Studio: international art (52.1911)

The Lay Figure

THE LAY FIGURE : ON MODERN
WATER-COLOUR PAINTING.

" I never can understand the attitude of
the men who refuse to see any good in modern art,"
said the Man with the Red Tie. " It seems to me
that they shut their eyes wilfully to all the evidences
of artistic progress, and ignore facts that are patent
to all reasonable people."

"What proof is there that art has made any
progress in modern times ? " demanded the Pedant.
"Before you accuse people of wilfully shutting their
eyes to facts, you have to make quite sure that art
has advanced and that the older masters have been
superseded."

" I was not suggesting that the older masters had
been superseded," replied the Man with the Red
Tie, " because I believe that every real master, what-
ever his period, has his fixed place in the records of
art. But why should not the modern masters be re-
cognised quite as frankly as the old ? Why should
the fact that they are modern be counted against
them, and treated as something that is necessarily
to their discredit ? "

" Because modern times do not breed masters,"
asserted the Pedant. " We have lost the spirit that
makes great artists. We are degenerates, merely
pale shadows of our predecessors, and our art is
only a faint reflection of the past. I cannot see
any direction in which it is showing what I should
count as encouraging signs of development or even
of healthy movement."

" I think I can suggest one for your considera-
tion," broke in the Art Critic. "Would you not
admit that water-colour painting has markedly
progressed during the last half-century, and that it
is a far more efficient and vital art than it was two
or three generations ago ? "

" Have we to-day men greater than Turner, De
Wint, or David Cox ? " asked the Pedant. " Have
we even people fit to set beside the lesser men who
were the contemporaries of those incomparable
masters ? "

" That is not the way to put the question," cried
the Man with the Red Tie. " As I have already
said, I do not want to tear down the great masters
from their pedestals to make room for new ones.
But I do want full credit to be given to the men
who are carrying on, and carrying further, the work
which those masters began."

" And it is by that process of carrying further
that the real progress of art is shown," agreed the
Critic. "The blind worship of the past does not
imply that we have the right kind of respect for it
334

at all: it is more often ,than not either a lazy and
unintelligent evasion of artistic responsibilities or
simply the result of a stupid want of appreciation of
the spirit in which the great men of the past pro-
duced their best work."

"Would you seriously contend that we can best
show our appreciation of the work of these great
men by going away from the principles they have
laid down? " asked the Pedant. "To me progress
of that sort looks painfully like retrogression, not
advance."

"It does not follow that we are going away from
their principles because we do not choose de-
liberately to imitate their practice," suggested the
Man with the Red Tie.

"Precisely, that is exactly the point I want to
make," responded the Critic. " The earlier leaders
of water-colour painting established the tradition of
individual effort and personal intention. They
fought the battle of independence and opened the
way for originality of outlook and interpretation.
We show our respect for them not by imitating
them or by slavishly copying their methods but by
trying to be, in our dealings with the art they loved,
as independent as they were themselves. They
laid down great principles but they expected us to
apply them in our own way and to choose our own
modes of practice."

" And because we have applied them in our own
way you say we have advanced," commented the
Pedant. "That maybe your opinion but I do not
see that it proves anything."

" The proof is in the condition of the art of
water-colour at the present time," replied the Critic.
" Half a century ago there was a small group of
masters and all the other men were trying to paint
like them. To-day there is a great company of
painters who are all striving to say something for
themselves : some of them are masters indisputably,
but even the lesser ones deserve respect for their
freshness of vision and their independence of
practice. There is an immense increase in indi-
viduality both in choice and treatment of subject;
there is infinitely more variety of expression and a
far greater range of thought than there ever was
before; and though there is no lack of respect for
tradition, mere imitation of the earlier methods is
healthily discouraged and new readings of the old
truths are sincerely welcomed. Surely all this is
proof of progress and of a vast accession in the
vitality of the art."

"Perhaps so, but I am not sure that we want
this sort of progress," said the Pedant.

The Lay Figure.