Studio: international art (1.1893)

The Growth of Recent A rt

nature. The earlier realism took a more piece-
meal view of things than the later impressionism
and so more willingly put up with rugged or hap-
hazard handling.

Landscape led the way, and, of all the school of
1830, it was Corot who was the main instrument in
bringing about a revolution. Compare him with
those who showed landscape imagination before
him. Since Corot, we can no longer quite look at
a tree with the eyes of Rubens, Rembrandt, Claude,
Hobbema, Watteau, or even Constable. It has
become, for ever, something else, and stands in a
different relation to what is round it. We have
learnt that truths will assume, on our canvases,
just the proportion of importance which we have
accorded them in our observation of nature. If
we are as earnest in observation of the trivial as of
the essential, we shall infallibly overstate the small
and let the large go unexpressed. Painters who
offer the goodness of their eyesight as an excuse
for niggling work, should rather confess their blind-
ness to broad effects. Indifferent to large shapes,
they pore over surface markings ; blind to the
general aspect of sky and earth, they ostentatiously
note small shades of local colour. He who feels
strongly the effect of the whole will take care not
to over-estimate the value of parts. But, to the
man observant only of small corners, who yet
paints panoramic scenes, breadth must seem mere
wilful emptiness. He cannot know that it is swept
clear to show a big thing and just depths of space.
If we admire a detail we should compose it as a
separate picture. Otherwise we allow fifty en-
sembles of impression to fight it out on one canvas.
We drown in confusion the character of the larger
shapes, the big trend of the ground, and all the
mystery and envelopment of nature. It is no
longer permitted to build together little separate
pieces of picturesqueness like Claude, even with all
his exquisite art. Corot has shown us a better sort
of Claude.

Meantime, figure-painting no less than land-
scape clamoured for a new cult of style. Let us
pass over the classics and romantics, Ingres and
Delacroix, and the temporary reconciliation of
their methods by T. Couture, and speak of what
more directly concerns our own day. Modern Art
has been mainly the work of France, and that free
expressive manner of handling according to the
sentiment of the form as shown by real light, was
worked out by Frenchmen; not fantastically but,
by their own admission, under the guidance of
the ancients. Nor was this copying ; a new way
of seeing and a new notion of picture-making had

to be counted with. In the " Illusions Perdues "
(1843) Gleyre had sounded the first note of that
Neo-classicism which has shot out so many
branches. Other schools sprung from Millet's
Winower (1848) or from Courbet's Stone
Breakers, 1850, and Funeral at Ornans, 1850.
These pictures and others by the same men, no
less than Corot's work, had marked out as it were
Dv 1855 the foundations of a new art. Now we
begin to hear more of Velasquez ; and now portrait-
painters contribute much to experiments in figure-
painting and to the establishment of technique.
Chaplin, Puvis de Chavannes, Baudry, Henner,
Bonnat, Vollon, Carolus-Duran, E. Delaunay,
Legros, Whistler, Manet, Fortuny, and H. Regnault,
occur to me as men whose influence was paramount
with the artists of the sixties and seventies. Bonnat,
Duran, Regnault, and other masters of this time
cultivated a solid firm technique. Its logical ex-
pression of the construction of a figure afforded a
sound necessary basis for modern teaching. To
equip painters for treating more ethereal kinds of
impressions, there was need of something else.
Whistler was there and threw a glamour over
things with his more filmy, suggestive, and mys-
terious manner which seems to partake of the
methods of Tiepolo, Corot and Velasquez. Puvis
de Chavannes, Henner, Legros, and Carolus-
Duran have affected the ideals of picture-making
as well as of technique. With these immediate
precursors of recent art we may mention the land-
scapist Pelouse whose work and teaching has been
useful in preparing methods favourable to impres-
sionistic treatment. To Edward Manet, however,
unquestionably belongs the chief honour of the
initiation of the impressionistic quality that charac-
terises the new schools. Manet is the great modern
originator of that mosaic of just open-air tones
which finally supplanted lines and object-painting.
It is remarkable that he no less than Duran was a
continual student of Velasquez. How to see was,
however, what Manet chiefly sought, though he
became no less eminent in style of expression. To
speak of the ramifications of the later art which
owns Manet as its first exponent, trespasses on the
bounds of another subject and would require all
the space I have at command. The reader will
know to what art I allude if I but mention the
names of Duez, Butin, Boudin, Claude Monet,
Bastian Lepage, Dagnan-Bouveret, Degas, Roll,
Besnard, Cazin, Raffaelli, Carriere, Kroyer, Boldini,
Montenard and the brothers Maris, to which he
can add any others that may occur to him. One
could fill pages in speaking of the Anglo-Saxon