able to make 
 these simplifications plastic. 
 
 Renoir's colour up to this time had been re- 
 strained by the didates of his epoch. But with 
 the inspiration and encouragement given him by 
 Les Femmes d'Alger dans Leur Appartement, it 
 burst forth with all the force of long-imprisoned 
 energy, and drove him out of doors. In this 
 pidure he found excuse to carry colour, to any 
 extreme he desired. At once the instinds of 
 the porcelain painter, ever latent in him, came 
 uppermost. Delacroix, in giving him the Impres- 
 sionists' freedom of colour, had brought him back 
 to those rich and full little designs he had painted 
 on china between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. 
 In this early training alone lies the explanation 
 of his later matiere which has for so long puzzled 
 the critics. Many attribute his colour effeds to 
 Watteau. But Renoir had developed his tech- 
 nique before he knew the older master. Years 
 previous he had been intensely interested in the 
 very material of his models. In Le Menage 
 Sisley, La Baigneuse au Griffon and La Fenime a 
 la Perruche is evinced the love of the connoisseur 
 for rare and rich stuffs. Furthermore he had 
 begun to turn his eyes toward Impressionist 
 methods two years before he painted Les 
 Parisiennes Habillees en Algeriennes. Up to that 
 time his brushing had been broad like Manet's 
 or Courbet's; immediately afterward it tended 
 toward spotting, and Monet took the upper hand. 
 
AUGUSTE RENOIR 113 
 
 Watteau's manner of application served only to 
 substantiate Renoir in his choice of method. 
 
 The years from 1865 to 1876 constitute a period 
 of Renoir's life rich in its promise of splendid 
 things. His keen admirations and high enthusi- 
 asms nriade of him throughout this time a disciple. 
 But his achievements, small as they were, were 
 more sumptuous and effedual than either Manet's 
 or Monet's. Their true significance, though, lay 
 in their assurance of what was to come after he 
 had completed that unlearning process through 
 which all great men must pass. Only by sitting 
 at a rnaster's feet can one acquire the knowledge 
 that informs one which influences should be 
 utilised and which cast aside. One cannot learn 
 from experience the total lessons of many men, 
 each one of whom has given a lifetime to the 
 study of a different side of a subjed. If these 
 men are to be surpassed their life work must be 
 used as a starting point. Renoir began thus. 
 He had fallen under the sway of Courbet, Manet, 
 Delacroix and Monet; but after eleven years he 
 had exhausted his creative interest in both their 
 theories and their attainments. These men had 
 expressed all that was in them. For Renoir to 
 cling to them was to stand still. If he was to 
 go down in history as a construdive genius and 
 not merely as an able imitator, it was time for 
 him to strike out alone. 
 
 He did not hesitate. The portrait of Mile. 
 Durand-Ruel, done in 1876, marks his transfor- 
 mation. ^ In it he achieved the scintillation of 
 light which is not linked with colour or painting, 
 but which seems to arise, by some mysterious 
 alchemy, from the surface of the canvas. In 
 
114 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 this pidure, and also in the Moulin de la Galette, 
 finished in the same year, he consummated the 
 fondest ambition of the Impressionists, namely: 
 to make the speculator feel a picture, not as a 
 depidion of nature's light, but as a medium from 
 which emanates the very force of light itself. 
 But Renoir did not stop here: to this achieve- 
 ment he added form and rhythm — two attributes 
 which the Impressionists, preoccupied with ob- 
 jedivity, were too busy to attempt. And in 
 addition he displayed a technique so perfect in 
 its adaptability to any expression, that its 
 mannerisms were completely submerged in the 
 pidure's total effed. These were the qualities 
 which Renoir was to develop to so superlative 
 a degree. He had begun to express form in 
 1870 in his Portrait de Dame. Two years later 
 in his Delacroix adaptation he had branched out 
 into colour. And in his very first canvases there 
 was rhythmic balance of lines. In 1876 all these 
 tendencies coalesced. In consequence Renoir 
 blossomed forth free from aggressive influences, 
 knowing his own limitations and possibilities. 
 This cannot be said even of those excellent works. 
 La Loge, La Danseuse and La Fillette Attentive, 
 done the two preceding years. It is only by 
 contemplating such pidures as the portrait of 
 Mile. Durand-Ruel, La Chevelure and La Source 
 that we can perceive the path along which his 
 development was to take place. For these can- 
 vases, though far more significant than the 
 works of Pissarro and Monet, are almost negli- 
 gible beside his later work. He was a man 
 never satisfied with results, no matter how 
 exalted. His every new achievement was only 
 
AUGUSTE RENOIR 115 
 
 a higher elevation from which his horizon ever 
 receded. 
 
 One of Renoir's important advances in method 
 is his Hberation from the circumscribed use of 
 black. Although in some of his work of 1876 
 there are still traces of that tone used organically, 
 they are so slight that they may be disregarded. 
 Black was the very keynote of the paintings of 
 his day. It was looked upon as a necessity in 
 the creation of volumes. Courbet did little with- 
 out it, and Manet brightened it only with 
 occasional flashes of colour. Today we know 
 that it is not a technical necessity, that pure 
 colours, in fact, when properly used, can produce 
 the most solid forms. But whereas we have been 
 able to profit by the teachings of Cezanne and 
 the Synchromists, Renoir had to learn this fad 
 by bitter experiments in a new element. In La 
 Balan^oire, done in the same year as the Moulin 
 de la Galette and now hanging with that pic5lure 
 in the Luxembourg, black is entirely absent. 
 This little canvas was probably an experiment 
 aduated by Monet, for never afterward did he 
 on principle lay black aside. While he realised 
 its unimportance as a fundamental for construA- 
 ing volume, he nevertheless felt its need as a 
 complement to colour — the need of the static 
 and the dead to accentuate the plastic and alive. 
 
 It is during this period that critics are prone 
 to see Gainsborough in Renoir. But their rea- 
 sons for such a comparison are superficial, and 
 go no further than the fadl that both painters 
 dealt with feminine themes in a similarly intimate 
 manner. No genuinely artistic likeness can be 
 found between Mrs. Siddons, for instance, and 
 
ii6 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 the Ingenue. The one is merely a spirited por- 
 trait without composition or tadihty: the other 
 is an exquisite bit of form and colour, which we 
 feel would be as solid to the touch as it appears 
 to the eye. If we are to compare Renoir to 
 English painters at all, let us designate Hogarth 
 and Romney, both of whom are better artists 
 and more deserving of respedful consideration 
 than Gainsborough. However, even these two 
 men are distindly inadequate as measures for 
 Renoir. In the graphic arts Englishmen exhibit 
 no feeling for rhythm. Indeed, it may corredly 
 be said they possess no graphic arts. Rhythm is 
 a fador which has made itself felt only in their 
 poetry, and here it can hardly be called more than 
 a division of interval, or tempo. Rossetti in 
 his paintings is seemingly more conscious of its 
 power than any other Englishman, and occasion- 
 ally attempted to produce it by the primitive 
 device of curved lines. But, after all, Rossetti 
 was Italian. On the whole Renoir and the 
 English artists are too fundamentally dissimilar to 
 be estimated relatively. The finest qualities of 
 Renoir's art grew out of his instind for fluent 
 movement, for intense undulations, for hot gor- 
 geous colour, for freedom from all traditional 
 prescriptions. 
 
 The evolution of these instinds was by no 
 means a mechanical one. After he had amal- 
 gamated the leading qualities of his art, his 
 interest would often reveal itself more strongly 
 in one diredion than another. Thus many of 
 his canvases show a retrogression toward emphasis 
 of light; others toward form; still others toward 
 linear rhythm. Yet no matter which one of these 
 
AUGUST E RENOIR 117 
 
 qualities predominated, the others also remained 
 intadl. More importance, however, attached to 
 his preoccupation with the treatment of light. 
 His experiments and consequent development in 
 this field are of initial significance in judging 
 his later work. In 1878 he had evidently fore- 
 seen the cul-de-sac into which the natural dis- 
 tribution of light would lead. The very volatility 
 and translucency of illumination and its matter- 
 dispelling qualities, constituted the greatest draw- 
 back to its use in the creation of form. In other 
 words its sheer beauty nullified the deeper aims 
 of painting. In two decorative Panneaux of 
 reclining nudes, done in the same year, Renoir 
 makes his first attempt to escape from the 
 naturalism of light. The use of light is here 
 restricted to a colour force which serves only to 
 bring form into relief. From that time on, 
 although he had many struggles with its power 
 over him, he had conquered its insidious influ- 
 ence. It became his servant, whereas before it 
 had been his master. In his earlier canvases, 
 wherein sunlight had played a leading part, he 
 had placed the sun patches, gleaming and vibrant, 
 wherever they naturally fell. After 1878 he 
 began placing them arbitrarily on points where 
 formal projection was needed. 
 
 The subtle manner in which he construcfted 
 and posed these patches precluded any discovery 
 of his reasons for altering their natural location. 
 But Renoir was not fully satisfied, and soon 
 abandoned this phase of pleinairisme. Later the 
 spots of sunlight appeared on cheeks, shoulders, 
 knees, or any other salients which called for 
 powerful relief, thereby losing their flat and de- 
 
ii8 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 tached appearance. This moulding of them into 
 intense aggregations had much to do with Renoir's 
 fullness of form. His long experience had given 
 him a complete knowledge of their naturalistic 
 effed. He knew it was impossible to make them 
 remain on the same plane with the surrounding 
 shadow, and he understood the reasons for this 
 phenomenon. It was not therefore remarkable 
 that, in his later method of applying them, he 
 was sure of his results. As soon as he realised 
 that sunlight dispersed matter by obscuring some 
 points and accentuating others, he knew that by 
 an intelligent employment of this fador of lumi- 
 nosity he could at will accentuate certain parts 
 of his canvas and obscure others. This knowl- 
 edge led him naturally to create his own light, 
 irrespedive of how it actually existed. This was 
 an important step toward its complete abroga- 
 tion, and brought arbitrary means in painting 
 just so much nearer. He had already distorted 
 volumes for purposes of organisation in the same 
 manner that he now distorted light. Indeed 
 every great painter has taken this liberty with 
 form; but each one has to learn the device anew 
 in its relation to his own separate vision. 
 
 There are few shadows, as such, in Renoir. 
 We find darks and lights in scintillating succes- 
 sion, but we may search in vain, even in his 
 canvases of 1878 or 1879, for those shadowed out- 
 lines which are the result of light. If light there 
 is, it is only the light which springs from our own 
 eyes — light which seems to come from the 
 diredion of the beholder, like the refledlion of a 
 light in water. Move as you will before his 
 pidlures, it follows you, for it is the illumination 
 
AUGUSTE RENOIR 
 
 of that part of the pidlure nearest the eyes of the 
 painter. Where a form is full, there Renoir con- 
 trives to have a Hght fall. This artifice may 
 strike us today as childish, since we have out- 
 grown our concern with light; but let us remem- 
 ber that from the beginning the depidlion of 
 lights and shadows had been a fixed pradlice, 
 and that their tones had formed the only basis 
 for chiaroscuro. With the Impressionists light 
 became the atout of painting. Renoir made of it 
 a vital form-creating element. Herein we have 
 its evolution: first, a convention; next, an 
 obsession; last, a utility. So were the aesthetic 
 possibilities of light exhausted, just as the aes- 
 thetic possibilities of the human form were 
 exhausted by Michelangelo. 
 
 In this last step of liberating light from con- 
 vention, Renoir approached nearer to nature than 
 any antecedent painter. After all, a human 
 being in the sunlight appears to us as a solid 
 moving mass. Only those who look upon nature 
 as a flat pattern of shades and lights are misled 
 by sun patches. So, in Renoir's adapting the 
 source of light for the purpose of producing 
 solidity of form, we are cognisant of the palpa- 
 bility of his figures whether they are in light or 
 shadow, or both. Thus he created the adual 
 impression of volume we all get before a moving 
 form. This arbitrary disposition of light and 
 shadow also gave fullness and intensity to his 
 form, and accentuated the poise, so subtle and 
 unexpected, we feel in even his slightest works. 
 But while this was the secret of his attainment 
 of volume, the compositional use to which he put 
 this volume requires another explanation — one 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 which has its roots in the very depths of the 
 man's genius. There had never been such form 
 in the French school as that which Renoir gave 
 it in 1880. The Tete de Jeune Fille and Les 
 Enfants en Rose et Bleu, done about this time, 
 must have been the despair of even the sculptors 
 of his day. And these were but the beginning. 
 Many phases of his art were yet to be emphasised 
 and developed before the Renoir we know today 
 was to be perfe(5led. 
 
 It was in 1884 that he began to a-pprendre 
 le dessiny For four years he continued this 
 self-training in the precision of draughtsmanship. 
 As a boy he had begun his painting in a manner 
 more competent than the most advanced style of 
 the average artist, as is evidenced by the able 
 use of colour as design in his early porcelains. 
 And although he was driven to this work by 
 necessity, the incident was a salutary one. It 
 turned his thoughts toward those abstra(51: organi- 
 sations of colour which always afterward haunted 
 him. Later he learned all the tricks of the day 
 in the school of the realists, and succeeded in 
 surpassing his masters. Next he studied the 
 Impressionists and went beyond them also. Then 
 he co-ordinated his knowledge and established his 
 individual greatness. This period of his develop- 
 ment gave France much of its finest painting, and 
 his Baigneuse done at this time is an undoubted 
 masterpiece. His reversion to the rudiments of 
 drawing was the result of a burning desire to 
 develop rhythm and form. His technical diffi- 
 culties had been conquered at an early date: 
 he needed only dexterity in drawing to achieve his 
 end. Not only did Renoir attain to his objective, 
 
AUGUSTE RENOIR 121 
 
 but, by comprehending the principle of the place- 
 ments and displacements of volumes, he learned 
 the advantages of line accentuation in obtaining 
 movement. 
 
 We now come to those pictures which show 
 Renoir's intimate relation to Rubens through 
 Boucher and Watteau: to his alfresco bathing 
 figures. Some one has pointed out that his 
 Baigneuses of 1885, one year after he had devoted 
 himself to drawing, was inspired by Girardon's 
 lead-reliefs in the gardens at Versailles. The 
 commentary is undoubtedly true; but even so, 
 of what significance is it? Aside from the super- 
 ficial fad: that in the works of both appear 
 bathing women in more or less abandoned poses, 
 Renoir had nothing in common with the school 
 of Largilliere, Pater, Fragonard, Le Moyne, 
 Santerre and Girardon. In all such observations 
 one senses the restridlion of the critic's viewpoint 
 to illustration. An artist may find inspiration in 
 any visual form, but this form is of no more 
 aesthetic importance to him than a photograph. 
 In Picasso's paintings of violin fragments we are 
 scarcely permitted to deduce an inspiration from 
 Stradivarius. Grotesque as this analogy may 
 seem, it is applicable to the contention that 
 Renoir stemmed from Girardon. For there is 
 nothing whatever in Renoir's bathing girls to 
 suggest a psychological parallel between them and 
 the leaden frieze at Versailles. If Renoir saw in 
 that frieze an attradive pose, it was with an eye 
 to its adaptability to composition. In Girardon 
 there is only a pretty and sensual chaos. In 
 Renoir we have a masterly organisation wherein 
 the adlual positions of the young women are not 
 
122 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 even remarked. Compare, for instance, Girar- 
 don's version of the figure of the girl throwing 
 water on her playmates, with the corresponding 
 figure in Renoir's drawing. The body of the 
 former is without doubt a more faithful replica 
 of its model; in Renoir it has become impossibly 
 elongated and voluminous. Its head is too small; 
 its back too long; its hips are too large — and 
 yet withal it is an exquisite bit of rich form which 
 has as concrete a tangibility as that of a real 
 body. One cannot judge it by its contour; one 
 must bury oneself in its very weight. 
 
 Had Renoir advanced no further than his mas- 
 terly Baigneuse of 1884, he would nevertheless 
 have gone down in history as a great artist. But 
 compared with the same subjeA done in 1888, it 
 appears stiff. We feel in it the rigidity of a 
 master whose great qualities are without a diredl- 
 ing intelligence. In the later canvas, Renoir is 
 less preoccupied with details. As a result there 
 is a greater plenitude of bulging form, a purer 
 rhythm. And there is also an added movement 
 caused by the linear harmony of the background, 
 by the hair over the shoulder, and above all by 
 the turning of the head so that its weight is 
 shifted over a hollow. An apparently simple 
 thing — this turning of a head. Yet Michel- 
 angelo's genius, as well as that of all great 
 artists, is dependent on the knowledge of when 
 a head should be turned or a limb advanced. 
 This knowledge is what transforms action into 
 movement, tempo into rhythm, the static into 
 the plastic, the dead into the living. It is the 
 final penetration into composition; on it all 
 aesthetic form is built. Renoir acquired it in his 
 
AUGUSTE RENOIR 
 
 period of so-called dry drawing. Its dawn came 
 in La Natte and Mere et Enfant. It was still 
 developing in the Baigneuse; and in La Baigneuse 
 Brune and Nu a TEtoffe Vert et Jaune, both 
 done after 1900, this knowledge was becoming 
 sure of itself. Between 1884 and 1892, however, 
 Renoir's new strength was not wholly mastered. 
 There was conscious effort in its employment. 
 This is seen in La Fillette a la Gerbe and Les 
 Filles de Catulle Mendes and in that otherwise 
 miraculous canvas, Au Piano. In Le Croquet, 
 1892, he begins to exhibit, in his use of new 
 means, the same prodigious adroitness he displayed 
 in his earlier and slighter works. And in Les 
 Deux Soeurs the effecfls of labour entirely vanish, 
 and he once more paints with magistral unconcern. 
 
 From that time forward Renoir's complete gen- 
 ius was but a matter of evolution. And here let 
 it be remembered that his transcendent compe- 
 tency was the result of academic training, for of 
 late we have heard many objedlions to this kind 
 of discipline. We have been invited to behold 
 the water-colour and crayon works of the untu- 
 tored, assured that they were as fine as Matisse's 
 drawings. And we have been asked to accept, 
 as a corollary, the statement that all painters are 
 better off without the pernicious influence of 
 schools. We have had modern paintings pointed 
 out to us as examples of what inspiration and 
 freedom from convention can do. We have heard 
 the constantly reiterated assertion that academies 
 cramp genius, restrid vision and force all expres- 
 sion into stipulated moulds. To concede to these 
 extravagant assertions would be to ignore the 
 history of great painting, for during all the 
 
 I 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 significant epochs of art the school was at its 
 zenith. Without it there could be no genuine 
 achievement. No amount of mere inspiration 
 has ever enabled an artist to paint an eminent 
 canvas. No amount of uncontrolled emotion- 
 alism has ever permitted one to make an aestheti- 
 cally moving work of art. No untrained man, 
 no matter how high his natural gifts, has yet 
 been able to record adequately his feelings. All 
 the records of past accomplishment go to show 
 that no person who has not been profoundly 
 educated in the purely objedlive (not utilitarian) 
 forms, and in the abstract qualities of painting, 
 such as anatomy and technique, has succeeded 
 in conceiving an artistic organisation. 
 
 The school has never obscured or dwarfed 
 genius, nor is it probable it ever will. To the 
 contrary it assists the truly great man in his 
 self-fulfilment and weeds out the mediocre man. 
 It turns the student's thoughts to methods rather 
 than to inspiration. It direds the attention of 
 incompetent and merely talented persons, incapa- 
 ble of rising above its teachings, into side issues. 
 Thus it relegates their work to the soupentes of 
 the world: whereas, if they had been permitted 
 to labour at random, they would only have choked 
 the market of genuinely aesthetic produAion. 
 The school teaches discipline, precision, and the 
 control of wayward impulses, without all of 
 which the greatest artist could only incompletely 
 express himself. These are the things which 
 Renoir felt he lacked; and in the midst of his 
 career he halted long enough to acquire them. 
 It may be argued that his was intelligent train- 
 ing, while that of the schools is unintelligent. 
 
AUGUSTE RENOIR 
 
 But all discipline is beneficial to the artist. 
 Only slavish minds, hopeless from the first, 
 succumb to it. The fadl that a man capitulates 
 to academic training attests to an incompetency 
 so great that, under no circumstances, however 
 favorable, could it have arisen to a point capable 
 of producing great art. Giotto, El Greco and 
 Rubens passed through rigid training and rose 
 above it. And the apprenticeship demanded of 
 the old Egyptian, Chinese and Greek artists was 
 longer and more tedious than any of our school 
 courses today. 
 
 Renoir's scholastic training was his salvation. 
 With the advent of the twentieth century he 
 struck his pace. All his qualities converged 
 toward the construdlion of rhythm. In 1900 he 
 painted a large and ambitious canvas of an attired 
 maid combing a nude's hair. La Toilette de la 
 Baigneuse, which is more extended and conclusive 
 than any of his previous works. The forms lean 
 in opposition and complete each other. In 
 them is a perfed: poise which subjedlively evokes 
 an emotion of movement. Even the lights and 
 darks are separated so as to give the strongest 
 efifed:. The very hat and tree trunk are integral 
 parts of the whole, and there is not a line in the 
 pidlure which does not develop logically to a 
 harmonic completion. The luscious plenitude of 
 form is equalled only by the finality of the rhythm. 
 
 Another pid:ure of the same period is the 
 Baigneuses in the Vollard collection, a duplicate 
 of his Baigneuses of fifteen years before. Now 
 all the hardness is gone from the contours. The 
 differentiation of texture between the flesh and 
 water and foliage is absent. The lines are less 
 
126 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 angular and true, and both the distant nudes' 
 attitudes are changed. The first canvas recalled 
 Ingres; but the second brings up Cezanne, for 
 it is pure composition with every nugatory 
 quality eliminated. It demonstrates the possi- 
 bility of creating abstract unity in three dimen- 
 sions with the objedlive reality at hand. The 
 picture contains movement in the vital sense, 
 and possesses a tadlility as great as a Giorgione 
 done with modern means. In fadl, comparison 
 of these two Baigneuses will straightway divulge 
 the advantages that lie in modern methods. 
 The first is extremely able, and has the unfinished 
 foundation of a great composition. The second, 
 because of what Renoir had learned of freedom, 
 is as intense as a Rubens in that painter's own 
 manner; and in addition it has an emotional 
 element to which the Antwerp master never 
 attained. 
 
 Two years later this obsession to create form 
 as an impregnable block, no matter in how many 
 integers it might be divided, made him turn his 
 attention to Daumier; and in Le Jardin d'Essoyes 
 and his heads of Coco he surpasses even this 
 master of organisation. Having assimilated this 
 new influence Renoir added it to his own store of 
 knowledge, and four years later painted his 
 greatest pidure, Le Petit Peintre. After this 
 there was little more to be done in Renoir's style 
 unless he extended his vision to greater surfaces. 
 This he has not done. But he has added other 
 masterpieces to the ones already mentioned. 
 His Ode aux Fleurs (d'apres Anacreon), the two 
 decorative Panneaux of the tambourine player 
 and the dancer, Coco et les Deux Servantes, La 
 
BAIGNEUSES, 1885 
 
 RENOIR 
 
 BAIGNEUSES, I902 
 
 RENOIR 
 
AUGUSTE RENOIR 
 
 Rose dans les Cheveux and La Femme au Miroir 
 are all worthy of a place beside the greatest 
 pictures of all time. In these last paintings 
 nature's form is transcribed in a purely arbitrary 
 manner. Many of the parts are exaggerated to 
 create greater projed:ion or more perfecfl propor- 
 tion in relation to the whole. Texture has 
 developed into a unified surface, and simple 
 linear balance has become poise in depth. The 
 colouring has grown so subtle that it is impossible 
 in many places to tell just what it is, for in it is 
 a whole spectrum that makes it living. 
 
 Renoir was a man who fundamentally was not 
 revolutionary, an artist who was shown the way 
 by others, a genius who culminated a great and 
 febrile epoch. His beginnings were imitative of 
 the painters of his day. He climbed the ladder 
 from dark to light, from the stiff to the mobile. 
 His first works under Courbet and Manet were no 
 better than those of Hankwan. Later his pictures 
 began to flow rhythmically in simple lines as in 
 the Head of a Chinese Lady by Ririomin. Then 
 they began to extend into depth, and as early as 
 1881 they surpassed Titian. From then on they 
 approached steadily to the completeness of a 
 modernised Rubens. That Renoir never reached 
 that master's greatness is due, not to his lack of 
 acute and complete vision, but to his restrid:ion 
 of it to small works. A composer who writes a 
 symphony in which each minute part is an inti- 
 mate factor of the whole, is greater than he who 
 writes only an overture whose entirety is no 
 greater than one of the symphony's movements. 
 Renoir, in so far as he went, was as great as the 
 greatest. 
 
128 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 One cannot think of a Renoir canvas merely 
 as a painting. It is a new and visually complete 
 cosmos. In looking at his work the intelligence 
 enters a world in which every form has interest, 
 every line completion, every space a plasticity: 
 in short, a world in which everything is visibly 
 interrelated. A host of influences have been 
 read into Renoir, and indeed there were many in 
 his development. But they were only the steps 
 by which he mounted to high achievement. So 
 unimportant are the works of most of these other 
 men when compared with Renoir's personal ac- 
 complishments, that one may visualise this artist 
 as a raindrop on a window, which, as it flows 
 downward, consumes and embodies all those in 
 its path. Courbet, Monet, Delacroix and Manet, 
 had they no other claim on posterity than as 
 instrudlors of Renoir, would not have lived in 
 vain. The Chinese, the Greeks, the Renaissance, 
 even that full Indian sculpture in the Chaitya of 
 Karli of the eleventh century b. c. — are all 
 within him. That they are temperamental 
 affinities rather than diredl influences none can 
 deny; but, strange as it may seem, he has traits 
 which direcftly recall each one of them. They all 
 have the ineradicable germ of genius in them; 
 and that germ, being changeless and eternal, lies 
 at the root of all aesthetic creation. For this 
 reason a great man belongs to all time. He 
 embraces all the results of the struggles which 
 have gone before. In the possession of Renoir 
 we have no apologies to make to antiquity, any 
 more than in having produced Cezanne must we 
 abase ourselves before the artists who are yet to 
 come. 
 
VI 
 
 PAUL CEZANNE 
 
 THE dilettante, avid for accounts of an 
 artist's eccentricities, will find abundant 
 and varied material of this nature in 
 half a hundred books written by critics 
 of almost every nationality on that astound- 
 ing and grotesque colossus, Cezanne. Perhaps 
 no great artist in the world's history has been 
 so wantonly libelled, maligned and ridiculed as 
 he. Nor has there ever been a painter of such 
 wide influence so grossly misunderstood. Cezanne 
 has been endowed with most fantastic powers, dis- 
 missed with a coup d' esprit for attributes he never 
 possessed, and canonised for qualities he would 
 have repudiated. Like Michelangelo he has 
 been both the admiration and the mystery of 
 critics. And he is at once the idol and the 
 incubus of present-day artists. His letters alone 
 have formed the technical basis of one great 
 modern art school. A fragmentary phrase of 
 his mentioning geometrical figures was seized 
 upon by a Spaniard and made the foundation for 
 another school. His mention of Poussin drove a 
 horde of Scandinavians, Austrians and Bohemians 
 to a contemplation of that artist. Cezanne's 
 very limitations have been the inspiration for 
 an army of hardy imitators who believe it is 
 more vital to imitate modernity than to recon- 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 struct the past. Indeed it may be said that all 
 art since Impressionism is divided into two 
 groups, one which endeavours to develop some 
 quality or qualities in Cezanne, the other which 
 attempts the anachronism of resuscitating the 
 primitive art of a simple-minded antiquity. For 
 even this latter group, Cezanne is in part responsi- 
 ble. Did he not say that we must become 
 classicists again by way of nature.? And did 
 this not give readlionary and servile minds ample 
 excuse to cling with even greater passion to a 
 dead and rigid past? In his great sense of order 
 his disciples saw only immobility; their minds, 
 redundant with parallels, harked back to the 
 Egyptians. Thus has he been emulated: but, 
 among all these branches shot out from the 
 mother trunk, it can be stated incontestably that 
 only one has understood him, has penetrated 
 beneath the surface of his canvases, has realised 
 his true gift to the art of the future. And this 
 one, strangely enough, is the furthest removed 
 from imitation. 
 
 Cezanne's biography is of value to the art 
 student, for it embodies in concrete form the 
 facftors which motivated his aesthetic appercep- 
 tions. By Cezanne's biography is meant, not 
 the distorted interpretations of the incidents of 
 his life, now so well known, or the superficial 
 conclusions deduced by his biographers from 
 hearsay; but those adlions and temperamental 
 characteristics which are impartially set down at 
 first hand by Emile Bernard. To this chronicler 
 we are indebted for pradically all the authentic 
 personal anecdotes of the artist. He had always 
 admired Cezanne, and in 1904 a personal friend- 
 
PAUL CEZANNE 131 
 
 ship was established between them, which endured 
 until the latter's death. After Cezanne had 
 overcome parental objedions and had definitely 
 decided on an artist's career, he spent much of 
 his time in Paris. Many influences entered into 
 his early life. He had met Zola at school and 
 had been intimate with him. Through him he 
 had become acquainted with Manet, and while 
 he appreciated Manet's friendliness, he could 
 never understand that artist's great popularity. 
 He preferred Courbet as a painter, and studied 
 him sedulously. His great influence, however, 
 came from Pissarro. For that persuasive Jew's 
 memory he always harboured a deep resped. 
 
 Cezanne's youth, if one may call forty years a 
 youth,^ was, as he himself put it, filled mostly 
 with ''literature and laziness." Not until his 
 final renunciation of city life and his return to 
 the south did his best work begin. At first he 
 made friends timidly. He was a man who could 
 not brook opposition, who was extremely sensi- 
 tive to rebuffs; and those good people of pro- 
 vincial France were brusquely aggressive in all 
 their beliefs and traditions. At every thought he 
 expressed they sneered. He clashed violently and 
 disastrously with the local celebrities who had 
 the sanaion of the established schools. In Paris 
 he had been a frank and even garrulous com- 
 panion; but at each contad with the narrow, 
 self-centered and righteous community of Aix, 
 he withdrew into himself. His natural spontane- 
 ity and good-fellowship turned inward, became 
 restrained and pent-up. He grew sensitive and 
 wary, and in later life this defensive attitude 
 developed into abnormal irritability. To those 
 
132 • MODERN PAINTING 
 
 who could understand, however, he unburdened 
 himself on all subjedls, and his opinions were 
 always the result of profound thought. But he 
 never entirely divulged his methods. If questions 
 became too pertinent, he consciously led his 
 interrogators astray. "They think I've got a 
 trick," he would cry, "and they want to steal 
 it. But nobody will ever put his hooks on me 
 {pas un ne me mettra le grappin dessus)." He 
 had already suffered enough at the hands of self- 
 seekers. He had been extravagantly ridiculed 
 by his boyhood friends. He had been robbed 
 and bullied by his hired archited; and having 
 money he had been considered prey by the village 
 widows. He permitted himself to be browbeaten 
 because of his antipathy to any kind of fridion. 
 It is small wonder he became misanthropic. 
 
 The popular opinion of Aix was that he was 
 crazy, and his chroniclers, almost without excep- 
 tion, have echoed this belief. But, to the con- 
 trary, his was the highest type of the creative 
 mind, always in search for something better, 
 never satisfied with present results; the type of 
 mind which gives no thought to the acquisition 
 or retention of property. His joy lay in his 
 creations of the moment, but his desires were far 
 ahead. Some one who showed him one of his 
 early treasured canvases was ridiculed for liking 
 "such things." Every day Cezanne watched his 
 evolution: to him this progress was the essential 
 thing. He left his unfinished works in the 
 meadows, in studio corners, in the nursery. 
 They have been found in the most out-of-the- 
 way places. He had given large numbers of 
 them to chance friends on the impulse of the 
 
PAUL CEZANNE 
 
 133 
 
 moment. His son cut out the windows of his 
 masterpieces for amusement, and his servant and 
 his wife used his canvases for stove cleaners. 
 He saw his work put to these uses tranquilly, 
 knowing that later he would do better, that he 
 would realise" more fully. His mind was too 
 exalted to be impatient with the pettinesses of 
 life. His great aversion was politics, and unlike 
 Delacroix, he was above nationality. During 
 the Franco-Prussian War he hid with a relative 
 that he might pursue his own ideal rather than 
 sacrifice himself for the protedlion of his tor- 
 mentors. What did he care for France when his 
 whole admiration was for Italy and Holland.? 
 Painting, not the preservation of nationality, was 
 his innermost concern. In evading conscription 
 he called down upon him the public abuse which 
 such adlions evoke. But it passed him by: he 
 was too absorbed in his work to heed, just as 
 later he was too engrossed to follow his mother's 
 hearse to the funeral or to seek a market for his 
 pidlures. At every step he paused to study the 
 rapports of line, of light, of shadow, of colour. 
 At table, in conversation or at church, he never 
 for a moment lost sight of his desire. One can 
 find a parallel for this intellectually ascetic 
 creature only in the old martyrs. He was the 
 type that renounces all the benefits and usufrud:s 
 of life in order to follow the face of a dream. 
 
 With such self-confidence no adversity could 
 daunt him, no logic draw from him a compromise, 
 no flourish of enthusiasm distract him from his 
 course. Zola says of him: "He is made in one 
 piece, stiff and hard under the hand; nothing 
 bends him; nothing can wrench from him a 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 concession." This quality of charader was a 
 thing which Zola, the slave of words, could not 
 understand. Cezanne, through much contad 
 with letters, saw the danger of literature to the 
 painter. "Literature," he wrote, expresses it- 
 self through abstradlions, while painting, by 
 means of drawing and colour, makes concrete 
 the artist's sensations and perceptions." Zola 
 libelled him at great length in L'CEuvre. Ce- 
 zanne's reply was simply that Zola had a 
 "mediocre intelligence" and was a "detestable 
 friend." In their youth Cezanne took the as- 
 cendency over Zola in Latin and French verse; 
 even in his old age he could recite long passages 
 from Virgil, Lucretius and Horace. He knew 
 literature and was able to judge it. His criti- 
 cisms of Zola are as penetrating as any that 
 realist has called forth. His reputation for bar- 
 barism, vulgarity and ignorance has little 
 foundation in fac^. To be sure, he did not desert 
 his work for social adlivities: he despised the 
 polished and shallow wit of men like Whistler: 
 and he bitterly attacked those painters who 
 strove for salon popularity. It is therefore not 
 incredible that the accusations against him were 
 but the world's retaliation for having been ignored 
 by him. 
 
 Cezanne's work from the first contained the 
 undeniable elements of greatness. In his first, 
 almost black-and-white still-lives, executed under 
 the influence of Courbet (it is not tenable that 
 they were done under Manet, as is commonly 
 believed: they are too solidly formed for that), 
 there is exhibited a passionate admiration for 
 volume and for full and rich chiaroscuro. We 
 
PAUL CEZANNE 135 
 
 are conscious of the artist's gropings for those 
 fundamentals he was finally to discover in the 
 seclusion of his rugged country of the south. 
 Even his early figure pieces carry this sensual 
 delight in objedlivity to a greater height than 
 did Delacroix by whom they were inspired. 
 And they attest to a freedom from academic 
 principles which was not surpassed by the Im- 
 pressionists. These paintings are classic in the 
 best sense; in them is an orderliness which 
 Manet and the Impressionists never possessed. 
 Yet, withal, they are only the results of the 
 literary influences from Delacroix and of his 
 admirations for other painters. They are not 
 purely creative, but the qualities of creation are 
 there. To those who can read the signs, they 
 unmistakably indicate the beginnings of a full 
 and masterly growth. 
 
 His potentialities began to a(5lualise with his 
 comprehension of El Greco and the Venetians. 
 From that period on his power for organisation 
 steadily developed, and it was still advancing at 
 the time of his death. But organisation touched 
 only the compositional side of his work: it was 
 the resultant element. His inspiration toward 
 colour which emanated from Pissarro was what 
 precipitated him irrevocably into painting. 
 Colour, by presenting so many problems, claimed 
 him entirely. To that Impressionist he owes 
 much, not to that artist's acflual achievement, 
 but to the incentive he furnished. During his 
 intimacy with Pissarro, Cezanne completed his 
 assimilation of all the traits in others which were 
 relative to himself. His beliefs and intransi- 
 gencies became crystallised. The road opened 
 
136 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 into fields where that new element of colour, 
 which had taken on so vital a significance, led to 
 an infinitude of emotional possibilities. Though 
 Cezanne never completely became a defender of 
 Pissarro's theories, he always looked upon the 
 Impressionists as innovators whose importance 
 as such could not be overestimated. He realised 
 that without them he himself would not have 
 existed, and that they had sketched out a preface 
 to all the great art which was to come. Without 
 them there undoubtedly would have been great 
 artists, but he knew that a painter with the means 
 of a Renoir is greater than one who, though 
 equally competent in organisation, is limited in 
 the mechanics of method. Restridled means per- 
 mit only of restridled expression. The Impres- 
 sionists, having made an advance in aesthetic 
 procedure, facilitated the experimentations of 
 Cezanne. But he in turn recognised the restric- 
 tions of the Impressionists* methods: indeed, he 
 saw that their theories could apply only to a 
 very circumscribed aesthetic field; and he was 
 not content with them. He studied assiduously 
 in the Louvre and absorbed the myriad impulses 
 which had impelled the great masters of the 
 past. The Louvre and Pissarro constituted his 
 primer. From the one he got his impetus toward 
 voluminous organisation; from the other, his 
 impetus toward colour. From their fragmentary 
 teachings he went on to greater achievements. 
 
 There is little or no documentary history of 
 Cezanne's early years. Consequently his youth- 
 ful admirations are not recorded in detail. But 
 we know enough to gauge his early tastes. He 
 travelled in Holland and Belgium, and though 
 
PAUL CEZANNE i37 
 
 he never went to Italy, he greatly admired 
 Tintoretto and Veronese. He had a high esteem 
 for that master of style, Luca Signorelli, who, 
 had he not gone into architedure, niight have 
 become one of the world's great painters. In 
 his studio Cezanne kept a water-colour by Dela- 
 croix — hung face to the wall that it might 
 not fade, and beside it a lithograph by Daumier 
 whom he regarded highly. We may be sure he 
 fully understood the limitations of these men 
 aside from their ambitions. To him they were 
 points of departure rather than goals to aspire 
 to. Both of them he surpassed early in his 
 career. Cezanne admired also the Dutch and 
 Flemish masters. He had an old and dilapidated 
 book of their reprodudions full of bad lithographs 
 done by inferior craftsmen. But he overlooked 
 all their defeds in his remembrance of the 
 originals. Here, as elsewhere, he ignored those 
 details which to another would have militated 
 against enjoyment. His mind was too compre- 
 hensive and analytic to be led astray by the 
 flaws on an otherwise perfed work: it penetrated 
 to the essentials first and remained there. 
 
 Thus it was in his work. The exad reproduc- 
 tion of nature in any of its manifestations never 
 held him for a moment. He saw its eternal 
 asped aside from its accidental visages caused by 
 fluduating lights. In this he was diametrically 
 opposed to the Impressionists who recorded only 
 nature's temporary phases. They captured and 
 set down its atmosphere and were satisfied. 
 Cezanne, regarding its atmosphere as an ephem- 
 erality, portrayed the lasting force of light. 
 **One is the master of one's model and above all 
 
138 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 of one's means of expression," he wrote. "Pene- 
 trate what is before you, and persevere in ex- 
 pressing yourself as logically as possible." It is 
 this penetration which separates Cezanne by an 
 impassable gulf from those purely sensitive artists 
 who are content with the merely physiological 
 efifedls of an emotion. In the process of pene- 
 trating he became familiar with those under- 
 currents of causation from which has sprung the 
 greatest art of all ages. 
 
 In a Cezanne of the later years not only is the 
 form poised in three dimensions, but the very 
 light also is poised. We feel in Cezanne the 
 same completion we experience before a Rubens 
 — that emotion of finality caused by the forms 
 moving, swelling and grinding in an eternal order; 
 and added to this completion of form, heightening 
 its emotive power, is the same final organisation 
 of illumination. The light suggests no particular 
 time of day or night; it is not appropriated from 
 morning or afternoon, sunlight or shadow. So 
 delicate and perfedly balanced is this light that, 
 with the raising or the lowering of the curtain in 
 the room where the pidlure hangs, it will darken 
 or brighten perfedly, logically, proportionately 
 with the outer light. It lives because it is 
 painted with the logic of nature. Whether the 
 piAure be hung in a bright sunlight or in half 
 gloom, it is a creature of its environment. Its 
 planes, like those of nature, advance and recede, 
 swell and shrink. In short, they are dynamic. 
 
 If this feat of Cezanne's seems to border on 
 metaphysics, the reason is that there has been no 
 precedent for it in history. It was, in fad, a 
 purely technical accompHshment based wholly 
 
PAUL CEZANNE 
 
 on the most stringently empirical research. The 
 manner in which he arrived at this achievement 
 may not be entirely insusceptible of explanation. • 
 It has been pointed out how the Impressionists 
 broke up surfaces into minute sensitive parts, 
 some of which refledled or absorbed more than 
 others. That which gives us our sensation of 
 colour is the atomic preponderance of one of 
 these attributes. Thus if an atom or combination 
 of atoms refledls highly it translates itself through 
 the retina into our brains as a high force, namely, 
 as a yellow. If an atom absorbs more than it 
 refledls, it takes and retains the refledlive force 
 of light, and, in discharging this limited power, 
 produces in us the sensation of blue. Now, that 
 point on a round objedl where the light is 
 strongest is the point nearest the light. As the 
 planes of the objedl curve away from the light 
 they diminish in brilliancy. The further the 
 plane from the point nearest the illumination, 
 the less light it has to refledt. Consequently it 
 will appear bluish. The Impressionists were 
 satisfied with recording this blue of shadow 
 merely as the complement of the light which was 
 yellow. But Cezanne studied each degradation 
 of tone from yellow to blue. In this study he 
 discovered that light always graduates from 
 warm to cold in precisely the same way; and, 
 that, provided the model is white, each step 
 down the tonic scale is the same on no matter 
 what objedl. But this discovery was little more 
 than a premise. He was now necessitated to 
 solve the problem of just how much the local 
 colour of an objedl modifies the natural colours 
 of the light and shadow which reveal that objedt. 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 In all coloured objeAs the modifications are 
 different, according to the laws of colour com- 
 plementaries and admixtures. By keeping these 
 laws always in mind, and by applying his dis- 
 covery of the consistent gradations of the colours 
 of light, he was able to paint in such a way that, 
 no matter how much or how little outside light 
 of a uniform quality fell on his canvas, the 
 colours he had applied would, as they retreated 
 from the most highly illuminated point on the 
 pidure, absorb a graduatingly smaller quantity 
 of adual light, and would thus create emotional 
 form in the same manner that nature creates 
 visual form. Hence, the planes in a Cezanne 
 canvas advance or recede en masse, retaining 
 their relativity, as the eye excludes or receives 
 a greater or a lesser quantity of light; and since 
 the light never remains the same for any period 
 of time, the planes bulge toward the spectator 
 and retrad from him with each minute variation 
 of illumination. 
 
 In all painting prior to Cezanne, the natural 
 variations of light distorted the objects of a 
 picflure: that is to say, the colours of external 
 light changed the character of the applied colours, 
 making some advance and others retreat; and 
 because these applied colours were not put on 
 with the exad logic of natural gradations, the 
 proportions between them could not be main- 
 tained. Thus in one light certain objeds ad- 
 vanced more than others, and in another light 
 certain objeds receded more than others. Their 
 relativity was lost. Hence, not only was the 
 picture's composition and balance altered, but 
 the appearance of its objeds belied the adlual 
 
PAUL CEZANNE 
 
 measurements. These variations were so small 
 that the untrained eye might not have seen 
 them, any more than an untrained ear may not 
 deted; the slight variations of pitch in music. 
 But to the man whose eye is trained, even to the 
 degree that a good musician's ear is trained, 
 pictures appear **ofif" in the same way that a 
 poorly tuned piano sounds "off" to the sensitive 
 musician. Cezanne, had he never achieved any 
 intrinsically great art, would still be a colossal 
 figure in painting because of this basic and 
 momentous discovery. The Impressionists had 
 been content with the mere discovery of light. 
 Their theory was, not that one can enjoy the 
 natural light of out-of-doors more than the 
 abstract light in a canvas, but that, since every 
 one of nature's moods is the result of degrees of 
 illumination, these moods can only be recorded 
 by the depiction of natural light; and therefore 
 out-of-door light is an aesthetic means. Cezanne 
 recognised the limitations of this theory, but 
 considered it an admirable opening for higher 
 achievement. He thereupon stripped the Im- 
 pressionists' means of their ephemeral plasticity, 
 and, by using the principles, and not the results, 
 of nature's method, gave them an eternal plas- 
 ticity which no great art of the future can afford 
 to ignore, and which in time, no doubt, will lead 
 to the creation of an entirely new art. 
 
 Although Cezanne had many times given out 
 broad hints of his methods, his friends and 
 critics were too busy trying to discover other less 
 concise qualities in his work to appreciate the 
 full significance of his occasional words. Herein 
 lies the main reason why an untechnical onlooker 
 
142 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 and admirer can never sound the depths of art. 
 He is too detached, for, not having followed its 
 logical evolution from the simplest forms to the 
 most complex, he is unable to understand the 
 complicated mechanism on which it is built. 
 Critics for the most part are writers whose 
 admiration for art has been born in front of the 
 completed works of the great masters. Unable 
 to comprehend them fully, they turn to a con- 
 templation of the simple and naif. Their process 
 of valuation is thus reversed. Great art is as 
 a rule too compounded for their analytical powers, 
 and they end by imagining that the primitives 
 and the mosaicists represent the highest and most 
 conscious type of the creative will. What to 
 them is incomprehensible appears of little value; 
 and here we find the explanation for the popular 
 theory that the test of great art is its simplicity, 
 its humanitas, its obviousness. Persons who 
 would not pretend to grasp without study the 
 principles of modern science, still demand that 
 art be sufficiently lucid to be comprehended at 
 once by the untutored mind. A physician may 
 tell them of profundities in medical experimenta- 
 tion, and they will accept his views as those of 
 an expert in a science of which they are ignorant. 
 But when an artist tells them of recondite 
 principles in aesthetics they accuse him of an 
 endeavour to befuddle them. The isolation of 
 bacilli and the application of serums and anti- 
 toxins are mysteries which call for respedt. The 
 equally scientific and obscure principles of colour 
 and form are absurd imaginings. And yet with- 
 out a scientific basis art is merely an artifice — 
 the New Thought in aesthetics. Readily com- 
 
PAUL CEZANNE 
 
 prehensible painting is no further advanced than 
 readily comprehensible therapeutics. 
 
 Emile Bernard was little different from the 
 average critic. In attributing to Cezanne his 
 own limitations, he restricted what he might 
 otherwise have learned. But the literalness with 
 which he recorded the artist's sayings makes his 
 book of paramount interest. We read for in- 
 stance that Cezanne once remarked: "Here is 
 something incontestable; I am most affirmative 
 on this point: An optical sensation is produced 
 in our visual organ by what we class as light, 
 half tone or quarter tone, each plane being repre- 
 sented by colour sensations. Therefore light as 
 such does not exist for the painter." By this 
 he broadly hinted at an absolute relativity be- 
 tween the degrees of light forces — a relativity 
 which translates itself to us as colour gradations. 
 Again Cezanne said: ''One should not say model 
 but modulate. . . . Drawing and colour are not 
 distindl; as one paints one draws. The more 
 the colours harmonise [namely: follow nature's 
 logical sequences], the more precise is the draw- 
 ing." Precision in drawing to Cezanne meant 
 among other things the ability to produce volume. 
 Again: "When colour is richest, form is at its 
 plenitude. In the contrasts and rapports of 
 tones lies the secret of drawing and of modelling." 
 In a letter he wrote: "Lines parallel to the 
 horizon create vastness {donnent Vetendue), whether 
 it be a se(5lion of nature, or if you choose, of the 
 spectacle that the Pater omnipotens ceternus Deus 
 spreads before our eyes. Lines perpendicular to 
 this horizon give depth. And since nature for us 
 human beings exists in depth rather than sur- 
 
144 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 facely, the painter is necessitated to introduce 
 into light vibrations, represented by reds and 
 yellows, a sufficient amount of blue to make the 
 air felt." 
 
 These observations are of paramount interest 
 because they touch on the essential principles of 
 his esthetique. They are at once an explanation 
 and a measure of his significance. Like all great 
 truths they appear simple after we know them, 
 or rather after we have experienced them. Dau- 
 mier might have stated with certitude the same 
 principles in relation to tone, for he always 
 practised them qualifiedly. Though his means 
 were limited, he employed those means as fully 
 as his materials permitted. Cezanne, because he 
 possessed the greater element — colour, con- 
 struAed his canvases as nature presents its ob- 
 jects to the sight, as a unique whole. With all 
 of the older painters drawing came first, chiaro- 
 scuro second and colour third — three distinct 
 steps, each one conceived separately. Daumier 
 was the first painter to approach simultaneity in 
 execution. Ignorant of colour, he conceived his 
 drawing and chiaroscuro together. Cezanne went 
 a step beyond, and conceived his drawing, form 
 and colour as one and the same, in the exadt 
 manner that these qualities, united in each 
 natural objed:, present themselves to the eye. 
 His method was the same as the mechanism of 
 human vision. Compared with Cezanne, Monet 
 was only fragmentary. Not only in methods did 
 they differ but in objedlive as well. The Im- 
 pressionists' aim was to reproduce nature's exter- 
 nals: Cezanne's desire was to reproduce its 
 solidity. Both achieved their ends. Cezanne's 
 
PAUL CEZANNE 145 
 
 pidlures are as impenetrable as sculpture. Every 
 objedl seems hewn out of marble. 
 
 Solidity alone, however, though a high and 
 necessary virtue of painting, is a limited quality. 
 Unless it is made mobile it gives off the impres- 
 sion of rigidity. It is to painting what the 
 rough clay is to sculpture — the dead material of 
 art. In order for it to engender aesthetic em- 
 pathy it must be organised, that is, it must be 
 harmonised and poised in three dimensions in 
 such a way that, should we translate our bodies 
 into its spacial forms, we should experience its 
 dynamism. This Cezanne did, and therein lay 
 his claim to greatness. In his best canvases there 
 seems no way of veering a plane, of imagining 
 one plane changing places with another, unless 
 every plane in the picture is shifted simultane- 
 ously. Cezanne's solidity is organised like the 
 volumes in Michelangelo's best sculpture. Move 
 an arm of any one of these statues, and every 
 other part of the figure, down to the smallest 
 muscle, must change position. Their plasticity, 
 like Cezanne's, is perfect. There is a complete 
 ordonnance between every minute part, and 
 between every group of parts. Nothing can be 
 added or taken away without changing the 
 entire strucflure in all its finest details. Cezanne 
 once said to Ambroise Vollard, a piAure mer- 
 chant, who had called attention to a small 
 uncovered spot on a canvas which the artist had 
 pronounced finished: "You will understand that 
 if I were to put something there haphazardly, I 
 should have to start the whole pidlure over from 
 that point." 
 
 The individual solidity of Cezanne's colour 
 
146 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 planes is due to the eternalism and absolutism 
 of his light. But it was the other qualities which 
 entered into his art which brought about the 
 interdependence of the parts and evoked the 
 sensation of unity we feel before them. One of 
 these qualities was a perfedl rapport of lines. 
 Cezanne, better than any other painter up to his 
 day, understood how one slanting line modifies 
 its diredlion when coming in contadl with another 
 line moving from a different direcflion. When 
 colour was first investigated realistically, artists 
 saw that two pure complementary tints, when 
 juxtaposed, tended to draw away from each 
 other and to differentiate themselves. Therefore 
 they set about to study the influence that one 
 colour has upon another, assuming that lines 
 were more static and absolute and consequently 
 did not change at contadt with other lines. 
 Cezanne recognised the fallacy of this assumption, 
 and wrote: "I see the planes criss-crossing and 
 overlapping, and sometimes the lines seem to 
 fall." He realised that the laws governing the 
 opposition of line are most important in the 
 produdlion of the emotion of movement. In all 
 the old painters this emotion was engendered by 
 just such devices, but with them the laws were 
 only dimly suspedled — instindts rather than 
 applied science. In contemplating their work 
 we seem torn by some physical impulse to follow 
 one line, but cannot, because the lure of the 
 other line is equally great. 
 
 To the man of sensitive and trained eyesight 
 this physical emotion is incited also by nature, 
 only nature is more complex than art and is 
 without aesthetic finality. Thus in regarding the 
 
PAUL CEZANNE 
 
 rapports of two lines in nature, one leaning to 
 the right and one to the left, the highly sensitive 
 person feels unrest and strife, and subconsciously 
 produces order and calm by imagining a third 
 line which harmonises the original two. Cezanne 
 looked upon nature with perhaps the most deli- 
 cate and perceptive eye a painter has ever 
 possessed, and his vision became a theatre for 
 the violent struggles of some one line against 
 terrible odds, for the warring clashes of inhar- 
 monious colours. He saw in objedlive nature a 
 chaos of disorganised movement, and he set 
 himself the task of putting it in order. In 
 studying the variations and qualifications of 
 linear dired:ions in his model, he discovered 
 another method of accentuating the feeling of 
 dynamism in his canvases. He stated lines, not 
 in their static charadler, but in their average of 
 fludluation. We know that all straight lines are 
 influenced by their surroundings, that they appear 
 bent or curved when related to other lines. The 
 extent to which a line is thus optically bent is its 
 extreme of fluAuability. Cezanne determined this 
 extreme in all of his lines, and by transcribing 
 them midway between their adlual and optical 
 states, achieved at once their normality and 
 their extreme abnormality. The character, direc- 
 tion and curve of all lines in a canvas change 
 with every shifting of the point of visual contact. 
 Since the unity of a picture is different from every 
 focus, all the lines consequently assume a slightly 
 different diredlion every time our eye shifts 
 from one spot to another. Cezanne, by recording 
 the mean of linear changeability, facilitated and 
 hastened this vicissitude of mutation. 
 
148 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 Another contribution he made to painting was 
 his application of the stereoscopic fundion of the 
 eye to all models by means of colour. From the 
 earliest art to Cezanne, objeds have been por- 
 trayed as if conceived in vacuo, with absolute and 
 delimited contours. Such portrayals are diredly 
 opposed to our normal vision, for whenever we 
 focus our sight on any natural object whatever, 
 each eye records a different perspedive repre- 
 sentation of that objed; there is a distind binocu- 
 lar parallax. Certain parts are seen by one eye 
 which are invisible to the other. But these two 
 visual impressions are perceived simultaneously, 
 combined in one image; that is to say: the optic 
 axes converge at such an angle that both the 
 right and left monocular impressions are superim- 
 posed. The single impression thus produced is 
 one of perspedive and relief. This is a rudi- 
 mentary law of optics, but on it our accuracy of 
 vision has always depended. In the lenticular 
 stereoscope the eye-glasses are marginal portions 
 of the same convex lens, which, when set edge to 
 edge, defied the rays from the pidure so as to 
 strike the eyes as if coming from an intermediate 
 point. By this bending of the rays the two 
 pidures become one impression, and present the 
 appearance of solid forms as in nature. The 
 problem of how to transcribe on a flat surface in 
 a single pidure the effed later produced by a 
 stereoscope with two pidures, has confronted 
 painters for hundreds of years. Leonardo da 
 Vinci in his Trattato della Pittura recorded the 
 fad that our vision encompasses to a slight 
 degree everything that passes before it; that we 
 see around all objeds; and that this encircling 
 
PAUL CEZANNE 
 
 sight gives us the sensation of rotundity. But 
 neither he, nor any artist up to Cezanne, was 
 able to make aesthetic use of the fad. The 
 vision of all older painting (although by the use 
 of line and composition it became plastic because 
 used as a detail) was the vision of the man with 
 one eye, for a one-eyed man sees nature as a 
 flat plane: only by association of the relative 
 size of objeds is he capable of judging depth. 
 Cezanne saw the impossibility of producing a 
 double vision by geometric rules, and approached 
 the problem from another direction. By under- 
 standing the funcftioning elements of colour in their 
 relation to texture and space, he was able to 
 paint forms in such a way that each colour he 
 applied took its relative position in space and 
 held each part of an objed stationary at any 
 required distance from the eye. As a result of 
 his method we can judge the depth and sense the 
 solidity of his pidlures the same as we do in 
 nature. 
 
 Cezanne was ever attempting to solve the 
 problem of the dynamics of vision. An analysis 
 of his pidlures often reveals a uniform leaning 
 of lines — a tendency of all the objects to pre- 
 cipitate themselves upon a certain spot, like the 
 minute flotsam on a surface of water being sucked 
 through a drain-hole. We find an explanation 
 for this convergence in one of his letters. He 
 says: "In studying nature closely, you will 
 observe that it becomes concentric. I mean that 
 on an orange, an apple, a ball or a head there is 
 a culminating point; and this point, despite the 
 strong effeds of light and shadow which are 
 cclour sensations, is always the nearest to our 
 
I50 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 eye. The edges of objects retreat toward a 
 centre which is situated on our horizon." It is 
 small wonder that Cezanne, obsessed with the 
 idea of form and depth, should have had little 
 admiration for his contemporaries, Van Gogh 
 and Gauguin, both of whom were workmen in 
 the flat. He let pass no opportunity of express- 
 ing himself on these artists who of late years 
 have become so popular. Van Gogh was to him 
 only another PointiUist; and he called Gauguin's 
 work ''des images Chinoises," adding, "I will 
 never accept his entire lack of modelling and 
 gradation." Does not this explain his aversion 
 to the primitives in whom he saw but the rudi- 
 ments of art? How could Cezanne, preoccupied 
 with the most momentous problems of aesthetics, 
 take an interest in enlarged book illuminations, 
 when the most superficial corner of his slightest 
 canvas had more organisation and incited a 
 greater aesthetic emotion than all the mosaics in 
 S. Vitale at Ravenna? 
 
 Cezanne was never attraded by the facial 
 expressions, the manual attitudes, or the graceful 
 poses of his models. The charaderistics of ma- 
 teriality meant nothing to him. He was per- 
 petually searching for something more profound, 
 and began his art where the average painter 
 leaves off. Realistic attributes are interesting 
 only as decoration; they are indicative of the 
 simplicity of man's mind; they are unable to 
 conduce to an extended aesthetic experience. Van 
 Gogh and Gauguin said well what they had to 
 say, but] it was so slight that it is of little interest 
 to us today. We demand a greater stimulus 
 than an art of two dimensions can give; our 
 
PAUL CEZANNE 151 
 
 minds instindlively extend themselves into space. 
 So it was with Cezanne. He left no device 
 untried which would give his work a greater 
 depth, a more veritable solidity. He experi- 
 mented in colour from this standpoint, then in 
 line, then in optics. With the results of this 
 research he became possessed of all the necessary 
 fadlors of colossal organisation. He knew that, 
 were these fadtors rightly applied, they would 
 produce a greater sensation of weight, of force 
 and of movement than any artist before him had 
 succeeded in attaining. 
 
 Their application presented to Cezanne his 
 most difficult problem. He must use his dis- 
 coveries in these three fields in such a way that 
 the very disposition of weights would produce 
 that perfeA balance of stress and repose, out of 
 which emanates all aesthetic movement. The 
 simplest manifestation of this balance is found 
 in the opposition of line; but in order to complete 
 this linear adjustment there must be an opposi- 
 tion of colours which, while they must fundlion 
 as volumes, must also accord with the character 
 of the natural objedt portrayed. In short, there 
 must be an opposition of countering weights, not 
 perfectly balanced so as to create a dead equality, 
 but rhythmically related so that the effed: is one 
 of swaying poise. Obviously this could not be 
 accomplished on a flat surface, for the emotion 
 of depth is a necessity to the recognition of 
 equilibrium. Cezanne finally achieved this poise 
 by a plastic distribution of volumes over and 
 beside spacial vacancies. He mastered this basic 
 principle of the hollow and the bump only after 
 long and trying struggles and tedious experi- 
 
152 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 mentations. He translated it into terms of his 
 own intelledion: to the extent that there was 
 order within him so was he able to put order 
 into his pidures. This vision of his was intel- 
 lectual rather than optical; and M. Bernard 
 unnecessarily tells us that, so sure was Cezanne 
 of his justification, he placed his colours on 
 canvas with the same absolutism he used in 
 expressing himself verbally. His art was his 
 thought given concrete form through the medium 
 of nature. His painting was the result of a 
 mental process — an intelledual conclusion after 
 it had been weighed, added to, substraded from, 
 modified by exterior considerations, and at last 
 brought forth purged and clarified and as nearly 
 complete as was his development at the time. 
 
 For this reason Cezanne resented the presence 
 of people while he worked. To attain his ends 
 his mind had to be concentrated on its ultimate 
 ambition. It could support no disturbing factors. 
 Even though he had no trick which might be 
 copied, he once said to a friend: "I have never 
 permitted anyone to watch me while I work. 
 I refuse to do anything before anyone." Had he 
 allowed spectators to stand over him he probably 
 would have fatigued them, for his work pro- 
 gressed by single strokes interspersed by long 
 periods of reflection and analysis. M. Bernard 
 would hear him descend to the garden a score 
 of times during the day's work, sit a moment 
 and rush back to the studio as if some solution 
 had presented itself to him suddenly. At other 
 times he would walk back and forth before his 
 picture awaiting the answer to a problem before 
 him. It is such deliberateness in great artists 
 
PAUL CEZANNE 153 
 
 that has, curiously enough, acquired for them 
 a reputation for esotericism. Their moments of 
 deep contemplation and their sudden plunges into 
 labour have been interpreted as periods of intel- 
 leAual coma shot through occasionally by "divine 
 flashes of inspiration'' coming from an outside 
 agent. The reverse is true, however. An artist 
 retains his sentiency at all times. He necessarily 
 works consciously, with the same intelledlual 
 labours as a scientist. A painter can no more 
 produce a great pidure unwittingly than an 
 inventor can construdl an intricate machine 
 unwittingly. They are both labourers in the 
 most plebeian sense. 
 
 Cezanne's hatred for facile and thoughtless 
 workmen who continually entertain amateurs, 
 was monumental. To him they were pupils who, 
 by learning a few rules, were able to paint con- 
 ventional pieces after the manner of thousands 
 who had preceded him. They represented the 
 academicians with whom every country is over- 
 run — the suave and satisfied craftsmen who 
 epitomise mediocrity, whose appeal is to minds 
 steeped in pedantry and conservatism. In France 
 they come out of the government-run Beaux- 
 Arts school to which the incompetents of both 
 America and England flock. Cezanne harboured 
 a particular enmity for that school; anyone who 
 had passed through it aroused his scorn. "With 
 a little temperament anyone can be an academic 
 painter," he said. "One can make pictures with- 
 out being a harmonist or a colourist. It is 
 enough to have an art sense — and even this 
 art sense is without doubt the horror of the 
 bourgeois. Thus the institutes, the pensions and 
 
154 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 the honours are only made for cretins, farceurs 
 and drolls." 
 
 In writing of Cezanne one is led to make a 
 comparison between him and his great com- 
 patriot, Renoir, for it is almost unbelievable that 
 one century could have produced two such radi- 
 cally different geniuses. Renoir, first of all, was 
 not an innovator: he was the consummation of 
 Impressionistic means. In Cezanne, to the con- 
 trary, we see a man dissatisfied with the greatest 
 results of others, ever tortured by the search for 
 something more final, more potent. ''Let us not 
 be satisfied with the formulas of our wonderful 
 antecedents," he said many times, and he might 
 have added, "and of our wonderful contempo- 
 raries." Renoir was the apex of an art era, while 
 Cezanne was the first segment of a greater and 
 vaster cycle. Renoir, by mastering his means at 
 an early date, acquired a technical facility to 
 which Cezanne, ever on the hunt for deeper con- 
 ceptions, never attained. Renoir's genius was for 
 linear rhythm. In the acquisition of this there 
 entered, in varying degree, form, colour and light; 
 but the line itself was his preoccupation. Cezanne's 
 genius was for plastic volume out of which the 
 rhythmic line resulted. That is: the one con- 
 stru(5led his creations out of colour and made 
 colour appear like form; while in the other's 
 creations, which are the result of colour, the 
 colour is felt to he form. In Renoir is recognised 
 the solidity and depth of form, while in Cezanne 
 the colour is a fundlional element whose dyna- 
 mism gives birth to form which \?,felt suhje6lively. 
 Renoir synthesises nature's forms, by grouping 
 them in such a way that the lines move and are 
 
PAUL CEZANNE 
 
 harmonious. Cezanne looks for the synthesis in 
 each subjedl he sits before, and instead of group- 
 ing his forms arbitrarily, he penetrates to their 
 inherent synthesis. This is why almost every one 
 of his pidures is built on a different synthetic 
 form. His penetration gave him at each essay a 
 different vision of the organisms of a particular 
 subjed, a vision which varied as the subjed: 
 varied. In Renoir movement is attained by 
 relating the lines: Cezanne has produced harmony 
 by accentuating their differences. In the former 
 the lines lead smoothly and fluently into others, 
 until they all culminate in a line which carries 
 the movement to a finality; while in the latter 
 we feel little of that suavity of sequence: the lines 
 are formed by the spaces between his volumes 
 rather than by linear continuation. Cezanne, 
 if less pleasing, is the more powerful; and with 
 all his lack of suavity he is the more complex 
 and less monotonous. The extraordinary imprevu 
 of his formal developments and his unique man- 
 ner of stating parallels recall the symphonic works 
 of Beethoven. The ensembles of both are made 
 up of an infinitude of smaller forms, and both 
 display a colossal power of absoluteness in set- 
 ting forth each smallest form. Renoir's work is 
 more on the lines of Haydn. 
 
 After Michelangelo there was no longer any 
 new inspiration for sculpture. After Cezanne 
 there was no longer any excuse for it. He has 
 made us see that painting can present a more 
 solid vision than that of any stone image. Against 
 modern statues we can only bump our heads: in 
 the contemplation of modern painting we can 
 exhaust our intelligences. Cezanne is as much a 
 
156 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 reproach to sculptors as Renoir is to those who 
 continue to use Impressionist methods. He is the 
 great prophet of future art, as well as the con- 
 summator of the realistic vision of his time. ^ Both 
 men deformed nature's objeAs — Renoir slightly 
 to meet the demands of consistency in his pre- 
 conceived compositions; Cezanne to a greater 
 extent in order to make form voluminous. Some 
 of his deformations resulted from extraneous line 
 forces which, when coming in contad with an 
 objed's contour, made it lean to the right or left, 
 or in some other way take on an abnormal 
 appearance as of convexity or concavity. 
 
 M. Bernard thinks these irregularities in Cezanne 
 the result of defedive eyesight. But such an 
 explanation is untenable. There is abundant 
 evidence to show that, to the contrary, they are 
 the result of a highly sensitised sight — a sight 
 which simultaneously calls up the complementary 
 of the thing viewed, whether it be a line, a colour 
 or a tone. This double vision is only a depen- 
 dency of the plastic mind which, instead of ap- 
 proaching a problem from the nearest side, throws 
 itself automatically to the opposite side, and, by 
 thus obtaining a double approach, arrives at a 
 fuller comprehension. While slanting his line 
 and distorting his volumes Cezanne was uncon- 
 sciously moulding the parts to echo the organisa- 
 tion of the whole. In turning his pidures into 
 block-manifestations, he strove for a result which 
 would conduce to a profounder aesthetic pleasure 
 than did the linear movements of Renoir. After 
 we have enjoyed Renoir's rhythms we can lay 
 them aside for the time as we can a very beauti- 
 ful but simple melody. The force of Cezanne 
 
POMMES SUR UNE TABLE 
 
 CEZANNE 
 
PAUL CEZANNE 157 
 
 strikes us like that of a vast bulk or a mountain. 
 Contemplating his work is like coming suddenly 
 face to face with an ordered elemental force. At 
 first we are conscious only of a shock, but when 
 our wonder has abated, we find ourselves studying 
 the smaller forms which go into the pidure's 
 making. In the 1902 Baigneuses of Renoir each 
 separate figure is a beautiful and complete form 
 which fits into and becomes part of the general 
 rhythm. In Cezanne the importance of parts is 
 entirely submerged in the effed: of the whole. 
 Here is the main difference between these two 
 great men: we enjoy each part of Renoir and are 
 conduced by line to a completion; in Cezanne 
 we are struck simultaneously by each interrelated 
 part. Viewing a canvas of the latter is like 
 going out into the blazing sunlight from the cool 
 sombreness of a house. At first we are aware 
 only of the force of the light, but as we gradually 
 become accustomed to the glare, we begin to per- 
 ceive separately objects which before had been 
 only a part of the general impression. The fad 
 that Cezanne invariably spoke of the "motif" 
 should have given his friends a clue to his con- 
 ception of composition. Before him composition 
 had been to a great extent the formation of a 
 simple melody of line in three dimensions, con- 
 struded by the forms of objeds. It corresponded 
 to the purely melodious in music, the opening of 
 the theme, its sequence of phrasing and the 
 finale. Cezanne chose a motif, and in each move- 
 ment of his pidure it is to be found, varied, 
 elaborated, reversed and developed. Each part 
 of his canvas is a beginning, yet each part, though 
 distind as a form, is perfedly united both with 
 
158 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 the opening motif and with every variation 
 of it. 
 
 In this little-understood side of Cezanne's gen- 
 ius lies an infinitude of possibilities. Without 
 an ability to organise, all his knowledge is worth- 
 less to the painter. He himself could apply it, 
 and his understanding of the exad adaptability 
 of a form to a hollow permitted him to express 
 his knowledge with a force his followers lack. 
 His sensitiveness to spaces and the charaders of 
 his forms recall at times the works of Mokkei 
 who used protuberances and hollows (namely: 
 accidents of portraiture and landscape) to enrich 
 and diversify form. Nature to Cezanne was not 
 simple, and he never depided it thus. Even in 
 his bathing pieces, whose disproportions are de- 
 plored by many, the composition is minutely 
 conceived, not on a simple harmonic figure, but 
 on complicated oppositional planes. Not only 
 are the surface forms perfedly adapted to a given 
 space, but the diredions taken by these forms are 
 as solidly indicated and the vacancies made by them 
 are as solidly filled in, as in a Rubens. Indeed 
 these canvases, as block-manifestations, are nearly 
 as perfed as the pidures of El Greco who was 
 the greatest master of this kind of composition. 
 
 Cezanne should be numbered among the experi- 
 menters in art. With him, as with the Impres- 
 sionists, the desire was to learn rather than to 
 utilise discoveries. The painters from Courbet 
 to Cezanne were the first to usher in an authen- 
 tically realistic art mode, and they were also the 
 first who sensed the possibilities of inanimate 
 reality for aesthetic organisation. Others before 
 them had regarded nature stridly en amateur, using 
 
PAUL CEZANNE 159 
 
 only the human body for abstract purposes. Even 
 Michelangelo said that aside from it there was 
 nothing worth while. These modern innovators 
 refuted his assertion by proving the contrary, 
 namely: by introducing order into chaotic nature. 
 Their simple arrangements, however, would not 
 have satisfied Michelangelo who, like all men who 
 come at a florescence when the lessons have 
 been learned and it remains only to apply them, 
 demanded an arbitrary organisation which should 
 be not only ordered but composed. Cezanne did 
 little composing in the melodic sense of the word. 
 He stopped at the gate of great composition which, 
 after pointing the future way, he left for his 
 successors to enter. His synthetic interest was 
 limited to the eternal fugue qualities of nature. 
 He undoubtedly saw the futility of creating poly- 
 phonic composition from lemons and napkins, 
 but he had not found a menstruum in which the 
 qualities of his materials would disappear. The 
 old masters had done all that was possible with 
 the recognisable human body; Cezanne's desires 
 for the purification of painting kept him from 
 attempting to improve on their medium. 
 
 Among a great scope of oil subjects one cannot 
 say through which of them Cezanne has exerted 
 the strongest influence. His landscapes have 
 made as many disciples as his portraits, and his 
 figure pieces and still-lives are universally copied. 
 But his greatest work, his water-colours, has 
 almost no following. In these he found his most 
 facile and fluent expression. His method of work- 
 ing in oil had always been the posing of small, 
 slightly oblong touches of colour which gave his 
 canvases the appearance of perfed: mosaics. In 
 
i6o MODERN PAINTING 
 
 his water-colour pidures these touches are placed 
 side by side with little or no thought of their 
 ultimate objedive importance, and they become 
 larger planes of unmixed tints juxtaposed in such 
 a way that voluminous form results. His work 
 in this most difficult medium has an abstrad 
 significance, for in it even the objedive colouring 
 of natural objeds is unnoticeable. The colours 
 stand by themselves; and while the asped of 
 Cezanne's pidures in this medium is flat and al- 
 most transparent, the subjedive emotion we 
 feel before them is greater than in his oil work. 
 In these pidures there was no going back to re- 
 touch. They had to be visualised as a whole 
 before they could be commenced. Each brush 
 stroke had to be a definite and irretrievable step 
 toward the completion of the ensemble. As we 
 study them a slow shifting of the planes is felt: 
 an emotional reconstrudion takes place, and at 
 length the volumes begin their turning, advancing 
 and retreating as in his oil paintings, only here 
 the purely Esthetic quality is unadulterated by 
 objedive reality. In these water-colours, more 
 than in any of his other work, has he posed the 
 question of aesthetic beauty itself. When we 
 contemplate them, we are more than ever con- 
 vinced that Cezanne was the first painter, that is, 
 the first man to express himself entirely in the 
 medium of his art, colour. Unfortunately these 
 pidures are difficult of access. Only occasionally 
 are they exposed in a group. Bernheim-Jeune 
 has a magnificent coUedion of them, and it is to 
 be hoped they will soon find their way into public 
 museums. Eventually, when a true comprehen- 
 sion of this great man comes, they will supplant 
 
PAUL CEZANNE i6i 
 
 his other efforts. His desires for a pure art are 
 here expressed most intensely. 
 
 Cezanne, however, is not always able to 
 "realise,'' as he put it. Even in these water- 
 colours he did not attain his desire. He started 
 too late in life to acquire complete mastery over 
 his enormous means. *'One must be a workman 
 in one's art, must know one's method of realisa- 
 tion," he said. "One must be a painter by the 
 very qualities of painting, by making use of the 
 rough materials of art." He failed to gain that 
 great facility by which supreme realisation is 
 achieved, because the span of life accorded him 
 was too short. He was old when his best work 
 was begun, and like Joseph Conrad, he had 
 passed his youth before the great ambition fired 
 him. "Realising" to him meant the handling of 
 his stupendous means as easily as the academicians 
 handled their puny ones. This he could never do, 
 and his age haunted him to the end. Many have 
 taken him literally when he said he desired to 
 expose in Bouguereau's Salon, but though he 
 earnestly wished it, he desired to be received there 
 as Bouguereau was: as one who had mastered 
 his expression. "The exterior appearance is 
 nothing," he explained. "The obstacle is that I 
 don't realise sufficiently." In other words, he 
 did not have great enough fluency to permit only 
 the highest qualities of his art to be felt. In his 
 gigantic efforts to "realise," his pidures changed 
 colour and form many times before they were 
 finished. His respedl and admiration for inferior 
 men like Bouguereau and Couture was due to 
 their enviable facility in handling their means. 
 He knew that the fundamental and unalterable 
 
i62 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 laws of organisation had been found and perfeded 
 by the old masters, and that, so long as we were 
 human, we must build on their discoveries. 
 "Only to realise like the Venetians!" he cried. 
 And later: ''We must again become classicists 
 by way of nature, that is to say, by sensation. 
 . . . I am old, and it is possible I shall die with- 
 out having attained this great end." A year 
 before his death he said: "Yes, I am too old; I 
 have not realised, and I shall never realise now. 
 I shall remain the primitive of the way I have 
 discovered." 
 
 The predidlion proved true, but his destiny was 
 none the less a glorious one. Deprived of the 
 phrenetic impulse which took him in all weathers 
 over country roads to the "motif" from six 
 o'clock in the morning until dark, he would 
 never have achieved what he did. The fad of 
 this great modern genius going to work in a hired 
 carriage, too weak to walk, should be a lesson to 
 those painters who are always awaiting the com- 
 bination of propitious circumstances which will 
 provide them with a perfed: studio, a perfed 
 model and a perfed desire. Cezanne, however, 
 knew his high place in art history. Once when 
 Balzac's Le Chef-d'GEuvre Inconnu was brought 
 up in conversation and the name of its hero, 
 Frenhofer, was mentioned, he arose with tears in 
 his eyes and indicated himself with a single 
 gesture. So sure was he of what he wanted to do 
 that when he failed he discarded his canvases. 
 Many of them are only half covered. He could 
 never pad merely to fill out an arbitrary frame. 
 
 With Cezanne's death came his apotheosis. 
 As he had predided, thousands rushed in and 
 
PAUL CEZANNE 163 
 
 cleverly imitated his surfaces, his colour gamuts, 
 his distortions of line. His white wooden tables 
 and ruddy apples and twisted fruit-dishes have 
 lately become the etiquette of sophistication. 
 But all this is not authentic eulogy. Derain, 
 his most ardent imitator, is as ignorant of him as 
 Nadelmann is of the Greeks or Archipenko is of 
 Michelangelo. And the majority of those who 
 have written books concerning him merely echo 
 the unintelligent commotion that goes on about 
 his name. Cezanne's significance lies in his gifts 
 to the painters of the future, to those in whom 
 the creative instind: is a sacred and exalted thing, 
 to those serious and solitary men whose insati- 
 ability makes of them explorers in new fields. 
 To such artists Cezanne will always be the primi- 
 tive of the way that they themselves will take, for 
 there can be no genuine art of the future without 
 his direAing and guiding hand. His postulates 
 are too solidly founded on human organisms ever 
 to be ignored. He may be modified and developed: 
 he can never be set aside until the primal emotions 
 of life are changed. Only today is he beginning 
 to be understood, and even now his claim to true 
 greatness is questioned. But Cezanne, judged 
 either as a theorist or as an achiever, is the pre- 
 eminent figure in modern art. Renoir alone 
 approaches his stature. Purely as a painter he is 
 the greatest the world has produced. In the 
 visual arts he is surpassed only by El Greco, 
 Michelangelo and Rubens. 
 
VII 
 
 THE NEO-IMPRESSIONISTS 
 
 THE Impressionists, although they turned 
 their backs upon casual seledivism and 
 branched out into analytic research, had 
 — contrary to the generally accepted 
 opinion — no precise and scientific method of 
 colour application. This came later with the 
 advent of a group of painters who have been 
 called, in turn, Pointillists, Divisionists, Chromo- 
 luminarists and Neo-Impressionists, but who 
 chose to regard themselves only as the last of 
 these four designations. And there is perhaps 
 more logic in this nomenclature, for it is not 
 limited technically; it contains no claim to achieve- 
 ment as does Chromo-luminarism; and it suggests 
 this new school's consanguinity with the move- 
 ment out of which it grew. With Delacroix's 
 Journal, the pidures of Claude Monet and Chev- 
 reul's pioneer treatise on colour, De la Loi du 
 Contraste Simultane des Couleurs, the Neo- 
 Impressionists evolved a coldly scientific method 
 of technique. By carrying a simple premise to 
 its ultimate conclusion, regardless of everything 
 save the exadling demands of logic, they endeav- 
 oured to heighten the emotional effed of the 
 Impressionist vision. In this movement, as in 
 other similar ones, can be deteded the spirit 
 
THE NEO-IMPRESSIONISTS 165 
 
 which animates the ardent visionary when he 
 contemplates a novel method — the spirit which 
 invites him to go to even greater extremes. In 
 it there is as much enthusiasm as serious purpose, 
 as much of the essence of youth as of the arri- 
 viste. In no instance has such a spirit led to 
 significant results; and the Neo-Impressionists 
 prove no exception. In looking too fixedly at 
 means, they lost sight of their ends. Their debut 
 took place at the last concerted exhibition of the 
 Impressionists in 1886 where the canvases of 
 Seurat and Signac were hung beside those of 
 Cassatt, Bracquemond, Morisot, Camille and 
 Lucien Pissarro, Gauguin, Guillaumin, Redon, 
 Schuffenecker, Tillot, Degas, Forain and Vignon. 
 Here was seen for the first time the logical exten- 
 sion of the earlier methods of Monet and Pissarro. 
 
 Georges Seurat had once been a good student at 
 the Beaux-Arts, but his quick, precise and ques- 
 tioning intelligence had saved him from falling 
 under the professorial injundions. Most of his 
 studying was done in the art museums where he 
 contemplated for long the old masters. Here he 
 discovered that "there are analogous laws which 
 govern line, tone, colour and composition, as 
 much with Rubens as with Raphael, with Michel- 
 angelo as with Delacroix: rhythm, measure and 
 contrast." (By rhythm, measure and contrast 
 he meant curved lines, space and opposition.) 
 Still searching for the secrets of art he studied the 
 works of the Orient and the writings of Chevreul, 
 Superville, Humbert, Blanc, Rood and Helmholtz. 
 Then, by analysing Delacroix, he found substan- 
 tiation for his discoveries. The result of this 
 study was, as Signac tells us, his "judicious and 
 
i66 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 fertile theory of contrasts." From 1882 on he 
 applied it to all his canvases. The theory in 
 brief was to use scientifically opposed spots of 
 colour of more or less purity. This method he 
 might have learned dired from the first modern 
 French master, for in that artist's Journal are 
 discussed at length colour division; optical admix- 
 ture; the dramatic unity of colour, line and sub- 
 jedl; and the juxtaposition of complementaries 
 for brilliancy. 
 
 Paul Signac's evolution was different. He had 
 first been under the influence of Pissarro, Renoir, 
 Monet and Guillaumin, and though being a 
 zealous pupil of their methods, he knew little of 
 their motives. It was only after he had^ observed 
 the interplay and contrast of colours in nature 
 that he sought explanation in the works of his 
 masters, the Impressionists. Failing, he turned 
 again to nature. In copying it, he discovered 
 that in the gradation from one colour to another, 
 let us say from blue to orange, the transition was 
 always muddy and disagreeable when mixed on 
 the palette, although if distind spots of these 
 two colours were juxtaposed in alternating ratio, 
 the modulation would be smooth and clean. 
 This observation impelled him to seek a method 
 whereby this "passage" could be highly clarified. 
 Consequently he completely divided the Impres- 
 sionists' spots so that each individual touch 
 remained pure and at the same time left patches 
 of the white canvas showing for purposes of 
 brilliancy. His next step led him to Cheyreul 
 whose theory of complementaries he committed 
 to memory. His technical education he now 
 deemed complete. 
 
THE NEO-IMPRESSIONISrS 167 
 
 Seurat and Signac first met at the Salon des 
 Artistes Independants in 1884, and their dis- 
 coveries were at once mutually appropriated. 
 Signac's colour divisions, combined with Seurat's 
 more scholarly equilibrium of elements, formed 
 the nucleus from which evolved the Neo-Impres- 
 sionists who later repudiated Impressionism, using 
 it only as the point from which they leapt off 
 into a morass of set formulas. It was a laudable 
 desire on the part of these new men, especially of 
 Seurat, to try to snatch from a purely inspirational 
 school its halo of mystery and to place painting 
 methods on a sound rationalistic basis. But 
 while they were right in believing a picflure should 
 be more than the visual accompaniment to senti- 
 ments, they should have gone deeper than the 
 mere exterior of painting. For example, they 
 should have tried to see in what plastic way their 
 colour theories could be used, instead of limiting 
 themselves to the synthetic unity of aesthetic 
 illustration. And they should have tried to make 
 a form-producing faculty of their light instead of 
 introducing into it another poetic element in the 
 shape of dramatic line. But they were more 
 concerned with the clothes in the wardrobe of art 
 than in its body. Their painting, as a result, was 
 without sustaining strudlure. 
 
 With the Impressionists, as with all significant 
 art movements, the desire for change and for 
 higher emotional power came first: the method 
 came later. With the Neo-Impressionists this 
 order was reversed. Their canvases for this 
 reason are less emotional than those of their 
 forerunners. By limiting their palettes to certain 
 pure colours they restricted their diversity of 
 
i68 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 interest. Even their aim at a scientific art has 
 gone far of the mark because their science was in 
 many instances faulty. By conditioning their 
 methods on the observations of inaccurate writers 
 they were able to progress only so far as these 
 observations went. Chevreul is far from authori- 
 tative today: in fact there is no comprehensive 
 scientific work on colour in existence. Tudor-Hart, 
 the greatest of all colour scientists, has blasted 
 many of the older accepted theories of such men 
 as Helmholtz, Rood and Chevreul, and his 
 experiments have shown conclusively that maciy 
 of their postulates are unreliable. The Neo- 
 Impressionists were unaware of Chevreul's errors, 
 and their minds were too literal to enable them to 
 make new and more advanced observations in the 
 realm of colour. The meagre attention paid 
 them is not due to their novelty, but to the fad 
 that they have done nothing the Impressionists 
 did not do better. They are like a cartridge 
 which, having all the combustible ingredients, 
 fails to explode because it is wet. 
 
 The Neo-Impressionists may, in refutation, 
 point to music as a scientific art. But it must be 
 remembered that taste brought about the con- 
 struction of chords and that the mathematical 
 explanation came later. The primitive peoples 
 who found an aesthetic pleasure in broken-up 
 major chords were ignorant of nodal points and 
 the laws of vibration. The early Assyrians had 
 a pipe of three notes, C, E and G, perfeAly 
 attuned, yet they were ignorant of the science of 
 harmony. Taste in the arts has always come 
 first: science follows with its interpretations. 
 The Impressionists, through instind, created their 
 
THE NEO-IMPRESSIONISTS 169 
 
 marvels of light and atmosphere. Afterward the 
 science of optics explained their efforts. Personal 
 taste was their only criterion, and no books could 
 have taught them their lesson, because their 
 methods were so plastic that whatever was to 
 them artistically consistent was right. Had they 
 been familiar with science, it still would have 
 remained to be applied: and it is only by the 
 superimposition of taste that knowledge in the 
 artist becomes pregnant. The Divisionists, by 
 making a hard and fast code of science, enslaved 
 themselves to the demands of theories. The 
 functioning of their tastes was nullified. They 
 therefore fell short of art. 
 
 In Signac's book, D'Eugene Delacroix au Neo- 
 Impressionnisme, are explained many points of 
 divergence between this school and that of the 
 Impressionists. The difference of the two methods 
 may be exemplified by describing the manner in 
 which each approached a landscape wherein the 
 grass and foliage were partly in shadow and partly 
 in sunlight. In such a landscape the artist's eye 
 records a fleeting, dimly-felt impression of red in 
 that part of the green of the shadow which is 
 nearest the light region. The Impressionists, 
 satisfied with having experienced this sensation, 
 hastened to put a touch of red on their canvas, 
 while the aAual colour in nature might have been 
 an orange, a vermilion, or even a purple. In this 
 haphazard choice of a red Signac detected sloven- 
 liness. He says that the shadow of any colour 
 is always lightly tinted with the colour's comple- 
 mentary; that if the light is yellow-green the 
 shadow will be touched with violet; if orange, the 
 shadow will contain blue-green. Had the Impres- 
 
I70 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 sionists known this fad: and cared to use it, says 
 Signac, they could have made their pidures 
 scientifically correct by posing the exad: comple- 
 mentary of light in their shadow. And he adds 
 that it is difficult to see in just what way this 
 process would have harmed their work. 
 
 It is, however, not so difficult as he imagines. 
 If, in copying nature by a stridily scientific vision 
 as the Neo-Impressionists advocate, we closely 
 study the light, we will discover not only that a 
 local colour is modified by the colour of the sun's 
 rays, but that an added suite of colours is intro- 
 duced by the absorption of some of the object's 
 particles, by the encompassing air, and by the 
 circumjacent refledlions. We may have (i) the 
 local colour which, let us say, is green, (2) the 
 colour of sunlight, (3) the colour caused by 
 atmospheric conditions, (4) the reflexion of sky, 
 and (5) the refledlion of the ground. Further- 
 more, if the objedl has any indentures their 
 shadows will lower to a limited degree the whole 
 tone of the objeA. At the least calculation then 
 we have (i) green, (2) yellow-orange, (3) any 
 colour in the cold region of the spe(5lrum, (4) 
 blue or violet, and (5) green, brown, Venetian red 
 or any colour in the warm region of the spedlrum: 
 — all of which colours change and shift unceasingly, 
 dependent on the density of the air which obscures, 
 to a lesser or greater degree, the sun's rays and 
 hence changes the reflexion from sky and ground, 
 thereby modifying the local colour. Thus it is 
 impossible when copying nature even to determine 
 the colour of its lightened parts. And if a colour 
 premise cannot be established, it is obviously 
 impossible to find its exadl complementary. 
 
THE NEO-IMPRESSIONISrS 171 
 
 Suppose we admit that an approximate colour 
 can be recorded for that part of the landscape's 
 green which is in the light, that is, the green 
 whose complement is to be placed on the out- 
 skirts of the shadow. Let us say that this green 
 is technically a yellow-green, since it is in the sun. 
 Now the complement of yellow-green is not, as 
 the Neo-Impressionists hold, violet, but red-violet 
 or purple. But, were red-violet used in the 
 shadow, its effed would be false, because, in order 
 for yellow-green to call up its pure complementary, 
 the light itself must be an intense yellow-green — 
 so intense in fad that the local colour of the 
 objed: (whatever it is) is entirely absorbed and 
 unable to influence the light. Then, and only 
 then, would the shadow be pure purple, for the 
 local colour, being nullified, would not interfere 
 with the optical sensation of complementaries. 
 But on an objed: which appears yellow-green in 
 the light, the yellow of which is the sun's rays and 
 the green the local colour, the shadow also is 
 modified by the local colour in the same propor- 
 tion that the light is modified, only its modifica- 
 tion is in an opposite diredion; that is, the yellow 
 of the sun's rays, in raising green to yellow-green, 
 lowers the green of the shadow to blue-green. 
 Therefore the shadow is not the complementary 
 of the light colour. But in the darkest part of 
 the shadow, which is the boundary dividing it 
 from the light, there is a sensation of red derived 
 from purple, purple being the complementary of 
 the yellow-green. Thus in a blue objed, though 
 the pure complementary of the lighted part would 
 be orange, the shadow in sunlight is merely dark 
 blue with that fugitive sensation of red through it. 
 
172 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 In the shadow on such an objed Signac calls for 
 pure orange, claiming that a vermilion, a lake or 
 a purple is out of place. His colour science in 
 the abstrad may be unimpeachable, but his 
 physics is faulty. The sensation caused by the 
 complementary of the lighted part is that of a 
 reddish tint; and so long as the painter introduces 
 a colour into the shadow so as to give this impres- 
 sion of red, he is at least empirically, though not 
 scientifically, correct. There is only a sensation 
 of red, not a definite spot where red can be placed; 
 and for the canvas to be truthful emotionally 
 there must be only that sensation of red in the 
 painted shadow. And the only way to produce it 
 without making a spot of orange, which is a light 
 colour and which in its pure state has no prop- 
 erties in common with shadow, is to use a colour 
 which is intimately conneded with shadow and 
 which contains the elements of both light and 
 shadow. Thus in the cold bluish-orange shadow 
 of a blue objed there must be placed a cold lake 
 or a purple which partakes of both the light and 
 shadow and therefore does not offend the eye by 
 its isolation. In the bluish or blue-green shadow 
 of a yellow-green objed, a purple is too aggres- 
 sive and blatant, while a blue-violet or an atten- 
 uated violet is doubly harmonious. 
 
 Indeed there is another reason why comple- 
 mentaries should not be used, but merely their 
 approximations set down. Perfed complemen- 
 taries neutralise each other and, when optically 
 mixed or applied in such small particles in a pure 
 state that at a short distance the eye cannot dis- 
 tinguish their limitations, produce a metallic and 
 acid grey which is to colour harmony what noise 
 
THE NEO-IMPRESSIONISTS 173 
 
 is to music. When C and are struck together 
 the sensitive ear revolts in the same way a sensi- 
 tive eye revolts at complementaries in colour. 
 But while in music a minor, or diminished, fifth 
 is displeasing, by increasing or reducing the in- 
 terval a semitone, by making it, for instance, 
 C — F or C — G, a pleasing effed can be obtained. 
 In colour also this principle holds good. The 
 complementary combination of red and green is 
 harsh, but by placing red with one of the spec- 
 trum tones on either side of green a pleasurable 
 harmony is at once established. The Impres- 
 sionists through instind generally made use of 
 colours which primitively or softly harmonised, 
 again proving the ascendency of taste over sys- 
 tem, for if taste is sensitive it will be verified by 
 science. Science, however, cannot create taste. 
 When we consider the Neo-Impressionists' antag- 
 onistic and neutralising complementaries, it is 
 difficult to understand their criticism of Impres- 
 sionism. The Impressionists, they said, "put a 
 little of everything everywhere, and in the result- 
 ing polychromatic tumult there were antagonistic 
 elements: in neutralising each other, they deadened 
 the ensemble of the pidure." Now in the entire 
 range of colour from violet to yellow there is 
 hardly a possible dual combination which cannot 
 be made harmonious by the addition of one or 
 two other colours. In this process of compli- 
 cation lie the infinite harmonic possibilities of 
 sound as well as of colour. There are no two 
 notes in music which, though when struck to- 
 gether are jarring, cannot be drawn into a perfed 
 chord by the introdudion of certain other notes. 
 And any two lines, no matter how inapposite, can 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 be aesthetically related by other lines properly 
 placed. Even were the Neo-Impressionists, in 
 their criticism, referring to the placing of blue in 
 light and of yellow in shadow, they would still 
 be open to refutation, for their predecessors, by 
 placing on their canvases the colours they had 
 felt in contemplating their models, were once more 
 emotionally right although not exadlly right from 
 the standpoint of abstrad science. 
 
 With all the brilliancy of their pure pigments 
 the Neo-Impressionists have yet to produce a 
 canvas as brilliant or as harmonious as those of 
 the Impressionists. The reason is not far to seek. 
 In an Impressionist pi(5lure there is a certain 
 amount of neutrality caused by mixing the colour 
 of light with that of blue shadow; and this mix- 
 ture heightens the scintillation of the ensemble. 
 The Divisionists, on the other hand, went so far 
 as to abolish neutrality altogether. In raising all 
 values to a point of saturation, they diminished 
 the brilliancy of the pidure as a whole. It is to 
 be doubted seriously if even Signac is still of the 
 belief that the Pointillists' squares of colour blend 
 optically. Theoretically they should, but adually 
 the impression we receive is not one of vibrant 
 light. We see only an extended series of spots 
 which are all about the same size — a size which 
 was varied but little as the dimensions of the 
 canvas varied, as was the case with the Impres- 
 sionists. But these latter artists mixed their 
 spots not only on the palette but on the canvas 
 as well, and blent them into neighbouring spots. 
 The result was a richly decorated surface whose 
 minute parts do not foist themselves upon our 
 sight. But in Signac, Cross, Van Rysselberghe, 
 
THE NEO-IMPRESSIONISTS 
 
 Dubois-Pillet, Luce, Petitjean, Van de Velde or 
 Augrand, who developed these means to their 
 ultimate limits, these spots are so displeasing and 
 obtrusive that it is mentally impossible to lose 
 sight of them in the contemplation of the pidlures. 
 All of these artists produce flat work, with the 
 possible exception of Van Rysselberghe who has 
 merely superposed this technique on an obvious 
 and insensitive academism. He is to the Neo- 
 Impressionists what Henri Martin is to Monet. 
 
 There has been too much credit taken by the 
 Neo-Impressionists for the discovery of this 
 stippling technique. As a matter of fad it is not 
 wholly original with them. Turner, Constable, 
 Delacroix, Jongkind, Fantin-Latour, Cezanne and 
 the Impressionists were all interested in breaking 
 nature up into parts in order to arrive at a 
 dynamic representation of the whole. The process 
 with them was commendable, but the Chromo- 
 luminarists carried it to such an extreme that they 
 saw nature only in order to break it into spots. 
 They repudiate vehemently the appellation of 
 Pointillists, and the name that Emile Bernard 
 gave them — Pointists — has remained beneath 
 their notice. They point out that one may be a 
 Pointillist without being a Divisionist, for Point- 
 illism is the using of colour in spots so as to avoid 
 its flat application, while "division" is the appli- 
 cation of separated spots of pure pigment for the 
 purpose of bringing about an optical admixture. 
 The idea of optical admixture was born when 
 some one placed several planes of different colours 
 on a disc and, by revolving it rapidly, caused 
 them to blend perfedly. Immediately the Neo- 
 Impressionists jumped to the conclusion that 
 
176 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 distance would accomplish the same result with 
 any-sized spots. This assumption was their 
 initial error. There is a very definite limit to 
 the size of colour spots which at a distance will 
 blend optically, and the artists of this school, with 
 the one exception of Seurat, made their spots too 
 large. Delacroix never juxtaposed large strips 
 of complementaries in one plane, but applied 
 hachures of almost the same tint. The effedl 
 would have been little different had he painted 
 flatly, except for the richer matiere this method 
 produced. The Impressionists mixed their colours 
 both on the palette and on the canvas, except 
 when they wished to reproduce a certain texture 
 that called for small lights and shadows placed side 
 by side. And Cezanne modulated his colour spots so 
 that there were no jumps or hiatuses between them. 
 
 The Neo-Impressionistic methods have no such 
 subtleties. In applying their colour these painters 
 keep each spot separated from its neighbour by 
 a tiny bit of white canvas which is intended to 
 give added light to each part. The spots are 
 unmixed and are applied straight from the palette 
 in preponderating proportions to obtain certain 
 general colour impressions. They use only the 
 seven colours of the prismatic spedlrum, and in 
 thus restridling their palette they have limited 
 their range of greys. Since nature itself is a 
 series of high-pitched greys in which only occa- 
 sionally does a pure colour appear, they were 
 inadequately equipped for reproducing it. If, by 
 raising all tints to their purity, they hoped to 
 obtain the maximum of colouration and therefore 
 the maximum of luminosity, they overlooked the 
 fad that to produce any light whatever there must 
 
THE NEO-IMPRESSIONISrS 
 
 be negation or shadow. They failed to achieve 
 light because they equalised the brilliancy of all 
 colours. Even to produce colour there must be 
 black or grey. Their equilibrium of elements led 
 to the cold grey aspedl of their work and to the 
 acid and inharmonious effed of their colour. 
 
 The desire of the Neo-Impressionists to improve 
 upon the Impressionistic vision was a sincere one, 
 and in their striving for dramatic means for 
 heightening the already intense emotional power 
 of their forerunners' work, they showed themselves 
 to be animated by an ambition for change and 
 improvement without which no vital innovation 
 can be made. Their desire was commendable, 
 but their science was inadequate. Their modern 
 spirit was best shown in their search for the 
 significance of line in its harmonic relation to 
 colour and tone. The impetus to this search 
 emanated from Seurat who didlated to his biog- 
 rapher, Jules Christophe: "Art is harmony; 
 harmony is the analogy of contraries (contrasts), 
 the analogy of likes (gradated), of tone, of tint, 
 of line; — tone, that is to say, the light and dark; 
 tint, that is to say, red and its complement green, 
 orange and blue, yellow and violet; line, that is to 
 to say, horizonal diredions. . . . The means of 
 expression is the optical admixture of tones and 
 tints and of their readions (shadows) following 
 fixed laws." Delacroix had already turned his 
 eyes in the diredion of the harmony of lines and 
 colours. It will be recalled that he wrote in his 
 Journal: "If to a composition, interesting in its 
 choice of subjed, you add a disposition of lines, 
 which augments the impression, a chiaroscuro 
 which seizes the imagination, and a colour which 
 
178 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 is adapted to the charaders, it is then a harmony, 
 and its combinations are so adapted that they 
 produce a unique song. ... It is good not to let 
 each brush stroke melt into the others; they will 
 appear uniform at a certain distance by the 
 sympathetic law which associates them." 
 
 The Neo-Impressionists, taking their cue from 
 Seurat's observations, state that the first consider- 
 ation of a painter before a blank canvas should be 
 to determine what curves and what arabesques 
 are going to divide the surface, and what colours 
 and tones cover it. Even in this aim they went 
 further than the Impressionists who neither 
 ordered nor synthesised their works formally. 
 The Neo-Impressionists say they do not com- 
 mence a canvas until they have determined its 
 complete arrangement. Then, guided by tradi- 
 tion and science, they harmonise the composition 
 with their conception. That is to say, they adapt 
 the lines, colours and tones to an order which 
 aesthetically expresses the charadler of emotion 
 their model calls up in them. They hold that 
 horizontal lines give calm; ascending lines, joy; 
 descending lines, sorrow; and that the interme- 
 diary lines represent the infinite variations of 
 emotions that lie outside these first three types. 
 But they offer no explanation of the analogies 
 between these intermediate lines and the kinds 
 of emotion they are supposed to call up. They go 
 on to explain that hot tints and light tonalities 
 should be applied to ascending lines, cold tints 
 and sombre tonalities to descending lines, and an 
 equal amount of light and dark to the horizontal 
 lines. "Thus," they add, "the painter becomes 
 a creator and a poet." 
 
THE NEO-IMPRESSIONISrS 
 
 All this theorising would be important for the 
 dramatic illustrators were it entirely true. But 
 while a line placed horizontally may represent 
 calm, the same line made perpendicular or laid 
 at an angle of forty-five degrees will also produce 
 calm. The straight line varies so little in its 
 significance, no matter at what angle it is placed, 
 that its direction is negligible from an emotional 
 standpoint. The degree of curve in a line is its 
 emotional element, and only when varying curves 
 come in contadl is the highest formal emotion 
 obtained. The straight line is the lifeless, the 
 static, the immobile. As such it can serve only 
 as a foil to the curved line, for it is the straight 
 that makes the curved of value." Their theory 
 concerning hot colours and high tones is sounder 
 than their linear theory; but in copying a joyous 
 landscape is one not forced to put on high tonal- 
 ities and hot colours, since it is in seeing these 
 high values that we experience the sensation of 
 joy? And is it not from the low values in nature 
 that we receive our sensation of sorrow.? One 
 may accentuate the colours and tones, but if 
 they are too strongly intensified they will ap- 
 proach the other extreme and produce dead and 
 mournful landscapes. This accentuation the Neo- 
 Impressionists carried to the limit permitted by 
 their pigments. Their ideas of line and of joyous 
 and sombre colours are undoubtedly of value if 
 profoundly and extensively comprehended and 
 properly applied. But, in order to become signifi- 
 cant, line must only delimit organisation and 
 become volume; and colour, instead of merely 
 producing joy and sorrow, must bring about 
 form. Then again, there is that world lying 
 
i8o MODERN PAINTING 
 
 on the further side of flatness which must be 
 explored. 
 
 With all their theorising and attempts to obtain 
 brilliancy, the Neo-Impressionists produce only 
 grey work. From the first these artists were too 
 coldly intelledual, and it matters little whether 
 their science was right or wrong when we con- 
 template their pidures. Were their science per- 
 fed they could never have created art which goes 
 beyond the arabesque and the poetry of arrange- 
 ment, for they were not fundamental even in 
 their aims. They have all painted different 
 subjedls in slightly varying manners, but, apart 
 from Seurat's, all their canvases have these 
 things in common: a uniform range of colour, 
 a set method of technique, and the hard and 
 "noisy" contrasts which in their larger works 
 produce a veritable din. Those of the Neo- 
 Impressionists who are still living claim to have 
 completed Cezanne, Pissarro and Delacroix, to 
 have perfeded a method, to have expanded 
 logically the Impressionists to something worth 
 while, to be in accord with Rood and Chevreul, 
 to have brought great harmony into painting, 
 to have taken painting into the pure realms of 
 poesy and symphonic musical composition. ^ Alas, 
 that their claims have no substantiation in our 
 receptivities! 
 
 Seurat, the founder, was the only genuinely 
 artistic man of the movement, and an early death 
 denied him his chance to develop. Though 
 seduced by too exading a process, he has never- 
 theless given us some sensitive and delicately 
 beautiful canvases. Le Chahut, Le Cirque and 
 Un Dimanche a la Grande-Jatte are saturated 
 
w 
 
 H 
 < 
 
 W 
 Q 
 
 < 
 
THE NEO-IMPRESSIONISTS i8i 
 
 with light, and in them is an undeniable order 
 of parallel lines. His colours were never as harsh 
 and acid as those of his confreres, and his pictures 
 have a blond tonality which the other men of 
 the movement entirely lack. His crayon draw- 
 ings, from the standpoint of tonal experimentation, 
 are interesting and seem almost like paintings. He 
 had a great talent, and had he lived we might have 
 expeded great things from it. He was more vitally 
 interested in style than in technical methods, and in 
 his conclusions stemmed diredlly from Delacroix. 
 His spottings were much smaller and more effecflive 
 than those of the other Pointillists. His desire was 
 to express an idea through the medium of nature, 
 not to copy nature in order to relate the sensation 
 it gave the artist. His painting was synthetic. 
 All details and accidents of colour and silhouette 
 he set aside as useless. His is an art of parallels 
 and analogies, of sensitivity and analysis; in 
 fadl, it has all those qualities which, were they 
 present in greater strength, would produce signifi- 
 cant pictures. He was of one piece; and his 
 development, once he had begun to paint, was 
 an even one toward a definite goal. In him, 
 alone of the members of the group, we find an 
 artist and not an illustrator. Those who liken 
 him to Aubrey Beardsley have less reason for 
 their comparison than the ones who see parallels 
 between Gainsborough and Renoir. Compare the 
 quoted remarks of Seurat concerning tone, line 
 and colour with Signac's summing up of his 
 method, and the temperamental differences be- 
 tween the artist and the scientist will at once be 
 seen. Signac says his method is ** observation of 
 the laws of colour, the exclusive use of pure tints. 
 
1 82 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 the renunciation of all attenuated mixings, and 
 the methodical equilibrium of elements." 
 
 One of the most noted followers of the Neo- 
 Impressionistic methods was the Hollander, Vin- 
 cent van Gogh. Although generally considered 
 in critical essays as an unrelated phenomenon in 
 the art heavens, he is closely allied to Signac and 
 to Delacroix through Seurat. He adopted paint- 
 ing, one is inclined to believe, because his verbal 
 eloquence was inadequate to bring the Belgian 
 miners to repentance. He had studied for the 
 ministry, but like most men who, finding them- 
 selves stridlly limited in one vocation, essay 
 another, he found himself equally limited in his 
 second. He drifted back to Holland and began 
 to study painting in the studio of Mauve, a 
 relative of his by marriage. His ardent, even 
 flamboyant, desire to do good to everyone who 
 crossed his path needed an outlet, and he found 
 an emotional substitute for pamphleteering in the 
 physical and mental exertion of painting. In this 
 work he could preach unchecked, secure from 
 arrest. He loved Millet because Millet loved the 
 down-trodden. He loved Delacroix because of 
 that artist's dramatic inspiration. He loved 
 Daumier because he imagined he saw in Daumier 
 a satire on the beast in man. He loved Monti- 
 celli because in that Provencal he sensed a wild 
 gypsy mind and a kindred unrestraint in the use 
 of colour. And he loved Diaz because Diaz was 
 a poetic woodman. 
 
 Before coming to Paris Van Gogh had studied 
 in the Antwerp Academy, and while in the French 
 capital he met and was influenced by Pissarro. 
 Here he also became acquainted with Bernard 
 
THE NEO-IMPRESSIONISTS 183 
 
 and Gauguin, adopting the Divisionistic methods 
 from Seurat. He used only pure colours on his 
 palette and mixed them only with white and 
 black. Later he went to Aries where in two 
 years, from 1887 and 1889, he painted the great 
 bulk of his work, averaging four canvases a week 
 through sickness, drink, insanity and disease. 
 In him we have a perfed: example of just how 
 little can be done with pure enthusiasm unor- 
 ganised by intelledual processes. His pictures 
 display an entire lack of order, whether it be of 
 colour, line or silhouette: there was never any 
 form in them. His work is plainly the labour of 
 the fanatic who, in a fury of pent-up desire to 
 express himself, suddenly seizes a palette and 
 brush and applies colours almost at random. 
 Indeed, some of his pidures were completed in a 
 few minutes. Even many of those in which the 
 symbology had to be thought out at length, were 
 painted in an hour. 
 
 That Van Gogh was an illustrator is undenia- 
 ble; but he was an illustrator of the abstrad 
 gropings of an unbalanced mind avid for dramatic 
 emotions, rather than of exterior nature. His 
 landscapes seem to portend the calm before 
 some great upheaval, or to express a supernatural 
 energy poised for an a6t of total annihilation. 
 In them there are frenzied lines running zigzag 
 and at random, and rolling clouds of purple and 
 lurid yellow hanging over raucously bright roofs. 
 His portraits remain with us as memories of a 
 feverish nightmare. They are too hollow and 
 immaterial to appear even as a depidion of form. 
 His colours carried out this feeling of dramatic 
 terror, and because they were not harmonised 
 
1 84 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 with either line or tone, they became all the more 
 chaotic. He never kept to the spots that Signac 
 and Seurat had given him. His impatience was 
 too great; the fire burned too furiously. He 
 elongated them into strips like straw, and they 
 give his work the appearance of haystacks. He 
 covered with one stroke more space than Seurat 
 covered with twenty strokes. 
 
 This has been called his own apport to art. 
 In Gauguin, however, the same stroke is used, not 
 so heavily loaded with pure colour, to be sure, 
 but just as long. But in Gauguin the strokes 
 are less noticeable because they all have an 
 analogous diredlion. With Van Gogh they rush 
 wildly about, now one way, now another, some- 
 times covering the canvas entirely, sometimes 
 separated to let the white show through. This 
 separating was not done for the same reasons as 
 in Signac, but because Van Gogh's impatience 
 was too great to permit him to go back and 
 cover. His figures are outlined in broad black or 
 coloured lines, and colours are juxtaposed with 
 their complementaries. In a Portrait d'Homme, 
 done in 1889, the background is laid in with a 
 bright green over which are superimposed polka- 
 dots of pure vermilion surrounded by a darker 
 green, the whole striped with yellow and light 
 vermilion flourishes. On this is a yellowish face 
 whose pompadour hair is made of black, vermil- 
 ion and light violet. The collar is light green, 
 red and blue; the striped cravat, red and white; 
 the coat, violet and green; the shirt, pure green 
 outlined in pure lake, with orange buttons on it; 
 and the picture's inscription — Vincent, Aries, 
 '89 — is signed in vermilion. In this painting 
 
PORTRAIT DE l'aRTISTE VAN GOGH 
 
THE NEO-IMPRESSIONISTS 185 
 
 is evidenced his impetuous method. He seemed 
 to feel that the greater the exertion, the greater 
 the relief from that repressed passion which egged 
 him on to action. 
 
 Landscapes he liked, and he took pleasure in 
 doing copies of other men. In such works there 
 was no hard and set reality to follow as in still- 
 lives and portraiture. Here the colour could be 
 splashed on almost haphazardly. He himself said 
 that still-life was a relaxation. He felt this 
 because to paint still-life his enthusiasm was 
 restridled. Anything served for a subjed: — an 
 old boot, a single vase, a coffee-pot. One im- 
 agines he tossed these models onto a table from 
 the opposite side of the room, and painted them 
 in whatever position they fell. In this careless- 
 ness the public sees ''inspiration." And indeed 
 his canvases were inspired, but only in the same 
 way a starving man is inspired to throw himself 
 upon a sumptuous meal. He painted because he 
 was forced to, and when painting is merely a 
 physical necessity indulged in to express an 
 unordered religious mania, it ceases to interest 
 the aesthetician who searches for a complete 
 cosmos bodied forth in subjedlive form. 
 
 As a decorator Van Gogh is too turbulent and 
 forward; as a painter of easel pidlures he is too 
 chaotic and unintelligible; but as a blast of 
 misdiredled enthusiasm he is not without power. 
 His symbolism, while not being of the variety 
 which presents Grecian figures as abstra(5l virtues, 
 is nevertheless of the same order. He tells us 
 that in painting a young man he loved, he would 
 make the head a golden yellow and orange, and 
 the background a rich and intense blue, as well 
 
1 86 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 as transcribing the physical likeness to epitomise 
 his love. Thus depi(5led the young man would be 
 ''like a bright star in the boundless infinite taking 
 on a mysterious importance." Again he writes: 
 "Had I had the strength to continue, I would 
 have done saints and holy women from nature, 
 who would have seemed to belong to another 
 age. They would have been the bourgeois of the 
 present, having many parallels with the old 
 primitive Christians." We see what he was after. 
 
 Van Gogh possessed all the modern socialistic 
 ideals. He held that individuals could do nothing 
 alone, but should work in communities, one doing 
 the colour, one the drawing, another the com- 
 position, etc. In his desire for this democratic 
 art fadlory is seen his absence of self-confidence. 
 It is not strange when we consider his adherence 
 all his life to so childish a technical programme as 
 Divisionism. This adherence marked the main 
 difference between him and Gauguin. The latter 
 detested the Divisionistic method. He wanted 
 to adapt nature's colour and effedl to decoration, 
 while Van Gogh wanted to make only abstract 
 dramatic tapestries. They both succeeded; and 
 though the canvases of Gauguin have the peaceful 
 utilitarian destiny of interior decoration awaiting 
 them. Van Gogh's work, once we are rid of the 
 modern habit of welcoming all disorganised and 
 purely enthusiastic work as profound, will be laid 
 aside forever. He was psychiatric and expended 
 the greater part of his feverish energy through 
 the channel of painting. But he did little more 
 than use a borrowed and inharmonious palette to 
 express ideas wholly outside the realm of art. 
 
VIII 
 
 GAUGUIN AND THE PONT-AVEN SCHOOL 
 
 THE descriptive in art has always se- 
 duced the eye of the superficial majority. 
 From this accidental and nugatory side 
 of painting the public has derived all 
 its enjoyment. The moment a depided objedl 
 is recognised, the general pleasure in the arts 
 increases; and the moment the accepted vision 
 of the objedl is modified or distorted, this pleasure 
 decreases and in many instances ceases altogether. 
 One school which deals with a certain class of 
 subjecfls has its own admirers; while another 
 school which treats of dissimilar subjects has a 
 different following. Furthermore, the manner in 
 which subje(5ls are portrayed — realistically or 
 impressionably, poetically or prosaically — has its 
 individual adherents. Persons whose tempera- 
 mental tastes make them antipodal to one method 
 of transcription become enthusiastic over another, 
 irrespective of the fad: that the aesthetic merits of 
 the different procedures are equal. Those whose 
 criterion is prettiness are naturally attracted to 
 Whistlerian and Cubistic modes. Idealists lean 
 toward the symbolic and transcendental painters 
 like Van Gogh and Redon. Hardy persons who 
 live largely on the physical plane prefer Ribera, 
 Franz Hals, Sorolla or Diirer. Simple sensualists 
 admire Goya, Rubens, Bronzino, the erotic prints 
 
1 88 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 of the Japanese, or the piAures of the Little 
 Dutchmen. Biblical students choose the primi- 
 tives or the painters of religious subjeAs. Archi- 
 teds like Guardi, Gentile Bellini and Canaletto. 
 Personal tastes in life didate tastes in art; the 
 reason some have a wider taste than others is 
 because their interests are larger. 
 
 The average person forms his art attachments 
 in the same way he chooses friends. For this 
 reason many art lovers are passionately attraded 
 to Gauguin, while others, obsessed with the 
 theories of modernity, are impervious to the in- 
 herent appeal he incontestably possesses. The 
 Impressionists were enamoured of nature. Their 
 pidures have an almost human physiognomy and 
 are thoroughly joyous. In them one senses the 
 abstrad love of beautiful country-sides, blue 
 distances and scintillating lights. They arouse an 
 emotion in the popular mind because of the 
 familiarity of their themes. Gauguin was not 
 content with the landscapes of civilisation. He 
 wanted something more elemental — scenes where 
 an unspoilt and untamed nature gave birth to a 
 race of simple and colourful charader. He felt 
 the need of harmonising his people with their 
 milieu. To him it seemed inconsistent to place a 
 fully dressed man or woman in a primitive forest 
 or on the banks of a turbulent stream innocent of 
 commercial traffic. There was a positive im- 
 modesty in combining a puny figure, whose body 
 was too distorted by work to show itself un- 
 clothed, with the majestic nakedness of a primeval 
 landscape. Millet's peasants in plowed fields and 
 Rafifaelli's clothed figures in busy streets were 
 not incongruous; but in most of the landscapes 
 
THE PONT-AVEN SCHOOL 189 
 
 of Gauguin's day cultivated moderns stalked 
 where Corot had once put nymphs and Titian, 
 Antiopes. 
 
 Gauguin's sense of harmony in idea precluded 
 any such irrelevancies and anachronisms. His 
 painting was perhaps the highest and most con- 
 sistent type of illustration the world has produced. 
 Judged from this standpoint, on which it was 
 based consciously, his art was complete. And 
 inasmuch as he did not strive for profounder 
 things, it is from this standpoint that he must be 
 approached. What impetus he gave to art came 
 out of his desire to view nature simply, like a 
 child, at the same time equipped with all the 
 weapons of a modern intelligence. His art conse- 
 quently has not only the interest of historic 
 reconstruction but an added interest which, in 
 spite of our veneer of cultivation and education, 
 we all feel at times for perfecfh lassitude and 
 elemental unrestraint. No man is so intelle(5lual 
 that he cannot enjoy occasional recreation and a 
 forgetfulness of mental adlivities. Indeed the 
 greatest minds read: so completely at times that 
 they demand the crudest stimulants — melo- 
 drama, wild Arabian chants, romance and physi- 
 cal intoxication. Gauguin, appearing in the midst 
 of gigantic and epoch-making aesthetic endeavours, 
 embodied this spirit of reaction. It was a grave 
 and serious world in which he found himself — 
 the world of Cezanne, Impressionism and Neo- 
 Impressionism. His nature was too timid and 
 simple for him to throw himself into the whirl- 
 pool. Instindively he sought a haven far re- 
 moved from the strife about him. 
 
 In the contemplation of the canvases of this 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 modern savage we enter that side of the broad 
 field of aesthetics where the whole world can 
 escape, as for a holiday, from the stress of in- 
 telledual research, there to enjoy art simply and 
 receptively, as one enjoys a dream of strange 
 lands. In Gauguin there is a power which 
 impels our interest, hunts out our instincfl for the 
 exotic and calls to the fore a romantic love of 
 adventure and a desire for far countries. In this 
 appeal no other painting succeeds like his — not 
 even the Persian landscapes, the Chinese picftorial 
 visions of heaven, or the lurid images of Gustave 
 Moreau. In Gauguin's South Sea Island can- 
 vases are crystallised our hopes for a Utopian 
 peace, our vague memories of an untramelled 
 prehistoric age. Calm and sunlight, the sea and 
 wild mountains — all are here. And we find 
 ourselves amid a peaceful, music-loving and simple 
 people who, we imagine, would welcome the tired 
 traveller and gather round him with offerings of 
 fruit and flowers as he lands on their golden 
 beach. 
 
 Gauguin is purely an image-maker. So ab- 
 stra6t a painter is he that his piAures are merely 
 the point of departure from which our thoughts 
 leap into an unlimited world of pleasurable 
 visualising. They move us emotionally, even 
 mentally, but never aesthetically. We feel before 
 them exadly what we feel when reading that 
 extraordinary and unique book of his, Noa Noa. 
 Indeed he was more literary than artistic, and 
 to appreciate him fully one should read first his 
 biography written by Jean de Rotonchamp, — 
 then Noa Noa. After that his pidures will take 
 on a new meaning. He makes his dreams so 
 
THE PONT-AVEN SCHOOL 191 
 
 forceful that we too start to dream before them. 
 His art is of the same calibre as that of Altichiero, 
 Michelino da Bosozzo, Ortolano, the Borassa 
 school, Manet and Degas. All these men are 
 illustrators of a high order; all are impelled by 
 the complete sincerity of their visions; and all 
 are interesting because of their freedom of expres- 
 sion. It is a new adventure each time we see 
 one of their works, for adventure is merely 
 contadl with the unexpeded. In Gauguin this 
 imprevu is not restricted to unconventionality of 
 balance and the extraordinary arrangement of 
 objecfls; but expresses itself in the adual subjedl- 
 matter as well. His savages, ready to kill or love 
 with equal unconcern, bring up to us our child- 
 hood enthusiasms for the tales of Swift, Defoe and 
 Pierre Loti. His pictures epitomise the call of 
 the natural, the delight in perfed freedom, the 
 ideal of an unclothed age. 
 
 But though his work is calm and outside the 
 world of strife and endeavour, his life was turbu- 
 lent, and tortured by reiterated disappointments. 
 Toward the end he wrote to a friend that he fell 
 over-often, and arose only to fall again. As with 
 the sailor new horizons ever stretched before him, 
 and their promise of better things was never 
 consummated. His energy was drained by a 
 continual struggle against the forces of civilisation 
 just as the sailor's is weakened by unceasing 
 battles against the elements. The spot where at 
 last he found refuge was far from his ideal. But 
 in this ideal world he always imagined himself 
 living, and his painting took on its colour and 
 atmosphere. Just as he advised his followers to 
 draw a curtain in front of their models, so he 
 
192 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 drew the veil of imagination before his eyes and 
 saw only what he wished to see. In this almost 
 fanatic idealism he was undoubtedly aduated by 
 fear of life's gross realities, for he was not content 
 merely to live apart: he was forever attempting 
 to ameliorate the trying conditions which arose 
 from French misrule in the Marquesas. For his 
 pains he was condemned to gaol and later was 
 made an outcast. This fri(5lion with the estab- 
 lished order, however, had to do only with Gau- 
 guin the man. Gauguin the artist remained to 
 the end a contented and passionate dreamer. 
 
 To understand his art and its aduating im- 
 pulses it is necessary to know something of his 
 colourful and adventuresome life. Of all modern 
 painters, he, more than any other, was refleded 
 in his work. As a youth he had gone to sea and 
 served a six-year apprenticeship before the mast. 
 He next became a successful banker and to all 
 outward appearances was satisfied with the status 
 of a wealthy citizen. But all the time the love 
 of change and the nostalgia for strange lands were 
 at work within him, and though spending six 
 days a week in an office he painted every Sunday. 
 It was Pissarro, admired by Gauguin from the 
 first, who persuaded him to forgo everything 
 save his art. This he did in 1883. From that 
 time on he became a derelid who had to seek 
 support from his friends. Although at times he 
 was forced to work in offices, edit papers and 
 grow fruit, the donations from those he knew 
 were the backbone of his resources. He had 
 met Van Gogh in Paris in 1886, and two years 
 later accepted the latter's invitation to visit him 
 on the bounty of Van Gogh's brother Theodore 
 
THE PONT-AVEN SCHOOL 
 
 at Aries in the south of France. Here, where he 
 had exped:ed to find conditions conducive to 
 work, his life was, according to his own accounts, 
 in constant danger. The Dutchman, he says, 
 attacked him often, and sometimes Gauguin, 
 awaking with a start, would see Van Gogh steal- 
 ing across the room to him with a knife. Such a 
 life was impossible, and after a regrettable inci- 
 dent in which he was blamed for the amputation 
 of Van Gogh's ear, he returned to Paris. The 
 year before this he had made a short trip to 
 Martinique, and while in Europe had lived at 
 Pouldu, Copenhagen, Rouen, Pont-Aven, Con- 
 carneau and Paris. Again he went to Brittany. 
 He wanted quiet and was ever ill at ease among 
 the superficialities of a hypocritical civilisation. 
 But there, while protedling a negress, he was 
 attacked by some sailors, and his injuries forced 
 him to return once more to Paris. The negress 
 had preceded him, and when he arrived he 
 discovered that she had robbed him of his entire 
 studio equipment. 
 
 At this time, Verlaine, Moreas, Aurier, Julien 
 Leclerc and Stuart Merril, who called themselves 
 the symbolist poets, saw in him a comrade. In 
 1891 they gave a benefit performance in the 
 Vaudeville for him and Verlaine. Maeterlinck's 
 LTntruse was staged for the first time, and Gau- 
 guin's share of the proceeds was enough to pay 
 his passage to his longed-for tropics. Two years 
 later found him back again with many canvases 
 and a strange and grotesque costume, heavy 
 rings on every finger, wooden shoes and a cane 
 of his own carving. He was impatient for praise 
 and admiration and large sales; but none of 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 these came to him. At a sale of his work in the 
 Hotel Drouot in 1895 so small a sum was realised 
 that his friends again took pity on him, and 
 Carriere secured him a cheap passage back to his 
 beloved islands. His adventures in the tropics 
 make poetic and romantic reading. His prema- 
 ture death, at which only one old cannibal was 
 present, was a fitting climax to a life given over 
 to a hopeless search for the ideal. 
 
 While still in a banker's office, and before he 
 had met Pissarro, Gauguin had painted as an 
 amateur; and as early as 1873 he had exposed 
 a landscape. But when he became personally 
 acquainted with Pissarro, who had a way of 
 inflaming the minds of the younger and naturally 
 revolutionary men of his day, his impulses toward 
 art became overpowering. His early training 
 under this violent heretic was so thorough that 
 he never made a concession to the public or 
 retrogressed toward scholastic formulas. Being 
 a born painter, he quickly absorbed the ideas of 
 the Impressionists, and exposed with them in the 
 Rue des Pyramides in 1880 and 1881. His first 
 canvases were wholly Impressionistic and much 
 like Guillaumin's. Even as late as 1887, after he 
 had known Cezanne and had become imbued with 
 the blazing brilliancy of Martinique, Gauguin still 
 clung to his earlier technique. His Paysage de la 
 Martinique is one of his best-ordered works and 
 also one of his most fluent. However, he had 
 become dissatisfied with Impressionist precepts 
 and had gone to Brittany to get closer to a more 
 natural people, to a cruder and more rugged 
 landscape. There he had seen and admired the 
 Gothic statues, the simplicity of which appealed 
 
THE PONT-AVEN SCHOOL 195 
 
 to him intensely. On his return from the South 
 Seas these statues, diredl, stiff and archaic, com- 
 bined with his late vision of scintillant light and 
 hot, luscious colour, became adlive influences in 
 his work. 
 
 Gauguin had a considerable amount of Peruvian 
 Indian blood in him, and his desire for the South 
 was not a superficial one. Rather was it an ata- 
 vistic necessity for the wild that made him 
 intolerant of cities and culture and highly com- 
 plex modes of living. This same instinA, mani- 
 festing itself through his art, drove him toward a 
 simple and direcfl statement of a vision, toward an 
 unrestraint which no civilised community would 
 permit him. He wanted something naive — some- 
 thing expressed by broad planes and rich colours. 
 He had imitated the Impressionists, copied 
 Manet's Olympia and seen Giottos; and by reduc- 
 ing these varied influences to their simplest terms 
 he made his art. Emile Bernard, an indifferent 
 painter and writer, who temperamentally was not 
 unlike Gauguin, claims priority for this manner 
 of painting; but even if it were true, it would 
 mean nothing. Gauguin's canvases of 1888 give 
 undeniable promise of what he would eventually 
 do, and in 1889 his Jeunes Bretonnes fully reveals 
 the trend of all his later endeavours. Bernard was 
 at best but a clever imitator, and his canvases in 
 Gauguin's style appear inferior and superficial 
 when compared with such pieces as Tahitiennes 
 and Ruperupe. 
 
 The Impressionists went toward descriptive 
 beauty, but Gauguin searched for and found an 
 emotional interpretation of nature adapted to 
 large decoration. It is problematical whether or 
 
196 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 not he is artistically indebted to Van Gogh, for 
 one can attribute the fad that he painted his 
 best European pidures immediately after his 
 return from Aries either to Van Gogh's teachings 
 or to the effeds of southern colour and atmos- 
 phere. The question though is of little impor- 
 tance. Every man, no matter how great or small, 
 goes through a formative period in which he 
 receives numerous influences. At any rate, just 
 before Van Gogh died he called Gauguin "maitre." 
 During their final periods, however, we know 
 that the two men differed totally; and in 1891 
 Gauguin showed that he was under no man's 
 influence. In the Femmes Assises a I'Ombre des 
 Palmiers and Vairaoumati Tei Oa, he was already 
 the Gauguin we know so well. The first is a 
 sunlit landscape with the hills and palm-trees 
 broadly and flatly painted. The women who are 
 seated in the great pool of cool shade have all the 
 sagely childish drawing that we find later in his 
 more complete pidures. In the second, the 
 flowered stuffs, the heavy limbs and the per- 
 pendicularity of design, which appear so frequently 
 later on, are more than suggested; and the colour 
 has all the beauty of his best efforts. 
 
 It was after Gauguin's first sojourn to the Is- 
 lands that he came back to France a barbarian, 
 eager to stupefy the world of arts not only by 
 his pidures but by his very attire. In this he 
 failed. The public had barely recovered from its 
 Impressionist shock, and Gauguin went to Brit- 
 tany. Here he gathered about him many of the 
 painters he had known before, as well as some 
 new ones, and formed a group of young men who 
 were ready to read against the pettiness of the 
 
THE PONT-AVEN SCHOOL 
 
 Neo-Impressionistic methods and to establish a 
 new art school. They called themselves Syn- 
 thesists, afterward Cloisonnists, and some of them 
 later became Classicists. Here forgathered Seru- 
 sier, Maurice Denis, Filiger, De Hahn, Seguin, 
 Verkade, Anquetin, Laval, Louis Ray, Chamail- 
 lard, Fauche, Bernard and Schuffenecker, few of 
 whom are discoverable today. Among these 
 painters the slightest tendency toward division- 
 istic methods was looked upon as heresy; and 
 religious pictures were in the ascendant, especially 
 with Verkade. The enthusiasm of these young 
 men for their simple and "synthetic" retrogres- 
 sion to the elemental led them to decorate tavern 
 walls and ceilings, to paint windows and barn 
 doors, and to proclaim themselves on all occasions 
 as the only authoritative and vital artists of the 
 day. They had forgotten Renoir and Cezanne 
 because they detested all intelledual and scientific 
 accuracy. And they had not known the latter 
 with sufficient intimacy to be diredlly influenced 
 by his work. Under the sway of Gauguin's 
 unsophisticated aesthetics and Bernard's rhetorical 
 eloquence they went far afield in their search for 
 a siniple and elemental synthesis. Zeal was not 
 wanting. They argued, caroused and fought 
 continually. This last adivity was the cause of 
 Gauguin's lameness all the rest of his life. Little 
 or nothing of lasting merit came out of this group 
 which, though it moved from Pont-Aven to 
 Pouldu, has come to be known as the Pont-Aven 
 School. Most of its members are dead or have 
 been swallowed up in the commercial currents of 
 today. A few, like Bernard, Fauche and Schuf- 
 fenecker, are doing indifferent art. They con- 
 
198 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 tributed nothing to the modern idea outside of 
 the impetus they gave to the anti-academic spirit. 
 There was among them more enthusiasm than 
 talent, more polemical energy than genius. 
 
 Gauguin, though he talked as loudly as the 
 others, painted also. At length their conversa- 
 tions lost their novelty for him. He felt once 
 more the call of his Islands. He was still after 
 an ideal, a congenial setting. These things 
 France could not give him. Again, the necessity 
 of accepting charity from his friends was too 
 humiliating a trial for a nature so timid. His 
 high-handed attitude was only a mask to hide his 
 desire to shrink away. He was always uneasy in 
 cities and unhappy among people who did not 
 try to understand him. He detested the artifi- 
 cialities of Parisian women. His robust sensuality 
 craved a more solid and artless Eve. In France 
 his nature, so responsive to the glow of colour 
 and the primitive lure of archaic forms, saw only 
 chill tints and inutile complications. To him the 
 South meant the richness and heat of romantic 
 emotions, the satiety of the senses. It appealed 
 to his deep love of chaotic and untrammelled 
 nature. He had tasted it before in his seafaring, 
 and he turned to it now as to an only salvation. 
 It was at this time that Carriere arranged the 
 passage. Gauguin was never to see Europe 
 again. 
 
 The Impressionists had made infinitesimal spots 
 of colour in order to imitate as exadly as possible 
 the colour effed of nature and to increase the 
 dynamic power of a canvas by making it give off 
 a light of its own. By this technique they had 
 incorporated both air and sunlight into their art. 
 
THE PONT-AVEN SCHOOL 
 
 The Neo-Impressionists made mathematical the 
 Impressionists' haphazard stippling and had 
 turned the spots into almost symmetrical squares. 
 The squares were slightly separated, and the bare 
 canvas was permitted to show between them in 
 order to achieve a greater brilliance and a more 
 vivid light. Van Gogh later elongated these 
 squares into threads until his pi(5lures resembled 
 tapestries. There was no longer the technical 
 unconcern in painting which Pissarro and Monet 
 had prescribed. Paradoxically enough, while art 
 was growing more scientific it was also becoming 
 less significant. With the men of Pont-Aven the 
 rea(flion against a too technically self-conscious 
 painting began to set in. Their ardent advocacy 
 of primitive conception and method was the re- 
 bound from the pseudo-scientific verbiage which, 
 in the "advanced" studios, took the place of good 
 painting. Consequently they favoured the broad 
 arrangement of surfaces; classic, if the artist 
 leaned temperamentally in that diredlion; bar- 
 baric, if his tastes so inclined him; Gothic, 
 Chinese, Japanese or primitive — all according 
 to which his inclination led him. But all work 
 had to be completed during the first fury of in- 
 spiration, conceived imaginatively, and executed 
 from the decorative standpoint. Gauguin, by his 
 quick wit and youthful impetuosity, easily domi- 
 nated the circle and developed, through the 
 constant interchange of opinions, his vague ideas 
 concerning a synthetic" art. On his third and 
 last voyage to the Islands his greatest work was 
 done. Here he carried out those ideas which had 
 had their inception at Aries and which had 
 become crystallised at Pont-Aven. He made his 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 art entirely out of colour, but instead of profiting 
 by the teachings of Daumier and Cezanne whose 
 visions were the most simultaneous in the history 
 of art, he chose rather to emulate the early and 
 ingenuous schools of plastic expression. In this 
 his painting was retrogressive. 
 
 But there was another and more important side 
 to Gauguin. He at least strove for a larger and 
 more purely emotional interpretation of nature 
 than had been attempted before: and our interest 
 in him is due largely to the broad and peaceful 
 vision he gives us. Monet put many greens in 
 one tree. Gauguin saw the tree as green, but by 
 depiding it in broad planes of pure pigment, he 
 made it a more intense green than Monet could 
 ever have done. ''A metre of green is greener 
 than a centimetre of green," said Gauguin; and 
 this principle he applied to all his work. Instead 
 of portraying light by colour as the Impressionists 
 did, he interested himself only in the colour which 
 resulted from light. Thus he was able to raise 
 his paintings to the highest possible pitch of 
 purity, while still being preoccupied with nature. 
 In painting a landscape where a woman with a 
 cerulean blue dress was seated among green trees 
 on an ochre beach with purple hills in the rear, 
 and where the yellow sunlight shone on the tree 
 trunks and in the woman's hair, Gauguin would 
 first of all draw apart the blues as much as 
 possible. The woman's dress would be painted 
 almost blue-green, and in order to contrast this 
 colour with the other blue in his subjed, he would 
 paint the sky blue-violet-violet. Thus he would 
 produce a greater range of emotional colour than 
 if the two blues had been pale and similar in 
 
THE PONT- J FEN SCHOOL 201 
 
 tint. Furthermore, he would make the sunlight a 
 yellow-orange-orange and the sand a spe(5trum 
 yellow. The trees would then be recorded as 
 yellow-green and the hills as red-red-purple. By 
 this process all the parts of the picture were 
 differentiated, with the result that the canvas 
 had a strong carrying power. This power was 
 further increased by the figures being sharply 
 outlined. 
 
 Gauguin's composition has little importance. 
 It takes the form of perpendicularities, and 
 rarely is any rhythmic order discernible. It is of 
 a piece with the Romanesque painting in Saint- 
 Savin near Poitiers. All his objeAs are personi- 
 fications of calm, and are rooted in their environ- 
 ment as well as in the earth. They do not seem 
 merely to pose there: Gauguin's work is not 
 superficial to this extent, — but they grow 
 naturally out of their matrix like flowers or trees, 
 unconscious but immovable. The passivity which 
 pervades them is not the calm of completion or 
 of the perfedl rest which comes after mental 
 exercise, but rather the calm of the lethargic 
 mind which avoids thought, dislikes action and is 
 content to dream. Technically this feeling is 
 caused by lines at right angles to the horizon, by 
 big simple planes on which the eye can rest free 
 from the disturbance of line opposition, by large 
 flat patterns of dark tonality conducive to peace 
 and introspection. Even the contoured volumes 
 have a greater extent of base than of apex and 
 thus add to the pidlure's aspedl of immobility. 
 Gauguin's drawing is interesting in that it por- 
 trays a race highly susceptible of pid;urisation. 
 His models are impelling because it is an adven- 
 
202 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 ture to explore their parts, their joints, their 
 distortions and disproportions. Their beauty is 
 heavy and cumbersome, like that of the stone 
 images of the Aztecs. 
 
 That which interests us most in Gauguin how- 
 ever is his colour. In this medium he arrived 
 at a sumptuousness unsurpassed by preceding 
 painters. His art was a new application of the 
 old principle of wall decoration. Many had 
 made use of broad planes of colour before his 
 advent, but none had heightened the significance 
 of these planes sufficiently to express nature. He 
 was the first realist in decoration, and from him 
 come, by dired: descent, Matisse and a horde of 
 lesser men like Fritz Erler, Leo Putz, R. M. 
 Eichler, Adolf Miinzer, Rodolphe Fornerod, Alcide 
 Le Beau and Gustave Jaulmes. The aesthetic 
 import of a Puvis de Chavannes is almost equal 
 to that of Gauguin, but the former's greys and 
 grey-blues appear washed-out and dead, while 
 Gauguin's pictures vibrate with the heat of tropi- 
 cal sunlight and the richness of tropical colour. 
 Gauguin, however, could get no orders. His work 
 was too sensuous. Interior decoration would 
 have had to be far more joyous than it was at 
 that time for his exotic creations to find a place 
 on walls and ceilings. 
 
 Gauguin's animating desire was to synthesise 
 his pictures — to make each part of them relative 
 to all the other parts, to order them as to colour, 
 line and tone in such a way that they would give 
 forth the impression of a simple vision, a perfecH: 
 ensemble. This desire was in the air of the day. 
 The Impressionists had unconsciously approached 
 synthesis by using light and air as a solvent. 
 
THE PONT-AVEN SCHOOL 
 
 Cezanne had gone much deeper and ordered form 
 by means of colour. In Seurat Gauguin saw 
 almost completely set forth an expression which 
 by its simplicity satisfied him. Some assert that 
 he was also influenced by Degas. But whether 
 this is so or not, certain it is that there is more 
 of Ingres in him than of Giotto. With Seurat as 
 a starting-point — that is, the linear Seurat of 
 La Baignade and Un Dimanche a la Grande- 
 Jatte — Gauguin quickly abolished the tiny and 
 labourious spotting which Impressionism and 
 Pointillism had taught him, and branched out 
 into simpler design and greater chromatic bril- 
 liancy. By these departures he achieved his 
 synthesis. But this triumph must not be over- 
 estimated. There are degrees of synthesis. 
 Rubens, Giotto, Degas, Ingres, Bocklin, Botti- 
 celli — all are synthetic, but all are by no means 
 of equal importance. While synthesis is necessary 
 to art, it is not the ear-mark of great art alone. 
 The order which is obtained by three harmonious 
 lines is not so extended an order as that found in 
 the multilinear drawings of PoUaiuolo: and this 
 complication of aesthetic ordonnance is what 
 makes a Donatello more significant than a piece 
 of negro sculpture, a Scarsellino greater than a 
 Matisse, and an El Greco more puissant than a 
 Mazzola-Bedoli. Furthermore, when this com- 
 plete surface order extends itself into three dimen- 
 sions it becomes an infinitely greater moving 
 power. When from simple straight lines on a 
 flat surface the artist carries his creation into 
 opposition, development and finality, he is push- 
 ing the frontiers of his painting to art's extreme 
 limits. 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 Gauguin's temperament was simple in the 
 extreme. He had fallen under the sway of 
 Manet: he had gone to a rugged country of 
 primitive instindls where singular costumes were 
 a part of the landscape: he had studied the stone 
 and wooden figures in the old churches and cross- 
 roads of Brittany, and had found the elemental to 
 his liking. Consequently in synthesising his art 
 he used simple forms, straight lines and large 
 planes of shadow and light, all of which were 
 presented on a flat surface, so that all the paral- 
 lelisms and elementary curves of the pi(5lure 
 would deliver themselves to the average spectator 
 at first glance. His method of filling or balancing 
 a canvas was little more than primitive, and the 
 curved lines of light and shadow, which are in- 
 tended to entice the eye, are so isolated that when 
 we at length arrive at their end we discover they 
 are without rhythmic intention. Nor is there a 
 generating line out of which the others grow. 
 
 Gauguin's linear harmony is no greater, if a 
 trifle more diverse, than in the Byzantine mosaic 
 decorations in S. Vitale. Indeed the emotion we 
 experience before each of them is to all purposes 
 the same. The richness of medium in the mosaics 
 is amply compensated for by Gauguin's richness 
 of foliage forms and floral designs. The decora- 
 tive colours in both are equally effedlive. As 
 moderns we might get more enjoyment out of 
 Gauguin's heat and brilliance and the diversity 
 of his silhouette, but at the same time there is a 
 greater archaeological attraAion and a more spirit- 
 ual interest for us in the ancient work. Intrinsi- 
 cally one is as great as the other. Those seeking 
 for calm will find it in equal degree in both, for 
 
DEUX TAHITTENS 
 
 GAUGUIN 
 
THE PONT-AVEN SCHOOL 
 
 in each it is produced by the same method: by 
 the static representation of form rather than by 
 a sequence of movement. Gauguin's sculpture 
 has the same qualities as his paintings, and 
 resembles the religious effigies of some barbaric 
 tribe. The figures are upright and rigid, their 
 backs against a straight support, as in Egyptian 
 archite<5lural art. 
 
 Gauguin said many times that when a painter 
 was before his easel he must not be the slave 
 either of nature or the past. This is true, but 
 as a principle it is too limited. Although he 
 himself lived up to it, he did not go far enough 
 beyond it to do truly significant work. He 
 arrived at the brilliancy of nature by a method 
 distindlly different from nature's; and while 
 refusing to be dominated by the past, his tempera- 
 ment was such that he fabricated an art much 
 closer to antiquity than that of the Zaks and the 
 Rousseaus who servilely imitated it. He accom- 
 plished what he set out to accomplish. His 
 failure to give birth to great art was due to the 
 intelledlual limitations of his ambitions. His 
 place in modern painting, however, is secure. 
 
 That great cycle of aesthetic endeavour which 
 was set in motion by the discovery of oil paint- 
 ing found its termination in Rubens. The cycle 
 which Delacroix and Turner ushered in was less 
 extended. Being more concrete in its aims, it 
 took only five decades to reach completion in the 
 works of Renoir. The first cycle, born with 
 fixed materials, was based on an absolute and 
 physiological law of composition which can never 
 radically change, and therefore permitted of an 
 extensive development and variation. Decadence 
 
2o6 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 naturally set in after its means had lost their 
 ability to inspire artists. The second cycle was 
 one of research, and during it artists were so 
 narrowly focused on nature that they lost sight 
 of the foundation laid down during the first 
 cycle. Had their concentration not been rudely 
 disturbed their data hunting would have carried 
 them hopelessly afield. Gauguin exposed the 
 futility of the meticulous imitation of nature's 
 effects, and by so doing took a step forward 
 toward liberty of method. For this reason he is 
 of importance. Painters were rapidly becoming 
 scientists. By turning men's minds away from 
 nature to broadly natural pidlures Gauguin in- 
 vited them once more to become artists. He 
 was the link which joined experimental research 
 to pure creation. The first cycle gave us an 
 absolute composition: the second furnished a 
 scientific hypothesis for art: the third, of which 
 Cezanne was the primitive, combined the first 
 two and thus opened the door on an infinity 
 of achievement. Gauguin prevented the second 
 from running into decadence by showing its 
 uselessness as an isolated procedure. 
 
IX 
 
 DEGAS AND HIS CIRCLE 
 
 THE development of art itself is no more 
 mechanical than the artistic development 
 of the individual: in both there are ir- 
 regularities, retrogressions, forward spurts, 
 divagations. Renoir first appeared with a rhyth- 
 mic line-balance which first grew luminous, then 
 voluminous, until it blossomed forth into his full 
 form and line and colour. Sometimes he leapt 
 ahead in one quality and deterioriated in another, 
 abandoned one for the glory of the other, and 
 sacrificed continually until by experience he knew 
 his limitations. Then consciously, with all the 
 reins in hand, he progressed steadily to his highest 
 point of efficiency. Art in general also advances 
 sporadically. Delacroix gave a new freedom to 
 subjed: and drawing, resuscitated composition and 
 found a new use for colour. He was the em- 
 bryonic statement of the ends of modern art. 
 Courbet, ignoring colour, totally divorced subjed- 
 matter from antiquity and liberated drawing from 
 the accepted style. He carried art forward, but 
 not in a direct line. Daumier gave us a new con- 
 ception of form, but contented himself with 
 Spanish colour: his art, though fragmentary, was 
 another step toward a unique vision. Then came 
 Manet who, forgetting composition, exalted the 
 documentary freedom of Courbet and began the 
 
2o8 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 study of light. He, also, was a continuation 
 of the modern art impulse, but in his struggle 
 for the new he forgot the foundations. The 
 Impressionists accepted passively all that had 
 come before. They raised colour to an im- 
 portant place in painting and brought it to 
 the consideration of all artists by showing its 
 potency in the production of intense emotion. 
 Renoir used their inspiration; reverted to the 
 past through Delacroix, Courbet and Daumier; 
 combined all that had preceded him; and 
 in an incomparable flourish closed up the possi- 
 bilities of his experimental forerunners. In him 
 was a consummation. But there had to be a 
 transition also, unless art was to stand still. 
 Gauguin, though he went so far back that he 
 passed to a time when composition did not 
 exist, interpreted, but did not imitate, nature. 
 The Neo-Impressionists continued the impetus 
 of Pissarro. Cezanne unearthed secrets from 
 nature which linked him to Impressionism, and 
 by applying them arbitrarily to classic organisa- 
 tions, became an interpreter of the past as well 
 as of the future. 
 
 At each step of this broad and prolific advance 
 there were those painters who, profiting by the 
 teachings of the great, set themselves to imitate 
 and ornament the exteriors of their faintly-under- 
 stood masters and to emphasise the qualities of 
 texture, matiere and prettiness. So rapid was the 
 evolution of modern endeavour that nearly every 
 painter overlapped his seemingly remote prede- 
 cessor. Edgar Degas was born more than twenty 
 years before the death of Delacroix. He was one 
 of those painters who, content to remain stagnant, 
 
DEGAS AND HIS CIRCLE 
 
 employ the qualities which have been handed 
 down to them and breathe into old inspirations 
 the flame of individual idiosyncrasy. He was a 
 man who impressed everyone by the strength of 
 his personality and by the power of his caustic 
 wit. In his youth he travelled in Italy and 
 America and went to school, not for artistic 
 training, but merely as a concession to the 
 conventions of the day. He copied Holbein and 
 Lawrence. In his earlier portraits there are 
 undeniable traces of the German master: the 
 Lawrence influence exhibited itself in his feminin- 
 ity more than in a(5lual technical innovations. 
 He was an enthusiastic visitor to the Cafe 
 Guerbois on the Avenue de Clichy where, from 
 1865 until the war, Manet was the dominating 
 figure, and where the Impressionists and such 
 men as Lhermitte, Cazin, Legros, Whistler and 
 Stevens came to discuss aesthetics. 
 
 Although never radically opposed to scholasti- 
 cism, as were these other men. Degas was never- 
 theless persuaded to share in a joint exhibition in 
 1867 with his revolutionary companions. But 
 the ridicule of the public disgusted him so 
 thoroughly that he never exposed again. He 
 shut himself up in his studio, and there, isolated 
 from his fellow painters and the vulgar populace, 
 worked out his own salvation. He instin(n;ively 
 hated the brummagem show of popularity and put 
 into his every subjed: this disgust with life's 
 hypocrisies. Even in his prancing ballet figures, 
 though they are in full light and amid joyous 
 settings, one senses the satire which led to the 
 depidlion of their apparent sans-souci. One reads 
 in them the sordid misery of their home life, the 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 long trying hours of muscular strain, and the 
 deceit of their simulated smiles. His synthetic 
 figures — synthetic in that they were without 
 details and accidents of contour which would 
 detradl from the vision of the whole — came to 
 him direct and with little variation from Ingres 
 — not the Ingres of Stratonice but the Ingres of 
 the drawings in the Musee Ingres at Montauban. 
 His study of this master gave him a greater 
 insight into the academic construdlion of the 
 human figure than any school could have done. 
 It permitted him to set forth a firmly drawn 
 body in any pose with equal ease. This facile 
 mastery of adion is one of his greatest claims to 
 popularity. 
 
 Gauguin held that nothing should be moving 
 in a canvas, that all the figures should be static, 
 arrested in their pose, and calm. Degas repre- 
 sented Gauguin's antithesis. He strove to catch 
 his model in flight. He immobilised their elan, 
 and registered those charadleristics of a model 
 which express acflion at its intensest dynamic 
 instant. In all his racecourse pi(5lures the very 
 horses have that delicate balance of mincing 
 tread that we first feel when we look at their 
 prototypes in life — that dainty and slight re- 
 siliency as of weight on springs. Monet, on the 
 one hand, caught the ephemeral effed: of light on 
 nature: Degas, on the other, recorded the fleeting 
 movement of objects, that is, the physical poise 
 of a granted image, not the (Esthetic poise which 
 transmits itself to our subjedlivities. He surprised 
 the adlional segment which epitomises the entire 
 cycle of movement. Everything he touches be- 
 comes as charming and interesting as a well- 
 
DEGAS AND HIS CIRCLE 211 
 
 staged scene. His sympathies with the Im- 
 pressionist colour methods and his manner of 
 handling his material add to this charm and 
 make pleasurable, fresh and adventuresome what 
 would otherwise be banal and sometimes even 
 ugly and devoid of interest. He paints the 
 racehorse, which Gericault first introduced into 
 French art, and, by surrounding it with a vernal 
 spring atmosphere, violet hills and green and 
 ochre stubble, and by catching its instantaneous 
 adion, makes of it a pidure with a rich and 
 colourful surface — a surface beside which a 
 Gericault, judged from the same illustrative 
 standpoint, appears stiff and black. 
 
 Degas, in short, paints the kind of pidlures 
 which the general public calls "artistic" — a 
 word which, though loosely used, has come to 
 have a distind: connotation when applied to arts 
 and crafts. Vases, plaques, panels, screens, deco- 
 rations, posters and book-plates are all ''artistic" 
 provided they fulfil certain simple requirements. 
 The bizarre exteriors of German art have given 
 great impetus to this qualitative adjedive. The 
 word is used indeterminately, and its popular 
 meaning has not been defined. But in Degas 
 we find it exemplified; and by studying him we 
 may discover its exa(fl limitations. "Artistic" 
 commonly refers to paintings in which the exacti- 
 tude of drawing is lost in a nonchalant sensibilite, 
 and in which the mature takes on a sedudlive 
 interest merely as a stuff or a substance, the love 
 of which lies deep in the most intelle<ftual of 
 men. The tadlile sense will be found at the roots 
 of the average person's idea of an "artistic" 
 work. This desire for superficial and material 
 
212 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 beauty, as of a rare porcelain or of scintillating 
 old silk, is a part of the same physical sensuality 
 which makes some men choose rough-grained 
 canvas, others the stone of the lithographer, 
 others the fluid brushing of a Whistler or a 
 Velazquez. The desire for texture is what led 
 Degas to pastels. His pidures have something 
 more than an illustrative value; they are highly 
 attradive as ohjets d'art as well. But while this 
 attradliveness heightened the popular value of his 
 work, it indicated the inherent decadence of his 
 aims. 
 
 Nor was it the only sign of his retrogression. 
 There is not even pidorial finality in his work. 
 He never painted subjedls as such, but used them 
 only as bases for arabesques. Surface-covering 
 was his forte, and it is not remarkable that one 
 so sensitive to objedive adion should have been 
 such a master of balance. He could never have 
 achieved such perfed balance had he not realised 
 that a work of art must be done coldly and 
 consciously and without passion for the model, 
 and that all enthusiasm should come only from 
 the progressing work itself. His arrangements 
 are wholly natural ones, and we feel that no 
 studio posing has gone into their making. In 
 this naturalistic attitude he was continuing the 
 modern spirit of arbitrary subjed seledion found 
 in Courbet, Manet and Pissarro. But where 
 these men painted with colour. Degas only tinted 
 his drawings. Consequently his colour, as well 
 as composition, was a reversion to a sterile past. 
 Although we may admire his Apres le Bain, La 
 Toilette, the Trois Danseuses, Femme au Tub, 
 La Sortie du Bain, Torse de Femme S'Essuyant, 
 
DEGAS AND HIS CIRCLE 213 
 
 Musiciens a I'Orchestre for their verisimilitude 
 and lightness of treatment, their imprevu of 
 arrangement and balance and their charm of 
 colour, we can never credit their creator with 
 even a slight genius, for all his pidures lack the 
 rich volumes of a Daumier and the order of a 
 Renoir. 
 
 Degas was neither academic nor revolutionary. 
 He struck a middle course in which the scholastic 
 and the heretical blent, and in blending neutral- 
 ised each other's characteristics. In his canvases 
 he tells inherently commonplace stories, but he 
 does it with the force and the graceful ease of 
 one on whom all the visions of the world have 
 made a powerful impression. Life meant to him 
 a pageant, neither moral nor immoral, but real, 
 and as such interesting. If in what he tells us 
 there seems a bit of the cynical indifference of a 
 mind too fully disillusioned, it never obtrudes 
 itself. He himself might have been surfeited and 
 bitter, but his work contains only the barest hint 
 of his temperamental retrospedlion. His com- 
 prehension of life's tragedies did not spoil his 
 enjoyment in depiding them. Louis Legrand 
 reveals the metropolitan lust of mankind; Forain, 
 its bestiality; Toulouse-Lautrec, its viciousness. 
 Each was prejudiced in some direction. Degas 
 merely goes behind the scenes and by stripping 
 his characters of their pretences shows them to 
 us as they are, intimately and unsentimentally. 
 
 The other men in this circle of illustrators of 
 which Degas was the dominant figure had 
 distindlly individual traits. In no sense were 
 they followers of one leader. Their preoccupa- 
 tion with illustration alone held them together. 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 Degas has given us well-balanced patterns with 
 fragilely lovely surfaces. He was little interested 
 in the traits of his models: he cared more for the 
 pidure than for individual character. With Henri 
 de Toulouse-Lautrec this mental attitude was 
 reversed. In his work are specific members of 
 the demi-monde, marionettes who have all the 
 accentuated vices, vulgarities, fatigues and pre- 
 tensions of their trade. In their faces, moulded 
 by unrestrained indulgences, joys and sorrows, 
 we can read their innermost hopes and aspira- 
 tions. We can reconstrudl their entire day's 
 acclivities. In order to study his characters 
 Lautrec went to the milieu where gaiety was 
 unchecked, where the denizens of the under- 
 world — those unreal beings who live like fantas- 
 tic flow^ers nourished by artificial light and 
 colour — come to work and play. He saw and 
 set down the principals in the Bohemian music 
 halls, the cafes-concerts and the cirques^ and those 
 daylight moralists who come to relax viciously at 
 night with all the laisser-aller of violent reaction. 
 His search was for character; and in these 
 establishments character did not masquerade in 
 the hypocritical garb of pride and dignity. 
 Passions were aired frankly, even proudly. 
 
 Lautrec had personal as well as artistic reasons 
 for choosing this sphere. He had an ardent, 
 almost febrile, desire to live fully and furiously. 
 He was deformed; he had a man's head and body 
 on a child's legs — the result of incompetent 
 bone-setting in his youth. His family was a very 
 old and noble one: his father was a sportsman, 
 a lover of horses, a sculptor in his leisure moments. 
 All the pride of race and dignity of class tumbled 
 
DEGAS AND HIS CIRCLE 215 
 
 from its pedestal in this young artist. He had 
 worked in the schools of Bonnat and Cormon, 
 had met and admired Forain, and had finally 
 been revealed to himself by Degas who led him 
 to the theatre. He drank much, one suspecfts, to 
 forget his deformity, just as Van Gogh drank to 
 forget disease. He sought solace in the ephem- 
 eral, visionary life of the cafes; and no aiflion, 
 no type, no expression escaped his probing 
 notice. He had many friends to whom he 
 confided. ''I am only half a bottle," he would 
 say. He adored women impersonally and roman- 
 tically, but in his own station of life they looked 
 upon him askance. Consequently he lived where 
 money would always buy attention and where 
 good-fellowship was repaid with good-fellowship. 
 
 Lautrec was an indefatigable worker, but his 
 pidures possess little of the surface beauty of a 
 Degas. Rather do they attest to a love of 
 exaggerated and uncommon form, as do Chinese 
 paintings. But in him is more order than in 
 Degas. Compare Une Table au Moulin-Rouge 
 with Degas's Cafe-Concert. In the first the 
 character in the physiques of the principals 
 harmonises with the charadier of the faces; and 
 the female figure's hair, hat and fur-trimmed coat 
 indicate the artist's love for grotesque and 
 beautiful abstrad; form. There is more than 
 balance here: there is the rudiment of an instinc- 
 tive composition which Degas never' had. Beside 
 this pi(flure the Cafe-Concert seems flat silhouette, 
 sprightly and entertaining, but far from profound. 
 The nucleus of composition can be found in all of 
 Lautrec's best canvases, especially those he 
 painted after his return from Spain. Toward the 
 
2i6 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 end of his life he worked, for the most part, with 
 a full brush and rich colours. Before this, how- 
 ever, pencil, chalk, lithographs and water-colours 
 had claimed him. His greatest fluency was in 
 the use of separated hachures of rich greyish 
 colour on neutral backgrounds. This method of 
 application permitted him line as well as colour; 
 and with his lines, summary and economical 
 though they were, he caught the animality of his 
 subjects with as sure a hand as Monet caught the 
 light and Degas the adlion. 
 
 Lautrec, with Cheret, revolutionised the poster 
 art. There are few men today in this field who 
 do not owe much to him. His love of the 
 eccentricities of his model was an ideal gift for 
 the poster-maker, and he had himself sufficiently 
 in hand not to be led into the grotesque. He 
 was a caricaturist in that he exaggerated char- 
 acfteristic traits, just as Matisse did in his sculp- 
 ture. He always noted fully the uncommon, and 
 his love of every manifestation of life gave him 
 a wide range of inspiration. Life was his great 
 adventure; his art was merely his diary. He is 
 a historian of the theatre of his time and has 
 left salient portraits of Loie Fuller, Polaire, 
 Sarah Bernhardt, Mounet-Sully, Yahne and Anna 
 Held. His types of the raptorial woman of the 
 past — the kind that today is found in the 
 hidden corners of Les Halles, at the fortifications 
 and about the *'Rue de la Joie" — are as real as 
 the female characters of Balzac, Daudet, Augier 
 and Prevost. They live in his pidlures because 
 one feels that they once were realities: his 
 caricaturisations of them, as of his clowns and 
 dancers, only intensify their intimate humanity. 
 
DEGAS AND HIS CIRCLE 217 
 
 To some it may seem strange that Lautrec should 
 have liked Massys and Memlinc. But in the 
 first he found trenchant charaderisation, espe- 
 cially in such things as Head of an Old Man, 
 The Courtesan and Portrait of a Canon. And he 
 was temperamentally akin to Memlinc in such 
 arrangements as the latter's The Casting of the 
 Lots (a detail of Calvary) and Our Lord's Passion, 
 at the Museum in Turin. 
 
 That the illustrators of this group were deca- 
 dent is borne out in their subjed-matter as well 
 as in their methods. Since the earliest recorded 
 antiquity artists have been attraded to the 
 moving, the glittering, the brilliant; and the 
 human occupation which embodies these three 
 qualities most obviously is dancing. The men 
 who are in love with life and not art and who 
 paint and draw pidures merely to record their 
 impressions, have always been hypnotised by the 
 colour, the grace, the fluent movement and the 
 rhythmic shiftings of dancers. These men, unable 
 to analyse their emotions, have dreamed only of 
 depiding objedively their photographic impres- 
 sions of the dance. The artists who penetrated 
 to the fundamental causes of rhythm used the 
 dance only arbitrarily, whereas the superficial 
 painters of the past saw in it merely the mosaic, 
 the pattern, the arabesque. They thought that 
 in portraying the dance literally they would 
 arrive at its motive significance. But in this 
 they failed. Had they done their figures in clay 
 or stone they would have approached nearer 
 their desire. But even this more masculine 
 medium has, with few exceptions, resulted in 
 failure. The dancing girls in the Grottoes of 
 
21 8 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 Mahavelipore were used only by those puissant 
 masters of form as friezes or shapes to fill in and 
 ornament a vacant space. The Tanagra figurines 
 are a purely decorative endeavour. In Greece 
 it was not the men of Praxiteles's calibre, but the 
 smaller talents like the potters who used the 
 dance in their designs. Even a man as slight as 
 Hokusai leaves it to a Toba Sojo to make his 
 models caper. But the feminine talent of Degas 
 finds in the dance absolute and unordered expres- 
 sion; and Lautrec and Legrand, both more robust 
 than Degas, though minor and ornamentally 
 illustrative artists, are seduced into portraying it 
 often. 
 
 Louis Legrand was more of the "maker" of 
 pidlures than were his two contemporaries. His 
 nature leaned toward the heavy and boisterous 
 Sodoma rather than toward the Latin ideal of 
 Tiepolo. This almost Teutonic racial penchant 
 in him explains why the bestiality of his subjeA- 
 matter is so often done in the manner of Goya, 
 with broad black and white masses, not with the 
 suggested line and the attractive mature of his 
 master. Degas. There is much Teutonic blood 
 in Spain, and Goya, while being far the greater 
 artist even in his slightest etchings, is the nearest 
 approach to Legrand in the treatment of themes. 
 Goya paints moral decay with disgust and genius, 
 whereas Legrand, with his slight gropings after 
 order of a surface variety, glories in it as in a 
 pursuit, and paints it with a leer. The Spaniard 
 uses it as a temperamental means. The French- 
 man, whose whole talent lies in a formula of 
 draughtsmanship, works toward its creation as an 
 end. His shallowness is at once apparent when 
 
DEGAS AND HIS CIRCLE 
 
 we compare his Maitresse or his illustrations for 
 Edgar Allan Poe's tales with etchings like Donde 
 Va Mama or Buen Viaje. Psychologically he is 
 intimately related to the fin de siecle movement 
 in England; and, although a better and more 
 healthy workman, he has a temperament singu- 
 larly akin to that ineffedual Vidorian academi- 
 cian, Walter Sickert. 
 
 In J.-L. Forain we have a man of different 
 stamp, one who, knowing his ability for certain 
 things, clings to them and does not attempt to 
 thrust himself into the rank of artist. By 
 developing his small potentialities to their highest 
 ad:uality he has achieved as much as his con- 
 freres have by extraneous tricks and appearances. 
 And there is no doubt that he comprehends art 
 much better than they. His iconoclastic and 
 acidulous cynicism, his ability to wrench from 
 behind the veil of mundane hypocrisy the real 
 motivation of an adlion, and his probing analysis 
 which cannot be imposed upon by pretence, have 
 touched on many sides of contemporary life — 
 politics, extortion, courts, merchants, the heau 
 monde, prostitution, religion, the theatre and 
 the tawdry Bohemianism of Montparnasse. With 
 a few straight and fluent strokes of the pencil he 
 builds up a type of the blustering parvenu Jew, 
 the mercenary pidlure dealer, the childish and 
 vain adlor who is avid for praise and obsessed 
 with his vocation. Forain calls the ad:or a 
 " M'as-tu-vu?" and depicfls him as with that 
 phrase ever on his lips. Baudelaire Chez les 
 Mufles is one of the world's greatest monuments 
 to human hypocrisy. A chlorotic bourgeoise is 
 standing in the centre of a small gathering 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 reciting Baudelaire's verses. Around her are 
 grouped types of self-satisfied and vicious mascu- 
 linity, all pretending, like the speaker herself, 
 to be feeling deeply the hidden spirituality of the 
 poem. Some of the men have their heads raised 
 high, others bowed low, for purposes of con- 
 centration. The whole pidure is rough-hewn as 
 though done with an axe in a square of clay. 
 With the simplest means the artist gives us the 
 impression of rugged stone and, at the same 
 time, completion. The titles to his drawings 
 are in the exadl spirit of the pidures themselves, 
 succindl, brutal and penetrating. Forain is the 
 second greatest caricaturist the world has pro- 
 duced. He was not the artist that Daumier was, 
 but as a serious creator of types and as a highly 
 intelligent critic of contemporary shams, he is a 
 master, even as Daumier was a master of a realm 
 far above him. 
 
 Forain perfeded what he set out to do, and 
 for this praise is due him. That his ambition 
 ran along a subpassage of aesthetic endeavour, as 
 did that of his three confreres, he would be the 
 first to admit. As artists these men cannot be 
 judged either by the surface quality of their 
 works or by their penetration into life and char- 
 ader. Such considerations have nothing to do 
 with aesthetic emotion. No matter how much we 
 may eulogise such painters — for they must be 
 judged by their own standard rather than by a 
 criterion set by a Rubens — our praise will never 
 place them in the rank of plastic creators. They 
 will ever remain in the realm of nearly perfed 
 workmen with literary apperceptions. Toulouse- 
 Lautrec, because of his love of formal distortion 
 
DECAS AND HIS CIRCLE 
 
 for its own sake, probably comes nearer the 
 higher level: there is in his work a slight aesthetic 
 element. Degas will ever remain the piece of old 
 velvet in a frame; Louis Legrand, the illustrator 
 of the bachelor clubs; Forain, the expositor of 
 life's pretensions. 
 
 It is these men who have given the greatest 
 impetus to realistic illustration in all countries. 
 Viewed from this standpoint they were a salutary, 
 as well as a diverting, manifestation. By burrow- 
 ing down into the depths of material existence 
 they made unimportant such poetic men as 
 Beardsley, Rossetti and Moreau. All good illus- 
 tration after them took on a deeper meaning. 
 It ignored the mendacious surfaces of things and 
 strove to reproduce the undercurrents which lie 
 at the bottom of human adlions and readions. 
 Its mere prettiness was supplanted by subcutane- 
 ous characfteristics. It sought for motives rather 
 than emotions, for causes rather than effects. 
 It became critical where once it had been only 
 photographic. From Degas, Lautrec, Legrand 
 and Forain comes diredlly the best illustrative 
 talent in both Europe and America. Without 
 these four men we would not possess the best 
 work of Max Beerbohm, Hermann Paul, Bellows, 
 Maxime Dethomas, Roubille, Carlopez, Carl Lar- 
 son, Albert Engstrom, C. D. Gibson, E. M. Ashe, 
 Boardman Robinson, Cesare, Blumenschein and 
 Wallace Morgan, the last of whom is unques- 
 tionably the most artistic illustrator in either 
 America or England. 
 
X 
 
 HENRI-MATISSE 
 
 WHILE the bitter struggle against the 
 narrow didates of a retrospective 
 and so-called classic academy was 
 in progress, and before the older 
 scholastic forces had finally been put to rout, 
 the Impressionists calmly arrogated to them- 
 selves the authority of their dumbfounded 
 predecessors. Their pidures, because more re- 
 stridled and not based on the fundamentals of 
 art, soon became as familiar and commonplace 
 as the paintings of Gerome, Cabanel and Bougue- 
 reau, and in becoming familiar settled into the 
 groove of a new academism as immobile and 
 self-satisfied as the old. The Neo-Impressionists 
 were the first to read against them, and later 
 Gauguin and his fellow synthesists openly de- 
 clared war. Cezanne at that time was little 
 known and less understood. Living apart and 
 alone, he was counted out of the main struggle. 
 The decadents of the movement. Degas and his 
 circle, continued their popularising process: their 
 eyes were so fixedly turned inward that they saw 
 little of what was going on about them. Gau- 
 guin, putting aside imitation of nature for inter- 
 pretation, began the great movement which was 
 to culminate in the most extreme readlion against 
 Impressionism — Cubism. And Matisse who, arous- 
 
HENRI-MATISSE 
 
 223 
 
 ing public interest in the new, is responsible 
 for the popular Cezanne discussions of today, 
 was the next man to carry on Gauguin's work of 
 pigeon-holing Monet and his followers. But where- 
 as the Impressionists had completely forgotten 
 the classics, Gauguin wished to recommence the 
 entire cycle by reverting to the forefathers of 
 those very classics. He also had his decadent 
 followers, but there was no one to continue his 
 methods and inspiration. If it is difficult to 
 perceive an analogy between him and a painter 
 like Jacopo dei Barbari, compare the works of 
 these men with a later drawing by Matisse. 
 The similarity of the first two, by being con- 
 trasted with the latter, will at once become 
 apparent. Gauguin clung close to the drawing 
 of the primitive Christians; and the classic seed 
 within him, though it never flowered, was never 
 dead. 
 
 While the form in Matisse at times has all the 
 suavity of contour of a Liombruno or a Roma- 
 nelli, there is a more purely sensitive reason for it 
 than in the well-taught decadents of the later 
 Renaissance. In the classes of Bouguereau and 
 Carriere at the Beaux-Arts he had seen to what 
 an impasse a too great love of antiquity would 
 lead. Furthermore, with his many copies in the 
 Louvre, by command of the state, he began 
 gradually to realise that the classics had become 
 a fetich, and that the only salvation for a painter 
 was to seek a different and less-known inspiration. 
 This course was not so difficult as it had once 
 been, for the younger men had already liberated 
 themselves from popular mandates. The freedom 
 of the artist was now an assured thing, and while 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 the public still scoffed and offered suggestions, it 
 no longer felt that a man's expression was its 
 personal concern. To be sure, popular rage 
 against things which appeared incomprehensible 
 was still evident, but it was the impotent rage 
 which sneers because it can no longer strike. 
 The Salon des Artistes Independants was in full 
 swing, and the new artists who had ideas rather 
 than tricks and who were intent on discovering 
 new fields through devious experimentation, found 
 therein a refuge where they could expose as 
 conspicuously as could the academicians. In this 
 healthful Salon Matisse has exhibited regularly 
 up to a few years ago, and it was here and in 
 the Salon d'Automne — another exhibition which 
 at first was animated by high ideals but which 
 has lately fallen into the hands of cliques and 
 pidlure merchants — that his fame took birth. 
 
 With Matisse's advent we behold the paradox 
 of an artist who is in full readlion against the 
 Impressionistic and classic do(5lrines and who 
 at the same time reveals a certain composition 
 and makes colour of paramount interest. The 
 Matisse of exotic inspiration came from the 
 studio of Gustave Moreau who, by his intelligent 
 toleration of the virile enthusiasms of his pupils, 
 facilitated the way toward complete self-expres- 
 sion. There are Matisse drawings extant which 
 are impeccable from the academic standpoint — 
 drawings in which is found all the cold "right 
 drawing" of the school. There are paintings 
 in the Neo-Impressionistic manner, except that 
 they display a sensitive use of harmonious colours, 
 which should have shown Signac and Cross the 
 error of their rigid science. Also there are still- 
 
HENRI-MATISSE 
 
 225 
 
 lives which recall Chardin, one of Matisse's great 
 admirations; and at least one study of a head, 
 done in Colorossi's old academy on the Rue de la 
 Grande Chaumiere, in which a love of Cezanne's 
 form and colour mingles with a resped: for 
 Manet's method of applying paint. 
 
 Gauguin too served as a provenance for the 
 later colour vision of Matisse. Indeed it is as 
 much from Gauguin as from Cezanne that he 
 stems. The broad planes of rich tones and the 
 decorative employment of form in the former 
 had as great an influence in Matisse's art as did 
 the perfed: displacement of spaces in the canvases 
 of the Provencal master. Gauguin, while still 
 leaning to the classic, desired a fresher impetus. 
 He therefore sought distortion in exotic inspira- 
 tion; but the man who was led to distortion 
 through a pure love of unfamiliar form and to 
 whom Matisse owes the deciding influence toward 
 a new body, was the Spaniard Goya. The 
 deformed, the grotesque and the monstrous were 
 with Goya a passion. In his Caprichos it is easily 
 seen that he, too, was tired of the established 
 formulas regarding the human body, and strove 
 to vary and enrich it. By emphasising a char- 
 aderistic trait, by shifting a certain form, by 
 exaggerating a certain proportion, he sought to 
 obtain, as did Matisse, the complete expression 
 of what he felt to be essential in his model. 
 The deformations in Gauguin came as a result 
 of an outline which after the first drawing was 
 left unchanged for the sake of its naif effed. 
 But in Goya and Matisse the deformations are 
 the result of a highly developed plastic sense 
 which glories in new and unusual forms. With 
 
226 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 them the human body is treated as the means 
 through which an idea is expressed — an idea of 
 form, not of literature. Compare, for instance, 
 the drawing called Deux Tahitiens, one of Gau- 
 guin's best works, with Matisse's Baigneuses, a 
 canvas of three nudes one of which is playing 
 with a turtle. In the former the proportions are 
 distorted as much as in the latter, but these 
 proportions are flat and are an end in them- 
 selves. They have no intelledual destiny. In 
 the Matisse pidlure the exaggerations grow out 
 of a desire to express more fully the form which 
 the artist has felt to be important and charaAer- 
 istic. In the seated woman the torso and neck 
 constitute a personal and original vision, and the 
 crouching woman's back has as much solidity as 
 the Venus Accroupie of the Louvre. 
 
 Matisse's simplified vision of form came, as did 
 all synthetic modern art, from Ingres and Dau- 
 mier through Seurat, Degas and Gauguin. That 
 Ingres, the master of so classic a school, should 
 have unconsciously felt the need for modifying 
 and simplifying an obje^l is a significant indica- 
 tion of the fatigue which is always produced by 
 an adherence to a set form. In his drawings the 
 details are omitted merely because they do not 
 further the achievement of his own particular 
 kind of beauty. In Daumier they are absent 
 because they detradl from the spontaneous emo- 
 tion of the whole; in Degas and Manet, because 
 they hinder the fluency of adlion and obscure the 
 complete and dired image; in Seurat, because 
 they interfere with the suavity of line itself; and 
 in Gauguin, because they preclude that naivete 
 of appearance he wished to obtain. In Matisse 
 
BAIGNEUSES HENRI-MATISSE 
 
HENRI-MATISSE 
 
 227 
 
 began the conscious process of making form 
 arbitrary, of bending it to the personal require- 
 ment of expression. In Cubism form became 
 even more abstradl. In Ingres's drawings there 
 is an entire lack of suppleness: his figures appear 
 like a first sketch in wood for a German carving. 
 In Gauguin this wooden look becomes a trifle 
 more fluent; the proportions are artistically 
 improved. And in Matisse there is no trace of 
 the awkward or the. stiff. While his form is more 
 simplified than that of the two other painters, 
 the simplifications come as a result of that 
 artistic rightness of proportion which is an out- 
 growth of the ultimate refinement of knowledge 
 and taste. 
 
 The trick of drawing of a Louis Legrand has 
 no parallel in Matisse. In the work of the latter 
 each figure or objedl, no matter how many times 
 he has already drawn it, has a distinctively novel 
 construdlion and presents a new vision. All 
 familiar joints and hackneyed interpretations are 
 absent. We have seen, for instance, the deltoids 
 drawn in every conceivable pose of stress or calm. 
 When one speaks of a nude we immediately 
 visualise it with the angular shoulders, with the 
 accustomed bulges over the upper arm which 
 have been painted there in the same manner since 
 the early Renaissance. In the delineation of 
 deltoids the painter had become stagnant, accept- 
 ing their conventional appearance as an external 
 truth and recording them without thought. 
 Matisse revolted against this fixed standard. 
 Glance through his later nudes — and there are 
 many of them — and every shoulder will present 
 a different appearance; every arm will take on a 
 
228 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 novel form. We speak here of these particular 
 muscles because they seem to obtrude themselves 
 upon the sensitive sight more than any others. 
 Matisse, seeking to overcome this strudural 
 monotony, made each shoulder he drew a new 
 form, a new adventure, by expressing, not the 
 aAual bone and muscle of the clinic, but the 
 salient meaning of that shoulder in a given 
 milieu. It is this same desire to do away with 
 the hackneyed forms of art that has driven the 
 modern poets away from classic metres and 
 caused them to seek a more plastic and adaptable 
 medium in vers lihre. Rondeaux, ballades, quat- 
 rains, odaves and the like are today as intrinsi- 
 cally perfedl forms as they ever were, but the 
 significance of their beauty has been lost through 
 overuse, through too great familiarity. Our 
 minds pass over them as over well-learned lessons 
 committed to memory. 
 
 It is thus Matisse felt about the classic forms 
 of his predecessors. These forms had once been 
 beautiful; intrinsically they were still beautiful; 
 but they had been habitualised by constant repe- 
 tition; and new ones were needed. In order to 
 find them Matisse says that, when before a model, 
 he tried to forget that he had even seen a nude 
 before and to look upon it with the eyes of one 
 who had never seen a pidure. By this he does 
 not mean that his vision was naive, but that it 
 was innocent of set rules and preconceived ideas 
 of how form should be obtained. As a theory 
 this attitude proved fruitful because, while he 
 did not succeed in setting aside memory, he was 
 nevertheless led to a conscious thrusting aside of 
 his first impulses to depid form as he saw it. All 
 
HENRI-MATISSE 229 
 
 painters, even the greater artists of the past, had 
 copied form as it presents itself to the eye, but 
 Matisse forced himself, through painstaking 
 analysis, to express form in a totally novel man- 
 ner; and to a certain extent he succeeded. One 
 might well ask why, in modifying the human 
 body, he did not, for instance, omit a leg or a 
 head, thus making his expression at once purer 
 and more abstrad. The answer is that he real- 
 ised that the spedator, after the first shock at 
 seeing the unexpeded form and the consequent 
 mental readjustment to the new vision, would 
 nevertheless recognise the picture as a depidion 
 of the human figure. Therefore a complete 
 recognisability must be maintained. If the ar- 
 tist omitted an eye or a mouth, for example, the 
 spectator would experience physically the incom- 
 pleteness of the vision. He would feel, through 
 personal association, the blindness or the suffo- 
 cation as suggested in the pidure; and these 
 shocks, being secondary physiological sensations, 
 would detradl from the cesthetic pleasure provoked 
 by the work. The point is an important one, for 
 it demonstrates the impossibility of appreciating 
 art purely as abstrad form so long as recognisable 
 objeAs are presented. As modern painting pro- 
 gressed the illustrative gradually became relegated. 
 
 Much impetus for his abbreviations and accen- 
 tuations of form came to him with his personal 
 discovery of the wood carvings of the African 
 negroes, the sculpture of natives of Polynesia 
 and Java and of the Peruvian and Mexican 
 Indians. During the last five years we have 
 heard much of these unknown artists and of their 
 superlative ability for organisation and rhythm. 
 
230 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 But they have been a Httle too quickly and 
 enthusiastically accepted as criteria at the expense 
 of those greater artists, the Greeks, the Egyptians, 
 the East Indians and the Chinese. Matisse 
 found in them an inspiration toward synthesis 
 and also a substantiation for his own desire to 
 emphasise salient chara^eristics. They influ- 
 enced his motives in depiding only what was 
 personally important and in doing away with 
 unnecessary details. After him there came a 
 horde of imitators who saw in negro sculpture the 
 quintessence of artistic expression, who looked 
 upon it as a finality of organisation and rhythmic 
 composing. Such judgment, however, contains 
 more of enthusiasm than of critical acumen. 
 Negro sculpture has an interest for us only in so 
 far as it is novel and untutored. Its organisation 
 is of the most primitive kind, symmetrical rather 
 than rhythmic, architedonic rather than plastic. 
 It is the work of slightly synthetic artists who 
 were without models and whose visions encom- 
 passed only certain traits of form which, when 
 expressed, became not composed but balanced, 
 not imitative but abstrad. The abstradness of 
 negro sculpture, its bending of all human forms to 
 an ornament, its archaic rigidity which is the 
 antithesis of fluent movement — these are the 
 qualities which have so gripped the imaginations 
 of minor modern artists. In reality the negro 
 sculptors did not seek these qualities consciously. 
 Their lack of realistic observation was due to 
 their partial isolation from exterior influences such 
 as the Greeks and Egyptians, and to their desire 
 to make an ornament of all images. 
 
 It was the Persians, however, who influenced 
 
HENRI-MATISSE 
 
 231 
 
 Matisse more than did negro sculpture. He 
 found in these artists a pradical lesson in the 
 application of his beliefs — a lesson which sub- 
 stantiated the tonic division and formal im- 
 provisation of Goya and the decorative colour 
 application of Gauguin. Besides he learned from 
 them a more dired: method of image making, a 
 method which was at once more delicate and more 
 femininely sensitive. After seeing the pidiures 
 done by Matisse in Algiers, and such paintings 
 as La Glace sans Tain, and after looking at the 
 vistas through the open doors and windows in 
 some of his large interiors, one realises at once 
 the great influence these exquisitely delicate 
 painters of ancient Persia had on him. The 
 decorative illustrations of the Mille et Une Nuits, 
 published in Paris by Fasquelle, are so similar 
 to some of his pic5lures that one is inclined to 
 believe he studied this book before painting them. 
 His superiority lies in his finer comprehension of 
 the human form and in the great diversity he 
 exhibited in the repetition of its component parts. 
 Persia, like other nations, had an academy, and 
 while its yield was more charming and less given 
 to complex reprodudlions, it had no more aesthetic 
 importance than have the art schools of our own 
 day. But unlike ours it had not forgotten the neces- 
 sity of formal distribution in the making of artistic 
 arrangements. This distribution in its flat sense 
 Matisse appropriated to his own ends, and by 
 applying to it freer modern means, made his art 
 more aesthetically significant than that of the 
 Persians. 
 
 His modern means were the outgrowth of his 
 understanding of colour in its capacity to incite 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 emotion. His first essays in this field were 
 greyish. Later, through divisionistic methods, 
 they grew brighter; and finally his colour became 
 pure and was applied in large planes. His works 
 of this period shine as a source of light, and with 
 his development of exaggerated forms his colour 
 interpretations also become exaggerated. Where 
 he saw a green in a shadow he painted it a pure 
 green; where he saw a yellow in light he made it 
 a pure yellow; and so on with the other colours. 
 But in these interpretations there is more than a 
 mere desire to record hastily an optical vision. 
 Each colour is pondered at length in its relation 
 to the others. It is changed a score of times, 
 modified and adjusted; and when it is finally 
 posed it is artistically ''right." In other words, 
 it fills harmoniously an important part in a 
 pidlure where understanding and taste are the 
 creators. In the work of Matisse sensihilite plays 
 the all-important role, and while his results are 
 satisfying as far as they go, there are times when 
 we could wish for a greater rhythmic sense, a 
 more conscious knowledge of the profundities of 
 composition, and a less dominating desire to free 
 each form and line from classic di(^lates. 
 
 With his colour we can find no such fault. 
 Though here his knowledge, like that of all other 
 artists before him, is limited, the perfed: harmony 
 between tints, which in him reaches a more 
 advanced stage than in any preceding artist, is 
 the result of a highly sensitive eye and an impec- 
 cable taste. The beauty of his colour alone 
 makes him of paramount importance. Every one 
 of his canvases is a complete colour gamut created 
 by taste and authenticated by science not only as 
 
HENRI-MATISSE 233 
 
 to pure colour but also as to greys and tone. In 
 his still-lives he chooses objedls alone for their 
 colour and form, and his sense of proportion is so 
 developed and his redudlion of line is carried to 
 so final an economy that, as flat as these objects 
 are, they seem to have a rich consistency and to 
 extend themselves into visual depth. As in the 
 case of all men who deviate from the narrow and 
 well-worn path of monotonous tonality, Matisse 
 is accused of dealing in raucous and blatant 
 colours which set the head aching and the eyes 
 smarting. But the accusation is true only of his 
 followers who display little sensitivity and even 
 less artistry, and who, in imitating the superficial 
 aspeds of his work, see only grotesque distortions 
 and pure colour. Matisse once had a school 
 where he endeavoured to develop the native talents 
 of the Americans, Poles, Russians and Germans; 
 but when a Bohemian woman, in reply to his 
 question as to what she wished to do, answered, 
 *'Je veux Jaire le 'neuf/' he abandoned the enter- 
 prise and retired to Clamart. She unwittingly 
 summed up the desire of those meagre painters 
 who, on seeing something novel, immediately 
 throw themselves into imitating it. Matisse's 
 followers approach his colour gamut, but they 
 never bridge that lacuna which separates a pre- 
 cise art from one which is d pen pres. It is the 
 last delicate refinement of perfed harmony which 
 Matisse possesses and which his imitators can 
 not attain to, which places him in the rank of 
 greatness. 
 
 Matisse is called the Chef des Fauves^ and his 
 art has been catalogued and labeled, turned into 
 a "school" and has come to be known in many 
 
234 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 quarters as Post-Impressionism, although that 
 title, as well as the one of Fauvism, was originally 
 intended to designate all the art movements after 
 Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism and in- 
 cluded such widely dissimilar men as Cezanne, 
 Van Gogh, Picasso, Kandinsky, Matisse and 
 Friesz. It stood for the new vitality in art, for 
 the contemporary animating spirit, and implied 
 an epoch rather than a movement. It was not 
 sufficiently specific, however; and while modern 
 art in the main is a homogeneous development 
 of new means, its forces are too diverse and its 
 evolution too complex to permit of its being 
 described by a blanket term. It was therefore 
 natural that in an endeavour to understand the 
 underlying forces of modern painting a process of 
 critical differentiation should have been insti- 
 tuted. But labels are offensive and impertinent 
 when attached to serious aesthetic endeavours, 
 and are apt to lead to misunderstanding and 
 errors of judgment. The canvases themselves 
 must be the final test of a movement's enduring 
 vitality. Matisse is himself the whole impetus 
 of the movement he represents. With the one 
 exception of Cezanne, he is more remote from his 
 followers than any other modern leader. He 
 repeats himself so little that his disciples cannot 
 make a fetich of his canons. Indeed, he does not 
 work by rote or law, except in so far as there is 
 a law governing his personal impressions and 
 prediled: ons. 
 
 Although Matisse's greatest impetus to modern 
 art, after his carrying form nearer to an abstrad: 
 conception, is the harmonising of colour, his 
 finest canvases are those in which the form pre- 
 
HENRI-MATISSE 
 
 235 
 
 dominates, as for instance the Jeu de Balles, 
 La Musique — esquisse, La Musique (panneau 
 decoratif) and Baigneuses. In these pidlures, 
 however, there is an entire absence of rhythm in 
 the Renoir sense, but they possess a perfe6l 
 disposition of forms to fill a given space, a har- 
 mony of subject with its frame, a dazzling succes- 
 sion of uncommon and beautifully proportioned 
 spaces and an amazing feeling for two-dimensioned 
 form. Where with Matisse the distinct parti pris 
 of reverting to a primitive inspiration was excus- 
 able, such an attitude was worse than folly 
 for those who came after him. With him it was 
 a manifestation of the disgust of an impatient 
 and experimental mind for stereotyped expression: 
 with his followers it was only an imitation of his 
 motives, and hence it was decadent. If Matisse 
 partially understood Giotto and Michelangelo, 
 the understanding contributed little to his art. 
 His greatest claim to consideration is that he 
 gave painting its final impulse toward abstradion. 
 But his canvases, while being aesthetically just, 
 are not aesthetically satisfying, because in compo- 
 sition he never penetrated further than the 
 surface. And even on the surface he did not 
 attain to a greater fluency than that permitted by 
 parallelisms and simple oppositions, although 
 there has never been an artist who more perfectly 
 adapted his expression to the shape and size of 
 his canvas. 
 
 That all great artists worked like him from the 
 standpoint of creating recognisable form by ab- 
 stract thought, does not detracft from his fine 
 destiny. Where other artists failed to drag art 
 from the quicksands of literary instantaneity. 
 
236 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 Matisse succeeded. His evolution was direct: 
 and logical, as a close study of his work will show; 
 and those who see in him an arriviste may with 
 equal justice bring the same charge against 
 Michelangelo. His aesthetic sources and admira- 
 tions, of which so much has been written, are 
 important in understanding the genealogical foun- 
 dations of art, but they are of little moment in 
 the adlual enjoyment of his pidlures. Looking 
 impartially at his classic influences on the one 
 hand and his Persian and negro influences on the 
 other, it is difficult to see just where the benefits 
 of the latter lie. Matisse merely shifted his 
 inspiration from the greatest masters of form to 
 the slighter masters — from a well-known and 
 great antiquity to a little-known and less sig- 
 nificant one. However, if negro sculpture can 
 help produce a man like Picasso, and the Persian 
 stuffs and enamels one like Matisse, they serve 
 after all a high purpose. 
 
XI 
 
 PICASSO AND CUBISM 
 
 CUBISM first and foremost is an attempt 
 to make art more arbitrary in its se- 
 ledlion of compositional forms. In all 
 ancient painting only the human figure 
 was used as a basis for organisation. Later 
 landscape widened the scope of the painter's 
 material possibilities; but even the introduction 
 of this new element merely extended the boundary 
 of subjedl-matter. The essence of art remained 
 the same. Landscape permitted new forms to be 
 interwoven with the old ones, without making 
 the old more plastic. The elasticising process was 
 what the painter had always desiderated, but his 
 literalness was such that he never went beyond 
 primary distortions of the human body — distor- 
 tions so small that they were almost unnoticeable. 
 With the Greeks and Chinese these deformations 
 were praAised in order to beautify the body's 
 relative proportions; with the East Indians and 
 Michelangelo, to accentuate the emotion of force- 
 ful movement; with Renoir, to express form fully 
 in its relation to the generating line of each 
 pidlure; and with Matisse the distortions were the 
 the result, first, of a readion against a hackneyed 
 classic system, and later, of a desire to divorce 
 aesthetic pleasure from mental association, in 
 other words, to make form abstradl rather than 
 
238 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 personal. In him there is no rhythmic composi- 
 tion, and while, as in the case of Renoir, his 
 pictures are great as ensembles, each part of them 
 is a separate item which does not depend, for 
 appreciation, on its rapport to the whole. His is 
 an art of colour, of sensitive and inspiring form 
 in two dimensions — a decorative art of a high 
 order. As such it is at once a derivation of 
 Impressionism and a development of Impression- 
 istic colour through the channels of taste. 
 
 Cubism is a far more arbitrary art than 
 Matisse's. In its extreme expression it depends, 
 not so much on the artist's adroitness at inter- 
 preting nature, as on his ability to express pure 
 aesthetic emotion in its relation to form — form 
 being used here in its extended sense to connote 
 the solidity of the entire pidlure and the block 
 relation of each part to the other parts. Compo- 
 sition prior to the Cubists had been the rhythmic 
 organisation of a pidlure's integral parts by line, 
 volume, chiaroscuro and colour. A totally unre- 
 lated set of objedlive figures or forms was drawn 
 together into an ensemble by these abstrad 
 aesthetic means. Cubism retained the older 
 methods of form and conception, and added to 
 them the illustrative device of disorganising and 
 rearranging objeftivity so that the separated parts 
 would intersed:, overlap and partly obscure the 
 image. Thus was presented a pidure replete 
 with all aspedls of the model, that is, a pidlure 
 in which the expression presented not only the 
 vision of reality as it discloses itself to our eyes, 
 but the vision which delivers itself to our intelli- 
 gences, with its adions and reactions, its many 
 and changing miens, its linear and voluminous 
 
PICASSO AND CUBISM 239 
 
 struggles, its solidity and its transparency. In 
 Cubism the details of this ubiquitous and omni- 
 farious vision are subjugated to arbitrary order 
 and expressed in tones of warm and cold. 
 
 At the outset Cubism was a Dionysian readion 
 against the flowing and soft decoration of the 
 schools of Bouguereau and the Impressionists. 
 The precise and masculine minds of a new cycle 
 could not rest satisfied with the single melody 
 of their immediate predecessors. Courbet, the 
 Cubists' prototype on the side of painting which 
 dealt entirely with objedlivity, readied against 
 corresponding feminine tendencies in the schools 
 of David and Ingres; and the decisive blow he 
 struck in 1850 with his L'Enterrement a Ornans 
 had a psychological parallel in the Cubists' 
 exhibit in 191 1. While Manet seemed to continue 
 Courbet he in reality retrogressed to a classic 
 prettiness. His achievements may be compared 
 to those of the Orphists who, while seeming to 
 carry on the principles of Cubism, nullified the 
 effed of that school by the misapplication of 
 colour. Cubism itself ignored colour and curved 
 lines. It was a further step toward a more 
 intelledlual type of painting. The modern artist's 
 mind, in becoming more self-conscious, was 
 consequently growing more precise in its expres- 
 sion. And since the Cubists were the primitives 
 of a new era, it was natural that this precision 
 should express itself in straight lines and angular 
 forms. The inconsistency of these artists lay in 
 the fad that, while their first desire was to make 
 their art arbitrary, they were so preoccupied with 
 the dynamism of objedivity that the main objed 
 of their work was deputised. In the canvases of 
 
240 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 Picasso's followers naturalism is the first consider- 
 ation. As a result the organisation of emotion- 
 impelling form is obscured. It was from Cezanne 
 that the Cubists garnered the greater part of their 
 theories, and even the appearance of their work 
 is not unlike his. Cezanne realised that a mere 
 imitation of reality, no matter how interesting, 
 could never set in motion the wheels of aesthetic 
 ecstasy; and so he translated nature into a sub- 
 jedlive impression of reality by expressing it in a 
 complete order which was itself dynamic. The 
 Cubists, profiting by his discoveries of linear and 
 tonal modification, essayed to found a school on 
 certain of his better-known and more easily 
 grasped practices. The spirit of precision, the 
 need for a renovation, and the example of Picasso 
 who at one period copied the angularities of negro 
 sculpture — all gave momentum to the movement. 
 Later were introduced the philosophical reasonings 
 and scientific explanations of which there has 
 recently been so much discussion. 
 
 The total absence of colour in the Cubists is 
 ascribable to the same revolt against prettiness 
 and ambiguity that made them alter their line 
 and form. They felt the subjedlive solidity of 
 Cezanne without understanding that it was 
 brought about by the use of colour whose emo- 
 tional possibilities he had profoundly penetrated. 
 In fadl his art was composed entirely of minute 
 chromatic planes which, by their complete adapt- 
 ability to a given position in space, produced the 
 intensest form. The Cubists' planes are based, 
 not on colour, but on objedlive form itself, and 
 are expressed by tone. In this respe(5l Cubism 
 is diametrically opposed to the conception of 
 
PICASSO AND CUBISM 
 
 Cezanne. With him form was a result of the 
 plastic employment of colour. With the Cubists 
 even tone is subjugated to formal planes. In 
 them we do not experience the subjectivity of 
 emotion which can be produced alone by colour. 
 Their piAures represent a recognisable solidity 
 which, by an image, expresses subjective processes. 
 Cezanne's simultaneous vision of reality had to do 
 purely with the most mobile element of art; the 
 Cubists attempted to express psychological phe- 
 nomena by the limited methods of the early primi- 
 tives. Their inability to sound (not in theory but 
 adlually) the possibilities of colour in the creation 
 of aesthetic form, has caused them to diverge from 
 the diredl path in the development of means, and 
 has restricted permanently their initial desire for 
 concentrated composition. The Impressionists ex- 
 perimented in a highly dynamic element; but 
 the Cubists have only dabbled in mental processes 
 which, even should they become perfeCled, could 
 give us only the sequential vision of a human 
 adlion. The Cubist dodlrine embraces no more 
 than a side issue in an art which primarily has to 
 do with the organisation of form. In the effort 
 of the Cubists to create a pure art they merely 
 disguise objeClivity by abstrad thought. This is 
 by no means the same as creating abstrad: form 
 — that is, form which is not reminiscent of a 
 particular natural objedl; and by failing in this 
 they let pass the great opportunity of taking the 
 final step from Matisse to purity. They took 
 only a half step, for in their exultation they forgot 
 the preceding advances in composition. 
 
 In such forgetfulness there was nothing unusual. 
 Every new movement in the progress of art has 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 about it a certain isolation of ambition. The first 
 innovators push out the boundary on one side; 
 their followers, on another; and the final expo- 
 nents of a method, having fully assimilated what 
 has preceded them, combine the endeavours and 
 accomplishments of their forerunners and go 
 forward to new achievements. Cezanne had rec- 
 ognised that he could never round out his own 
 cycle. No stricture can attach to his incomplete- 
 ness: his life was too short for realisation. That 
 the Cubists did not altogether achieve their desire 
 does not detract from the importance of their 
 departure from established precedent. Their re- 
 a(flion was a salutary event in the evolution of 
 modern painting. The field of art was being 
 overrun by the decadents of Impressionism and 
 Cezanne, by the imitators of Toulouse-Lautrec 
 and Degas, by those academicians who follow 
 in the wake of every movement long after its 
 methods have been accepted as vital. These 
 scholastic men were incorporating spots and bright 
 colours into their school-room drawings when 
 Cubism came forward. By its unequivocal ex- 
 pression of opinions and by its neat delimitations 
 of planes it has revealed the futility and petti- 
 ness of academic alterations. Besides their purely 
 psychological innovations the Cubists have 
 achieved all the ambitions of the academies in a 
 way so net, so sure, so precise, that they have 
 reduced the school, if not to silence, at least to 
 ineffedualness. No longer can the admirers of 
 scholastic art stand before a canvas exclaiming 
 on the feeling, the atmosphere or the spirituality 
 of the work. One must now use concrete terms 
 and speak of those qualities which have to do 
 
PICASSO AND CUBISM 
 
 with profound order; for although the theories of 
 Cubism state one thing, the application of them 
 has taken another and definite aesthetic form. In 
 the Cubists' work lies their greatest importance. 
 We may without loss lay aside their explanations, 
 their manifestos and the reports of their ledures. 
 
 The idea of synthesis in painting had been so 
 thoroughly assimilated through familiarity with 
 successive movements that, with the advent of 
 Cubism, it was an accepted and unquestioned law 
 of painting. Synthesis had in fad become an 
 almost unconscious knowledge. Ingres, Daumier, 
 Manet, Seurat and Matisse had, in quick succes- 
 sion, proclaimed its value in eliminating the 
 unimportant and unessential from models. With 
 Cubism, as with Matisse and Gauguin, synthesis 
 was the supreme ambition — synthesis which had 
 for its goal the artistic consistency of all the 
 pidure's qualities. Subjedl-matter, colour and 
 the method of expression were all harmonised in 
 Gauguin: with him the synthesis was illustrative. 
 In Matisse it manifested itself in the redudion of 
 form and colour to their simplest and most per- 
 sonal expression, and was therefore a step toward 
 a pure art. With Picasso synthesis went still 
 further. It became almost basic. We know that 
 the curved line stands for life, colour and move- 
 ment; that the straight line represents the dead, 
 the sombre and the static. A solid dark is con- 
 ducive to peace, while quickly succeeding light 
 and dark promote liveliness. Bearing these funda- 
 mental postulates in mind we can easily analyse 
 Picasso's quality of synthesis. The straight line 
 which predominates in Cubism repudiates colour: 
 — the Cubists were not colourists. The curved 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 line, when profoundly comprehended, expresses 
 movement and fluidity; when used haphazardly 
 mere prettiness results. There are seldom any 
 curves in Cubism, and then only for relieving the 
 monotony, for the sake of ornament. In the 
 Cubists' scintillating succession of darks and 
 lights, like a photographic negative of a Cezanne 
 or an early Renoir, there is an unescapable femi- 
 nine prettiness in which the twinkling of tone 
 serves the same purpose as pretty colour. By 
 their straight lines, subfuse tones and rigid forms, 
 on the one hand, they achieve immobility. By 
 their lights and darks, their curves and their 
 dependence on nature, on the other hand, they 
 reveal their emotional kinship to the illustrative 
 schools of Whistler, Fragonard and Tiepolo. 
 Now when we combine properly these two widely 
 separated aspeds of art — the one almost Egyptian 
 and the other almost English — we obtain a com- 
 bination of temperamental charadleristics capable 
 of the greatest achievements, for we have brought 
 about the coalition of the purely masculine and 
 the purely feminine. In Cubism, however, these 
 two aspeds are mingled disproportionately. The 
 static predominates. The pretty is merely super- 
 imposed because of temperamental didation: 
 instead of fundioning, it only attrads. But 
 though in Cubism we do not find the perfed 
 fusion of these creative sex impulses, the simul- 
 taneous presence of the two elements produces 
 nevertheless a fundamental synthesis. 
 
 In order to bring about the greatest art, the 
 form and order (which constitute the masculine 
 side) must be all-pervading. Objedive ornament 
 and external beauty (which constitute the femi- 
 
PICASSO AND CUBISM 
 
 nine side) must be only the inspiration to creation. 
 This is an important principle, for all art, like all 
 life, falls into either the masculine or the feminine 
 category. All personal preferences for certain 
 forms of art are imputable to the predomina- 
 tion of the male or the female in the individual. 
 Necessarily all creation is to a certain extent 
 masculine — in it there has to be order; and by 
 the predomination of the male or female is meant 
 simply the accentuation of one of these qualities 
 in their relative combination in each of the sexes. 
 For instance, should the feminine "predominate" 
 in a man, the fadl would merely indicate that the 
 percentage of femininity in his bisexuality had over- 
 balanced the normal ratio. Decoration, which is 
 an ornamental art, is feminine, and it will appeal 
 to men who have a subnormal amount of the creator 
 in them. The colossally ordered art of a Rubens 
 will be understood and enjoyed only by one highly 
 capable of creation, for in the contemplation and 
 comprehension of a profound work of art the 
 spedlator reconstructs the artist's mind after his 
 own formula, and thus recreates the work for 
 himself. That side of art which is the recording 
 of some emotion the artist has experienced so 
 intensely that it demands concrete expression, is 
 feminine. It is merely an overflow of receptivity 
 into objedlivity. To the contrary, when great 
 art is produced it is not dependent on a specific 
 exterior impulse. It grows abstradlly out of a col- 
 ledlion of assimilated impressions. When the will 
 dominates the expression, these impressions must 
 take plastic form. The desire to create is in itself 
 feminine. The construAive ability is masculine. 
 The first desire always is to decorate and beautify. 
 
246 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 but the masculine will didates and rules the ex- 
 pression. In feminine art the will to co-ordinate 
 is absent. Consequently the expression is only 
 the diredl result of the reception. The Cubists 
 realise that the will must play a large part in paint- 
 ing, but they exert their will on the analysis of 
 thought rather than on their adlual productions. 
 The result is that, while their expression is highly 
 restrained and reasoned, the will is exercised only 
 on the emotion of the received impression, and is 
 not manifested on their canvases' surface. In all 
 their work they are decorators first and significant 
 artists afterward. They belong distinctly to the 
 lighter side of artistic tradition. They are the 
 lyric poets of the plastic. 
 
 This is markedly true of Picasso who instigated 
 the movement. When he first came to Paris 
 he threw himself into a style of painting which 
 recalled Steinlen at his best. From Steinlen he 
 went to Toulouse-Lautrec and Impressionistic 
 colour. Next he did carefully drawn portraits 
 which proclaimed him a greater Gauguin. Later 
 he become infatuated with the rhythm and skele- 
 ton-like creations of El Greco. It was at this 
 period that he began to do his significant work. 
 His pictures for the most part were painted in 
 blue. They were sensitive to a high degree, and 
 were, in the sculptural sense, sometimes ordered 
 into a solid block form. Then, adopting a reddish 
 colour gamut, he began to create full figures c^f 
 nudes, portraits and animal studies. At this 
 time he commenced his research in precise form. 
 He organised copies of negro sculpture of which 
 he had heard much from Matisse, and it was a 
 result of his studying these rigid figures that 
 
FEMME A LA MANDOLINE PICASSO 
 
PICASSO AND. CUBISM 247 
 
 angularities began to creep into his art. Other 
 artists set to work along the same lines, and from 
 the fridion of ideas which followed the theory 
 of Cubism was evolved. Picasso's still-lives then 
 became more precise, more hard-cut, more per- 
 sonal, more completely ordered. It is from this 
 period we receive some of his greatest work. 
 
 Shortly after came the Cubist theory of simul- 
 taneity. The authorship of this theory is in 
 doubt. There has been much controversy as to 
 whether it originated with Picasso or with one of 
 his followers. But it was straightway adopted by 
 the entire group and made one of the dominating 
 principles of the movement. Simultaneity to 
 these painters meant the combined presentation 
 of a number of aspedls of the same objeA from 
 many different angles. In the visualisation of an 
 objedl in nature during the absence of that obje(5t, 
 we conceive it, not only as a silhouette or as a 
 form with three dimensions, but as a congeries 
 of silhouettes which, when imagined simultane- 
 ously, constitute the appearance of the objed: 
 from every known angle. In short, our minds 
 envelop it and all its attributes at the same in- 
 stant. Such a vision is the result of colledled and 
 concentrated memory. In a desire to disarm 
 criticism the Cubists offered as a theory the 
 pidurisation of this multilateral vision; but in 
 reality it was little more than an excuse to make 
 the utilisation of natural forms more arbitrary 
 than in the case of Matisse, Cezanne and Gauguin 
 and also to rid themselves entirely of the illus- 
 trative obstacle. Their ingrained weakness lay 
 in that they did not possess sufficient genius to 
 alienate themselves entirely from document and 
 
248 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 to create new abstract compositions. Nor did 
 their instind permit them to throw document 
 aside when they sensed their inability to replace 
 it with something more vital. Their spirit of 
 revolution worked on the form which illustration 
 would take, rather than on the discontinuance of 
 illustration. But even in this attitude they 
 marked a decided progress, for while in the paint- 
 ings of their predecessors the disposition of line 
 and form had made a unity of many separated 
 figures, these figures, even to a mind unusually 
 free from the taint of anecdote and objedlivity 
 in art, presented themselves separately as integers 
 of a whole. The Cubists, by breaking up a 
 model into parts which separately bore little 
 resemblance to nature, proved that they not only 
 recognised the demands of pure organisation but 
 that they knew those demands could never be 
 met so long as there were recognisable objedls in 
 a painting. 
 
 The presentation of a nude or a landscape from 
 many different viewpoints was in itself no more 
 important than the methods of the Impressionists. 
 Indeed the pleasure derived from so construdling 
 a pidure is similar to the pleasure derived from 
 copying light. It represents the nearest approach 
 of the enthusiastic painter of form to the enthusi- 
 astic painter of light. They are both interested 
 in recording a rather puzzling and interesting 
 phenomenon: the one is after that which creates 
 the impressions of form; the other, that which 
 creates the impressions of colour. Both, in the 
 broad sense, derive the same enjoyment in deci- 
 phering the work after it is finished. The one re- 
 cords only broad waves of scintillating colours 
 
PICASSO AND CUBISM 249 
 
 with no demarcation of silhouettes; and these 
 colours gradually resolve themselves into a sunny 
 and ambiguous landscape. The other makes a 
 number of broad planes of brown and white which, 
 when diligently studied in their parts, become the 
 angular representation of water, ships, sky-lines 
 which run into and through houses, trees which 
 obscure near-by objedls, and houses which melt 
 into distant skies. Both schools of painting are 
 impressionistic; each treats of exadly what the 
 other negleds. No artist as yet has seen the 
 distindl advantage of uniting the two methods. 
 Cezanne might be suggested as having approached 
 this alliance, but his means were too profound for 
 him to be led into portraying by concrete symbols 
 his impressions of a model. 
 
 In painting the enveloping mental vision of a 
 model, however, the Cubists adually failed in the 
 synchronism for which they strove. In reality 
 they extended the effe6l of their piAures into 
 time more than ever before. To grasp their 
 illustrative import, long and arduous search must 
 be made. While their canvases present a simul- 
 taneous vision, each pidlure as a whole is incapable 
 of creating a unified impression. A Cubist paint- 
 ing is, let us say, like the momentary blare of a 
 hundred musical instruments all of which play 
 consecutive bars. By approaching each performer 
 in order and studying his particular notes, until 
 every musical detail is learned, we might intel- 
 ledlually construA from our memory an impression 
 of a related musical composition. But should the 
 blare be repeated, even after our research, the 
 music's meaning would be no clearer than before. 
 On the other hand, if, having first heard the com- 
 
2SO MODERN PAINTING 
 
 position in its natural development, we had 
 studied its parts and motifs and then heard it 
 repeated sequentially, a greater enjoyment and 
 comprehension would result. In breaking up 
 nature, either for the sake of extending the 
 aesthetic appreciation into time like music, or for 
 simuhaneity of presentation, all the parts must 
 answer to an organisation; — in the first case, so 
 that, after the spedator's first fleeting vision of 
 the whole, his eye will be carried from one part 
 to another by the rhythmic balance of volume, 
 linear opposition and harmony of colour; and in 
 the second case, so that the canvas will be an 
 interdependent block-manifestation. 
 
 In construdling formal planes with definite tones 
 whose values are mechanical and absolute, the 
 Cubists have missed that possible subjedlivity 
 of movement which, in its highest degree, colour 
 alone can give. They have construAed only 
 primitively ordered bas-reliefs each plane and 
 line of which has a distind diredion. And this di- 
 redion, no matter what is added to or subtracted 
 from the work, will remain the same. The planes 
 are consequently static and absolute. In the 
 great art of Cezanne there is only a relative abso- 
 lutism. By any alteration in one of his pidures, 
 the entirety is shattered: the diredion of each 
 plane and line is changed to concur with the needs 
 of a different order. This is because Cezanne's 
 work possesses the poise which is demanded in 
 the highest art. And this poise is what Cubism, 
 with its rigid lines and planes, has entirely missed. 
 Illustratively the Cubists' conception was new, 
 compositionally it was old; and an art cannot 
 be significantly renovated save from the bottom 
 
PICASSO AND CUBISM 251 
 
 upward. The foundation of all art is composition, 
 and the only means which can be accepted as 
 vital are those which increase the artist's power 
 to express that which is more inherent in painting 
 than in any of the other arts, namely: rhythmic 
 form in three dimensions. That the Cubists 
 failed to develop such means may be perceived 
 by comparing the compositions of Picasso's "red" 
 period, which were but slightly cubic and which 
 contain a certain amount of arbitrary form, with 
 his late and wholly cubic black-and-white draw- 
 ings and paintings such as are seen at Kahn- 
 weiler's back of the Madeleine. The latter are 
 almost wholly flat. His Femme a la Mandoline 
 marks the transition from the early period to the 
 late one. In all his piAures one finds a charming 
 rhythm of lights and darks and a slight compre- 
 hension of surface form. But he never goes very 
 deep. Even in his sculptured heads, while there 
 is order, there is no form in the compositional 
 sense. 
 
 To ascribe Picasso's Cubism to so childish an 
 impulse as a desire to square an academic draw- 
 ing is both untrue and unjust. Some have 
 pointed to Diirer as his artistic forbear merely 
 because Durer once described a number of curves 
 which he said could be made into a human body 
 and drew a block-diagram of box-like forms which 
 he said was the basis for the body's construdion. 
 But no relationship exists between these two 
 artists. Cubism's first consideration was to coyer 
 the surfaces of its canvases with form, thus doing 
 away with the empty spaces so prevalent in all 
 art works, spaces which Cezanne left blank. To 
 accomplish this logically it was necessary either 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 to introduce superfluous figures, or to stretch the 
 ones already present into impossible distortions. 
 Since the elimination of all unessentials was the 
 keynote of the day, Picasso decided to make 
 multiplex his essentials. Herewith was born the 
 Cubist conception of breaking up the model for 
 the attainment of a more complete work and one 
 in which there would be no dead planes. At first 
 an extensive linear diredlion, which started at 
 the lower frame, was carried up into the back- 
 ground by the demarcation of a shadow or an 
 object, for the purpose of holding tightly together 
 two or more forms. Later, in order to facilitate 
 this procedure of multiplying their models, the 
 Cubists began to walk round them. This pro- 
 cess unchained them from the slavery to a single 
 model and from the given contour of an absolute 
 subjed. At the same time it permitted them a 
 fantastically arbitrary composition, and made 
 their expression more dependent on the personal- 
 ity of the artist, and less contingent on precon- 
 ceived ideas, than ever before. 
 
 Cubism expressed a laudable tendency toward 
 an aristocratic vision as opposed to the popular 
 vision of reality. Its pictures therefore became 
 doubly complex, for in the contemplation of the 
 pidlurisation of our mental process, another pro- 
 cess is started which is far more complicated than 
 the first. Herein we have an explanation for the 
 fad: that Cubism is incomprehensible to the 
 untutored person who regards art as an imitation 
 of nature. The very word "form*' is aestheti- 
 cally meaningless to the average spedlator. In 
 order to experience its meaning, aside from 
 organisation, one's attention has to be given over 
 
PICASSO AND CUBISM 253 
 
 to the objed's weight, its force, its circum- 
 ferential volume. A form in a pidlure cannot be 
 considered merely as to its employment and its 
 utilitarian destiny, or from the standpoint of 
 one's experience with it. To the great artist an 
 objed exists as a volume with which to fill a 
 given space. He completely forgets its raison 
 d'etre in life, and views it only as a means for 
 tightening a pidure's order. To this extreme of 
 pure artistic conception the Cubists never at- 
 tained. And while Cezanne advanced from Cour- 
 bet's surface realism to the realism of causes, 
 the Cubists were unable to progress along similar 
 lines. They simply translated abstradion into 
 terms of concrete expression. The profound 
 reasons for dynamism in art were left untouched 
 by them. They endeavoured to portray objec- 
 tively an abstrad process, expeding its mere 
 portrayal to be dynamic. 
 
 The dynamic, however, cannot be rendered by 
 imitation. It is as impossible of attainment by 
 this method as in the dancing-girl canvases of 
 Degas. Behind the emotional power of nature 
 there is a great abstrad force; and the effed of 
 dynamism can be got only when this force is 
 expressed. Then the result is a natural outgrowth 
 of a cause. Otherwise we have only a detached 
 effed which does not lead us back into the 
 undercurrents of causation. When a Cubist pic- 
 ture is interesting it will at most make us puzzle 
 over the application of its theories; it can never 
 move us aesthetically by the sheer power of its 
 methods. The one dynamic element which the 
 Cubists have in common with Cezanne — namely: 
 the modification of lines and forms through 
 
254 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 contaA with other Hnes and forms — they have 
 nullified by constructing with rigid tones the 
 planes which the lines delimit, thereby making 
 their planes frozen and immovable. Because 
 ignorant of the fundionality of colour the Cubists 
 were unable to present, at one and the same time, 
 perfed mobility, planar solidity and indefinite 
 depth. As a result of too much study of Ce- 
 zanne's and El Greco's composition and too little 
 study of Michelangelo and Rubens, they failed 
 to achieve, even with the great arbitrariness and 
 convenience of their means, a profound composi- 
 tion which is a rhythmic order of volume, as 
 distinguished from a simple organisation of parts. 
 Their accomplishments do not realise the promises 
 of their programme because their theories were 
 too inflexible. Cubism was too tightly bound 
 by rigid systems and methods to produce plasti- 
 cally significant results. 
 
 The Cubists' greatest apport to art (not in 
 theory but in achievement) is their almost total 
 abolition of the painter's slavery to nature. It 
 was but a step from Matisse to the complete 
 elimination of recognisable objeds, and though 
 Cubism did not cover the entire distance, it 
 nevertheless made an advance toward that pure 
 expression which Cezanne saw was inevitable. 
 Even today the followers of this school are 
 beginning to realise their' early mistakes and to 
 throw off their self-imposed restrictions. They 
 are launching forth into colour and are seeking 
 expression in purely arbitrary form. But these 
 new developments have not yet been productive 
 of a new artistic worth. Indeed, it is doubtful 
 if they will lead to important results so long as 
 
PICASSO AND CUBISM 255 
 
 the geometrical phase of Cubism is adhered to, 
 and so long as the Cubists ignore the dynamic 
 possibilities of colour. In its present status 
 Cubism can only continue striving toward a style 
 that goes deeper than tonal prettiness and lyric 
 immobility. Already Picasso has passed out of 
 painting altogether. An artist with his extraordi- 
 nary gift to do anything superficially well could 
 not remain anchored to an idea after the novelty 
 of its method had worn off. He is not a man 
 who is the slave of thought, but rather an obsti- 
 nate artist with a spark of genius who has passed 
 through many different stages with a rapidity 
 born of astounding dexterity and cleverness. 
 Many of his early female heads rival in sheer 
 classic beauty the best of the Renaissance 
 painters. Some of his pen-and-ink drawings are 
 the most sensitive of modern times. There are 
 caricatures done by him which closely approach 
 the fantasy of a Goya. Indeed it may be justly 
 said that he is as great an illustrator as Raphael. 
 And in this analogy lie both his glory and 
 his limitation. Like Raphael he lacks that pro- 
 found penetration of exteriors which would per- 
 mit him a comprehension of his greater influences 
 — of El Greco, for instance. But, with a glance, 
 he can sound the depths of a Toulouse-Lautrec, 
 a Steinlen or a piece of negro sculpture. 
 
 Picasso's inability to conceive two elements at 
 once and to construdl a complicated development 
 of composition, is exemplified in his earlier work, 
 first, by his adherence to certain single colours 
 at different stages of his career, secondly, by the 
 extreme simplicity of his circus folk, and thirdly, 
 by his figure compositions which, though they 
 
2S6 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 are never tedious or dull and possess an almost 
 nervous sensibilite, are limited to one or two 
 human forms. Again Picasso's limitation of com- 
 positional conception is attested to by his stub- 
 born use of brown and white in his latest Cubist 
 pidures, by his employment of line alone in the 
 drawings of his architedural-plan stage, and by 
 his application of objedls at hand to the clay 
 blocks which mark his latest metamorphosis. 
 But no matter what his medium or style, he 
 remains essentially unchanged. In all his work 
 is felt the superficial lightness of one who con- 
 ceives order only as an ornament to decoration 
 and who is interested in three-dimensional form 
 merely as an after-thought. His sculpture is but 
 his painting in a solider medium. It is broken 
 up into planes and organised as to each contour 
 in exadlly the same manner as is his work in 
 oils. The difference between Picasso, the sculp- 
 tor, and Matisse, the sculptor, is the difference 
 between a man who has a slight genius for 
 rhythm and a block order, and one who has a 
 slight genius for characterisation and a perfedl 
 ensemble. The art of Picasso, having to do with 
 form as decoration, is admirably adapted to 
 sculpture. The art of Matisse, being flat and 
 dealing with colour as decoration, is inexpressible 
 in clay. 
 
 Fernand Leger, with the exception of Picasso, 
 is the most genuinely talented artist of the 
 Cubist movement. His work at first was much 
 less radical than that of his confreres and gave 
 greater evidence of depth because it had never 
 completely shaken off perspedlive. His canvases, 
 Les Toits and Maisons et Fumees, represent 
 
FUMEUR ET PAYSAGE LEGER 
 
PICASSO AND CUBISM 
 
 little more than a highly artistic angularisation 
 of a subjed: which, being angular in itself, lends 
 itself admirably to Cubistic treatment. Leger's 
 method is to place in the foreground large planes 
 which serve as a frame for the ad:ual pidlure 
 which is seen between them as through a tunnel. 
 By this device he creates a diversity of form and 
 with it a recognisable depth. His paint at first 
 was light in tone, but is now taking on colour. 
 Since his first Cubist exhibits he has made a 
 logical progress in rhythmic conception, and if 
 his past development can be assumed as a 
 criterion of the future it is safe to prophesy that 
 eventually he will be the most significant man of 
 the original group. Albert Gleizes, Jean Met- 
 zinger, Marcel Duchamp, Georges Braque and 
 Francis Picabia are all prominent figures in the 
 Cubist movement. Gleizes manifested his first 
 Cubist tendencies by giving form a solid angu- 
 larity, thereby making it precise. His canvases 
 are devoid of interest because so slightly creative. 
 His well-known L'Homme au Balcon appears to 
 us today almost Futuristic in conception. In 
 fad:, it was exposed at the Salon d'Automne in 
 191 2 one year after the Futurist show; and 
 when we compare it with his early and less 
 significant Les Baigneuses, with which it was 
 hung, it gives the impression of having been the 
 result of a sudden and enthusiastic inspiration 
 from the newer men. Later his work grew 
 broader and simpler, but in it there is little or no 
 composition. Even the order is that of the 
 straight line. Metzinger is a better artist. In 
 him is a greater order, although, as in Gleizes, it 
 is produced by the straight line. During his 
 
258 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 artistic beginnings he was under the sway of 
 negro sculpture and painted in small planes of 
 light and dark. Later, turning from the influence 
 of negro antiquity, he direded his talent on 
 nature and began to interpret form into angu- 
 larities. His La Femme au Cheval, done in 
 191 2, was a distind step, both as to form and 
 composition, in advance of the naturalistic vision; 
 and his Le Port is one of the finest examples of 
 the Cubist theory of synchronous pidurisation 
 and interpenetrating lines and masses. Duchamp, 
 a slighter talent than either Leger or Gleizes, 
 is the Whistler of the movement. In his pidures 
 are less form, less composition and less comprehen- 
 sion of volume than in any other Cubist work 
 except that of Juan Gris whose lethargic canvases 
 have not even the interest of an Aime Morot. 
 Braque has added nothing to Cubism. He fol- 
 lowed Picasso closely, and his whole creative 
 impetus seems derived from the latter's canvases. 
 
 Picabia, despite his popularity, is but a second- 
 rate Cubist. He was quick to grasp the fadl 
 that the Cubists were working away from illus- 
 tration, and attempted to step beyond them. 
 Where they had endeavoured to bring about the 
 precise stylisation of form, he merely dealt in 
 ribbon-like patches of colour which were without 
 contour, shape, proportion or volume. His can- 
 vases wherein many of these strange amorphous 
 hachures are grouped, have a highly bizarre 
 appearance but are only remotely intelligible. 
 He used almost monochromatic schemes, as did 
 his master Picasso, and continued this style of 
 work until his fellow Cubists, by diligent research 
 and serious study, had approached the abstrad: 
 
PICASSO AND CUBISM 259 
 
 appearance of his surfaces. Picabia then found 
 a new impetus in the works of the Futurists — 
 an impetus toward movement expressed, not by 
 bodies, but by Hne. This Futurist influence 
 resulted in his making flat pictures of many 
 sharply defined silhouettes tinted red, green, blue 
 and grey. His lines serve only to accentuate 
 the chaos of his ensemble, for in his work there 
 is no definite conception of the whole. 
 
 Cubism's possibilities as a dynamic illustrative 
 art have never been adequately exhausted, and, 
 since the angular mode is rapidly disappearing as 
 a result of newer and more vital visions, they 
 probably never will. Picasso was its high priest 
 up to two years ago, at which time colour, coming 
 back on the wave of a counter-revolution, threw 
 most of the Cubists into its application. Robert 
 Delaunay was responsible for this reaction. 
 Early in 191 2 he came forward with a very 
 large canvas entitled Ville de Paris, whose surface 
 was broken up into many angular planes after 
 the Cubist fashion. But instead of depid:ing 
 forms and formal relations, the pid:ure was 
 painted in greys and high colours solely as a 
 means of surface filling. Its contours recalled 
 El Greco despite their being disguised by triangu- 
 lar dislocations. The pidlure represented three 
 mammoth Graces standing before a distant Paris 
 landscape, and so transparent and ethereal was 
 it that it seemed as though a breath could have 
 dispersed it into mist. It possessed the delicate 
 loveliness of a butterfly, and the eye, in running 
 over its glittering and pretty array of colours, 
 was fascinated as in the contemplation of a 
 kaleidoscope. But the canvas, while provoking a 
 
26o MODERN PAINTING 
 
 distind visual pleasure, failed to arouse any 
 aesthetic enjoyment. 
 
 Delaunay's L'Equipe de Cardiff the following 
 year was equally unemotional. Fundamentally 
 this piAure was the same as his Ville de Paris, 
 though treated differently as to surface. The 
 same up-shooting type of svelte beauty as for- 
 merly bodied forth in his three Graces was here 
 repeated in the bodies of the athletes, but there 
 was in addition a very slight surface rhythm; 
 and the colour, because its application was 
 broader, had a greater fascination. In his Ville 
 de Paris, not daring to paint a naturally drawn 
 nude with the colours his sense of prettiness and 
 ornament didated, he fragmentised the surface 
 by luxating the lines. Thus, while the sensitive 
 contour was retained, the pidure appeared as if 
 viewed through a polygonal prism. In the second 
 canvas this artifice for the sake of charm was 
 discarded. The players were dressed in solid 
 colours of bright pigment; the sky was blue- 
 violet; the Eiffel tower, eminently appreciable, 
 stood to the right; down the centre of the canvas 
 was a large afiche in yellow; and overhead soared 
 an aeroplane. The transition from a hackneyed 
 theme to a modern one was the result of the 
 artist's desire to pass beyond the methods of the 
 day to more vigorous ones. 
 
 Before Delaunay's decisive work was done he 
 had been influenced by the Neo-Impressionists, 
 Cezanne, the Cubists and, in his two mentioned 
 early works, by the Impressionists. Indeed these 
 pid:ures are the expression of Impressionist 
 methods broadened and extended to suit the 
 dimensions of his canvases. His cityscapes with 
 
PICASSO AND CUBISM 261 
 
 the Eiffel tower as the principal obje(5l are in- 
 teresting though not profound, and such canvases 
 as the Route de Laon and Les Tours are so 
 dainty they seem breathed onto the canvas. 
 He is essentially a decorator in that he works 
 always in two dimensions. This surface quality 
 enters into all art, but in itself it is never signifi- 
 cant. Only when it is a result of ordered plastic- 
 ity does it have power to move us. In Delaunay, 
 however, there exists no fundamental order. Con- 
 sequently his power is strid:ly limited. His desire 
 is to make decoration which will be profound, in- 
 stead of profound composition which will result in 
 decoration. By thus reversing the natural order, 
 eflfed:s are considered before causes; and only by 
 the dynamism of causes can we be made to feel 
 beauty. Beauty such as his is merely prettiness: 
 it is only the objedive mask of beauty, and is 
 of no more aesthetic importance than a view 
 of nature. The true beauty of a work of art 
 is subjedlive; it is the effed of one's having 
 sensed the accumulated and sequential aspeds 
 of co-ordinated expression. Herein lies the dif- 
 ference between aesthetic emotion and the pleasure 
 aroused by a sunset, a stage setting or a dramatic 
 story. When one is able to penetrate finally into 
 art, neither dolour nor depression results, but 
 always a feeling of exultation and joy, for by 
 one's intelledual comprehension one has been 
 physically aroused by a dynamic force, not 
 merely moved by a scene or story which sets in 
 motion the associative processes. 
 
 To the inadequate comprehension of this psy- 
 chological truth is attributable the failure of the 
 Cubists and of Delaunay. The latter strove to 
 
262 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 preserve the individuality of his work under the 
 name of Orphism, and later under the designation 
 of Simultaneism. But his temperamental kinship 
 to Picasso and the Cubists is too obvious to be 
 denied by nomenclature. Even his latest work, 
 while more abstraft and more luminous, is at 
 most secessionistic. His canvas hung in the 
 Salon des Independants in 19 14 was Cubism 
 translated into light colours and twisted into 
 curves and circles. Delaunay's wife, Madame 
 Delaunay-Terk, follows him closely in inspira- 
 tion and application, but her pictures are less 
 ordered than his. The American, Bruce, once 
 an imitator of Matisse and later of Cezanne, has 
 joined the Simultaneist ranks; and Frost, another 
 American, is an ardent disciple of Delaunay. 
 The orthodox Cubists had passed colour by, but 
 its reappearance in the Orphists-Simultaneists 
 was a significant augury. Though it was not 
 understood by them as an element capable of 
 organic fundlioning, its mere presence was an 
 inspiration and a call to all genuine artists to 
 penetrate its meaning in relation to the intensifi- 
 cation of form. 
 
XII 
 
 FUTURISM 
 
 THE dramatic enhancement of painting 
 by line so well understood by the 
 ancients, and the literary intensifica- 
 tion of subjedt-matter by colour fore- 
 shadowed by the primitives and made more 
 conscious by Delacroix, reached their highest 
 development in the theories of Kandinsky and 
 the Futurists. With Delacroix's comments con- 
 cerning the harmonising of line and colour with 
 subjedl and Seurat's and Signac's subsequent 
 addenda to these comments, began scientific 
 observation in painting. So long as these theories 
 remained secondary to the great truths of com- 
 position they were admissible, because they had 
 to do only with the unimportant ornamentation 
 of an aesthetic organisation. But when, as in 
 Kandinsky and the Futurists, they became the 
 all in all of the artist's ambitions, they ceased to 
 produce painting, and gave birth only to bad 
 music, as in the Russian, and to bad poetry, as 
 in the Italians. But while the Futurists' work 
 had little to commend it to the discriminating 
 spectator, their ideas were interesting and in- 
 spiring, and it is from their manifestos that has 
 come what little influence they have exerted. 
 Their pid:ures are neither pretty nor agreeable, 
 while Kandinsky's, to the contrary, possess dainty 
 
264 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 and pleasing traits. In both cases the pi(5lures 
 are puzzles to be deciphered at length: they are 
 expressions of moods brought about by half 
 veiling reality and by making symbolically con- 
 crete an abstract force or cause. 
 
 In music where the form is an abstract result 
 of concrete causes and in literature where the 
 form is wholly abstrad: and represented by 
 symbols, moods can be easily expressed, for they 
 are the natural outgrowth of the media of these 
 two arts. But in painting and sculpture, which 
 are the visual arts wherein the form itself is 
 concrete, emotion can be provoked only by a 
 plastic poise of subjedlive weights. The balance 
 and opposition of such weights or volumes when 
 rhythmically organised give rise to complete 
 aesthetic satisfacflion and engender a feeling of 
 finality which encompasses both line and colour. 
 The Futurists, as did Delacroix and Seurat, 
 count on "force-lines" to express an emotion, 
 thereby branding themselves two-dimensional 
 artists. And their desire to represent an emotion 
 of objedlivity on canvas places them at once in 
 the ranks of illustrators. The highest art has 
 nothing to do with objed:ive reality whether as 
 a spectacle or as a means to sensation. It is 
 true that painting, in becoming pure, will even- 
 tually incorporate the associative emotions, but 
 these emotions will be the psychological results 
 of abstradl form, not memorial experiences pro- 
 duced by cognitive objeAs. And the line, of 
 which we have heard so much, will then become 
 a diredlion and equality of pure form; it will no 
 longer be simply an indication on a flat surface 
 by means of a mark. The Futurists did not 
 
FUTURISM 
 
 265 
 
 strive for purity. Rather did they emphasise an 
 irrelevant side of painting. They declared them- 
 selves the renovators of subjed-matter. Their 
 whole ambition worked toward that end; and 
 it is from that standpoint they must be judged. 
 
 In arriving at their conclusions many necessities 
 of aesthetic emotion were sensed. Their most 
 important statement, and one which, because of 
 the dearth of significant art criticism, had not 
 previously been set down, is that the person who 
 contemplates a pidure should not feel himself a 
 mere observer of the events taking place in the 
 painted work, but one of the principal adors in 
 the canvas. In illustration such empathy is 
 impossible unless the work is wholly and ulti- 
 mately synthesised as to volume, colour, line, 
 diredion, size and subjed. No such work has 
 ever been produced because all the dramatic 
 uses of these elements have never been under- 
 stood by one man. That there are hundreds of 
 canvases which entrain us into their ramifications 
 is indisputable, but the aesthetic emotion we feel 
 in them has to do with formal line alone, not 
 with the perfed concord of line, form and subjed. 
 Marinetti and his group have striven earnestly 
 to accomplish this difficult feat, but in every 
 instance have failed. The explanation of their 
 theories has far more to do with the emotion 
 their pidures arouse in us, than has the adual 
 application of these theories to canvas. They 
 state that perpendicular, undulating and worn-out 
 lines attached to hollow bodies express languor 
 and discouragement; that confused, somersaulting 
 lines, straight or curved, confounded into sug- 
 gested gestures of appeal or haste, express the 
 
266 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 chaotic agitation of sentiments; that horizontal, 
 jerky lines which brutally cut into semi-obscured 
 faces, and bits of broken, irregular landscape give 
 us the sensation of one departing on a journey. 
 But while all this may be true, it has nothing to 
 do with the aesthetic emotion which in painting 
 grows entirely out of the dynamic use of the 
 elements inherent in that art. 
 
 The desire of many modern painters and theo- 
 rists to introduce into their own art emotions 
 derived from the other arts results, first, from 
 the modern ambition to intensify each of the 
 arts, and secondly, from certain observations in 
 aesthetic fundamentals, which have led artists 
 little by little toward a vague realisation that the 
 basis of all the arts is identical. But in this 
 synthesis of the arts there is nothing new. The 
 Futurists, in attempting to fuse poetry and paint- 
 ing, are many decades too late to lay claim to 
 originality. Numerous attempts — all of them 
 failures — have been made along similar lines. 
 Wagner's was the most conspicuous. Then there 
 were Sadikichi Hartmann, Madame Mary Hal- 
 lock, Rene de Ghil, Arthur Rimbaud and recently 
 Alexander Scriabine, all of whom commingled the 
 different arts in an attempt to produce intensity. 
 Commendable as these efforts for a hybrid expres- 
 sion may be, they are a futile expenditure of 
 energy until the arts have been more precisely 
 understood; and it is worth noting that those 
 who have tried to coalesce them have been, in 
 nearly every instance, the ones who understand 
 none of them profoundly. The Futurists prove 
 no exception. Their misapprehension of paint- 
 ing is analogous to that of Degas who, in piduring 
 
FUTURISM 
 
 267 
 
 the dance,' imagined that the spectator, by 
 contemplating its static representations, would 
 experience its rhythm. 
 
 The emotion of movement which the Futurists 
 wish to call up can never be produced by dis- 
 ordered and tumbling lines. The effedl is chaos. 
 Movement grows out of the placement and 
 displacement of volumes. It is a result of 
 rhythmic organisation. We are conscious of 
 movement in a human body when a position or 
 pose is shifted, and we are conscious of it only 
 during the process of shifting. Should we look at 
 a body in one position, close our eyes during its 
 change of attitude, and then behold it completely 
 altered, we should not experience a sensation of 
 adlion at all. But if the static points of move- 
 ment present themselves to us with sufficient 
 rapidity they produce the effed: of continuous 
 movement, as in the simulacra of the kinemato- 
 graph. Otherwise we record merely the result 
 of the change of position — not the ad: of chang- 
 ing itself. In a Michelangelo statue we see at 
 first glance only a solid rigid mass; but the mo- 
 ment we begin mentally to reconstrucfl the form, 
 we sense the opposition of volume-diredlion and 
 the delicate poise of weights which overhang 
 hollows and which are proportionally exaggerated 
 in order to give a greater emotion of struggling 
 forces. Then, our will guiding our eye, the 
 mind translates to us physically the statue's 
 expansion and contradlion, the withheld com- 
 pletion of absolute balance, the approximation to 
 equilibrium: and it is only after we have passed 
 through discords and struggles and complicated 
 developments — in other words, after we have 
 
268 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 striven for physical completion — that the finality 
 comes as a satisfying consummation, like the 
 knowledge of a tremendous task, long laboured 
 over, brought to perfe6l and final accomplishment. 
 
 Is not the desire for an emotion, so completely 
 refledlive of the very undercurrents of life's 
 forces, worthier of an artist's aim than the 
 desire for the momentary sensation that someone 
 is going away or that one is looking on at a 
 dance? The emotional depicflions of such episodes 
 are at best but remote reflexes of reality. Our 
 participation in a dance, for instance, is infinitely 
 more intense than the Futurists' kinematic repre- 
 sentation of it. In the adlual experience one not 
 only sees chaos but can touch the swirling forms, 
 blink at the lights, smell the perfumes and hear 
 the noise and music. In other words, one is 
 moved to sensation or feeling by the physical 
 forces themselves. To the true artist these physi- 
 cal forces are only his weapons, never his ends. 
 And it is only through their intelligent use in 
 the produdlion of form that aesthetic emotion 
 results. The superficial portrayal of effedls, 
 whether mental or physical, can never lead us 
 inward to their causes. Any result is simply 
 the dead end of a force, like the sea-weed a 
 submarine volcano has thrown to the surface of 
 the ocean. Art, being the causative force itself, 
 should bring about the upheaval whose final 
 manifestation is complete and satisfying. In 
 great painting the sped;ator is led through every 
 step of kinetic energy from chaos to order. 
 When he emerges he has undergone a colossal 
 dynamic experience. After all, energy is the 
 ultimate physical reality. 
 
FUTURISM 
 
 269 
 
 The Futurists, it is true, strove sedulously for 
 dynamism. Several of the titles of their later 
 canvases contain the word. But their consistent 
 misinterpretation of Leibniz's dodlrine led them 
 into the most superficial statements of the laws of 
 force. By confusing adlion with movement and 
 tempo with rhythm, and by constantly juggling 
 causes and effedts, they never arrived at a basic 
 exposition of energy. In contemplating their 
 pidlures we experience only visual confusion. 
 There is no movement because there is no static 
 foil, no consummation. There is no dynamism 
 because there is no suggestion of the inherent 
 force which all substance involves. Let us 
 assume the hypothesis that it is possible to 
 photograph a kinematic force in movement. 
 The Futurists* pidlures wherein the representation 
 of dynamism is attempted, as in Dynamisme 
 d'une Auto, there is a series of these hypotheti- 
 cal photographs each of which has caught a 
 segment of immobility, as any snap-shot catches 
 some static pose of a moving objedl. By super- 
 imposing each of these images successively on 
 the other the Futurists imagine that a state of 
 adlion is created. But even were this the case 
 the pidlure would be innocent of dynamism. 
 Again, Futurism claims not to paint maladies 
 but their symptoms and results. Admittedly 
 therefore it works against its own gropings for 
 dynamism, for symptoms and results are the 
 outgrowth of causes, and as such can have only 
 an objedlive interest. Would the Futurists main- 
 tain, for instance, that, by portraying a head 
 from many viewpoints on the same canvas, they 
 can give us the emotion of a head turning? 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 Even were it possible thus to extend the con- 
 templation of piAures into time, the effedl of a 
 series of dissimilar profiles would be no more 
 convincing than that obtained by a slowly 
 moving cinematograph film. Should we grant 
 that by such a device the efifedl of movement 
 resulted, it would depend entirely upon which 
 end of the movement the eye alighted first 
 whether the head moved one way or the other. 
 And if the pid:ure was a perfect organisation the 
 change of direction would throw every part of 
 the canvas out of gear. 
 
 Considering Futurism purely from the stand- 
 point of illustration we still are unable to justify 
 its aims. In painting a pi(5lure of a person 
 setting forth upon a journey from a railway 
 station, the Futurist represents the departure 
 by means of horizontal, fleeting and jerky lines, 
 half-hidden profiles, the station's interior, the 
 engine, etc. Then by introducing into the canvas 
 bits of landscape and other incidentals which 
 depict the thoughts of the person about to 
 depart, the artist endeavours to call up the same 
 mental state in the spectator of the canvas. 
 The associative process of the human mind, 
 however, makes such a proceeding unnecessary, 
 because in beholding a simple, even an academi- 
 cally pidlured, scene of someone entering a train 
 amid the confusion and haste of passengers and 
 guards, the speculator involuntarily calls up the 
 landscape running past, the telegraph poles jerk- 
 ing by, the clanging of the bell, the shouts of 
 attendants, the shufBing of many feet and the 
 hiss of steam. In setting these things down the 
 Futurists succeed only in limiting a highly 
 
FUTURISM 
 
 271 
 
 imaginative person's thoughts by restridted visions 
 of objedlivity, just as in the theatre a producer, 
 by placing many papier mache trees and rocks 
 and fibre grass about the stage, circumscribes 
 the onlooker's imagination. The Greeks, whose 
 theatrical presentations were sufficiently intense 
 to evoke an imaginative milieu^ did not need 
 fadlitious properties: but the theatrical Belascos 
 must necessarily make their settings absolute and 
 meticulously realistic. A Tintoretto needs no 
 such tricks to strengthen its emotive power; but 
 the Futurists, unable to move us by dynamic 
 canvases, need recourse to dramatic tricks. At 
 most their pictures could be significant only as 
 auxiliaries to literary texts. 
 
 The Futurists' contention that all modern art 
 should have as a point of departure an entirely 
 modern sensation is wholly tenable, but they 
 mistake the fad: that a modern sensation is merely 
 the sensation which pertains specially to the 
 contemporary man. It has nothing to do 
 innately with the delineation of an automobile or 
 an aeroplane. The modern aesthetic spirit goes 
 deeper. It implies the expression of aniemotion 
 by use of the latest refinements and researches 
 in the medium of an art. In painting it is not 
 limited to the illustrative portrayal of a novelty. 
 Were this the case any painter who confined 
 himself to the pidlurisation of the latest dread- 
 naughts and the highest skyscrapers would be 
 the pioneer of a new expression. In order to 
 express himself in a modern manner, an artist 
 needs only to have divested himself of all predi- 
 ledions for antiquity, to have subdued all con- 
 scious desire to will himself into the bodies of 
 
272 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 an ancient people, and to have seen the error of 
 the childish maxim that there is nothing new 
 under the sun. Any painter free from tradition, 
 with a comprehension of aesthetic movement and 
 an ability to apply it, will produce canvases 
 which, though they have no radical theory behind 
 them, will be as distinctly modern as those of 
 the Futurists. Modernity has to do with 
 methods and mental attitude. It is in no wise 
 related to subjedl-matter. 
 
 Consider, for instance, the famous Futurist 
 statement that "a running horse has not four 
 legs, but twenty." Then contemplate Balla's 
 picture. Dog and Person in Movement, to which 
 this theory is applied. Neither the dog nor the 
 person seems to move at all. They are static 
 figures with blurred triangles resembling lace 
 where their legs should be. Such a juvenile 
 artifice to give the effed: of movement is certainly 
 not modern or even novel. Long prior to the 
 Futurists, caricaturists and comic journalistic 
 draughtsmen sought to express ad:ion by placing 
 circular lines round the wagging tails of dogs 
 or by drawing long sweeping lines behind a 
 swiftly moving figure to indicate from what 
 direcflion it had come and the rapidity of locomo- 
 tion. Such inventions are outside the field of 
 aesthetics. They have to do only with slow 
 optical adiion. But the modification of objects 
 in contadl with others, of which Cezanne wrote, 
 is a profound postulate of organisation. It 
 creates a poise of volume which causes us to 
 experience an emotion of movement. The Fu- 
 turists' contrivance of endowing a horse with 
 twenty legs precludes any possibility of their 
 
FUTURISM 
 
 273 
 
 calling up forcibly a running horse, for only the 
 legs seem to move, as of a horse in a treadmill. 
 Save for the pidiorial side of a picture so pre- 
 sented there is nothing in it of interest to us: 
 and our memory of an actual horse clashes with 
 the vision of a multipedalian one. 
 
 The Futurists' statement, however, that a 
 picture's lines should subjectively drag the specta- 
 tor into the centre of the canvas, where he will 
 personally experience the rhythmic interplay of 
 forms, is not only pertinent but expresses an 
 absolute aesthetic necessity. Pictures which do 
 not so affect the beholder have failed as great 
 art. But though the Futurists were the first to 
 give succinct utterance to this shibboleth, the 
 practice of constituting a work of art so that the 
 spectator was transposed into its stress and 
 strain, had been going on ever since great com- 
 position came into painting. One cannot study 
 a Michelangelo or a Rubens without feeling, even 
 to the point of physical fatigue, the struggle of 
 their finally harmonised volumes. This does not 
 hold true of the Futurists' work. In studying 
 their pictures our eyes alone become tired; and, 
 though we succeed in unravelling the involutions 
 of their pictures, there is for us no recompense of 
 emotional satisfaction. Action in itself has little 
 charm for us, and action is what the paintings of 
 Futurism, in their ultimate expression, are 
 founded on. But while action may attract us 
 when expressed by an interesting and sympathetic 
 personality, as in the paintings of Henri and in 
 the sculpture of Rude, there is in Futurism no 
 actional sensation or explicit element of deep 
 enjoyment that we cannot obtain in greater 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 intensity by gazing upon a busy thorougiifare, 
 or by watching the landscape from a sA^iftly 
 moving train, or by attending a dance. Evtn the 
 chaos of a Futurist painting does not p-esent 
 the interest of the Flight Turning a Corner from 
 Keion's panoramic roll of the Hogen Heij. war, 
 or the prints of Moronobu, or even The Heavenly 
 Host by the primitive Guariento. All :hese 
 works, while they represent adlion, are also 
 ordered. And order, which the Futurists lack, 
 is more than an arbitrary ingredient in art. 
 Just as the eternal desire in life is for something 
 positive and absolute, so the attempt at order 
 in painting is an outgrowth of the desire to make 
 a pidiure complete and satisfying. 
 
 There is no doubt that the Futurists eierted 
 much good in imbuing the artists of the day with 
 a greater consciosity and in showing them, 3y an 
 elaborate critical prospedus, the error of their 
 ways. Futurism quieted the animadversiois the 
 modernist painters were hurling at Monet and his 
 school, by pointing out that, to readl against 
 Impressionism by adopting piAorial laws which 
 antedated it, was futile, and that the only way 
 to combat it seriously was to surpass it. The 
 Futurists, however, were unable to fulfil their 
 proposition. They were, in fad:, the abstrad 
 perpetuators of Impressionism through the Cabists 
 who represented its formal side. The man who 
 surpassed Impressionism was Cezanne. Further- 
 more, the Futurists chided the Cubists for paint- 
 ing from models, whether in squares, cutes or 
 circles; and thus turned the light of analysis on 
 the adual achievements, and away from the theo- 
 ries, of Picasso and his followers. The conse- 
 
ROGLYPHE DYNAMIQUE DU BAL TABARIN SEVERINI 
 
FUTURISM 
 
 275 
 
 quence was that for a short time the Cubists 
 became somewhat Futuristic. Then, the strong 
 impetus slowly ebbing out, the two schools grad- 
 ually approached each other. Futurism has taken 
 on a somewhat Cubistic mien; and the Cubists, 
 having profited by the Futurists' teachings and 
 having partially divorced themselves from the 
 model, have begun to seek expression in Orphism 
 and Synchromism. The work of Boccioni and 
 Carra has assumed a wholly abstradl appearance, 
 and is much more interesting than formerly. 
 
 The methods of Futurism have their pro- 
 venience in many preceding art movements. One 
 finds in this school's canvases cubes, spots, divi- 
 sionistic technique and wholly academic drawing; 
 some of the pid:ures are monotonously brown and 
 grey, while others possess the acid colouring of 
 Neo-Impressionism. But aside from their work 
 the Futurists proved a salutary event in modern 
 art. The painting of the day needed just such 
 a cataclysm to turn its eyes from the contempla- 
 tion of partial traits to a more encompassing 
 vision. Their motto might be the saying of 
 Mallarme: "To name is to destroy, but to sug- 
 gest is to create." Their art is largely one of 
 suggestion. Their initial mistake was in suppos- 
 ing that the depidion of mental states would 
 recall the causes of those states. Life would 
 indeed be monotonous if in it there was no 
 struggle. We could never appreciate its consum- 
 mations were we ignorant of the travail which 
 brought them about. The Futurists present, as 
 it were, the conclusion of an oration in which 
 has been developed a colossal thought, and ask us 
 to applaud. This we cannot do, for not having 
 
276 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 followed the struggle of the new idea against 
 opposing forces, we are unable to appreciate the 
 import of the results. 
 
 Notwithstanding their many failures the Futu- 
 rists have greatly widened the field of illustration; 
 by a word they have given birth to a school, 
 Simultaneism; and they have forever^ turned 
 Cubism from its narrow formalism. But in them- 
 selves they were not significant. They were too 
 stringently literary, and in attempting to advance 
 their own theories at the expense of profounder 
 dodlrines, they have succeeded only in assisting 
 other painters toward a greater purity of expres- 
 tion, despite the fad that they advocated a retro- 
 gressive objedivity. Marinetti, a poet, is the 
 spiritual (and monetary) father of Futurism; and 
 the names signed to the original manifesto were 
 Umberto Boccioni, a sculptor as well as a painter; 
 Carlo D. Carra, the most genuine artist of the 
 group ; Luigi Russolo, its most orthodox exponent ; 
 Gino Severini, its illustrator par excellence; and 
 Giacomo Balla, its high priest of prettiness. In 
 an attempt to preclude all censure, they closed 
 their manifest with these words: "There will be 
 those who will accuse our art of being cerebrally 
 distorted and decadent. But we will answer 
 simply that we are, to the contrary, the primitives 
 of a new and centuple sensitivity, and that our 
 art is drunk with spontaneity and power." With 
 the slight change of theory" for "art" we would 
 heartily agree with them. 
 
XIII 
 
 SYNCHROMISM 
 
 IN order to understand the last step in the 
 evolution of present-day art methods, it is 
 necessary to be thoroughly cognizant not 
 only of what has taken place before but of the 
 chronological development of all the qualities of 
 modern painting, for Synchromism embraces 
 every aesthetic aspiration from Delacroix and 
 Turner to Cezanne and the Cubists. At the 
 same time it reverts to the compositions of 
 Rubens, complicating them further to satisfy the 
 needs of the modern mind. Delacroix took the 
 first decided step toward making colour an organic 
 fador in art — a fadlor which would help present 
 a more homogeneous emotion of the pidure as a 
 whole, and which would be intimately conne(5ted 
 with the picture's vital expression. He was a 
 decided advance on those painters to whom 
 colour was as arbitrary a means of adorning a 
 good work as the gilt frame they placed about it. 
 Colour with them was didated by the demands of 
 an age of voluptuousness and unrestrained living. 
 The great art nations of Spain, Italy and Flanders 
 were then passing through a sensuous epoch, and 
 the painters refleded in their work the tone of the 
 national temperament. The primitives of these 
 countries and of Germany had used colour be- 
 cause the religious qualities in their pidlures 
 
278 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 became more realistic when nature's general tints 
 were employed. By making their work more 
 dramatic they were able to set forth more forcibly 
 the lesson they strove to teach. The art of the 
 primitives was primarily dogmatic. In it was 
 none of those subtleties of composition which 
 come only with the conscious artist's delight in 
 bringing order out of chaos: it contained only 
 that simple and instindive order which is the 
 avoidance of chaos. That which the primitives 
 had to say was so rudimentary and well-learned 
 that it took a definite visional form in their 
 minds. When dogmatism began to lose its charm 
 for the painter his forms gradually became more 
 suave, and his colour likewise grew gracious and 
 ornamental. The lessons were forgotten, and com- 
 position as an element of first importance, dressed 
 in a robe of rich and varied hue, supplanted them. 
 
 Such was the employment of colour at the 
 advent of Delacroix whose probing mind sensed 
 not only its importance as drama, but also its 
 potentialities for brilliance. With him, however, 
 it remained an adjundl to drawing — something 
 to be applied when the rest of the pidure had 
 been laid in, an element with which to intensify 
 the importance of subjed. He gave a great and 
 necessary impetus to its study, but he outlined 
 no diredions for its significant application: indeed, 
 by following out his original concepts one is led 
 into the impasse of Neo-Impressionism. But 
 at so early a stage the impetus is the important 
 thing, and to Delacroix belongs the credit for 
 having set in motion the wheels of colour inquisi- 
 tion. It was Daumier, however, who, apparently 
 ignoring it, brought its exclusive use appreciably 
 
STNCHROMISM 
 
 279 
 
 nearer. By conceiving contour and form as one, 
 he disposed, as it were, of these two elements 
 which, in the scale of pidorial importance, had 
 always been placed before colour. Had each 
 successive painter profited by all the apports and 
 qualities of his diredl predecessor's art, the 
 progress of painting might have been more rapid, 
 but it would never have been so perfedl. Each 
 painter would have inherited both the short- 
 comings and the merits of his forerunner. Thus 
 one side of his art would have developed out of 
 all proportion to the other. Daumier, going 
 back to tone, discovered a wholly natural method 
 for the achievement of intense form. His picftures 
 present themselves as great bulks of flesh and 
 matter, crude but vital, which have about them 
 a force of adlual weight. In nowise was he a 
 colourist. He lived in a time when prettiness 
 was the keynote of the day, and his whole life 
 was a revolt against it. His readlion was so 
 extreme that he disregarded the capabilities of 
 colour. 
 
 The Impressionists, on the other hand, over- 
 emphasised its objedlive uses. They held that 
 the colour seen in nature is all-important for 
 pidlure making, and proceeded to copy it. As 
 a result their work is highly emotional, but only 
 in the same way that a sunny landscape is emo- 
 tional. These artists were the slaves of nature, 
 doing its bidding; Gauguin bent everything into 
 the mould of his own personality: and it is only 
 when these two types of creative impulse combine 
 and modify each other that great naturalistic art 
 is possible. The Impressionists, being receptive, 
 believed all that nature openly proclaimed. They 
 
28o MODERN PAINTING 
 
 unearthed none of its formal secrets; they probed 
 none of its causes. Theirs was only the joy of 
 the discoverer. But their insistence upon the 
 discovery was important, because it helped give 
 birth to Cezanne. He was a diredl outgrowth of 
 Impressionism, but he was also an outgrowth of 
 art's entire history. Superficially he may seem 
 more closely akin to Pissarro's school than to 
 the older painters, since it was from Pissarro he 
 learned his first colour lessons; but in reality he 
 was more intimately related to a Giotto or a 
 Rembrandt, because his knowledge of colour was 
 used only to heighten the emotion of volume; and 
 this volume, which Monet or Sisley would not 
 have understood, was the chief concern of the old 
 masters. 
 
 With the Impressionists colour was an end in 
 itself. They looked upon it not merely as expres- 
 sive of light, but as synonymous with light, 
 whereas Cezanne, ignoring colour's dramatic possi- 
 bilities, used it to express and intensify the funda- 
 mentals of organisation, just as Giotto, disregard- 
 ing the dramatic possibilities of line, employed 
 line as a means to ordinate volume. Cezanne is 
 related to Daumier and Rembrandt in that while 
 these men created their art (which was primarily 
 one of tone) by building up volume simultaneously 
 with contour, he created his art (which was pri- 
 marily one of colour) by presenting his visions as 
 nature presents itself to our eyes and intelligences, 
 that is, as forms in which tone, contour and colour 
 are inseparable. That he has been little under- 
 stood is due to the fadl that his profoundly 
 logical methods took birth in an age of "inspira- 
 tional" painting. Matisse who came later made 
 
STNCHROMISM 
 
 281 
 
 of Cezanne's still-lives a highly enjoyable decora- 
 tion whose destiny can rise no higher than that 
 of tasteful and complete ornament. Cezanne's art 
 is dynamic, while Matisse's is exaltedly excitatory. 
 The former bears the same relation to the latter 
 that a Beethoven symphonic movement bears to 
 a ballet by Delibes. One inspires thought: the 
 other incites to adion, to spontaneous admiration 
 and joy. Matisse loves and knows colour in its 
 harmonic relations. He and Gauguin, by the 
 broad beauty of their work, have given an impetus 
 toward large planes of pure pigment. In brief 
 the evolution of colour is as follows: it was used 
 first for verity; secondly, for ornament; thirdly, 
 for drama; fourthly, for its inherent beauty as 
 light; and last, for intensifying natural form. 
 
 All this has to do only with the concrete side 
 of art's progress. There is also a progress of the 
 mental attitude which is inseparable from art's 
 concrete development and without which its 
 material evolution could not have gone forward 
 significantly. This mental progress resulted in 
 the emancipation of the artist from the intelledlual 
 limitations of his public. Up to Gericault and 
 Delacroix painting had idealised contemporary 
 life, had held itself to the interpretation of biblical 
 history, or had spoken in legend and allegory. It 
 had expressed itself in the Italian mode of draw- 
 ing; it had followed set rules of balance and 
 chiaroscuro; and above all it had possessed a very 
 definite finish. Naturally the art historians ex- 
 pelled this style of painting to continue indefi- 
 nitely. But with Delacroix it began to change. 
 The hard contours grew freer. The depidion 
 of the human form halted at approximation. 
 
282 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 Drawing became more arbitrary. Then came 
 Courbet who insisted that there was beauty in 
 everything if one knew how to bring it forth. 
 He turned to the commonplace life about him for 
 inspiration, repudiated the suavities of David, the 
 romance of Delacroix, the elegance of Velazquez 
 and the colour of Veronese; and began to order 
 realistic nature. About his name there grew up 
 a tempest of adverse criticism; but no man so 
 sure of his own genius as was Courbet could be 
 weakened by public condemnation; and he made 
 no compromise. Manet continued Courbet's free- 
 dom of seledion and painted n'importe quoi. 
 The Impressionists also carried forward this 
 modern attitude. They sought for that which 
 generally was considered ugly, and made it artis- 
 tically enjoyable by drenching it with light and 
 colour. Then came Cezanne, Matisse, the Cubists 
 and the Futurists, with each of whom subjed- 
 matter became more and more emancipated. 
 Natural objedls gradually lost their importance 
 and grew more abstrad. Form was considered 
 for its own sake, and models were not copied 
 merely because they filled certain utilitarian 
 destinies in the speculator's mind. Objedls were 
 used by Cezanne to create abstradl ensembles. 
 In Matisse the form itself became more purely 
 aesthetic, though with him there was a residue of 
 objedivity for the sake of illustrative consistency. 
 With the Cubists natural form was an echo, a 
 memory of life, retained because they were not 
 sure of how to turn their minds away from it. 
 Futurism attempted a rehabilitation of illustra- 
 tion, but lately it has been converted into a purer 
 vision by the Cubists. 
 
STNCHROMISM 283 
 
 To sum up: colour reached its highest develop- 
 ment in Cezanne; composition attained its highest 
 intensity in Rubens; and the greatest freedom in 
 material form was represented by the Cubists. 
 Thus the art of painting stood in 1912. But at 
 that time the development of modern means had 
 not reached its highest point. The purification of 
 painting had not been attained. The tendencies 
 of the past century fell short of realisation. As 
 yet there had been no abstradl coalition of colour, 
 forni and composition. Colour had not been 
 carried to its ultimate purity as a funAioning 
 element. Form had became almost unrecog- 
 nisable but had just missed abstradion, its inevi- 
 table goal. And composition, the basis of all 
 great art, had been temporarily abjured in the 
 feverish search for new methods. The step from 
 the condition of art in 191 2 to its final purity, 
 in which would be embodied all the qualities 
 necessary to the greatest compositional painting, 
 was not a long one, but until it was taken the 
 cycle must remain incomplete. The last advance 
 in modern methods was made by the Synchro- 
 mists at Der Neue Kunstsalon of Munich in 
 June, 1913. This movement was fathered by 
 Morgan Russell and S. Macdonald- Wright, both 
 of whom, though native Americans, were partially 
 European in parentage and education. Russell 
 is more than half French, and Macdonald- Wright, 
 whose family name is Van Vranken, is diredly 
 descended from the Dutch. 
 
 Russell first studied in New York under Robert 
 Henri, one of the most sincere and intelligent 
 produds of American art. There he acquired a 
 sound and capable foundation for his later work 
 
284 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 both in clay and paint. He then went to Paris, still 
 feeling nature through the inspiration of Manet, 
 and like Manet fell under the sway of Monet. 
 From the Impressionists he was attraded to 
 Matisse with whom he was personally acquainted. 
 He did many canvases attradive in colour 
 and competent as to form, as well as a number 
 of synthetic and obviously disproportioned statues 
 which recall the modern "Fauve" to a marked 
 degree. Later he began to take an interest in 
 Cezanne, and to his study of this master and of 
 Michelangelo is attributable his later development 
 in colour and composition. These men consti- 
 tuted his main influences; but in the course of 
 his development he had cast a glance at Picasso 
 and even at the Futurists; and it is a significant 
 commentary on their methods that they are more 
 susceptible of understanding than either Renoir 
 or Matisse. Leo Stein, an astute and discerning 
 connoisseur of the more modern art movements 
 and a man who can see with occasional flashes of 
 genius through the aspeds of a canvas to its basic 
 cause, no doubt had much to do with Russell's 
 rapid intelledual progress through the discipleship 
 of the student to the creation of individual 
 endeavours. 
 
 Macdonald-Wright, to the contrary, had little 
 art training in the accepted sense of the word. 
 Primarily interested in the purely technical side 
 of painting, as were Renoir, Cezanne and Courbet, 
 he had been influenced first by Hals, Rembrandt 
 and Velazquez and later by their successors, 
 Manet and the Barbizon school. Hoping to find 
 help in the schools he studied at many academies, 
 but after a brief period retired to the seclusion of 
 
STNCHROMISM 
 
 285 
 
 his studio. About this time he began, with the 
 aid of Chevreul, Helmholtz and Rood, to make 
 experiments in colour in its relation to luminosity. 
 Quite naturally the influence of Monet followed, 
 and it was not until a year later that his enthu- 
 siasm for the Impressionists disappeared. He 
 then began the construdlion of form by large and 
 crude planes, building his figures with light and 
 dark chromatic blocks. It was this broader 
 application, coupled with his love of pure colour, 
 that led him to an eager admiration for Gauguin. 
 At this period of his development he met Russell, 
 his senior by three years, to whom he has always 
 admitted his debt for his early appreciation of 
 Michelangelo as well as of the modern masters. 
 From then on, through many struggles with light, 
 he made rapid progress. When Futurism blinded 
 the eyes of the younger men he went straight 
 ahead in the path he had chosen. 
 
 Shortly after their meeting, Russell and 
 Macdonald-Wright reached the end of their 
 appreciative and formative period of imitation. 
 They were both too intensely desirous of self- 
 expression in its broadest and most precise sense 
 to vary an already well-learned precept or theory. 
 The y were colourists, and had been even when 
 passing through their most sombre stage. Now 
 both turned to colour as to a longed-for goal. 
 The art world at that time was being flooded with 
 the mournful browns and whites of Cubism; and 
 Matisse was too slight an inspiration to attradl 
 them, for they had consistently conceived form 
 in three dimensions. Their desire was to create 
 canvases of richly harmonious colour; but the 
 difficulty lay in finding a new method of applica- 
 
286 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 tion. Neither of them was content merely to 
 place suites of pure hues on the canvas, as an end 
 in themselves. This would be to sacrifice organised 
 volume for an ephemeral pleasure. Colour rtiust 
 have a formal and compositional significance, other- 
 wise it would be but shallow decoration. The 
 fa(5l that, like all painters of the day, they were 
 still bound to the depidlion of natural objedls, 
 added difficulty to the solution of their problem. 
 Their individual interpretation of Cezanne, how- 
 ever, little by little showed them the method by 
 which they might eventually open the door on 
 their desires. Russell approached form through 
 light, combining both qualities in a simultane- 
 ous vision. Macdonald- Wright approached light 
 through form, regarding them as an inseparable 
 and inevitable unity. Both painters expressed 
 their vision in the purest gamut of colour which 
 painting up to that time had seen. Colour with 
 them became the totality of art, the one element 
 by which every quality of a canvas was to be 
 expressed. Even their lines were obtained by the 
 differentiation of colours in the same way that 
 tempo delimits sound. 
 
 Russell began his Synchromism by extending 
 and completing the methods of the Impressionists 
 who had observed that one always has an illusion 
 of violet in shadows when the sunlight is yellow, 
 and who in their painting represented the full 
 force of light as yellow, and its opposite extreme 
 of shadow as violet. Russell, in observing that 
 the strong force of light gives us a sensation of 
 yellow and that shadow produces its complemen- 
 tary of violet, went further and discovered that 
 quarter and half tones also possess colours by 
 
STNCHROMISM 
 
 287 
 
 which they can be interpreted. He thus arrived 
 at a complete colour interpretation of the degrees 
 of light forces or tones. This method he aptly 
 called the orchestration of tones from black to 
 white. For it he made no hard and set rules. 
 From the first it was a highly plastic and arbi- 
 trary manner of depiAing objedlivity. By modu- 
 lating from light to dark (from yellow to violet) 
 not only was light conceived forcibly, but form 
 resulted naturally and inevitably. This was the 
 principle by which Cezanne, although he did not 
 completely grasp its import, achieved his eternal 
 light which brought form into being. But the 
 principle with him was subjugated to the influence 
 of local colours, varying milieu, reflexions, etc. 
 Russell stated the principle frankly and applied 
 it purely. Since his form at that period resulted 
 from a sensitive depidlion of light values expressed 
 by colour, his canvases had much the same beauty 
 of strongly lighted natural objects seen through 
 the three-sided prism by which the transition 
 from tone to colour is automatically brought 
 about. 
 
 Macdonald-Wright approached his conception 
 of Synchromism from the opposite diredlion. He 
 had always been dissatisfied with the endless 
 alternation of small shadows and lights which the 
 Impressionists had introduced into painting, and 
 with the tiny planes and spots which artists used 
 for verisimilitude. He desired a method whereby 
 the elements of shadow and light could be differ- 
 entiated and drawn together in simple masses. 
 He had studied pure colour more from the stand- 
 point of form than from that of light, and during 
 1912 began to take note of the flud:uations of 
 
288 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 colours, their mobility when juxtaposed with other 
 colours, their densities and transparencies. In 
 fine, he recorded their inherent tendency to ex- 
 press degrees of material consistency. Thus with 
 him a yellow, instead of meaning an intense light, 
 represented an advancing plane, and a blue, while 
 having all the sensation of shadow about it, 
 receded to an infinity of subjedlive depth. The 
 relative spacial extension of all the other colours 
 was then determined, and a series of colour scales 
 was drawn up which gave not only the sensation 
 of light and dark but also the sensation of per- 
 spe6live. Thus it was possible to obtain any 
 degree of depth by the use of colour alone, for 
 all the intermediate steps from extreme projeAion 
 to extreme recession were expressible by means 
 of certain tones and pure hues. 
 
 The first Synchromist canvas was exposed by 
 Russell in the Salon des Independants early in 
 the spring of 191 3. It was called Synchromie en 
 Vert and recorded a large interior in which all the 
 light forces were treated in their purely emotional 
 phases. The canvas lacked the complete visuali- 
 sation and the solid space-construdion which 
 charadlerise his later work, and furthermore it 
 revealed many traces of the academic composi- 
 tion. However, had there been critics possessed 
 of artistic prescience they straightway would have 
 sensed in it a new force in painting. But the 
 pi(fture's defeds obscured their recognition of its 
 potential vitality. This was due in part to the 
 fadl that the work lost much of its effed: by piece- 
 painting, that is, by the minute treatment of 
 details each of which' constituted an end in itself 
 regardless of the total. Russell counted on the 
 
STNCHROMISM 
 
 289 
 
 line of the different bodies holding it together; 
 but he reckoned falsely, for if, in a work where 
 colour is so important a part of line, the colour 
 and line are not in complete harmony, the line 
 alone is inadequate to effedl the liaison of forms. 
 In this same Salon Macdonald- Wright, not yet 
 having arrived at a defined conception, exposed 
 two canvases in which his later developments 
 were but vaguely foreshadowed. Both pidures 
 were formal compositions of nude figures painted 
 in three or four flat planes of pure colour, and 
 recalled Matisse and Cezanne more strongly than 
 they presented a new vision. From the stand- 
 point of efficient visualisation all three Syn- 
 chromist works were failures, or at least they 
 were indications of incomplete progress. In 
 Russell's canvas the diminutive breaking up of 
 colour negatived what otherwise would have been 
 the picture's brilliant effed:; and Macdonald- 
 Wright's large application of colour served only 
 to place him under the banner of an established 
 school. But both men realised that this was only 
 a start, and set diligently to work on the canvases 
 for their first exhibition which was booked in 
 Munich for June of that year. 
 
 Between their first pidlures and those of a few 
 months later there was to be noted an advance 
 both in conception and in application. Russell's 
 small colour planes, applied wholly from the 
 standpoint of light, expanded and took on a new 
 effedliveness. His form became more abstra(5l, 
 and his colour more harmonious. Also his com- 
 positions were more compadl, though they were 
 ordered rather than rhythmically organised. 
 Macdonald- Wright's progress was similar. In an 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 interpretation of one of Michelangelo's Slaves, 
 used as the dominant form in an arrangement of 
 three figures, all the academism which had marked 
 his earlier expression had disappeared. His 
 method had been liberated from the exactitudes 
 of static principles, and had become consistent, 
 not with the new colour knowledge, but within 
 itself. The theory of defined colour gamuts, 
 which from the first had been applied by these 
 two men, had now become a scientific principle. 
 Though the truth of it had always been vaguely 
 sensed by them, it had not become a definitely 
 comprehended formula until they had worked 
 out the naturalistic laws governing colour. The 
 Synchromist pi(ftures in which these laws were 
 boldly applied were first brought together at 13, 
 Prannerstrasse, Munich, in June, 1913. 
 
 In November of the same year their work was 
 again exposed, this time at the Bernheim-Jeune 
 galleries in Paris. The show in Munich, widely 
 advertised by coloured posters, had attradled 
 considerable interest, but in Paris the exhibition 
 created a two-weeks' sensation. Though the 
 more discriminating critics saw its importance, 
 there was considerable adverse comment due 
 largely to the Synchromists' spedlacular and 
 over-enthusiastic methods of putting' forward 
 their views and discoveries. In their two speci- 
 fically worded prospectuses they devoted much 
 space to the shortcomings of Orphism, then in 
 vogue; and although their criticisms of that school, 
 coupled with the statement of their own tangible 
 and logical aims, had much to do with Orphism's 
 demise, the impropriety of the attack created a 
 feeling antagonistic to the new men. The appear- 
 
STNCHROMISM 291 
 
 ance of their pidures was entirely different from 
 any paintings hitherto exposed; and their concep- 
 tion, while being a normal and dired outgrowth 
 of Cezanne, marked a revolution in formal con- 
 strudion. The inspiration of both these new 
 artists was classic in that they recognised the 
 absolute need of organisation which, if it was not 
 melodiously and sequentially composed, should 
 at least be rhythmic. Both were striving to 
 create a pure art — one which would express 
 itself with the means alone inherent in that art, 
 as music expresses itself by means of circumscribed 
 sound. 
 
 There was no precedent for purely abstract 
 form — that is, form which has no antitype in 
 nature — any more than there was a precedent 
 for the construdlion of painting solely by means 
 of colour and line. This was not due to an 
 absence of desire in the artist for an abstrad 
 language of form, but to a natural diffidence on 
 his part to break once and for all with centuries 
 of tradition, and with one imperious gesture to 
 cast aside the accepted raison d'etre of the visual 
 arts. We have seen how form from the first had 
 been an imitation of natural objeds, how it de- 
 developed into synthesis, then into pure composi- 
 tion, how it reached a high degree of arbitrariness 
 in Matisse, how it disintegrated in Cubism, and 
 how in Futurism and Orphism there was a valiant 
 attempt to convert it once more into piAorialism, 
 to check its elan toward perfed: freedom of crea- 
 tion. It is not therefore strange that the Syn- • 
 chromist exhibition should have comprised, with 
 the exception of one canvas, figure pieces, studies 
 of landscape and still-lives (some almost archaic 
 
292 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 in their dired and simple statement), and not 
 canvases which abandoned all semblance to natural 
 form. Russell and Macdonald-Wright were still 
 occupied tentatively in expressing the forms they 
 knew best, each by his own individual method. 
 But despite this compromise with tradition their 
 exhibition presented a highly novel impression. 
 There were human figures distorted almost out 
 of recognition for the compositional needs of the 
 canvas and painted in bars of pure colour; still- 
 lives which seemed to be afire with chromatic bril- 
 liance; fantastic fruits; life-sized male figures in 
 pure yellow-orange; and mountains of intense reds 
 and purples, warm greens and violets. All the 
 pidures, however, displayed decided organisa- 
 tional ability, and they possessed a more complete 
 harmony of colour and line than had been achieved 
 by any of the other younger painters. 
 
 But that quality of Synchromism which struck 
 the discerning speculator more than any other was 
 the force of volume resulting from the relation- 
 ship of colours. For years painters had realised 
 that certain colours when applied to certain forms 
 rebelled at the combination, that they refused 
 to remain passively on the planes assigned them. 
 But this phenomenon had never been given any 
 penetrating study. The more sensitive painters 
 had merely changed their colours to more trad- 
 able ones, and had thus avoided the inevitable 
 conflid that followed the fallacious commingling 
 of two highly affirmative elements. Such chro- 
 matic inconsistencies should have taught artists 
 the necessity of harmony for the sake of perfed 
 order; but the matter was left to personal instind. 
 The clash between colour and form, however, was 
 
STNCHROMISM 293 
 
 not due to any error or idiosyncrasy of taste, but 
 to the absolute charader of each separate hue 
 which demanded, for its formal affinity, a fixed 
 and unalterable spacial extension. At an early 
 date artists had recognised that blue and violet 
 were cool and mournful colours, and that yellow 
 and orange were warm and joyful ones. They 
 applied this primitive discovery with the feeble 
 results to be found in Neo-Impressionism. That 
 these colours had any further charader they 
 never suspecfled. Their insight extended only to 
 the emotional and associative charaderistics of 
 the colours; the physical side was overlooked. 
 Had the painters been more scientifically minded 
 they would have known that these charaderistics, 
 which were the feminine traits, could not have 
 existed in isolation; and they would have searched 
 for the colours' dominating and directing prop- 
 erties which represented the masculine traits. 
 Such a search would have led them to the mean- 
 ing of colours in relation to volumes, that is, to 
 colours' formal vibrations which alone are capable 
 of expressing plastic fullness. 
 
 This vibratory quality Macdonald- Wright found 
 and applied. By it he achieved light and shadow 
 which resulted naturally by the juxtaposition of 
 warm and cold colours. Russell, working alto- 
 gether from the standpoint of light as revealed 
 by form, attained pradically the same results so 
 long as his light came from the diredlion of the 
 spedator, for in such a case the highest illumina- 
 tion was the most intense salient and, as with 
 Macdonald-Wright, had therefore to be painted 
 with a warm and highly opaque colour. But 
 where the light came from a source at right angles 
 
294 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 to the line of vision, the expression reverted to an 
 intensification of the Impressionistic method. 
 Later this accident of light disappeared from 
 Russell's work, and consequently his treatment 
 became less restrided. This setting aside of light 
 as the motif was a necessary departure, for when 
 Russell carried his work into the higher elements 
 of pure form, a realistic source of illumination 
 would have made his suites of abstrad: volumes 
 appear, not poised and relatively solid, but as 
 paterse attached to an impenetrable substance. 
 Under such conditions painting would merely be 
 another and perhaps more beautiful way of making 
 effedive the ordonnances of ,surface form. But it 
 would have no more power to create in us an 
 aesthetic emotion than an exquisitely composed 
 bas-relief. 
 
 The ambitions of the Synchromists went deeper. 
 They desired to express, by means of colour, form 
 which would be as complete and as simple as a 
 Michelangelo drawing, and which would give 
 subjedively the same emotion of form that 
 the Renaissance master gives objedively. They 
 wished to create images of such logical strudure 
 that the imagination would experience their 
 unrecognisable reality in the same way our eyes 
 experience the recognisable realities of life. They 
 strove to bring about a new and hitherto unper- 
 ceived reality which would be as definite and 
 moving as the commonplace realities of every day, 
 in short, to find an abstrad statement for life 
 itself by the use of forms which had no definable 
 aspeds. The Synchromists' chief technical method 
 of obtaining this abstrad equivalent for material- 
 ity was to make use of the inherent and absolute 
 
SYNCHROMIE COSMIQ.UE 
 
 MORGAN RUSSE 
 
STNCHROMISM 295 
 
 movement of colours toward and away from the 
 spedator, by placing colours on forms in exad 
 accord with the propensities of those colours to 
 approach or recede from the eye. The Futurists 
 had spoken of drawing the spectator into the 
 centre of the picture, there to struggle with the 
 principals of the work. They failed in this ambi- 
 tion because their canvases lacked the intense 
 tadility of volume. The Synchromists, by mak- 
 ing the enjoyment of form purely subjedive, and 
 by expressing form both by objedivity of line 
 and the subjedlivity of colour, achieved the 
 ambition of both the Futurists and Cezanne. The 
 latter's desire was ever toward a pure and sub- 
 jedive art. Although his colour viewed objedively 
 is much like the Impressionists', the pleasure of 
 the Impressionistic vision disappears when the 
 eye is satisfied, whereas our emotions begin to 
 work on a Cezanne only after the visual enjoy- 
 ment has run its course. 
 
 Where Cezanne obtained a block solidity by 
 the intelligent addition of local colour to light 
 and by the subtraction of light from local colour, 
 the Synchromists rejedl all local colour and paint 
 only with hues which express the desired form. 
 The position of a given volume in space dilates 
 to them the colour with which it is to be painted. 
 Consequently a receding volume whose position 
 is behind the other volumes is never painted a 
 pure yellow, for that colour advances toward the 
 spedlator's eye; and a solid volume which projeds 
 further than the others is never painted violet, 
 for violet expresses not solidity but a quality of 
 space, something intangible and translucent. All 
 colours and tones and admixtures are answerable 
 
296 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 to the law of natural placement. This law is not 
 absolute; it does not anchor each colour at a 
 specific and unchangeable distance from the eye, 
 but it determines the relative position of colours 
 in space according to the influence of environ- 
 mental colours, thereby making their position 
 both dependent and direding but none the less 
 inevitable. The perfecfling of this principle by 
 the Synchromists introduced an added element of 
 poise and a new emotion in painting — poise, 
 because, by changing a line or a colour, the 
 formal solid construded by interdependent hues 
 would shift and adopt another position answering 
 to the needs of the new order: — a new emotion, 
 because colour in all painting before Cezanne had 
 been used for ornament or for the dramatic 
 reinforcement of the drawing or subjecf^, and in 
 Cezanne colour had been employed to express 
 subjedively the emotions of volumes found in 
 nature. 
 
 In Synchromism, which was first inspired by 
 natural forms, all considerations other than light 
 forces (as with Russell) and form (as with 
 Macdonald- Wright) and composition (as used 
 by both) were abolished. Colour was made a 
 fundioning element out of which grew all the 
 qualities of the pidures. At first, adverse criti- 
 cisms were aimed at the Synchromists' polychro- 
 matic nudes, still-lives and landscapes. The press 
 remarked that the nudes appeared as if adorned 
 in Harlequin suits; the landscapes, as if they were 
 intended for theatre drops; and the still-lives, 
 as if painted through a prism. The Synchromists 
 answered that, in order to achieve a strong 
 emotion of force and weight, they would "will- 
 
STNCHROMISM 
 
 297 
 
 ingly sacrifice the lovely tints of the flesh and the 
 joy of searching for coloured pots in the shops of 
 the second-hand merchants." But, despite all 
 they could say, there was justice in the public's 
 criticism. So long as there was a natural form in 
 a piAure, the spectator would unconsciously judge 
 it from a naturalistic standpoint. To be sure, 
 there were canvases in the Munich exhibition 
 which were almost unrecognisable as nature; 
 but, before the aims of this new movement could 
 be fully attained, a style of arbitrary and pure 
 form was necessary. In the Bernheim-Jeune 
 show Russell exposed one wholly abstrad: canvas. 
 As an indication of a deflection toward pure 
 composition, it was important, but the picture 
 itself was as manifestly an artistic failure as had 
 been his first large Synchromie en Vert hung in 
 the Salon des Independants of that year. It was 
 not the only failure exposed, however. From the 
 point of view of complete and organised concep- 
 tion all the early Synchromist pid:ures were to 
 a certain extent fragmentary and tentative. The 
 large canvas by Macdonald-Wright, Synchromie 
 en Bleu, was a flagrant example of a totally new 
 vision unsuccessfully struggling with the objecflively 
 classic inspiration of a defundl antiquity. The 
 group of three males in its foreground, while 
 competently and intelligently built, had the 
 appearance of allegorical figures struggling against 
 a toppling world. Although their position and 
 organisation were dilated by the needs of an al- 
 most El Greco-like composition, one was too con- 
 scious of natural objedis to accept, with a clear 
 aesthetic conscience, the seeming chaos of the 
 elements. 
 
298 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 In bringing together in a unified emotion all 
 the impressions of form, the Synchromists at first 
 overlooked the fad that purity of expression, in 
 order to be highly potent, must embody a pure 
 conception. Their early canvases demonstrated 
 many new formal possibilities, but, while they 
 were composed more compadlly than those of the 
 other moderns, the forms themselves were ob- 
 viously naturalistic. Herein the Synchromists at 
 their debut failed to take the step from Cezanne 
 to abstraction. Cezanne conceived all nature's 
 qualities — form, colour and tone — simultane- 
 ously. He was the first great realist, because 
 nature dictated to him the colour he was to use. 
 The Synchromists, on the other hand, used 
 natural objeds to create organisations of pure 
 colour, thus making formal expression a wholly 
 subjective performance. This method contained 
 greater emotional potentialities than Cezanne's, 
 because where the latter's palette was necessarily 
 much subdued in order to approximate to the 
 attenuated gamut found in nature, the Syn- 
 chromists' palette was keyed to its highest pitch 
 of saturation. Cezanne's choice of colour was 
 never absolute in the harmonic sense, because he 
 depended for accuracy entirely on taste and 
 sensitivity. With Macdonald-Wright and Russell 
 the palette was completely and scientifically 
 rationalised so that one could strike a chord upon 
 it as surely and as swiftly as on the keyboard of 
 a piano: the element of hazard in harmony was 
 eliminated. This knowledge of colour gamuts 
 was not employed for ornamental niceties, but 
 was converted into a method of creating an 
 aesthetic finality other than that of form and line. 
 
STNCHROMISM 
 
 299 
 
 If, in a complete balance of line and volume, the 
 colour overweighs at any point into warm or 
 cold, the poise of the whole is jeopardised and 
 the finality obscured. The perfect poise of all 
 the elements of a painting, expressed by the 
 single element of colour, is the final technical aim 
 of Synchromism. 
 
 In the first arbitrary formal composition by 
 Russell the desire was to carry out the continua- 
 tions of form from one chosen generating colour 
 and at the same time to create linear development 
 as well. His compositional theory was that, 
 through the inevitable evolution of line from an 
 arbitrarily chosen centre, the artist would nat- 
 urally and consciously create form which would 
 definitely approximate to the human body. In 
 his Synchromie en Bleu Violace the composition 
 was very similar to that of the famous Michel- 
 angelo Slave whose left arm is raised above the 
 head and whose right hand rests on the breast. 
 The pi(fture contained the same movement as 
 the statue, and had a simpler ordonnance of 
 linear diredlions; but, save in a general way, it 
 bore no resemblance to the human form. The 
 sketch for this canvas was a greater success than 
 the final presentation, for its realisation was more 
 complete, its order more contradled and intense. 
 In both there was but one very simple rhythm 
 with two movements; and the size of the large 
 pi(5lure, which was twelve feet high, was incom- 
 mensurate with the slightness of the expression. 
 
 Mis second large Synchromie, exposed in the 
 Salon des Independants in March 19 14, was more 
 complicated and more sensitively organised, both 
 as to movement and to colour, than his first. 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 By his colour rhythms he strove to incorporate 
 into his painting the quahty of duration: that is, 
 he sought to have his pidlure develop into time 
 like music. The ambition was commendable 
 although he wrongly asserted that older painting 
 extends itself stridtly into space. A Rubens, 
 while presenting itself to the spectator at one 
 glance, is nevertheless more than a block-mani- 
 festation of forms, for it never reveals itself fully 
 until after many periods of study. In the old 
 painters there is a definite formal foundation on 
 which the canvas is rhythmically built, and as a 
 rule this formal figure is repeated in miniature 
 many times throughout the canvas. These form- 
 echoes are defined and complete linear orders, 
 and into them rhythm is introduced. In Russell 
 the process is reversed: with him the rhythm 
 brings about the order. In Rubens there is a 
 distind: and conscious development of line, but 
 no development of form. Russell, in his later 
 canvases, sets down a central form which dicflates 
 both the continuity of the pidlure and its formal 
 complications. His generating centre is not like 
 a motif whose charaAer imprints itself on all its 
 developments, but rather like a seed out of which 
 the different forms grow — a diredling centre 
 which inspires and orders its environment. In 
 fine, the surrounding forms are not a development 
 of the central one, but a result of it. This type 
 of composition corresponds to the melodic com- 
 position in music. 
 
 In the later works of Macdonald-Wright the 
 motif form of composition is achieved. In Ce- 
 zanne there are forms whose parallels are repeated 
 in varied development throughout the work and 
 
ARM ORGANISATION IN BLUE-GREEN MACDONALD-VTR IGHT 
 
STNCHROMISM 
 
 301 
 
 are rhythmically ordered into blocks. But while 
 these forms resemble motif repetition, they are 
 not generated by rhythm but united by it. In 
 Macdonald- Wright's canvases the rhythmic con- 
 tinua of a central form constitute the move- 
 ment of the pidure as well as the final charader 
 of it. In his Arm Organisation in Blue-Green 
 one can discern near the centre a small and 
 arbitrary interpretation of the construAional form 
 of the human arm. The movement of these 
 forms throws off other lines and forms which, 
 through many variations and counter-statements, 
 reconstruct the arm in a larger way. Again these 
 lines of the larger arm, in conjunction with the 
 lines of the smaller one, evoke a further set of 
 forms which break into parts each of which is a 
 continuation or a restatement of the original arm 
 motif, varied and developed. 
 
 Macdonald- Wright bolds that the forms which 
 we have experienced in our contadl with nature 
 are more expressive and diverse than those which 
 are born of the inventive intelligence. But, while 
 it is true that every realisation of cesthetic move- 
 ment or of the rhythm of form is based on the 
 movement of the human body, it is not true that 
 the human body is a necessary foundation for 
 form alone. However, Macdonald- Wright, in in- 
 terpreting the human form, makes use merely 
 of the diredlion and counterpoise of volume; he 
 does not indulge in the depic^lion of limbs and 
 torso: the body is only his inspiration to abstrac- 
 tion. He changes and shifts its forms out of any 
 superficial resemblance to nature. In his desire 
 to cling to a solid and immutable foundation we 
 recognise an artist who realises how meagre is 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 the incentive to create abstrad: compositions. 
 With centuries of tradition urging him to a 
 realistic rendering of the Hfe about him, he finds 
 it difficult to break entirely with realism and to 
 create without referring to materiality. Perhaps 
 some day he will even forgo the inspiration 
 found in the combined forms in nature. His 
 work is tending toward that ultimate freedom, 
 as also is Russell's. 
 
 Such a development, however, cannot be defi- 
 nitely predidied, but one can say, without dog- 
 matism, that in the future their work will become 
 surer, their compositions of a higher and more 
 complete order. With their knowledge of the 
 fundamentals of rhythmic organisation, which is 
 well in advance of that of the other painters of 
 today, their progress seems assured. Their postu- 
 lates are too definite to permit of the introduction 
 of literary or musical transcendentalism; and 
 their apports are too significant to permit of any 
 retrogression toward metaphysics or drama. 
 Their palette has become co-ordinated and ra- 
 tionalised. Their composition is founded on the 
 human body in movement. And their colour, in 
 its plastic sense, takes into consideration space, 
 light and form. These fadlors represent their 
 technical assets. With these painters comes into 
 being an art divorced from all the entanglements 
 of photography, of piecemeal creation, of inhar- 
 monic gropings, of literature and of data hunting. 
 
 But they must not be regarded merely as 
 inventors of new pictorial methods, for their 
 discoveries have already taken significant aesthetic 
 form. As Renoir completed the first cycle of 
 modern art which was ushered in by Turner and 
 
STNCHROMISM 303 
 
 Delacroix, so have the Synchromists completed 
 the cycle of which Cezanne is the archaic father. 
 They have discovered the concrete means where- 
 with to bring about his desires. It remains now 
 for the painters of today and of the future to 
 realise more fully the dreams of a higher art 
 history. With the Synchromists there is no 
 system or method other than a purely personal 
 one. The word Synchromism, adopted by them 
 to avoid obnoxious classification under a foreign 
 banner, means simply ''with colour." It does not 
 explain a mannerism or indicate a special trait, as 
 do Cubism, Futurism and Neo-Impressionism. 
 It is as open as the term musician. As a school 
 it can never exist. Indeed it is the first graphic 
 art the application of whose principles cannot 
 be learned by a course of instrudlion. Artists 
 employing its means must depend entirely on 
 their own ability to create. In Synchromist 
 pidlures the good or bad results cannot be ob- 
 scured by the introduction of foreign elements, as 
 in the case of pi(5lures wherein nature is copied. 
 Russell and Macdonald- Wright have already re- 
 pudiated the appellation of Synchromist and call 
 themselves merely ''painters," for, since Cezanne, 
 painting means, not the art of tinting drawing 
 or of corredlly imitating natural objedls, but the 
 art which expresses itself only with the medium 
 inherent in it — colour. 
 
 All significant painting to come must neces- 
 sarily make use of Synchromist means, although 
 form and composition — that is, the creative 
 expression — may be as arbitrary or personal as 
 the artist desires. In the Synchromists' latest 
 prospedlus are to be found the following com- 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 ments: "In our painting colour becomes the 
 generating fundlion. Painting being the art of 
 colour, any quality of a pidlure not expressed by 
 colour is not painting. An art whose ambition 
 it is to be pure should express itself only with 
 means inherent in that art. The relation of 
 spacial emotions and of the emotions of density 
 and transparency which we wish to express, 
 didlates to us the colours most capable of trans- 
 mitting these sensations to the speculator. In 
 thus creating the subjeAive emotion of depth 
 and rhythm we achieve the dreams of painters 
 who talk of drawing the spedlator into the centre 
 of the picture; but instead of his being drawn 
 there merely by intelledlual processes he is en- 
 veloped in the pidiure by ta(5lile sensation. We 
 limit ourselves to the expression of plastic emo- 
 tions. We can no longer conceive of the stupid 
 juxtapositions of colours devoid of any rhythmic 
 interlinking as art organisations." The Synchro- 
 mists do not pretend to have invented new 
 qualities for art but to have brought to painting 
 a new vision which permits them to express the 
 old qualities with a greater potency than formerly. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE LESSER MODERNS 
 
 DECADENCE is simply the inability to 
 create new tissue. In painting it man- 
 ifests itself in two ways: either in 
 the endeavour of an artist to turn the 
 attention from new and precise procedures to 
 antiquated and irrelevant ones; or in the artist's 
 desire to base his inspiration on the great work of 
 an immediate forerunner rather than on the 
 foundation of all vitality, nature. In neither case 
 is new material being added to the sum of art. 
 Decadence usually takes the form of a facile 
 imitation of the surface asped: of a master, not 
 infrequently making that master's results prettier, 
 more fluent and more attractive. This is a 
 natural and inevitable consequence of copying 
 the objedlive side of a great work which originally 
 was the outgrowth of a profound aesthetic philoso- 
 phy. Decadents, as a general rule, are suffi- 
 ciently analytic to sense their own paucity of 
 construAive genius. In recognising that nature 
 can never inspire them to significant co-ordina- 
 tions, they are content to accept, with slight 
 modifications, the artistic standards of their 
 predecessors. They vary the art that has gone 
 before to meet the needs of their own tempera- 
 ments. In many cases highly meritorious work 
 results. 
 
3o6 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 The word decadent is not wholly deprecatory. 
 Often the decadent is a competent composer in 
 the abstrad. By presenting in an attradive 
 way his own personal tastes, he sometimes makes 
 his art both interesting and beautiful. His deca- 
 dence lies in his retrogression from the point to 
 which the art of his day has arrived and in his 
 inability to introduce a new element to com- 
 pensate for this retrogression. No amount of 
 individuality can bridge this gap. Many painters, 
 like Gauguin, have readied against achievement 
 but have possessed a tangential vitality which in 
 itself has been a new contribution to aesthetic 
 endeavour. Other painters, like Renoir, while 
 introducing no innovations, have, by talented 
 and comprehensive efforts, duplicated and im- 
 proved upon the art of the latest creative masters 
 and thereby pushed forward the highest stand- 
 ards. They are not decadents, for their work 
 exhibits no deterioration. Even decadents may 
 be excellent artists. Caspar de Grayer was 
 undoubtedly a great artist though an offshoot of 
 Rubens; and Giampietrino and Cesare da Sesto 
 were both solid and intelligent painters, though 
 they did not rival their master, Leonardo da 
 Vinci. There has undoubtedly been great sculp- 
 ture since the Renaissance; but Michelangelo 
 closed up for all time the plastic possibilities of 
 clay and marble, and consequently, there being 
 no new fundlioning element to be introduced into 
 it, all sculpture since his day has been in the 
 broad sense decadent. 
 
 Modern painting has had its decadents also — 
 men who have attempted to revert to a sterile 
 past or who have followed in the paths blazed 
 
THE LESSER MODERNS 307 
 
 by others without approaching the achievements 
 of the painters imitated. This latter class has its 
 usages, for it tends to lend impetus to the move- 
 ment it follows. The men composing it are 
 popularly called exponents, and the appellation is 
 just. There are painters in all countries today 
 who adhere to Impressionist methods, and thereby 
 keep ever before us one of the great steps in the 
 development of modern painting. Cezanne has 
 undoubtedly been given greater consideration 
 because of the many artists who follow his 
 precepts. And the numerous imitators of Cubism 
 have done much to focus on that movement the 
 consideration it deserves. In a general way all 
 the lesser modern painters, by their feverish 
 adivities, expositions and pamphleteering, have, 
 despite their inherent lack of genuine importance, 
 kept the world conscious of the fad that it is 
 in the midst of a great aesthetic upheaval, that 
 new forces are at work, that the older order is 
 being supplanted. 
 
 Today nearly every country has a group of 
 men striving toward the new vision. They can- 
 not all be innovators of new methods. They 
 cannot all carry forward the evolution of modern 
 painting. But they can at least give momentum 
 to the current ideals and turn out work which 
 bears so much personal merit that it becomes 
 deserving of more or less serious consideration. 
 Degas and his circle are of this class, as are the 
 Futurists who, though at bottom decadent, inas- 
 much as they turn their art back to illustration, 
 are a force which cannot be ignored. In Dresden, 
 Munich and Berlin are groups of modern men 
 who have repudiated the academies and struck 
 
3o8 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 out into new fields. Russia has contributed 
 many young artists to the present ideal. Eng- 
 land has not been altogether impervious to the 
 modern doArines. America is represented by 
 fully a score of artists animated by the new 
 vitality. And in France there are a hundred 
 painters at work tearing down the older idols. 
 While few of these men can lay claim to intro- 
 ducing any intrinsically new and significant 
 methods or forms into modern painting, their 
 work in many instances, while being decadent in 
 the strid sense, is nevertheless commendable. 
 They are not great artists even in the sense that 
 Monet, Manet, Gauguin, Matisse and Picasso 
 are great; but many of them are at least genuine 
 artists. 
 
 One of the most conspicuous figures among 
 the decadents is Wassily Kandinsky. In an age 
 when all art was being arraigned before the 
 tribunal of biology, physiology, and psychology, 
 he came forward and attempted to drag it back 
 into the murky medium of metaphysics. The 
 generating forces of modern painting, however, 
 rest on no metaphysical hypothesis. To attempt 
 to define form by transcendental terms, or even 
 to credit form with esoteric significance, reveals 
 an ignorance of the principles of aesthetic emotion. 
 Form in the art sense is a demonstrable proposi- 
 tion; it is answerable to physical laws. Michel- 
 angelo, El Greco, Giotto, Rubens, Cezanne and 
 Renoir based composition on natural causes, and 
 as each successive artist has approached intensity 
 in organisation, he has come nearer and nearer 
 to the rhythm which animates and controls 
 corporeal existence. ^Esthetic form, in order to 
 
THE LESSER MODERNS 
 
 become emotion-producing, must refled: the form 
 which is most intimately associated with our 
 sensitivities. It must primarily be physical. 
 There is nothing mysterious about aesthetic 
 rhythm, and any attempt to "spirituaHse" the 
 harmonies of art carries art so much further from 
 the truth. The modern tendency to make objects 
 abstradl and to divest subjed-matter of all its 
 mimetic qualities, has led some critics and 
 painters to the false conclusion that form itself 
 is unrelated to recognisable phenomena. But 
 even in the most abstract of the great painters, 
 the form is concrete. In a broad sense it is 
 susceptible of geometrical demonstration; and 
 its intensity is in diredl ratio to its proximation to 
 human organisms. In fadl, there are no moving 
 forms in an aesthetic organisation which do not 
 have their prototypes in the human body in 
 adlion. Were this not true empathy would be 
 impossible, and without empathy an artistic 
 emotion is purely intelledual and associative. 
 The greatest painters, past and present, have 
 recognised this principle; and art which does not 
 adhere to it is decadent both in the aesthetic and 
 the intelledlual sense. 
 
 Kandinsky exemplifies this kind of decadence. 
 While the innovators up to Matisse had tried to 
 discover in nature secrets which would aid them 
 in plastic expression, Kandinsky has tried, by 
 numerous articles and at least one complete book, 
 to turn back the minds of painters to the sup- 
 posedly mystical elements of form and colour. 
 But although this artist is to be commended 
 on his effort to make colour significant in a day 
 when angular forms of brown and black were the 
 
3IO MODERN PAINTING 
 
 keynote, his study of colour should have begun 
 where Cezanne left off and not with the writings 
 of Maeterlinck and the symbolist poets. Kan- 
 dinsky recognises that colour has possibilities, 
 but he ignores the fad that colour is one of the 
 physical sciences, as definite as those of the 
 quadrivium, that its indudive qualities have 
 become classified and that its fundioning is 
 precise and answerable to natural laws. Conse- 
 quently he cannot co-ordinate its governing 
 principles, and in an attempt to rationalise it he 
 has sought refuge in music, an art which presents 
 to him the same mystical difficulties. So long 
 as he was under the healthy influence of Matisse 
 his symbology was less evident; but when he 
 adopted a metaphysical programme it all came 
 to the surface. 
 
 Kandinsky's early "impressions" are heavy 
 and insensitive "Fauve" pidures. His " com- 
 positions'' for the most part are general state- 
 ments of some rural scene in Matisse's manner; 
 and his ''improvisations" represent semi-abstrad 
 lines delimiting scientifically meaningless colours. 
 In his book. The Art of Spiritual Harmony, 
 he presents an elaborate explanation of the 
 metaphysical basis for colour, but he fails to 
 contribute any ideas not to be found in Dela- 
 croix and Seurat. And the pidures with which 
 he complements the text have been surpassed, 
 in their own manner, by the Chinese. There are 
 isolated comments on colour theories which are 
 separately sound, and there are explanatory 
 generalisations; but a diligent search fails to 
 reveal any statement which is precise and at the 
 same time new. The book refers constantly to 
 
THE LESSER MODERNS 311 
 
 music, and there are undeniable evidences of 
 literary thought; but nowhere is there an ex- 
 planation of the plastic significance of colour. 
 Kandinsky is a painter of moods, and as such 
 encroaches upon the domain of music. He is a 
 painter of the vision of an a(ftion without its 
 objedlive integument, and as such he enters the 
 realm of poetry. He is essentially pretty, and 
 despite his idealistic nomenclature, he is at 
 bottom illustrative and decorative. What he 
 designates the "soul" is only associative memory, 
 and his conception of composition is the breaking 
 up of a flat surface into irregular compartments 
 by lines and more or less pure colour. Like 
 Scriabine he has overlooked the formal possi- 
 bilities of colour and consequently has failed in 
 any aesthetically emotional expression. 
 
 Kandinsky's attempts to create moods are 
 largely failures because of the inherent limitations 
 of his art medium. The arts may be synthesised 
 when a profounder understanding of them has 
 come about, but their fundlionality can never be 
 interchanged. The art of literature will always 
 be able to tell a story better than the greatest 
 sculpture; and even a primitive song is more 
 capable of producing a mood than the most 
 highly organised painting. Kandinsky, for in- 
 stance, fails to achieve what the Marseillaise 
 achieves in music, namely: the dramatic presenta- 
 tion of an exortation to adlion. Separate, for 
 instance, the phrases of the original version. 
 The first verse opens with a rousing appeal which 
 culminates on " patrie," a word always welcome 
 to the ear and heart of a Frenchman. Then the 
 song acclaims the glory of the occasion and 
 
312 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 repeats dramatically the cause of the struggle — 
 " Contre nous de la tyrannie VHendard sanglant 
 est leve^ Then it recounts the tragedies which 
 are befalling relatives and friends at the hands 
 of the growling soldiers of the enemy; and 
 suddenly, in an unexpedled voice it calls, Aux 
 armes, citoyens!" ending in a patriotic and deci- 
 sive flourish. The music throughout is subtly 
 harmonised with the words: lively during the 
 opening call; abated during the first statement 
 of the cause; animated with its repetition; minor 
 when the tragic words occur; vibrant and imita- 
 tive of bugles during the call to arms; and 
 highest in pitch at the end. This is the expres- 
 sion of the mood intensified. 
 
 Could painting extend itself into time and 
 present singly and in sequence the visions of 
 obje(5live nature, dramatically synthesised with 
 colour and line, it could perhaps influence people 
 to emotion in the way music does. But the 
 musical quality of time-extension is impossible in 
 painting. And since a picture presents a simul- 
 taneous vision, which cannot be otherwise except 
 through a subjedlive process, it is incapable of 
 working from a prelude to a finale like music. 
 Music is abstradl, though firmly based on the 
 rhythmic movement of all nature, yet it can 
 produce moods by far more distant and far less 
 tangible associations than can painting. But 
 mood in music is no higher a quality than 
 illustration in painting, and the highly creative 
 artists ignore them both. The great composer is 
 the one who, seeing beyond the associative theory 
 in music, feels the deeper plasticity of movement 
 and form: and his plasticity is this only pre- 
 
THE LESSER MODERNS 313 
 
 occupation, just as the plastic element of colour 
 is the great modern painter's chief concern. 
 Kandinsky has only tried to introduce an unim- 
 portant element of one art into another art. 
 While the procedure has a superficial taste of 
 novelty it is no more creditable than if he had 
 declared himself frankly for illustration and 
 joined the ranks of Degas and his school. He 
 has not probed into the pregnant recesses of 
 painting and attempted to discover the meaning 
 of form. He has contented himself with obscur- 
 ing the delineations of natural objects in such a 
 manner that the beholder feels led to decipher 
 his cryptic realities. The suggestion of adluality 
 is there, but there being no other strong attraAion 
 in the pi(5lure, aesthetic or otherwise, the speculator 
 sets to work to penetrate its objedlive meaning. 
 In the majority of cases he succeeds, and gains 
 thereby a satisfaction similar to that of having 
 solved a simple problem in fractions. 
 
 In painting moods, which he refers to as 
 "spiritual impressions," "internal harmonies,'* 
 "psychic effedts" and "soul vibrations," Kan- 
 dinsky does not attempt to depidl the dynamic 
 forces which produce moods, but strives to inter- 
 pret his own emotional impressions by means 
 of semi-symbolic and semi-naturalistic visions 
 and by inspirational methods. Unable to ally the 
 elements of colour and line to a given theme, he 
 contents himself with giving us a chaotic impres- 
 sion by such means as he personally associates 
 with his mood: and since this kind of association 
 is largely individual, his depidiion of the mood 
 is incomprehensible to anyone not tempera- 
 mentally and mentally at one with him. Did he 
 
314 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 understand the inherent psychological dramatic 
 significance of colours and lines he could represent 
 a universally moving vision, and thereby attain 
 in a small degree the end for which he aims. 
 But his feeling for colour especially is so vague 
 and unscientific that it is, after all, a personal 
 thing, and his graphic representation of a mood is 
 little more than an individual and purely otiose 
 expression. Even Carra, in his colourless Funeral 
 of the Anarchist Galli, approaches nearer the 
 creation of a mood than does Kandinsky in his 
 best canvases, for in Carra there is exhibited a 
 certain knowledge of the dramatic use of line 
 which, when combined with recognisable subjedl- 
 matter, augments the thematic drama. 
 
 Despite his complete preoccupation with colour 
 Kandinsky is decadent more than Van Gogh to 
 whom artistically he is closely related, because 
 the progress of modern painting is toward purity, 
 toward creation by means of a unique element, 
 toward an art which expresses only the qualities 
 of which that art is the most highly capable. 
 When other considerations enter into it, it is at 
 once drawn back toward illustration, and its 
 final defecation is postponed. Happily Kandin- 
 sky, an explorer of the limitless realms of meta- 
 physics, has given us no more specific a postulate 
 than that colour has meaning. Though he formu- 
 lates many vaguely associative theories (such as 
 "keen yellow looks sour because it recalls the taste 
 of a lemon," "a shade of red will cause pain or 
 disgust through association with running blood," 
 and "in the hierarchy of colours green is the 
 bourgeoisie — self-satisfied, immovable, narrow"); 
 he nevertheless relies largely on instindl for their 
 
THE LESSER MODERNS 315 
 
 application. While attempting to turn painters' 
 minds from the precise discoveries of colourists to 
 a pseudo-philosophical consideration of colour, he 
 is too general and ambiguous to inspire extensive 
 imitation. Already painters since him have gone 
 forward in the great work of research begun by 
 the Impressionists. 
 
 If Kandinsky, as a theorist, is cabalistic and 
 illusory, he achieves a certain decorative pretti- 
 ness in his work. Though his ideas are old, the 
 appearance of his canvases is new: and it is 
 merely this novelty of conception, coupled with 
 his tendency toward abstra<flion, which makes 
 him of interest, and then only as a theoretical 
 deviation from the work of Gauguin, Matisse and 
 the Orientals. His colour is not without visual 
 charm, and his composition often has the fascina- 
 tion of the delicate patterns found in the Chinese. 
 In fadl, Kandinsky's compositional debt to the 
 Chinese is large. His Improvisation No. 29 is 
 almost identical with a painting by Rin Teikei, 
 and many of his pictures appear like curved-line 
 generalisations of Chinese groupings, or the forms 
 in Chinese backgrounds. Like the Cubists Kan- 
 dinsky is a step toward arbitrariness in formal 
 composition, but his advance is less significant 
 than theirs. In his desire to illustrate a mood 
 and produce a corresponding psychic emotion in 
 the spectator he is a transcendentalised Futurist. 
 His ontological terminology has given an impetus 
 to his popularity, but it has tended unfortunately 
 to obscure his worth as a maker of arabesques. 
 
 Of a different decadent type are Bonnard, 
 Vuillard and K.-X. Roussel who call themselves 
 the Intimists. These artists descend in large 
 
3i6 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 measure from Matisse, and though other arid 
 sometimes stronger influences enter their work, 
 they are in a general way more closely akin to 
 him than any other modern painter. Their 
 appearance is more academic and, in the decora- 
 tive sense, prettier than that of Matisse. Also, 
 there is in their pictures a greater perpendicularity 
 than in the work of their master. The angular 
 and the perpendicular always represent the second 
 compositional step from symmetricality to order: 
 they are indicative of the earliest stage of aesthetic 
 consciousness. They are found in the Egyptians, 
 Phoenicians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and in all the 
 primitive Christians, and in Gauguin and Puvis 
 de Chavannes. The artists who use them have 
 awakened to the fad: that chaos is not conducive 
 to emotional satisfadion. In perpendicular lines 
 there is a primitive sense of fitness, for one feels 
 they are both well-planted and immovable. Not 
 infrequently they are employed by the decadents 
 of a movement or an epoch because they har- 
 monise so neatly and unostentatiously with pretty 
 colours and delicate themes. The Futurists found 
 in them a ready means to a decorative order. 
 
 Bonnard, the most genuine artist of the group, 
 uses perpendicularity of arrangement more con- 
 sciously than does either of the others. He stu- 
 died in the same class with Maurice Denis at the 
 Academie Julieriy and his association with this 
 painter no doubt explains his compositional pre- 
 diledion. He is strongly influenced by Renoir, 
 although he has never penetrated beyond Renoir's 
 surface. His greys are always rich and sombre, 
 and even his simplest works are as artistically 
 opulent and lovely as the finest tapestry. Indeed 
 
THE LESSER MODERNS 317 
 
 his large paintings are more appropriately wall 
 coverings than panels, ornaments rather than 
 decorations. In them are hot sunlight and cold 
 shadow in scintillating succession; and every 
 objecft is put to genuine ornamental use. They 
 seem to exhibit an unconscious fluency in the 
 employment of bafflingly diverse greys which are 
 saturated with colour and applied so as to reveal 
 highly their attentuated purity. There are also 
 in his work harmoniously horizontal lines and 
 pleasing sequences of curves. In Le Jardin a line 
 starts with the head of a man on the left, con- 
 tinues along his arm and leg and the sofa back, 
 and reaches an apex in the child's head to the 
 right of the centre, sinks by way of the head of 
 the woman on the right to the man's arm, is then 
 caught up again by the contour of his legs, is 
 paralleled by the outline of the nearest standing 
 child's dress and face and the face of the kneeling 
 girl, is continued in the bottom of the skirt of the 
 child seated on the sofa, and then becomes 
 horizontal in a perfedl continuation of the table's 
 surface. The line is beautiful and studiously 
 made, and is pointed out here for the purpose of 
 showing the simple ordonnance often found in 
 the lesser artists. Nor is it the only line in the 
 canvas. There are others as harmonious and as 
 beautiful; but what keeps the pidlure from being 
 a great composition, although its forms are solid 
 and well adapted to their spaces, is its lack of 
 opposition or solution of warring elements. If 
 we do not try to class Bonnard with the greatest 
 artists, we are forced to praise him. He is 
 unpretentious, highly gifted, has a well-developed 
 sense of the beautiful, and is possessed of a most 
 
3i8 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 sensitive eye. He is neither an illustrator of 
 nature nor of moods, but an artist who paints to 
 obtain aesthetic expression, without the arriere 
 pensee of a theoretical method. He is one of the 
 most purely pleasing painters of modern times. 
 
 Vuillard, a painter of interiors, owes his inspira- 
 tion as much to Toulouse-Lautrec as to Gauguin. 
 Like Bonnard he uses greys of dry and mat 
 colour, but his harmonies are slighter and of 
 lighter tonality than those of Bonnard. Profiting 
 by the Impressionists' light discoveries he has 
 done some very admirable interiors; some of his 
 works are more modern and artistic Whistlers. 
 His art is one in which the spotting of masses for 
 the sake of balance supplants any attempt to 
 produce generating lines. As with Bonnard and 
 Roussel there is in him a striving after beautiful 
 surfaces, matures which in themselves will tempt 
 the amateur. In this common pursuit the Inti- 
 mists show themselves to be the successors of 
 Degas; but they are successors who, having taken 
 to heart the teachings of more significant fore- 
 runners, represent a sturdier decadence than that 
 of Degas. K.-X. Roussel is a feminised Poussin. 
 He searches solely for effed:, and his canvases 
 have the singular charm of enamel. Were they 
 smaller they would make admirable brooches and 
 vases. He too has made tapestries, but in spirit 
 they are less modern than the corresponding 
 efforts of his contemporaries. His compositions 
 embody reddish satyrs and nymphs, intense blue 
 sky, yellow-green foliage and yellow ground. 
 His drawing never has more than the rudimentary 
 charm of school-room talent, while that of 
 Vuillard is subjugated to his colour application, 
 
THE LESSER MODERNS 
 
 and that of Bonnard is instindlively deformed to 
 the needs of Hne and decorative necessity. 
 
 Maurice Denis is more diredlly an outcome of 
 the school of Pont-Aven than are the three pre- 
 ceding men. His synthetic figures were first seen 
 in Courbet, then in Puvis de Chavannes, then in 
 Besnard and Gauguin. In Denis they have lost 
 much of their significance and have once more 
 become primarily academic. There was a time 
 about 1890 when Denis's colour was not aggres- 
 sively disagreeable. It was subjugated to a 
 certain greyness which was applied in little spots 
 resembling the black-and-white stippling of some 
 of Seurat's drawings. Now his colour has grown 
 acid and unpleasant. His line is stiff and vitiated 
 and lacks even the quality of a pleasing silhouette. 
 He has written a book of theories, but it has 
 helped him little in his artistic achievements. He 
 is the antithesis of Bonnard, and his colours possess 
 almost no harmonious interrelation. In him there 
 are a few perpendicular lines, but one may seek in 
 vain for evidences of co-ordination. Many of his 
 figures are appropriated from the works of the 
 old masters, but because he fails to adapt them 
 sensitively to his needs, they lose, rather than 
 gain, in beauty by the transfer. He is at times 
 symbolic and allegoric, and while one might 
 overlook this literary phase of his art, provided 
 there were other qualities to compensate for it, 
 he fails to exhibit a complete appreciation of the 
 aesthetic possibilities of his models, and conse- 
 quently becomes merely an exponent of adopted 
 mannerisms. His popularity has entirely to do 
 with qualities unrelated to painting. Judged by 
 a purely aesthetic standard he is inferior to an 
 
320 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 Augustus John, a Desvallieres, a Bourdelle or a 
 Wyndham Lewis. 
 
 The highly talented Andre Derain is another 
 synthetic painter. He is sincerely moved by 
 multiramose tree forms and the sunlight effeds of 
 Provence, and his admiration for Cezanne led 
 him into certain mannerisms which have for their 
 objed a facilitation of the Aix master's methods. 
 In his use of soft yellows, hot earth tones, deep 
 warm greens and light blues, he reveals his debt 
 to the modern tendency toward colour. By out- 
 lining his objedls with heavy contours, he has 
 acquired erroneously a reputation for virility, 
 and though he aspires to composition, he only 
 achieves pattern. He is much like the Scandi- 
 navian, Othon Friesz, who, having absorbed the 
 exteriors of Matisse and Cezanne, and having 
 read Cezanne's letter recommending Poussin re- 
 made on nature, has turned his attention to this 
 old Titian offshoot and endeavours to give us a 
 reversion to style. At one time he used colour 
 freely, but he now paints with ochres, blues, 
 blacks, greens and an occasional red — a gamut 
 like Derain's, only yellower. He too has a heavy 
 technique and a reputation for virility. Maurice 
 de Vlaminck is another painter of similar inspira- 
 tion and palette. He is much prettier and has a 
 finer sense of soft harmonies than either of the 
 other two. He reveals a genuine feeling for his sub- 
 jeds, and always tries to introduce into his works 
 a simple oppositional line. He comes dired: from 
 Cezanne, and it is from paintings such as his that 
 Cezanne has acquired a reputation as a maker of 
 arabesques. De Vlaminck has a rich and impelling 
 mature and an art sense which is almost coquettish. 
 
THE LESSER MODERNS 321 
 
 Kees van Dongen has studied the sensual 
 drawings of Toulouse-Lautrec and the broad 
 exteriors of Matisse, and in combining his two 
 admirations has made eminently effective posters 
 of nearly harmonious colours in very broad planes. 
 De Segonzac also uses attenuated colours in a 
 broad manner after Matisse. Manguin, another 
 Matisse imitator, is too academic to appeal 
 strongly to those who have acquired the modern 
 vision, despite the primitive order his canvases 
 at times possess. Flandrin is more decorative. 
 His works reveal a classic perpendicularity of 
 composition, and though they are without a 
 sense of form, we feel in them a certain charm of 
 space and air. He brushes in his landscapes 
 broadly by planes of light and dark, somewhat 
 in the very early manner of Matisse. Pierre 
 Laprade has arrived at a style of surface which 
 may best be charadlerised as bad tapestry. Jean 
 Puy applies his pidlures in a broad, somewhat 
 bold, manner, and his light tonality and angular- 
 ities point to his having lingered over the work 
 of Cezanne. Lebasque is the feminine prototype 
 of Puy. His colour is faded and unemotional, 
 and his exteriors are as flat as the simplest 
 decorations. Madame Marval differs from La- 
 basque only in theme. 
 
 Modern decadence in Zak, Rousseau, Vallotton, 
 Prendergast and Simon Bussy manifests itself 
 in a retrogression to primitive ideals. Though 
 using the modern methods of simplification, these 
 men revert to a static and dead past. Their aim 
 is to revive the most ancient manner of painting. 
 Of all the modern decadents they are perhaps 
 the most devitalising for they tacitly repudiate the 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 discoveries of the new men, and strive to turn the 
 minds of the pubHc and of painters alike to the 
 steriUties of antiquity. They even ignore the 
 aesthetic principles of the Renaissance, and by 
 pushing creative expression to its furthest limits 
 of artlessness, turn to naught the entire achieve- 
 ments of the great plastic composers. At best 
 these men are dealers in decorative material. 
 Simple arrangement is absent from their works, 
 and colour, which for nearly a century has fought 
 for its true place in painting, is once more used as 
 an instinctive means for filling in drawings. 
 
 Vallotton, though a modern primitive, is not 
 allied to any recent school. In appearance his 
 work is unlike that of the other moderns. He 
 disdains all save the simplest means and the most 
 restricted colours. In him there are no delicate 
 plays of light, but broad and heavy shadings 
 which are not without subtlety. He is a Teutonic 
 Ingres — a Flandrin made serious as to precision 
 and reduced colour. At a distance his nude 
 studies are interesting, for there one loses the 
 dryness and hardness of their technical manner 
 — a heritage of Vallotton's days of wood engrav- 
 ings. Other modern painters who elude classifica- 
 tion, but who are intimately related in a general 
 way to the new movements are Charles Guerin, 
 Plot, Spiro, Alcide Le Beau, Gustave Jaulmes and 
 d'Espagnat. Though they differ markedly from 
 Vallotton they are all preoccupied with self- 
 expression by means of colour. By making it a 
 dominant element in their work, they have 
 admitted their susceptibility to the modern ideal 
 and thereby have given an impetus to the spirit 
 which tends toward purification. Guerin is a 
 
THE LESSER MODERNS 
 
 professor of the Academie Moderne; and though 
 clinging close to conventional drawing, he attains 
 a slightly novel aspedl in all his tapestry-like 
 canvases. He is eminently of the Beaux-Arts 
 tradition, is artificial and monotonous, and paints 
 very large pidlures with both idealistic and realis- 
 tic themes. 
 
 Of the modern men who have found in Cubism 
 their strongest aesthetic fascination de la Fresnay 
 is a noteworthy example. So well does he under- 
 stand the demands of the Picasso tradition that 
 he has come to be looked upon as one of the 
 members of the Cubist group. His arrangements 
 are soft and pretty and his colour is harmonious. 
 He has in fad: surpassed in merit several of the 
 original Cubists. Frederick Etchells and W. 
 Roberts are English exponents of Cubism, and 
 the latter has done some work which rivals that 
 of Picabia. Wyndham Lewis, another Enghsh- 
 man, strives for an individual expression, but his 
 angularities reveal his debt to Picasso, although 
 the general impression of his pictures is Futuristic. 
 The hand of the Cubists can be found in many of 
 the canvases of the modern Americans. Arthur 
 B. Davies, the most popular of the new men in 
 the United States, is at bottom a superficial 
 academician, but he superimposes shallow Cubist 
 traits on his two-dimensional drawings, giving 
 them a spuriously modern appearance. Maurice 
 Stern treats Gauguin themes with a pale reflec- 
 tion of the early geometrical Picasso; and similar 
 means are employed by C. R. Sheeler, Jr., though 
 both Matisse and Delaunay have contributed to 
 his art. 
 
 To name all the modern painters who are con- 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 scientiously battling against formalism and the 
 dry-rot of the academies would be impossible. 
 The field is too broad: the adivities are too 
 numerous. Few civilised countries have escaped 
 the insistence of the new impetus. By some 
 painters the new methods are adopted tentatively 
 and by degrees. Others fly to the latest phases 
 of art and move forward with the epoch. Today 
 there are numerous representatives of all the 
 movements from Impressionism to Synchromism. 
 KroU and Childe Hassam, both Americans, are 
 emulators of Monet, though Hassam, who appears 
 less modern than KroU, is by far the more sensi- 
 tive painter. Marquet has done more than 
 imitate Impressionism. He has synthesised 
 Monet into a more masculine expression. His 
 planes are broad and luminous, and he achieves 
 a distind feeling for air and distance by 
 simpler and more dired means than did the Im- 
 pressionists. W. S. Glackens combines a Renoir 
 technique with a modern purity of colour. J. D. 
 Ferguson, the Scotchman, also reverts to the Im- 
 pressionists but has learned much from Matisse. 
 Duncan Grant, an Englishman, is much more 
 modern than Ferguson and more competently 
 expressive of the new. Roger Fry has contributed 
 much to the modern impetus. His writings reveal 
 a wide comprehension of present-day paintings 
 and his insight into aesthetics is at times profound. 
 Every year adds to the ranks. Besides the 
 modern artists already named may be men- 
 tioned Bechteiev, Bolz, Lhote, Chagall, Chamail- 
 lard, Zawadowsky, Hayden, Ottmann, Lotiron, 
 Utrillo, Hartley, Peckstein, Valensi, Jawlensky, 
 Knauerhase, Miinter, Tobeen, Bloch, Dove, de 
 
THE LESSER MODERNS 325 
 
 Chirico, Walkowitz, Boussingault, Kanoldt and 
 Granzow. 
 
 One of the healthiest movements of the day, 
 though without novelty, is Vorticism whose head- 
 quarters are London. The Vorticists are unre- 
 stridied as to theories, and have for their aim the 
 final purification of painting as well as of the 
 other arts. Their creed is an intelligent one, 
 and is in diredl line with the current tendencies. 
 As yet they have produced no piAures which 
 might be called reflexive of their principles, but 
 they have kept before English artists the necessity 
 of eliminating the unessentials. Their main doc- 
 trines, so far as painting is concerned, were set 
 forth by the Synchromists long before the Vorti- 
 cists came into public being; but by their in- 
 sistence on the basic needs of purification, they 
 have done valuable service. The Synchromists in 
 their manifesto wrote: "An art whose ambition 
 it is to be pure should express itself only in the 
 means inherent in that art. . . . Painting being 
 the art of colour, any quality of a picfture not 
 expressed by colour is not painting." A year 
 later in Blast, the Vorticists' publication, we 
 read: "The Vorticist relies on this alone; on the 
 primary pigment of his art, and nothing else. . . . 
 Every concept, every emotion presents itself to 
 the vivid consciousness in some primary form. 
 It belongs to the art of this form. If sound, 
 to music, if formed words, to literature; colour in 
 position, to painting. . . 
 
 All these painters are the leaders of the secon- 
 dary inspirations in modern art, and out of them 
 grow other painters in Europe and America. 
 They do not as a rule go by the name of any 
 
326 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 school, but they can be classed together because 
 in them all is the same desire to create the 
 novel, to present a strikingly different aspedl 
 from the academies, and to differentiate them- 
 selves individually from their fellows. They all 
 feel their incompetency to create new forms, the 
 necessity to follow, the timidity which only 
 permits them to modify the surfaces of other 
 greater men. They are the creative exponents 
 and the decadents of vital movements, and they 
 in turn have their own imitators and decadents. 
 They have felt the need for change, but lack the 
 genius for new organisations. That many of 
 them are sound artists it would be folly to deny. 
 But they are in no sense of the word innovators. 
 Some of them in fadl are failures, but theirs is 
 the consolation of having failed in attempting 
 something vital and representative of the age in 
 which they live. 
 
XV 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 IN conclusion there are several points which 
 require accentuation if the significance of 
 modern painting is to be fully grasped. 
 There have been three epochs in the visual 
 arts. The first was the longest, and extended 
 through more than two centuries. The last two 
 epochs have required less than a hundred years 
 for their fulfilment. Each epoch dealt with a 
 specific phase of painting and developed that 
 phase until its possibilities were exhausted. The 
 ultimate aim of all great painting was purifica- 
 tion, but before that could come about many 
 theories had to be tested; many consummations 
 had to take place; many problems had to be 
 solved. The laws of formal organisation were 
 first discovered and applied with the limited 
 means at hand. Then came experimentation and 
 research in the mechanics of expression — the 
 search for new and vital methods wherewith these 
 principles of composition might be bodied forth 
 more intensely. Later the fundlioning properties 
 of colour were unearthed and employed. In the 
 course of this evolution many irrelevant fac^lors 
 found their way into painting. The men of the 
 first epoch used primitive and obvious materials 
 to express their forms. When the new means — 
 means inherent in painting — were ascertained, 
 
328 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 it was necessary to eliminate the former media. 
 The subjedl-matter of painting — that is, the 
 recognisable objedl, the human obstacle — had to 
 be forced out to permit of the introdudion of 
 colour which had become an inseparable adjundl 
 of form. To effed: the coalition of pure composi- 
 tion and the newer methods was a difficult feat, 
 for so long had the world been accustomed to the 
 pidorial aspedl of painting, that it had come to 
 look upon subjed-matter as a cardinal requisite 
 to plastic creation. 
 
 The first epoch began with the advent of oil 
 painting about 1400, and went forward, building 
 and developing, until it reached realisation early 
 in the seventeenth century. Knowing that organ- 
 ised form is the basis of all aesthetic emotion, the 
 old masters strove to find the psychological 
 principles for co-ordinating volume. Their means 
 were naturally superficial, for their initial concern 
 was to determine what they should do, not how 
 they should do it. In expressing the form they 
 deemed necessary to great art they used the 
 material already at their disposal, namely: objec- 
 tive nature. They organised and made rhythmic 
 the objeds about them, more especially the 
 human body which permitted of many variations 
 and groupings and which was in itself a complete 
 ensemble. And furthermore they had discovered 
 that movement — an indispensable attribute of 
 the most highly emotional composition — was 
 best expressed by the poise of the human figure. 
 Colour to these early men was only an addendum 
 to drawing. They conceived form in black and 
 white, and sought to reinforce their work by the 
 realistic use of pigments. That colour was an 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 329 
 
 infixed element of organisation they never sus- 
 peAed. Their preoccupation was along different 
 lines. The greatest exponents of intense composi- 
 tion during this first epoch were Tintoretto, 
 Giorgione, Masaccio, Giotto, Veronese, El Greco 
 and Rubens. These men were primarily inter- 
 ested in discovering absolute laws for formal 
 rhythm. The mimetic quality of their work was 
 a secondary consideration. In Rubens were con- 
 summated the aims of the older painters; that is, 
 he attained to the highest degree of compositional 
 plasticity which was possible with the fixed means 
 of his period. In him the first cycle terminated. 
 There was no longer any advance to be made in 
 the art of painting until a new method of expres- 
 sion should be unearthed. However, the princi- 
 ples of form laid down by these old masters were 
 fundamental and unalterable. Upon them all 
 great painting must ever be based. They are 
 intimately connected with the very organisms of 
 human existence, and can never be changed until 
 the nature of mankind shall change. 
 
 After Rubens a short period of decadence and 
 deterioration set in. The older methods no 
 longer afforded inspiration. About the beginning 
 of the nineteenth century the second cycle of 
 painting was ushered in by Turner, Constable and 
 Delacroix. These men, realising that until new 
 means were discovered art could be only a 
 variation of what had come before, turned their 
 attention to finding a procedure by which the 
 ambition of the artist could be more profoundly 
 realised. This second cycle was one of research 
 and analysis, of scientific experimentation and 
 data gathering. To surpass Rubens in his own 
 
330 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 medium was impossible: he had reached the 
 ultimate outpost of aesthetic possibilities with 
 what materials he possessed. The new men first 
 made inquiry into colour from the standpoint of 
 its dramatic potentialities. Naturalism was born 
 While Del acroix was busy applying the rudiments 
 of colour science to thematic romanticism, Cour- 
 bet was busy tearing down the tenets of conven- 
 tionalism in subjedt-matter, and Daumier was 
 experimenting in the simultaneity of form and 
 drawing. Manet liberated the painter from set 
 themes, and thereby broadened the material field 
 of composition. The Impressionists followed, and 
 by labourious investigations into nature's methods, 
 probed the secrets of colour in relation to light. 
 The Neo-Impressionists went further afield with 
 scientific observations; and finally Renoir, assimi- 
 lating all the new discoveries, rejedled the fallacies 
 and co-ordinated the valuable conclusions. In 
 him was brought to a close the naturalistic con- 
 ception of painting. He was the consummation 
 of the second cycle. During this period the older 
 laws of composition were for the most part for- 
 gotten. The painters were too absorbed in their 
 search for new means. They forgot the founda- 
 tions of art in their enthusiasm for a fuller and 
 less restrided expression. The essential charader 
 of colour and light and the new freedom in subjed 
 seledion so intoxicated them that they lost 
 sight of all that had preceded them. But their 
 gifts to painting cannot be overestimated. By 
 finding new weapons with which future artists 
 might achieve the highest formal intensity, they 
 opened up illimitable fields of aesthetic endea- 
 vour: they made possible the third and last 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 331 
 
 cycle which resulted in the final purification of 
 painting. 
 
 Of this cycle Cezanne was the primitive. 
 Profiting by the Impressionist teachings, he 
 turned his attention once more to the needs of 
 composition. He realised the limitations of the 
 naturalistic conception, and created light which, 
 though it was as logical as nature's, was not 
 restricted to the realistic vision. Colour with him 
 became for the first time a fundlional element 
 capable of producing form. The absolute freedom 
 of subjedl sele(?tion — a heritage from the second 
 cycle — permitted him extreme distortions, and 
 with these distortions was opened up the road to 
 abstraction. Matisse made form even more arbi- 
 trary, and Picasso approached still nearer to the 
 final elimination of natural objectivity, though 
 both men ignored colour as a generator of form. 
 They carried forward the work of Cezanne only 
 on its material side. Then Synchromism, com- 
 bining the progress of both Cezanne and the 
 Cubists, took the final step in the elimination of 
 the illustrative object, and at the same time put 
 aside the local hues on which the art of Cezanne 
 was dependent. Since the art of painting is the 
 art of colour, the Synchromists depended entirely 
 on primary pigment for the complete expression 
 of formal composition. Thus was brought about 
 the final purification of painting. Form was 
 entirely divorced from any realistic consideration: 
 and colour became an organic function. The meth- 
 ods of painting, being rationalised, reached their 
 highest degree of purity and creative capability. 
 
 The evolution of painting from tinted illustra- 
 tion to an abstract art expressed wholly by the 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 one element inherent in it — colour, was a 
 natural and inevitable progress. Music passed 
 through the same development from the imitation 
 of natural sounds to harmonic abstraiflion. We no 
 longer consider such compositions as The Battle 
 of Prague or Monastery Bells aesthetically com- 
 parable to Korngold's Symphonietta or Schon- 
 berg's Opus ii. And yet in painting the great 
 majority confines its judgment to that phase of a 
 pidlure which is irrelevant to its aesthetic im- 
 portance. So long has form and composition 
 expressed itself through recognisable phenomena 
 that the cognitive objedl has come to be looked 
 upon as an end, whereas it is only a means to a 
 subjedlive emotion. The world still demands 
 that a painting shall represent a natural form, 
 that is, that the basis of painting shall be illustra- 
 tion. The illustrative obje(ft was employed by 
 the older painters only because their means were 
 limited, because they had no profounder method 
 wherewith to express themselves. And even with 
 them the human body was deliberately dispropor- 
 tioned and altered to meet the needs of composi- 
 tion. When the properties of colour began to be 
 understood, the older methods were no longer 
 required. Colour itself became form. But so 
 deeply rooted was the illustrative precedent that 
 no one painter had the courage to eliminate 
 objeAivity at one stroke. Cezanne took the 
 first great step; Matisse, the second; Cubism the 
 next; and Synchromism the final one. 
 
 So long as painting deals with objective nature 
 it is an impure art, for recognisability precludes 
 the highest aesthetic emotion. All painting, an- 
 cient and modern, moves us aesthetically only in 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 333 
 
 so far as it possesses a force over and beyond its 
 mimetic aspect. The average sped:ator is unable 
 to differentiate his literary and associative emo- 
 tions from his aesthetic ecstasy. Form and 
 rhythm alone are the bases of aesthetic enjoy- 
 ment: all else in a pidlure is superfluity. There- 
 fore a picture in order to represent its intensest 
 emotive power must be an abstract presentation 
 expressed entirely in the medium of painting: 
 and that medium is colour. There are no longer 
 any experiments to be made in methods. Form 
 and colour — the two permanent and inalienable 
 qualities of painting — have become synonymous. 
 Ancient painting sounded the depths of composi- 
 tion. Modern painting has sounded the depths of 
 colour. Research is at an end. It now remains 
 only for artists to create. The means have been 
 perfedled: the laws of organisation have been laid 
 down. No more innovatory ''movements" are 
 possible. Any school of the future must neces- 
 sarily be compositional. It can be only a varia- 
 tion or a modification of the past. The methods 
 of painting may be complicated. New forms may 
 be found. But it is no longer possible to add 
 anything to the means at hand. The era of pure 
 creation begins with the present day. 
 
 Those who go to painting for anecdote, drama, 
 archaeology, illustration or any other quality which 
 is not strictly aesthetic, would do well to confine 
 their attention and their comments to the acade- 
 micians of whom there is and always has been an 
 abundant supply. Let them keep their hands 
 off those artists who strive for higher and more 
 eternal manifestations. The greatest artists of 
 every age have never sought to appeal to the 
 
334 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 lovers of reality and sentiment. Nor have they 
 wished to be judged by standards which con- 
 sidered only verisimilitude and technical profi- 
 ciency. It is the misfortune of painting that 
 literary impurities should have accompanied its 
 development, and it is the irony of serious 
 endeavour that on account of these impurities 
 there has been an indefinite deferment of any 
 genuine appreciation of painting. It is difficult 
 to convince a man who has not experienced the 
 great aesthetic emotions which art is capable of 
 producing, that there is an intoxication to be 
 derived from the contemplation of art keener than 
 that of association, sentiment or drama. Not 
 knowing that greater delights await him once he 
 has penetrated beneath the surface, he has 
 doggedly combated every effort to eliminate the 
 irrelevant accretions. But if painting was to 
 reach its highest point of artistic creation, its 
 reahstic aspedl had to go. When colour became 
 profoundly understood, no longer could the artist 
 apply it according to the dictates of nature. It 
 lost its properties as decoration and as an en- 
 hancement of the naturalistic ' vision. Its de- 
 mands freed the artist from the tyranny of 
 nature. In becoming pure, painting drew further 
 and further away from mimicry; and the superfi- 
 cial lover of painting, enslaved by the ignorant 
 and rigid standards of the past, protested with 
 greater and greater vehemence. 
 
 The misunderstanding which has attached to 
 modern painting has been colossal. The newer 
 men, because they have dared search for means 
 of expression superior to those of the past, have 
 met with ridicule and abuse. From Delacroix 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 335 
 
 to Synchromism the critics and public have fought 
 every advance. Immured in tradition, their minds 
 have been unable to grasp the meaning of the 
 new acclivities or to sense the artist's need for 
 pure creation. No school has escaped the oblo- 
 quy of the professional critic who, judging art 
 from its superficial and unimportant side, has 
 failed to penetrate to its fundamentals. Dela- 
 croix was declared crazy by the leading critics. 
 The Journal des Artistes said of him, ''We do 
 not say this man is a charlatan, but we do say 
 this man is the equivalent of a charlatan." The 
 Observateur des Beaux-Arts, commenting on this 
 artist's failure to procure an award, remarked, 
 "Delacroix, the leader of the new school, received 
 no honours, but in order to recompense him, he 
 was accorded a two hours' seance each day in the 
 morgue." Gros, Delecluze and Alfred Nettement 
 are conspicuous among the academicians and 
 critics who bitterly opposed Delacroix's innova- 
 tions. Courbet met with a similar reception. 
 Gautier, after studying one of his pidures, wrote, 
 "One does not know whether to weep or laugh. 
 There are heads which recall the ensigns of 
 tobacconists and of the menagerie." Clement de 
 Ris said of Courbet's work, "It is the glorification 
 of vulgar ugliness;" and de Chennevieres called 
 one of his finest pidures "an ignoble and impious 
 caricature." Even Manet, whose radicalism was 
 slight, brought down upon himself the abuse of 
 the critics for daring to paint modern themes. 
 Claretie drew the following conclusion from the 
 Olympia: "One cannot reproach Manet for 
 idealising vierges folles, for he makes of them 
 vierges sales.'' The remark was charadleristic. 
 
336 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 Manet revolted against classic subje(5ls, anl for 
 his modernity was excoriated by the noral 
 traditionalists. 
 
 The early Impressionists, as pretty as they 
 were, did not escape critical abuse. Ben^min 
 Constant called them ''the school of snobs the 
 conscious or unconscious enemies of art," and 
 added, ''Their days are numbered." Albert Volff 
 was more venomous. "These soi-disant artsts," 
 he wrote, "call themselves the intransigents. They 
 take canvases, colours and brushes, flinj at 
 hazard several tones, and then sign the vork. 
 It is thus that the wandering spirits at Zille- 
 Evrard pick up pebbles on the highway and 
 think they have found diamonds. Hi(eous 
 spedlacle of human vanity straying towar( de- 
 mentia!" Paul Mantz's remarks were sinilar. 
 His criticism in part read: "Before the worcs of 
 certain members of the group one is tempttd to 
 ascribe to them a defedl of the eyes, singulaities 
 of vision which would be the joy of ophhal- 
 mologists, and the terror of families." (Hov like 
 the recent criticisms of the very modern men 
 does all this sound — these accusations o in- 
 sanity, these hints of defed:ive vision! Such 
 comments would seem to have been lifted ahiost 
 bodily by the detractors of Cubism, Futurisnr and 
 Synchromism.) Renoir shared a similar fate. 
 One leading critic said it was futile to "tiy to 
 explain to Renoir that the female torso is rot a 
 mass of decomposing flesh with spots of |reen 
 and violet which denote the state of comolete 
 putrefaction in a cadaver." Roger Ballu ex- 
 plained the appearance of Renoir's work ^hus: 
 "At first view it seemed that his canvases, diring 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 337 
 
 their trip from the studio to the exhibition, had 
 undergone an accident." With the exception of 
 Manet two years prior to his death and Renoir 
 at the age of sixty-eight, not one of the Impres- 
 sionists was decorated by the French government. 
 They were banished from official Salons, and 
 compelled to expose in private galleries. 
 
 To quote from the critics who denounced 
 Cezanne would be an endless task. When he 
 exposed at the Impressionist exhibition in the 
 Rue Peletier in 1877 he was universally regarded 
 with disgust and horror and considered a bar- 
 barian. The venom of the critics was appalling. 
 They attacked him from every standpoint, though 
 on one point they seemed in agreement, namely: 
 that he was a communard. Nor did the abuse 
 cease with his early works. His greatness has 
 consistently evaded critics and painters alike. 
 Recently the American painter, William M. Chase, 
 offered the suggestion that Cezanne did not know 
 how to paint. Chase's opinion is not an isolated 
 one: it is typical of the minor academic painters 
 and the critics who view art through the eyes of 
 the past. Henri-Matisse is another painter who 
 has received short shrift from the reviewers. 
 One need not have a long memory to recall the 
 adverse criticisms he provoked. His distortions 
 have served as a basis for a display of ignorance 
 which has few parallels in art history. Matisse 
 himself has fed fuel to the fire. In his interview 
 with newspaper men he indulged in much high 
 jesting, and the remarks attributed to him were 
 in many instances blague. Others, judging him 
 by his words, have pinned on him the labels of 
 charlatan and degenerate. 
 
338 MODERN PAINTING 
 
 The Cubists, misunderstood from the first, 
 have been a source of ridicule rather than of 
 contumely. Systematisers have sought to trace 
 them to Diirer, forgetting that Cezanne once 
 wrote: "Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere 
 and the cone; the whole put in perspediive, so 
 that each side of an objed: and of a plane direds 
 itself toward a central point." Even today, after 
 the vital contributions of the Cubists have altered 
 the whole trend of modern art, there are few who 
 see in them aught but the material for laughter. 
 The critics who have accepted the Impressionists 
 and Cezanne deny the merits of Cubism, venting 
 their derision in a manner which recalls the de- 
 tradors of the very schools which these critics 
 now uphold. Synchromism has perhaps called 
 forth the bitterest protests. It was the last step 
 in the evolution of modern means. It had no 
 affinities with the academies. There was no 
 foothold in this new school for the conservatives 
 and readionaries. The Munich critics were first 
 to attack it. Later in Paris Andre Salmon 
 wrote, "The public will believe that Synchromism 
 is the final movement of which it has learned. 
 Synchromism is the worst of backward move- 
 ments, a vulgar art, without nobility, unlikely to 
 live, as it carries the principles of death in itself." 
 Les Arts et Les Artistes summed up Synchromists 
 with: "The house painter at the corner can, 
 when he wishes, claim that he belongs to this 
 school." La Plume discovered the fad that 
 " Macdonald-Wright copies with a dirty broom 
 the Slave of Michelangelo." Charles H. Caffin 
 declared, "The whole tenor of their foreword and 
 introdudlion is one of egregious self-exploitation 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 339 
 
 and self-advertisement. This . . . raises the very 
 obvious question: 'Are these men megalo- 
 maniacs or charlatans?' Possibly they are 
 neither the one nor the other. I am not in a 
 position to decide." 
 
 These quotations and comments are set down 
 to reveal the opposition which the genuine modern 
 painters have had to contend with. The criti- 
 cisms of each movement repeat themselves with 
 the following one, even to a point of verbal 
 similarity. The attacks on Synchromism are 
 strangely like those which ^ companioned Impres- 
 sionism. The same facetiousness, the same irrel- 
 evant denunciation, the s^me opposition to the 
 new, the same antipathy for progress are manifest 
 in all the critics of the new painting from Dela- 
 croix to date. All arise out of ignorance, out of 
 that immobility of mind which cannot judge 
 clearly until a thing is swathed in the perspective 
 of the years. Art has grown faster than the 
 critic's ability to comprehend. Its problems are 
 a closed book to him, for, not being a painter 
 himself, he requires a longer period in which to 
 assimilate the new ideals. Gradually as the new 
 methods establish themselves, and become 
 accepted (as in the case of Impressionism), the 
 critic at last comes abreast of a movement; but by 
 that time art has gone forward and left him in the 
 rear. Again he attacks the new. All innovations 
 are as poison to his system, until he again becomes 
 adjusted. Thus can we account for the animosity 
 and ridicule with which each modern movement has 
 been met. 
 
 Nor are the animadversions of academic critics 
 the only obstacles in the path of aesthetic develop- 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 ment. Those who sympathise with the new with- 
 out understanding it do more harm than good. 
 There are those who always accept the latest 
 men irrespective of their individual merit. But 
 modernity in itself is not a merit, and the modern 
 enthusiasts, in defending the newest painters, 
 very often expend their energies on the undeserv- 
 ing. Thus the mediocrities are given prominence 
 over the truly great; and the lesser artists are 
 looked upon as representative of the epoch. 
 Again, those who admire without comprehending 
 are given to emphasising the less important points 
 of departure in the new men, and of ignoring the 
 deeper qualities which represent the primary 
 importance of modern art. The true meaning of 
 the late movements is thereby obscured. Of this 
 class of critic Arthur Jerome Eddy may be 
 mentioned as representative. By crediting the 
 distindlly second-rate moderns with qualities they 
 have only absorbed from greater men, and by 
 misunderstanding the animating ideals of today's 
 painting, he presents so disproportionate and 
 biased a history that the entire significance of 
 modern art is lost. England, France and Ger- 
 many possess critics who feel the grandeur but 
 miss the meaning of the new ideals, and their 
 books and articles, while crediting the modern 
 painters with vitality, go little beneath the 
 surface. 
 
 However, there are a few men to whom the 
 modernist owes much for intelligent assistance. 
 One may name Meier-Graefe as one of these, 
 despite his being in reality a pioneer. He has 
 shown an eager attitude to do justice, and has 
 succeeded in bringing the modern men to the 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 341 
 
 attention of the world. Guillaume Apollinaire, 
 editor of Les Soirees de Paris, has done more 
 intelligent service for the younger heretics in 
 France than any other man. Clive Bell and 
 Roger Fry represent the ablest and most discern- 
 ing defenders of the modern spirit in England; 
 although Mr. A. R. Orage, by opening up the 
 columns of the New Age, has permitted a healthy 
 discussion and exposition of the radical art 
 theories. In America much credit is due Mr. 
 Alfred Stieglitz for his insistent demands that the 
 later men be given a respectful hearing. By his 
 sympathetic attitude and his ceaseless labours he 
 has brought before the American public the work 
 of many prominent modern artists; and his 
 sincerity and understanding have done much 
 toward ameliorating the conventional scoffs of 
 American critics. 
 
 But were there no far-seeing defenders of 
 modern painting, the signs of the awakening are 
 too numerous and too conspicuous to be ignored. 
 On every hand we are conscious of the struggle 
 for new methods and forms. Not all the inertia 
 of the critics and the public has succeeded in 
 suppressing the vital spirit. Nor will it succeed. 
 The modern tendency in painting cannot be 
 dismissed as charlatanism or extremism. The 
 ignorant and reactionary may laugh and hurl 
 philippics. Such opposition, if it has any effedl, 
 will only prove a stimulus to those who have 
 experienced the ecstasy of the new work. The 
 old dies hard. Even when the corpse is buried 
 (as it has been) the ghost lingers. But the light 
 will soon grow too strong. The ghost in time will 
 be dissolved. For centuries painting has been 
 
MODERN PAINTING 
 
 reared on a false foundation, and the criteria of 
 aesthetic appreciation have been irrelevant. 
 Painting has been a bastard art — an agglomera- 
 tion of literature, religion, photography and 
 decoration. The efforts of painters for the last 
 century have been devoted to the elimination of 
 all extraneous considerations, to making painting 
 as pure an art as music. But so widespread is 
 the general ignorance regarding art's funda- 
 mentals that the modern men have been opposed 
 at every step. Public and critical illiteracy in the 
 arts, however, matters little. The painter's joy 
 lies in the rapture of creation, in the knowledge 
 that he is carrying forward the banner of a high 
 ideal. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adoration of the Wise Men, 40. 
 Alexander, John W., 98. 
 Altichiero, 191. 
 Ambassadors, The, 24. 
 Andreiev, 52. 
 Angelina, 68. 
 Angelus, The, 57. 
 Anges au Tombeau, Les, 79. 
 Annunciation, 8t. 
 Anquetiri, 197. 
 Antwerp Museum, 40. 
 ApoUinaire, Guillaume, 341. 
 Apres le Bain, 212. 
 Archipenko, 163. 
 
 Arm Organisation in Blue^Green, 301. 
 
 Art of Spiritual Harmony, The, 310. 
 
 Arts et Les Artistes, Les, 338. 
 
 Ashe, E. M., 221. 
 
 Assommoir, U, 73. 
 
 Assyrian art, 78. 
 
 Augier, 216. 
 
 Augrand, 175. 
 
 Au Piano, 123. 
 
 Aurier, 193. 
 
 Avignon painters, 108. 
 
 Baignade, La, 203. 
 Baigneuse, 1884, (Renoir), 120. 
 Baigneuse, 1888, (Renoir), 122, 123. 
 Baigneuse au Griffon, La, 112. 
 Baigneuse Brune, La, 123. 
 Baigneuses, 1885, (Renoir), 121, 125. 
 Baigneuses, 1902, (Renoir), 125-126, 
 157- 
 
 Baigneuses, (Matisse), 226, 235. 
 Baigneuses, Les, (Courbet), 56. 
 Baigneuses, Les, (Gleizes), 257. 
 Bain, Le, (Daumier), 60. 
 Bain, Le, (Manet), see Dejeuner sur 
 
 I'Herbe, Le. 
 Bain Turc, Le, 6g. 
 Balanqoire, La, iij. 
 Balla, Giacomo, 276; Dog and Person 
 
 in Movement, 272. 
 Ballu, Roger, 336. 
 
 Balzac, 25, 216; Le Chef-d'CEuvre 
 
 Inconnu, 162. 
 Barbizon school, 69, 70, 87, 284. 
 
 Bar des Folies-Begere, Le, 80. 
 
 Bataille de Taillebourg, 40. 
 
 Battle of Prague, The, $32. 
 
 Baudelaire, 43, 53. 
 
 Baudelaire Chez les Mufles, 219-220. 
 
 Bazille, 89, 103. 
 
 Beardsley, Aubrey, 181, 221. 
 
 Beaux-Arts, 153, 165, 223, 323. 
 
 Beerbohm, Max, 62, 221. 
 
 Beethoven, 25, 42, 82,. 155, 281; 
 
 Ninth Symphony, 8. 
 Bechteiev, 324. 
 Bell, Clive, 341. 
 Bellini, Gentile, 188. 
 Bellows, 221. 
 
 Bernard, fimile, 130, 143, 152, 156, 
 
 175, 182, 195, 197- ^ ^ , 
 Bernhardt, portrait of Sarah, 216. 
 Bernheim-Jeune galleries, 290, 297. 
 Besnard, 319. 
 
 Boccioni, Umberto, 275, 276. 
 Bocklin, 21, 203. 
 Bolz, 324. 
 Bonington, 37, 49. 
 
 Bonnard, 315, 316-318, 318, 319; Lt 
 
 Jar din, 317. 
 Bonnat, 215. 
 Bononi, 23. 
 Borassa school, 191. 
 Botticelli, 21, 22, 28, 93, 203. 
 Boucher, 34, 97, 121. 
 Bouguereau, 161, 222, 223, 239. 
 Bourdelle, 320. 
 Bourgeois, 31. 
 Boussingault, 325. 
 Blanc, 165. 
 Blast, 325. 
 Bloch, 324. 
 Blumenschein, 221. 
 Bracquemond, 165. 
 Brangwyn, 21. 
 Braque, Georges, 257, 258. 
 Bronzino, 187. 
 Bruce, 262. 
 Bruyas, 53. 
 Buen Viaje, 219. 
 Bulles de Savon, Les, 80. 
 Bussy, Simon, 321-322. 
 
344 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Buveur d' Absinthe, Le, 66, 68. 
 Byron, 43. 
 
 Byzantine art, 9, 35, 40, 51, 93, 204. 
 Cabanel, 222. 
 
 Cabaret de la Mere Anthony, Le, 109. 
 
 Cafe-Concert, 215. 
 
 Caffin, Charles H., 338. 
 
 Caillebotte Collection, 98-99, 104. 
 
 Calvary (Memlinc), 217. 
 
 Canaletto, 188. 
 
 Caprichos, 225. 
 
 Captivite de Babylone, La, 42. 
 
 Caravaggio, 44, 56. 
 
 Carlopez, 221. 
 
 Carra, Carlo D., 275, 276; Funeral 0} 
 
 the Anarchist Galli, 314. 
 Carreno, 67. 
 
 Carriere, 60, 73, 194, 198, 223. 
 Cassatt, 165. 
 
 Casseurs de Pierres, Les, 57. 
 Castagnary, 79. 
 Castello, Valerio, 21. 
 Cathedral, La, 102. 
 Cazin, 209. 
 Celesti, 23. 
 Cellini, 52. 
 Cesare, 221. 
 
 Cezanne, 21, 26, 27, 31, 32, 36, 45, 
 56, 61, 75, 96, 97, 104, IIS, 126, 
 128, 129-163, 175, 176, 180, 189, 
 197, 200, 203, 206, 208, 222, 223, 
 225, 234, 240, 241, 242, 244, 247, 
 249, 250, 251, 253, 254, 260, 262, 
 272, 274, 277, 280, 281, 282, 283, 
 284, 286, 287, 289, 291, 295, 296, 
 298, 300, 303, 307, 308, 310, 320, 
 
 ^321, 33i> 332, 337> 338. 
 Chagall, 324. 
 Chahut, Le, 180. 
 Chamaillard, 197, 324. 
 Champfleury, 56. 
 Chanteuse des Rues, La, 79. 
 Chardin, 34, 225. 
 Charivari, 48. 
 Chase, William M., 337. 
 Chavannes, Puvis de, 74, 202, 316, 
 319- 
 
 Chef-d'OEuvre Inconnu, Le, 162. 
 Chemin de Fer, Le, 80. 
 Cheret, 216. 
 Chesneau, Ernest, 44. 
 Chevelure, La, 114. 
 
 Chevreul, 31, 84, 165, 166, 168, 180, 
 285; De la Loi du Contraste Simul- 
 tane des Couleurs, 164. 
 
 Chien et Lievres, 51. 
 
 Chinese art, 64, 125, 128, 190, 215, 
 315- 
 
 Christophe, Jules, 177. 
 Chromo-luminarists, see Neo-Impres- 
 
 sionism. 
 Cimabue, 29. 
 Cirque, Le, 180. 
 Claire de Lune, Le, 80. 
 Claretie, 335. 
 Claude, 50. 
 Coco, heads of, 126. 
 Coco et les Deux Servantes, 126. 
 Coins de Riviere, 100. 
 Combat de Cerfs, Le, 51. 
 Combat du Kerseage et de V Alabama, 80. 
 Concert Champetre, see Rural Concert. 
 Conegliano, 79. 
 Conrad, Joseph, 52, 161. 
 Constable, 17, 37, 43, 46, 49, 50, 97, 
 
 17s, 329- 
 Constant, Benjamin, 336. 
 Cormon, 215. 
 
 Corot, 21, 48, 68, 87, 89, 91, 108, 189. 
 
 Correggio; La Vierge dl'Ecuelle, 62. 
 
 Courbet, 17, 45, 48, 50-58, 59, 63, 
 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 
 76, 77, 81, 83, 87, 89, 97, 106, 107, 
 108, 109, III, 112, 113, 115, 127, 
 128, 131, 134, 158, 207, 208, 212, 
 239, 253, 282, 284, 319, 330, 355; 
 Les Baigneuses, 56; Les Casseurs 
 de Pierres, 57; Chien et Lievres, 51; 
 Le Combat de Cerfs, 5 1 ; Femme de 
 Munich, 53; Les Grands Chdtaign- 
 iers, 57; La Grotte, 56; Le Hamac, 
 76; V Enterrement d Ornans, 51, 54, 
 55, 63, 77, 239; Les Lutteurs, 59-60; 
 Le Reiour de la Conference, 51; La 
 Vague, loi. 
 
 Course de Taureaux, 80. 
 
 Courtesan, The, 217. 
 
 Courtois, 108. 
 
 Couture, Thomas, 66, 161; Methodes 
 
 et Entretiens d' Atelier, 44. 
 Crayer, Caspar de, 306. 
 Creation of the Sun and Moon, 24. 
 Cromwell au Chateau de Windsor, 40. 
 Croquet, Le, 123. 
 Cross, 174, 224. 
 
 Cubism (Cubists), 97, 187, 222, 227, 
 237-262, 274, 275, 277, 282, 283, 
 285, 291, 303, 307, 315, 323, 331, 
 332, 336, 338. 
 
 da Bologna, Giovanni, 41. 
 da Bosozzo, Michelino, 191. 
 Danseuse, La, 114. 
 
INDEX 
 
 345 
 
 Dante et Virgile aux Enfers, 36, 55. 
 da Sesto, Cesare, 306. 
 Daubigny, 67. 
 Daudet, 216. 
 
 Daumier, 17, 25, 58-63, 66, 68, 72, 
 97, 106, 126, 137, 144, 182, 200, 
 207, 208, 213, 220, 226, 243, 278, 
 279, 280, 330; Le Bain, 60, Don 
 ^uichotte, 62; Le Drame, 63; Les 
 Emigrants, 62; Les Lutteurs, 59-60; 
 Ratapoil, 62; Le Repos des Saltim- 
 banques, 60; La Republique, 61; 
 Silene, 63. 
 
 David, 17, 34, 35, 43, 56, 239, 282. 
 
 Davies, Arthur B., 323. 
 
 da Vinci, Leonardo, 44, 60, 306; 
 T rattato della Pittura, 148. 
 
 Dead Christ, The, 24. 
 
 Debucourt, 34. 
 
 Debussy, 52. 
 
 Decamps; Sonneurs de Cloches, 62. 
 de Chennevieres, 335. 
 de Chirico, 325. 
 Defoe, 191. 
 
 Degas, 19, 62, 63, 165, 191, 203, 
 207-221, 222, 226, 242, 253, 266, 
 307, 313, 318; Apres le Bain, 212; 
 Cafe-Concert, 215; Femme au Tub, 
 212; Musiciens a I'Orchestre, 2\y, 
 La Sortie du Bain, 212; La Toilette, 
 212; Torse de Femme S'Essuyant, 
 212; Trois Danseuses, 212. 
 
 De Hahn, 197. 
 
 dei Barbari, Jacopo, 223. 
 
 Dejeuner, Le, 79. 
 
 Dejeuner sur I'Herbe, Le, 69-70, 77-78, 
 79- 
 
 Delacroix, 17, 25, 27, 30, 34, 35-46. 
 48, 50, 53. 56, 57. 58, 59. 62, 63, 
 66, 67, 72, 75, 80, 81, 87, 88, 106, 
 107, 108, III, 112, 113, 114, 128, 
 133. 13s. 137, 165, 175, 176, 177, 
 180, 181, 182, 201, 205, 207, 264, 
 277, 278, 281, 282, 303, 310, 329, 
 330. 334, 335. 339; Baiaille de 
 Taillebourg 40; La Capttvite de 
 Baby lone, 42; Cromwell au Chateau 
 de Windsor, 40; Dante et Virgile 
 aux Enfers, 36, 45; Enlevement de^ 
 Rebecca, 40; Entree des Croises d 
 Jerusalem, 40; Les Femmes d' Alger 
 dans Leur Appartement, 39, in, 
 112; La Grece Expirant sur les 
 Ruines de Missolonghi, 41; Janis- 
 saires a I'Attaque, 40; La Justice de 
 Trajan, 40, 42; Justinien Com- 
 posant les Institutes, 43 ; La Liberie 
 
 Guidant le Peuple sur les Barricades, 
 
 38, 40; Lion Dechirant un Cadavre, 
 
 41; La Lutte de Jacob avec I'Ange, 
 
 40, 45; Massacre de Scio, 36, 39; 
 
 Pieta, 41; Renaude et Angelique, 
 
 62; Repos, 42. 
 de la Fresnay, 323. 
 De la Loi du Contraste Simultane des 
 
 Couleurs, 164. 
 Delaunay, 259-162, 323; L'Equipe de 
 
 Cardiff, 260; Route de Laon, 261; 
 
 Les Tours, 261; Fille de Paris, 
 
 259-260, 260. 
 Delaunay-Terk, Madame, 262. 
 Delecluze, 335. 
 Delibes, 281. 
 
 Denis, Maurice, 197, 216, 319-320. 
 
 Derain, Andre, 163, 320. 
 
 de Ris, Clement, 335. 
 
 Descent from the Cross, 24. 
 
 De Segonzac, 321. 
 
 d'Espagnat, 322. 
 
 Desvallieres, 320. 
 
 Dethomas, Maxime, 221. 
 
 D'Eugene Delacroix au Neo-Impres' 
 
 sionnisme, 169. 
 Deux Sceurs, Les, 123. 
 Deux Tahitiens, 226. 
 Devil's Bridge, The, 50. 
 Diane Chasseresse, 109. 
 Diaz, 68, 89, 108, 182. 
 Dimanche a la Grande-Jatte, Un, 180, 
 
 203. 
 
 di Nicolo, Pietro, 41. 
 
 Divisionists, see Neo-Impressionism. 
 
 Dog and Person in Movement, 272. 
 
 Donatello, 203. 
 
 Donde Fa Mama, 219. 
 
 Don ^uichotte, 62. 
 
 Dostoievsky, 52. 
 
 Dove, 84, 324. 
 
 Drame, Le, 63. 
 
 Dreiser, Theodore, 52. 
 
 Dubois-Pillet, 175. 
 
 Duchamp, Marcel, 257, 258. 
 
 Dumas, 43. 
 
 Durer, 187, 251, 338; Four Naked 
 
 Women, 24. 
 Duret, 102. 
 
 Dutch landscapists, 96. 
 Dynamisme d'une Auto, 269. 
 
 Earl and Countess of Arundel, The, 
 24. 
 
 East Indian art, 237. 
 Eddy, Arthur Jerome, 340. 
 Eglise a Farengeville, V, 99. 
 
346 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Egyptian art, 64, 78, 205. 
 
 Eichler, R. M., 202. 
 
 El Greco, 20, 21, 22, 51, 95, 125, 
 135, 158, 163, 203, 246, 254, 255, 
 259, 297, 308, 329; Annunciation, 
 81; Obsequies of the Count of 
 Orgaz, 55; The Resurrection of 
 Christ, 24. 
 
 Emigrants, Les, 62. 
 
 &mile Zola, 79. 
 
 Emperor Charles V, 24. 
 
 En Bateau, yg. 
 
 Enfant d I'Epee, L', 6y. 
 
 Enfants en Rose et Bleu, Les, 120. 
 
 English painters, 99, 116. 
 
 Engstrom, Albert, 221. 
 
 Enlevement de Rebecca, 40. 
 
 Enterrement a. Ornans, L', 51, 54, 55, 
 63., 77, 239. , _ 
 
 Entree des Croises d Jerusalem, 40. 
 
 Equipe de Cardiff, L', 260. 
 
 Erler, Fritz, 202. 
 
 Etchells, Frederick, 323. 
 
 Eva Gonzales, 79. 
 
 Execution de Maximilien, 80. 
 
 Falaise a Etretat, \oo, loi. 
 Fantin-Latour, 53, 175. 
 Fauche, 197. 
 Faust, 8. 
 
 Fauves, Chef des, 233. 
 Fauvism, 234. 
 Fecondite, 73. 
 
 Femme d la Mandoline, 251. 
 Femme d la Perruche, La, 112. 
 Femme au Cheval, La, 258. 
 Femme au Miroir, La, 127. 
 Femme au Perroquet, La, 79. 
 Femme au Tub, 212. 
 Femme aux Mangos, La, 75. 
 Femme de Munich, 55. 
 Femmes Assises d 1' Ombre des Palmier s, 
 196. 
 
 Femmes d' Alger dans Leur Apparte- 
 
 ment, Les, 39, iii, 112. 
 Ferguson, J. D., 324. 
 Fielding, 37. 
 
 Fighting Tem'eraire, The, 47. 
 Filiger, 197. 
 
 Filles de Catulle Mendes, Les, 123. 
 Fillette d la Gerbe, La, 123. 
 Fillette d 1' Orange, La, 26. 
 Fillette Attentive, La, 114. 
 fin de siecle movement, 219. 
 Flandrin, 321, 322. 
 Flemish masters, 137. 
 Flight Turning a Corner, 274. 
 
 Folle, La, 55. 
 
 Forain,J.-L.,62,i65, 213, 219-221,221; 
 
 Baudelaire Chez les Mufles, 219- 
 220. 
 
 Fornerod, Rodolphe, 202. 
 
 Forum, The, 9. 
 
 Fouquet, 34. 
 
 Four Naked Women, 24. 
 
 Fragonard, 34, 121, 244. 
 
 French art, 211. 
 
 Friesz, Othon, 22, 234, 320. 
 
 Frost, 262. 
 
 Fry, Roger, 324, 341. 
 Fuller, portrait of Loie, 216. 
 Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, 314. 
 Futurism (Futurists), 257, 259, 264- 
 
 276, 282, 284, 285, 291, 295, 303, 
 
 316, 323, 336. 
 
 Gainsborough, in, 181; Mrs. Sid- 
 dons, 115. 
 
 Gare St. Lazare, La, 50. 
 
 Gauguin, 22, 39, 93, 104, 150, 165, 
 183, 184, 186, 187-206, 208, 210, 
 222, 223, 225, 226, 227, 231, 243, 
 246, 247, 279, 281, 285, 306, 308, 
 315, 316, 318, 319, 323; Deux 
 Tahitiens, 226; Femmes Assises d 
 r Ombre des Palmier s, 196; La 
 Femme aux Mangos, 75; Jeunes 
 Bretonnes, 195; Noa Noa, 190; 
 Paysage de la Martinique, 194; 
 Ruperupe, 195; Tahitiennes, 195; 
 V airaoumati Tei Oa, 196. 
 
 Gautier, 43, 335. 
 
 Gerard, 17, 34, 35, 56. 
 
 Gericault, 34, 35, 51, 113, 211, 281; 
 La Folle, 55; Radeau de la Meduse, 
 
 ^35. SS- 
 
 German art, 211. 
 
 Gerome, 222. 
 
 Ghil, Rene de, 266. 
 
 Giampietrino, 306. 
 
 Gibson, C. D., 221. 
 
 Giorgione, 21, 30, 95, 126, 329; Rural 
 
 Concert (Concert Champetre), 69. 
 Giotto, 22, 29, 44, 56, 75, 125, 195, 
 
 203, 235, 280, 329; Death of Saint 
 
 Francis, 81; Descent from the 
 
 Cross, 24. 
 Girardon, 121, 121-122. 
 Girodet, 34. 
 
 Glace sans Tain, La, 231. 
 
 Glackens, W. S., 324. 
 
 Gleizes, Albert, 257, 258; Les Bai- 
 
 gneuses, 257; L'Homme au Balcon, 
 
 257' 
 
INDEX 
 
 347 
 
 Goethe; Faust, 8. 
 
 Goya, 19, 25, 44, 67, 74, 75, 76, no, 
 187, 218, 225, 231, 255; Buen 
 Viaje, 219; Caprichos, 225; Donde 
 V d Mama, 219; La Maya Desnuda, 
 42. 
 
 Grand Canal — Venice, The, 24. 
 Grands Chdtaigniers, Les, 57. 
 Grant, Duncan, 324. 
 Granville, 62. 
 Granzow, 325. 
 Gravelot, 34. 
 
 Grece Expirant sur les Ruines de 
 
 Missolonghi, La, 41. 
 Greek artists, 35, 125, 128, 163. 
 Greuze, 21, 34. 
 Gris, Jean, 258. 
 Gros, 17, 34, 35, 335. 
 Grotte, La, 56. 
 
 Guardi, 188; The Grand Canal — 
 
 Venice, 24. 
 Guariento; The Heavenly Host, 274. 
 Guercino, 56. 
 
 Guerin, Charles, 35, 36, 322, 322-323. 
 Guillaumin, 89, 96, 103, 104, 165, 
 
 166, 194. 
 Guitarrero, Le, 67. 
 Guizot, caricature of, 62. 
 
 Hallock, Madame Mary, 266. 
 Hals, Franz, 70, 80, 89, 187, 284. 
 Hamac, Le, 76. 
 Hankwan, 127. 
 Hartley, 324. 
 
 Hartmann, Sadikichi, 266. 
 Hassam, Childe, 324. 
 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 52. 
 Hayden, 324. 
 Haydn, 155. 
 
 Head of a Chinese Lady, 127. 
 Head of an Old Man, 217. 
 Heavenly Host, The, 274. 
 Held, portrait of Anna, 216. 
 Helmholtz, 31, 165, i6§, 285. 
 Henri, Robert, 273, 283. 
 Henri-Matisse. See Matisse. 
 Hiroshige, 73, 99; Series of the To- 
 
 kaido, 100. 
 Hogarth, 19, 116. 
 
 Hokusai, 73, 99, 218; Views of Fuji, 
 100. 
 
 Holbein, 209; The Ambassadors, 24. 
 Homme au Balcon, L', 257 
 Horace, 134. 
 
 Houses of Parliament — London^ Tb?^ 
 
 100. 
 Humbert, 165. 
 
 Impressionism (Impressionists), 31, 
 36, 43, 46, 47, 48, 49, 70, 74, 80, 
 82, 83-106, 107, 108, III, 112, 
 114, 119, 120, 129, 135, 136, 137, 
 139, 141, 144, 156, 158, 165, 166, 
 167, 168, 169, 173, 174, 175, 176, 
 177, 188, 189, 194, 195, 196, 198, 
 199, 202, 203, 208, 209, 211, 222, 
 223, 224, 238, 239, 241, 246, 248, 
 274, 279, 280, 282, 284, 285, 286, 
 287, 294, 295, 315, 318, 324, 330, 
 33i> 336, 337. 338, 339- 
 
 Improvisation No. 2g, 315. 
 
 Ingenue, 115. 
 
 Ingres, 17, 35, 56, 62, 108, in, 112, 
 126, 203, 210, 226, 227, 239, 243, 
 322; Le Bain Turc, 69; La Source, 
 69; Stratonice, 210; Thetis et 
 Jupiter, 79. 
 
 Intimists, 315-319. 
 
 Intruse, L', 193. 
 
 Italian art, 56, 82, 97. 
 
 Janissaires a I'Attaque, 40. 
 
 Japanese art, 64, 93, 99, 100, 188. 
 
 Japonaise, La, 98. 
 
 Jar din, Le, 317. 
 
 Jardin de Bellevue, Le, 80. 
 
 Jar din d'Essoyes, Le, 126. 
 
 Jarretiere, La, 75. 
 
 Jaulmes, Gustave, 202, 322. 
 
 Jawlensky, 324. 
 
 Jeu de Balles, 235. 
 
 Jeunes Bretonnes, 195. 
 
 John, Augustus, 320. 
 
 Jongkind, 48, 69, 91, 96, 175. 
 
 Journal, Delacroix's, 37, 39, 45, 164, 
 
 166, 177. 
 Journal des Artistes, 335. 
 Juanes, Juan de, 51. 
 Justice de Trajan, La, 40, 42. 
 Justinien Composant les Institutes, 43 . 
 
 Kandinsky, 234, 264, 308-315; The 
 Art of Spiritual Harmony, 3 10; Im- 
 provisation No. 29, 315. 
 
 Kanoldt, 325. 
 
 Keion; Flight Turning a Corner, 274. 
 Knauerhase, 324. 
 Korngold, 52; Symphonietta, 332. 
 KroU, 324. 
 
 La Fosse, 79. 
 Lancret, 34. 
 Landon, C. P., 44. 
 Laprade, Pierre, 321. 
 
348 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Largilliere, 121. 
 Larson, Carl, 221. 
 La Tour, 34. 
 
 Lautrec, see Toulouse-Lautrec. 
 
 Laval, 197. 
 
 Lawrence, 37, 209. 
 
 Lebasque, 321. 
 
 Le Beau, Alcide, 202, 322. 
 
 Leclerc, Julien, 193. 
 
 Leger, Fernand, 256-257, 258; Mai- 
 sons et Fumees, 256; Les Toits, 256. 
 
 Legrand, Louis, 213, 218, 218-219, 
 221, 227; Maiiresse, 219. 
 
 Legros, 209. 
 
 Leibniz, 269. 
 
 Le Moyne, 79, 121. 
 
 Le Nains, the, 34. 
 
 Lewis, Wyndham, 320, 323. 
 
 Lhermitte, 209. 
 
 Lhote, 324. 
 
 Liberie Guidant le Peuple sur les 
 
 Barricades, La, 38, 40. 
 Liombruno, 223. 
 Lion Dechirant un Cadavre, 41. 
 Lise, 109, 109-110, III. 
 Liszt, 97. 
 
 Little Dutchmen, the, 188. 
 Loge, La, 114. 
 Lola de Valence, 68. 
 London series (Monet), 102. 
 Loti, Pierre, 191. 
 Lotiron, 324. 
 Louis Philippe, 43. 
 Louis XVI, 34. 
 
 Louvre, the, 36, 53, 69, 136, 223, 226. 
 Luce, 175. 
 Lucretius, 134. 
 
 Lutte de Jacob avec I'Ange; La, 40, 45. 
 Luiteurs, Les (Courbet), 59-60. 
 LuUeurs, Les (Daumier), 59. 
 Luxembourg gallery, 53, 68, 99, 104, 
 lis- 
 
 Macdonald-Wright, S., 283, 284-285, 
 286, 287-288, 289, 289-290, 292, 
 293, 296, 298, 300-302, 303, 338; 
 Arm Organisation in Blue-Green, 
 301; Synchromie en Bleu, 297. 
 
 Madame T. et Son Fils, 26. 
 
 Mile. Durand-Ruel, 113, 114. 
 
 Maeterlinck, 310; L'Intruse, 193. 
 
 Maisons et Fumees, 256. 
 
 Mattress e, 219. 
 
 Mallarme, 275. 
 
 Manet, 25, 52, 53, 62, 64-82, 83, 87, 
 90, 93, 98, 99, 106, 107, 108, 109, 
 III, 112, 113, 115, 127, 128, 131, 
 
 134, 135, 191, 204, 207, 212, 225, 
 226, 239, 243, 282, 283, 308, 330, 
 335» 336, 337; Angelina, 68; Les 
 Anges au Tombeau, 79; Le Bar des 
 Folies-Bergere, 80; Les Bulks de 
 Savon, 80; Le Buveur d' Absinthe, 
 66, 68; La Chanteuse des Rues, 79; 
 Le Chemin de Fer, 80; Le Claire de 
 Lune, 80; Combat du Kerseage et 
 de r Alabama, 80; Course de Tau- 
 reaux, 80; Le Dejeuner, 79; Le De- 
 jeuner sur I'Herbe, 69-70, 77-78, 79; 
 Emile Zola, 79; En Bateau, 79; 
 L' Enfant a I'Epee, 67; Eva Gon- 
 zales, 79; Execution de Maximilien, 
 80; La Femme au Perroquet, 79; 
 Le Guiterrero, 6j; Le Jar din de 
 Bellevue, 80; La Jarretiere, 75; 
 Lola de Valence, 68; Nana, 75; 
 La Nym-phe Surprise, 66; Olympia, 
 74-75, 79, 335; Les Parents de 
 I Artiste, 67; Le Port de Bordeaux, 
 80; Rendez-vous de Chats, 77, 80; 
 Le Repos, 76. 
 Manguin, 321. 
 
 Mantegna; The Dead Christ, 24. 
 Mantz, Paul, 336. 
 Man with the Hoe, The, 57. 
 Marconi, 97. 
 Marinetti, 265, 276. 
 Marquet, 324. 
 Marseillaise, 3 1 1-3 12. 
 Martin, Henri, loi, 102, 175. 
 Martinet's gallery, 68. 
 Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, The, 
 55- 
 
 Marval, Madame, 321. 
 
 Masaccio, 22, 42, 329; Saint Peter 
 Baptising the Pagans, 24. 
 
 Massacre de Scio, 36, 39. 
 
 Massys, 217; The Courtesan, 217; 
 Head of an Old Man, 217; Por- 
 trait of a Canon, 217. 
 
 Matisse, 22, 32, 97, 123, 202, 203, 
 216, 222-236, 237, 238, 241, 243, 
 246, 247, 254, 256, 262, 280, 28 1, 
 282, 284, 285, 289, 291, 308, 309, 
 310, 315, 316, 320, 321, 323, 324, 
 33 1> 332, 337; Baigneuses, 226, 
 235; La Glace sans Tain, 235; Jeu de 
 Balles, 235; La Musique — esquis^se, 
 22 Si La Musique {panneau decora- 
 
 tif), 235- 
 Mauve, 182. 
 Maya Desnuda, La, 42. 
 Mazo, 67. 
 
 Mazzola-Bedoli, 203. 
 
INDEX 
 
 349 
 
 Meissonier, 53. 
 
 Meier-Graefe, 55, 340. 
 
 Memlinc, 217; The Casting of the 
 
 Lots, 217; Our Lord's Passion, 217. 
 Menage Sisley, Le, 109, iio-iii, 112. 
 Mere et Enfant, 123. 
 Merimee, 43. 
 Merril, Stuart, 193. 
 Methodes et Entretiens d' Atelier, 44. 
 Metzinger, Jean, 257, 257-258; La 
 
 Femme au Cheval, 258; Le Port, 258. 
 Meules, Les, 102. 
 Meunier, 62. 
 
 Michelangelo, 27, 36, 42, 44, 60, 61, 
 75, 82, 95, 119, 122, 129, 145, 155, 
 159, 163, 165, 235, 236, 237, 254, 
 267, 273, 284, 285, 294, 306, 308; 
 Creation of the Sun and Moon, 24; 
 Slaves, 21, 290, 299, 338. 
 
 Mille et Une Nuits, 231. 
 
 Millet, 57, 182, 188; The Angelus, 
 57; The Man with the Hoe, 57. 
 
 Minerva Expelling Mars, 57. 
 
 Miracle of Saint Mark, The, 24. 
 
 Mitsuoki, 77. 
 
 Modern Painters, 47. 
 
 Mokkei, 158. 
 
 Molineri, Antonino, 21. 
 
 Monastery Bells, 332. 
 
 Monet, 47, 48, 49, 50, S3, 80, 82, 90, 
 91, 96, 96-102, 103, 104, 112, 113, 
 114, 115, 128, 144, 165, 166, 17s, 
 199, 200, 210, 216, 223, 274, 280, 
 283, 285, 308, 324; La Cathedral, 
 102; Coins de Riviere, 100; L'^glise 
 a. V arengeville, 99; Falaise a £,tretat, 
 100, loi; La Gare St. Lazare, 50; 
 The Houses of Parliament — London, 
 100; La Japonaise, 98; London 
 series, 102; Les Meules, 102; Les 
 Nympheas, 102; Les Peupliers, 100; 
 F enice series, 102. 
 
 Monnier, 62. 
 
 Moore, George, 25, 52. 
 
 Monticelli, 182. 
 
 Moreas, 193. 
 
 Moreau, Gustave, 190, 221, 224. 
 Morgan, Wallace, 221. 
 Morisot, 165. 
 Moronobu, 274. 
 Morot, Aime, 258. 
 
 Moulin de la Gallette, Le, 26, 114, 115. 
 
 Mounet-Sully, portrait of, 216. 
 
 Mozart, 42. 
 
 Mrs. Siddons, 115. 
 
 Miinter, 324. 
 
 Miinzer, Adolf, 202. 
 
 Murillo, 21, 67. 
 Musiciens d I'Orchestre, 213. 
 Musique aux Tuileries, La, 109. 
 Musique — esquisse. La, 235. 
 Musique (panneau decoratif). La, 235. 
 
 Nadelmann, 163. 
 
 Nana, 75. 
 
 Napoleon, 53. 
 
 Napoleon III, 69. 
 
 National Gallery, London, 41. 
 
 Natte, La, 123. 
 
 Nattier, 34. 
 
 Negro sculpture, 229, 230, 231, 236. 
 
 Neo-Impressionism (Neo-Impression- 
 ists), 164-186, 189, 197, 199, 203, 
 208, 222, 224, 234, 260, 275, 278, 
 
 293. 303. 330- 
 New Age, The, 9, 341. 
 Ninth Symphony, 8. 
 Noa Noq, 190. 
 
 Nu a I'Etoffe Vert et Jaune, 123. 
 Nymphe Surprise, La, 66. 
 Nympheas, Les, 102. 
 
 Obsequies of the Count of Orgaz, 55. 
 Observateur des Beaux-Arts, 335. 
 Ode aux Fleurs {d'apres Anacreon), 
 126. 
 
 (Euvre, U, 134. 
 Olivier, 34. 
 
 Olympia, 74-75, 79, 195, 335. 
 Opus II (Schonberg), 332. 
 Orage, A. R., 341. 
 
 Orphism (Orphists), 239, 262, 275, 
 
 290, 291. 
 Ortolano, 191. 
 Ottmann, 324. 
 Our Lord's Prayer, 217. 
 
 Padovanino, 23. 
 
 Panneaux, decorative (Renoir), 117. 
 Panneaux (tambourine player and 
 
 dancer), (Renoir), 126. 
 Parisiennes Habillees en Algeriennes, 
 
 III, 112. 
 Pater, 34, 121. 
 Paul, Hermann, 221. 
 Pay sage de la Martinique, 194. 
 Peckstein, 324. 
 
 Persian art, 64, 190, 230, 23 1, 236. 
 
 Petitjean, 175. 
 
 Petit Peintre, Le, 126. 
 
 Peupliers, Les, 100. 
 
 Philip IV, 24. 
 
 Picabia, Francis, 257, 258-259, 323. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Picasso, 9, 22, 121, 234, 236, 240, 
 243, 246, 247, 251, 252, 255-256, 
 258, 259, 262, 274, 284, 308, 323, 
 331; Femme d la Mandoline, 251. 
 
 Pieta, 41. 
 
 Piot, 322. 
 
 Pisanello, 28. 
 
 Pissarro, 47, 48, 69, 82, 89, 90, 95-96, 
 99, 104, 107, 114, 131, 135, 136, 
 165, 166, 180, 182, 192, 194, 199, 
 208,212,280; Sydenham Road, <jg. 
 
 Pissarro, Lucien, 165. 
 
 Plume, La, 338. 
 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, 53. 
 
 Poe, tales of Edgar Allan, 219. 
 
 Pointillism (Pointillists), see ,Neo- 
 Impressionism. 
 
 Polaire, portrait of, 216. 
 
 Pollaiuolo, 203. 
 
 Pont-Aven school, 187-206, 319. 
 Port de Bordeaux, Le, 80. 
 Port, Le, 258. 
 Portrait de Dame, 1 14. 
 Portrait d' Homme, 184-185. 
 Portrait of a Canon, 217. 
 Post-Impressionism (Post-Impressio- 
 nists), 234. See also Matisse. 
 Poussin, 19, 21, 22, 40, 97, 129, 320, 
 Praxiteles, 218. 
 Prendergast, 321-322. 
 Prevost, 216. 
 Puget, 108. 
 Putz, Leo, 202. 
 Puy, Jean, 321. 
 
 Radeau de la Meduse, 35, 55. 
 Raeburn, 89. 
 Rafaelli, 188. 
 
 Rain, Steam and Speed, 47, 50. 
 Raphael, 19, 21, 22, 165, 255. 
 Ratapoil, 62. 
 Ray, Louis, 197. 
 
 Rembrandt, 22, 25, 41, 44, 45, 51, 
 56, 61, 62, 66, 99, 108, 280, 284; 
 etchings, 59. 
 
 Redon, 165, 187. 
 
 Regnault, 21, 34. 
 
 Remberg, Baron, 53. 
 
 Renaissance, the, 26, 29, 39, 51, 
 92, 128, 223, 227, 255, 306, 322. 
 
 Renaude et Angelique, 62. 
 
 Rendez-vous de Chats, 77, 80. 
 
 Renoir, 21, 22, 25, 26, 52, 56, 70, 77, 
 106, 107-128, 136, 154, 155, 156, 
 163, 166, 181, 197, 205, 207, 208, 
 213. 235, 237, 238, 244, 284, 302, 
 306, 308, 316, 324, 330, 336, 337; 
 
 Au Piano, 123; Baigneuse (1884), 
 120, 122; Baigneuse (1888), 122, 
 123; La Baigneuse au Griffon, 112; 
 La Baigneuse Brune, 123; Baign- 
 euses (1885), 121, 125; Baigneuses 
 (1902), 125, 126, 157; La Balangoire, 
 115; Le Cabaret de la Mere A nthony, 
 109; La Chevelure, 1 14; Coco, heads 
 of, 126; Coco et les Deux Servantes, 
 126; Le Croquet, ii-^; LaDanseuse, 
 114; Les Deux Soeurs, 123; Diane 
 Chasseresse, 109; Les Enfants en 
 Rose et Bleu, 120; La Femme d la 
 Perruche, 112; La Femme au 
 Miroir, 127; Les Filles de Catulle 
 Mendes, 123; La Filletie d la Gerbe, 
 123; La Fillette Attentive, 114; La 
 Fillet et V Orange, 26; Ingenue, 115; 
 Le 'Jar din d' Essay es, 126; La Lege, 
 114; Lise, 109, 109-110, III; 
 Madame T. et Son Fils, 26; Mere 
 et Enfant, 123; Le Menage Sisley, 
 109, iio-iii, 112; Mile. Durand- 
 Ruel, 113, 114; Le Moulin de la 
 Galette, 26, 114, 115; La Musique 
 aux Tuileries, 109; La Natte, 123; 
 Nu a I'&toffe Vert et Jaune, 123; 
 Ode aux Fleurs (d'apres Anacreon), 
 126; Panneaux, decorative, 117; 
 Panneaux (tambourine player and 
 dancer), 126; Parisiennes Habillees 
 en Algeriennes, iii, 112; Le Petit 
 Peintre, 126; Portrait de Dame, 114; 
 La Rose dans les Cheveux, 126; La 
 Source, 114; Tete de Jeune Fille, 
 120; La Toilette de la Baigneuse, 125. 
 Repos, 42. 
 
 Repos des Saltimbanques, Le, 60. 
 Repos, Le, (Manet), 76. 
 Republique — 1848, La, 61. 
 Resurrection of Ch ist. The, 24. 
 Retour de Christophe Colomb, 40, 5 1. 
 Reynolds, Joshua, 21, 61. 
 Ribera, 21, 51, 108, 187; The Martyr- 
 dom of Saint Bartholomew, 55. 
 Rigaud, 79. 
 
 Rimbaud, Arthur, 266. 
 Rin Teikei, 315. 
 
 Ririomin; Head of a Chinese Lady, 
 127. 
 
 Roberts, W., 323. 
 Robinson, Boardman, 221. 
 Robusti, 79. 
 Rodin, 62. 
 Roll, loi. 
 Romanelli, 223. 
 Romney, 116. 
 
INDEX 
 
 351 
 
 Rondinelli, 79. 
 
 Rood, 31, 165, 168, 180, 285. 
 Rose dans les Cheveux, La, 127. 
 Rossetti, 116, 221. 
 Rotonchamp, Jean de, 190. 
 Roubille, 221. 
 
 Rousseau, 68, 89, 108, 205, 321-322. 
 
 Roussell, K.-X., 315, 318, 318-319. 
 
 Route de Laon, 251. 
 
 Rubens, 9, 20, 21, 22, 26, 28, 36, 40, 
 41, 44, 45, 51, 52, 71, 81, 82, 87, 
 97, 108, 121, 125, 126, 127, 138, 
 158, 163, 165, 187, 203, 205, 220, 
 24s, 254, 273, 277, 283, 300, 306, 
 308, 329; The Adoration of the 
 Wise Men of the East, 40; The Earl 
 and Countess of Arundel, 24. 
 
 Rude, 273. 
 
 Ruperupe, 195. 
 
 Rural Concert, 69. 
 
 Ruskin, 46, 47; Modern Painters, 47. 
 
 Russell, Morgan, 283, 283-284, 285, 
 286, 286-287, 288, 289, 292, 293, 
 294, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 302, 
 294, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 302, 
 303; Synchromie, 299; Synchromie 
 en Bleu-Violace, 299; Synchromie 
 en Vert, 288-289, 297. 
 
 Russolo, Luigi, 276. 
 
 Saint Peter Baptising the Pagans, 24. 
 
 Salmon, Andre, 338. 
 
 Salon d' Automne, 224, 257. 
 
 Salon des Artistes Independents, 167, 
 
 224, 262, 288, 297, 299. 
 Salon des Refuses, 69. 
 Salon des Reprouves, 69. 
 Santerre, 121. 
 
 S. Vitale, mosaics in, 150, 204. 
 Sargent, 18, 98. 
 Scarsellino, 203. 
 Schonberg; Opus II, 332. 
 SchufFenecker, 165, 197. 
 Scott, Walter, 43. 
 Scriabine, Alexander, 266, 311. 
 Seguin, 197. 
 Serusier, 197. 
 Setting Sun, icx)." 
 
 Seurat, 165, 165-166, 167, 176, 177, 
 178, 180, 180-181, 181, 182, 183, 
 184, 203, 226, 243, 264, 265, 310, 
 319; La Baignade, 203; Le Chahut, 
 180; Le Cirque,i8o; Un Dimanche d 
 la Grande-Jatte, 180, 203. 
 
 Severini, 22, 276. 
 
 Shannon, 98. 
 
 Shaw, George Bernard, 52. 
 
 Sheeler, Jr., C. R., 323. 
 
 Shiubun; Setting Sun, 100. 
 
 Sibelius, 52. 
 
 Sickert, Walter, 219. 
 
 Signac, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 174, 
 181, 182, 184, 224, 264; D'Eugene 
 Delacroix au N eo-Impressionnisme, 
 169. 
 
 Signorelli, Luca, 137. 
 Silene, 63. 
 
 Silvestre, Theophile, 44. 
 Simon, 18. 
 
 Simultaneism, 262, 276. 
 Sisley, 49, 89, 96, 99, 102-103, 104, 
 280. 
 
 Slaves, 21, 290, 299, 338. 
 Sodoma, 218. 
 Soirees de Paris, Les, 341. 
 Sonneurs de Cloches, 62. 
 Sorolla, 18, 52, 187. 
 Sortie du Bain, La, 212. 
 Source, La (Ingres), 69. 
 Source, La (Renoir), 114, 
 Spanish art, 62, 97, iii. 
 Spiro, 322. 
 Stein, Leo, 284. 
 Steinlen, 62, 246, 255. 
 Stendhal, 43. 
 Stern, Maurice, 323. 
 Stevens, Alfred, 209. 
 Stieglitz, Alfred, 341. 
 Stradivarius, 121. 
 Strauss, Richard, 25, 52. 
 Stratonice, 210. 
 
 Sun of Venice Going to Sea, The, 49. 
 Superville, 165. 
 Swift, 191. 
 Swinburne, 82. 
 Sydenham Road, 99. 
 Symphonietta, 332. 
 Synchromie, 299. 
 Synchromie en Bleu, 297. 
 Synchromie en Bleu-Violace, 299, 
 Synchromie en Vert, 288-289, 297. 
 Synchromism (Synchromists), 32, 97, 
 115, 275, 277-304, 324, 325, 331, 
 
 332, 33S» 336, 338, 339- 
 Synthesists, see Pont-Aven school. 
 
 Table au Moulin-Rouge, Une, 215. 
 Tahitiennes, 195. 
 Taine, 32. 
 
 Tanagra figurines, 218. 
 Tete de Jeune Fille, 120. 
 Thetis et Jupiter, 79. 
 Thiers, 36. 
 
 Tiepolo, 87, 218, 244. 
 
352 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Tillot, 165. 
 
 Tintoretto, 2i, 22, 51, 66, 137, 271, 
 
 329; Minerva Expelling Mars 57; 
 ne Miracle of Saint Mark, 24. 
 Titian, 21, 36, 42, 44, 66, 72, 74, 75, 
 97, 108, 127, 189, 320; Emperor 
 Charles F, 24; Fenus Reclining, 
 
 ^7S- . 
 
 Toba Sojo, 218. 
 
 Tobeen, 324. 
 
 Toilette, La, 212. 
 
 Toilette de la Baigneuse, La, 125. 
 
 Toils, Les, 256. 
 
 Tokaido, series of the, 100. 
 
 Torse de Femme S'Essuyant, 212. 
 
 Toulouse-Lautrec, 62, 213, 214-218, 
 
 220, 221, 242, 246, 255, 318, 321; 
 
 Une Table au Moulin-Rouge, 215; 
 
 Portraits of Loie Fuller, Sarah 
 
 Bernhardt, Mounet-Sully, Yahne, 
 
 Anna Held, 216. 
 Tours, Les, 261. 
 Trattato della Pittura, 148. 
 Trois Danseuses, 212. 
 Trovatore, II, 42. 
 Troyon, 67. 
 Tudor-Hart, 168. 
 
 Turner, 17, 43, 46-50, 58, 63, 88, 89, 
 91, 97, 99, 103, 17s, 205, 277, 302, 
 329; The Devil's Bridge, 50; The 
 Fighting Temeraire, 47; Rain, 
 Steam and Speed, 47, 50; The Sun 
 of Fenice Going to Sea, 49; Ulysses 
 Deriding Polyphemus, 47. 
 
 Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus, 47. 
 Utamaro, 100. 
 Utrillo, 324. 
 
 Fague, La, roi. 
 Fairaoumati Tei Oa, 196. 
 Valensi, 324. 
 Vallotton, 321-322, 322. 
 Van de Velde, 175. 
 Van Dongen, Kees, 321. 
 Van Dyke, 50. 
 
 Van Gogh, 46, 62, 150, 182-186, 187, 
 192, 193, 196, 199, 21S, 234, 314; 
 Portrait d' Homme, 184-185. 
 
 Van Rysselberghe, 174, 175. 
 
 VanVranken,wMacdonald-Wright,S. 
 
 Vaudeville, the, 193. 
 
 Velazquez, 19, 51, 66, 67, 70, 82, 89, 
 
 110,212,282,284; Philip IF, 2^. 
 Venetians, 39,43, 44, 62, 70, 135, 162. 
 Fenice series (Monet), 102. 
 Fenus Accroupie, 226. 
 Fenus Reclining, 75. 
 Verdi; // Trovatore, 42. 
 Verkade, 197. 
 Verlaine, 193. 
 
 Veronese, 36, 38, 40, 44, 137, 282, 329. 
 Veron, Eugene, 44. 
 Vien, 34. 
 
 Fierge a I'Ecuelle, La, 62. 
 Fiews of Fuji, 100. 
 Vignon, 165. 
 
 Fille de Paris, 259-260, 260. 
 Virgil, 134. 
 
 Vlaminck, Maurice de, 320-321. 
 VoUard, Ambroise, 145. 
 VoUard collection, 125. 
 Vorticism (Vorticists), 325. 
 Vuillard, 3iS>3i8> 318-319. 
 
 Wagner, 42, 53, 266. 
 Walkowitz, 325. 
 
 Watteau, 22, 34, 97, 112, 113, I2I. 
 Whistler, 21, 47, 52. 69, 98, 134, 187, 
 
 209, 212, 244, 258, 318. 
 William of Orange, 50. 
 WolfF, Albert, 336. 
 
 Wright, S. Macdonald. See Mac- 
 donald-W right, S. 
 
 Yahne, portrait of, 216. 
 Young, Thomas, 84. 
 
 Zak, 205, 321-322. 
 Zanchi, 23. 
 Zawadowsky, 324. 
 Zola, 52, 73, 131, 133, 134; 
 
 moir, 73 ; Fecondite, 73 ; L (Euvre, 
 
 134- 
 Zorn, 52. 
 Zuloaga, 21, 98. 
 Zurbaran, 50. 
 
OTHER BOOKS BT WILLARD HUNTINGTON WRIGHT 
 
 WHAT NIETZSCHE TAUGHT 
 
 A comprehensive exposition of Nietzsche's philosophy, book 
 by book, with a complete biographical sketch and a frontis- 
 piece of Professor Karl DonndorPs bust of Nietzsche. 
 
 The best book of its sort I have ever seen. — James Huneker. 
 
 We know of no other book just like Mr. Wright's, nor any- 
 one that, on the whole, we can recommend more heartily. 
 
 — The Nation. 
 
 As a presentation in compadl form of biographical data and 
 certain extrads from the philosopher's writings, the book is 
 admirable. — Review of Reviews. 
 
 It offers a better and truer report of Nietzsche's ideas than 
 any other book either in Enghsh or German. — H. L. Mencken 
 in the Baltimore Evening Sun. 
 
 An excellent survey of the life and philosophy of Nietzsche 
 . . . The best summary of Nietzsche that has yet appeared in 
 English. — Springfield Republican. 
 
 Just as one should begin the study of Nietzsche's works 
 with "Human, AU-too-Human," so could one most advanta- 
 geously undertake the study of Nietzsche with Mr. Wright's 
 volume. — The Dial. 
 
 Mr Wright's compilation may be warmly recommended. 
 
 — Boston Transcript. 
 
 Mr. Wright knows thoroughly what he is talking about, 
 and his book is excellent. — New York Evening Sun. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF ESTHETIC FORM 
 AND ORGANISATION 
 
 {In Preparation) 
 
 An inquiry into the laws governing aesthetic appreciation in 
 all the arts. The first basic co-ordination of the fadors which 
 make for empathy and aesthetic emotion, and the only funda- 
 mental rationale for criticism in existence. Mr. Wright, in this 
 new and important work, defines aesthetic form and rhythmic 
 composition, and establishes a definite foundation for artistic 
 judgment. "The Principles of ^Esthetic Form and Organi- 
 sation" is by far the most profound and important contribution 
 to the science of aesthetics since Kant. 
 
OTHER BOOKS BY WILLARD HUNTINGTON WRIGHT 
 
 THE MAN OF PROMISE 
 
 {To be published January, IQ16) 
 
 Mr. Wright has here written one of the most penetrating and unusual 
 novels of this generation. Its conception, its point of view, its frankness, 
 its freedom from all prejudice, and its form are in accord with the 
 highest standards of the best Continental fidtion. The central characfter — 
 "the man of promise," despite his potentialities of genius, is an intensely 
 appeaUng and sympathetic figure. In his nature are combined weakness 
 and strength, cruelty and tenderness, virtue and viciousness. In short, he is 
 inherently human, capable of ascending the heights, yet capable also of sink- 
 ing to the depths of life's degradations. 
 
 The story, which takes him from early boyhood to middle age, is centred 
 about his affairs, phsycological and sexual, with the many women who touch 
 his life. Not one of these women is able to assist him in his great work or 
 to attain to his high and solitary ideals. In not one of them can he find an 
 " inspiration." They are not necessary to his intelledtual development. To 
 the contrary, each tends to drag him down to the mediocre level of the 
 world's criterion of greatness, to sap his vitality, to curb his heresies, to make 
 of him a commonplace man. The book, in short, is an undogmatic refutation 
 of the theory that great men need the influence of women. It shows how 
 women, by their conservatism and social conventionality, interfere with true 
 greatness and conspire instindtively and unconsciously against the higher 
 nature of the men they love. 
 
 First Mr. Wright shows the cramping influence of mother love, the maternal 
 eflPorts to inculcate conventional and religious ideals into the child. Then we 
 are given a glimpse of the influence of the man's boyhood romance. Next 
 we see his college sweetheart, in love with life's pleasures and gaieties, turning 
 his mind from his work. Later we have the young man's mistress, a selfish 
 and calculating woman, ready to sacrifice his career to her personal ends. 
 Still later, his wife, a sweet, loving and admirable woman, hinders him by 
 her conservatism and constant attentions. In a final attempt to find a woman 
 who can wholly appreciate his exalted desires and follow him to the heights 
 he has in mind, he deserts his wife for what he thinks is an advanced 
 and intelledlual woman. But she in the end proves little different from the 
 others. She exhibits the same petty jealousies and makes the same demands 
 on him, and he sends her away in a last desperate attempt to consummate 
 his aspirations. But at this time his daughter, now a young woman, appears; 
 and he is forced to make the final sacrifice to her future. 
 
 "The Man of Promise" goes deep into the undercurrents of life, and it is 
 not a novel any man or woman can afford to miss reading. It is a powerful 
 story and in many ways a ruthless one; but both in conception and execution 
 it marks a new epoch in American fidtion.