DOI Heft:
No. 129 (November, 1907)
DOI Artikel:Rutter, Frank: A consideration of the work of Anton Mauve
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28253#0029
Anton Mauve
to read into a pi nting ideas which the painter
never conceived or recorded. Who cannot picture
the bewildered astonishment of Leonardo when
Pater in Elysium reads him his too eloquent
appreciation of La Gioconda ? Mauve’s art is
serious, pensive if you like, but pensiveness is
not necessarily melancholy or sadness. It may
be a deep, though quiet, abiding joy. Sadness or
melancholy implies discontent, if resigned; but the
Titanic element is almost wholly absent in Mauve,
and the greater number of his reveries seem to me
inspired by peaceful, contented contemplation.
We can be sympathetic without being pessimists,
and it does not lessen the beauty, nor should it
our appreciation, of Mauve’s work if we find no
“ sense of suffering ” in the two cows the boy is
driving Homeward (page 14), no “undertone of
sadness ” in the woman who comes with her pail to
the cows at Milking Time (page 10), poetry but no
melancholy in the Interior of a Barn (frontispiece).
To have nothing better to think about this last
than the melancholy fact that sheep are fed and
kept warm only that they may afford raiment
and food for man, is to read a false literary
motive into a work that has a true pictorial
appeal. We must not confuse what may happen
to interest us with what primarily interests the
painter, light giving colour to form.
I imagine this melancholy misconception about
Mauve originally arose from some critic observing
that his tendency was epic rather than lyric. And
since epic to many suggests sorrow and suffering,
just as lyric does joy and gladness, the rest was
easy. Then by another association of ideas, that
of sorrow with shadow, a second misconception
was brought to birth, and the “ sorrow-laden ” work
of Mauve wras spoken of uniformly as low-toned.
Now all tones are relative, and a middle period
Mauve may be low in tone compared to a late
Turner or a Monet; but it is high compared to a
Rembrandt or a Jacob Maris. With a Boudin it
is about on a level, and Boudin is not usually
considered a low-toned painter. The truth is that
Mauve, beginning in the bass, played for the best
part of his life on the middle notes of the colour
scale. There are low-toned paintings by him just
as there are in some of them figures, like the
tired, worn peasant of the Shepherd and Flock
(supplement), which do convey a sense of sad
endurance. Still the characteristics of a painter’s
art are not to be deduced from isolated examples,
but from the bulk of his work; and to look
without preconceived notions at a number of
Mauves is to recognise that his painting was
no more low-toned, in the strict sense of the
word, than it as “strongly marked” by the
influence of Millet.
The two chief excellences of Mauve, derived
wholly from the keenness of his own perceptions
and his power to record them aright, are the
BY ANTON MAUVE
“THE HILLSIDE” (OIL PAINTING)
13
to read into a pi nting ideas which the painter
never conceived or recorded. Who cannot picture
the bewildered astonishment of Leonardo when
Pater in Elysium reads him his too eloquent
appreciation of La Gioconda ? Mauve’s art is
serious, pensive if you like, but pensiveness is
not necessarily melancholy or sadness. It may
be a deep, though quiet, abiding joy. Sadness or
melancholy implies discontent, if resigned; but the
Titanic element is almost wholly absent in Mauve,
and the greater number of his reveries seem to me
inspired by peaceful, contented contemplation.
We can be sympathetic without being pessimists,
and it does not lessen the beauty, nor should it
our appreciation, of Mauve’s work if we find no
“ sense of suffering ” in the two cows the boy is
driving Homeward (page 14), no “undertone of
sadness ” in the woman who comes with her pail to
the cows at Milking Time (page 10), poetry but no
melancholy in the Interior of a Barn (frontispiece).
To have nothing better to think about this last
than the melancholy fact that sheep are fed and
kept warm only that they may afford raiment
and food for man, is to read a false literary
motive into a work that has a true pictorial
appeal. We must not confuse what may happen
to interest us with what primarily interests the
painter, light giving colour to form.
I imagine this melancholy misconception about
Mauve originally arose from some critic observing
that his tendency was epic rather than lyric. And
since epic to many suggests sorrow and suffering,
just as lyric does joy and gladness, the rest was
easy. Then by another association of ideas, that
of sorrow with shadow, a second misconception
was brought to birth, and the “ sorrow-laden ” work
of Mauve wras spoken of uniformly as low-toned.
Now all tones are relative, and a middle period
Mauve may be low in tone compared to a late
Turner or a Monet; but it is high compared to a
Rembrandt or a Jacob Maris. With a Boudin it
is about on a level, and Boudin is not usually
considered a low-toned painter. The truth is that
Mauve, beginning in the bass, played for the best
part of his life on the middle notes of the colour
scale. There are low-toned paintings by him just
as there are in some of them figures, like the
tired, worn peasant of the Shepherd and Flock
(supplement), which do convey a sense of sad
endurance. Still the characteristics of a painter’s
art are not to be deduced from isolated examples,
but from the bulk of his work; and to look
without preconceived notions at a number of
Mauves is to recognise that his painting was
no more low-toned, in the strict sense of the
word, than it as “strongly marked” by the
influence of Millet.
The two chief excellences of Mauve, derived
wholly from the keenness of his own perceptions
and his power to record them aright, are the
BY ANTON MAUVE
“THE HILLSIDE” (OIL PAINTING)
13