Studio: international art (11.1897)

Constantin Meunier

more or less offensive. And the more they are
at variance with the aesthetical conventions of
the past, the greater is the annoyance of all the
pedants of the Italian galleries, who forget that
no two epochs are ever alike, and that the past
lives best in its own imperishable works of art.
So, what with the foolishness of the cultured,
and the natural heedlessness of the ignorant, an
honest man of real genius, a Meunier, unskilled in
the many social arts of useful courtesanship and
self-advertisement, must needs whistle down the
winds for fame. He must be content, like Meunier,
if he is able, at the age of sixty, to hail as friends
many of those critics who used to turn him into
ridicule.

Yet Meunier may well laugh in his sleeve at
some of his old foes. He must see that they are
making wild amends for their past follies. There
are those amongst them who are hardy enough to
acclaim him as the greatest sculptor of the time :
nay, as the inventor of an art entirely new and
original, which will be that of the millenarian
centuries to come. Critical applause, however,
like adverse criticism, is usually indiscreet, and for
the good reason that it is a delightful flattery which
men offer to their own judgment, and as a conse-
quence to their own intellectual vainglory. Ideal
criticisms would be in some sort admirable plagiar-
isms ; for the critic's ideal duty is faithfully to
repeat what every book, or picture, poem or statue,
has to tell him for and against its creator's talents
and attainments. No one, however, can thus turn
himself into what we may call a thinking phono-
graph, truthfully giving voice to those impressions
and those mute self-criticisms which art leaves in
every receptive educated mind. It is with his
whole character, as well as through a medium of
borrowed wisdom and stupidity, that a man sees ;
hence he reveals himself in his criticisms, and the
artist of whom he speaks is seldom benefited.

For this reason, one cannot hope to do justice to
the work of Constantin Meunier. To treat of it
simply and straightforwardly is the utmost that one
could do. M. Meunier, because he made the
collier and the artisan his theme, and "the suffering
greatness of toil" his poetry, is not necessarily the
inventor of an art entirely new, as well as memor-
ably original. Men of genius have long been
inspired by the life of the working classes; and
assuredly the old Dutch masters, when considered
as social historians, are not less truthful than Millet
and Meunier. The difference between the old
truth and the new is the result of a marked change
in the attitude of thoughtful men to the miseries so

common in the world. The Dutch masters loved
the world as it v/as, and were happy ; whereas we
moderns are so alive to the sorrows and abuses
near us, that our mirth loses itself in melancholy,
like that of the latter-day Dickens. In our own
day, as a rule, the man of genius is in revolt against
the common human lot, sometimes consciously
like Millet, unconsciously sometimes like Meunier;
and although he stirs in us many tender feelings,
by which our ancestors were seldom moved, yet we
must not think, like some of Meunier's rash critics,
that he will eventually bring about a regeneration
of mankind. Art must not pretend to educate

" DOCK LABOURER "

STATUETTE IN BRONZE BY CONSTANTIN MEUK

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