Page 19 - The Studio First Edition - April 1893

The Growth of Recent Art

nature. The earlier realism took a more piece- to be counted with. In the " Illusions Perdues "
meal view of things than the later impressionism (1843) Gleyre had sounded the first note of that
and so more willingly put up with rugged or hap- Neo-classicism which has shot out so many
hazard handling. branches. Other schools sprung from Millet's
Landscape led the way, and, of all the school of Winower (1848) or from Courbet's Stone
183o, it was Corot who was the main instrument in Breakers, 185o, and Funeral at Ornans, 185o.
bringing about a revolution. Compare him with These pictures and others by the same men, no
those who showed landscape imagination before less than Corot's work, had marked out as it were
him. Since Corot, we can no longer quite look at by 1855 the foundations of a new art. Now we
a tree with the eyes of Rubens, Rembrandt, Claude, begin to hear more of Velasquez ; and now portrait-
Hobbema, Watteau, or even Constable. It has painters contribute much to experiments in figure-
become, for ever, something else, and stands in a painting and to the establishment of technique.
different relation to what is round it. We have Chaplin, Puvis de Chavannes, Baudry, Henner,
learnt that truths will assume, on our canvases, Bonnat, Vollon, Carolus-Duran, E. Delaunay,
just the proportion of importance which we have Legros, Whistler, Manet, Fortuny, and H. Regnault,
accorded them in our observation of nature. If occur to me as men whose influence was paramount
we are as earnest in observation of the trivial as of with the artists of the sixties and seventies. Bonnat,
the essential, we shall infallibly overstate the small Duran, Regnault, and other masters of this time
and let the large go unexpressed. Painters who cultivated a solid firm technique. Its logical ex-
offer the goodness of their eyesight as an excuse pression of the construction of a figure afforded a
for niggling work, should rather confess their blind- sound necessary basis for modern teaching. To
ness to broad effects. Indifferent to large shapes, equip painters for treating more ethereal kinds of
they pore over surface markings ; blind to the impressions, there was need of something else.
general aspect of sky and earth, they ostentatiously Whistler was there and threw a glamour over
note small shades of local colour. He who feels things with his more filmy, suggestive, and mys-
strongly the effect of the whole will take care not terious manner which seems to partake of the
to over-estimate the value of parts. But, to the methods of Tiepolo, Corot and Velasquez. Puvis
man observant only of small corners, who yet de Chavannes, Henner, Legros, and Carolus-
paints panoramic scenes, breadth must seem mere Duran have affected the ideals of picture-making
wilful emptiness. He cannot know that it is swept as well as of technique. With these immediate
clear to show a big thing and just depths of space. precursors of recent art we may mention the land-
If we admire a detail we should compose it as a scapist Pelouse whose work and teaching has been
separate picture. Otherwise we allow fifty en- useful in preparing methods favourable to impres-
sembles of impression to fight it out on one canvas. sionistic treatment. To Edward Manet, however,
We drown in confusion the character of the larger unquestionably belongs the chief honour of the
shapes, the big trend of the ground, and all the initiation of the impressionistic quality that charac-
mystery and envelopment of nature. It is no terises the new schools. Manet is the great modern
longer permitted to build together little separate originator of that mosaic of just open-air tones
pieces of picturesqueness like Claude, even with all which finally supplanted lines and object-painting.
his exquisite art. Corot has shown us a better sort It is remarkable that he no less than Duran was a
of Claude. continual student of Velasquez. How to see was,
Meantime, figure-painting no less than land- however, what Manet chiefly sought, though he
scape clamoured for a new cult of style. Let us became no less eminent in style of expression. To
pass over the classics and romantics, Ingres and speak of the ramifications of the later art which
Delacroix, and the temporary reconciliation of owns Manet as its first exponent, trespasses on the
their methods by T. Couture, and speak of what bounds of another subject and would require all
more directly concerns our own day. Modern Art the space I have at command. The reader will
has been mainly the work of France, and that free know to what art I allude if I but mention the
expressive manner of handling according to the names of Duez, Butin, Boudin, Claude Monet,
sentiment of the form as shown by real light, was Bastian Lepage, Dagnan-Bouveret, Degas, Roll,
worked out by Frenchmen ; not fantastically but, Besnard, Cazin, Raffaelli, Carrière, Kroyer, Boldini,
by their own admission, under the guidance of Montenard and the brothers Maris, to which he
the ancients. Nor was this copying ; a new way can add any others that may occur to him. One
of seeing and a new notion of picture-making had could fill pages in speaking of the Anglo-Saxon
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