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diff --git a/17244-8.txt b/17244-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..94172c7 --- /dev/null +++ b/17244-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5162 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of French Art, by W. C. Brownell + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: French Art + Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture + +Author: W. C. Brownell + +Release Date: December 6, 2005 [EBook #17244] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRENCH ART *** + + + + +Produced by Barbara Tozier, Graeme Mackreth, Bill Tozier +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +FRENCH ART + +_CLASSIC AND CONTEMPORARY PAINTING +AND SCULPTURE_ + +BY +W.C. BROWNELL + + +NEW YORK +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS +1892 + + +Copyright, 1892, by +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + + + +TO AUGUSTE RODIN + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +I. Classic Painting, 1 + I. Character and origin. + II. Claude and Poussin. + III. Lebrun and Lesueur. + IV. Louis Quinze. + V. Greuze and Chardin. + VI. David, Ingres, and Prudhon. + +II. Romantic Painting, 47 + I. Romanticism. + II. Géricault and Delacroix. + III. The Fontainebleau Group. + IV. The Academic Painters. + V. Couture, Puvis de Chavannes, and Regnault. + +III. Realistic Painting, 89 + I. Realism. + II. Courbet and Bastien-Lepage. + III. The Landscape Painters; Fromentin and Guillaumet. + IV. Historical and Portrait Painters. + V. Baudry, Delaunay, Bonvin, Vollon, Gervex, + Duez, Roll, L'Hermitte, Lerolle, Béraud, + The Illustrators. + VI. Manet and Monet. + VII. Impressionism; Degas. + VIII. The Outlook. + +IV. Classic Sculpture, 139 + I. Claux Sluters. + II. Jean Goujon. + III. Style. + IV. Clodion, Pradier, and Etex. + V. Houdon, David d'Angers, and Rude. + VI. Carpeaux and Barye. + +V. Academic Sculpture, 165 + + I. Its Italianate Character. + II. Chapu. + III. Dubois. + IV. Saint-Marceaux and Mercié. + V. Tyranny of Style. + VI. Falguière, Barrias, Delaplanche, and Le Feuvre. + VII. Frémiet. + VIII. The Institute School in General. + +VI. The New Movement in Sculpture, 205 + I. Rodin. + II. Dalou. + + + + +I + + +CLASSIC PAINTING + + +I + +More than that of any other modern people French art is a national +expression. It epitomizes very definitely the national æsthetic judgment +and feeling, and if its manifestations are even more varied than are +elsewhere to be met with, they share a certain character that is very +salient. Of almost any French picture or statue of any modern epoch +one's first thought is that it is French. The national quite overshadows +the personal quality. In the field of the fine arts, as in nearly every +other in which the French genius shows itself, the results are evident +of an intellectual co-operation which insures the development of a +common standard and tends to subordinate idiosyncrasy. The fine arts, as +well as every other department of mental activity, reveal the effect of +that social instinct which is so much more powerful in France than it is +anywhere else, or has ever been elsewhere, except possibly in the case +of the Athenian republic. Add to this influence that of the intellectual +as distinguished from the sensuous instinct, and one has, I think, the +key to this salient characteristic of French art which strikes one so +sharply and always as so plainly French. As one walks through the French +rooms at the Louvre, through the galleries of the Luxembourg, through +the unending rooms of the _Salon_ he is impressed by the splendid +competence everywhere displayed, the high standard of culture +universally attested, by the overwhelming evidence that France stands at +the head of the modern world æsthetically--but not less, I think, does +one feel the absence of imagination, opportunity, of spirituality, of +poetry in a word. The French themselves feel something of this. At the +great Exposition of 1889 no pictures were so much admired by them as the +English, in which appeared, even to an excessive degree, just the +qualities in which French art is lacking, and which less than those of +any other school showed traces of the now all but universal influence of +French art. The most distinct and durable impression left by any +exhibition of French pictures is that the French æsthetic genius is at +once admirably artistic and extremely little poetic. + +It is a corollary of the predominance of the intellectual over the +sensuous instinct that the true should be preferred to the beautiful, +and some French critics are so far from denying this preference of +French art that they express pride in it, and, indeed, defend it in a +way that makes one feel slightly amateurish and fanciful in thinking of +beauty apart from truth. A walk through the Louvre, however, suffices to +restore one's confidence in his own convictions. The French rooms, at +least until modern periods are reached, are a demonstration that in the +sphere of æsthetics science does not produce the greatest artists--that +something other than intelligent interest and technical accomplishment +are requisite to that end, and that system is fatal to spontaneity. M. +Eugène Véron is the mouthpiece of his countrymen in asserting absolute +beauty to be an abstraction, but the practice of the mass of French +painters is, by comparison with that of the great Italians and Dutchmen, +eloquent of the lack of poetry that results from a scepticism of +abstractions. The French classic painters--and the classic-spirit, in +spite of every force that the modern world brings to its destruction, +persists wonderfully in France--show little absorption, little delight +in their subject. Contrasted with the great names in painting they are +eclectic and traditional, too purely expert. They are too cultivated to +invent. Selection has taken the place of discovery in their inspiration. +They are addicted to the rational and the regulated. Their substance is +never sentimental and incommunicable. Their works have a distinctly +professional air. They distrust what cannot be expressed; what can only +be suggested does not seem to them worth the trouble of trying to +conceive. Beside the world of mystery and the wealth of emotion forming +an imaginative penumbra around such a design as Raphael's Vision of +Ezekiel, for instance, Poussin's treatment of essentially the same +subject is a diagram. + +On the other hand, qualities intimately associated with these defects +are quite as noticeable in the old French rooms of the Louvre. +Clearness, compactness, measure, and balance are evident in nearly every +canvas. Everywhere is the air of reserve, of intellectual good-breeding, +of avoidance of extravagance. That French painting is at the head of +contemporary painting, as far and away incontestably it is, is due to +the fact that it alone has kept alive the traditions of art which, +elsewhere than in France, have given place to other and more material +ideals. From the first its practitioners have been artists rather than +poets, have possessed, that is to say, the constructive rather than the +creative, the organizing rather than the imaginative temperament, but +they have rarely been perfunctory and never common. French painting in +its preference of truth to beauty, of intelligence to the beatific +vision, of form to color, in a word, has nevertheless, and perhaps _à +fortiori_, always been the expression of ideas. These ideas almost +invariably have been expressed in rigorous form--form which at times +fringes the lifelessness of symbolism. But even less frequently, I +think, than other peoples have the French exhibited in their painting +that contentment with painting in itself that is the dry rot of art. +With all their addiction to truth and form they have followed this ideal +so systematically that they have never suffered it to become mechanical, +merely _formal_--as is so often the case elsewhere (in England and among +ourselves, everyone will have remarked) in instances where form has been +mainly considered and where sentiment happens to be lacking. Even when +care for form is so excessive as to imply an absence of character, the +form itself is apt to be so distinguished as itself to supply the +element of character, and character consequently particularly refined +and immaterial. And one quality is always present: elegance is always +evidently aimed at and measurably achieved. Native or foreign, real or +factitious as the inspiration of French classicism may be, the sense of +style and of that perfection of style which we know as elegance is +invariably noticeable in its productions. So that, we may say, from +Poussin to Puvis de Chavannes, from Clouet to Meissonier, _taste_--a +refined and cultivated sense of what is sound, estimable, competent, +reserved, satisfactory, up to the mark, and above all, elegant and +distinguished--has been at once the arbiter and the stimulus of +excellence in French painting. It is this which has made the France of +the past three centuries, and especially the France of to-day--as we get +farther and farther away from the great art epochs--both in amount and +general excellence of artistic activity, comparable only with the Italy +of the Renaissance and the Greece of antiquity. + +Moreover, it is an error to assume, because form in French painting +appeals to us more strikingly than substance, that French painting is +lacking in substance. In its perfection form appeals to every +appreciation; it is in art, one may say, the one universal language. But +just in proportion as form in a work of art approaches perfection, or +universality, just in that proportion does the substance which it +clothes, which it expresses, seem unimportant to those to whom this +substance is foreign. Some critics have even fancied, for example, that +Greek architecture and sculpture--the only Greek art we know anything +about--were chiefly concerned with form, and that the ideas behind their +perfection of form were very simple and elementary ideas, not at all +comparable in complexity and elaborateness with those that confuse and +distinguish the modern world. When one comes to French art it is still +more difficult for us to realize that the ideas underlying its +expression are ideas of import, validity, and attachment. The truth is +largely that French ideas are not our ideas; not that the French +who--except possibly the ancient Greeks and the modern Germans--of all +peoples in the world are, as one may say, addicted to ideas, are lacking +in them. Technical excellence is simply the inseparable accompaniment, +the outward expression of the kind of æsthetic ideas the French are +enamoured of. Their substance is not our substance, but while it is +perfectly legitimate for us to criticise their substance it is idle to +maintain that they are lacking in substance. If we call a painting by +Poussin pure style, a composition of David merely the perfection of +convention, one of M. Rochegrosse's dramatic canvasses the rhetoric of +technic and that only, we miss something. We miss the idea, the +substance, behind these varying expressions. These are not the less real +for being foreign to us. They are less spiritual and more material, less +poetic and spontaneous, more schooled and traditional than we like to +see associated with such adequacy of expression, but they are not for +that reason more mechanical. They are ideas and substance that lend +themselves to technical expression a thousand times more readily than do +ours. They are, in fact, exquisitely adapted to technical expression. + +The substance and ideas which we desire fully expressed in color, form, +or words are, indeed, very exactly in proportion to our esteem of them, +inexpressible. We like hints of the unutterable, suggestions of +significance that is mysterious and import that is incalculable. The +light that "never was on sea or land" is the illumination we seek. The +"Heaven," not the atmosphere that "lies about us" in our mature age as +"in our infancy," is what appeals most strongly to our subordination of +the intellect and the senses to the imagination and the soul. Nothing +with us very deeply impresses the mind if it does not arouse the +emotions. Naturally, thus, we are predisposed insensibly to infer from +French articulateness the absence of substance, to assume from the +triumphant facility and felicity of French expression a certain +insignificance of what is expressed. Inferences and assumptions based on +temperament, however, almost invariably have the vice of superficiality, +and it takes no very prolonged study of French art for candor and +intelligence to perceive that if its substance is weak on the +sentimental, the emotional, the poetic, the spiritual side, it is +exceptionally strong in rhetorical, artistic, cultivated, æsthetically +elevated ideas, as well as in that technical excellence which alone, +owing to our own inexpertness, first strikes and longest impresses us. + +When we have no ideas to express, in a word, we rarely save our +emptiness by any appearance of clever expression. When a Frenchman +expresses ideas for which we do not care, with which we are +temperamentally out of sympathy, we assume that his expression is +equally empty. Matthew Arnold cites a passage from Mr. Palgrave, and +comments significantly on it, in this sense. "The style," exclaims Mr. +Palgrave, "which has filled London with the dead monotony of Gower or +Harley Streets, or the pale commonplace of Belgravia, Tyburnia, and +Kensington; which has pierced Paris and Madrid with the feeble +frivolities of the Rue Rivoli and the Strada de Toledo." Upon which +Arnold observes that "the architecture of the Rue Rivoli expresses show, +splendor, pleasure, unworthy things, perhaps, to express alone and for +their own sakes, but it expresses them; whereas, the architecture of +Gower Street and Belgravia merely expresses the impotence of the +architect to express anything." + +And in characterizing the turn for poetry in French painting as +comparatively inferior, it will be understood at once, I hope, that I am +comparing it with the imaginativeness of the great Italians and +Dutchmen, and with Rubens and Holbein and Turner, and not asserting the +supremacy in elevated sentiment over Claude and Corot, Chardin, and +Cazin, of the Royal Academy, or the New York Society of American +Artists. And so far as an absolute rather than a comparative standard +may be applied in matters so much too vast for any hope of adequate +treatment according to either method, we ought never to forget that in +criticising French painting, as well as other things French, we are +measuring it by an ideal that now and then we may appreciate better than +Frenchmen, but rarely illustrate as well. + + +II + +Furthermore, the qualities and defects of French painting--the +predominance in it of national over individual force and distinction, +its turn for style, the kind of ideas that inspire its substance, its +classic spirit in fine--are explained hardly less by its historic origin +than by the character of the French genius itself. French painting +really began in connoisseurship, one may say. It arose in appreciation, +that faculty in which the French have always been, and still are, +unrivalled. Its syntheses were based on elements already in combination. +It originated nothing. It was eclectic at the outset. Compared with the +slow and suave evolution of Italian art, in whose earliest dawn its +borrowed Byzantine painting served as a stimulus and suggestion to +original views of natural material rather than as a model for imitation +and modification, the painting that sprang into existence, Minerva-like, +in full armor, at Fontainebleau under Francis I, was of the essence of +artificiality. The court of France was far more splendid than, and +equally enlightened with, that of Florence. The monarch felt his title +to Mæcenasship as justified as that of the Medici. He created, +accordingly, French painting out of hand--I mean, at all events, the +French painting that stands at the beginning of the line of the present +tradition. He summoned Leonardo, Andrea del Sarto, Rossi, Primaticcio, +and founded the famous Fontainebleau school. Of necessity it was +Italianate. It had no Giotto, Masaccio, Raphael behind it. Italian was +the best art going; French appreciation was educated and keen; its +choice between evolution and adoption was inevitable. It was very much +in the position in which American appreciation finds itself to-day. Like +our own painters, the French artists of the Renaissance found themselves +familiar with masterpieces wholly beyond their power to create, and +produced by a foreign people who had enjoyed the incomparable advantage +of arriving at their artistic apogee through natural stages of growth, +beginning with impulse and culminating in expertness. + +The situation had its advantages as well as its drawbacks, certainly. It +saved French painting an immense amount of fumbling, of laborious +experimentation, of crudity, of failure. But it stamped it with an +essential artificiality from which it did not fully recover for over +two hundred years, until, insensibly, it had built up its own traditions +and gradually brought about its own inherent development. In a word, +French painting had an intellectual rather than an emotional origin. Its +first practitioners were men of culture rather than of feeling; they +were inspired by the artistic, the constructive, the fashioning, rather +than the poetic, spirit. And so evident is this inclination in even +contemporary French painting--and indeed in all French æsthetic +expression--that it cannot be ascribed wholly to the circumstances +mentioned. The circumstances themselves need an explanation, and find it +in the constitution itself of the French mind, which (owing, doubtless, +to other circumstances, but that is extraneous) is fundamentally less +imaginative and creative than co-ordinating and constructive. + +Naturally thus, when the Italian influence wore itself out, and the +Fontainebleau school gave way to a more purely national art; when France +had definitely entered into her Italian heritage and had learned the +lessons that Holland and Flanders had to teach her as well; when, in +fine, the art of the modern world began, it was an art of grammar, of +rhetoric. Certainly up to the time of Géricault painting in general held +itself rather pedantically aloof from poetry. Claude, Chardin, what may +be called the illustrated _vers de société_ of the Louis Quinze +painters--of Watteau and Fragonard--even Prudhon, did little to change +the prevailing color and tone. Claude's art is, in manner, thoroughly +classic. His _personal_ influence was perhaps first felt by Corot. He +stands by himself, at any rate, quite apart. He was the first thoroughly +original French painter, if indeed one may not say he was the first +thoroughly original modern painter. He has been assigned to both the +French and Italian schools--to the latter by Gallophobist critics, +however, through a partisanship which in æsthetic matters is ridiculous; +there was in his day no Italian school for him to belong to. The truth +is that he passed a large part of his life in Italy and that his +landscape is Italianate. But more conspicuously still, it is +ideal--ideal in the sense intended by Goethe in saying, "There are no +landscapes in nature like those of Claude." There are not, indeed. +Nature has been transmuted by Claude's alchemy with lovelier results +than any other painter--save always Corot, shall I say?--has ever +achieved. Witness the pastorals at Madrid, in the Doria Gallery at Rome, +the "Dido and Æneas" at Dresden, the sweet and serene superiority of the +National Gallery canvases over the struggling competition manifest in +the Turners juxtaposed to them through the unlucky ambition of the great +English painter. Mr. Ruskin says that Claude could paint a small wave +very well, and acknowledges that he effected a revolution in art, which +revolution "consisted mainly in setting the sun in heavens." "Mainly" is +delightful, but Claude's excellence consists in his ability to paint +visions of loveliness, pictures of pure beauty, not in his skill in +observing the drawing of wavelets or his happy thought of painting +sunlight. Mr. George Moore observes ironically of Mr. Ruskin that his +grotesque depreciation of Mr. Whistler--"the lot of critics" being "to +be remembered by what they have failed to understand"--"will survive his +finest prose passage." I am not sure about Mr. Whistler. Contemporaries +are too near for a perfect critical perspective. But assuredly Mr. +Ruskin's failure to perceive Claude's point of view--to perceive that +Claude's aim and Stanfield's, say, were quite different; that Claude, in +fact, was at the opposite pole from the botanist and the geologist whom +Mr. Ruskin's "reverence for nature" would make of every landscape +painter--is a failure in appreciation than to have shown which it would +be better for him as a critic never to have been born. It seems hardly +fanciful to say that the depreciation of Claude by Mr. Ruskin, who is a +landscape painter himself, using the medium of words instead of +pigments, is, so to speak, professionally unjust. + +"Go out, in the springtime, among the meadows that slope from the +shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower mountains. There, +mingled with the taller gentians and the white narcissus, the grass +grows deep and free; and as you follow the winding mountain paths, +beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom--paths that +forever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping down in +scented undulation, steep to the blue water, studded here and there with +new-mown heaps, filling the air with fainter sweetness--look up toward +the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silently +into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines." + +Claude's landscape is not Swiss, but if it were it would awaken in the +beholder a very similar sensation to that aroused in the reader of this +famous passage. Claude indeed painted landscape in precisely this way. +He was perhaps the first--though priority in such matters is trivial +beside pre-eminence--who painted _effects_ instead of _things_. Light +and air were his material, not ponds and rocks and clouds and trees and +stretches of plain and mountain outlines. He first generalized the +phenomena of inanimate nature, and in this he remains still unsurpassed. +But, superficially, his scheme wore the classic aspect, and neither his +contemporaries nor his successors, for over two hundred years, +discovered the immense value of his point of view, and the puissant +charm of his way of rendering nature. + +Poussin, however, was the incarnation of the classic spirit, and perhaps +the reason why a disinterested foreigner finds it difficult to +appreciate the French estimate of him is that no foreigner, however +disinterested, can quite appreciate the French appreciation of the +classic spirit in and for itself. But when one listens to expressions of +admiration for the one French "old master," as one may call Poussin +without invidiousness, it is impossible not to scent chauvinism, as one +scents it in the German panegyrics of Goethe, for example. He was a very +great painter, beyond doubt. And as there were great men before +Agamemnon there have been great painters since Raphael and Titian, even +since Rembrandt and Velasquez. He had a strenuous personality, moreover. +You know a Poussin at once when you see it. But to find the suggestion +of the infinite, the Shakespearian touch in his work seems to demand the +imaginativeness of M. Victor Cherbuliez. When Mr. Matthew Arnold +ventured to remark to Sainte-Beuve that he could not consider Lamartine +as a very important poet, Sainte-Beuve replied: "He was important to +us." Many critics, among them one severer than Sainte-Beuve, the late +Edmond Scherer, have given excellent reasons for Lamartine's absolute as +well as relative importance, and perhaps it is a failure in +appreciation on our part that is really responsible for our feeling that +Poussin is not quite the great master the French deem him. Assuredly he +might justifiably apply to himself the "Et-Ego-in-Arcadia" inscription +in one of his most famous paintings. And the specific service he +performed for French painting and the relative rank he occupies in it +ought not to obscure his purely personal qualities, which, if not +transcendent, are incontestably elevated and fine. + +His qualities, however, are very thoroughly French qualities--poise, +rationality, science, the artistic dominating the poetic faculty, and +style quite outshining significance and suggestion. He learned all he +knew of art, he said, from the Bacchus Torso at Naples. But he was +eclectic rather than imitative, and certainly used the material he found +in the works of his artistic ancestors as freely and personally as +Raphael the frescos of the Baths of Titus, or Donatello the fragments of +antique sculpture. From his time on, indeed, French painting dropped its +Italian leading-strings. He might often suggest Raphael--and any painter +who suggests Raphael inevitably suffers for it--but always with an +individual, a native, a French difference, and he is as far removed in +spirit and essence from the Fontainebleau school as the French genius +itself is from the Italian which presided there. In Poussin, indeed, +the French genius first asserts itself in painting. And it asserts +itself splendidly in him. + +We who ask to be moved as well as impressed, who demand satisfaction of +the susceptibility as well as--shall we say rather than?--interest of +the intelligence, may feel that for the qualities in which Poussin is +lacking those in which he is rich afford no compensation whatever. But I +confess that in the presence of even that portion of Poussin's +magnificent accomplishment which is spread before one in the Louvre, to +wish one's self in the Stanze of the Vatican or in the Sistine Chapel, +seems to me an unintelligent sacrifice of one's opportunities. + + +III + +It is a sure mark of narrowness and defective powers of perception to +fail to discover the point of view even of what one disesteems. We talk +of Poussin, of Louis Quatorze art--as of its revival under David and its +continuance in Ingres--of, in general, modern classic art as if it were +an art of convention merely; whereas, conventional as it is, its +conventionality is--or was, certainly, in the seventeenth century--very +far from being pure formulary. It was genuinely expressive of a certain +order of ideas intelligently held, a certain set of principles +sincerely believed in, a view of art as positive and genuine as the +revolt against the tyrannous system into which it developed. We are +simply out of sympathy with its aim, its ideal; perhaps, too, for that +most frivolous of all reasons because we have grown tired of it. + +But the business of intelligent criticism is to be in touch with +everything. "Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner," as the French +ethical maxim has it, may be modified into the true motto of æsthetic +criticism, "Tout comprendre, c'est tout justifier." Of course, by +"criticism" one does not mean pedagogy, as so many people constantly +imagine, nor does justifying everything include bad drawing. But as +Lebrun, for example, is not nowadays held up as a model to young +painters, and is not to be accused of bad drawing, why do we so entirely +dispense ourselves from comprehending him at all? Lebrun is, perhaps, +not a painter of enough personal importance to repay attentive +consideration, and historic importance does not greatly concern +criticism. But we pass him by on the ground of his conventionality, +without remembering that what appears conventional to us was in his case +not only sincerity but aggressive enthusiasm. If there ever was a +painter who exercised what creative and imaginative faculty he had with +an absolute gusto, Lebrun did so. He interested his contemporaries +immensely; no painter ever ruled more unrivalled. He fails to interest +us because we have another point of view. We believe in our point of +view and disbelieve in his as a matter of course; and it would be +self-contradictory to say, in the interests of critical catholicity, +that in our opinion his may be as sound as our own. But to say that he +has no point of view whatever--to say, in general, that modern classic +art is perfunctory and mere formulary--is to be guilty of what has +always been the inherent vice of protestantism in all fields of mental +activity. + +Nowhere has protestantism exhibited this defect more palpably than in +the course of evolution of schools of painting. Pre-Raphaelitism is +perhaps the only exception, and pre-Raphaelitism was a violent and +emotional counter-revolution rather than a movement characterized by +catholicity of critical appreciation. Literary criticism is certainly +full of similar intolerance; though when Gautier talks about Racine, or +Zola about "Mes Haines," or Mr. Howells about Scott, the polemic temper, +the temper most opposed to the critical, is very generally recognized. +And in spite of their admirable accomplishment in various branches of +literature, these writers will never quite recover from the misfortune +of having preoccupied themselves as critics with the defects instead of +the qualities of what is classic. Yet the protestantism of the +successive schools of painting against the errors of their predecessors +has something even more crass about it. Contemporary painters and +critics thoroughly alive, and fully in the contemporary æsthetic +current, so far from appreciating modern classic art sympathetically, +are apt to admire the old masters themselves mainly on technical +grounds, and not at all to enter into their general æsthetic attitude. +The feeling of contemporary painters and critics (except, of course, +historical critics) for Raphael's genius is the opposite of cordial. We +are out of touch with the "Disputa," with angels and prophets seated on +clouds, with halos and wings, with such inconsistencies as the "Doge +praying" in a picture of the marriage of St. Catherine, with the mystic +marriage itself. Raphael's grace of line and suave space-filling shapes +are mainly what we think of; the rest we call convention. We are become +literal and exacting, addicted to the pedantry of the prescriptive, if +not of the prosaic. + +Take such a picture as M. Edouard Detaille's "Le Rêve," which won him so +much applause a few years ago. M. Detaille is an irreproachable realist, +and may do what he likes in the way of the materially impossible with +impunity. Sleeping soldiers, without a gaiter-button lacking, +bivouacking on the ground amid stacked arms whose bayonets would prick; +above them in the heavens the clash of contending ghostly +armies--wraiths born of the sleepers' dreams. That we are in touch with. +No one would object to it except under penalty of being scouted as +pitiably literal. Yet the scheme is as thoroughly conventional--that is +to say, it is as closely based on hypothesis universally assumed for the +moment--as Lebrun's "Triumph of Alexander." The latter is as much a true +expression of an ideal as Detaille's picture. It is an ideal now become +more conventional, undoubtedly, but it is as clearly an ideal and as +clearly genuine. The only point I wish to make is, that Lebrun's +painting--Louis Quatorze painting--is not the perfunctory thing we are +apt to assume it to be. That is not the same thing, I hope, as +maintaining that M. Bouguereau is significant rather than insipid. +Lebrun was assuredly not a strikingly original painter. His crowds of +warriors bear a much closer resemblance to Raphael's "Battle of +Constantine and Maxentius" than the "Transfiguration" of the Vatican +does to Giotto's, aside from the important circumstance that the +difference in the latter instance shows development, while the former +illustrates mainly an enfeebled variation. But there is unquestionably +something of Lebrun in Lebrun's work--something typical of the age whose +artistic spirit he so completely expressed. + +To perceive that Louis Quatorze art is not all convention it is only +necessary to remember that Lesueur is to be bracketed with Lebrun. All +the sympathy which the Anglo-Saxon temperament withholds from the +histrionism of Lebrun is instinctively accorded to his gentle and +graceful contemporary, who has been called--_faute de mieux_, of +course--the French Raphael. Really Lesueur is as nearly conventional as +Lebrun. He has at any rate far less force; and even if we may maintain +that he had a more individual point of view, his works are assuredly +more monotonous to the scrutinizing sense. It is impossible to recall +any one of the famous San Bruno series with any particularity, or, +except in subject, to distinguish these in the memory from the sweet and +soft "St. Scholastica" in the _Salon Carré_. With more sapience and less +sensitiveness, Bouguereau is Lesueur's true successor, to say which is +certainly not to affirm a very salient originality of the older painter. +He had a great deal of very exquisite feeling for what is refined and +elevated, but clearly it is a moral rather than an æsthetic delicacy +that he exhibits, and æsthetically he exercises his sweeter and more +sympathetic sensibility within the same rigid limits which circumscribe +that of Lebrun. He has, indeed, less invention, less imagination, less +sense of composition, less wealth of detail, less elaborateness, no +greater concentration or sense of effect; and though his color is more +agreeable, perhaps, in hue, it gets its tone through the absence of +variety rather than through juxtapositions and balances. The truth is, +that both equally illustrate the classic spirit, the spirit of their age +_par excellence_ and of French painting in general, in a supreme degree, +though the conformability of the one is positive and of the other +passive, so to say; and that neither illustrates quite the subserviency +to the conventional which we, who have undoubtedly just as many +conventions of our own, are wont to ascribe to them, and to Lebrun in +particular. + + +IV + +Fanciful as the Louis Quinze art seems, by contrast with that of Louis +Quatorze, it, too, is essentially classic. It is free enough--no one, I +think, would deny that--but it is very far from individual in any +important sense. It has, to be sure, more personal feeling than that of +Lesueur or Lebrun. The artist's susceptibility seems to come to the +surface for the first time. Watteau, Fragonard--Fragonard especially, +the exquisite and impudent--are as gay, as spontaneous, as careless, as +vivacious as Boldini. Boucher's goddesses and cherubs, disporting +themselves in graceful abandonment on happily disposed clouds, outlined +in cumulus masses against unvarying azure, are as unrestrained and +independent of prescription as Monticelli's figures. Lancret, Pater, +Nattier, and Van Loo--the very names suggest not merely freedom but a +sportive and abandoned license. But in what a narrow round they move! +How their imaginativeness is limited by their artificiality! What a +talent, what a genius they have for artificiality. It is the era _par +excellence_ of dilettantism, and nothing is less romantic than +dilettantism. Their evident feeling--and evidently genuine feeling--is +feeling for the factitious, for the manufactured, for what the French +call the _confectionné_. Their romantic quality is to that of the modern +Fontainebleau group as the exquisite _vers de société_ of Mr. Austin +Dobson, say, is to the turbulent yet profound romanticism of Heine or +Burns. Every picture painted by them would go as well on a fan as in a +frame. All their material is traditional. They simply handle it as +_enfants terribles_. Intellectually speaking, they are painters of a +silver age. Of ideas they have almost none. They are as barren of +invention in any large sense as if they were imitators instead of, in a +sense, the originators of a new phase. Their originality is arrived at +rather through exclusion than discovery. They simply drop pedantry and +exult in irresponsibility. They are hardly even a school. + +Yet they have, one and all, in greater or less degree, that distinct +quality of charm which is eternally incompatible with routine. They are +as little constructive as the age itself, as anything that we mean when +we use the epithet Louis Quinze. Of everything thus indicated one +predicates at once unconsciousness, the momentum of antecedent thought +modified by the ease born of habit; the carelessness due to having one's +thinking done for one and the license of proceeding fancifully, +whimsically, even freakishly, once the lines and limits of one's action +have been settled by more laborious, more conscientious philosophy than +in such circumstances one feels disposed to frame for one's self. There +is no break with the Louis Quatorze things, not a symptom of revolt; +only, after them the deluge! But out of this very condition of things, +and out of this attitude of mind, arises a new art, or rather a new +phase of art, essentially classic, as I said, but nevertheless imbued +with a character of its own, and this character distinctly charming. +Wherein does the charm consist? In two qualities, I think, one of which +has not hitherto appeared in French painting, or, indeed, in any art +whatever, namely, what we understand by cleverness as a distinct element +in treatment--and color. Color is very prominent nowadays in all writing +about art, though recently it has given place, in the fashion of the +day, to "values" and the realistic representation of natural objects as +the painter's proper aim. What precisely is meant by color would be +difficult, perhaps, to define. A warmer general tone than is achieved by +painters mainly occupied with line and mass is possibly what is oftenest +meant by amateurs who profess themselves fond of color. At all events, +the Louis Quinze painters, especially Watteau, Fragonard, and Pater--and +Boucher has a great deal of the same feeling--were sensitive to that +vibration of atmosphere that blends local hues into the _ensemble_ that +produces tone. The _ensemble_ of their tints is what we mean by color. +Since the Venetians _this_ note had not appeared. They constitute, thus, +a sort of romantic interregnum--still very classic, from an intellectual +point of view--between the classicism of Lebrun and the still greater +severity of David. Nothing in the evolution of French painting is more +interesting than this reverberation of Tintoretto and Tiepolo. + +By cleverness, as exhibited by the Louis Quinze painters, I do not mean +mere technical ability, but something more inclusive, something relating +quite as much to attitude of mind as to dexterity of treatment. They +conceive as cleverly as they execute. There is a sense of confidence and +capability in the way they view, as well as in the way they handle, +their light material. They know it thoroughly, and are thoroughly at one +with it. And they exploit it with a serene air of satisfaction, as if +it were the only material in the world worth handling. Indeed, it is +exquisitely adapted to their talent. So little significance has it that +one may say it exists merely to be cleverly dealt with, to be +represented, distributed, compared, and generally utilized solely with +reference to the display of the artist's jaunty skill. It is, one may +say, merely the raw material for the production of an effect, and an +effect demanding only what we mean by cleverness; no knowledge and love +of nature, no prolonged study, no acquaintance with the antique, for +example, no philosophy whatever--unless poco-curantism be called a +philosophy, which eminently it is not. To be adequate to the +requirements--rarely very exacting in any case--made of one, never to +show stupidity, to have a great deal of taste and an instinctive feeling +for what is elegant and refined, to abhor pedantry and take gayety at +once lightly and seriously, and beyond this to take no thought, is to be +clever; and in this sense the Louis Quinze painters are the first, as +they certainly are the typical, clever artists. + +In Louis Quinze art the subject is more than effaced to give free swing +to technical cleverness; it is itself contributory to such cleverness, +and really a part of it. The artists evidently look on life, as they +paint their pictures, as the web whereon to sketch exhibitions of skill +in the composition of sensation-provoking combinations--combinations, +thus, provoking sensations of the lightest and least substantial kind. +When you stand before one of Fragonard's bewitching models, modishly +modified into a great--or rather a little--lady, you not only note the +color--full of tone on the one hand and of variety on the other, besides +exhibiting the happiest selective quality in warm and yet delicate hues +and tints; you not only, furthermore, observe the clever touch just +poised between suggestion and expression, coquettishly suppressing a +detail here, and emphasizing a characteristic there; you feel, in +addition, that the entire object floats airily in an atmosphere of +cleverness; that it is but a bit, an example, a miniature type of an +environment wholly attuned to the note of cleverness--of competence, +facility, grace, elegance, and other abstract but not at all abstruse +qualities, quite unrelated to what, in any profound sense, at least, is +concrete and vitally significant. Artificiality so permeated the Louis +Quinze epoch, indeed, that one may say that nature itself was +artificial--that is to say, all the nature Louis Quinze painters had to +paint; at least all they could have been called upon to think of +painting. What a distinction is, after all, theirs! To have created out +of nothing, or next to nothing, something charming, and enduringly +charming; something of a truly classic inspiration without dependence +at bottom on the real and the actual; something as little indebted to +facts and things as a fairy tale, and withal marked by such qualities as +color and cleverness in so eminent a degree. + +The Louis Quinze painters may be said, indeed, to have had the romantic +temperament with the classic inspiration. They have audacity rather than +freedom, license modified by strict limitation to the lines within which +it is exercised. But there can be no doubt that this limitation is more +conspicuous in their charmingly irresponsible works than is, essentially +speaking, their irresponsibility itself. They never give their +imagination free play. Sportive and spontaneous as it appears, it is +equally clear that its activities are bounded by conservatory confines. +Watteau, born on the Flemish border, is almost an exception. Temperament +in him seems constantly on the verge of conquering tradition and +environment. Now and then he seems to be on the point of emancipation, +and one expects to come upon some work in which he has expressed himself +and attested his ideality. But one is as constantly disappointed. His +color and his cleverness are always admirable and winning, but his +import is perversely--almost bewitchingly--slight. What was he thinking +of? one asks, before his delightful canvases; and one's conclusion +inevitably is, certainly as near nothing at all as can be consistent +with so much charm and so much real power. As to Watteau, one's last +thought is of what he would have been in a different æsthetic +atmosphere, in an atmosphere that would have stimulated his really +romantic temperament to extra-traditional flights, instead of confining +it within the inexorable boundaries of classic custom; an atmosphere +favorable to the free exercise of his adorable fancy, instead of +rigorously insistent on conforming this, so far as might be, to +customary canons, and, at any rate, restricting its exercise to material +_à la mode_. A little landscape in the La Caze collection in the Louvre, +whose romantic and truly poetic feeling agreeably pierces through its +elegance, is eloquent of such reflections. + + +V + +With Greuze and Chardin we are supposed to get into so different a +sphere of thought and feeling that the change has been called a "return +to nature"--that "return to nature" of which we hear so much in +histories of literature as well as of the plastic arts. The notion is +not quite sound. Chardin is a painter who seems to me, at least, to +stand quite apart, quite alone, in the development of French painting, +whereas there could not be a more marked instance of the inherence of +the classic spirit in the French æsthetic nature than is furnished by +Greuze. The first French painter of _genre_, in the full modern sense of +the term, the first true interpreter of scenes from humble life--of +lowly incident and familiar situations, of broken jars and paternal +curses, and buxom girls and precocious children--he certainly is. There +is certainly nothing _régence_ about him. But the beginning and end of +Greuze's art is convention. He is less imaginative, less romantic, less +real than the painting his replaced. That was at least a mirror of the +ideals, the spirit, the society, of the day. A Louis Quinze fan is a +genuine and spontaneous product of a free and elastic æsthetic impulse +beside one of his stereotyped sentimentalities. + +The truth is, Greuze is as sentimental as a bullfinch, but he has hardly +a natural note in his gamut. Nature is not only never his model, she is +never his inspiration. He is distinctively a literary painter; but this +description is not minute enough. His conventions are those not merely +of the _littérateur_, but of the extremely conventional _littérateur_. +An artless platitude is really more artificial than a clever paradox; it +doesn't even cast a side-light on the natural material with which it +deals. Greuze's _genre_ is really a _genre_ of his own--his own and that +of kindred spirits since. It is as systematic and detached as the art of +Poussin. The forms it embodies merely have more natural, more familiar +associations. But compare one of his compositions with those of the +little Dutch and Flemish masters, for truth, feeling, nature handled +after her own suggestions, instead of within limits and on lines imposed +upon her from without. By the side of Van Ostade or Brauer, for example, +one of Greuze's bits of humble life seems like an academic composition, +quite out of touch with its subject, and, except for its art, absolutely +lifeless and insipid. + +In a word, his choice of subjects, of _genre_, is really no disguise at +all of his essential classicality. Both ideally and technically, in the +way he conceives and the way he handles his subject, he is only +superficially romantic or real. His literature, so to speak, is as +conventional as his composition. One may compare him to Hogarth, though +both as a moralist and a technician _a longo intervallo_, of course. He +is assuredly not to be depreciated. His scheme of color is clear if not +rich, his handling is frank if not unctuous or subtly interesting, his +composition is careful and clever, and some of his heads are admirably +painted--painted with a genuine feeling for quality. But his merits as +well as his failings are decidedly academic, and as a romanticist he is +really masquerading. He is much nearer to Fragonard than he is to +Edouard Frère even. + +Chardin, on the other hand, is the one distinguished exception to the +general character of French art in the artificial and intellectual +eighteenth century. He is as natural as a Dutchman, and as modern as +Vollon. As you walk through the French galleries of the Louvre, of all +the canvases antedating our own era his are those toward which one feels +the most sympathetic attraction, I think. You note at once his +individuality, his independence of schools and traditions, his personal +point of view, his preoccupation with the object as he perceives it. +Nothing is more noteworthy in the history of French art, in the current +of which the subordination of the individual genius to the general +consensus is so much the rule, than the occasional exception--now of a +single man, now of a group of men, destined to become in its turn a +school--the occasional accent or interruption of the smooth course of +slow development on the lines of academic precedent. Tyrannical as +academic precedent is (and nowhere has it been more tyrannical than in +French painting) the general interest in æsthetic subjects which a +general subscription to academic precedent implies is certainly to be +credited with the force and genuineness of the occasional protestant +against the very system that has been powerful enough to popularize +indefinitely the subject both of subscription and of revolt. Without +some such systematic propagandism of the æsthetic cultus as from the +first the French Institute has been characterized by, it is very +doubtful if, in the complexity of modern society, the interest in +æsthetics can ever be made wide enough, universal enough, to spread +beyond those immediately and professionally concerned with it. The +immense impetus given to this interest by a central organ of authority, +that dignifies the subject with which it occupies itself and draws +attention to its value and its importance, has, _à priori_, the manifest +effect of leading persons to occupy themselves with it, also, who +otherwise would never have had their attention drawn to it. It would +scarcely be an exaggeration to say, in other words, that but for the +Institute there would not be a tithe of the number of names now on the +roll of French artists. When art is in the air--and nothing so much as +an academy produces this condition--the chances of the production of +even an unacademic artist are immensely increased. + +So in the midst of the Mignardise of Louis Quinze painting it is only +superficially surprising to find a painter of the original force and +flavor of Chardin. His wholesome and yet subtle variations from the art +_à la mode_ of his epoch might have been painted in the Holland of his +day, or in our day anywhere that art so good as Chardin's can be +produced, so far as subject and moral and technical attitude are +concerned. They are, in quite accentuated contra-distinction from the +works of Greuze, thoroughly in the spirit of simplicity and directness. +One notes in them at once that moral simplicity which predisposes +everyone to sympathetic appreciation. The special ideas of his time seem +to pass him by unmoved. He has no community of interest with them. While +he was painting his still life and domestic genre, the whole fantastic +whirl of Louis Quinze society, with its æsthetic standards and +accomplishments--accomplishments and standards that imposed themselves +everywhere else--was in agitated movement around him without in the +least affecting his serene tranquillity, his almost sturdy composure. +There can rarely have been such an instance as he affords of an artist's +selecting from his environment just those things his own genius needed, +and rejecting just what would have hampered or distracted him. He is as +sane, as unsentimental, as truthful and unpretending as the most literal +and unimaginative Dutchman of his time or before it; but he has also +that feeling for style, and that instinct for avoiding the common and +unclean which always seem to prevent French painters from "sinking with +their subject," as Dutch painters have been said to do. He seems never +to let himself go either in the direction of Greuze's literary and +sentimental manipulation of his homely material, or in the direction of +supine satisfaction with this material, unrelieved and unelevated by an +individual point of view, illustrated by the Brauers and Steens and +Ostades. One perceives that what he cared for was really art itself, for +the æsthetic aspect and significance of the life he painted. +Affectionate as his interest in it evidently was, he as evidently +thought of its artistic potentialities, its capability of being treated +with refinement and delicacy, and of being made to serve the ends of +beauty equally well with the conventionally beautiful material of his +fan-painting contemporaries. He looked at the world very originally +through and over those round, horn-bowed spectacles of his, with a very +shrewd and very kindly and sympathetic glance, too; quite untinctured +with prejudice or even predisposition. One can read his artistic +isolation in his countenance with a very little exercise of fancy. + + +VI + +It is the fashion to think of David as the painter of the Revolution and +the Empire. Really he is Louis Seize. Historical critics say that he had +no fewer than four styles, but apart from obvious labels they would be +puzzled to tell to which of these styles any individual picture of his +belongs. He was from the beginning extremely, perhaps absurdly, +enamoured of the antique, and we usually associate addiction to the +antique with the Revolutionary period. But perhaps politics are slower +than the æsthetic movement; David's view of art and practice of painting +were fixed unalterably under the reign of philosophism. Philosophism, as +Carlyle calls it, is the ruling spirit of his work. Long before the +Revolution--in 1774--he painted what is still his most characteristic +picture--"The Oath of the Horatii." His art developed and grew +systematized under the Republic and the Empire; but Napoleon, whose +genius crystallized the elements of everything in all fields of +intellectual effort with which he occupied himself, did little but +formally "consecrate," in French phrase, the art of the painter of "The +Oath of the Horatii" and the originator and designer of the "Fête" of +Robespierre's "Être Suprême." Spite of David's subserviency and that of +others, he left painting very much where he found it. And he found it in +a state of reaction against the Louis Quinze standards. The break with +these, and with everything _régence_, came with Louis Seize, Chardin +being a notable exception and standing quite apart from the general +drift of the French æsthetic movement; and Greuze being only a +pseudo-romanticist, and his work a variant of, rather than reactionary +from, the artificiality of his day. Before painting could "return to +nature," before the idea and inspiration of true romanticism could be +born, a reaction in the direction of severity after the artificial yet +irresponsible riot of the Louis Quinze painters was naturally and +logically inevitable. Painting was modified in the same measure with +every other expression in the general _recueillement_ that followed the +extravagance in all social and intellectual fields of the Louis Quinze +epoch. But in becoming more chaste it did not become less classical. +Indeed, so far as severity is a trait of classicality--and it is only an +associated not an essential trait of it--painting became more classical. +It threw off its extravagances without swerving from the artificial +character of its inspiration. Art in general seemed content with +substituting the straight line for the curve--a change from Louis Quinze +to Louis Seize that is very familiar even to persons who note the +transitions between the two epochs only in the respective furniture of +each; a Louis Quinze chair or mirror, for example, having a flowing +outline, whereas a Louis Seize equivalent is more rigid and rectilinear. + +David is artificial, it is to be pointed out, only in his _ensemble_. In +detail he is real enough. And he always has an _ensemble_. His +compositions, as compositions, are admirable. They make a total +impression, and with a vigor and vividness that belong to few +constructed pictures. The canvas is always penetrated with +David--illustrates as a whole, and with completeness and comparative +flawlessness, his point of view, his conception of the subject. This, of +course, is the academic point of view, the academic conception. But, as +I say, his detail is surprisingly truthful and studied. His +picture--which is always nevertheless a picture--is as inconceivable, as +traditional in its inspiration, as factitious as you like; his figures +are always sapiently and often happily exact. His portraits are +absolutely vital characterizations. And in general his sculptural sense, +his self-control, his perfect power of expressing what he deemed worth +expressing, are really what are noteworthy in his pictures, far more +than their monotonous coloration and the coldness and unreality of the +pictures themselves, considered as moving, real, or significant +compositions. In admiration of these it is impossible for us nowadays to +go as far as even the romanticist, though extremely catholic, Gautier. +They leave us cold. We have a wholly different ideal, which in order to +interest us powerfully painting must illustrate--an ideal of more +pertinence and appositeness to our own moods and manner of thought and +feeling. + +Ingres, a painter of considerably less force, I think, comes much nearer +to doing this. He is more elastic, less devoted to system. Without being +as free, as sensitive to impressions as we like to see an artist of his +powers, he escapes pedantry. His subject is not "The Rape of the +Sabines," but "The Apotheosis of Homer," academic but not academically +fatuitous. To follow the inspiration of the Vatican Stanze in the +selection and treatment of ideal subjects is to be far more closely in +touch with contemporary feeling as to what is legitimate and proper in +imaginative painting, than to pictorialize an actual event with a +systematic artificiality and conformity to abstractions that would +surely have made the sculptor of the Trajan column smile. Yet I would +rather have "The Rape of the Sabines" within visiting distance than "The +Apotheosis of Homer." It is better, at least solider, painting. The +painter, however dominated by his theory, is more the master of its +illustration than Ingres is of the justification of his admiration for +Raphael. The "Homer" attempts more, but it is naturally not as +successful in getting as effective a unity out of its greater +complexity. It is in his less ambitious pictures that the genius of +Ingres is unmistakably evident--his heads, his single figures, his +exquisite drawings almost in outline. His "Odalisque" of the Louvre is +not as forceful as David's portrait of Madame Récamier, but it is a +finer thing. I should like the two to have changed subjects in this +instance. His "Source" is beautifully drawn and modelled. In everything +he did distinction is apparent. Inferior assuredly to David when he +attempted the grand style, he had a truer feeling for the subtler +qualities of style itself. All his works are linearly beautiful +demonstrations of his sincerity--his sanity indeed--in proclaiming that +drawing is "the probity of art." + +With a few contemporary painters and critics, whose specific penetration +is sometimes in curious contrast with their imperfect catholicity, he +has recently come into vogue again, after having been greatly neglected +since the romantic outburst. But he belongs completely to the classic +epoch. Neither he nor his refined and sympathetic pupil, Flandrin, did +aught to pave the way for the modern movement. Intimations of the +shifting point of view are discoverable rather in a painter of far +deeper poetic interest than either, spite of Ingres's refinement and +Flandrin's elevation--in Prudhon. Prudhon is the link between the last +days of the classic supremacy and the rise of romanticism. Like Claude, +like Chardin, he stands somewhat apart; but he has distinctly the +romantic inspiration, constrained and regularized by classic principles +of taste. He is the French Correggio in far more precise parallelism +than Lesueur is the French Raphael. With a grace and lambent color all +his own--a beautiful mother-of-pearl and opalescent tone underlying his +exquisite violets and graver hues; a color-scheme, on the one hand, and +a sense of design in line and mass more suave and graceful than anything +since the great Italians, on the other--he recalls the lovely +chiaro-oscuro of the exquisite Parmesan as it is recalled in no other +modern painter. Occupying, as incontestably he does, his own niche in +the pantheon of painters, he nevertheless illustrates most distinctly +and unmistakably the slipping away of French painting from classic +formulas as well as from classic extravagance, and the tendency to new +ideals of wider reach and greater tolerance--of more freedom, +spontaneity, interest in "life and the world"--of a definitive break +with the contracting and constricting forces of classicism. During its +next period, and indeed down to the present day, French painting will +preserve the essence of its classic traditions, variously modified from +decade to decade, but never losing the quality in virtue of which what +is French is always measurably the most classic thing going; but of this +next period certainly Prudhon is the precursor, who, with all his +classic serenity, presages its passion for "storms, clouds, effusion, +and relief." + + + + +II + + +ROMANTIC PAINTING + + +I + +When we come to Scott after Fielding, says Mr. Stevenson, "we become +suddenly conscious of the background." The remark contains an admirable +characterization of romanticism; as distinguished from classicism, +romanticism is consciousness of the background. With Gros, Géricault, +Paul Huet, Michel, Delacroix, French painting ceased to be abstract and +impersonal. Instead of continuing the classic detachment, it became +interested, curious, and catholic. It broadened its range immensely, and +created its effect by observing the relations of its objects to their +environment, of its figures to the landscape, of its subjects to their +suggestions even in other spheres of thought; Delacroix, Marilhat, +Decamps, Fromentin, in painting the aspect of Orientalism, suggested, +one may almost say, its sociology. For the abstractions of classicism, +its formula, its fastidious system of arriving at perfection by +exclusions and sacrifices, it substituted an enthusiasm for the concrete +and the actual; it revelled in natural phenomena. Gautier was never +more definitely the exponent of romanticism than in saying "I am a man +for whom the visible world exists." To lines and curves and masses and +their relations in composition, succeeds as material for inspiration and +reproduction the varied spectacle of the external world. With the early +romanticists it may be said that for the first time the external world +"swims into" the painter's "ken." But, above all, in them the element of +personality first appears in French painting with anything like general +acceptance and as the characteristic of a group, a school, rather than +as an isolated exception here and there, such as Claude or Chardin. The +"point of view" takes the place of conformity to a standard. The painter +expresses himself instead of endeavoring to realize an extraneous and +impersonal ideal. What he himself personally thinks, how he himself +personally feels, is what we read in his works. + +It is true that, rightly understood, the romantic epoch is a period of +evolution, and orderly evolution at that, if we look below the surface, +rather than of systematic defiance and revolt. It is true that it recast +rather than repudiated its inheritance of tradition. Nevertheless there +has never been a time when the individual felt himself so free, when +every man of any original genius felt so keenly the exhilaration of +independence, when the "schools" of painting exercised less tyranny +and, indeed, counted for so little. If it be exact to speak of the +"romantic school" at all, it should be borne in mind that its adherents +were men of the most marked and diverse individualities ever grouped +under one standard. The impressionists, perhaps, apart, individuality is +often spoken of as the essential characteristic of the painters of the +present day. But beside the outburst of individuality at the beginning +of the romantic epoch, much of the painting of the present day seems +both monotonous and eccentric--the variation of its essential monotony, +that is to say, being somewhat labored and express in comparison with +the spontaneous multifariousness of the epoch of Delacroix and Decamps. +In the decade between 1820 and 1830, at all events, notwithstanding the +strength of the academic tradition, painting was free from the thraldom +of system, and the imagination of its practitioners was not challenged +and circumscribed by the criticism that is based upon science. Not only +in the painter's freedom in his choice of subject, but in his way of +treating it, in the way in which he "takes it," is the revolution--or, +as I should be inclined to say, rather, the evolution--shown. And as +what we mean by personality is, in general, made up far more of emotion +than of mind--there being room for infinitely more variety in feeling +than in mental processes among intelligent agents--it is natural to +find the French romantic painters giving, by contrast with their +predecessors, such free swing to personal feeling that we may almost sum +up the origin of the romantic movement in French painting in saying that +it was an ebullition of emancipated emotion. And, to go a step farther, +we may say that, as nothing is so essential to poetry as feeling, we +meet now for the first time with the poetic element as an inspiring +motive and controlling force. + +The romantic painters were, however, by no means merely emotional. They +were mainly imaginative. And in painting, as in literature, the great +change wrought by romanticism consisted in stimulating the imagination +instead of merely satisfying the sense and the intellect. The main idea +ceased to be as obviously accentuated, and its natural surroundings were +given their natural place; there was less direct statement and more +suggestion; the artist's effort was expended rather upon perfecting the +_ensemble_, noting relations, taking in a larger circle; a suggested +complexity of moral elements took the place of the old simplicity, whose +multifariousness was almost wholly pictorial. Instead of a landscape as +a tapestry background to a Holy Family, and having no pertinence but an +artistic one, we have Corot's "Orpheus." + + +II + +Géricault and Delacroix are the great names inscribed at the head of the +romantic roll. They will remain there. And the distinction is theirs not +as awarded by the historical estimate; it is personal. In the case of +Géricault perhaps one thinks a little of "the man and the moment" +theory. He was, it is true, the first romantic painter--at any rate the +first notable romantic painter. His struggles, his steadfastness, his +success--pathetically posthumous--have given him an honorable eminence. +His example of force and freedom exerted an influence that has been +traced not only in the work of Delacroix, his immediate inheritor, but +in that of the sculptor Rude, and even as far as that of Millet--to all +outward appearance so different in inspiration from that of his own +tumultuous and dramatic genius. And as of late years we look on the +stages of any evolution as less dependent on individuals than we used +to, doubtless just as Luther was confirmed and supported on his way to +the Council at Worms by the people calling on him from the house-tops +not to deny the truth, Géricault was sustained and stimulated in the +face of official obloquy by a more or less considerable æsthetic +movement of which he was really but the leader and exponent. But his +fame is not dependent upon his revolt against the Institute, his +influence upon his successors, or his incarnation of an æsthetic +movement. It rests on his individual accomplishment, his personal value, +the abiding interest of his pictures. "The Raft of the Medusa" will +remain an admirable and moving creation, a masterpiece of dramatic vigor +and vivid characterization, of wide and deep human interest and truly +panoramic grandeur, long after its contemporary interest and historic +importance have ceased to be thought of except by the æsthetic +antiquarian. "The Wounded Cuirassier" and the "Chasseur of the Guard" +are not documents of æsthetic history, but noble expressions of artistic +sapience and personal feeling. + +What, I think, is the notable thing about both Géricault and Delacroix, +however, as exponents, as the initiators, of romanticism, is the way in +which they restrained the impetuous temperament they share within the +confines of a truly classic reserve. Closely considered, they are not +the revolutionists they seemed to the official classicism of their day. +Not only do they not base their true claims to enduring fame upon a +spirit of revolt against official and academic art--a spirit essentially +negative and nugatory, and never the inspiration of anything permanently +puissant and attractive--but, compared with their successors of the +present day, in whose works individual preference and predilection seem +to have a swing whose very freedom and irresponsible audacity extort +admiration--compared with the confident temerariousness of what is known +as _modernité_, their self-possession and sobriety seem their most +noteworthy characteristics. Compared with the "Bar at the +Folies-Bergère," either the "Raft of the Medusa" or the "Convulsionists +of Tangiers" is a classic production. And the difference is not at all +due to the forty years' accretion of Protestantism which Manet +represents as compared with the early romanticists. It is due to a +complete difference in attitude. Géricault imbued himself with the +inspiration of the Louvre. Delacroix is said always to have made a +sketch from the old masters or the antique a preliminary to his own +daily work. So far from flaunting tradition, they may be said to have, +in their own view, restored it; so far from posing as apostles of +innovation, they may almost be accused of "harking back"--of steeping +themselves in what to them seemed best and finest and most authoritative +in art, instead of giving a free rein to their own unregulated emotions +and conceptions. + +Géricault died early and left but a meagre product. Delacroix is _par +excellence_ the representative of the romantic epoch. And both by the +mass and the quality of his work he forms a true connecting link +between the classic epoch and the modern--in somewhat the same way as +Prudhon does, though more explicitly and on the other side of the line +of division. He represents culture--he knows art as well as he loves +nature. He has a feeling for what is beautiful as well as a knowledge of +what is true. He is pre-eminently and primarily a colorist--he is, in +fact, the introducer of color as a distinct element in French painting +after the pale and bleak reaction from the Louis Quinze decorativeness. +His color, too, is not merely the prismatic coloration of what had +theretofore been mere chiaro-oscuro; it is original and personal to such +a degree that it has never been successfully imitated since his day. +Withal, it is apparently simplicity itself. Its hues are apparently the +primary ones, in the main. It depends upon no subtleties and refinements +of tints for its effectiveness. It is significant that the absorbed and +affected Rossetti did not like it; it is too frank and clear and open, +and shows too little evidence of the morbid brooding and hysterical +forcing of an arbitrary and esoteric note dear to the English +pre-Raphaelites. It attests a delight in color, not a fondness for +certain colors, hues, tints--a difference perfectly appreciable to +either an unsophisticated or an educated sense. It has a solidity and +strength of range and vibration combined with a subtle sensitiveness, +and, as a result of the fusion of the two, a certain splendor that +recalls Saracenic decoration. And with this mastery of color is united a +combined firmness and expressiveness of design that makes Delacroix +unique by emphasizing his truly classic subordination of informing +enthusiasm to a severe and clearly perceived ideal--an ideal in a sense +exterior to his purely personal expression. In a word, his chief +characteristic--and it is a supremely significant trait in the +representative painter of romanticism--is a poetic imagination tempered +and trained by culture and refinement. When his audacities and +enthusiasms are thought of, the directions in his will for his tomb +should be remembered too: "Il n'y sera placé ni emblème, ni buste, ni +statue; mon tombeau sera copié très exactement sur l'antique, ou +Vignoles ou Palladio, avec des saillies très prononcées, contrairement à +tout ce qui se fait aujourd'hui en architecture." "Let there be neither +emblem, bust, nor statue on my tomb, which shall be copied very +scrupulously after the antique, either Vignola or Palladio, with +prominent projections, contrary to everything done to-day in +architecture." In a sense all Delacroix is in these words. + + +III + +Delacroix's color deepens into an almost musical intensity occasionally +in Decamps, whose oriental landscapes and figures, far less important +intellectually, far less _magistrales_ in conception, have at times, one +may say perhaps without being too fanciful, a truly symphonic quality +that renders them unique. "The Suicide" is like a chord on a violin. But +it is when we come to speak of the "Fontainebleau Group," in especial, I +think, that the æsthetic susceptibility characteristic of the latter +half of the nineteenth century feels, to borrow M. Taine's introduction +to his lectures on "The Ideal in Art," that the subject is one only to +be treated in poetry. + +Of the noblest of all so-called "schools," Millet is perhaps the most +popular member. His popularity is in great part, certainly, due to his +literary side, to the sentiment which pervades, which drenches, one may +say, all his later work--his work after he had, on overhearing himself +characterized as a painter of naked women, betaken himself to his true +subject, the French peasant. A literary, and a very powerful literary +side, Millet undoubtedly has; and instead of being a weakness in him it +is a power. His sentimental appeal is far from being surplusage, but, as +is not I think popularly appreciated, it is subordinate, and the fact +of its subordination gives it what potency it has. It is idle to deny +this potency, for his portrayal of the French peasant in his varied +aspects has probably been as efficient a characterization as that of +George Sand herself. But, if a moral instead of an æsthetic effect had +been Millet's chief intention, we may be sure that it would have been +made far less incisively than it has been. Compare, for example, his +peasant pictures with those of the almost purely literary painter Jules +Breton, who has evidently chosen his field for its sentimental rather +than its pictorial value, and whose work is, perhaps accordingly, by +contrast with Millet's, noticeably external and superficial even on the +literary side. When Millet ceased to deal in the Correggio manner with +Correggiesque subjects, and devoted himself to the material that was +really native to him, to his own peasant genius--whatever he may have +thought about it himself, he did so because he could treat this material +_pictorially_ with more freedom and less artificiality, with more zest +and enthusiasm, with a deeper sympathy and a more intimate knowledge of +its artistic characteristics, its pictorial potentialities. He is, I +think, as a painter, a shade too much preoccupied with this material, he +is a little too philosophical in regard to it, his pathetic struggle for +existence exaggerated his sentimental affiliations with it somewhat, he +made it too exclusively his subject, perhaps. We gain, it may be, at his +expense. With his artistic gifts he might have been more fortunate, had +his range been broader. But in the main it is his pictorial handling of +this material, with which he was in such acute sympathy, that +distinguishes his work, and that will preserve its fame long after its +humanitarian and sentimental appeal has ceased to be as potent as it now +is--at the same time that it has itself enforced this appeal in the +subordinating manner I have suggested. When he was asked his intention, +in his picture of a maimed calf borne away on a litter by two men, he +said it was simply to indicate the sense of weight in the muscular +movement and attitude of the bearers' arms. + +His great distinction, in fine, is artistic. His early painting of +conventional subjects is not without significance in its witness to the +quality of his talent. Another may paint French peasants all his life +and never make them permanently interesting, because he has not Millet's +admirable instinct and equipment as a painter. He is a superb colorist, +at times--always an enthusiastic one; there is something almost +unregulated in his delight in color, in his fondness for glowing and +resplendent tone. No one gets farther away from the academic grayness, +the colorless chiaro-oscuro of the conventional painters. He runs his +key up and loads his canvas, occasionally, in what one may call not so +much barbaric as uncultivated and elementary fashion. He cares so much +for color that sometimes, when his effect is intended to be purely +atmospheric, as in the "Angélus," he misses its justness and fitness, +and so, in insisting on color, obtains from the color point of view +itself an infelicitous--a colored--result. Occasionally he bathes a +scene in yellow mist that obscures all accentuations and play of values. +But always his feeling for color betrays him a painter rather than a +moralist. And in composition he is, I should say, even more +distinguished. His composition is almost always distinctly elegant. Even +in so simple a scheme as that of "The Sower," the lines are as fine as +those of a Raphael. And the way in which balance is preserved, masses +are distributed, and an organic play of parts related to each other and +each to the sum of them is secured, is in all of his large works so +salient an element of their admirable excellence, that, to those who +appreciate it, the dependence of his popularity upon the sentimental +suggestion of the raw material with which he dealt seems almost +grotesque. In his line and mass and the relations of these in +composition, there is a severity, a restraint, a conformity to +tradition, however personally felt and individually modified, that +evince a strong classic strain in this most unacademic of painters. +Millet was certainly an original genius, if there ever was one. In spite +of, and in open hostility to, the popular and conventional painting of +his day, he followed his own bent and went his own way. Better, perhaps, +than any other painter, he represents absolute emancipation from the +prescribed, from routine and formulary. But it would be a signal mistake +to fail to see, in the most characteristic works of this most personal +representative of romanticism, that subordination of the individual whim +and isolated point of view to what is accepted, proven, and universal, +which is essentially what we mean by the classic attitude. One may +almost go so far as to say, considering its reserve, its restraint and +poise, its sobriety and measure, its quiet and composure, its +subordination of individual feeling to a high sense of artistic decorum, +that, romantic as it is, unacademic as it is, its most incontestable +claim to permanence is the truly classic spirit which, however modified, +inspires and infiltrates it. Beside some of the later manifestations of +individual genius in French painting, it is almost academic. + +In Corot, anyone, I suppose, can see this note, and it would be +surplusage to insist upon it. He is the ideal classic-romantic painter, +both in temperament and in practice. Millet's subject, not, I think, his +treatment--possibly his wider range--makes him seem more deeply serious +than Corot, but he is not essentially as nearly unique. He is unrivalled +in his way, but Corot is unparalleled. Corot inherits the tradition of +Claude; his motive, like Claude's, is always an effect, and, like +Claude's, his means are light and air. But his effect is a shade more +impalpable, and his means are at once simpler and more subtle. He gets +farther away from the phenomena which are the elements of his +_ensemble_, farther than Claude, farther than anyone. His touch is as +light as the zephyr that stirs the diaphanous drapery of his trees. +Beside it Claude's has a suspicion, at least, of unctuousness. It has a +pure, crisp, vibrant accent, quite without analogue in the technic of +landscape painting. Taking technic in its widest sense, one may speak of +Corot's shortcomings--not, I think, of his failures. It would be +difficult to mention a modern painter more uniformly successful in +attaining his aim, in expressing what he wishes to express, in conveying +his impression, communicating his sensations. + +That a painter of his power, a man of the very first rank, should have +been content--even placidly content--to exercise it within a range by no +means narrow, but plainly circumscribed, is certainly witness +of limitation. "Delacroix is an eagle, I am only a skylark," he remarked +once, with his characteristic cheeriness. His range is not, it is true, +as circumscribed as is generally supposed outside of France. Outside of +France his figure-painting, for example, is almost unknown. We see +chiefly variations of his green and gray arbored pastoral--now idyllic, +now heroic, now full of freshness, the skylark quality, now of grave and +deep harmonies and wild, sweet notes of transitory suggestion. Of his +figures we only know those shifting shapes that blend in such classic +and charming manner with the glades and groves of his landscapes. Of his +"Hagar in the Wilderness," his "St. Jerome," his "Flight into Egypt," +his "Democritus," his "Baptism of Christ," with its nine life-size +figures, who, outside of France, has even heard? How many foreigners +know that he painted what are called architectural subjects +delightfully, and even _genre_ with zest? + +But compared with his landscape, in which he is unique, it is plain that +he excels nowhere else. The splendid display of his works in the +Centenaire Exposition of the great World's Fair of 1889, was a +revelation of his range of interest rather than of his range of power. +It was impossible not to perceive that, surprising as were his essays in +other fields to those who only knew him as a landscape painter, he was +essentially and integrally a painter of landscape, though a painter of +landscape who had taken his subject in a way and treated it in a manner +so personal as to be really unparalleled. Outside of landscape his +interest was clearly not real. In his other works one notes a certain +_débonnaire_ irresponsibility. He pursued nothing seriously but +out-of-doors, its vaporous atmosphere, its crisp twigs and graceful +branches, its misty distances and piquant accents, what Thoreau calls +its inaudible panting. His true theme, lightly as he took it, absorbed +him; and no one of any sensitiveness can ever regret it. His powers, +following the indication of his true temperament, his most genuine +inspiration, are concentrated upon the very finest thing imaginable in +landscape painting; as, indeed, to produce as they have done the finest +landscape in the history of art, they must have been. + +There are, however, two things worth noting in Corot's landscape, beyond +the mere fact that, better even than Rousseau, he expresses the essence +of landscape, dwells habitually among its inspirations, and is its +master rather than its servant. One is the way in which he poetizes, so +to speak, the simplest stretches of sward and clumps of trees, and long +clear vistas across still ponds, with distances whose accents are +pricked out with white houses and yellow cows and placid fishers and +ferrymen in red caps, seen in glimpses through curtains of sparse, +feathery leafage--or peoples woodland openings with nymphs and fawns, +silhouetted against the sunset glow, or dancing in the cool gray of +dusk. A man of no reading, having only the elements of an education in +the general sense of the term, his instinctive sense for what is refined +was so delicate that we may say of his landscapes that, had the Greeks +left any they would have been like Corot's. And this classic and +cultivated effect he secured not at all, or only very incidentally, +through the force of association, by dotting his hillsides and vaporous +distances with bits of classic architecture, or by summing up his +feeling for the Dawn in a graceful figure of Orpheus greeting with +extended gesture the growing daylight, but by a subtle interpenetration +of sensuousness and severity resulting in precisely the sentiment fitly +characterized by the epithet classic. The other trait peculiar to +Corot's representation of nature and expression of himself is his color. +No painter ever exhibited, I think, quite such a sense of refinement in +so narrow a gamut. Green and gray, of course, predominate and set the +key, but he has an interestingly varied palette on the hither side of +splendor whose subtleties are capable of giving exquisite pleasure. +Never did anyone use tints with such positive force. Tints with Corot +have the vigor and vibration of positive colors--his lilacs, violets, +straw-colored hues, his almost Quakerish coquetry with drabs and slates +and pure clear browns, the freshness and bloom he imparted to his tones, +the sweet and shrinking wild flowers with which as a spray he sprinkled +his humid dells and brook margins. But Corot's true distinction--what +gives him his unique position at the very head of landscape art, is +neither his color, delicate and interesting as his color is, nor his +classic serenity harmonizing with, instead of depending upon, the chance +associations of architecture and mythology with which now and then he +decorates his landscapes; it is the blithe, the airy, the truly +spiritual way in which he gets farther away than anyone from both the +actual pigment that is his instrument, and from the phenomena that are +the objects of his expression--his ethereality, in a word. He has +communicated his sentiment almost without material, one may say, so +ethereally independent of their actual analogues is the interest of his +trees and sky and stretch of sward. This sentiment, thus mysteriously +triumphant over color or form, or other sensuous charm, which +nevertheless are only subtly subordinated, and by no manner of means +treated lightly or inadequately, is as exalted as any that has in our +day been expressed in any manner. Indeed, where, outside of the very +highest poetry of the century, can one get the same sense of elation, of +aspiring delight, of joy unmixed with regret--since "the splendor of +truth" which Plato defined beauty to be, is more animating and consoling +than the "weary weight of all this unintelligible world," is depressing +to a spirit of lofty seriousness and sanity? + + * * * * * + +Dupré and Diaz are the decorative painters of the Fontainebleau group. +They are, of modern painters, perhaps the nearest in spirit to the old +masters, pictorially speaking. They are rarely in the grand style, +though sometimes Dupré is restrained enough to emulate if not to achieve +its sobriety. But they have the _bel air_, and belong to the aristocracy +of the painting world. Diaz, especially, has almost invariably the +patrician touch. It lacks the exquisiteness of Monticelli's, in which +there is that curiously elevated detachment from the material and the +real that the Italians--and the Provençal painter's inspiration and +method, as well as his name and lineage, suggest an Italian rather than +a French association--exhibit far oftener than the French. But Diaz has +a larger sweep, a saner method. He is never eccentric, and he has a +dignity that is Iberian, though he is French rather than Spanish on his +æsthetic side, and at times is as conservative as Rousseau--without, +however, reaching Rousseau's lofty simplicity except in an occasional +happy stroke. Both he and Dupré are primarily colorists. Dupré sees +nature through a prism. Diaz's groups of dames and gallants have a +jewel-like aspect; they leave the same impression as a tangle of +ribbons, a bunch of exotic flowers, a heap of gems flung together with +the felicity of haphazard. In general, and when they are in most +completely characteristic mood, it is not the sentiment of nature that +one gets from the work of either painter. It is not even _their_ +sentiment of nature--the emotion aroused in their susceptibilities by +natural phenomena. What one gets is their personal feeling for color and +design--their decorative quality, in a word. + +The decorative painter is he to whom what is called "subject," even in +its least restricted sense and with its least substantial suggestions, +is comparatively indifferent. Nature supplies him with objects; she is +not in any intimate degree his subject. She is the medium through which, +rather than the material of which, he creates his effects. It is her +potentialities of color and design that he seeks, or at any rate, of all +her infinitely numerous traits, it is her hues and arabesques that +strike him most forcibly. He is incurious as to her secrets and calls +upon her aid to interpret his own, but he is so independent of her, if +he be a decorative painter of the first rank--a Diaz or a Dupré--that +his rendering of her, his picture, would have an agreeable effect, owing +to its design or color or both, if it were turned upside down. +Decorative painting in this sense may easily be carried so far as to +seem incongruous and inept, in spite of its superficial attractiveness. +The peril that threatens it is whim and freak. Some of Monticelli's, +some of Matthew Maris's pictures, illustrate the exaggeration of the +decorative impulse. After all, a painter must get his effect, whatever +it be and however it may shun the literal and the exact, by rendering +things with pigments. And some of the decorative painters only escape +things by obtruding pigments, just as the _trompe-l'oeil_ or optical +illusion painters get away from pigments by obtruding things. It is the +distinction of Diaz and Dupré that they avoid this danger in most +triumphant fashion. On the contrary, they help one to see the decorative +element in nature, in "things," to a degree hardly attained elsewhere +since the days of the great Venetians. Their predilection for the +decorative element is held in leash by the classic tradition, with its +reserve, its measure, its inculcation of sobriety and its sense of +security. Dupré paints Seine sunsets and the edge of the forest at +Fontainebleau, its "long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight," in a +way that conveys the golden glow, the silvery gleam, the suave outline +of spreading leafage, and the massive density of mysterious boscage with +the force of an almost abstract acuteness. Does nature look like this? +Who knows? But in this semblance, surely, she appeared to Dupré's +imagination. And doubtless Diaz saw the mother-of-pearl tints in the +complexion of his models, and is not to be accused of artificiality, +but to be credited with a true sincerity of selection in juxtaposing his +soft corals and carnations and gleaming topaz, amethyst, and sapphire +hues. The most exacting literalist can hardly accuse them of solecism in +their rendering of nature, true as it is that their decorative sense is +so strong as to lead them to impose on nature their own sentiment +instead of yielding themselves to absorption in _hers_, and thus, in +harmonious and sympathetic concert with her, like Claude and Corot, +Rousseau and Daubigny, interpreting her subtle and supreme significance. + + * * * * * + +Rousseau carried the fundamental principle of the school farther than +the others--with him interest, delight in, enthusiasm for nature became +absorption in her. Whereas other men have loved nature, it has been +acutely remarked, Rousseau was in love with her. It was felicitously of +him, rather than of Dupré or Corot, that the naif peasant inquired, "Why +do you paint the tree; the tree is there, is it not?" And never did +nature more royally reward allegiance to her than in the sustenance and +inspiration she furnished for Rousseau's genius. You feel the point of +view in his picture, but it is apparently that of nature herself as well +as his own. It is not the less personal for this. On the contrary, it +is extremely personal, and few pictures are as individual, as +characteristic. Occasionally Diaz approaches him, as I have said, but +only in the very happiest and exceptional moments, when the dignity of +nature as well as her charm seems specially to impress and impose itself +upon the less serious painter. But Rousseau's selection seems +instinctive and not sought out. He knows the secret of nature's +pictorial element. He is at one with her, adopts her suggestions so +cordially and works them out with such intimate sympathy and +harmoniousness, that the two forces seem reciprocally to reinforce each +other, and the result gains many fold in power from their subtle +co-operation. His landscapes have in this way a Wordsworthian +directness, simplicity, and severity. They are not troubled and dramatic +like Turner's. They are not decorative like Dupré's, they have not the +solemn sentiment of Daubigny's, or the airy aspiration and fairy-like +blitheness of Corot's. But there is in them "all breathing human +passion;" and at times, as in "Le Givre," they rise to majesty and real +grandeur because they are impregnated with the sentiment, as well as are +records of the phenomena, of nature, and one may say of Rousseau, +paraphrasing Mr. Arnold's remark about Wordsworth, that nature seems +herself to take the brush out of his hand and to paint for him "with her +own bare, sheer, penetrating power." Rousseau, however, is French, and +in virtue of his nativity exhibits always what Wordsworth's treatment of +nature exhibits only occasionally, namely, the Gallic gift of style. It +is rarely as felicitous as in Corot, in every detail of whose every +work, one may almost say, its informing, co-ordinating, elevating +influence is distinctly to be perceived; but it is always present as a +factor, as a force dignifying and relieving from all touch, all taint of +the commonness that is so often inseparably associated with art whose +absorption in nature is listlessly unthinking instead of enthusiastic +and alert. In Rousseau, too, in a word, we have the classic strain, as +at least a psychological element, and note as one source of his power +his reserve and restraint, his perfect self-possession. + +In Daubigny a similar attitude toward nature is obvious, but with a +sensible difference. Affection for, rather than absorption in her, is +his inspiration. Daubigny stands somewhat apart from the Fontainebleau +group, with whom nevertheless he is popularly and properly associated, +for though he painted Normandy mainly, he was spiritually of the +Barbizon kindred. He stands, however, somewhat apart from French +painting in general, I think. There is less style, more sentiment, more +poetry in his landscapes than in those of his countrymen who are to be +compared with him. Beyond what is admirable in them there is something +attaching as well. He drew and engraved a good deal, as well as painted. +He did not concentrate his powers enough, perhaps, to make as signal and +definite a mark as otherwise he might have done. He is a shade +desultory, and too spontaneous to be systematic. One must be systematic +to reach the highest point, even in the least material spheres. But +never have the grave and solemn aspects of landscape found a sweeter and +serener spirit to interpret them. In some of his pictures there is a +truly religious feeling. His frankness recalls Constable's, but it is +more distinguished in being more spiritual. He has not Diaz's elegance, +nor Corot's witchery, nor Rousseau's power, but nature is more +mysteriously, more mystically significant to him, and sets a deeper +chord vibrating within him. He is a sensitive instrument on which she +plays, rather than a magician who wins her secrets, or an observer whose +generalizing imagination she sets in motion. The design of some of his +important works, notably that of his last _Salon_ picture, is very +distinguished, and in one of his large canvases representing a road like +that from Barbizon through the level plain to Chailly, there is the +spirit and sentiment of all the summer evenings that ever were. But he +has distinctly less power than the strict Fontainebleau group. He has, +in force, less affinity with them than Troyon has, whose force is often +magnificent, and whose landscape is so sweet, often, and often so strong +as well, that one wonders a little at his fondness for cattle--in spite +of the way in which he justifies it by being the first of cattle +painters. And neither Daubigny nor Troyon, nor, indeed, Rousseau +himself, often reaches in dramatic grandeur the lofty landscape of +Michel, who, with Paul Huet (the latter in a more strictly historical +sense) were so truly the forerunners and initiators of the romantic +landscape movement, both in sentiment and chronology, in spite of their +Dutch tradition, as to make the common ascription of its debt to +Constable, whose aid was so cordially welcomed in the famous Salon of +1824, a little strained. + + +IV + +But quite aside from the group of poetic painters which stamped its +impress so deeply upon the romantic movement at the outset, that to this +day it is Delacroix and Millet, Decamps and Corot whom we think of when +we think of the movement itself, the classic tradition was preserved all +through the period of greatest stress and least conformity by painters +of great distinction, who, working under the romantic inspiration and +more or less according to what may be called romantic methods, +nevertheless possessed the classic temperament in so eminent a degree +that to us their work seems hardly less academic than that of the +Revolution and the Empire. Not only Ingres, but Delaroche and Ary +Scheffer, painted beside Géricault and Delacroix. Ary Scheffer was an +eloquent partisan of romanticism, yet his "Dante and Beatrice" and his +"Temptation of Christ" are admirable only from the academic point of +view. Delaroche's "Hemicycle" and his many historical tableaux are +surely in the classic vein, however free they may seem in subject and +treatment by contrast with the works of David and Ingres. They leave us +equally cold, at all events, and in the same way--for the same reason. +They betray the painter's preoccupation with art rather than with +nature. They do, in truth, differ widely from the works which they +succeeded, but the difference is not temperamental. They suggest the +French phrase, _plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose_. Gérôme, for +example, feels the exhilaration of the free air of romanticism fanning +his enthusiasm. He does not confine himself, as, born a decade or two +earlier, certainly he would have done, to classic subject. He follows +Decamps and Marilhat to the Orient, which he paints with the utmost +freedom, so far as the choice of theme is concerned--descending even to +the _danse du ventre_ of a Turkish café. He paints historical pictures +with a realism unknown before his day. He is almost equally famous in +the higher class of _genre_ subjects. But throughout everything he does +it is easy to perceive the academic point of view, the classic +temperament. David assuredly would never have chosen one of Gérôme's +themes; but had he chosen it, he would have treated it in much the same +way. Allowance made for the difference in time, in general feeling of +the æsthetic environment, the change in ideas as to what was fit subject +for representation and fitting manner of treating the same subject, it +is hardly an exaggeration to say that Ingres would have sincerely +applauded Gérôme's "Cleopatra" issuing from the carpet roll before +Cæsar. And if he failed to perceive the noble dramatic power in such a +work as the "Ave, Cæsar, morituri te salutant," his failure would +nowadays, at least among intelligent amateurs, be ascribed to an +intolerance which it is one of the chief merits of the romantic movement +to have adjudged absurd. + +It is a source of really æsthetic satisfaction to see everything that is +attempted as well done as it is in the works of such painters as +Bouguereau and Cabanel. Of course the feeling that denies them large +importance is a legitimate one. The very excellence of their technic, +its perfect adaptedness to the motive it expresses, is, considering the +insignificance of the motive, subject for criticism; inevitably it +partakes of the futility of its subject-matter. Of course the personal +value of the man, the mind, behind any plastic expression is, in a +sense, the measure of the expression itself. If it be a mind interested +in "pouncet-box" covers, in the pictorial setting forth of themes whose +illustration most intimately appeals to the less cultivated and more +rudimentary appreciation of fine art--as indisputably the Madonnas and +Charities and Oresteses and Bacchus Triumphs of M. Bouguereau do--one +may very well dispense himself from the duty of admiring its +productions. Life is short, and more important things, things of more +significant import, demand attention. The grounds on which the works of +Bouguereau and Cabanel are admired are certainly insufficient. But they +are experts in their sphere. What they do could hardly be better done. +If they appeal to a _bourgeois_, a philistine ideal of beauty, of +interest, they do it with a perfection that is pleasing in itself. No +one else does it half so well. To minds to which they appeal at all, +they appeal with the force of finality; for these they create as well as +illustrate the type of what is admirable and lovely. It is as easy to +account for their popularity as it is to perceive its transitory +quality. But not only is it a mark of limitation to refuse all interest +to such a work as, for example, M. Cabanel's "Birth of Venus," in the +painting of which a vast deal of technical expertness is enjoyably +evident, and which in every respect of motive and execution is far above +similar things done elsewhere than in France; it is a still greater +error to confound such painters as M. Cabanel and M. Bouguereau with +other painters whose classic temperament has been subjected to the +universal romantic influence equally with theirs, but whose production +is as different from theirs as is that of the thorough and pure +romanticists, the truly poetic painters. + +The instinct of simplification is an intelligent and sound one. Its +satisfaction is a necessary preliminary to efficient action of any kind, +and indeed the basis of all fruitful philosophy. But in criticism this +instinct can only be satisfied intelligently and soundly by a +consideration of everything appealing to consideration, and not at all +by heated and wilful, or superior and supercilious, exclusions. +Catholicity of appreciation is the secret of critical felicity. To +follow the line of least resistance, not to take into account those +elements of a problem, those characteristics of a subject, to which, +superficially and at first thought, one is insensitive, is to dispense +one's self from a great deal of particularly disagreeable industry, but +the result is only transitorily agreeable to the sincere intelligence. +It is in criticism, I think, though no doubt in criticism alone, +preferable to lose one's self in a maze of perplexity--distressing as +this is to the critic who appreciates the indispensability of +clairvoyance in criticism--rather than to reach swiftly and simply a +conclusion which candor would have foreseen as the inevitable and +unjudicial result of following one's own likes and whims, and one's +contentment with which must be alloyed with a haunting sense of +insecurity. In criticism it is perhaps better to keep balancing +counter-considerations than to determine brutally by excluding a whole +set of them because of the difficulty of assigning them their true +weight. In this way, at least, one preserves the attitude of poise, and +poise is perhaps the one essential element of criticism. In a word, that +catholicity of sensitiveness which may be called mere impressionism, +behind which there is no body of doctrine at all, is more truly critical +than intolerant depreciation or unreflecting enthusiasm. "The main thing +to do," says Mr. Arnold, in a significant passage, "is to get one's self +out of the way and let humanity judge." + +It is temptingly simple to deny all importance to painters who are not +poetic painters. And the temptation is especially seductive when the +prosaic painters are paralleled by such a distinguished succession of +their truly poetic brethren as are the painters of the romantic epoch +who are possessed of the classic temperament. But real criticism +immediately suggests that prose has its place in painting as in +literature. In literature we do not insist even that the poets be +poetic. Poetic is not the epithet that would be applied, for instance, +to French classic verse or the English verse of the eighteenth century, +compared with the poetry, French or English, which we mean when we speak +of poetry. Yet no one would think of denying the value of Dryden or even +of Boileau. No one would even insist that, distinctly prosaic as are the +qualities of Boileau--and I should say his was a crucial instance--he +would have done better to abjure verse. And painting, in a wide sense, +is just as legitimately the expression of ideas in form and color as +literature is the expression of ideas in words. It is perfectly plain +that Meissonier was not especially enamoured of beauty, as Corot, as +Troyon, as Decamps was. But nothing could be less critical than to deny +Meissouier's importance and the legitimate interest he has for every +educated and intelligent person, in spite of his literalness and his +insensitiveness to the element of beauty, and indeed to any truly +pictorial significance whatever in the wide range of subjects that he +essayed, with, in an honorable sense, such distinguished success. + +Especially in America, I think, where of recent years we have shown an +Athenian sensitiveness to new impressions, the direct descendants of the +classic period of French painting have suffered from the popularity of +the Fontainebleau group. Their legitimate attachment to art, instead of +the Fontainebleau absorption in nature, has given them a false +reputation of artificiality. But the prose element in art has its +justification as well as the poetic, and it is witness of a narrow +culture to fail in appreciation of its admirable accomplishment. The +academic wing of the French romantic painting is marked precisely by a +breadth of culture that is itself a source of agreeable and elevated +interest. The neo-Grec painters are thoroughly educated. They lack the +picturesque and unexpected note of their poetic brethren--they lack the +moving and interpreting, the elevating and exquisite touch of these; +nay, they lack the penetrating distinction that radiates even from +rusticity itself when it is inspired and transfigured as it appears in +such works as those of Millet and Rousseau. But their distinction is not +less real for being the distinction of cultivation rather than +altogether native and absolute. It is perhaps even more marked, more +pervasive, more directly associated with the painter's aim and effect. +One feels that they are familiar with the philosophy of art, its history +and practice, that they are articulate and eclectic, that for being less +personal and powerful their horizon is less limited, their purely +intellectual range, at all events, and in many cases their æsthetic +interest, wider. They have more the cultivated man's bent for +experimentation, for variety. They care more scrupulously for +perfection, for form. With a far inferior sense of reality and far less +felicity in dealing with it, their sapient skill in dealing with the +abstractions of art is more salient. To be blind to their successful +handling of line and mass and movement, is to neglect a source of +refined pleasure. To lament their lack of poetry is to miss their +admirable rhetoric; to regret their imperfect feeling for decorativeness +is to miss their delightful decorum. + + +V + +As one has, however, so often occasion to note in France--where in every +field of intellectual effort the influence of schools and groups and +movements is so great that almost every individuality, no matter how +strenuous, falls naturally and intimately into association with some one +of them--there is every now and then an exception that escapes these +categories and stands quite by itself. In modern painting such +exceptions, and widely different from each other as the poles, are +Couture and Puvis de Chavannes. Better than in either the true +romanticists with the classic strain, or the academic romanticists with +the classic temperament, the blending of the classic and romantic +inspirations is illustrated in Couture. The two are in him, indeed, +actually fused. In Puvis de Chavannes they appear in a wholly novel +combination; his classicism is absolutely unacademic, his romanticism +unreal beyond the verge of mysticism, and so preoccupied with visions +that he may almost be called a man for whom the actual world does _not_ +exist--in the converse of Gautier's phrase. His distinction is wholly +personal. He lives evidently on an exceedingly high plane--dwells +habitually in the delectable uplands of the intellect. The fact that his +work is almost wholly decorative is not at all accidental. His talent, +his genius if one chooses, requires large spaces, vast dimensions. There +has been a great deal of rather profitless discussion as to whether he +expressly imitates the _primitifs_ or reproduces them sympathetically. +But really he does neither; he deals with their subjects occasionally, +but always in a completely modern, as well as a thoroughly personal, +way. His color is as original as his general treatment and composition. +He had no schooling, in the École des Beaux Arts sense. A brief period +in Henri Scheffer's studio, three months under Couture, after he had +begun life in an altogether different field of effort, yielded him all +the explicit instruction he ever had. His real study was done in Italy, +in the presence of the old masters of Florence. With this equipment he +revolutionized modern decoration, established, at any rate, a new +convention for it. His convention is a little definite, a little bald. +One may discuss it apart from his own handling of it, even. It is a +shade too express, too confident, too little careless both of tradition +and of the typical qualities that secure permanence. In other hands one +can easily imagine how insipid it might become. It has too little body, +its scheme is too timorous, too vaporous to be handled by another. Puvis +de Chavannes will probably have few successful imitators. But one must +immediately add that if he does not found a school, his own work is, +perhaps for that reason, at all events in spite of it, among the most +important of the day. Quite unperturbed by current discussions, which +are certainly of the noisiest by which the current of artistic +development was ever deflected, he has kept on his way, and has finally +won all suffrages for an æsthetic expression that is really antagonistic +to the general æsthetic spirit of his time. + +Puvis de Chavannes is, perhaps, the most interesting figure in French +painting to-day. Couture is little more than a name. It is curious to +consider why. Twenty years ago he was still an important figure. He had +been an unusually successful teacher. Many American painters of +distinction, especially, were at one time his pupils--Hunt, La Farge, +George Butler. He theorized as much, as well--perhaps even better +than--he painted. His "Entretiens d'atelier" are as good in their way as +his "Baptism of the Prince Imperial." He had a very distinguished +talent, but he was too distinctly clever--clever to the point of +sophistication. In this respect he was distinctly a man of the +nineteenth century. His great work, "Romains de la Décadence," created +as fine an effect at the Centenary Exhibition of the Paris World's Fair +in 1889 as it does in the Louvre, whence it was then transferred, but it +was distinctly a decorative effect--the effect of a fine panel in the +general mass of color and design; it made a fine centre. It remains his +greatest performance, the performance upon which chiefly his fame will +depend, though as painting it lacks the quality and breadth of "Le +Fauconnier," perhaps the most interesting of his works to painters +themselves, and of the "Day-Dreams" of the New York Metropolitan Museum +of Art. Its permanent interest perhaps will be the historical one, due +to the definiteness with which it assigns Couture his position in the +evolution of French painting. It shows, as everything of Couture shows, +the absence of any pictorial feeling so profound and personal as to make +an impression strong enough to endure indefinitely. And it has not, on +the other hand, the interest of reality--that faithful and enthusiastic +rendering of the external world which gives importance to and fixes the +character of the French painting of the present day. + +Had Regnault lived, he would have more adequately--or should I say more +plausibly?--marked the transition from romanticism to realism. +Temperamentally he was clearly a thorough romanticist--far more so, for +instance, than his friend Fortuny, whose intellectual reserve is always +conspicuous. He essayed the most vehement kind of subjects, even in the +classical field, where he treated them with truly romantic truculence. +He was himself always, moreover, and ideally cared as little for nature +as a fairy-story teller. In this sense he was more romantic than the +romanticists. His "Automedon," his portrait of General Prim, even his +"Salome," are wilful in a degree that is either superb or superficial, +as one looks at them; but at any rate they are romantic _à outrance_. At +the same time it was unmistakably the aspect of things rather than their +significance, rather than his view of them, that appealed to him. He was +farther away from the classic inspiration than any other romanticist of +his fellows; and at the same time he cared for the external world more +on its own account and less for its suggestions, than any painter of +equal force before Courbet and Bastien-Lepage. The very fact that he was +not, intellectually speaking, wholly _dans son assiette_, as the French +say, shows that he was a genius of a transitional moment. One's final +thought of him is that he died young, and one thinks so not so much +because of the dramatic tragedy of his taking off by possibly the last +Prussian bullet fired in the war of 1870-71, as because of the +essentially experimental character of his painting. Undoubtedly he would +have done great things. And undoubtedly they would have been different +from those that he did; probably in the direction--already indicated in +his most dignified performance--of giving more consistency, more vivid +definiteness, more reality, even, to his already striking conceptions. + + + + +III + + +REALISTIC PAINTING + + +I + +To an intelligence fully and acutely alive, its own time must, I think, +be more interesting than any other. The sentimental, the scholastic, the +speculative temperament may look before or after with longing or regret; +but that sanity of mind which is practical and productive must find its +most agreeable sensations in the data to which it is intimately and +inexorably related. The light upon Greek literature and art for which we +study Greek history, the light upon Roman history for which we study +Latin literature and art, are admirable to us in very exact proportion +as we study them for our ends. To every man and every nation that really +breathes, true vitality of soul depends upon saying to one's self, with +an emotion of equivalent intensity to the emotion of patriotism +celebrated in Scott's familiar lines, This is my own, my native era and +environment. Culture is impossible apart from cosmopolitanism, but +self-respect is more indispensable even than culture. French art alone +at the present time possesses absolute self-respect. It possesses this +quality in an eminent, in even an excessive degree; but it possesses it, +and in virtue of it is endued with a preservative quality that saves it +from the emptiness of imitation and the enervation of dilettantism. It +has, in consequence, escaped that recrudescence of the primitive and +inchoate known in England and among ourselves as pre-Raphaelitism. It +has escaped also that almost abject worship of classic models which +Winckelmann and Canova made universal in Germany and Italy--not to speak +of its echoes elsewhere. It has always stood on its own feet, and, +however lacking in the higher qualities of imaginative initiative, on +the one hand, and however addicted to the academic and the traditional +on the other, has always both respected its æsthetic heritage and +contributed something of its own thereto. + +Why should not one feel the same quick interest, the same instinctive +pride in his time as in his country? Is not sympathy with what is +modern, instant, actual, and apposite a fair parallel of patriotism? +Neglect of other times in the "heir of all the ages" is analogous to +chauvinism, and indicative of as ill-judged an attitude as that of +provincial blindness to other contemporary points of view and systems of +philosophy than one's own. Culture is equally hostile to both, and in +art culture is as important a factor as it is in less special fields of +activity and endeavor. But in art, as elsewhere, culture is a means to +an actual, present end, and the pre-Raphaelite sentiment that dictates +mere reproduction of what was once a genuine expression is as sterile as +servile imitation of exotic modes of thought, dress, and demeanor is +universally felt to be. The past--the antique, the renaissance, the +classic, and romantic ideals are to be used, not adopted; in the spirit +of Goethe, at once the most original of modern men and the most +saturated with culture, exhibited in his famous saying: "Nothing do I +call my own which having inherited I have not reconquered for myself." + +It would indeed be a singular thing were the field of æsthetics the only +one uninvaded by the scientific spirit of the time. The one force +especially characteristic of our era is, I suppose, the scientific +spirit. It is at any rate everywhere manifest, and it possesses the best +intellects of the century. _A priori_ one may argue about its hostility, +essential or other, to the artistic, the constructive spirit; but to do +so is at the most to beat the air, to waste one's breath, to Ruskinize, +in a word. Interest in life and the world, instead of speculation or +self-expression, is the "note" of the day. The individual has withered +terribly. He is supplanted by the type. Materialism has its positive +gospel; it is not at all the formulated expression of Goethe's "spirit +that denies." Nature has acquired new dignity. She cannot be studied too +closely, nor too long. The secret of the universe is now pursued through +observation, as formerly it was through fasting and prayer. Nothing is +sacred nowadays because everything receives respect. If absolute beauty +is now smiled at as a chimera, it is because beauty is perceived +everywhere. Whatever is may not be right--the maxim has too much of an +_ex cathedra_ sound--but whatever is is interesting. Our attitude is at +once humbler and more curious. The sense of the immensity, the +immeasurableness of things, is more intimate and profound. What one may +do is more modestly conceived; what might be done, more justly +appreciated. There is less confidence and more aspiration. The artist's +eye is "on the object" in more concentrated gaze than ever heretofore. +If his sentiment, his poetry, is no longer "inevitable," as Wordsworth +complained Goethe's was not, it is more reverent, at any rate more +circumspect. If he is less exalted he is more receptive--he is more +alive to impressions for being less of a philosopher. If he scouts +authority, if even he accepts somewhat weakly the thraldom of dissent +from traditional standards and canons, it is because he is convinced +that the material with which he has to deal is superior to all canons +and standards. If he esteems truth more than beauty, it is because what +he thinks truth is more beautiful in his eyes than the stereotyped +beauty he is adjured to attain. In any case, the distinction of the +realistic painters--like that of the realists in literature, where, +also, it need not be said, France has been in the lead--is measurably to +have got rid of solecisms; to have made, indeed, obvious solecisms, and +solecisms of conception as well as of execution, a little ridiculous. It +is, to be sure, equally ridiculous to subject romantic productions to +realistic standards, to blind one's self to the sentiment that saturates +such romantic works as Scott's and Dumas's, or Géricault's and Diaz's, +and is wholly apposite to its own time and point of view. The great +difficulty with a principle is that it is universal, and that when we +deal with facts of any kind whatever, universality is an impossible +ideal. Scott and Géricault are, nowadays, in what we have come to deem +essentials, distinctly old-fashioned. It might be well to try and +imitate them, if imitation had any salt in it, which it has not; or if +it were possible to do what they did with their different inspiration, +which it is not. Mr. Stevenson is, I think, an example of the danger of +essaying this latter in literature, just as a dozen eminent painters of +less talent--for no one has so much talent as Mr. Stevenson--are +examples in painting. But there are a thousand things, not only in the +technic of the romanticists but in their whole attitude toward their art +and their material, that are nowadays impossible to sincere and +spontaneous artists. Details which have no importance whatever in the +_ensemble_ of the romantic artist are essential to the realist. Art does +not stand still. Its canons change. There is a constant evolution in its +standards, its requirements. A conventional background is no more an +error in French classic painting than in tapestry; a perfunctory scheme +of pure chiaro-oscuro is no blemish in one of Diaz's splendid forest +landscapes; such phenomena in a work of Raffaelli or Pointelin would +jar, because, measured by the standards to which modern men must, +through the very force of evolution itself, subscribe, they can but +appear solecisms. In a different set of circumstances, under a different +inspiration, and with a different artistic attitude, solecisms they +certainly are not. But, as Thackeray makes Ethel Newcome say, "We belong +to our belongings." Our circumstances, inspiration, artistic attitude, +are involuntary and possess us as our other belongings do. + +In Gautier's saying, for instance, "I am a man for whom the visible +world exists," which I have quoted as expressing the key-note of the +romantic epoch, it is to be noted that the visible world is taken as a +spectacle simply--significant, suggestive or merely stimulant, in +accordance with individual bent. Gautier and the romanticists generally +had little concern for its structure. To many of them it was indeed +rather a canvas than a spectacle even--just as to many, if not to most, +of the realists it is its structure rather than its significance that +altogether appeals; the romanticists in general sketched their ideas and +impressions upon it, as the naturalists have in the main studied its +aspects and constitution, careless of the import of these, pictorially +or otherwise. Indeed one is tempted often to inquire of the latter, Why +so much interest in what apparently seems to you of so little import? +Are we never to have your skill, your observation, your amassing of +"documents" turned to any account? Where is the realistic tragedy, +comedy, epic, composition of any sort? Courbet's "Cantonniers," Manet's +"Bar," or Bastien-Lepage's "Joan of Arc," perhaps. But what is +indisputable is, that we are irretrievably committed to the present +general æsthetic attitude and inspiration, and must share not only the +romanticists' impatience with academic formulæ and conventions, but the +realists' devotion to life and the world as they actually exist. The +future may be different, but we are living in the present, and what is +important is, after all, to live. It is also so difficult that not to +take the line of least resistance is fatuity. + + +II + +It is at least an approximation to ascribe the primacy of realism to +Courbet, though ascriptions of the kind are at best approximations. Not +only was he the first, or among the first, to feel the interest and +importance of the actual world as it is and for what it is rather than +for what it suggests, but his feeling in this direction is intenser than +that of anyone else. Manet was preoccupied with the values of objects +and spaces. Bastien-Lepage, while painting these with the most +scrupulous fidelity, was nevertheless always attentive to the +significance and import of what he painted. Courbet was a pure +pantheist. He was possessed by the material, the physical, the actual. +He never varies it a hair's-breadth. He never lifts it a fraction of a +degree. But by his very absorption in it he dignifies it immensely. He +illustrates magnificently its possibilities. He brings out into the +plainest possible view its inherent, integral, æsthetic quality, +independent of any extraneity. No painter ever succeeded so well with so +little art, one is tempted to say. Beside his, the love of nature which +we ascribe to the ordinary realist is a superficial emotion. He had the +_sentiment_ of reality in the highest degree; he had it intensely. If he +did not represent nature with the searching subtlety of later painters, +he is certainly the forerunner of naturalism. He has absolutely no +ideality. He is blind to all intimations of immortality, all unearthly +voices. + +Yet it would be wholly an error to suppose him a mere literalist. No one +is farther removed from the painstaking, grubbing imitators of detail so +justly denounced and ridiculed by Mr. Whistler. He has the generalizing +faculty in very distinguished degree, and in very large measure. Every +trait of his talent, indeed, is large, manly; but for a certain +qualification--which must be made--one might add, Olympian. This +qualification perhaps may be not unfairly described as earthiness--never +an agreeable trait, and one to which probably is due the depreciation of +Courbet that is so popular even among appreciative critics. It is easy +to characterize Courbet as brutal and material, but what is easy is +generally not exact. What one glibly stigmatizes as brutality and +grossness may, after all, be something of a particularly strong savor, +enjoyed by the painter himself with a gusto too sterling and instinctive +to be justifiably neglected, much less contemned. The first thing to do +in estimating an artist's accomplishment, which is to place one's self +at his point of view, is, in Courbet's case, unusually difficult. We are +all dreamers, more or less--in more or less desultory fashion--and can +all appreciate that prismatic turn of what is real and actual into a +position wherein it catches glints of the imagination. The imagination +is a universal touchstone. The sense of reality is a special, an +individual faculty. When one is poetizing in an amateur, a dilettante +way, as most of us poetize, a picture of Courbet, which seems to flaunt +and challenge the imagination in virtue of its defiant reality, its +insistence on the value and significance of the prosaic and the actual, +appears coarse and crude. It is not, however. It is very far from that. +It is rather elemental than elementary--in itself a prodigious +distinction. No modern painter has felt more intensely and reproduced +more vigorously the sap that runs through and vivifies the various forms +of natural phenomena. To censure his shortcomings, to regret his +imaginative incompleteness, is to miss him altogether. + +It is easy to say he had all the coarseness without the sentiment of the +French peasantry, whence he sprang; that his political radicalism +attests a lack of the serenity of spirit indispensable to the sincere +artist; that he had no conception of the beautiful, the exquisite--the +fact remains that he triumphs over all his deficiencies, and in very +splendid fashion. He is, in truth, of all the realists for whom he +discovered the way, and set the pace, as it were, one of the two +naturalistic painters who have shown in any high degree the supreme +artistic faculty--that of generalization. However impressive Manet's +picture may be; however brilliant Monet's endeavor to reproduce sunlight +may seem; however refined and elegant Degas's delicate selection of +pictorial material--for broad and masterful generalization, for enduing +what he painted with an interest deeper than its surface and underlying +its aspect, Courbet has but one rival among realistic painters. I mean, +of course, Bastien-Lepage. + +There is an important difference between the two. In Courbet the +sentiment of reality dominates the realism of the technic; in +Bastien-Lepage the technic is realistically carried infinitely farther, +but the sentiment quite transcends realism. Imagine Courbet essaying a +"Jeanne d'Arc!" Bastien-Lepage painting Courbet's "Cantonniers" would +not have stopped, as Courbet has done, with expressing their vitality, +their actual interest, but at the same time that he represented them in +far greater technical completeness he would also have occupied himself +with their psychology. He is indeed quite as distinctly a psychologist +as he is a painter. His favorite problem, aside from that of technical +perfection, which perhaps equally haunted him, is the rendering of that +resigned, bewildered, semi-hypnotic, vaguely and yet intensely longing +spiritual expression to be noted by those who have the eyes to see it in +the faces and attitudes now of the peasant laborer, now of the city +pariah. All his peasant women are potentially Jeannes d'Arc--"Les +Foins," "Tired," "Petite Fauvette," for example. The "note" is still +more evident in the "London Bootblack" and the "London Flower-girl," in +which the outcast "East End" spiritlessness of the British capital is +caught and fixed with a Zola-like veracity and vigor. Such a phase as +this is not so much pictorial or poetic, as psychological. +Bastien-Lepage's happiness in rendering it is a proof of the exceeding +quickness and sureness of his observation; but his preoccupation with it +is equally strong proof of his interest in the things of the mind as +well as in those of the senses. This is his great distinction, I think. +He beats the realist on his own ground (except perhaps Monet and his +followers--I remember no attempt of his to paint sunlight), but he is +imaginative as well. He is not, on the other hand, to be in anywise +associated with the romanticists. Degas's acid characterization of him, +as "the Bouguereau of the modern movement," is only just, if we remember +what very radical and fundamental changes the "modern movement" implies +in general attitude as well as in special expression. I should be +inclined, rather, to apply the analogy to M. Dagnan-Bouveret, though +here, too, with many reserves looking mainly to the difference between +true and vapid sentiment. + +It is interesting to note, however, the almost exclusively intellectual +character of this imaginative side of Bastien-Lepage. He does not view +his material with any apparent sympathy, such as one notes, or at all +events divines, in Millet. Both were French peasants; but whereas +Millet's interest in his fellows is instinctive and absorbing, +Bastien-Lepage's is curious and detached. If his pictures ever succeed +in moving us, it is impersonally, in virtue of the camera-like scrutiny +he brings to bear on his subject, and the effectiveness with which he +renders it, and of the reflections which we institute of ourselves, and +which he fails to stimulate by even the faintest trace of a loving touch +or the betrayal of any sympathetic losing of himself in his theme. You +feel just the least intimation of the _doctrinaire_, the systematic +aloofness of the spectator. In moral attitude as well as in technical +expression he no more assimilates the various phases of his material, to +reproduce them afterward in new and original combination, than he +expresses the essence of landscape in general, as the Fontainebleau +painters do even in their most photographic moments. Both his figures +and his landscapes are clearly portraits--typical and not merely +individual, to be sure, but somehow not exactly creations. His skies are +the least successful portions of his pictures, I think; one must +generalize easily to make skies effective, and perhaps it is not +fanciful to note the frequency of high horizons in his work. + +The fact remains that Bastien-Lepage stands at the head of the modern +movement in many ways. His friend, M. André Theuriet, has shown, in a +brochure published some years ago, that he was himself as interesting as +his pictures. He took his art very seriously, and spoke of it with a +dignity rather uncommon in the atmosphere of the studios, where there is +apt to be more enthusiasm than reflection. I recall vividly the +impatience with which he once spoke to me of painting "to show what you +can do." His own standard was always the particular ideal he had formed, +never within the reach of his ascertained powers. And whatever he did, +one may say, illustrates the sincerity and elevation of this remark, +whether one's mood incline one to care most for this psychological +side--undoubtedly the more nearly unique side--of his work, or for such +exquisite things as his "Forge" or the portrait of Mme Sarah Bernhardt. +Incontestably he has the true tradition, and stands in the line of the +great painters. And he owes his permanent place among them not less to +his perception that painting has a moral and significant, as well as a +representative and decorative sanction, than to his perfect harmony with +his own time in his way of illustrating this--to his happy fusion of +aspect admirably rendered with profound and stimulating suggestion. + + +III + +Of the realistic landscape painters, the strict impressionists apart, +none is more eminent than M. Cazin, whose work is full of interest, and +if at times it leaves one a little cold, this is perhaps an affair of +the beholder's temperament rather than of M. Cazin's. He is a thoroughly +original painter, and, what is more at the present day, an imaginative +one. He sees in his own way the nature that we all see, and paints it +not literally but personally. But his landscapes invariably attest, +above all, an attentive study of the phenomena of light and air, and +their truthfulness is the more marked for the personality they +illustrate. The impression they make is of a very clairvoyant and +enthusiastic observation exercised by an artist who takes more pleasure +in appreciation than in expression, whose pleasure in his expression is +subordinate to his interest in the external world, and in large measure +confined to the delight every artist has in technical felicity when he +can attain it. Their skies are beautifully observed--graduated in value +with delicate verisimilitude from the horizon up, and wind-swept, or +drenched with mist, or ringing clear, as the motive may dictate. All +objects take their places with a precision that, nevertheless, is in +nowise pedantic, and is perfectly free. Cazin's palette is, moreover, a +thoroughly individual one. It is very pure, and if its range is not +great, it is at any rate not grayed into insipidity and ineffectualness, +but is as positive as if it were more vivid. A distinct air of elegance, +a true sense of style, is noteworthy in many of his pictures; not only +in the important ones, but occasionally when the theme is so slight as +to need hardly any composition whatever--the mere placing of a tree, its +outline, its relation to a bank or a roadway, are often unmistakably +distinguished. Cazin is not exclusively a landscape painter, and though +the landscape element in all his works is a dominant one, even in his +"Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert," and his "Judith Setting out for +Holofernes's Camp" (in which latter one can hardly identify the heroine +at all), the fact that he is not a landscape painter, pure and simple, +like Harpignies and Pointelin, perhaps accounts for his inferiority to +them in landscape sentiment. In France it is generally assumed that to +devote one's self exclusively to any one branch of painting is to betray +limitations, and there are few painters who would not resent being +called landscapists. Something, perhaps, is lost in this way. It +witnesses a greater pride in accomplishment than in instinctive bent. +But however that may be, Cazin never penetrates to the sentiment of +nature that one feels in such a work as Harpignies's "Moonrise," for +example, or in almost any of Pointelin's grave and impressive +landscapes. Hardly less truthful, I should say, though perhaps less +intimately and elaborately real (a romanticist would say less +superficially real) than Cazin's, the work of both these painters is +more pictorial. They have a quicker sense for the beautiful, I think. +They feel very certainly much more deeply the suggestiveness of a scene. +They are not so _débonnaires_ in the presence of their problems. In a +sense, for that reason, they understand them better. There is very +little feeling of the desert, the illimitable space, where, according to +Balzac, God is and man is not, in the "Hagar and Ishmael;" indeed there +seems to have been no attempt on the part of the painter to express any. +True as his sand-heap is, you feel somehow that there may be a +kitchen-garden or the entrance to a coal-mine on the other side of it, +or a little farther along. And the landscape of the "Judith," fine as +its sweep is, and admirable as are the cool tone and clear distance of +the picture, might really be that of the "south meadow" of some +particular "farm" or other. + +The contrast which Guillaumet presents to Fromentin affords a very +striking illustration of the growth of the realistic spirit in recent +years. Fromentin is so admirable a painter that I can hardly fancy any +appreciative person wishing him different. His devoted admirer and +biographer, M. Louis Gonse, admits, and indeed expressly records, +Fromentin's own lament over the insufficiency of his studies. Fond as he +was of horses, for instance, he does not know them as a draughtsman with +the science of such a conventional painter in many other respects as +Schreyer. But it is not in the slightly amateurish nature of his +technical equipment--realized perfectly by himself, of course, as the +first critic of the technic of painting among all who have ventured upon +the subject--that his painting differs from Guillaumet's. It is his +whole point of view. His Africa is that of the critic, the +_littérateur_, the _raffiné_. Guillaumet's is Africa itself. You feel +before Guillaumet's Luxembourg canvases, as in looking over the +slightest of his vivid memoranda, that you are getting in an acute and +concentrated form the sensations which the actual scenes and types +rendered by the painter would stimulate in you, supposing, of course, +that you were sufficiently sensitive. Fromentin, in comparison, is +occupied in picture-making--giving you a beautifully colored and highly +intelligent pictorial report as against Guillaumet's actual +reproduction. There is no question as to which of the two painters has +the greater personal interest; but it is just as certain that for +abiding value and enduring charm personal interest must either be +extremely great or else yield to the interest inherent in the material +dealt with, an interest that Guillaumet brings out with a felicity and a +puissance that are wholly extraordinary, and that nowadays meet with a +readier and more sympathetic recognition that even such delicate +personal charm as that of Fromentin. + + +IV + +So thoroughly has the spirit of realism fastened upon the artistic +effort of the present that temperaments least inclined toward interest +in the actual feel its influences, and show the effects of these. The +most recalcitrant illustrate this technically, however rigorously they +may preserve their point of view. They paint at least more +circumspectly, however they may think and feel. An historical painter +like Jean Paul Laurens, interested as he is in the memorable moments and +dramatic incidents of the past, and exhibiting as he does, first of all, +a sense of what is ideally forceful and heroic, is nevertheless clearly +concerned for the realistic value of his representation far more than a +generation ago he would have been. When Luminais paints a scene from +Gaulish legend, he is not quite, but nearly, as careful to make it +pictorially real as he is to have it dramatically effective. M. François +Flameng, expanding his book illustration into a mammoth canvas +commemorative of the Vendean insurrection, is almost daintily fastidious +about the naturalistic aspect of his abundant detail. M. +Benjamin-Constant's artificially conceived seraglio scenes are as +realistically rendered as is indicated by a recent caricature depicting +an astonished sneak-thief, foiled in an attempted rape of the jewels in +a sultana's diadem, painted with such deceptive illusoriness by M. +Benjamin-Constant's clever brush. The military painters, Detaille, De +Neuville, Berne-Bellecour, do not differ from Vernet more by painting +incidents instead of phases of warfare, by substituting the touch of +dramatic _genre_ for epic conceptions, than they do by the scrupulously +naturalistic rendering that in them supplants the old academic +symbolism. Their dragoons and _fantassins_ are not merely more real in +what they do, but in how they look. Vernet's look like tin soldiers by +comparison; certainly like soldiers _de convenance_. Aimé Morot +evidently used instantaneous photography, and his magnificent cavalry +charges suggest not only carnage, but Muybridge as well. + +The great portrait-painters of the day--Carolus-Duran, Bonnat, +Ribot--are realists to the core. They are very far from being purely +portrait-painters of course, and their realism shows itself with +splendid distinction in other works. Few painters of the nude have +anything to their credit as fine as the figure M. Carolus-Duran +exhibited at the Paris Exposition in 1889. Ribot's "Saint Sebastian" is +one of the most powerful pictures of modern French art. Bonnat's +"Christ" became at once famous. Each picture is painted with a vigor and +point of realistic detail that are peculiar to our own time; painted +to-day, Bonnat's fine and sculptural "Fellah Woman and Child," of the +Metropolitan Museum, would be accented in a dozen ways in which now it +is not. But it is perhaps in portraiture that the eminence of these +painters is most explicit. They are at the head of contemporary +portraitists, at all events. And their portraits are almost defiantly +real, void often of arrangement, and as little artificial as the very +frequently prosaic atmosphere appertaining to their sometimes very stark +subjects suggests. A portrait by Bonnat blinks nothing in the subject; +its aim and accomplishment are the rendering of the character in a vivid +fashion--including the reproduction of cobalt cravats and creased +trousers even--which would have mightily embarrassed Van Dyck or +Velasquez. Ribot reproduces Ribera often, but he deals with fewer +externals, fewer effects, taken in the widest sense. Carolus-Duran, the +"swell" portrait-painter of the day, artificial as he may be in the +quality of his mind, nevertheless seeks and attains, first of all, the +sense of an even exaggerated life-likeness in his charming sitters. +They are, first of all, people; the pictorial element takes care of +itself; sometimes even--so overmastering is the realistic tendency--the +plush of the chair, the silk of the robe, the cut of the coat, seems, to +an observer who thinks of the old traditions of Titian, of Raphael, of +Moroni, unduly emphasized, even for realism. + + +V + +One element of modernity is a certain order of eclecticism. It is not +the eclecticism of the Bolognese painters, for example, illustrating the +really hopeless attempt to combine the supposed and superficial +excellences, always dissociated from the essence, of different points of +view. It is a free choice of attitude, rather, due to the release of the +individual from the thraldom of conformity that ruled even during the +romantic epoch. Hence a great deal of admirable work, of which one +hardly thinks whether it is realistic or not, side by side with the more +emphatic expressions of the realistic spirit. And this work is of all +degrees of realism, never, however, getting very far away from the +naturalistic basis on which more and more everyone is coming to insist +as the necessary and only solid pedestal of any flight of fancy. Baudry +is perhaps the nearest of the really great men to the Bolognese order +of eclecticism. I suppose he must be classed among the really great men, +so many painters of intelligence place him there, though I must myself +plead the laic privilege of a slight scepticism as to whether time will +approve their enthusiasm. He is certainly very effective, and in +certainly his own way, idle as it is to say that his drafts on the great +Italians are no greater than those of Raphael on the antique frescos. He +had a great love of color and a native instinct for it; with perhaps +more appreciation than invention, his imagination has something very +personal in the zealous enthusiasm with which he exercised it, though I +think it must be admitted that his reflections of Tiepolo, Titian, +Tintoretto and his attenuated expansions of Michael Angelo's condensed +grandiosity, recall the eclecticism of the Carracci far more than that +of Raphael. But his manner is the modern manner, and it is altogether +more effective, more "fetching," to use a modern term, than anything +purely academic can be. Élie Delaunay, another master of decoration, is, +on the other hand, as real as the most rigorous literalist could ask of +a painter of decorative works. Chartran, who has an individual charm +that both Baudry and Delaunay lack, inferior as he is to them in sweep +and power, is perhaps in this respect midway between the two. Clairin +is, like Mazerolles, a pure _fantaisiste_. Dubufe _fils_, whose at +least equally famous father ranks in a somewhat similar category with +Couture, shows a distinct advance upon him in reality of rendering, as +the term would be understood at present. + +In other departments of painting the note of realism is naturally still +more universally apparent; but as in the work of the painters of +decoration it is often most noticeable as an undertone, indicating a +point of departure rather than an aim. Bonvin is a realist only as +Chardin, as Van der Meer of Delft, as Nicholas Maes were, before the +jargon of realism had been thought of. He is, first of all, an exquisite +artist, in love with the beautiful in reality, finding in it the +humblest material, and expressing it with the gentlest, sweetest, +æsthetic severity and composure imaginable. The most fastidious critic +needs but a touch of human feeling to convert any characterization of +this most refined and elevated of painters into pure panegyric. Vollon's +touch is felicity itself, and it is evident that he takes more pleasure +in exercising and exploiting it than in its successful imitation, +striking as its imitative quality is. Gervex and Duez are very much more +than impressionists, both in theory and practice. There is nothing +polemic in either. Painters extol in the heartiest way the color, the +creative coloration of Gervex's "Rolla," quite aside from its dramatic +force or its truth of aspect. Personal feeling is clearly the +inspiration of every work of Duez, not the demonstration of a theory of +treating light and atmosphere. The same may be said of Roll at his best, +as in his superb rendering of what may be called the modern painter's +conception of the myth of Europa. Compared with Paul Veronese's +admirable classic, that violates all the unities (which Veronese, +nevertheless, may readily be pardoned by all but literalists and +theorists for neglecting), this splendid nude girl in _plein air_, +flecked with splotches of sunlight filtered through a sieve of leafage, +with her realistic taurine companion, and their environment of +veridically rendered out-of-doors, may stand for an illustrative +definition of modernity; but what you feel most of all is Roll. It is +ten chances to one that he has never even been to Venice or thought of +Veronese. He has not always been so successful; as when in his "Work" he +earned Degas's acute comment: "A crowd is made with five persons, not +with fifty." ("Il y a cinquante figures, mais je ne vois pas la foule; +on fait une foule avec cinq, et non pas avec cinquante.") But he has +always been someone. Compare with him L'Hermitte, a painter who +illustrates sometimes the possibility of being an artificial realist. +His "Vintage" at the Metropolitan Museum, his "Harvesters" at the +Luxembourg, are excellently real and true in detail, but in idea and +general expression they might compete for the prix de Rome. The same is +measurably true of Lerolle, whose pictures are more sympathetic--sometimes +they are _very_ sympathetic--but on the whole display less power. But +in each instance the advocate _à outrance_ of realism may justly, I +think, maintain that a painter with a natural predisposition toward the +insipidity of the academic has been saved from it by the inherent sanity +and robustness of the realistic method. Jean Béraud, even, owes something +to the way in which his verisimilitude of method has reinforced his +artistic powers. His delightful Parisiennes--modistes' messengers crossing +wet glistening pavements against a background of gray mist accented with +poster-bedizened kiosks and regularly recurring horse-chestnut trees; +_élégantes_ at prayer, in somewhat distracted mood, on _prie-dieus_ +in the vacant and vapid Paris churches; seated at café tables on the busy, +leisurely boulevards, or posing _tout bonnement_ for the reproduction +of the most fascinating feminine _ensemble_ in the world--owe their +charm (I may say again their "fetchingness") to the faithfulness with which +their portraitist has studied, and the fidelity with which he has +reproduced, their differing types, more than to any personal expression +of his own view of them. Fancy Béraud's masterpiece, the Salle +Graffard--that admirable characterization of crankdom embodied in a +socialist reunion--painted by an academic painter. How absolutely it would +lose its pith, its force, its significance, even its true distinction. And +his "Magdalen at the Pharisee's House," which is almost equally +impressive--far more impressive of course in a literary and, I think, +legitimate, sense--owes even its literary effectiveness to its significant +realism. + +What the illustrators of the present day owe to the naturalistic method, +it is almost superfluous to point out. "Illustrators" in France are, in +general, painters as well, some of them very eminent painters. Daumier, +who passed in general for a contributor to illustrated journals, even +such journals as _Le Petit Journal pour Rire_, was not only a genius of +the first rank, but a painter of the first class. Monvel and Monténard +at present are masterly painters. But in their illustration as well as +in their painting, they show a notable change from the illustration of +the days of Daumier and Doré. The difference between the elegant (or +perhaps rather the handsome) drawings of Bida, an artist of the utmost +distinction, and that of the illustrators of the present day who are +comparable with him--their name is not legion--is a special attestation +of the influence of the realistic ideal in a sphere wherein, if +anywhere, one may say, realism reigns legitimately, but wherein also the +conventional is especially to be expected. One cannot indeed be quite +sure that the temptations of the conventional are resisted by the +ultra-realistic illustrators of our own time, Rossi, Beaumont, Albert +Lynch, Myrbach. They have certainly a very handy way of expressing +themselves; one would be justified in suspecting the labor-saving, the +art-sparing kodak, behind many of their most unimpeachable successes. +But the attitude taken is quite other than it used to be, and the change +that has come over French æsthetic activity in general can be noted in +very sharp definition by comparing a book illustrated twenty years ago +by Albert Lynch, with, for example, Maupassant's "Pierre et Jean," the +distinguished realism of whose text is adequately paralleled--and the +implied eulogy is by no means trivial--by the pictorical commentary, so +to speak, which this first of modern illustrators has supplied. And an +even more striking illustration of the evolution of realistic thought +and feeling, as well as of rendering, is furnished by the succession of +Forain to Grévin, as an illustrator of the follies of the day, the +characteristic traits of the Parisian seamy side, morally speaking. +Grévin is as conventional as Murger, in philosophy, and--though +infinitely cleverer--as "Mars" in drawing. Forain, with the pencil of a +realism truly Japanese, illustrates with sympathetic incisiveness the +pitiless pessimism of Flaubert, Goncourt, and Maupassant as well. + + +VI + +But to go back a little and consider the puissant individualities, the +great men who have really given its direction to and, as it were, set +the pace of, the realistic movement, and for whom, in order more +conveniently to consider impressionism pure and simple by itself, I have +ventured to disturb the chronological sequence of evolution in French +painting--a sequence that, even if one care more for ideas than for +chronology, it is more temerarious to vary from in things French than in +any others. To go back in a word to Manet; the painter of whom M. Henri +Houssaye has remarked: "Manet sowed, M. Bastien-Lepage has reaped." + +Manet was certainly one of the most noteworthy painters that France or +any other country has produced. His is the great, the very rare, merit +of having conceived a new point of view. That he did not illustrate this +in its completeness, that he was a sign-post, as Albert Wolff very aptly +said, rather an exemplar, is nothing. He was totally unheralded, and he +was in his way superb. No one before him had essayed--no one before him +had ever thought of--the immense project of breaking, not relatively but +absolutely, with the conventional. Looking for the first time at one of +his pictures, one says that customary notions, ordinary brushes, +traditional processes of even the highest authenticity, have been thrown +to the winds. Hence, indeed, the scandal which he caused from the first +and which went on increasing, until, owing to the acceptance, with +modifications, of his point of view by the most virile and vigorous +painters of the day, he became, as he has become, in a sense the head of +the corner. Manet's great distinction is to have discovered that the +sense of reality is achieved with a thousand-fold greater intensity by +getting as near as possible to the _actual_, rather than resting content +with the _relative_, value of every detail. Everyone who has painted +since Manet has either followed him in this effort or has appeared +jejune. + +Take as an illustration of the contrary practice such a masterpiece in +its way as Gérôme's "Éminence Grise." In this picture, skilfully and +satisfactorily composed, the relative values of all the colors are +admirably, even beautifully, observed. The correspondence of the gamut +of values to that of the light and dark scale of such an actual scene is +perfect. Before Manet, one could have said that this is all that is +required or can be secured, arguing that exact _imitation_ of local +tints and general tone is impossible, owing to the difference between +nature's highest light and lowest dark, and the potentialities of the +palette. In other words, one might have said, that inasmuch as you can +squeeze absolute white and absolute black out of no tubes, the thing to +do is first to determine the scale of your picture and then make every +note in it bear the same relation to every other that the corresponding +note in nature bears to its fellows in its own corresponding but +different scale. This is what Gérôme has done in the "Éminence Grise"--a +scene, it will be remembered, on a staircase in a palace interior. Manet +inquires what would happen to this house of cards shored up into +verisimilitude by mere _correspondence_, if Gérôme had been asked to cut +a window in his staircase and admit the light of out-of-doors into his +correspondent but artificial scene. The whole thing would have to be +done over again. The scale of the picture running from the highest +palette white to the lowest palette dark, and yet the key of an actual +interior scene being much nearer middle-tint than the tint of an actual +out-of-doors scene, it would be impossible to paint with any +verisimilitude the illumination of a window from the outside, the +resources of the palette having already been exhausted, every object +having been given a local value solely with relation, so far as truth of +representation is concerned, to the values of every other object, and no +effort being made to get the precise value of the object as it would +appear under analogous circumstances in nature. + +It may be replied, and I confess I think with excellent reason, that +Gérôme's picture has no window in it, and therefore that to ask of him +to paint a picture as he would if he were painting a different picture, +is pedantry. The old masters are still admirable, though they only +observed a correspondence to the actual scale of natural values, and +were not concerned with imitation of it. But it is to be observed that, +successful as their practice is, it is successful in virtue of the +unconscious co-operation of the beholder's imagination. And nowadays not +only is the exercise of the imagination become for better or worse a +little old-fashioned, but the one thing that is insisted on as a +starting-point and basis, at the very least, is the sense of reality. +And it is impossible to exaggerate the way in which the sense of reality +has been intensified by Manet's insistence upon getting as near as +possible to the individual values of objects as they are seen in +nature--in spite of his abandonment of the practice of painting on a +parallel scale. Things now drop into their true place, look as they +really do, and count as they count in nature, because the painter is no +longer content with giving us change for nature, but tries his best to +give us nature itself. Perspective acquires its actual significance, +solids have substance and bulk as well as surfaces, distance is +perceived as it is in nature, by the actual interposition of atmosphere, +chiaro-oscuro is abolished--the ways in which reality is secured being +in fact legion the moment real instead of relative values are studied. +Something is lost, very likely--an artist cannot be so intensely +preoccupied with reality as, since Manet, it has been incumbent on +painters to be, without missing a whole range of qualities that are so +precious as rightly perhaps to be considered indispensable. Until +reality becomes in its turn an effect unconsciously attained, the +painter's imagination will be held more or less in abeyance. And perhaps +we are justified in thinking that nothing can quite atone for its +absence. Meantime, however, it must be acknowledged that Manet first +gave us this sense of reality in a measure comparable with that which +successively Balzac, Flaubert, Zola gave to the readers of their +books--a sense of actuality and vividness beside which the traditionary +practice seemed absolutely fanciful and mechanical. + +Applying Manet's method, his invention, his discovery, to the painting +of out-of-doors, the _plein air_ school immediately began to produce +landscapes of astonishing reality by confining their effort to those +values which it is in the power of pigments to imitate. The possible +scale of mere correspondence being of course from one to one hundred, +they secured greater truth by painting between twenty and eighty, we may +say. Hence the grayness of the most successful French landscapes of the +present day--those of Bastien-Lepage's backgrounds, of Cazin's pictures. +Sunlight being unpaintable, they confined themselves to the +representation of what they could represent. In the interest of truth, +of reality, they narrowed the gamut of their modulations, they attempted +less, upheld by the certainty of accomplishing more. For a time French +landscape was pitched in a minor key. Suddenly Claude Monet appeared. +Impressionism, as it is now understood, and as Manet had not succeeded +in popularizing it, won instant recognition. Monet's discovery was that +light is the most important factor in the painting of out-of-doors. He +pushed up the key of landscape painting to the highest power. He +attacked the fascinating, but of course demonstrably insolvable, problem +of painting sunlight, not illusorily, as Fortuny had done by relying on +contrasts of light and dark correspondent in scale, but positively and +realistically. He realized as nearly as possible the effect of +sunlight--that is to say, he did as well and no better in this respect +than Fortuny had done--but he created a much greater illusion of a +sunlit landscape than anyone had ever done before him, by painting those +parts of his picture not in sunlight with the exact truth that in +painting objects in shadow the palette can compass. + +Nothing is more simple. Take a landscape with a cloudy sky, which means +diffused light in the old sense of the term, and observe the effect upon +it of a sudden burst of sunlight. What is the effect where considerable +portions of the scene are suddenly thrown into marked shadow, as well as +others illuminated with intense light? Is the absolute value of the +parts in shadow lowered or raised? Raised, of course, by reflected +light. Formerly, to get the contrast between sunlight and shadow in +proper scale, the painter would have painted the shadows darker than +they were before the sun appeared. Relatively they are darker, since +their value, though heightened, is raised infinitely less than the value +of the parts in sunlight. Absolutely, their value is raised +considerably. If, therefore, they are painted lighter than they were +before the sun appeared, they in themselves seem truer. The part of +Monet's picture that is in shadow is measurably true, far truer than it +would have been if painted under the old theory of correspondence, and +had been unnaturally darkened to express the relation of contrast +between shadow and sunlight. Scale has been lost. What has been gained? +Simply truth of impressionistic effect. Why? Because we know and judge +and appreciate and feel the measure of truth with which objects in +shadow are represented; we are insensibly more familiar with them in +nature than with objects directly sun-illuminated, the value as well as +the definition of which are far vaguer to us on account of their +blending and infinite heightening by a luminosity absolutely +overpowering. In a word, in sunlit landscapes objects in shadow are what +customarily and unconsciously we see and note and know, and the illusion +is greater if the relation between them and the objects in sunlight, +whose value habitually we do not note, be neglected or falsified. Add to +this source of illusion the success of Monet in giving a juster value to +the sunlit half of his picture than had even been systematically +attempted before his time, and his astonishing _trompe-l'oeil_ is, I +think, explained. Each part is truer than ever before, and unless one +have a specially developed sense of _ensemble_ in this very special +matter of values in and affected by sunlight, one gets from Monet an +impression of actuality so much greater than he has ever got before, +that he may be pardoned for feeling, and even for enthusiastically +proclaiming, that in Monet realism finds its apogee. To sum up: The +first realists painted _relative_ values; Manet and his derivatives +painted _absolute_ values, but in a wisely limited gamut; Monet paints +_absolute values in a very wide range, plus sunlight, as nearly as he +can get it_--as nearly as pigment can be got to represent it. Perforce +he loses scale, and therefore artistic completeness, but he secures an +incomparably vivid effect of reality, of nature--and of nature in her +gayest, most inspiring manifestation, illuminated directly and +indirectly, and everywhere vibrant and palpitating with the light of all +our physical seeing. + +Monet is so subtle in his own way, so superbly successful within his own +limits, that it is time wasted to quarrel with the convention-steeped +philistine who refuses to comprehend even his point of view, who judges +the pictures he sees by the pictures he has seen. He has not only +discovered a new way of looking at nature, but he has justified it in a +thousand particulars. Concentrated as his attention has been upon the +effects of light and atmosphere, he has reproduced an infinity of +nature's moods that are charming in proportion to their transitoriness, +and whose fleeting beauties he has caught and permanently fixed. +Rousseau made the most careful studies, and then combined them in his +studio. Courbet made his sketch, more or less perfect, face to face with +his subject, and elaborated it afterward away from it. Corot painted his +picture from nature, but put the Corot into it in his studio. Monet's +practice is in comparison drastically thorough. After thirty minutes, he +says--why thirty instead of forty or twenty, I do not know; these +mysteries are Eleusinian to the mere amateur--the light changes; he +must stop and return the next day at the same hour. The result is +immensely real, and in Monet's hands immensely varied. One may say as +much, having regard to their differing degrees of success, of Pissaro, +who influenced him, and of Caillebotte, Renoir, Sisley, and the rest of +the impressionists who followed him. + +He is himself the prominent representative of the school, however, and +the fact that one representative of it is enough to consider, is +eloquent of profound criticism of it. For decorative purposes a hole in +one's wall, an additional window through which one may only look +satisfactorily during a period of thirty minutes, has its drawbacks. A +walk in the country or in a city park is after all preferable to anyone +who can really appreciate a Monet--that is, anyone who can feel the +illusion of nature which it is his sole aim to produce. After all, what +one asks of art is something different from imitative illusion. Its +essence is illusion, I think, but illusion taken in a different sense +from optical illusion--_trompe-l'oeil_. Its function is to make dreams +seem real, not to recall reality. Monet is enduringly admirable mainly +to the painter who envies and endeavors to imitate his wonderful power +of technical expression--the thing that occupies most the conscious +attention of the true painter. To others he must remain a little +unsatisfactory, because he is not only not a dreamer, but because he +does nothing with his material except to show it as it is--a great +service surely, but largely excluding the exercise of that architectonic +faculty, personally directed, which is the very life of every truly +æsthetic production. + + +VII + +In fine, the impressionist has his own conventions; no school can escape +them, from the very nature of the case and the definition of the term. +The conventions of the impressionists, indeed, are particularly salient. +Can anyone doubt it who sees an exhibition of their works? In the same +number of classic, or romantic, or merely realistic pictures, is there +anything quite equalling the monotony that strikes one in a display of +canvasses by Claude Monet and his fellows and followers? But the defect +of impressionism is not mainly its technical conventionality. It is, as +I think everyone except its thick-and-thin advocates must feel, that +pursued _à outrance_ it lacks a seriousness commensurate with its +claims--that it exhibits indeed a kind of undertone of frivolity that is +all the nearer to the absolutely comic for the earnestness, so to speak, +of its unconsciousness. The reason is, partly no doubt, to be ascribed +to its _débonnaire_ self-satisfaction, its disposition to "lightly run +amuck at an august thing," the traditions of centuries namely, to its +bumptiousness, in a word. But chiefly, I think, the reason is to be +found in its lack of anything properly to be called a philosophy. This +is surely a fatal flaw in any system, because it involves a +contradiction in terms; and to say that to have no philosophy is the +philosophy of the impressionists, is merely a word-juggling bit of +question-begging. A theory of technic is not a philosophy, however +systematic it may be. It is a mechanical, not an intellectual, point of +view. It is not a way of looking at things, but of rendering them. It +expresses no idea and sees no relations; its claims on one's interest +are exhausted when once its right to its method is admitted. The remark +once made of a typically literal person--that he cared so much for facts +that he disliked to think they had any relations--is intimately +applicable to the whole impressionist school. Technically, of course, +the impressionist's relations are extremely just--not exquisite, but +exquisitely just. But merely to get just values is not to occupy one's +self with values ideally, emotionally, personally. It is merely to +record facts. Certainly any impressionist rendering of the light and +shade and color relations of objects seems eloquent beside any +traditional and conventional rendering of them; but it is because each +object is so carefully observed, so truly painted, that its relation to +every other is spontaneously satisfactory; and this is a very different +thing from the result of truly pictorial rendering with its constructive +appeal, its sense of _ensemble_, its presentation of an idea by means of +the convergence and interdependence of objects focussed to a common and +central effect. To this impressionism is absolutely insensitive. It is +the acme of detachment, of indifference. + +Turgénieff, according to Mr. George Moore, complained of Zola's Gervaise +Coupeau, that Zola explained how she felt, never what she thought. +"Qu'est que ça me fait si elle suait sous les bras, ou au milieu du +dos?" he asked, with most pertinent penetration. He is quite right. +Really we only care for facts when they explain truths. The desultory +agglomeration of never so definitely rendered details necessarily leaves +the civilized appreciation cold. What distinguishes the civilized from +the savage appreciation is the passion for order. The tendency to order, +said Sénancour, should form "an essential part of our inclinations, of +our instinct, like the tendencies to self-preservation and to +reproduction." The two latter tendencies the savage possesses as +completely as the civilized man, but he does not share the civilized +man's instinct for correlation. And in this sense, I think, a certain +savagery is justly to be ascribed to the impressionist. His productions +have many attractions and many merits--merits and attractions that the +traditional painting has not. But they are really only by a kind of +automatic inadvertence, pictures. They are not truly pictorial. + +And a picture should be something more than even pictorial. To be +permanently attaching it should give at least a hint of the painter's +philosophy--his point of view, his attitude toward his material. In the +great pictures you can not only discover this attitude, but the attitude +of the painter toward life and the world in general. Everyone has as +distinct an idea of the philosophy of Raphael as of the qualities of his +designs. The impressionist not only does not show you what he thinks, he +does not even show you how he feels, except by betraying a fondness for +violets and diffused light, and by exhibiting the temper of the radical +and the rioter. The order of a blithe, idyllic landscape by Corot, of +one of Delacroix's pieces of concentric coloration, of an example of +Ingres's purity of outline, shows not only temperament, but the position +of the painter in regard to the whole intellectual world so far as he +touches it at all. What does a canvas of Claude Monet show in this +respect? It is more truthful but not less impersonal than a photograph. + +Degas is the only other painter usually classed with the +impressionists, of whom this may not be said. But Degas is hardly an +impressionist at all. He is one of the most personal painters, if not +the most personal painter, of the day. He is as original as Puvis de +Chavannes. What allies him with the impressionists is his fondness for +fleeting aspects, his caring for nothing beyond aspect--for the look of +things and their transitory look. He is an enthusiastic admirer of +Ingres--who, one would say, is the antithesis of impressionism. He never +paints from nature. His studies are made with the utmost care, but they +are arranged, composed, combined by his own sense of what is +pictorial--by, at any rate, his own idea of the effects he wishes to +create. He cares absolutely nothing for what ordinarily we understand by +the real, the actual, so far as its reality is concerned; he sees +nothing else, to be sure, and is probably very sceptical about anything +but colors and shapes and their decorative arrangement; but he sees what +he likes in reality and follows this out with an inerrancy so +scrupulous, and even affectionate, as to convey the idea that in his +result he himself counts for almost nothing. This at least may be said +of him, that he shows what, given genius, can be got out of the +impressionist method artistically and practically employed to the end of +illustrating a personal point of view. A mere amateur can hardly +distinguish between a Caillebotte and a Sisley, for example, but +everyone identifies a Degas as immediately and as certainly as he does a +Whistler. His work is perfectly sincere and admirably intelligent. It +has neither the pose nor the irresponsibility of the impressionists. His +artistic apotheosis of the ballet-girl is merely the result of his happy +discovery of something delightfully, and in a very true sense naturally, +decorative in material that is in the highest degree artificial. His +impulse is as genuine and spontaneous as if the substance upon which it +is exercised were not the acme of the exotic, and already arranged with +the most elaborate conventionality. Nothing indeed could be more opposed +to the elementary crudity of impressionism than his distinction and +refinement, which may be said to be carried to a really _fin de siècle_ +degree. + + +VIII + +Whatever the painting of the future is to be, it is certain not to be +the painting of Monet. For the present, no doubt, Monet is the last word +in painting. To belittle him is not only whimsical, but ridiculous. He +has plainly worked a revolution in his art. He has taken it out of the +vicious circle of conformity to, departure from, and return to +abstractions and the so-called ideal. No one hereafter who attempts the +representation of nature--and for as far ahead as we can see with any +confidence, the representation of nature, the pantheistic ideal if one +chooses, will increasingly intrench itself as the painter's true aim--no +one who seriously attempts to realize this aim of now universal appeal +will be able to dispense with Monet's aid. He must perforce follow the +lines laid down for him by this astonishing naturalist. Any other course +must result in solecism, and if anything future is certain, it is +certain that the future will be not only inhospitable to, but absolutely +intolerant of, solecism. Henceforth the basis of things is bound to be +solid and not superficial, real and not fantastic. But--whether the +future is to commit itself wholly to prose, or is to preserve in new +conditions the essence of the poetry that, in one form or another, has +persisted since plastic art began--for the superstructure to be erected +on the sound basis of just values and true impressions it is justifiably +easy to predict a greater interest and a more real dignity than any such +preoccupation with the basis of technic as Monet's can possibly have. +And though, even as one says it, one has the feeling that the future is +pregnant with some genius who will out-Monet Monet, and that painting +will in some now inconceivable way have to submit hereafter to a still +more rigorous standard than it does at present--I have heard the claims +of binocular vision urged--at the same time the true "child of nature" +may console himself with the reflection that accuracy and competence are +but the accidents, at most the necessary phenomena, of what really and +essentially constitutes fine art of any kind--namely, the expression of +a personal conception of what is not only true but beautiful as well. In +France less than anywhere else is it likely that even such a powerful +force as modern realism will long dominate the constructive, the +architectonic faculty, which is part of the very fibre of the French +genius. The exposition and illustration of a theory believed in with a +fervency to be found only among a people with whom the intelligence is +the chief element and object of experiment and exercise, are a natural +concomitant of mental energy and activity. But no theory holds them long +in bondage. At the least, it speedily gives place to another formulation +of the mutinous freedom its very acceptance creates. And the conformity +that each of them in succession imposes on mediocrity is always varied +and relieved by the frequent incarnations in masterful personalities of +the natural national traits--of which, I think, the architectonic spirit +is one of the most conspicuous. Painting will again become creative, +constructive, personally expressive. Its basis having been established +as scientifically impeccable, its superstructure will exhibit the +taste, the elegance, the imaginative freedom, exhibited within the +limits of a cultivated sense of propriety, that are an integral part of +the French painter's patrimony. + + + + +IV + + +CLASSIC SCULPTURE + + +I + +French sculpture naturally follows very much the same course as +French painting. Its beginnings, however, are Gothic, and the +Renaissance emancipated rather than created it. Italy, over which the +Gothic wave passed with less disturbing effect than anywhere else, and +where the Pisans were doing pure sculpture when everywhere farther north +sculpture was mainly decorative and rigidly architectural, had a potent +influence. But the modern phases of French sculpture have a closer +relationship with the Chartres Cathedral than modern French painting has +with its earliest practice; and Claux Sluters, the Burgundian Fleming +who modelled the wonderful Moses Well and the tombs of Jean Sans Peur +and Phillippe le Hardi at Dijon, among his other anachronistic +masterpieces, exerted considerably greater influence upon his successors +than the Touraine school of painting and the Clouets did upon theirs. + +These works are a curious compromise between the Gothic and the modern +spirits. Sluters was plainly a modern temperament working with Gothic +material and amid Gothic ideas. In itself his sculpture is hardly +decorative, as we apply the epithet to modern work. It is just off the +line of rigidity, of insistence in every detail of its right and title +to individuality apart from every other sculptured detail. The prophets +in the niches of the beautiful Dijon Well, the monks under the arcades +of the beautiful Burgundian tombs, have little relation with each other +as elements of a decorative sculptural composition. They are in the same +style, that is all. Each of them is in interest quite independent of the +other. Compared with one of the Pisans' pulpits they form a congeries +rather than a composition. Compared with Goujon's "Fountain of the +Innocents" their motive is not decorative at all. Isaiah, Ezekiel, +Jeremiah asserts his individuality in a way the more sociable prophets +of the Sistine Chapel would hesitate to do. They have a little the air +of hermits--of artistic anchorites, one may say. + +They are Gothic, too, not only in being thus sculpturally undecorative +and uncomposed, but in being beautifully subordinate to the architecture +which it is their unmistakable ancillary function to decorate in the +most delightful way imaginable--in being in a word architecturally +decorative. The marriage of the two arts is, Gothically, not on equal +terms. It never occurred, of course, to the Gothic architect that it +should be. His _ensemble_ was always one of which the chief, the +overwhelming, one may almost say the sole, interest is structural. He +even imposed the condition that the sculpture which decorated his +structure should be itself architecturally structural. One figure of the +portals of Chartres is almost as like another as one pillar of the +interior is like its fellows; for the reason--eminently satisfactory to +the architect--that it discharges an identical function. + +Emancipation from this thraldom of the architect is Sluters's great +distinction, however. He is modern in this sense, without going so +far--without going anything like so far--as the modern sculptor who +divorces his work from that of the architect with whom he is called upon +to combine to the end of an _ensemble_ that shall be equally agreeable +to the sense satisfied by form and that satisfied by structure. His +figures, subordinate as they are to the general architectural purpose +and function of what they decorate, are not only not purely structural +in their expression, stiff as they still are from the point of view of +absolutely free sculpture; they are, moreover, not merely unrelated to +each other in any essential sense, such as that in which the figures of +the Pisans and of Goujon are related; they are on the contrary each and +all wonderfully accentuated and individualized. Every ecclesiastic on +the Dijon tombs is a character study. Every figure on the Well has a +psychologic as well as a sculptural interest. Poised between Gothic +tradition and modern feeling, between a reverend and august æsthetic +conventionality and the dawn of free activity, Sluters is one of the +most interesting and stimulating figures in the whole history of +sculpture. And the force of his characterizations, the vividness of his +conceptions, and the combined power and delicacy of his modelling give +him the added importance of one of the heroes of his art in any time or +country. There is something extremely Flemish in his sense of +personality. A similar interest in humanity as such, in the individual +apart from the type, is noticeable in the pictures of the Van Eycks, of +Memling, of Quentin Matsys, and Roger Van der Weyden, wherein all idea +of beauty, of composition, of universal appeal is subordinated as it is +in no other art--in that of Holland no more than in that of Italy--to +the representation in the most definite, precise, and powerful way of +some intensely human personality. There is the same extraordinary +concreteness in one of Matsys's apostles and one of Sluters's prophets. + +Michel Colombe, the pupil of Claux and Anthoniet and the sculptor of the +monument of François II., Duke of Brittany, at Nantes, the relief of +"St. George and the Dragon" for the Château of Gaillon, now in the +Louvre, and the Fontaine de Beaune, at Tours, and Jean Juste, whose +noble masterpiece, the Tomb of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany, is the +finest ornament of the Cathedral of St. Denis, bridge the distance and +mark the transition to Goujon, Cousin, and Germain Pilon far more +suavely than the school of Fontainebleau did the change from that of +Tours to Poussin. Cousin, though the monument of Admiral Chabot is a +truly marvellous work, witnessing a practical sculptor's hand, is really +to be classed among painters. And Germain Pilon's compromise with +Italian decorativeness, graceful and fertile sculptor as his many works +show him to have been, resulted in a lack of personal force that has +caused him to be thought on the one hand "seriously injured by the +bastard sentiment proper to the school of Fontainebleau," as Mrs. +Pattison somewhat sternly remarks, and on the other to be reprehended by +Germain Brice in 1718, for evincing _quelque reste du goût +gothique_--some reminiscence of Gothic taste. Jean Goujon is really the +first modern French sculptor. + + +II + +He remains, too, one of the very finest, even in a competition +constantly growing more exacting since his day. He had a very particular +talent, and it was exhibited in manifold ways. He is as fine in relief +as in the round. His decorative quality is as eminent as his purely +sculptural side. Compared with his Italian contemporaries he is at once +full of feeling and severe. He has nothing of Pilon's chameleon-like +imitativeness. He does not, on the other hand, break with the traditions +of the best models known to him--and, undoubtedly he knew the best. His +works cover and line the Louvre, and anyone who visits Paris may get a +perfect conception of his genius--certainly anyone who in addition +visits Rouen and beholds the lovely tracery of his earliest sculpture on +the portal of St. Maclou. He was eminently the sculptor of an educated +class, and appealed to a cultivated appreciation. Coming as he did at +the acme of the French Renaissance, when France was borrowing with +intelligent selection whatever it considered valuable from Italy, he +pleased the dilettanti. There is something distinctly "swell" in his +work. He does not perhaps express any overmastering personal feeling, +nor does he stamp the impress of French national character on his work +with any particular emphasis. He is too well-bred and too cultivated, he +has too much _aplomb_. But his works show both more personal feeling and +more national character than the works of his contemporaries elsewhere. +For line he has a very intimate instinct, and of mass, in the sculptor's +as well as the painter's sense, he has a native comprehension. Compare +his "Diana" of the Louvre with Cellini's in the adjoining room from the +point of view of pure sculpture. Goujon's group is superb in every way. +Cellini's figure is tormented and distorted by an impulse of decadent +though decorative æstheticism. Goujon's caryatides and figures of the +Innocents Fountain are equally sculptural in their way--by no means +arabesques, as is so much of Renaissance relief, and the modern relief +that imitates it. Everything in fine that Goujon did is unified with the +rest of his work and identifiable by the mark of style. + + +III + +What do we mean by style? Something, at all events, very different from +manner, in spite of Mr. Hamerton's insistence upon the contrary. Is the +quality in virtue of which--as Mr. Dobson paraphrases Gautier-- + + "The bust outlives the throne, + The coin Tiberius" + +the specific personality of the artist who carved the bust or chiselled +the coin that have thus outlived all personality connected with them? +Not that personality is not of the essence of enduring art. It is, on +the contrary, the condition of any vital art whatever. But what gives +the object, once personally conceived and expressed, its currency, its +universality, its eternal interest--speaking to strangers with familiar +vividness, and to posterity as to contemporaries--is something aside +from its personal feeling. And it is this something and not specific +personality that style is. Style is the invisible wind through whose +influence "the lion on the flag" of the Persian poet "moves and +marches." The lion of personality may be painted never so deftly, with +never so much expression, individual feeling, picturesqueness, energy, +charm; it will not move and march save through the rhythmic, waving +influence of style. + +Nor is style necessarily the grand style, as Arnold seems to imply, in +calling it "a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain +condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say in such a +manner as to add dignity and distinction to it." Perhaps the most +explicit examples of pure style owe their production to spiritual +coolness; and, in any event, the word "peculiar" in a definition begs +the question. Buffon is at once juster and more definite in saying: +"Style is nothing other than the order and movement which we put into +our thoughts." It is singular that this simple and lucid utterance of +Buffon should have been so little noticed by those who have written in +English on style. In general English writers have apparently +misconceived, in very curious fashion, Buffon's other remark, "le style +c'est l'homme;" by which aphorism Buffon merely meant that a man's +individual manner depends on his temperament, his character, and which +he, of course, was very far from suspecting would ever be taken for a +definition. + +Following Buffon's idea of "order and movement," we may say, perhaps, +that style results from the preservation in every part of some sense of +the form of the whole. It implies a sense of relations as well as of +statement. It is not mere expression of a thought in a manner peculiar +to the artist (in words, color, marble, what not), but it is such +expression penetrated with both reminiscence and anticipation. It is, +indeed, on the contrary, very nearly the reverse of what we mean by +expression, which is mainly a matter of personal energy. Style means +correctness, precision, that feeling for the _ensemble_ on which an +inharmonious detail jars. Expression results from a sense of the value +of the detail. If Walt Whitman, for example, were what his admirers' +defective sense of style fancies him, he would be expressive. If French +academic art had as little expression as its censors assert, it would +still illustrate style--the quality which modifies the native and +apposite form of the concrete individual thing with reference to what +has preceded and what is to follow it; the quality, in a word, whose +effort is to harmonize the object with its environment. When this +environment is heightened, and universal instead of logical and +particular, we have the "grand style;" but we have the grand style +generally in poetry, and to be sure of style at all prose--such prose as +Goujon's, which in no wise emulates Michael Angelo's poetry--may +justifiably neglect in some degree the specific personality that tends +to make it poetic and individual. + + +IV + +After Goujon, Clodion is the great name in French sculpture, until we +come to Houdon, who may almost be assigned to the nineteenth century. +There were throughout the eighteenth century honorable artists, +sculptors of distinction beyond contest. But sculpture is such an +abstract art itself that the sculpture which partook of the +artificiality of the eighteenth century has less interest for us, less +that is concrete and appealing than even the painting of the epoch. It +derived its canons and its practice from Puget--the French Bernini, who +with less grace and less dilettante extravagance than his Italian +exemplar had more force and solidity. With less cleverness, less +charm--for Bernini, spite of the disesteem in which his juxtaposition to +Michael Angelo and his apparent unconsciousness of the attitude such +juxtaposition should have imposed upon him, cause him to be held, has a +great deal of charm and is extraordinarily clever--he is more sincere, +more thorough-going, more respectable. Coysevox is chiefly Puget +exaggerated, and his pupil, Coustou, who comes down to nearly the middle +of the eighteenth century, contributed nothing to French sculptural +tradition. + +But Clodion is a distinct break. He is as different from Coysevox and +Coustou as Watteau is from Lebrun. He is the essence of what we mean by +Louis Quinze. His work is clever beyond characterization. It has in +perfection what sculptors mean by color--that is to say a certain warmth +of feeling, a certain _insouciance_, a brave carelessness for +sculpturesque traditions, a free play of fancy, both in the conception +and execution of his subjects. Like the Louis Quinze painters, he has +his thoughtless, irresponsible, involuntary side, and like them--like +the best of them, that is to say, like Watteau--he is never quite as +good as he could be. He seems not so much concerned at expressing his +ideal as at pleasing, and pleasing people of too frivolous an +appreciation to call forth what is best in him. He devoted himself +almost altogether to terra-cotta, which is equivalent to saying that the +exquisite and not the impressive was his aim. Thoroughly classic, so far +as the avoidance of everything naturalistic is concerned, he is yet as +little severe and correct as the painters of his day. He spent nine +years in Rome, but though enamoured in the most sympathetic degree of +the antique, it was the statuettes and figurines, the gay and social, +the elegant and decorative side of antique sculpture that exclusively he +delighted in. His work is Tanagra Gallicized. It is not the group of +"The Deluge," or the "Entry of the French into Munich," or "Hercules in +Repose," for which he was esteemed by contemporaries or is prized by +posterity. He is admirable where he is inimitable--that is to say, in +the delightful decoration of which he was so prodigal. It is not in his +compositions essaying what is usually meant by sculptural effect, but in +his vases, clocks, pendants, volutes, little reliefs of nymphs riding +dolphins over favoring breakers and amid hospitable foam, his toilettes +of Venus, his façade ornamentations, his applied sculpture, in a word, +that his true talent lies. After him it is natural that we should have a +reversion to quasi-severity and imitation of the antique--just as David +succeeded to the Louis Quinze pictorial riot--and that the French +contemporaries of Canova and Thorwaldsen, those literal, though +enthusiastic illustrators of Winckelmann's theories, should be Pradier +and Etex and the so-called Greek school. Pradier's Greek inspiration has +something Swiss about it, one may say--he was a Genevan--though his +figures were simple and largely treated. He had a keen sense for the +feminine element--the _ewig Weibliche_--and expressed it plastically +with a zest approaching gusto. Yet his statues are women rather than +statues, and, more than that, are handsome rather than beautiful. Etex, +it is to be feared, will be chiefly remembered as the unfortunately +successful rival of Rude in the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile decoration. + + +V + +Having in each case more or less relation with, but really wholly +outside of and superior to all "schools" whatever--except the school of +nature, which permits as much freedom as it exacts fidelity--is the +succession of the greatest of French sculptors since the Renaissance and +down to the present day: Houdon, David d'Angers, Rude, Carpeaux, and +Barye. Houdon is one of the finest examples of the union of vigor with +grace. He will be known chiefly as a portraitist, but such a masterpiece +as his "Diana" shows how admirable he was in the sphere of purely +imaginative theme and treatment. Classic, and even conventionally +classic as it is, both in subject and in the way the subject is +handled--compared for example with M. Falguière's "Nymph Hunting," which +is simply a realistic Diana--it is designed and modelled with as much +personal freedom and feeling as if Houdon had been stimulated by the +ambition of novel accomplishment, instead of that of rendering with +truth and grace a time-honored and traditional sculptural motive. Its +treatment is beautifully educated and its effect refined, chaste, and +elevated in an extraordinary degree. No master ever steered so near the +reef of "clock-tops," one may say, and avoided it so surely and +triumphantly. The figure is light as air and wholly effortless at the +same time. There has rarely been such a distinguished success in +circumventing the great difficulty of sculpture--which is to rob marble +or metal of its specific gravity and make it appear light and buoyant, +just as the difficulty of the painter is to give weight and substance to +his fictions. But Houdon's admirable busts of Molière, Diderot, +Washington, Franklin, and Mirabeau, his unequalled statue of Voltaire in +the _foyer_ of the Français and his San Bruno in Santa Maria degli +Angeli at Rome are the works on which his fame will chiefly rest, and, +owing to their masterly combination of strength with style, rest +securely. + +To see the work of David d'Angers, one must go to Angers itself and to +Père-Lachaise. The Louvre is lamentably lacking in anything truly +representative of this most eminent of all portraitists in sculpture, I +think, not excepting even Houdon, if one may reckon the mass as well as +the excellence of his remarkable production and the way in which it +witnesses that portraiture is just what he was born to do. The +"Philopoemen" of the Louvre is a fine work, even impressively large and +simple. But it is the competent work of a member of a school and leaves +one a little cold. Its academic quality quite overshadows whatever +personal feeling one may by searching find in the severity of its +treatment and the way in which a classic motive has been followed out +naturally and genuinely instead of perfunctorily. It gives no intimation +of the faculty that produced the splendid gallery of medallions +accentuated by an occasional bust and statue, of David's celebrated +contemporaries and quasi-contemporaries in every field of distinction. +It is impossible to overestimate the interest and value, the truth and +the art of these. Whether the subject be intractable or not seems to +have made no difference to David. He invariably produced a work of art +at the same time that he expressed the character of its motive with +uncompromising fidelity. His portraits, moreover, are pure sculpture. +There is nothing of the cameo-cutter's art about them. They are modelled +not carved. The outline is no more important than it is in nature, so +far as it is employed to the end of identification. It is used +decoratively. There are surprising effects of fore-shortening, +exhibiting superb, and as it were unconscious ease in handling +relief--that most difficult of illusions in respect of having no law (at +least no law that it is worth the sculptor's while to try to discover) +of correspondence to reality. Forms and masses have a definition and a +firmness wholly remarkable in their independence of the usual low +relief's reliance on pictorial and purely linear design. They do not +blend picturesquely with the background, and do not depend on their +suggestiveness for their character. They are always realized, +executed--sculpture in a word whose suggestiveness, quite as potent as +that of feebler executants, begins only when actual representation has +been triumphantly achieved instead of impotently and skilfully avoided. + +Of Rude's genius one's first thought is of its robustness, its +originality. Everything he did is stamped with the impress of his +personality. At the same time it is equally evident that Rude's own +temperament took its color from the transitional epoch in which he +lived, and of which he was _par excellence_ the sculptor. He was the +true inheritor of his Burgundian traditions. His strongest side was that +which allies him with his artistic ancestor, Claux Sluters. But he +lived in an era of general culture and æstheticism, and all his +naturalistic tendencies were complicated with theory. He accepted the +antique not merely as a stimulus, but as a model. He was not only a +sculptor but a teacher, and the formulation of his didacticism +complicated considerably the free exercise of his expression. At the +last, as is perhaps natural, he reverted to precedent and formulary, and +in his "Hebe and the Eagle of Jupiter" and his "L'Amour Dominateur du +Monde," is more at variance than anywhere else with his native instinct, +which was, to cite the admirable phrase of M. de Fourcaud, _extérioriser +nos idées et nos âmes_. But throughout his life he halted a little +between two opinions--the current admiration of the classic, and his own +instinctive feeling for nature unsystematized and unsophisticated. His +"Jeanne d'Arc" is an instance. In spite of the violation of tradition, +which at the time it was thought to be, it seems to-day to our eyes to +err on the side of the conventional. It is surely intellectual, classic, +even factitious in conception as well as in execution. In some of its +accessories it is even modish. It illustrates not merely the abstract +turn of conceiving a subject which Rude always shared with the great +classicists of his art, but also the arbitrariness of treatment against +which he always protested. Without at all knowing it, he was in a very +intimate sense an eclectic in many of his works. He believed in forming +a complete mental conception of every composition before even posing a +model, as he used to tell his students, but in complicated compositions +this was impossible, and he had small talent for artificial composition. +Furthermore, he often distrusted--quite without reason, but after the +fatal manner of the rustic--his own intuitions. But one mentions these +qualifications of his genius and accomplishment only because both his +genius and accomplishment are so distinguished as to make one wish they +were more nearly perfect than they are. It is really idle to wish that +Rude had neglected the philosophy of his art, with which he was so much +occupied, and had devoted himself exclusively to treating sculptural +subjects in the manner of a nineteenth century successor of Sluters and +Anthoniet. He might have been a greater sculptor than he was, but he is +sufficiently great as he is. If his "Mercury" is an essay in +conventional sculpture, his "Petit Pêcheur" is frank and free sculptural +handling of natural material. His work at Lille and in Belgium, his +reclining figure of Cavaignac in the cemetery of Montmartre, his noble +figures of Gaspard Monge at Beaune, of Marshal Bertrand, and of Ney, are +all cast in the heroic mould, full of character, and in no wise +dependent on speculative theory. Few sculptors have displayed anything +like his variety and range, which extends, for example, from the +"Baptism of Christ" to a statue of "Louis XIII. enfant," and includes +portraits, groups, compositions in relief, and heroic statues. In all +his successful work one cannot fail to note the force and fire of the +man's personality, and perhaps what one thinks of chiefly in connection +with him is the misfortune which we owe to the vacillation of M. Thiers +of having but one instead of four groups by him on the piers of the Arc +de Triomphe de l'Étoile. Carpeaux used to say that he never passed the +"Chant du Départ" without taking off his hat. One can understand his +feeling. No one can have any appreciation of what sculpture is without +perceiving that this magnificent group easily and serenely takes its +rank among the masterpieces of sculpture of all time. It is, in the +first place, the incarnation of an abstraction, the spirit of patriotism +roused to the highest pitch of warlike intensity and self-sacrifice, and +in the second this abstract motive is expressed in the most elaborate +and comprehensive completeness--with a combined intricacy of detail and +singleness of effect which must be the despair of any but a master in +sculpture. + + +VI + +Carpeaux perhaps never did anything that quite equals the masterpiece of +his master Rude. But the essential quality of the "Chant du Départ" he +assimilated so absolutely and so naturally that he made it in a way his +own. He carried it farther, indeed. If he never rose to the grandeur of +this superb group, and he certainly did not, he nevertheless showed in +every one of his works that he was possessed by its inspiration even +more completely than was Rude himself. His passion was the +representation of life, the vital and vivifying force in its utmost +exuberance, and in its every variety, so far as his experience could +enable him to render it. He was infatuated with movement, with the +attestation in form of nervous energy, of the quick translation of +thought and emotion into interpreting attitude. His figures are, beyond +all others, so thoroughly alive as to seem conscious of the fact and joy +of pure existence. They are animated, one may almost say inspired, with +the delight of muscular activity, the sensation of exercising the +functions with which nature endows them. And accompanying this supreme +motive and effect is a delightful grace and winningness of which few +sculptors have the secret, and which suggest more than any one else +Clodion's decorative loveliness. An even greater charm of sprite-like, +fairy attractiveness, of caressing and bewitching fascination, a more +penetrating and seductive engagingness plays about Carpeaux's "Flora," I +think, than is characteristic even of Clodion's figures and reliefs. +Carpeaux is at all events nearer to us, and if he has not the classic +detachment of Clodion he substitutes for it a quality of closer +attachment and more intimate appeal. He is at his best perhaps in the +"Danse" of the Nouvel Opéra façade, wherein his elfin-like grace and +exuberant vitality animate a group carefully, and even classically +composed, exhibiting skill and restraint as well as movement and fancy. +Possibly his temperament gives itself too free a rein in the group of +the Luxembourg Gardens, in which he has been accused by his own admirers +of sacrificing taste to turbulence and securing expressiveness at the +expense of saner and more truly sculptural aims. But fancy the +Luxembourg Gardens without "The Four Quarters of the World supporting +the Earth." Parisian censure of his exuberance is very apt to display a +conventional standard of criticism in the critic rather than to +substantiate its charge. + +Barye's place in the history of art is more nearly unique, perhaps, than +that of any of the great artists. He was certainly one of the greatest +of sculptors, and he had either the good luck or the mischance to do +his work in a field almost wholly unexploited before him. He has in his +way no rivals, and in his way he is so admirable that the scope of his +work does not even hint at his exclusion from rivalry with the very +greatest of his predecessors. A perception of the truth of this apparent +paradox is the nearest one may come, I think, to the secret of his +excellence. No matter what you do, if you do it well enough, that is, +with enough elevation, enough spiritual distinction, enough +transmutation of the elementary necessity of technical perfection into +true significance--you succeed. And this is not the sense in which +motive in art is currently belittled. It is rather the suggestion of +Mrs. Browning's lines: + + "Better far + Pursue a frivolous trade by serious means + Than a sublime art frivolously." + +Nothing could be more misleading than to fancy Barye a kind of modern +Cellini. Less than any sculptor of modern times is he a decorative +artist. The small scale of his works is in great part due to his lack of +opportunity to produce larger ones. Nowadays one does what one can, even +the greatest artists; and Barye had no Lorenzo de'Medici for a patron, +but, instead, a frowning Institute, which confined him to such work as, +in the main, he did. He did it _con amore_ it need not be added, and +thus lifted it at once out of the customary category of such work. His +bronzes were never _articles de Paris_, and their excellence transcends +the function of teaching our sculptors and amateurs the lesson that +"household" is as dignified a province as monumental, art. His groups +are not essentially "clock-tops," and the work of perhaps the greatest +artist, in the line from Jean Goujon to Carpeaux can hardly be used to +point the moral that "clock-tops" ought to be good. Cellini's "Perseus" +is really more of a "parlor ornament" than Barye's smallest figure. + +Why is he so obviously great as well as so obviously extraordinary? one +constantly asks himself in the presence of his bronzes. Perhaps because +he expresses with such concreteness, such definiteness and vigor a +motive so purely an abstraction. The illustration in intimate +elaboration of elemental force, strength, passion, seems to have been +his aim, and in everyone of his wonderfully varied groups he attains it +superbly--not giving the beholder a symbol of it merely; in no degree +depending upon association or convention, but exhibiting its very +essence with a combined scientific explicitness and poetic energy to +which antique art alone, one may almost say, has furnished a parallel. +For this, fauna served him as well as the human figure, though, could +he have studied man with the facility which the Jardin des Plantes +afforded him of observing the lower animals, he might have used the +medium of the human figure more frequently than he did. When he did, he +was hardly less successful; and the four splendid groups that decorate +the Pavillons Denon and Richelieu of the Louvre are in the very front +rank of the heroic sculpture of the modern world. + + + + +V + + +ACADEMIC SCULPTURE + + +I + +From Barye to the Institute is a long way. Nothing could be more +interhostile than his sculpture and that of the professors at the École +des Beaux-Arts. And in considering the French sculpture of the present +day we may say that, aside from the great names already +mentioned--Houdon, David d'Angers, Rude, Carpeaux, and Barye--and apart +from the new movement represented by Rodin and Dalou, it is represented +by the Institute, and that the Institute has reverted to the Italian +inspiration. The influence of Canova and the example of Pradier and Etex +were not lasting. Indeed, Greek sculpture has perished so completely +that it sometimes seems to live only in its legend. With the modern +French school, the academic school, it is quite supplanted by the +sculpture of the Renaissance. And this is not unreasonable. The +Renaissance sculpture is modern; its masters did finely and perfectly +what since their time has been done imperfectly, but essentially its +artistic spirit is the modern artistic spirit, full of personality, +full of expression, careless of the type. Nowadays we patronize a little +the ideal. You may hear very intelligent critics in Paris--who in Paris +is not an intelligent critic?--speak disparagingly of the Greek want of +expression; of the lack of passion, of vivid interest, of significance +in a word, in Greek sculpture of the Periclean epoch. The conception of +absolute beauty having been discovered to be an abstraction, the +tradition of the purely ideal has gone with it. The caryatids of the +Erechtheum, the horsemen of the Parthenon frieze, the reliefs of the +Nike Apteros balustrade are admired certainly; but they are hardly +sympathetically admired; there is a tendency to relegate them to the +limbo of subjects for æsthetic lectures. And yet no one can have +carefully examined the brilliant productions of modern French sculpture +without being struck by this apparent paradox: that, whereas all its +canons are drawn from a study of the Renaissance, its chief +characteristic is, at bottom, a lack of expression, a carefulness for +the type. The explanation is this: in the course of time, which "at last +makes all things even," the individuality, the romanticism of the +Renaissance has itself become the type, is now itself become +"classical," and the modern attitude toward it, however sympathetic +compared with the modern attitude toward the antique, is to a noteworthy +degree factitious and artificial. And in art everything depends upon +the attitude of mind. It is this which prevents Ingres from being truly +Raphaelesque, and Pradier from being really classical. If, therefore, it +can justly be said of modern French sculpture that its sympathy for the +Renaissance sculpture obscures its vision of the ideal, it is clearly to +be charged with the same absence of individual significance with which +its thick-and-thin partisans reproach the antique. The circumstance +that, like the Renaissance sculpture, it deals far more largely in +pictorial expression than the antique does, is, if it deals in them +after the Renaissance fashion and not after a fashion of its own, quite +beside the essential fact. There is really nothing in common between an +academic French sculptor of the present day and an Italian sculptor of +the fifteenth century, except the possession of what is called the +modern spirit. But the modern spirit manifests itself in an enormous +gamut, and the differences of its manifestations are as great in their +way, and so far as our interest in them is concerned, as the difference +between their inspiration and the mediæval or the antique inspiration. + + +II + +Chapu, who died a year or two ago, is perhaps the only eminent sculptor +of the time whose inspiration is clearly the antique, and when I add +that his work appears to me for this reason none the less original, it +will be immediately perceived that I share imperfectly the French +objection to the antique. Indeed, nowadays to have the antique +inspiration is to be original _ex vi termini_; nothing is farther +removed from contemporary conventions. But this is true in a much more +integral sense. The pre-eminent fact of Greek sculpture, for example, +is, from one point of view, the directness with which it concerns itself +with the ideal--the slight temporary or personal element with which it +is alloyed. When one calls an artist or a work Greek, this is what is +really meant; it is the sense in which Raphael is Greek. Chapu is Greek +in this way, and thus individualized among his contemporaries, not only +by having a different inspiration from them, but by depending for his +interest on no convention fixed or fleeting and on no indirect support +of accentuated personal characteristics. Perhaps the antiquary of a +thousand years from now, to whom the traits which to us distinguish so +clearly the work of certain sculptors who seem to have nothing in +common will betray only their common inspiration, will be even less at a +loss than ourselves to find traces of a common origin in such apparently +different works as Chapu's "Mercury" and his "Jeunesse" of the Regnault +monument. He will by no means confound these with the classical +productions of M. Millet or M. Cavelier, we may be sure. And this, I +repeat, because their purely Greek spirit, the subordination in their +conception and execution of the personal element, the direct way in +which the sculptor looks at the ideal, the type, not only distinguish +them among contemporary works, which are so largely personal +expressions, but give them an eminent individuality as well. Like the +Greek sculpture, they are plainly the production of culture, which in +restraining wilfulness, however happily inspired, and imposing measure +and poise, nevertheless acutely stimulates and develops the faculties +themselves. The skeptic who may very plausibly inquire the distinction +between that vague entity, "the ideal," and the personal idea of the +artist concerned with it, can be shown this distinction better than it +can be expressed in words. He will appreciate it very readily, to return +to Chapu, by contrasting the "Jeanne d'Arc" at the Luxembourg Gallery +with such different treatment of the same theme as M. Bastien-Lepage's +picture, now in the New York Metropolitan Museum, illustrates. Contrary +to his almost invariable practice of neglecting even design in favor of +impersonal natural representation, Bastien-Lepage's "Jeanne d'Arc" is +the creature of wilful originality, a sort of embodied protest against +conventionalism in historical painting; she is the illustration of a +theory, she is this and that systematically and not spontaneously; the +predominance of the painter's personality is plain in every detail of +his creation. Chapu's "Maid" is the ideal, more or less perfectly +expressed; she is everybody's "Maid," more or less adequately embodied. +The statue is the antipodes of the conventional much more so, even, to +our modern sense, than that of Rude; it suggests no competition with +that at Versailles or the many other characterless conceptions that +abound. It is full of expression--arrested just before it ceases to be +suggestive; of individuality restrained on the hither side of +peculiarity. The "Maid" is hearing her "voices" as distinctly as +Bastien-Lepage's figure is, but the fact is not forced upon the sense, +but is rather disclosed to the mind with great delicacy and the dignity +becoming sculpture. No one could, of course, mistake this work for an +antique--an error that might possibly be made, supposing the conditions +favorable, in the case of Chapu's "Mercury;" but it presents, +nevertheless, an excellent illustration of a modern working naturally +and freely in the antique spirit. It is as affecting, as full of direct +appeal, as a modern work essays to be; but its appeal is to the sense of +beauty, to the imagination, and its effect is wrought in virtue of its +art and not of its reality. No, individuality is no more inconsistent +with the antique spirit than it is with eccentricity, with the +extravagances of personal expression. Is there more individuality in a +thirteenth-century grotesque than in the "Faun" of the Capitol? For +sculpture especially, art is eminently, as it has been termed, "the +discipline of genius," and it is only after the sculptor's genius has +submitted to the discipline of culture that it evinces an individuality +which really counts, which is really thrown out in relief on the +background of crude personality. And if there be no question of +perfection, but only of the artist's attitude, one has but to ask +himself the real meaning of the epithet Shakespearian to be assured of +the harmony between individuality and the most impersonal practice. + +Nevertheless, this attitude and this perfection, characteristic as they +are of Chapu's work, have their peril. When the quickening impulse, of +whose expression they are after all but conditions, fails, they suddenly +appear so misplaced as to render insignificant what would otherwise have +seemed "respectable" enough work. Everywhere else of great +distinction--even in the execution of so perfunctory a task as a +commission for a figure of "Mechanical Art" in the Tribunal de +Commerce--at the great Triennial Exposition of 1883 Chapu was simply +insignificant. There was never a more striking illustration of the +necessity of constant renewal of inspiration, of the constant danger of +lapse into the perfunctory and the hackneyed, which threatens an artist +of precisely Chapu's qualities. Another of equal eminence escapes this +peril; there is not the same interdependence of form and "content" to be +disturbed by failure in the latter; or, better still, the merits of form +are not so distinguished as to require imperatively a corresponding +excellence of intention. In fact, it is because of the exceptional +position that he occupies in deriving from the antique, instead of +showing the academic devotion to Renaissance romanticism which +characterizes the general movement of academic French sculpture, that in +any consideration of this sculpture Chapu's work makes a more vivid +impression than that of his contemporaries, and thus naturally takes a +foremost place. + + +III + +M. Paul Dubois, for example, in the characteristics just alluded to, +presents the greatest possible contrast to Chapu; but he will never, we +may be sure, give us a work that could be called insignificant. His +work will always express himself, and his is a personality of very +positive idiosyncrasy. M. Dubois, indeed, is probably the strongest of +the Academic group of French sculptors of the day. The tomb of General +Lamoricière at Nantes has remained until recently one of the very finest +achievements of sculpture in modern times. There is in effect nothing +markedly superior in the Cathedral of St. Denis, which is a great deal +to say--much more, indeed, than the glories of the Italian Renaissance, +which lead us out of mere momentum to forget the French, permit one to +appreciate. Indeed, the sculpture of M. Dubois seems positively to have +but one defect, a defect which from one point of view is certainly a +quality, the defect of impeccability. It is at any rate impeccable; to +seek in it a blemish, or, within its own limitations, a distinct +shortcoming, is to lose one's pains. As workmanship, and workmanship of +the subtler kind, in which every detail of surface and structure is +perceived to have been intelligently felt (though rarely +enthusiastically rendered), it is not merely satisfactory, but visibly +and beautifully perfect. But in the category in which M. Dubois is to be +placed that is very little; it is always delightful, but it is not +especially complimentary to M. Dubois, to occupy one's self with it. On +the other hand, by impeccability is certainly not here meant the mere +success of expressing what one has to express--the impeccability of +Canova and his successors, for example. The difficulty is with M. +Dubois's ideal, with what he so perfectly expresses. In the last +analysis this is not his ideal more than ours. And this, indeed, is what +makes his work so flawless in our eyes, so impeccable. It seems as if of +what he attempts he attains the type itself; everyone must recognize its +justness. + +The reader will say at once here that I am cavilling at M. Dubois for +what I praised in Chapu. But let us distinguish. The two artists belong +to wholly different categories. Chapu's inspiration is the antique +spirit. M. Dubois, is, like all academic French sculptors, except Chapu +indeed, absolutely and integrally a romanticist, completely enamoured of +the Renaissance. The two are so distinct as to be contradictory. The +moment M. Dubois gives us the _type_ in a "Florentine Minstrel," to the +exclusion of the personal and the particular, he fails in +imaginativeness and falls back on the conventional. The _type_ of a +"Florentine Minstrel" is infallibly a convention. M. Dubois, not being +occupied directly with the ideal, is bound to carry his subject and its +idiosyncrasies much farther than the observer could have foreseen. To +rest content with expressing gracefully and powerfully the notion common +to all connoisseurs is to fall short of what one justly exacts of the +romantic artist. Indeed, in exchange for this one would accept very +faulty work in this category with resignation. Whatever we may say or +think, however we may admire or approve, in romantic art the quality +that charms, that fascinates, is not adequacy but unexpectedness. In +addition to the understanding, the instinct demands satisfaction. The +virtues of "Charity" and "Faith" and the ideas of "Military Courage" and +"Meditation" could not be more adequately illustrated than by the +figures which guard the solemn dignity of General Lamoricière's sleep. +There is a certain force, a breadth of view in the general conception, +something in the way in which the sculptor has taken his task, closely +allied to real grandeur. The confident and even careless dependence upon +the unaided value of its motive, making hardly any appeal to the fancy +on the one hand, and seeking no poignant effect on the other, endues the +work with the poise and purity of effortless strength. It conveys to the +mind a clear impression of manliness, of qualities morally refreshing. + +But such work educates us so inexorably, teaches us to be so exacting! +After enjoying it to its and our utmost, we demand still something else, +something more moving, more stirring, something more directly appealing +to our impulse and instinct. Even in his free and charming little "St. +John Baptist" of the Luxembourg, and his admirable bust of Baudry one +feels like asking for more freedom still, for more "swing." Dubois +certainly is the last artist who needs to be on his guard against +"letting himself go." Why is it that in varying so agreeably Renaissance +themes--compare the "Military Courage" and Michael Angelo's "Pensiero," +or the "Charity" and the same group in Della Quercia's fountain at +Sienna--it is restraint, rather than audacity, that governs him? Is it +caution or perversity? In a word, imaginativeness is what permanently +interests and attaches, the imaginativeness to which in sculpture the +ordinary conventions of form are mere conditions, and the ordinary +conventions of idea mere material. One can hardly apply generalities of +the kind to M. Dubois without saying too much, but it is nevertheless +true that one may illustrate the grand style and yet fail of being +intimately and acutely sympathetic; and M. Dubois, to whose largeness of +treatment and nobility of conception no one will deny something truly +suggestive of the grand style, does thus fail. It is not that he does +not possess charm, and charm in no mean proportion to his largeness and +nobility, but for the elevation of these into the realm of magic, into +the upper air of spontaneous spiritual activity, his imagination has, +for the romantic imagination which it is, a trifle too much +self-possession--too much sanity, if one chooses. He has the ambitions, +the faculties, of a lyric poet, and he gives us too frequently +recitative. + + +IV + +It is agreeable in many ways to turn from the rounded and complete +impeccability of M. Dubois to the fancy of M. Saint-Marceaux. More than +any of his rivals, M. Saint-Marceaux possesses the charm of +unexpectedness. He is not perhaps to be called an original genius, and +his work will probably leave French sculpture very nearly where it found +it. Indeed, one readily perceives that he is not free from the trammels +of contemporary convention. But how easily he wears them, and if no +"severe pains and birth-throes" accompany the evolution of his +conceptions, how graceful these conceptions are! They are perhaps of the +Canova family; the "Harlequin," for instance, which has had such a +prodigious success, is essentially Milanese sculpture; essentially even +the "Genius Guarding the Secret of the Tomb" is a fantastic rather than +an original work. But how the manner, the treatment, triumphs over the +Canova insipidity! It is not only Milanese sculpture better done, the +execution beautifully sapient and truthful instead of cheaply imitative, +the idea broadly enforced by the details instead of frittered away among +them; it is Milanese sculpture essentially elevated and dignified. +Loosely speaking, the mere _article de vertu_ becomes a true work of +art. And this transformation, or rather this development of a germ of +not too great intrinsic importance, is brought about in the work of +Saint-Marceaux by the presence of an element utterly foreign to the +Canova sculpture and its succession--the element of character. If to the +clever workmanship of the Italians he merely opposed workmanship of a +superior kind as well as quality--thoroughly artistic workmanship, that +is to say--his sculpture would be far less interesting than it is. He +does, indeed, noticeably do this; there is a felicity entirely +delightful, almost magical, in every detail of his work. But when one +compares it with the sculpture of M. Dubois, it is not of this that one +thinks so much as of a certain individual character with which M. +Saint-Marceaux always contrives to endue it. This is not always in its +nature sculptural, it must be admitted, and it approaches perhaps too +near the character of _genre_ to have the enduring interest that purely +sculptural qualities possess. But it is always individual, piquant, and +charming, and in it consists M. Saint-Marceaux's claim upon us as an +artist. No one else, even given his powers of workmanship, that is to +say as perfectly equipped as he, could have treated so thoroughly +conventional a _genre_ subject as the "Harlequin" as he has treated it. +The mask is certainly one of the stock properties of the subject, but +notice how it is used to confer upon the whole work a character of +mysterious witchery. It is as a whole, if you choose, an _article de +Paris_, with the distinction of being seriously treated; the modelling +and the movement admirable as far as they go, but well within the bounds +of that anatomically artistic expression which is the _raison d'être_ of +sculpture and its choice of the human form as its material. But the +character saves it from this category; what one may almost call its +psychological interest redeems its superficial triviality. + +M. Saint-Marceaux is always successful in this way. One has only to look +at the eyes of his figures to be convinced how subtle is his art of +expressing character. Here he swings quite clear of all convention and +manifests his genius positively and directly. The unfathomable secret of +the tomb is in the spiritual expression of the guarding genius, and the +elaborately complex movement concentrated upon the urn and directly +inspired by the ephebes of the Sistine ceiling is a mere blind. The same +is true of the portrait heads which within his range M. Saint Marceaux +does better than almost anyone. M. Renan's "Confessions" hardly convey +as distinct a notion of character as his bust exhibited at the Triennial +of 1883. Many of the sculptors' anonymous heads, so to speak, are +hardly less remarkable. Long after the sharp edge of one's interest in +the striking pose of his "Harlequin" and the fine movement and bizarre +features of his "Genius" has worn away, their curious spiritual +interest, the individual _cachet_ of their character, will sustain them. +And so integrally true is this of all the productions of M. +Saint-Marceaux's talent, that it is quite as perceptible in works where +it is not accentuated and emphasized as it is in those of which I have +been speaking; it is a quality that will bear refining, that is even +better indeed in its more subtle manifestations. The figure of the +Luxembourg Gallery, the young Dante reading Virgil, is an example; a +girl's head, the forehead swathed in a turban, first exhibited some +years ago, is another. The charm of these is more penetrating, though +they are by no means either as popular or as "important" works as the +"Genius of the Tomb" or the "Harlequin." In the time to come M. +Saint-Marceaux will probably rely more and more on their quality of +grave and yet alert distinction, and less on striking and eccentric +variations of themes from Michael Angelo like the "Genius," and +illustrations like the "Harlequin" of the artistic potentialities of the +Canova sculpture. + +With considerably less force than M. Dubois and decidedly less piquancy +than M. Saint-Marceaux, M. Antonin Mercié has perhaps greater +refinement than either. His outline is a trifle softer, his sentiment +more gracious, more suave. His work is difficult to characterize +satisfactorily, and the fact may of course proceed from its lack of +force, as well as from the well-understood difficulty of translating +into epithets anything so essentially elusive as suavity and grace of +form. At one epoch in any examination of academic French sculpture that +of M. Mercié seems the most interesting; it is so free from exaggeration +of any kind on the one hand, it realizes its idea so satisfactorily on +the other, and this idea is so agreeable, so refined, and at the same +time so dignified. The "David" is an early work now in the Luxembourg +gallery, reproductions of which are very popular, and the reader may +judge how well it justifies these remarks. Being an early work, one +cannot perhaps insist on its originality; in France, a young sculptor +must be original at his peril; his education is so complete, he must +have known and studied the beauties of classic sculpture so thoroughly, +that not to be impressed by them so profoundly as to display his +appreciativeness in his first work is apt to argue a certain +insensitiveness. And every one cannot have creative genius. What a +number of admirable works we should be compelled to forego if creative +genius were demanded of an artist of the present day when the best +minds of the time are occupied with other things than art! One is apt to +forget that in our day the minds that correspond with the artistic +miracles of the Renaissance are absorbed in quite different departments +of effort. M. Mercié's "David" would perhaps never have existed but for +Donatello's. As far as plastic motive is concerned, it may without +injustice be called a variant of that admirable creation, and from every +point of view except that of dramatic grace it is markedly inferior to +its inspiration; as an embodiment of triumphant youth, of the divine +ease with which mere force is overcome, it has only a superficial +resemblance to the original. + +But if with M. Mercié "David" was simply a classic theme to be treated, +which is exactly what it of course was not with Donatello, it is +undeniable that he has expressed himself very distinctly in his +treatment. A less sensitive artist would have vulgarized instead of +merely varying the conception, whereas one can easily see in M. Mercié's +handling of it the ease, science, and felicitous movement that have +since expressed themselves more markedly, more positively, but hardly +more unmistakably, in the sculptor's maturer works. Of these the chief +is perhaps the "Gloria Victis," which now decorates the Square +Montholon; and its identity of authorship with the "David" is apparent +in spite of its structural complexity and its far greater importance +both in subject and execution. Its subject is the most inspiring that a +French sculptor since the events of 1870-71 (so lightly considered by +those who only see the theatric side of French character) could treat. +Its general interest, too, is hardly inferior; there is something +generally ennobling in the celebration of the virtues of the brave +defeated that surpasses the commonplace of pæans. M. Mercié was, in this +sense, more fortunate than the sculptor to whom the Berlinese owe the +bronze commemoration of their victory. Perhaps to call his treatment +entirely worthy of the theme, is to forget the import of such works as +the tombs of the Medici Chapel at Florence. There is a region into whose +precincts the dramatic quality penetrates only to play an insufficient +part. But in modern art to do more than merely to keep such truths in +mind, to insist on satisfactory plastic illustrations of them, is not +only to prepare disappointment for one's self, but to risk misjudging +admirable and elevated effort; and to regret the fact that France had +only M. Mercié and not Michael Angelo to celebrate her "Gloria Victis" +is to commit both of these errors. After all, the subjects are +different, and the events of 1870-71 had compensations for France which +the downfall of Florentine liberty was without; so that, indeed, a note +of unmixed melancholy, however lofty its strain, would have been a +discord which M. Mercié has certainly avoided. He has avoided it in +rather a marked way, it is true. His monument is dramatic and stirring +rather than inwardly moving. It is rhetorical rather than truly poetic; +and the admirable quality of its rhetoric, its complete freedom from +vulgar or sentimental alloy--its immense superiority to Anglo-Saxon +rhetoric, in fine--does not conceal the truth that it is rhetoric, that +it is prose and not poetry after all. Mercié's "Gloria Victis" is very +fine; I know nothing so fine in modern sculpture outside of France. But +then there is not very much that is fine at all in modern sculpture +outside of France; and modern French sculpture, and M. Mercié along with +it as one of its most eminent ornaments, have made it impossible to +speak of them in a relative way. The antique and the Renaissance +sculpture alone furnish their fit association, and like the Renaissance +and the antique sculpture they demand a positive and absolute, and not a +comparative criticism. + + +V + +Well, then, speaking thus absolutely and positively, the cardinal defect +of the Institute sculpture--and the refined and distinguished work of M. +Mercié better perhaps than almost any other assists us to see this--is +its over-carefulness for style. This is indeed the explanation of what I +mentioned at the outset as the chief characteristic of this sculpture, +the academic inelasticity, namely, with which it essays to reproduce the +Renaissance romanticism. But for the fondness for style integral in the +French mind and character, it would perceive the contradiction between +this romanticism and any canons except such as are purely intuitive and +indefinable. In comparison with the Renaissance sculptors, the French +academic sculptors of the present day are certainly too exclusive +devotees of Buffon's "order and movement," and too little occupied with +the thought itself--too little individual. In comparison with the +antique, this is less apparent, but I fancy not less real. We are so +accustomed to think of the antique as the pure and simple embodiment of +style, as a sublimation, so to speak of the individual into style +itself, that in this respect we are scarcely fair judges of the antique. +In any case we know very little of it; we can hardly speak of it except +by periods. But it is plain that the Greek is so superior to any +subsequent sculpture in this one respect of style that we rarely think +of its other qualities. Our judgment is inevitably a comparative one, +and inevitably a comparative judgment fixes our attention on the Greek +supremacy of style. Indeed, in looking at the antique the thought +itself is often alien to us, and the order and movement, being more +nearly universal perhaps, are all that occupy us. A family tombstone +lying in the cemetery at Athens, and half buried in the dust which blows +from the Piræus roadway, has more style than M. Mercié's "Quand-Même" +group for Belfort, which has been the subject of innumerable encomiums, +and which has only style and no individuality whatever to commend it. +And the Athenian tombstone was probably furnished to order by the +marble-cutting artist of the period, corresponding to those whose signs +one sees at the entrances of our own large cemeteries. Still we may be +sure that the ordinary Athenian citizen who adjudged prizes between +Æschylus and Sophocles, and to whom Pericles addressed the oration which +only exceptional culture nowadays thoroughly appreciates, found plenty +of individuality in the decoration of the Parthenon, and was perfectly +conscious of the difference between Phidias and his pupils. Even now, if +one takes the pains to think of it, the difference between such works as +the so-called "Genius" of the Vatican and the Athenian marbles, or +between the Niobe group at Florence and the Venus torso at Naples, for +example, seems markedly individual enough, though the element of style +is still to our eyes the most prominent quality in each. Indeed, if one +really reflects upon the subject, it will not seem exaggeration to say +that to anyone who has studied both with any thoroughness it would be +more difficult to individualize the mass of modern French sculpture than +even that of the best Greek epoch--the epoch when style was most +perfect, when its reign was, as it sometimes appears to us, most +absolute. And if we consider the Renaissance sculpture, its complexity +is so great, its individuality is so pronounced, that one is apt to lose +sight of the important part which style really plays in it. In a work by +Donatello we see first of all his thought; in a Madonna of Mino's it is +the idea that charms us; the Delia Robbia frieze at Pistoja is pure +_genre_. + +But modern academic French sculpture feels the weight of De Musset's +handicap--it is born too late into a world too old. French art in +general feels this, I think, and painting suffers from it equally with +sculpture. Culture, the Institute, oppress individuality. But whereas +Corot and Millet have triumphed over the Institute there are--there +were, at least, till yesterday--hardly any Millets and Corots of +sculpture whose triumph is as yet assured. The tendency, the weight of +authority, the verdict of criticism, always conservative in France, are +all the other way. At the École des Beaux-Arts one learns, negatively, +not to be ridiculous. This is a great deal; it is more than can be +learned anywhere else nowadays--witness German, Italian, above all +English exhibitions. Positively one learns the importance of style; and +if it were not for academic French sculpture, one would say that this +was something the importance of which could not be exaggerated. But in +academic French sculpture it is exaggerated, and, what is fatal, one +learns to exaggerate it in the schools. The traditions of Houdon are +noticeably forgotten. Not that Houdon's art is not eminently +characterized by style; the "San Bruno" at Rome is in point of style an +antique. But compare his "Voltaire" in the foyer of the Comédie +Française with Chapu's "Berryer" of the Palais de Justice, to take one +of the very finest portrait-statues of the present day. Chapu's statue +is more than irreproachable, it is elevated and noble, it is in the +grand style; but it is plain that its impressiveness is due to the fact +that the subject is conceived as the Orator in general and handled with +almost a single eye to style. The personal interest that accentuates +every detail of the "Voltaire"--the physiognomy, the pose, the right +hand, are marvellously characteristic--simply is not sought for in +Chapu's work. Of this quality there is more in Houdon's bust of Molière, +whom of course Houdon never saw, than in almost any production of the +modern school. Chapu's works, and such exceptions as the heads of Baudry +and Renan already mentioned, apart, one perceives that the modern +school has made too many statues of the République, too many "Ledas" and +"Susannahs" and "Quand-Mêmes" and "Gloria Victis." And its penchant for +Renaissance canons only emphasizes the absolute commonplace of many of +these. + +On the other hand, if Houdon's felicitous harmony of style and +individual force are forgotten, there is hardly any recognized +succession to the imaginative freedom, the _verve_, the triumphant +personal fertility of Rude and Carpeaux. At least, such as there is has +not preserved the dignity and in many instances scarcely the decorum of +those splendid artists. Much of the sculpture which figures at the +yearly Salons is, to be sure, the absolute negation of style; its main +characteristic is indeed eccentricity; its main virtues, sincerity +(which in art, of course, is only a very elementary virtue) and good +modelling (which in sculpture is equally elementary). Occasionally in +the midst of this display of fantasticality there is a work of promise +or even of positive interest. The observer who has not a weak side for +the graceful conceits, invariably daintily presented and beautifully +modelled, of M. Moreau-Vauthier for example, must be hard to please; +they are of the very essence of the _article de Paris_, and only +abnormal primness can refuse to recognize the truth that the _article +de Paris_ has its art side. M. Moreau-Vauthier is not perhaps a modern +Cellini; he has certainly never produced anything that could be classed +with the "Perseus" of the Loggia de' Lanzi, or even with the +Fontainebleau "Diana;" but he does more than anyone else to keep alive +the tradition of Florentine preciosity, and about everything he does +there is something delightful. + +Still the fantastic has not made much headway in the Institute, and it +is so foreign to the French genius, which never tolerates it after it +has ceased to be novel, that it probably never will. It is a great +tribute to French "catholicity of mind and largeness of temper" that +Carpeaux's "La Danse" remains in its position on the façade of the Grand +Opéra. French sentiment regarding it was doubtless accurately expressed +by the fanatic who tried to ink it indelibly after it was first exposed. +This vandal was right from his point of view--the point of view of +style. Almost the one work of absolute spontaneity among the hundreds +which without and within decorate M. Garnier's edifice, it is thus a +distinct jar in the general harmony; it distinctly mars the "order and +movement" of M. Garnier's thought, which is fundamentally opposed to +spontaneity. But imagine the devotion to style of a _milieu_ in which a +person who would throw ink on a confessedly fine work of art is +actuated by an impersonal dislike of incongruity! Dislike of the +incongruous is almost a French passion, and, like all qualities, it has +its defect, the defect of tolerating the conventional. It is through +this tolerance, for example, that one of the freest of French critics of +art, a true Voltairian, Stendhal, was led actually to find Guido's ideal +of beauty higher than Raphael's, and to miss entirely the grandeur of +Tintoretto. Critical opinion in France has not changed radically since +Stendhal's day. + + +VI + +The French sculptor may draw his inspiration from the sources of +originality itself, his audience will measure the result by conventions. +It is this fact undoubtedly that is largely responsible for the +over-carefulness for style already remarked. Hence the work of M. +Aimé-Millet and of Professors Guillaume and Cavelier, and the fact that +they are professors. Hence also the election of M. Falguière to succeed +to the chair of the Beaux-Arts left vacant by the death of Jouffroy some +years ago. All of these have done admirable work. Professor Guillaume's +Gracchi group at the Luxembourg is alone enough to atone for a mass of +productions of which the "Castalian Fount" of a recent Salon is the +cold and correct representative. Cavalier's "Gluck," destined for the +Opéra, is spirited, even if a trifle galvanic. Millet's "Apollo," which +crowns the main gable of the Opéra, stands out among its author's other +works as a miracle of grace and rhythmic movement. M. Falguière's +admirers, and they are numerous, will object to the association here +made. Falguière's range has always been a wide one, and everything he +has done has undoubtedly merited a generous portion of the prodigious +encomiums it has invariably obtained. Yet, estimating it in any other +way than by energy, variety, and mass, it is impossible to praise it +highly with precision. It is too plainly the work of an artist who can +do one thing as well as another, and of which cleverness is, after all, +the spiritual standard. Bartholdi, who also should not be forgotten in +any sketch of French sculpture, would, I am sure, have acquitted himself +more satisfactorily than Falguière did in the colossal groups of the +Trocadéro and the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile. To acquit himself +satisfactorily is Bartholdi's specialty. These two groups are the +largest and most important that a sculptor can have to do. The crowning +of the Arc de Triomphe at least was a splendid opportunity. Neither of +them had any distinction of outline, of mass, of relation, or of idea. +Both were conventional to the last degree. That on the Arc had even its +ludicrous details, such as occur only from artistic absent-mindedness in +a work conceived and executed in a fatigued and hackneyed spirit. The +"Saint Vincent de Paul" of the Panthéon, which justly passes for the +sculptor's _chef-d'oeuvre_ is in idea a work of large humanity. M. +Falguière is behind no one in ability to conceive a subject of this kind +with propriety, and his subject here is inspiring if ever a subject was. +The "Petit Martyr" of the Luxembourg has a real charm, but it too is +content with too little, as one finds out in seeing it often; and it is +in no sense a large work, scarcely larger than the tiresomely popular +"Running Boy" of the same museum, which nevertheless in its day marked +an epoch in modelling. Indeed, so slight is the spiritual hold that M. +Falguière has on one, that it really seems as if he were at his best in +such a frankly carnal production as his since variously modified "Nymph +Hunting" of the Triennial Exposition of 1883. The idea is nothing or +next to nothing, but the surface _faire_ is superb. + +M. Barrias, M. Delaplanche, and M. Le Feuvre have each of them quite as +much spontaneity as M. Falguière, though the work of neither is as +important in mass and variety. M. Delaplanche is always satisfactory, +and beyond this there is something large about what he does that confers +dignity even in the absence of quick interest. His proportions are +simple, his outline flowing, and the agreeable ease of his compositions +makes up to a degree for any lack of sympathetic sentiment or impressive +significance: witness his excellent "Maternal Instruction," of the +little park in front of Sainte Clothilde. M. Le Feuvre's qualities are +very nearly the reverse of these: he has a fondness for integrity quite +hostile in his case to simplicity. In his very frank appeal to one's +susceptibility he is a little careless of sculptural considerations, +which he is prone to sacrifice to pictorial ends. The result is a +mannerism that in the end ceases to impress, and even becomes +disagreeable. As nearly as may be in a French sculptor it borders on +sentimentality, and finally the swaying attitudes of his figures become +limp, and the startled-fawn eyes of his maidens and youths appear less +touching than lackadaisical. But his being himself too conscious of it +should not obscure the fact that he has a way of his own. M. Barrias is +an artist of considerably greater powers than either M. Le Feuvre or M. +Delaplanche; but one has a vague perception that his powers are limited, +and that to desire in his case what one so sincerely wishes in the case +of M. Dubois, namely, that he would "let himself go," would be unwise. +Happily, when he is at his best there is no temptation to form such a +wish. The "Premières Funérailles" is a superb work--"the chef-d'oeuvre +of our modern sculpture," a French critic enthusiastically terms it. It +is hardly that; it has hardly enough spiritual distinction--not quite +enough of either elegance or elevation--to merit such sweeping praise. +But it may be justly termed, I think, the most completely representative +of the masterpieces of that sculpture. Its triumph over the prodigious +difficulties of elaborate composition "in the round"--difficulties to +which M. Barrias succumbed in the "Spartacus" of the Tuileries +Gardens--and its success in subordinating the details of a group to the +end of enforcing a single motive, preserving the while their individual +interest, are complete. Nothing superior in this respect has been done +since John of Bologna's "Rape of the Sabines." + + +VII + +M. Emmanuel Frémiet occupies a place by himself. There have been but two +modern sculptors who have shown an equally pronounced genius for +representing animals--namely, Barye, of course, and Barye's clever but +not great pupil, Cain. The tigress in the Central Park, perhaps the best +bronze there (the competition is not exacting), and the best also of the +several variations of the theme of which, at one time, the sculptor +apparently could not tire, familiarizes Americans with the talent of +Cain. In this association Rouillard, whose horse in the Trocadéro +Gardens is an animated and elegant work, ought to be mentioned, but it +is hardly as good as the neighboring elephant of Frémiet as mere animal +representation (the _genre_ exists and has excellences and defects of +its own), while in more purely artistic worth it is quite eclipsed by +its rival. Still if _fauna_ is interesting in and of itself, which no +one who knows Barye's work would controvert, it is still more +interesting when, to put it brutally, something is done with it. In his +ambitious and colossal work at the Trocadéro, M. Frémiet does in fact +use his _fauna_ freely as artistic material, though at first sight it is +its zoölogical interest that appears paramount. The same is true of the +elephant near by, in which it seems as if he had designedly attacked the +difficult problem of rendering embodied awkwardness decorative. Still +more conspicuous, of course, is the artistic interest, the fancy, the +humor, the sportive grace of his Luxembourg group of a young satyr +feeding honey to a brace of bear's cubs, because he here concerns +himself more directly with his idea and gives his genius freer play. And +everyone will remember the sensation caused by his impressively +repulsive "Gorilla Carrying off a Woman." But it is when he leaves this +kind of thing entirely, and, wholly forgetful of his studies at the +Jardin des Plantes, devotes himself to purely monumental work, that he +is at his best. And in saying this I do not at all mean to insist on the +superiority of monumental sculpture to the sculpture of _fauna_; it is +superior, and Barye himself cannot make one content with the exclusive +consecration of admirable talent to picturesque anatomy illustrating +distinctly unintellectual passions. M. Frémiet, in ecstasy over his +picturesque anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes, would scout this; but it +is nevertheless true that in such works as the "Âge de la pierre," +which, if it may be called a monumental clock-top, is nevertheless +certainly monumental; his "Louis d'Orléans," in the quadrangle of the +restored Château de Pierrefonds; his "Jeanne d'Arc" (the later statue is +not, I think, essentially different from the earlier one); and his +"Torch-bearer" of the Middle Ages, in the new Hôtel de Ville of Paris, +not only is his subject a subject of loftier and more enduring interest +than his elephants and deer and bears, but his own genius finds a more +congenial medium of expression. In other words, any one who has seen his +"Torch-bearer" or his "Louis d'Orléans" must conclude that M. Frémiet is +losing his time at the Jardin des Plantes. In monumental works of the +sort he displays a commanding dignity that borders closely upon the +grand style itself. The "Jeanne d'Arc" is indeed criticised for lack of +style. The horse is fine, as always with M. Frémiet; the action of both +horse and rider is noble, and the homogeneity of the two, so to speak, +is admirably achieved. But the character of the Maid is not perfectly +satisfactory to _à priori_ critics, to critics who have more or less +hard and fast notions about the immiscibility of the heroic and the +familiar. The "Jeanne d'Arc" is of course a heroic statue, illustrating +one of the most puissant of profane legends; and it is unquestionably +familiar and, if one chooses, defiantly unpretentious. Perhaps the Maid +as M. Frémiet represents her could never have accomplished +legend-producing deeds. Certainly she is the Maid neither of Chapu, nor +of Bastien-Lepage, nor of the current convention. She is, rather, +pretty, sympathetically childlike, _mignonne_; but M. Frémiet's +conception is an original and a gracious one, and even the critic +addicted to formulæ has only to forget its title to become thoroughly in +love with it; beside this merit _à priori_ shortcomings count very +little. But the other two works just mentioned are open to no objection +of this kind or of any other, and in the category to which they belong +they are splendid works. Since Donatello and Verrocchio nothing of the +kind has been done which surpasses them; and it is only M. Frémiet's +penchant for animal sculpture, and his fondness for exercising his +lighter fancy in comparatively trivial _objets de vertu_, that obscure +in any degree his fine talent for illustrating the grand style with +natural ease and large simplicity. + + +VIII + +I have already mentioned the most representative among those who have +"arrived" of the school of academic French sculpture as it exists +to-day, though it would be easy to extend the list with Antonin Carlès, +whose "Jeunesse" of the World's Fair of 1889 is a very graceful +embodiment of adolescence; Suchetet, whose "Byblis" of the same +exhibition caused his early death to be deplored; Adrien Gaudez, +Etcheto, Idrac, and, of course, many others of distinction. There is no +looseness in characterizing this as a "school;" it has its own qualities +and its corresponding defects. It stands by itself--apart from the Greek +sculpture and from its inspiration, the Renaissance, and from the more +recent traditions of Houdon, or of Rude and Carpeaux. It is a thoroughly +legitimate and unaffected expression of national thought and feeling at +the present time, at once splendid and simple. The moment of triumph in +any intellectual movement is, however, always a dangerous one. A +slack-water period of intellectual slothfulness nearly always ensues. +Ideas which have previously been struggling to get a hearing have +become accepted ideas that have almost the force of axioms; no one +thinks of their justification, of their basis in real truth and fact; +they take their place in the great category of conventions. The mind +feels no longer the exhilaration of discovery, the stimulus of fresh +perception; the sense becomes jaded, enthusiasm impossible. Dealing with +the same material and guided by the same principles, its production +becomes inevitably hackneyed, artificial, lifeless; the _Zeit-Geist_, +the Time-Spirit, is really a kind of Sisyphus, and the essence of life +is movement. This law of perpetual renewal, of the periodical quickening +of the human spirit, explains the barrenness of the inheritance of the +greatest men; shows why originality is a necessary element of +perfection; why Phidias, Praxiteles, Donatello, Michael Angelo (not to +go outside of our subject), had no successors. Once a thing is done it +is done for all time, and the study of perfection itself avails only as +a stimulus to perfection in other combinations. In fact, the more nearly +perfect the model the greater the necessity for an absolute break with +it in order to secure anything like an equivalent in living force; in +_its_ direction at least everything vital has been done. So its lack of +original force, its over-carefulness for style, its inevitable +sensitiveness to the criticism that is based on convention, make the +weak side of the French academic sculpture of the present day, fine and +triumphant as it is. That the national thought and feeling are not a +little conventional, and have the academic rather than a spontaneous +inspiration, has, however, lately been distinctly felt as a misfortune +and a limitation by a few sculptors whose work may be called the +beginning of a new movement out of which, whatever may be its own +limitations, nothing but good can come to French sculpture and of which +the protagonists are Auguste Rodin and Jules Dalou. + + + + +VI + + +THE NEW MOVEMENT IN SCULPTURE + + +I + +Side by side with the academic current in French art has moved of recent +years a naturalist and romantic impulse whose manifestations have been +always vigorous though occasionally exaggerated. In any of the great +departments of activity nationally pursued--as art has been pursued in +France since Francis I.--there are always these rival currents, of which +now one and now the other constantly affects the ebb and flow of the +tide of thought and feeling. The classic and romantic duel of 1830, the +rise of the naturalist opposition to Hugo and romanticism in our own +day, are familiar instances of this phenomenon in literature. The revolt +of Géricault and Delacroix against David and Ingres are equally well +known in the field of painting. Of recent years the foundation of the +periodical _L'Art_ and its rivalry with the conservative _Gazette des +Beaux Arts_ mark with the same definiteness, and an articulate +precision, the same conflict between truth, as new eyes see it, and +tradition. Never, perhaps, since the early Renaissance, however, has +nature asserted her supremacy over convention in such unmistakable, such +insistent, and, one may say, I think, such intolerant fashion as she is +doing at the present moment. Sculpture, in virtue of the defiant +palpability of its material, is the most impalpable of the plastic arts, +and therefore it feels less quickly than the rest, perhaps, the impress +of the influences of the epoch and their classifying canons. Natural +imitation shows first in sculpture, and subsists in it longest. But +convention once its conqueror, the return to nature is here most tardy, +because, owing to the impalpable, the elusive quality of sculpture, +though natural standards may everywhere else be in vogue, no one thinks +of applying them to so specialized an expression. Its variation depends +therefore more completely on the individual artist himself. Niccolò +Pisano, for example, died when Giotto was two years old, but, at the +other end of the historic line of modern art, it has taken years since +Delacroix to furnish recognition for Auguste Rodin. The stronghold of +the Institute had been mined many times by revolutionary painters before +Dalou took the grand medal of the Salon. + +Owing to the relative and in fact polemic position which these two +artists occupy, the movement which they represent, and of which as yet +they themselves form a chief part, a little obscures their respective +personalities, which are nevertheless, in sculpture, by far the most +positive and puissant of the present epoch. M. Rodin's work, especially, +is so novel that one's first impression in its presence is of its +implied criticism of the Institute. One thinks first of its attitude, +its point of view, its end, aim, and means, and of the utter contrast of +these with those of the accepted contemporary masters in his art--of +Dubois and Chapu, Mercié and Saint-Marceaux. One judges generally, and +instinctively avoids personal and direct impressions. The first thought +is not, Are the "Saint Jean" and the "Bourgeois de Calais" successful +works of art? But, _Can_ they be successful if the accepted masterpieces +of modern sculpture are not to be set down as insipid? One is a little +bewildered. It is easy to see and to estimate the admirable traits and +the shortcomings of M. Dubois's delightful and impressive reminiscences +of the Renaissance, of M. Mercié's refined and graceful compositions. +They are of their time and place. They embody, in distinguished manner +and in an accentuated degree, the general inspiration. Their spiritual +characteristics are traditional and universal, and technically, without +perhaps often passing beyond it, they exhaust cleverness. You may enjoy +or resent their classic and exemplary excellences, as you feel your +taste to have suffered from the lack or the superabundance of academic +influences; I cannot fancy an American insensitive to their charm. But +it is plain that their perfection is a very different thing from the +characteristics of a strenuous artistic personality seeking expression. +If these latter when encountered are seen to be evidently of an +extremely high order, contemporary criticism, at all events, should feel +at once the wisdom of beginning with the endeavor to appreciate, instead +of making the degree of its own familiarity with them the test of their +merit. + +French æsthetic authority, which did this in the instances of Barye, of +Delacroix, of Millet, of Manet, of Puvis de Chavannes, did it also for +many years in the instance of M. Rodin. It owes its defeat in the +contest with him--for like the recalcitrants in the other contests, M. +Rodin has definitively triumphed--to the unwise attempt to define him in +terms heretofore applicable enough to sculptors, but wholly inapplicable +to him. It failed to see that the thing to define in his work was the +man himself, his temperament, his genius. Taken by themselves and +considered as characteristics of the Institute sculptors, the obvious +traits of this work might, that is to say, be adjudged eccentric and +empty. Fancy Professor Guillaume suddenly subordinating academic +disposition of line and mass to true structural expression! One would +simply feel the loss of his accustomed style and harmony. With M. Rodin, +who deals with nature directly, through the immediate force of his own +powerful temperament, to feel the absence of the Institute training and +traditions is absurd. The question in his case is simply whether or no +he is a great artistic personality, an extraordinary and powerful +temperament, or whether he is merely a turbulent and capricious +protestant against the measure and taste of the Institute. But this is +really no longer a question, however it may have been a few years ago; +and when his Dante portal for the new Palais des Arts Décoratifs shall +have been finished, and the public had an opportunity to see what the +sculptor's friend and only serious rival, M. Dalou, calls "one of the +most, if not the most original and astonishing pieces of sculpture of +the nineteenth century," it will be recognized that M. Rodin, so far +from being amenable to the current canon, has brought the canon itself +to judgment. + +How and why, people will perceive in proportion to their receptivity. +Candor and intelligence will suffice to appreciate that the secret of M. +Rodin's art is structural expression, and that it is this and not any +superficial eccentricity of execution that definitely distinguishes him +from the Institute. Just as his imagination, his temperament, his +spiritual energy and ardor individualize the positive originality of his +motive, so the expressiveness of his treatment sets him aside from all +as well as from each of the Institute sculptors in what may be broadly +called technical attitude. No sculptor has ever carried expression +further. The sculpture of the present day has certainly not occupied +itself much with it. The Institute is perhaps a little afraid of it. It +abhors the _baroque_ rightly enough, but very likely it fails to see +that the expression of such sculpture as M. Rodin's no more resembles +the contortions of the Dresden Museum giants than it does the composure +of M. Delaplanche. The _baroque_ is only violent instead of placid +commonplace, and is as conventional as any professor of sculpture could +desire. Expression means individual character completely exhibited +rather than conventionally suggested. It is certainly not too much to +say that in the sculpture of the present day the sense of individual +character is conveyed mainly by convention. The physiognomy has usurped +the place of the physique, the gesture of the form, the pose of the +substance. And face, gesture, form are, when they are not brutally +naturalistic and so not art at all, not individual and native, but +typical and classic. Very much of the best modern sculpture might really +have been treated like those antique figurines of which the bodies were +made by wholesale, being supplied with individual heads when the time +came for using them. + +This has been measurably true since the disappearance of the classic +dress and the concealment of the body by modern costume. The nudes of +the early Renaissance, in painting still more than in sculpture, are +differentiated by the faces. The rest of the figure is generally +conventionalized as thoroughly as the face itself is in Byzantine and +the hands in Giottesque painting. Giotto could draw admirably, it need +not be said. He did draw as well as the contemporary feeling for the +human figure demanded. When the Renaissance reached its climax and the +study of the antique led artists to look beneath drapery and interest +themselves in the form, expression made an immense step forward. Color +was indeed almost lost sight of in the new interest, not to reappear +till the Venetians. But owing to the lack of visible nudity, to the lack +of the classic gymnasia, to the concealments of modern attire, the +knowledge of and interest in the form remained, within certain limits, +an esoteric affair. The general feeling, even where, as in the Italy of +the _quattro_ and _cinque centi_, everyone was a connoisseur, did not +hold the artist to expression in his anatomy as the general Greek +feeling did. Everyone was a connoisseur of art alone, not of nature as +well. Consequently, in spite of such an enthusiastic genius as +Donatello, who probably more than any other modern has most nearly +approached the Greeks--not in spiritual attitude, for he was eminently +of his time, but in his attitude toward nature--the human form in art +has for the most part remained, not conventionalized as in the Byzantine +and Gothic times, but thoroughly conventional. Michael Angelo himself +certainly may be charged with lending the immense weight of his majestic +genius to perpetuate the conventional. It is not his distortion of +nature, as pre-Raphaelite limitedness glibly asserts, but his +carelessness of her prodigious potentialities, that marks one side of +his colossal accomplishment. Just as the lover of architecture as +architecture will protest that Michael Angelo's was meretricious, +however inspiring, so M. Rodin declares his sculpture unsatisfactory, +however poetically impressive. "He used to do a little anatomy +evenings," he said to me, "and used his chisel next day without a model. +He repeats endlessly his one type--the youth of the Sistine ceiling. Any +particular felicity of expression you are apt to find him borrowing from +Donatello--such as, for instance, the movement of the arm of the +'David,' which is borrowed from Donatello's 'St. John Baptist.'" Most +people to whom Michael Angelo's creations appear celestial in their +majesty at once and in their winningness would deny this. But it is +worth citing both because M. Rodin strikes so many crude apprehensions +as a French Michael Angelo, whereas he is so radically removed from him +in point of view and in practice that the unquestionable spiritual +analogy between them is rather like that between kindred spirits working +in different arts, and because, also, it shows not only what M. Rodin is +not, but what he is. The grandiose does not run away with him. His +imagination is occupied largely in following out nature's suggestions. +His sentiment does not so drench and saturate his work as to float it +bodily out of the realm of natural into that of supernal beauty, there +to crystallize in decorative and puissant visions appearing out of the +void and only superficially related to their corresponding natural +forms. Standing before the Medicean tombs the modern susceptibility +receives perhaps the most poignant, one may almost say the most +intolerable, impression to be obtained from any plastic work by the hand +of man; but it is a totally different impression from that left by the +sculptures of the Parthenon pediments, not only because the sentiment is +wholly different, but because in the great Florentine's work it is so +overwhelming as wholly to dominate purely natural expression, natural +character, natural beauty. In the Medici Chapel the soul is exalted; in +the British Museum the mind is enraptured. The object itself seems to +disappear in the one case, and to reveal itself in the other. + +I do not mean to compare M. Rodin with the Greeks--from whom in +sentiment and imagination he is, of course, as totally removed as what +is intensely modern must be from the antique--any more than I mean to +contrast him with Michael Angelo, except for the purposes of clearer +understanding of his general æsthetic attitude. Association of anything +contemporary with what is classic, and especially with what is greatest +in the classic, is always a perilous proceeding. Very little time is apt +to play havoc with such classification. I mean only to indicate that the +resemblance to Michael Angelo, found by so many persons in such works as +the Dante doors, is only of the loosest kind--as one might, through +their common lusciousness, compare peaches with pomegranates--and that +to the discerning eye, or the eye at all experienced in observing +sculpture, M. Rodin's sculpture is far more closely related to that of +Donatello and the Greeks. It, too, reveals rather than constructs +beauty, and by the expression of character rather than by the suggestion +of sentiment. + +An illustration of M. Rodin's affinity with the antique is an incident +which he related to me of his work upon his superb "Âge d'Airain." He +was in Naples; he saw nature in freer inadvertence than she allows +elsewhere; he had the best of models. Under these favoring circumstances +he spent three months on a leg of his statue; "which is equivalent to +saying that I had at last absolutely mastered it," said he. One day in +the Museo Nazionale he noticed in an antique the result of all his study +and research. Nature, in other words, is M. Rodin's _material_ in the +same special sense in which it was the antique material, and in which, +since Michael Angelo and the high Renaissance, it has been for the most +part only the sculptor's _means_. It need not be said that the +personality of the artist may be as strenuous in the one case as in the +other; unless, indeed, we maintain, as perhaps we may, that +individuality is more apt to atrophy in the latter instance; for as one +gets farther and farther away from nature he is in more danger from +conventionality than from caprice. And this is in fact what has happened +since the high Renaissance, the long line of conventionalities being +continued, sometimes punctuated here and there as by Clodion or Houdon, +David, Rude, or Barye, sometimes rising into great dignity and +refinement of style and intelligence, as in the contemporary sculpture +of the Institute, but in general almost purely decorative or +sentimental, and, so far as natural expression is concerned, confining +itself to psychological rather than physical character. + +What is it, for instance, that distinguishes a group like M. Dubois's +"Charity" from the _genre_ sentiment or incident of some German or +Italian "professor?" Qualities of style, of refined taste, of elegance, +of true intelligence. Its artistic interest is purely decorative and +sentimental. Really what its average admirer sees in it is the same +moral appeal that delights the simple admirers of German or Italian +treatment of a similar theme. It is simply infinitely higher bred. Its +character is developed no further. Its significance as form is not +insisted on. The parts are not impressively differentiated, and their +mysterious mutual relations and correspondences are not dwelt on. The +physical character, with its beauties, its salient traits of every kind, +appealing so strongly to the sculptor to whom nature appears plastic as +well as suggestive, is wholly neglected in favor of the psychological +suggestion. And the individual character, the _cachet_ of the whole, the +artistic essence and _ensemble_, that is to say, M. Dubois has, after +the manner of most modern sculpture, conveyed in a language of +convention, which since the time of the Siennese fountain, at all +events, has been classical. + +The literary artist does not proceed in this way. He does not content +himself with telling us, for example, that one of his characters is a +good man or a bad man, an able, a selfish, a tall, a blonde, or a stupid +man, as the case may be. He takes every means to express his character, +and to do it, according to M. Taine's definition of a work of art, more +completely than it appears in nature. He recognizes its complexity and +enforces the sense of reality by a thousand expedients of what one may +almost call contrasting masses, derivative movements, and balancing +planes. He distinguishes every possible detail that plays any structural +part, and, in short, instead of giving us the mere symbol of the +Sunday-school books, shows us a concrete organism at once characteristic +and complex. Judged with this strictness, which in literary art is +elementary, how much of the best modern sculpture is abstract, symbolic, +purely typical. What insipid fragments most of the really eminent +Institute statues would make were their heads knocked off by some band +of modern barbarian invaders. In the event of such an irruption, would +there be any torsos left from which future Poussins could learn all they +should know of the human form? Would there be any _disjecta membra_ from +which skilled anatomists could reconstruct the lost _ensemble_, or at +any rate make a shrewd guess at it? Would anything survive mutilation +with the serene confidence in its fragmentary but everywhere penetrating +interest which seems to pervade the most fractured fraction of a Greek +relief on the Athenian acropolis? Yes, there would be the débris of +Auguste Rodin's sculpture. + +In our day the human figure has never been so well understood. Back of +such expressive modelling as we note in the "Saint Jean," in the "Adam" +and "Eve," in the "Calaisiens," in a dozen figures of the Dante doors, +is a knowledge of anatomy such as even in the purely scientific +profession of surgery can proceed only from an immense fondness for +nature, an insatiable curiosity as to her secrets, an inexhaustible +delight in her manifestations. From the point of view of such knowledge +and such handling of it, it is no wonder that the representations of +nature which issue from the Institute seem superficial. One can +understand that from this point of view very delightful sculpture, very +refined, very graceful, very perfectly understood within its limits, may +appear like _baudruche_--inflated gold-beater's skin, that is to say, of +which toy animals are made in France, and which has thus passed into +studio _argot_ as the figure for whatever lacks structure and substance. +Ask M. Rodin the explanation of a movement, an attitude, in one of his +works which strikes your convention-steeped sense as strange, and he +will account for it just as an anatomical demonstrator would--pointing +out its necessary derivation from some disposition of another part of +the figure, and not at all dwelling on its grace or its other purely +decorative felicity. Its artistic function in his eyes is to aid in +expressing fully and completely the whole of which it forms a part, not +to constitute a harmonious detail merely agreeable to the easily +satisfied eye. But then the whole will look anatomical rather than +artistic. There is the point exactly. Will it? I remember speculating +about this in conversation with M. Rodin himself. "Isn't there danger," +I said, "of getting too fond of nature, of dissecting with so much +enthusiasm that the pleasure of discovery may obscure one's feeling for +pure beauty, of losing the artistic in the purely scientific interest, +of becoming pedantic, of imitating rather than constructing, of missing +art in avoiding the artificial?" I had some difficulty in making myself +understood; this perpetual see-saw of nature and art which enshrouds +æsthetic dialectics as in a Scotch mist seems curiously factitious to +the truly imaginative mind. But I shall always remember his reply, when +he finally made me out, as one of the finest severings conceivable of a +Gordian knot of this kind. "Oh, yes," said he; "there is, no doubt, such +a danger for a mediocre artist." + +M. Rodin is, whatever one may think of him, certainly not a mediocre +artist. The instinct of self-preservation may incline the Institute to +assert that he obtrudes his anatomy. But prejudice itself can blind no +one of intelligence to his immense imaginative power, to his poetic +"possession." His work precisely illustrates what I take to have been, +at the best epochs, the relations of nature to such art as is loosely +to be called imitative art--what assuredly were those relations in the +mind of the Greek artist. Nature supplies the parts and suggests their +cardinal relations. Insufficient study of her leaves these superficial +and insipid. Inartistic absorption in her leaves them lifeless. The +imagination which has itself conceived the whole, the idea, fuses them +in its own heat into a new creation which is "imitative" only in the +sense that its elements are not inventions. The art of sculpture has +retraced its steps far enough to make pure invention, as of Gothic +griffins and Romanesque symbology, unsatisfactory to everyone. But, save +in M. Rodin's sculpture, it has not fully renewed the old alliance with +nature on the old terms--Donatello's terms; the terms which exact the +most tribute from nature, which insist on her according her completest +significance, her closest secrets, her faculty of expressing character +as well as of suggesting sentiment. Very beautiful works are produced +without her aid to this extent. We may be sure of this without asking M. +Rodin to admit it. He would not do his own work so well were he prepared +to; as Millet pointed out when asked to write a criticism of some other +painter's canvas, in estimating the production of his fellows an artist +is inevitably handicapped by the feeling that he would have done it very +differently himself. It is easy not to share M. Rodin's gloomy +vaticinations as to French sculpture based on the continued triumph of +the Institute style and suavity. The Institute sculpture is too good for +anyone not himself engaged in the struggle to avoid being impressed +chiefly by its qualities to the neglect of its defects. At the same time +it is clear that no art can long survive in undiminished vigor that does +not from time to time renew its vitality by resteeping itself in the +influences of nature. And so M. Rodin's service to French sculpture +becomes, at the present moment, especially signal and salutary because +French sculpture, however refined and delightful, shows, just now, very +plainly the tendency toward the conventional which has always proved so +dangerous, and because M. Rodin's work is a conspicuous, a shining +example of the return to nature on the part not of a mere realist, +naturalist, or other variety of "mediocre artist," but of a profoundly +poetic and imaginative temperament. + +This is why, one immediately perceives in studying his works, Rodin's +treatment, while exhausting every contributary detail to the end of +complete expression, is never permitted to fritter away its energy +either in the mystifications of optical illusion, or in the infantine +idealization of what is essentially subordinate and ancillary. This is +why he devotes three months to the study of a leg, for example--not to +copy, but to "possess" it. Indeed, no sculptor of our time has made such +a sincere and, in general, successful, effort to sink the sense of the +material in the conception, the actual object in the artistic idea. One +loses all sense of bronze or marble, as the case may be, not only +because the artistic significance is so overmastering that one is +exclusively occupied in apprehending it, but because there are none of +those superficial graces, those felicities of surface modelling, which, +however they may delight, infallibly distract as well. Such excellences +have assuredly their place. When the motive is conventional or otherwise +insipid, or even when its character is distinctly light without being +trivial, they are legitimately enough agreeable. And because, in our +day, sculptural motives have generally been of this order we have become +accustomed to look for such excellences, and, very justly, to miss them +when they are absent. Grace of pose, suavity of outline, pleasing +disposition of mass, smooth, round deltoids and osseous articulations, +and perpetually changing planes of flesh and free play of muscular +movement, are excellences which, in the best of academic French +sculpture, are sensuously delightful in a high degree. But they +invariably rivet our attention on the successful way in which the +sculptor has used his bronze or marble to decorative ends, and when they +are accentuated so as to dominate the idea they invariably enfeeble its +expression. With M. Rodin one does not think of his material at all; one +does not reflect whether he used it well or ill, caused it to lose +weight and immobility to the eye or not, because all his superficial +modelling appears as an inevitable deduction from the way in which he +has conceived his larger subject, and not as "handling" at all. In +reality, of course, it is the acme of sensitive handling. The point is a +nice one. His practice is a dangerous one. It would be fatal to a less +strenuous temperament. To leave, in a manner and so far as obvious +insistence on it goes, "handling" to take care of itself, is to incur +the peril of careless, clumsy, and even brutal, modelling, which, so far +from dissembling its existence behind the prominence of the idea, really +emphasizes itself unduly because of its imperfect and undeveloped +character. Detail that is neglected really acquires a greater prominence +than detail that is carried too far, because it is sensuously +disagreeable. But when an artist like M. Rodin conceives his spiritual +subject so largely and with so much intensity that mere sensuous +agreeableness seems too insignificant to him even to be treated with +contempt, he treats his detail solely with reference to its centripetal +and organic value, which immediately becomes immensely enhanced, and the +detail itself, dropping thus into its proper place, takes on a beauty +wholly transcending the ordinary agreeable aspect of sculptural detail. +And the _ensemble_, of course, is in this way enforced as it can be in +no other, and we get an idea of Victor Hugo or St. John Baptist so +powerfully and yet so subtly suggested, that the abstraction seems +actually all that we see in looking at the concrete bust or statue. +Objections to M. Rodin's "handling" as eccentric or capricious, appear +to the sympathetic beholder of one of his majestic works the very acme +of misappreciation, and their real excuse--which is, as I have said, the +fact that such "handling" is as unfamiliar as the motives it +accompanies--singularly poor and feeble. + +As for the common nature of these motives, the character of the +personality which appears in their varied presentments, it is almost +idle to speak in the absence of the work itself, so eloquent is this at +once and so untranslatable. But it may be said approximately that M. +Rodin's temperament is in the first place deeply romantic. Everything +the Institute likes repels him. He has the poetic conception of art and +its mission, and in poetry any authoritative and codifying consensus +seems to him paradoxical. Style, in his view, unless it is something +wholly uncharacterizable, is a vague and impalpable spirit breathing +through the work of some strongly marked individuality, or else it is +formalism. He delights in the fantasticality of the Gothic. The west +façade of Rouen inspires him more than all the formulæ of Palladian +proportions. He detests systematization. He reads Shakespeare, Schiller, +Dante almost exclusively. He sees visions and dreams dreams. The awful +in the natural forces, moral and material, seems his element. He +believes in freedom, in the absolute emancipation of every faculty. As +for study, study nature. If then you fail in restraint and measure you +are a "mediocre artist," whom no artificial system devised to secure +measure and restraint could have rescued from essential insignificance. +No poet or landscape painter ever delighted more in the infinitely +varied suggestiveness and exuberance of nature, or ever felt the +formality of much that passes for art as more chill and drear. Hence in +all his works we have the sense, first of all, of an overmastering +sincerity; then of a prodigious wealth of fancy; then of a marvellous +acquaintance with his material. His imagination has all the vivacity and +tumultuousness of Rubens's, but its images, if not better understood, +which would perhaps be impossible, are more compact and their evolution +more orderly. And they are furthermore one and all vivified by a wholly +remarkable feeling for beauty. In spite of all his knowledge of the +external world, no artist of our time is more completely mastered by +sentiment. In the very circumstance of being free from such conventions +as the cameo relief, the picturesque costume details, the goldsmith's +work characteristic of the Renaissance, now so much in vogue, M. Rodin's +things acquire a certain largeness and loftiness as well as simplicity +and sincerity of sentiment. The same model posed for the "Saint Jean" +that posed for a dozen things turned out of the academic studios, but +compared with the result in the latter cases, that in the former is even +more remarkable for sentiment than for its structural sapience and +general physical interest. How perfectly insignificant beside its moral +impressiveness are the graceful works whose sentiment does not result +from the expression of the form, but is conveyed in some convention of +pose, of gesture, of physiognomy! It is like the contrast between a +great and a graceful actor. The one interests you by his intelligent +mastery of convention, by the tact and taste with which he employs in +voice, carriage, facial expression, gesture, diction, the several +conventions according to which ideas and emotions are habitually +conveyed to your comprehension. Salvini, Coquelin, Got, pass immediately +outside the realm of conventions. Their language, their medium of +communication, is as new as what it expresses. They are inventive as +well as intelligent. Their effect is prodigiously heightened because in +this way, the warp as well as the woof of their art being expressive and +original, the artistic result is greatly fortified. Given the same +model, M. Rodin's result is in like manner expressly and originally +enforced far beyond the result toward which the academic French school +employs the labels of the Renaissance as conventionally as its +predecessor at the beginning of the century employed those of the +antique. "Formerly we used to do Greek," says M. Rodin, with no small +justice; "now we do Italian. That is all the difference there is." And I +cannot better conclude this imperfect notice of the work of a great +master, in characterizing which such epithets as majestic, Miltonic, +grandiose suggest themselves first of all, than by calling attention to +the range which it covers, and to the fact that, even into the domain +which one would have called consecrate to the imitators of the antique +and the Renaissance, M. Rodin's informing sentiment and sense of beauty +penetrate with their habitual distinction; and that the little child's +head entitled "Alsace," that considerable portion of his work +represented by "The Wave and the Shore," for example, and a small ideal +female figure, which the manufacturer might covet for reproduction, but +which, as Bastien-Lepage said to me, is "a definition of the essence of +art," are really as noble as his more majestic works are beautiful. + + +II + +Aubé is another sculptor of acknowledged eminence who ranges himself +with M. Rodin in his opposition to the Institute. His figures of +"Bailly" and "Dante" are very fine, full of a most impressive dignity in +the _ensemble_, and marked by the most vigorous kind of modelling. One +may easily like his "Gambetta" less. But for years Rodin's only eminent +fellow sculptor was Dalou. Perhaps his protestantism has been less +pronounced than M. Rodin's. It was certainly long more successful in +winning both the connoisseur and the public. The state itself, which is +now and then even more conservative than the Institute, has charged him +with important works, and the Salon has given him its highest medal. And +he was thus recognized long before M. Rodin's works had risen out of the +turmoil of critical contention to their present envied if not cordially +approved eminence. But for being less energetic, less absorbed, less +intense than M. Rodin's, M. Dalou's enthusiasm for nature involves a +scarcely less uncompromising dislike of convention. He had no success at +the École des Beaux Arts. Unlike Rodin, he entered those precincts and +worked long within them, but never sympathetically or felicitously. The +rigor of academic precept was from the first excessively distasteful to +his essentially and eminently romantic nature. He chafed incessantly. +The training doubtless stood him in good stead when he found himself +driven by hard necessity into commercial sculpture, into that class of +work which is on a very high plane for its kind in Paris, but for which +the manufacturer rather than the designer receives the credit. But he +probably felt no gratitude to it for this, persuaded that but for its +despotic prevalence there would have been a clearer field for his +spontaneous and agreeable effort to win distinction in. He greatly +preferred at this time the artistic anarchy of England, whither he +betook himself after the Commune--not altogether upon compulsion, but by +prudence perhaps; for like Rodin, his birth, his training, his +disposition, his ideas, have always been as liberal and popular in +politics as in art, and in France a man of any sincerity and dignity of +character has profound political convictions, even though his profession +be purely æsthetic. In England he was very successful both at the +Academy and with the amateurs of the aristocracy, of many of whom he +made portraits, besides finding ready purchasers among them for his +imaginative works. The list of these latter begins, if we except some +delightful decoration for one of the Champs-Élysées palaces, with a +statue called "La Brodeuse," which won for him a medal at the Salon of +1870. Since then his production has been prodigious in view of its +originality, of its lack of the powerful momentum extraneously supplied +to the productive force that follows convention and keeps in the beaten +track. + +His numerous peasant subjects at one time led to comparison of him with +Millet, but the likeness is of the most superficial kind. There is no +spiritual kinship whatever between him and Millet. Dalou models the +Marquis de Dreux-Brézé with as much zest as he does his "Boulonnaise +allaitant son enfant;" his touch is as sympathetic in his Rubens-like +"Silenus" as in his naturalistic "Berceuse." Furthermore, there is +absolutely no note of melancholy in his realism--which, at the present +time, is a point well worth noting. His vivacity excludes the pathetic. +Traces of Carpeaux's influence are plain in his way of conceiving such +subjects as Carpeaux would have handled. No one could have come so +closely into contact with that vigorous individuality without in some +degree undergoing its impress, without learning to look for the alert +and elegant aspects of his model, whatever it might be. But with +Carpeaux's distinction Dalou has more poise. He is considerably farther +away from the rococo. His ideal is equally to be summarized in the word +Life, but he cares more for its essence, so to speak, than for its +phenomena, or at all events manages to make it felt rather than seen. +One perceives that humanity interests him on the moral side, that he is +interested in its significance as well as its form. Accordingly with him +the movement illustrates the form, which is in its turn truly +expressive, whereas occasionally, so bitter was his disgust with the +pedantry of the schools, with Carpeaux the form is used to exhibit +movement. Then, too, M. Dalou has a certain nobility which Carpeaux's +vivacity is a shade too animated to reach. Motive and treatment blend in +a larger sweep. The graver substance follows the planes and lines of a +statelier if less brilliant style. It _has_, in a word, more style. + +I can find no exacter epithet, on the whole, for Dalou's large +distinction, and conscious yet sober freedom, than the word Venetian. +There is some subtle phrenotype that associates him with the great +colorists. His work is, in fact, full of color, if one may trench on the +jargon of the studios. It has the sumptuousness of Titian and Paul +Veronese. Its motives are cast in the same ample mould. Many of his +figures breathe the same air of high-born ease and well-being, of serene +and not too intellectual composure. There is an aristocratic tincture +even in his peasants--a kind of native distinction inseparable from his +touch. And in his women there is a certain gracious sweetness, a certain +exquisite and elusive refinement elsewhere caught only by Tintoretto, +but illustrated by Tintoretto with such penetrating intensity as to +leave perhaps the most nearly indelible impression that the sensitive +amateur carries away with him from Venice. The female figures in the +colossal group which should have been placed in the Place de la +République, but was relegated by official stupidity to the Place des +Nations, are examples of this patrician charm in carriage, in form, in +feature, in expression. They have not the witchery, the touch of +Bohemian sprightliness that make such figures as Carpeaux's "Flora" so +enchanting, but they are at once sweeter and more distinguished. The +sense for the exquisite which this betrays excludes all dross from M. +Dalou's rich magnificence. Even the "Silenus" group illustrates +exuberance without excess: I spoke of it just now as Rubens-like, but it +is only because it recalls Rubens's superb strength and riotous fancy; +it is in reality a Rubens-like motive purged in the execution of all +Flemish grossness. There is even in Dalou's fantasticality of this sort +a measure and distinction which temper animation into resemblance to +such delicate blitheness as is illustrated by the Bargello "Bacchus" of +Jacopo Sansovino. Sansovino afterward, by the way, amid the +artificiality of Venice, whither he went, wholly lost his individual +force, as M. Dalou, owing to his love of nature, is less likely to do. +But his sketch for a monument to Victor Hugo, and perhaps still more his +memorial of Delacroix in the Luxembourg Gardens, point warningly in this +direction, and it would perhaps be easier than he supposes to permit his +extraordinary decorative facility to lead him on to execute works +unpenetrated by personal feeling, and recalling less the acme of the +Renaissance than the period just afterward, when original effort had +exhausted itself and the movement of art was due mainly to +momentum--when, as in France at the present moment, the enormous mass of +artistic production really forced pedantry upon culture, and prevented +any but the most strenuous personalities from being genuine, because of +the immensely increased authoritativeness of what had become classic. + +Certainly M. Dalou is far more nearly in the current of contemporary art +than his friend Rodin, who stands with his master Barye rather defiantly +apart from the regular evolution of French sculpture, whereas one can +easily trace the derivation of M. Dalou and his relations to the present +and the immediate past of his art in his country. His work certainly has +its Fragonard, its Clodion, its Carpeaux side. Like every temperament +that is strongly attracted by the decorative as well as the significant +and the expressive, pure style in and for itself has its fascinations, +its temptations for him. Of course it does not succeed in getting the +complete possession of him that it has of the Institute. And there is, +as I have suggested, an important difference, disclosed in the fact that +M. Dalou uses his faculty for style in a personal rather than in the +conventional way. His decoration is distinctly Dalou, and not +arrangements after classic formulæ. It is full of zest, of ardor, of +audacity. So that if his work has what one may call its national side, +it is because the author's temperament is thoroughly national at bottom, +and not because this temperament is feeble or has been academically +repressed. But the manifest fitness with which it takes its place in the +category of French sculpture shows the moral difference between it and +the work of M. Rodin. Morally speaking, it is mainly--not altogether, +but mainly--rhetorical, whereas M. Rodin's is distinctly poetic. It is +delightful rhetoric and it has many poetic strains--such as the charm of +penetrating distinction I have mentioned. But with the passions in their +simplest and last analysis he hardly occupies himself at all. Such a +work as "La République," the magnificent bas-relief of the Hôtel de +Ville in Paris, is a triumph of allegorical rhetoric, very noble, not a +little moving, prodigious in its wealth of imaginative material, +composed from the centre and not arranged with artificial felicity, full +of suggestiveness, full of power, abounding in definite sculptural +qualities, both moral and technical; it again is Rubens-like in its +exuberance, but of firmer texture, more closely condensed. But anything +approaching the _kind_ of impressiveness of the Dante portal it +certainly does not essay. It is in quite a different sphere. Its +exaltation is, if not deliberate, admirably self-possessed. To find it +theatrical would be simply a mark of our absurd Anglo-Saxon preference +for reserve and repression in circumstances naturally suggesting +expansion and elation--a preference surely born of timorousness and +essentially very subtly theatrical itself. It is simply not deeply, +intensely poetic, but, rather, a splendid piece of rhetoric, as I say. + +So, too, is the famous Mirabeau relief, which is perhaps M. Dalou's +masterpiece, and which represents his national side as completely as the +group for the Place des Nations does those of his qualities I have +endeavored to indicate by calling them Venetian. Observe the rare +fidelity which has contributed its weight of sincerity to this admirable +relief. Every prominent head of the many members of the Assembly, who +nevertheless rally behind Mirabeau with a fine pell-mell freedom of +artistic effect, is a portrait. The effect is like that of similar works +designed and executed with the large leisure of an age very different +from the competition and struggling hurry of our own. In every respect +this work is as French as it is individual. It is penetrated with a +sense of the dignity of French history. It is as far as possible removed +from the cheap _genre_ effect such a scheme in less skilful hands might +easily have had. Mirabeau's gesture, in fact his entire presence, is +superb, but the marquis is as fine in his way as the tribune in his. The +beholder assists at the climax of a great crisis, unfolded to him in the +impartial spirit of true art, quite without partisanship, and though +manifestly stimulated by sympathy with the nobler cause, even more +acutely conscious of the grandeur of the struggle and the distinction of +those on all sides engaged in it, and acquiring from these a kind of +elation, of exaltation such as the Frenchman experiences only when he +may give expression to his artistic and his patriotic instincts at the +same moment. + +The distinctly national qualities of this masterpiece, and their +harmonious association with the individual characteristics of M. Dalou, +his love of nature, his native distinction, his charm, and his power, in +themselves bear eminent witness to the vitality of modern French +sculpture, in spite of all the influences which tend to petrify it with +system and convention. M. Rodin stands so wholly apart that it would be +unsafe perhaps to argue confidently from his impressive works the +potentiality of periodical renewal in an art over which the Institute +presides with still so little challenge of its title. But it is +different with M. Dalou. Extraordinary as his talent is, its +unquestioned and universal recognition is probably in great measure due +to the preparedness of the environment to appreciate extraordinary work +of the kind, to the high degree which French popular æsthetic education, +in a word, has reached. And one's last word about contemporary French +sculpture--even in closing a consideration of the works of such +protestants as Rodin and Dalou--must be a recognition of the immense +service of the Institute in education of this kind. Let some country +without an institute, around which what æsthetic feeling the age permits +may crystallize, however sharply, give us a Rodin and a Dalou! + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of French Art, by W. C. 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