Studio: international art (84.1922)

THE STUDIO

THE INNOCENCE OF PAOLO
UCCELLO. 0000

THERE was, as we all know, a Victorian
School of Art that regarded certain
kinds of realism (in painting) as the one
standard by which all pictures should be
judged. And it is not dead yet. To this
school visual realism stands for Truth ; and
all paintings that do not conform to this
standard fall short of supreme achievement.
Most fortunately Truth will not be con-
fined in a pigeon-hole; though a generation,
and sometimes more, may be hoodwinked
into believing—what its painters find
nattering to themselves—that to it has been
vouchsafed the peculiar privilege of know-
ing Truth, and of confining her within the
narrow limits of its comprehension. 0
And so it follows that for several genera-
tions Paolo Uccello has been patronized as
a would-be realist who failed, in a charming
and naive way, to reach his goal. But now
—and perhaps it is the study of Eastern Art
that has illuminated the artists and critics
of to-day to this knowledge—Uccello is, in
this generation, appreciated as one of the
world's greatest decorators ; as subtle and
distinguished as the greatest painters of
China, though innocent, it is true, of the
facile tricks of the optical illusionist. For
The Rout of San Romano (of recent times,
one of the most admired of all the pictures
in the National Gallery) is among the
greatest examples of rhythmical composi-
tion in the East or the West. 0 0
Our Victorian forefathers, though, could
not see this facet of Truth—it would not
have fitted nicely into their pigeon-holed
conception of her ; they therefore cut it
out; they ignored or neglected the arts of
China, Persia, India and Japan, or they
could not have written of Uccello as they
did. To quote one typical example, penned
by a learned gentleman not so very many
years ago. He says : "... Paolo
Uccello, who muddled his composition
through working entirely by rule of
thumb. ..." If, to the Victorians, The
Vol. LXXXIV.—No. 352. July 1922

Rout of San Romano was a " muddled "
composition, then we can congratulate our-
selves on at least one step forward in a
proper knowledge of the essentials of great
decoration ; for to us the " muddle " is not
in The Rout of San Romano, but in the
heads of such critics. 000

As to those who regarded Uccello as a
realist who failed in his aim, one must
suppose that it was his deep interest in the
problems of perspective that misled them.
They must have decided that alone to a
realist could perspective have made such an
appeal, and have judged him by the know-
ledge of perspective evolved in the genera-
tion that succeeded him. He was no
realist. A very few minutes' study of
Uccello's pictures should prove this to an
unbiased mind ; for in every part of them
decoration, and not realism, was the aim ;
the simplification of the forms, the subtly
considered relation of the colour masses
and his (at that time considerable) know-
ledge of perspective are all utilised to pro-
duce a supremely fine decoration. Not
only is his simplification of forms not that
of the embryo realist, and typical of the
decorator, but his qualities of colour and
rhythm are those that no realist has ever
yet achieved. 00000

However, students of war, I fancy, are
probably not very deeply impressed by
Paolo Uccello's battle pictures ; rather was
he a painter of pageantry, and his battles do
but suggest a little friendly jousting. There
is no agony in them ! no dust! no blood-
stained bandages !—the war symbols of the
modern painter. There are, it is true,
some broken lances ; but they have been
broken on the shields of scathless heroes ;
even in the picture in the Uffizi Gallery one
is doubtful whether the central incident is
a hit or a miss ; for the knight on the great
white horse may be neatly dodging the
enemy lance or meeting his death . . . well-
fleshed horses kick their fat little legs about
in a fierce manner, and some have evidently
slipped down—tripped, no doubt, by the
helmets, shields and lances that careless

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