International studio (60.1916/1917)

The Paintings of Lucien Pissarro

partly to misunderstanding but may be better
accounted for by the fact that his uncompromising
search for truth and the clear, logical statement
of it result often in the ignoring of time-honoured
shibboleths and an unlikeness to those conven-
tional notions of what a picture should look like
which seem to be ingrained in the English character.
Clear statement, too, it would astonishingly appear,
is held to be incompatible with the romantic in
art, whatever that may be. Vagueness in literature
whereby the meaning is obscured would indubit-
ably be condemned, but in the art of painting it
is apparently held to be a virtue. Even the term
Impressionism is so little understood as to indicate,
in many cases, something blurred, formless, and
without decision. Nothing, however, could be
more opposed to Pissarro’s work or to the prin-
ciples of Impressionism, the method of which
is based on a careful analysis of colour values,
a practice which holds no place for the charlatan.
There are logic and significance in all Pissarro’s

work. Had it nothing more than this a Pissarro
painting might be admirable enough, yet fail as
a work of art. But these characteristic qualities,
while on very rare occasions failing to support
a nobler edifice, form merely the basic quality of
all his work, on which have been erected what are
some of the most delightful lyrical paintings in
modern art. There have been, it is contended,
moments when his conscience—his love of the
literal truth—has made a coward of him in the
matter of composition. It may be that a reverence
for Nature and a determination to take it as it stands
have, in uninspired moments, prevented the trans-
plantation of a tree or the removal of a mountain
when such an act of artistic gardening would have
improved his picture. Possibly a detestation of
academic rules may result in the production of an
unfamiliar composition and provoke such annoy-
ance as was caused by Degas when he had the
audacity to permit a falling curtain to cut off the
heads of his ballet girls and show only their feet.


“sea view, fishpond”
60

BY LUCIEN PISSARRO