DOI Heft:
No. 133 (April, 1904)
DOI Artikel:Williams, Leonard: Joaquin Sorolla and Spanish painting of to-day
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19881#0261
Joaquin Sorolla
JOAQUIN SOROLLA AND civilised country will be in absolute concord with
SPANISH PAINTING OF TO-DAY. tne needs and characteristics of the national life,
gy LEONARD WILLIAMS Nevertheless, the demand a country makes for
art is not continuous but recurring, and national
The history of modern Spanish painting has yet needs and energies possess, volcano-like, their
to be written. The task, one cannot doubt, will periods and crises of composure or upheaval. In
prove both onerous and fascinating, for hardly any this respect the situation of both art and letters is
nation has undergone, within about a hundred identical. Both form the atmosphere enveloping
years, so radical an artistic change in all directions. the mountain-top. Now Matthew Arnold has said
To assert that the art of a country is created that in order to produce a great writer two powers
because that country calls for its creation, is merely must concur, the power of the man and the power
to repeat a truism. The painter, even when he of the moment; the power of the first not being
most believes himself to be obeying the single enough without the power of the second,
impulse of his personal ambition, is really domi- " Moment," then, being interchangeable with
nated, if his work has any lasting value, by another "upheaval," and "writer" with "artist," it would
and more subtle impulse proceeding from his be better, perhaps, though less euphonious, to state
inmost soul. He is just as much the servant of that every moment that has the power produces of
his country as is the soldier or the justice, the necessity the artist that has the power also. Such
parson or the schoolmaster ; for even if on the moments, as a rule, are operative in one land alone,
surface his work is executed for himself—his pocket, but now and then are almost universal. One
or his fame, or both together—yet underneath the instance is more salient than any other. The same
surface is it not executed for the great community upheaval which transfigured France inspired the
of which he is a member ? poets and the painters of the greater part of
Another yet an always useful truism asseverates Europe. In that immense example, the spark
that the kind of art demanded of her sons by any of wondrous fellow-feeling enkindled by the
mm
' AT SEA "
FROM THE OII.-rAINTING BY JOAQUIN SOROI.I.A
JOAQUIN SOROLLA AND civilised country will be in absolute concord with
SPANISH PAINTING OF TO-DAY. tne needs and characteristics of the national life,
gy LEONARD WILLIAMS Nevertheless, the demand a country makes for
art is not continuous but recurring, and national
The history of modern Spanish painting has yet needs and energies possess, volcano-like, their
to be written. The task, one cannot doubt, will periods and crises of composure or upheaval. In
prove both onerous and fascinating, for hardly any this respect the situation of both art and letters is
nation has undergone, within about a hundred identical. Both form the atmosphere enveloping
years, so radical an artistic change in all directions. the mountain-top. Now Matthew Arnold has said
To assert that the art of a country is created that in order to produce a great writer two powers
because that country calls for its creation, is merely must concur, the power of the man and the power
to repeat a truism. The painter, even when he of the moment; the power of the first not being
most believes himself to be obeying the single enough without the power of the second,
impulse of his personal ambition, is really domi- " Moment," then, being interchangeable with
nated, if his work has any lasting value, by another "upheaval," and "writer" with "artist," it would
and more subtle impulse proceeding from his be better, perhaps, though less euphonious, to state
inmost soul. He is just as much the servant of that every moment that has the power produces of
his country as is the soldier or the justice, the necessity the artist that has the power also. Such
parson or the schoolmaster ; for even if on the moments, as a rule, are operative in one land alone,
surface his work is executed for himself—his pocket, but now and then are almost universal. One
or his fame, or both together—yet underneath the instance is more salient than any other. The same
surface is it not executed for the great community upheaval which transfigured France inspired the
of which he is a member ? poets and the painters of the greater part of
Another yet an always useful truism asseverates Europe. In that immense example, the spark
that the kind of art demanded of her sons by any of wondrous fellow-feeling enkindled by the
mm
' AT SEA "
FROM THE OII.-rAINTING BY JOAQUIN SOROI.I.A