Page 52 - Studio International - March 1966

Book Reviews

Guide to English painting "I want no other life, only this." When he lacked money children, one has a right to expect very good

he turned official or newspaper editor, when he lacked justification for yet another full-length review of this
Painting in England 1550-1880 by David Piper health he was a bitter polemicist. He was a good deal already elaborately well-documented and
176 pages 85 monochrome plates too late for the unspoiled paradise he had imagined, mythologised career. Personally I would like to see a
Penguin Books 7s. 6d. which was a shame, as it seems it once actually ten-year moratorium on Picasso publications unless
This is a smooth, elegant, deftly-written survey that existed. That he arrived at something of the sort in his one or all of three conditions were fulfilled : (a) that
skims over the surface with practised ease. On the painting is satisfactory for us, but it is still a shame ; none of the illustrations had been published before,
whole it presents a conventional view of its subject— Gauguin would seem to have had more than the (b) that the documentation was genuinely new, or
the view that became orthodoxy in the 1950's. occasional escapee's aptitude for being a happy else that it concentrated in such detail on a single
According to this, English painting of the past was at savage, full-time, as well as the capacity for the great phase or aspect of the work that it amounted to a
its best and most typical when it was unambitious, irritation at the corruption of his paradise and the new study, or (c) that the text was properly and
sensitive, charming to look at and slightly cosy. Its politics of corruption which wasted so much of his objectively critical.

representative heroes were Gainsborough and Con- time. William Townsend The last, in my view, is the most important. It does
stable rather than those tougher geniuses, Hogarth, no artist any good to go on being written about as
Turner, and Blake. Stubbs, predictably, is accorded though everything he did was by definition
'Ruthless subjectivity'
high rank in this book, while history painting is important, unless sound critical reasons can be
scarcely mentioned. The freshest and most personal Soutine by Andrew Forge adduced for such a view. They certainly can't for
chapter is that on Constable, even though some of its 44 pages 48 coloured plates and illustrations Picasso, if only because he is not, alas, an artist who
judgements seem to this reviewer startlingly wrong ; Spring Books 15s. has grown greater with old age, as did Braque or
for example, 'if somehow, unaccountably, he Matisse or Bonnard. This in itself says something of
(Constable) did not produce the greatest paintings in The mere number of reasonable colour reproductions central significance about the nature of his genius,
English art, he is still the greatest of English painters', makes this volume, as others in the series, a bargain. and it is relevant to the sudden eclipse of his
which would surely be nearer the truth if put the other It is useful to have Andrew Forge's selection of influence on other artists during the last twenty years,
way round. However, Mr. Piper does raise, if he does Soutine's work, a little injudiciously stressing the Céret just at a time when that of Matisse has increased.
not answer, the seldom-asked question as to how far landscapes— not that they are not important but, as The great merit of John Berger's recent book, even
our appreciation of Constable depends, not on his might be expected, they lose most in reproduction. if one disagreed with the conduct of the argument
paintings alone, but on his paintings seen through the One does miss the sensation of the paint. "Unless the at one or two points, was its acknowledgement of
medium of his letters and personality. If we did not double sensation—of feathers, say, and paint, of look- this very fact and its effort to look at Picasso in
know what Constable was trying to do, should we be ing and painting's fused, no pictures resulted ... For proper critical perspective. And it rightly concentrated
able to deduce his artistic intentions merely from his there was no alternative to fall back on ; no theory of on what has happened to the artist since 1940,
work? The book also has an interesting final section on how the picture should work, no programme. Only the which is about the only aspect of him left worth
the Victorians and includes here and there some creative act." This is a difficult state of affairs to present talking about in print. Pierre Daix's new monograph,
unfamiliar contemporary quotations. in reproductions and reduction in scale is no help at all. on the other hand, is of the kind on which a
Mr. Piper's treatment of English painting may seem Some of the Céret pictures appear positively niggling moratorium should be called. It covers the familiar
too bland for modern tastes, but he has performed a and this was never imaginably a vice of Soutine's. ground all over again (with a good deal of
difficult and unprestigious task for which his fellow With such allowances the plates support Mr. Forge's 'according to Sabartes', 'Maurice Raynal points out',
professionals will be inclined, wrongly, to bite his head admirable essay which brilliantly analyses Soutine's 'Kahnweiler remarks', and the like) with a laboured
off; he has produced a reliable and worthwhile guide special situation as a painter. conscientiousness nominally justified by the odd
which will really be enjoyed by the general reader. Mr. Forge sees him as a 20th century artist, that is, a scrap of new information and the apparent 'full
Michael Kitson "modern" master, not because of the innovations he co-operation of Picasso'. When not dealing with
contributed to modern art, his place in movements or facts, which it does efficiently, it has no insights or
his artistic progeny, but because he was a kind of opinions worth offering, and in only two respects is
Gauguin's corrupted Paradise
painter who would not have been acceptable as an it any advance on the excellent Frank Elgar- Robert
artist at all in any previous climate of opinion. His Maillard monograph which the same publishers
Gauguin in the South Seas by Bengt Danielsson,
position is that demanded by a "ruthless and con- brought out in almost exactly similar format in 1956
translated by Reginald Spink
suming" subjectivity. "It is in terms of totally —the illustrations, though more familiar, are well-
310 pages 61 plates 5 plans and illustrations in text
engrossed, primitive relationship to his painting act... chosen and slightly better reproduced: and it covers
bibliography George Allen Er Unwin 42s.
that we can best understand Soutine." However, the further decade 1954-1964. Here, however, the
Students of Gauguin have had to learn something of
after his arrival in Paris, Soutine was not a notably choice of illustrations is poor. Two of the 180
the South Seas in order to deal with the biography, but
isolated figure and stylistically the influence of cubists 'Painter and his model' drawings for Verve and a
Bengt Danielsson has worked the other way round.
and others can be traced in his work ; it is "the terrible single very minor sketch, given full-page treatment,
An anthropologist long acquainted with and, indeed,
poignancy in Soutine's closeness to the things he from the Meninas series, are inadequate representation
resident on Pacific islands, he became concerned with
paints, his identification with them" that sets him of the two principal achievements of the period—
Gauguin as one of the remarkable inhabitants. His 4
apart. but then, of course, you need a critical approach to
years of research were just in time. Danielsson has
Soutine's state of being, as a primitive painting man, is decide these are the principal achievements of the
been able to secure the evidence of the last surviving
convincingly explored by Andrew Forge. One sees period. They come at the very beginning of it, and, as
people who knew Gauguin and of others who
why he could be, and has been, a disastrous master to Berger emphasized, they are about a kind of
remembered the circumstances and the personalities follow. Without his obsessive involvement in his aesthetic-personal despair, the consequences of
of Tahiti and the Marquesas in his time. The result is a
sensations before the subject, what is there to carry which are only too evident in the subsequent work.
narrative that comes to us in an eminently readable
over, to develop ? Soutine is almost unique among The Picasso 'case' at the moment is a tragic one.
translation, full of important new information and of
figurative painters in his success in involving us so Let's have no more books that don't recognise that.
well-documented revisions of accepted accounts of
intensely in his spasms of sensation that we need have David Thompson
Gauguin's two sojourns in the South Seas.
no concern with formal structure, decorative effect
The few years before Gauguin's first escape to Tahiti
William Townsend
or associations.
are briefly dealt with, and the motives and influences Camden Town painter
that guided him there. The social development of the
island at the end of the century, the state of its culture, An over-worked vein Robert Bevan 1865-1925. A memoir by his son
Studio Vista 63s.
the day-to-day life of its official hierarchy, of the
Picasso by Pierre Daix
settlers, the natives ; the whole situation into which This is a handsome and a welcome book, handsome,
271 pages 60 colour plates 84 black and white
Gauguin plunged so ill-prepared and ill-provided for; in its appearance, in the abundance and quality of
all this is presented with a clarity and detail that enable illustrations Thames and Hudson 35s. its illustrations, in its sober, decently written text and
us to follow with credibility the changes of status, of Presumably there is still an easy market for any book in its scholarly appendices; welcome, because neither
occupation, of health and of spiritual well-being of on Picasso, or there wouldn't be so many. But at Bevan nor most of the other 'Camden Town'
Gauguin himself. When he had health and money any level more serious than the recent Crawfie-type painters have attracted the attention of scholars and
enough, which was not often, he could paint and say volume which concentrated on his pictures of certainly they deserve it.
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