International studio (49.1913)

INTERNATIONAL
• STUDIO
VOL. LX1X. No. 194 Copyright, 1913, by John Lane Company) APRIL, 1913

VOLUTION NOT REVOLUTION IN
ART. BY CHRISTIAN BRINTON
Who will shew its a new thing?
We are indeed a fortunate people. Separ-
ated from Europe by that shining stretch of sea
which has always so clearly conditioned our devel-
opment—social, intellectual, and esthetic—we get
only the results of Continental cultural endeavor.
We take no part in the preliminary struggles that
lead up to these achievements. They come to our
shores as finished products, appearing suddenly
before us in all their salutary freshness and
variety. The awakening of the American public
to the appreciation of things artistic has, in brief,
been accomplished by a series of shocks from the
outside rather than through intensive effort, ob-
servation, or participation.
It is unnecessary to hark back to dim, rudiment-
ary epochs and recall the consternation occasioned
by the arrival in Philadelphia of our first collection
of casts from the antique, which were consigned to
the old Academy of Fine Arts. Let us simply
begin with the placing on view at Boston of the
initial examples of the work of the Barbizon school.
This may be characterized as shock number one,
and its effect was far-reaching. These sober
transcripts of Fontainebleau field and forest were,
heaven alone knows why, frantically assailed, yet
finally, despite the insensate opposition of, among
others, the head of the Fine Arts Department at
Harvard, they were at length accepted by a reluc-
tantly enlightened press and public. Shock num-
ber two was caused by the exhibition at the
American Art Galleries, New York, in 1886, under
the auspices of MM. Durand-Ruel, of a memor-
able group of paintings by the pioneer Impres-
sionists. Critical as well as popular opinion, again
crudely hostile at the outset, succumbed in due
season to the sovereign vibrancy of these can-

vases, and another and still more significant battle
was won for the cause of modern art.
Coming down to more recent days, it was a con-
siderably longer interval before the nascent con-
sciousness of the community experienced its third
and latest awakening, from the effects of which we
have as yet scarcely recovered. There was for a
time an apparent lull in Continental artistic devel-
opment. Impressionism was followed by neo-
Impressionism, which, in essence, was an extension
of method rather than a departure from the prac-
tice of the older men. It was not, indeed, until
the apparition at the Grafton Galleries, London,
in November, 1910, of the so-called Post-Impres-
sionists, that the Anglo-Saxon world realized that,
during this period of superficial calm, creative
impulse had all the while been seething with un-
precedented force and vitality. The focus of
activity was as usual found to be in France, and
it was from France that in large part came to us
the exhibition which made its impromptu home
during the past few weeks at the Sixty-ninth
Regiment Armory.
That penchant for repetition which has become
one of the cherished prerogatives of history, did
not fail upon this occasion to assert itself. The
scenes enacted and the things said on the appear-
ance of the Barbizon and Impressionist masters
were but duplicated on a larger scale under the
umbrageous canopy of glass, steel, and bunting
beneath which surged the eager, curious throngs.
The phenomenon of the omniscient critic was like-
wise not lacking, the position of the Harvard
pedagogue already referred to being paralleled by
the august art writer of The Tribune, who of
course planted himself majestically across the
pathway of progress. One thing and one thing
alone was different, and that was the attitude of
the general public and of a certain welcome leaven
of the press. Having on previous occasions found
themselves grotesquely in the wrong, and being


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