Claude Monet
Whether the pictures in the Royal Academy be bad or good, the journalist must describe them. The public goes to the Academy, and the journalist must follow the traffic, like the omnibuses. But the public, the English public, does not go to the Salon or to the Champ de Mars. Why, then, should our newspapers waste space on the description of pictures which not one reader in fifty has seen or will see? I suppose the demon of actuality is answerable for the wasted columns, and the demon of habit for my yearly wanderings over deserts of cocoa-nut matting, under tropical skylights, in continual torment from glaring oil-paintings. Of the days I have spent in those exhibitions, nothing remains but the memory of discomfort, and the sense of relief experienced on coming to a room in which there were no pictures. Ah, the arm-chairs into which I slipped and the tapestries that rested my jaded eyes! … So this year I resolved to break with habit and to visit neither the Salon nor the Champ de Mars. An art critic I am, but surely independent of pictures—at least, of modern pictures; indeed, they stand between me and the interesting article ninety times in a hundred.
Only now and then do we meet a modern artist about whom we may rhapsodise, or at whom we may curse: Claude Monet is surely such an one. So I pricked up my ears when I heard there was an exhibition of his work at Durand Ruel’s. I felt I was on the trail of an interesting article, and away I went. The first time I pondered and argued with myself. Then I went with an intelligent lady, and was garrulous, explanatory, and theoretical; she listened, and said she would write out all I had said from her point of view. The third time I went with two artists. We were equally garrulous and argumentative, and with the result that we three left the exhibition more than ever confirmed in the truth of our opinions. I mention these facts, not, as the ill-natured might suppose, because it pleases me to write about my own sayings and doings, but because I believe my conduct to be typical of the conduct of hundreds of others in regard to the present exhibition in the Rue Laffitte; for, let this be said in Monet’s honour: every day artists from every country in Europe go there by themselves, with their women friends, and with other artists, and every day since the exhibition opened, the galleries have been the scene of passionate discussion.
My own position regarding Monet is a peculiar one, and I give it for what it is worth. It is about eighteen years since I first made the acquaintance of this remarkable man. Though at first shocked, I was soon convinced of his talent, and set myself about praising him as well as I knew how. But my prophesying was answered by scoffs, jeers, supercilious smiles. Outside of the Café of the Nouvelle Athènes, Monet was a laughing-stock. Manet was bad enough; but when it came to Monet, words were inadequate to express sufficient contempt. A shrug of the shoulders or a pitying look, which clearly meant, “Art thou most of madman or simpleton, or, maybe, impudent charlatan who would attract attention to himself by professing admiration for such eccentricity?”
It was thus eighteen years ago; but revolution has changed depth to height, and Monet is now looked upon as the creator of the art of landscape painting; before him nothing was, after him nothing can be, for he has said all things and made the advent of another painter impossible, inconceivable. He who could never do a right thing can now do no wrong one. Canvases beside which the vaguest of Mr. Whistler’s nocturnes are clear statements of plain fact, lilac-coloured canvases void of design or tone, or quality of paint, are accepted by a complacent public, and bought by American millionaires for vast sums; and the early canvases about which Paris would not once tolerate a word of praise, are now considered old-fashioned. My personal concern in all this enthusiasm—the enthusiasm of the fashionable market-place—is that I once more find myself a dissident, and a dissident in a very small minority. I think of Monet now as I thought of him eighteen years ago. For no moment did it seem to me possible to think of him as an equal of Corot or of Millet. He seemed a painter of great talent, of exceptional dexterity of hand, and of clear and rapid vision. His vision seemed then somewhat impersonal; the temper of his mind did not illuminate his pictures; he was a marvellous mirror, reproducing all the passing phenomena of Nature; and that was all. And looking at his latest work, his views of Rouen Cathedral, it seems to me that he has merely continued to develop the qualities for which we first admired him—clearness of vision and a marvellous technical execution. So extraordinary is this later execution that, by comparison, the earlier seems timid and weak. His naturalism has expanded and strengthened: mine has decayed and almost fallen from me.
Monet’s handicraft has grown like a weed; it now overtops and chokes the idea; it seems in these façades to exist by itself, like a monstrous and unnatural ivy, independent of support; and when expression outruns the thought, it ceases to charm. We admire the marvellous mastery with which Monet drew tower and portico: see that tower lifted out of blue haze, no delicacy of real perspective has been omitted; see that portico bathed in sunlight and shadow, no form of ornament has been slurred; but we are fain of some personal sense of beauty, we miss that rare delicacy of perception which delights us in Mr. Whistler’s “Venice”, and in Guardi’s vision of cupolas, stairways, roofs, gondolas, and waterways. Monet sees clearly, and he sees truly, but does he see beautifully? is his an enchanted vision? And is not every picture that fails to move, to transport, to enchant, a mistake?
A work of art is complete in itself. But is any one of these pictures complete in itself? Is not the effect they produce dependent on the number, and may not this set of pictures be compared to a set of scenes in a theatre, the effect of which is attained by combination? There is no foreground in them; the cathedral is always in the first plane, directly, under the eye of the spectator, the wall running out of the picture. The spectator says, “What extraordinary power was necessary to paint twelve views of that cathedral without once having recourse to the illusion of distance!” A feat no doubt it was; and therein we perceive the artistic weakness of the pictures. For art must not be confounded with the strong man in the fair who straddles, holding a full-grown woman on the palm of his hand.
Then the question of the quality of paint. Manet’s paint was beautiful as that of an old master; brilliant as an enamel, smooth as an old ivory. But the quality of paint in Monet is that of stone and mortar. It would seem (the thought is too monstrous to be entertained) as if he had striven by thickness of paint and roughness of the handling to reproduce the very material quality of the stonework. This would be realism à outrance. I will not think that Monet was haunted for a single instant by so shameful a thought. However this may be, the fact remains that a trompe-l’oeil has been achieved, and four inches of any one of these pictures looked at separately would be mistaken by sight and touch for a piece of stonework. In another picture, in a haystack with the sun shining on it, the trompe-l’oeil has again been as cleverly achieved as by the most cunning of scene-painters. So the haystack is a popular delight.
Notes
Mr. Mark Fisher
Mark Fisher is a nineteenth-century Morland; the disposition of mind and character of vision seem the same in both painters, the outlook almost identical: the same affectionate interest in humble life, the same power of apprehending the pathos of work, the same sympathy for the life that thinks not. But beyond these qualities of mind common to both painters, Morland possessed a sense of beauty and grace which is absent in Mark Fisher. Morland’s pig-styes are more beautifully seen than Mark Fisher could see them. But is the sense of beauty, which was most certainly Morland’s, so inherent and independent a possession that we must regard it as his rather than the common inheritance of those who lived in his time? Surely Mark Fisher would have seen more beautifully if he had lived in the eighteenth century? Or, to put the case more clearly, surely Morland would have seen very much as Mark Fisher sees if he had lived in the nineteenth? Think of the work done by Morland in the field and farmyard—it is in that work that he lives; compare it with Mark Fisher’s, subtracting, of course, all that Morland owed to his time, quality of paint, and a certain easy sense of beauty, and say if you can that both men do not stand on the same intellectual plane.
To tell the story of the life of the fields, and to tell it sincerely, without false sentiment, was their desire; nor do we detect in either Morland or Mark Fisher any pretence of seeing more in their subjects than is natural for them to see: in Jacques, yes. Jacques tried to think profoundly, like Millet; Mark Fisher does not; nor was Morland influenced by the caustic mind of Hogarth to satirise the animalism of the boors he painted. He saw rural life with the same kindly eyes as Mark Fisher. The difference between the two men is a difference of means, of expression—I mean the exterior envelope in which the work of the mind lives, and which preserves and assures a long life to the painter. On this point no comparison is possible between the eighteenth and nineteenth century painter. We should seek in vain in Mark Fisher for Morland’s beautiful smooth painting, for his fluent and easy drawing, the complete and easy vehicle of his vision of things. Mark Fisher draws well, but he often draws awkwardly; he possesses the sentiment of proportion and the instinct of anatomy; we admire the sincerity and we recognise the truth, but we miss the charm of that easy and perfect expression which was current in Morland’s time. Mark Fisher is a man who has something to say and who says it in a somewhat barbarous manner. He dreams hardly at all, his thoughts are ordinary, and are only saved from commonplace by his absence of affectation. He is not without sentiment, but his sentiment is a little plain. His hand is his worst enemy; the touch is seldom interesting or beautiful.
I said that Morland saw nature with the same kindly eyes as Mark Fisher. I would have another word on that point. Mark Fisher’s painting is optimistic. His skies are blue, his sunlight dozes in the orchard, his chestnut trees are in bloom. The melodrama of nature never appears in his pictures; his lanes and fields reflect a gentle mind that has found happiness in observing the changes of the seasons. Happy Mark Fisher! An admirable painter, the best, the only landscape-painter of our time; the one who continues the tradition of Potter and Morland, and lives for his art, uninfluenced by the clamour of cliques.
A Portrait by Mr. Sargent
Mr. Sargent has painted the portrait of a beautiful woman and of a beautiful drawing-room; the picture is full of technical accomplishment. But is it a beautiful picture?
She is dressed in cherry-coloured velvet, and she sits on the edge of a Louis XV. sofa, one arm by her side, the other thrown a little behind her, the hand leaning against the sofa. Behind her are pale yellow draperies, and under her feet is an Aubasson carpet. The drawing is swift, certain, and complete. The movement of the arm is so well rendered that we know the exact pressure of the long fingers that melt into a padded silken sofa. But is the drawing distinguished, or subtle, or refined? or is it mere parade of knowledge and practice of hand? The face charms us with its actuality; but is there a touch intimately characteristic of the model? or is it merely a vivacious appearance?
But if the drawing when judged by the highest standard fails to satisfy us, what shall be said of the colour? Think of a cherry-coloured velvet filling half the picture—the pale cherry pink known as cerise—with mauve lights, and behind it pale yellowish draperies and an Aubasson carpet under the lady’s feet. Of course this is very “daring”, but is it anything more? Is the colour deep and sonorous, like Alfred Stevens’ red velvets; or is it thin and harsh, like Duran? Has any attempt been made to compose the colour, to carry it through the picture? There are a few touches of red in the carpet, none in the draperies, so the dress is practically a huge splash transferred from nature to the canvas. And when we ask ourselves if the picture has style, is not the answer: It is merely the apotheosis of fashionable painting? It is what Messrs. Shannon, Hacker, and Solomon would like to do, but what they cannot do. Mr. Sargent has realised their dreams for them; he has told us what the new generation of Academicians want, he has revealed their souls’ desire, and it is—l’article de Paris.
The portrait is therefore a prodigious success; to use an expression which will be understood in the studios, “it knocks the walls silly”; you see nothing else in the gallery; and it wins the suffrages of the artists and the public alike. Duran never drew so fluently as that, nor was he ever capable of so pictorial an intention. Chaplin, for it recalls Chaplin, was always heavier, more conventional; above all, less real. For it is very real, and just the reality that ladies like, reality without grossness; in other words, without criticism. So Mr. Sargent gets his public, as the saying goes, “all round”. He gets the ladies, because it realises the ideal they have formed of themselves; he gets the artists, because it is the realisation of the pictorial ideals of the present day.
The picture has been described as marvellous, brilliant, astonishing, superb, but no one has described it as beautiful. Whether because of the commonness of the epithet, or because every one felt that beautiful was not the adjective that expressed the sensation the picture awoke in him, I know not. It is essentially a picture of the hour; it fixes the idea of the moment and reminds one somewhat of a première at the Vaudeville with Sarah in a new part. Every one is on the qui vive. The salle is alive with murmurs of approbation. It is the joy of the passing hour, the delirium of the sensual present. The appeal is the same as that of food and drink and air and love. But when painters are pursuing new ideals, when all that constitutes the appearance of our day has changed, I fear that many will turn with a shudder from its cold, material accomplishment.
An Orchid by Mr. James
A Kensington Museum student would have drawn that flower carefully with a lead pencil; it would be washed with colour and stippled until it reached the quality of wool, which is so much admired in that art training-school; and whenever the young lady was not satisfied with the turn her work was taking, she would wash the displeasing portion out and start afresh. The difference—there are other differences —but the difference we are concerned with between this hypothetical young person of Kensington education and Mr. James, is that the drawing which Mr. James exhibits is not a faithful record of all the difficulties that are met with in painting an orchid. A hundred orchids preceded the orchid on the wall—some were good in colour and failed in drawing, and vice versâ. Others were excellent in drawing and colour, but the backgrounds did not come out right. All these were destroyed. That mauve and grey orchid was probably not even sketched in with a lead pencil. Mr. James desired an uninterrupted expression of its beauty: to first sketch it with a pencil would be to lose something of his first vividness of impression. It must flow straight out of the brush. But to attain such fluency it was necessary to paint that orchid a hundred times before its form and colour were learnt sufficiently to admit of the expression of all the flower’s beauty in one painting. It is not that Mr. James has laboured less but ten times more than the Kensington student. But all the preliminary labour having been discarded, it seems as simple and as slight a thing as may be—a flower in a glass, the flower drawn only in its essentials, the glass faintly indicated, a flowing tint of mauve dissolving to grey, the red heart of the flower for the centre of interest. A decoration for where? I imagine it in a boudoir whose walls are stretched and whose windows are curtained with grey silk. From the ceiling hangs a chandelier, cut glass—pure Louis XV. The furniture that I see is modern; but here and there a tabouret, a guéridon, or a delicate étagère, filled with tiny volumes of Musset and two or three rare modern writers, recall the eighteenth century. And who sits in this delicate boudoir perfumed with a faint scent, a sachet-scented pocket-handkerchief? Surely one of Sargent’s ladies. Perhaps the lady in the shot-silk dress who sat on an eighteenth-century French sofa two years ago in the Academy, her tiny, plump, curved white hand, drawn as well in its interior as in exterior limits, hanging over the gilt arm of the sofa. But she sits now, in the boudoir I have imagined, in a low arm-chair covered with grey silk; her feet lie one over the other on the long-haired rug; the fire burns low in the grate, and the soft spring sunlight laps through the lace curtains, filling the room with a bland, moody, retrospective atmosphere. She sits facing Mr. James’s water-colour. She is looking at it, she does not see it; her thoughts are far away, and their importance is slight.
The Whistler Album
The photograph of the portrait of Miss Alexander is as suggestive of the colour as a pianoforte arrangement of Tristan is of the orchestration. The sounds of the different instruments come through the thin tinkle of the piano just as the colour of the blond hair, the delicate passages of green-grey and green, come through the black and white of the photograph. Truly a beautiful thing! But “Before the Mirror” reflects perhaps a deeper beauty. The influence of that strange man, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, is sufficiently plain in this picture. He who could execute hardly at all in paint, and whose verse is Italian, though the author wrote and spoke no language but English, foisted the character of his genius upon all the poetry and painting of his generation. It is as present in this picture as it is in Swinburne’s first volume of Poems and Ballads. Mr. Whistler took the type of woman and the sentiment of the picture from Rossetti; he saw that even in painting Rossetti had something to say, and, lest an artistic thought should be lost to the world through inadequate expression, he painted this picture. He did not go on painting pictures in the Rossetti sentiment, because he thought he had exhausted Rossetti in one picture. In this he was possibly mistaken, but the large, white, indolent shoulders, misshapen, almost grotesque in original Rossettis, are here in beautiful prime and plenitude; the line of the head and neck, the hair falling over the stooped shoulder —a sensuous dream it is; all her body’s beauty, to borrow a phrase from Rossetti, is in that white dress; and the beauty of the arm in its full white sleeve lies along the white chimney-piece, the fingers languidly open: two fallen over the edge, two touching the blue vase. Note how beautiful is the placing of this figure in the picture; how the golden head shines, high up in the right-hand corner, and the white dress and white-sleeved arms fill the picture with an exquisite music of proportion. The dress cuts against the black grate, and the angle of black is the very happiest; it is brightened with pink sprays of azaleas, and they seem to whisper the very enchanted bloom of their life into the picture. Never did Dutch or Japanese artist paint flowers like these. And the fluent music of the painting seems only to enforce the languor and reverie which this canvas exhales: the languor of white dress and gold hair; languor and golden reverie float in the mirror like a sunset in placid waters. The profile in full light is thrilled with grief of present hours; the full face half lost in shadow, far away—a ghost of a dead self—is dreaming with half-closed eyes, unmindful of what may be. By her mirror, gowned in white as if for dreams, she watches life flowing past her, and she knows of no use to make of it.
Ingres
Raphael was a great designer, but there are a purity and a passion in Ingres’ line for the like of which we have to go back to the Greeks. Apelles could not have realised more exquisite simplifications, could not have dreamed into any of his lost works a purer soul of beauty than Ingres did into the head, arms, and torso of “La Source”. The line that floats about the muscles of an arm is illusive, evanescent, as an evening-tinted sky; and none except the Greeks and Ingres have attained such mystery of line: not Raphael, not even Michael Angelo in the romantic anatomies of his stupendous creations. Ingres was a Frenchman animated by the soul of an ancient Greek, an ancient Greek who lost himself in Japan. There is as much mystery in Ingres’ line as in Rembrandt’s light and shade. The arms and wrists and hands of the lady seated among the blue cushions in the Louvre are as illusive as any one of Mr. Whistler’s “Nocturnes”. The beautiful “Andromeda”, head and throat leaned back almost out of nature, wild eyes and mass of heavy hair, long white arms uplifted, chained to the basalt,—how rare the simplifications, those arms, that body, the straight flanks and slender leg advancing,—are made of lines simple and beautiful as those which in the Venus of Milo realise the architectural beauty of woman. We shrink from such comparison, for perforce we see that the grandeur of the Venus is not in the Andromeda: but in both is the same quality of beauty. In the drawing for the odalisque, in her long back, wonderful as a stem of woodbine, there is the very same love of form which a Greek expressed with the benign ease of a god speaking his creation through the harmonious universe.
But the pure, unconscious love of form, inherited from the Greeks, sometimes turned to passion in Ingres: not in “La Source”, she is wholly Greek; but in the beautiful sinuous back of the odalisque we perceive some of the exasperation of nerves which betrays our century. If Phidias’ sketches had come down to us, the margin filled with his hesitations, we should know more of his intimate personality. You notice, my dear reader, how intolerant I am of criticism of my idol, how I repudiate any slight suggestion of imperfection, how I turn upon myself and defend my god. Before going to bed, I often stand, candle in hand, before the Roman lady and enumerate the adorable perfections of the drawing. I am aware of my weakness, I have pleaded guilty to an idolatrous worship, but, if I have expressed myself as I intended, my great love will seem neither vain nor unreasonable. For surely for quality of beautiful line this man stands nearer to the Greeks than any other.