Studio: international art (41.1907)

The Lay Figure

THE LAY FIGURE : ON RECEIV-
ING IMPRESSIONS.
" Would you mind giving me an ex-
planation of impressionism ? " said the Plain Man.
" I met an artist the other day who said he was an
impressionist; he showed me some of his pictures,
and they seemed to be nothing but blots and
smudges. I could not understand them in the
least, and I am afraid I thought they were rather
ridiculous. I want to know whether that was his
fault or my misfortune."

" I commend you for your humility," laughed
the Man with the Red Tie ; "most people would
not have admitted that such an alternative was
possible. The average person who cannot under-
stand a work of art blames, as a matter of course,
the artist who produced it and acccuses him of not
knowing his business."

" That is foolish," replied the Plain Man, " for
an artist may fairly be presumed to have some defi-
nite intention in everything he does. I am quite
prepared to believe that the impressionist's inten-
tion is definite enough, but unfortunately I cannot
see what it is. That is why I am asking you to
help me."

" Well, I should say that impressionism was the
faithful and exact representation of certain aspects
of nature," said the Man with the Red Tie. "It
is, as its name implies, the realisation of the effect
produced upon the artist by what he has seen, the
representation in a pictorial form of the impression
he has received."

" But does he really see nature like that?" asked
the Plain Man. " Does a landscape, for instance,
seem to him to be merely a lot of spots and streaks
of colour ? I never came across anything in nature
like that."

" You forget you have not the trained eye of
the artist," returned the Man with the Red Tie.
" He can see much more than you can, and there-
fore his impressions, being the result of careful
and searching insight, are much more vivid than
yours."

"You are evading the real point," broke in the
Art Critic. " The question is whether the artist
sees anything in nature which will at all justify
what he represents on his canvas. What is your
answer to that ? "

" I say that he does," cried the Man with the
Red Tie; " because he has acquired the power
of analysing nature. His acuteness of vision
enables him to look more deeply into thing*
than the merely superficial observer, and conse-
170

quently to give a view of his subjects that is often
too subtle and scientific for the ordinary man to
understand."

" That is one way of putting it, certainly," said
the Critic; "and if all the so-called impressionists
were as subtle and scientific as you say they are,
I should be quite prepared to agree with you.
But I find neither subtlety nor science in much
that is put forward now-a-days as impressionism,
and I must confess that our friend's complaint
about blots and smudges seems to me to be justi-
fied. I deny that artists see nature like that, and
I deny that the technical tricks they affect are
evidences' of their remarkable acuteness of vision
or of their deep analysis of natural facts. Such
vagaries of expression mean only too often that
the man who uses them has merely adopted
an eccentric and extravagant convention for the
sake of attracting attention—that seems to be
the true explanation of their so-called impres-
sionism."

" Then the impressionist is simply a charlatan ? "
asked the Plain Man. " And his work is, you would
imply, deliberately extravagant, and therefore not
to be taken as honest art ? "

"No, I do not go so far as that," replied the
Critic. " In its beginning, what is popularly called
impressionism represented the attempt made by
certain able artists to dissect and analyse nature's
colour and tone effects and to produce upon can-
vas a vivid suggestion of the vibration of light,
and the attempt was a justifiable one enough.
But most of the followers of these men have simply
adopted a convention which is purely unmeaning
and unscientific, and they paint in a perfunctory
manner pictures which not only misrepresent nature,
but are also absolutely inartistic. They disregard
the real subtleties of atmosphere and the true
gradations of tone; and they often go out of their
way to distort facts into the most displeasing
and irritating type of untruths. The serious im-
pressionist is no charlatan, and his work is honest
enough even when he makes the mistake of trying
to deal with subjects which cannot be properly repre-
sented by means of his technical convention. The
men I object to are the painters who pretend that
their clumsy, uncouth and careless daubing, their
presentation of gross and offensive ugliness, their
meaningless blots and smudges, are sincere records
of nature—real impressions. They are the hangers-
on who bring discredit upon the art they follow, and
upon the masters whose precepts they profess to
respect. I wonder to which class your artist
acquaintance belongs." The Lay Figure,