Charles John Holmes

“ Millet, indeed, is a standing refutation of the idea that the modern attitude towards nature is incompatible with traditional methods of painting. His peasants are more like real peasants than those of anyone else, while his landscape suggests the weather and the time of day with a simple directness that makes the work of other painters look fantastic or laboured. His brushwork is often rather clumsy, for he never quite mastered the heaviness of hand he inherited from generations of peasant ancestors, but it is clumsy only in comparison with that of the great painters of the past. ”

“ Rothenstein been deeply influenced by Goya's painting, but the spirit in which they approach life and nature is similar, and their forms of activity are the same.... Fortunately he exhibits a power of exposition often denied to artists. He can make us see and weigh the qualities which have given Goya so great an influence on the development of modern art. Whether dealing with the general principle of an artist's appreciation of a master, or more particularly with Goya's relationship to the romantic revival of the early nineteenth century, every word should be weighed.... ”

“ Leslie's admirable biography must always remain the great authority on Constable's personal history, yet no book, however accurate and sympathetic, which dates from the forties, could foresee the enormous change which has taken place in landscape painting since Constable's death. Whatever his responsibility for the artistic revolution with which his name is associated, Constable undoubtedly stands at the parting of the ways between the old masters and the moderns, for he was the first to prove that a landscape might be a good picture, and also be really like nature. ”

“ Had they ever looked carefully at nature, and possessed any but the meanest ambitions, they could hardly have failed to sympathize with the sailing clouds of The Cornfield and The Valley Farm, the glistening meadows of The Leaping Horse, the storm and rainbow of the large Salisbury Cathedral, the tremendous desolation of The Old Sarum, or the hush that falls with the twilight of The Cenotaph. ”

“ The colour is so splendid, the touch so free and delicate, that the spectator cannot fail to be enchanted, though in his inmost heart he may know all the time that the deep tones of the sky, the glow and the swing of the warm foliage, are merely masterpieces of magnificent convention and like nothing that ever was upon the face of the earth.
Gainsborough and Wilson were not the only painters of the eighteenth century who helped to restore the dignity of landscape. ”

“ Constable's painting, in youth as in later life, is primarily inspired by a sincere affection for the actual objects and places he depicts. He regards them rather as things to be loved in themselves than as pictorial material to be disposed this way or that as an artist's taste or knowledge might suggest. Hence his tendency, in holding the balance between nature and art, is to an all-round compromise, and not to that abstraction and emphasis of particular facts which characterizes the best painting of Millet. Millet, thus, in spite of all his "local colour," is the property of the whole world. ”

“ As a young man Constable certainly may not have been rich, but he was never reduced to any desperate straits, and later by various bequests inherited nearly £30,000. If his art was too original to command the ready sale which attends the commercial painter who has learned to paint down to the level of the public, he was at least admired and respected by a fair number of his brother-artists, he was a regular exhibitor at the Academy, and his success on the Continent was sufficiently spontaneous and remarkable to have satisfied any ambition. ”

“ The Dutch have for centuries been a race of painters, so that in their hands the modern fashion in realism has not been carried to any absurd extremity, however apparent the French influence in their work may be. Their colour, if often too cold or too raw to be quite pleasant, is never violent or uncouth. Nevertheless, their dexterous compromise between art and nature has not the scientific interest of Monet's experiments, the real grandeur and force underlying the struggles of Rousseau, or the profound insight of Millet. ”

“ Founding his art upon the dull tradition of the Eclectics, he made the masses graceful, filled void spaces with appropriate detail, drew trees that had some resemblance to the trees of nature, painted a sea that could glitter with waves that actually seemed to splash, and spread over all a sky that was like a real sky—no convenient conventional twilight, but veritable day, with a warm sun in full view. ”

“ To accuse him of want of veneration for Nature is even more absurdly false, and may be best answered in Constable's own words. In the course of the last of his lectures on Landscape, delivered the year before his death, he says: "The young painter who, regardless of present popularity, would leave a name behind him, must become the patient pupil of Nature.... The landscape painter must walk in the fields with a humble mind. No arrogant man was ever permitted to see Nature in all her beauty. ”

“ In a sketch unity can easily be obtained by devices that are impossible in large pictures, where the composition has to be built up by elaborate machinery. Feeling that he could not as yet control this machinery, Constable set himself to learn its secrets by returning to the study of Reynolds and others of the old masters. His experiments in landscape were for a time confined to modest proportions, and he did not begin to paint on a large scale until he had assured himself of the soundness of his principles of work. ”

“ It allowed strong effects of light and colour to be rendered with great vigour and accuracy, while the infinite number of small spots of paint suggested the natural vibration of the atmosphere. Whether Monet's work can always be called art, is another matter. Monet's aim was scientific truth, and scientific truth has no inevitable relation to art. The aim of art, however one defines it, must always be closely connected with beauty, and it is undeniable that Monet's painting, though always interesting, is not always beautiful. His spotty raw pigment is a positively unpleasant substance. ”

“ In a short abstract such as this it is impossible to give a fair impression of the painter's character, of the simplicity and earnestness of his nature, of the kindness of his heart, and the sense of humour which together served to gain the affection of those with whom he came in contact, even more than his enthusiasm for his art, and the patience, originality, and skill with which he practised it. In Leslie's delightful pages Constable the man is revealed as clearly as Constable the painter, and it is difficult to say which of the two is the more attractive. ”

“ Sturge Moore is the right sympathetic expounder of this half-childish secluded nature. His own imagination, with its delight in quaint surprises of observation and sharp simplicities of expression, fits him to handle an art that is not for everybody, and at whose gates heavy trespassers should rather be warned by notice-boards than strollers invited by guide-posts.'
GOYA. By Will Rothenstein. ”

“ The logical result of such experiments is scientific imitation rather than Art, and, though a longer life might have enabled Constable to become even more modern than he is, it is doubtful whether he would have added to his fame as an artist.
The actual scope of his achievement is already wide enough. In early life his aim had been to find out how far the cool fresh colours of the skies and streams and fields and trees of his beloved Suffolk could be suggested within the then accepted limits of oil-painting. ”

“ In Corot we get the modern raw pigment, the modern spottiness, the modern shapeless brushwork, but his pictures are built on a monochrome foundation in the manner of Claude, while the artist's natural taste prevents the modernity of the colour and handling from being obtrusive. Millet was the great modern master of chiaroscuro. Unity therefore came naturally to him, yet, to make certainty still more certain, his toiling figures and stern landscape are bathed in the warm atmosphere of the old masters. ”

“ The method of Titian, which consisted of a first solid painting (probably tempera) of a broad and simple kind, followed by elaborate glazes with transparent or semi-transparent pigment, was admirably adapted for the breadth of mass and richness of colour at which he aimed. Being a thoroughly professional painter, he realized exactly the limitations and advantages of a method which enabled him to reduce his interpretations of natural effect to the unity of tone which had already become a recognised condition of pictorial success ”

“ At home he practised painting from nature in company with John Dunthorne, a plumber and glazier, an ingenious and original man, who shared the boy's enthusiasm for art. As in the case of Crome, who, as a boy, was apprenticed for seven years to a coach, house, and sign painter, this early acquaintance with men who used paint in the broadest and simplest manner was doubtless of much use in saving Constable from any pettiness or timidity in the handling of pigment. ”

“ The small study for The Valley Farm deserves special attention for the beauty of its colour, and an air of dignity and repose unusual with the master during his last years. The Study of Tree Stems might almost come from the hand of Manet, so brilliant and natural is the blaze of the sunlight, so frank is the treatment of the cool shadows. The furious sepia studies of buildings and trees at Dedham and Bergholt may also be assigned to this period. The View of Hampstead Heath, which Constable exhibited at the Academy of 1830, is probably identical with the picture in the National Gallery. ”

“ The efforts of Rousseau and Courbet towards absolute realism were continued by Manet and Monet. In many respects the results obtained by Monet may be regarded as final, for his painting imitates the light and colour of nature as exactly as is possible with the artistic materials hitherto discovered. Such a remarkable degree of accuracy could only be obtained by the sacrifice of all that was usually considered essential to good painting. Design became a matter of chance, because nature was not to be altered or adapted. ”

“ Choose where you will, there is something that takes you.... Wherever one turns, too, one finds a wisdom, an insight, and a flow of spirits that are miles away from the minor ruck, and that really sets one believing that Mr. Ainslie may be destined to help us right out of our precious hot-houses into the open road, where there is a wind and strength.'
ODES. By Laurence Binyon. With a Woodcut Title-page after William Strang. ”

“ The correspondence of the two lovers as given by Leslie should be read in extenso by all who are interested in Constable's personality, and is of no little interest as a human document. It is amusing to contrast the two young people. The artist is ardent, hopes and despairs alternately, turns for a time to portrait-painting as a means of making money, but is always intent upon bringing matters to a climax. ”

“ Portrait-painting is good practice for a landscape painter, both because it forces him to treat a simple subject with close attention, and because it is the branch of art which has the most sound and definite technical traditions. ”

“ Rembrandt and Claude proved that rustic life could provide material enough for admirable sketches, but the work of the lesser Dutchmen showed that average country scenery was by itself an inadequate motive for elaborate oil-painting. Gainsborough and Crome, it is true, made charming pictures out of very simple subjects, but they are made charming by art, and not by sincere imitation of nature.
The case of Turner is somewhat different. Turner all his life held to the ideals of the riper old masters, that is to say, his primary object was the making of splendid pictorial compositions. ”