Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1911 (Heft 36))

Mr. Weber's paintings of figures, judged from the standards which still obtain, would be
regarded as coarse, but in this world of change some one a century or so later may stand in front of
them and tell where Michael Angelo fell below the standard in draughtsmanship and anatomy.
The figures by Mr. Weber, however, do not purport to be anatomical verities, but forms as he
sees them.
This exhibition, as the first show made by an ambitious young painter with a firm belief
in his own mission, is worthy of attention and study, and in any event is interesting as evidence
of the fancies of the human brain.
Mr. R. Cortissoz in the N. T. Tribune:
When the noise made in London by the recent exhibition of Post-Impressionistic pictures
reverberated across the Atlantic, there were doubtless inquisitive souls who wished that they might
see just what all the fuss was made about. They may get some idea of the subject by visiting the
Photo-Secession Gallery, where there is a quantity of paintings and drawings by Mr. Max Weber.
He is a painter of nude figures, of landscape and of still life. His intention, it is to be presumed,
is more or less decorative. His paintings tell no particular story, allegorical or otherwise, and it
hardly matters that the catalogue contains no numbers, so that one is left to guess at the title
belonging to a given picture. Mr. Weber would appear to have one promising faculty lying dormant
in his character as an artist—-an instinct for movement, a sense of the beautiful effect to be got
out of a figure, mobile in space, out of a gesture, out of the pose of a head. But his people have
strangely articulated bodies, they stand about in attitudes made doubly mysterious by his crude
sense of form, and matters are finally made worse by his even more peculiar notion of color. Per-
haps, for the rigidly conventional folk who live in dread lest they be suspected of want of sympathy
for the new thing, these pictures may possess esoteric charm. To the merely disinterested observer
they are untrue to nature, ugly, and quite uninteresting. The discipline of the schools might
develop in Mr. Weber a modest talent. His work as it stands, however revolutionary in aim it
may be, has nothing really stimulating about it. Post-Impressionism in the light of this exhibition
need cause no alarm; it is only a bore.
The excitement about it in London has begun to die down, but in some quarters there a
little amusement is still provided. Mr. Roger Fry, one of the most ardent defenders of the quaint
pictures at the Grafton Galleries, sought to answer one of his critics by citing the names of several
distinguished persons as sharing, to some extent at least, his feeling for the Post-Impressionists.
Mr. Sargent was included in this group, whereupon the American painter sends to the London
“Nation" this interesting disclaimer:
My attention has been called to an article by Mr. Roger Fry, called “A Postscript on Post-Impres-
sionism,” in your issue of December 24, in which he mentions me as being among the champions of the
group of painters now being shown at the Grafton Gallery. I should be obliged if you allow me space in
your columns for these few words of rectification.
Mr. Fry has been entirely misinformed, and if I had been inclined to join in the controversy, he
would have known that my sympathies were in the exactly opposite direction as far as the novelties are
concerned that have been most discussed and that this show has been my first opportunity of seeing.
I had declined Mr. Fry’s request to place my name on the initial list of promoters of the exhibition,
on the ground of not knowing the work of the painters to whom the name of Post-Impressionists can be
applied; it certainly does not apply to Manet or to Cezanne. Mr. Fry may have been told—and have
believed—that the sight of those paintings had made me a convert to his faith in them.
The fact is that I am absolutely skeptical as to their having any claim whatever to being works of
art, with the exception of some of the pictures by Gauguin that strike me as admirable in color, and in
color only.
But one wonders what will Mr. Fry not believe, and one is tempted to say, what will he not print?
Yours, etc.,
John S. Sargent.
The force of this communication is the more to be appreciated in view of the fact that Mr.
Sargent has long been known as one of the most generous of modern artists in everything that
means sympathy for new ideas. He is broadminded and quick to recognize merit, no matter
where he may find it.

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