DOI Heft:
No. 296 (November 1917)
DOI Artikel:Wood, T. Martin: Modern French pictures at the National Gallery
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21264#0069
Modern French Pictures at the National Gallery
MODERN FRENCH PICTURES
AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY.
BY T. MARTIN WOOD
j
THE French Impressionist school will
take rank, I believe, with the greatest
schools of the world. It succeeded
so perfectly in what it set out to do
that painting is already seeking a new direction,
and what it achieved was in a field of experience
which preceding ages had considered to lie
almost beyond the province of artistic expres-
sion. Some day this school will be admitted to
rank with the supreme schools of the Italian
Renaissance—the more readily so from the very
fact that it sought its triumphs in an entirely
different field. Impressionism expresses an age
the most short-lived the world has known, end-
ing with the war that will change for decades,
if not for ever, the atmosphere of everyday life.
At no time, probably, did men live so vividly
as in that swift age—if life is to be measured in
degree of consciousness. There never was art
so responsive as Impressionism; it registered
every faint experience. At its best it is without
a single accent of exaggeration. Life, it would
seem to say, in its quietest aspect is so important
that an art of pure response is sufficient. In
representing life it would add nothing to it.
All that is evanescent, everything that will pass,
not to return in the same shape, must be arrested
and the image of it perpetuated. Of this art
that of Manet, Monet, and Degas is the most
characteristic, the most sure of lasting fame.
It does not aspire to express romantic ideas or
soft emotions, but it is so receptive to sensation
that the world in its most everyday complexion
affords it an inexhaustible theme. Any emotion
which would make it difficult for the artist to
sustain the attitude of pure receptivity was to
be avoided. The painter’s attitude was to be
that of a mystic, and it was certainly that of
one moved to ecstasy by the splendour of the
appearance of the material world. We should
expect, then, in the art that expresses such a
frame of mind, a rare spontaneity and exquisitely
nervous execution. In the painting of no other
school do we find execution of such sensibility.
It is most remarkable of all in Manet, whose
touch refines expression as sensitively as any
painist’s.
No man seems to have loved the material
world in every particle more than Degas. He
is enthusiastic in his art about even the dust
of a floor made visible in limelight. Unlike
Manet’s, Degas’ touch does not transmute.
UN JOUR d’£t:6”
MODERN FRENCH PICTURES
AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY.
BY T. MARTIN WOOD
j
THE French Impressionist school will
take rank, I believe, with the greatest
schools of the world. It succeeded
so perfectly in what it set out to do
that painting is already seeking a new direction,
and what it achieved was in a field of experience
which preceding ages had considered to lie
almost beyond the province of artistic expres-
sion. Some day this school will be admitted to
rank with the supreme schools of the Italian
Renaissance—the more readily so from the very
fact that it sought its triumphs in an entirely
different field. Impressionism expresses an age
the most short-lived the world has known, end-
ing with the war that will change for decades,
if not for ever, the atmosphere of everyday life.
At no time, probably, did men live so vividly
as in that swift age—if life is to be measured in
degree of consciousness. There never was art
so responsive as Impressionism; it registered
every faint experience. At its best it is without
a single accent of exaggeration. Life, it would
seem to say, in its quietest aspect is so important
that an art of pure response is sufficient. In
representing life it would add nothing to it.
All that is evanescent, everything that will pass,
not to return in the same shape, must be arrested
and the image of it perpetuated. Of this art
that of Manet, Monet, and Degas is the most
characteristic, the most sure of lasting fame.
It does not aspire to express romantic ideas or
soft emotions, but it is so receptive to sensation
that the world in its most everyday complexion
affords it an inexhaustible theme. Any emotion
which would make it difficult for the artist to
sustain the attitude of pure receptivity was to
be avoided. The painter’s attitude was to be
that of a mystic, and it was certainly that of
one moved to ecstasy by the splendour of the
appearance of the material world. We should
expect, then, in the art that expresses such a
frame of mind, a rare spontaneity and exquisitely
nervous execution. In the painting of no other
school do we find execution of such sensibility.
It is most remarkable of all in Manet, whose
touch refines expression as sensitively as any
painist’s.
No man seems to have loved the material
world in every particle more than Degas. He
is enthusiastic in his art about even the dust
of a floor made visible in limelight. Unlike
Manet’s, Degas’ touch does not transmute.
UN JOUR d’£t:6”