Studio: international art (2.1894)

English Art and M. Fernand Khnopff

DESIGN FOR A POSTER FOR " LES V1NGTISTES "
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its author. But there are two points on which
I shall make a few remarks. The description of
the studio is correct, but you must not think for a
moment that it is a studio like a museum, a South
Kensington in little. Fernand Khnopff, up to
the present time, has lived modestly, frugally,
like Mr. G. F. Watts; and long may he continue
to follow the example set by the greatest of our
living painters ! For I believe that the barren-
ness of the imaginative faculty in the productions
of modern art is due in great measure to the in-
fluence of those museum-houses in which so many
of our painters dwell. You see, the artist's genius
is comprised, if I may so speak, of two antagonistic
powers—the one imitates, the other creates; the
first is never tired of representing the surfaces and
forms of beautiful things, but the second, and
immeasurably the nobler, power needs usually the
spur of necessity, so apt is it to be bus> only
in day-dreams. This being so, it follows that
luxurious surroundings develop and tend to dignify
the first of these powers largely at the expense of
the second.

These reflections are not altogether mine, for
they were inspired by some thoughts I met with
in Goethe, in Carlyle, and in Edgar Poe. Poe asks
" if it is not possible that, while a high order of
genius is necessarily ambitious, the highest is
above that which is termed ambition ? And may
it not thus happen that many far greater than
Milton have contentedly remained 1 mute and
inglorious ' ? I believe that the world has never
seen—and that, unless through some series of
accidents goading the noblest order of mind into
distasteful exertion, the world will never see—
that full extent of triumphant execution, in the
richer domains of art, of which the human nature
is absolutely capable." And now listen to the
Sage of Chelsea : "I think always, so great, quiet,
complete and self-sufficing is this Shakespeare,
had the Warwickshire Squire not prosecuted him
for deer-stealing, we had perhaps never heard of
him as a poet!" As for Goethe, he told Ecker-
mann one evening that in a splendid abode, like
that which he had at Carlsbad, he felt at ease and
contented, and had no desire to work. "But a
small residence," he went on, " like this poor
apartment in which we are, and where a sort of
orderly-disorder—a sort of gipsy-fashion—prevails,
suits me exactly. It allows my inner nature full
liberty to act, and to create from itself alone."
The great old man returned to the subject some
weeks later, and said: " You see in my working-
chamber no sofa. I sit always in my old wooden