Page 18 - The Studio First Edition - April 1893

The Growth of Recent Art

Since early Italian ideals died, the world has learnt lead to the Phidian epoch of landscape and its
many new ways of seeing things, and notably many allied art modern figure-painting. First, that of the
new arts of expressing our feelings about landscape so-called classic formalists beginning in Claude
and the effect of figures in nature. When any style and Poussin, and ending in Turner and the school
of expressing things has become a mere decorative of David—an impasse. Secondly, that of the
formula it is deserted. First, those of vivid feelings Realists, beginning with the Flemish and Dutch,,
about reality abandon it ; finally it stinks in the and culminating in Constable, Crome, Gros,
nostrils of those whose sentiments are more purely Gericault, Delacroix, Huet, and the early French-
decorative. So Lionardo represents the man of men. These joined most conspicuously in Corot
acute observation and realistic feeling, turning from and became the high road of the future —
decayed conventions to study truths of illumination the road to impressionistic vision treated deco-
and the new facts of anatomy. ratively.
The great decorative panel of Italy expired in a Let us cast a rapid eye over the aims of recent
trick of piled-up limbs, wagging beards, flaunting art with a quotation from Delacroix's letters as
drapery, and artificially balanced blocks of colour. guide. " Ce fameux Beau . . . . ils se sont tous
Its decorative principle became a cheap receipt, obstiné a ne le voir que dans les lignes. Je suis a
and real art fled from the pompous inflation of ma fenêtre, et je vois le plus beau paysage : l'ideé
curly wiggery which ensued. Art reappeared in d'une ligne ne me vient pas a l'esprit
Ils
three new strains, with Poussin and Claude, and ne veulent voir proportion, harmonie qu'entre deux
the Franco-Italians; with Rubens, Bril, Rembrandt, lignes : le reste pour eux est chaos, et le compas
Hals, Terburg, Hobbema, Ruysdael, &c., in the seulement juge." To attain " le Beau " of natural
Low Countries, and with Velasquez and Ribera in atmospheric tones and gradations was sought by
Spain. The taste of modern art can be detected in the new schools in preference to eternally playing
these men, and, somewhat in the order in which I with arbitrary schemes of colour and design after
quote them, they have operated directly upon the the fashion of the surviving classics. The courage
aims of our century. To speak of England only, of realists has been shown much less in the choice
how like Claude are Turner and Thomson ; while of new and natural subjects than in a new and
the Chateau de Stein of Rubens, still proclaims natural treatment of any subject. It is the manner
its power of begetting descendants when we see of seeing and painting it, not the name of the thing
some of Constable's work or Cecil Lawson's Min- painted, that gives the quality of grandeur or of
ister's Garden. Crome and Constable followed littleness and worry to a picture, and Courbet's
Hobbema's embroidery of small foliage before they Stone Breakers is more " classic " than David's
reached the breadth of the " slate quarries," and Horatii. Soon, in the course of progress, an
the two great South Kensington sketches. But on object was no longer expressed under all con-
the way from the seventeenth to the nineteenth ditions by that pencil-point contour which real
century there are many notable side-paths. Men light disdains to preserve. Men learnt to use the
of individuality wandered from the main routes modesty of nature and to dare to reveal things with
following the same direction, but on tracks of their the mystery of a true chiaroscuro. It became
own. They saw what their predecessors had seen, necessary to note the values of light on planes at
but they saw it modified from their particular various angles and at different distances, and on a
standpoints. Hence came the solid yet graceful variety of colours ; to observe the relative force with
truth of Watteau, a cross of Italy with the Low which masses relieved against the general tone ; to
Countries; that perpetually fruitful union, courted complete the impression of a true aspect by regard-
by Jan Both no less than by Rubens, and after- ing colours as related to the prevailing note of the
wards so prolific in Corot's marriage of Claude to whole field of vision rather than to each other.
Constable ; hence too the sportive dexterity of Then we have those researches into effects of focus
Tiepolo's fluid suggestive touch ; hence Chardin's and definition by which we suit nature to the con-
classic simplicity; Wilson's rich juicy rendering of ditions of a framed composition, by which we
Claude and Poussin, which sometimes hints at obtain an effective scale of relative importances in
future Romanticism ; and hence the peculiarities colour, tone, air and detail, and so secure our
of Hogarth, Canaletto, Ramsay, Reynolds, Gains- fleeting impressions of grandeur, size, space, and
borough, Goya, Raeburn, Lawrence, and others. mystery. Finally, handling became part of the
Nevertheless there are two main roads which we imagination, and was made to underline construc-
can detect running through the maze of paths which tion and express the sentiment of a broad view of
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