Studio: international art (72.1918)

Modern French Pictures at the National Gallery

Those who immensely admire Daumier’s art,
which is now so much in fashion, will no doubt
esteem his painting, Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza, more than his oil-sketch of Daubigny.
I cannot write as one who can see in the forced
theatrical vehemence of Daumier the greatest
achievement of the modern world. Yet this
painting of Don Quixote is one of the most
representative of his important canvases, and
it vindicates the scope of the collection that we
should find it beside the Manets and the Renoir.

Of the later Impressionists none is more
interesting than Vuillard, and Vuillard’s The
Mantelpiece must be counted among master-
pieces of still-life.

Forain remains in his painting The Law Courts,
a graphic artist rather than a painter. There is
a purely literary flavour in his art; the moralities
are surprised there, as in Hogarth’s work.
But in this evocation of moral atmosphere
Forain’s art is far removed from that of the
Impressionists. To them life does not merely
mean human life and its surroundings. Their
pantheism does not only discover a spirit in
nature; it also regards as nature every phase
of life in the recesses of the town. It will not
regard one aspect of life as more noble, more
worthy of representation, than another—not

from blindness to ideal beauty but from an atti-
tude of reverence to every manifestation of life.

The virtue of Impressionism was its exquisite
sensibility ; the mirror that it held to nature
was the most sensitive that has ever yet received
an image on its surface. But the greatest
Impressionist art was not merely receptive, it
knew what it wished to retain. It could not
bear the thought that beauty involved in
transient conditions would pass away with them
as if it had never been. It strove to detain the
elements that went to make the passing show
enchanting, desiring that, as its tenement
crumbled to dust, the spirit of the hour should
enter into immortal life in art.

In forming his collection of continental
pictures Sir Hugh Lane did not confine himself
to French pictures. He took pains to secure
a typical example of the work of the Belgian
interior painter Stevens; while, with Mr. J. S.
Sargent, he greatly admired the art of Mancini,
and acquired several works by that painter.
In representing French art he cast back as far
as Ingres, with the head of the Due d’Orleans—
a study for the full-length at Versailles.

As I am adding the last words to this article
the news comes to hand of the death of M. Degas,
at the age of eighty-three.

BY CAMILLE PISSARRO