Studio: international art (9.1897)

Studio-Talk

For amid the artificial display, the narrowness, of
our western civilisation his expansive, nature-loving
spirit was cramped and spoiled."

This is all very well; but I must give a graphic
illustration of what this "extraordinary" artist has
brought back from his place of exile. It is some-
thing which cannot be described in words, for
happily there are no words ugly enough to express
the monstrous hideousness of these pictures.
"What a pity," once exclaimed M. Prudhomme, at
an exhibition of paintings, "that these confounded
artists have coloured all this beautiful white can-
vas !" And the same remark inevitably rises to
one's lips on seeing M. Gauguin's chaotic col-
lection. _

In it may be found the full realisation of all that
is to be achieved by a mad fancy, allied to the most
absolute ignorance, incoherence and want of
form. Really one has no inclination to go to
Tahiti, after having seen it through the medium of
M. Gauguin's pictures. The people of the country,
male and female, are simply human animals of the
most repulsive type. Even in painting they are
terrifying—just lumps of black flesh glistening in
the sun, without shape or dignity, mere bundles of
dirty linen, formless and inert. And all around
is a demented sort of Nature—slabs of crude
colour intended to represent sky and sea and trees.

Give a child a palette and some paints and this
is how he would represent what he saw around him.
Nothing more coarse, more unreal, more loud could
be conceived. Not a half-tone anywhere. The
boldest colours join without intermingling, and
without the slightest regard to their surroundings.
It is all a sort of inharmonious chaos, with here
and there a vague form, intended for a human
being, or a frog, or a skinned cat—one hardly knows
which. Even if the colours were beautiful and
clear and clean it would not be so bad. But
they are quite the reverse. One would think they
were mixed with coal-dust, which has run and caked
into dirty patches. And this is what the admirers
of this mad, extravagant rubbish call "ideal art;"
this is what they style " symbolist, synthetic, sub-
jective and decorative."

M. Gauguin is not content with being a painter
—though that were flattery enough in itself!—but is
also by way of being a sculptor into the bargain.
He carves on cocoa-nuts and gourds, and on these
ridiculous substances appear snouts intended for
146

human faces, while the bodies of his strange
creatures are mere puffy, pudding-like excrescences.
It is all inconceivably atrocious; but ask his wor-
shippers, and they will tell you that Gauguin is the
Michael Angelo of to-day—and beware of contra-
dicting them, but you would run the risk of being
stoned!

A strange sign, all this, of the taste of a certain
" enlightened " class in France at the present time.
A strange disease, which happily has left most
minds untouched, but one which, it seems to me,
is worth noting now that the opportunity has
occurred.

Fantin-Latour is an artist of remarkable poetic
fancy, and the most delightful imaginations spring
from his supple art. Romantic in his ideas, and
very modern in manner, his beautiful dreams find
perfect realisation in the lithographs in which he
excels. A subtle and yet a very healthy art, his
translating as it does, with grand simplicity, the un-
real into work of real charm, with all frankness and
sincerity. As witness this Pastorale of his, one of
the latest of his lithographs, which gives an excel-
lent idea of his refined and delicate manner.

G. M.

HOLLAND.—Holland is actually a very
important art centre. I say Holland,
because Amsterdam, Rotterdam,
and The Hague are so close
together, that nearly every exhibition
held in one of these towns is repeated in the others.
Still The Hague, by the presence of the most cele-
brated Dutch painters, like Israels, Jacob and
Willem Maris, Mesdag, &c, and by the consider-
able number of artists living there (about one
painter per 700 inhabitants !) may be considered
the principal centre in the country. Two important
art clubs exist here: " Pulchri Studio" and the
younger " Kunstkring." In Amsterdam, a powerful
society is " Arti et Amicitia?," which is just now
organising an exhibition of Dutch pictures at the
Academy of St. Petersburg, and in Rotterdam a
new and very active art-club is organising exhibi-
tions also, while Utrecht and other provincial towns
are showing a revival of importance.

The summer season, now finished, was rather an
important one. After a poor triennial exhibition
at the Hague, there followed a brilliant exhibition