Marie Van Vorst

“ Rodin’s art, by reason of his more complex, subtle temperament, his more artistic sympathy and profounder insight into nature and humanity, has been a renaissance to modern sculpture, and is to plastic art what Puvis de Chavannes was to decorative painting. He calls himself a student of human life, a disciple of nature, from which he inspires himself, and in an original, individual manner expresses in tangible form his conceptions of the mysteries of life. ”

“ France is true to her traditions in her treatment of her celebrated men. She has slaughtered a king, dethroned an emperor, sold a deliverer (Jeanne d’Arc) , and to her immortal artists offers as a stirrup-cup at starting such draughts of bitterness that if the very divinity within them did not preserve them for posterity’s good, who can tell whether Carpeaux, Delacroix, Manet, Rude, Berlioz, Garnier, Baryé, Puvis de Chavannes, and Rodin would not have fallen by the way?—and all the names are not here! Prejudice and schools in every country and age have their scores to level. ”

“ To me nature is so beautiful, the truths of humanity are so thrilling, that I have grown to adore life and the world. Je trouve que la vie est tellement belle!” His face was fairly luminous. This apotheosis of bien-être that the sculptor has reached in late middle age is perhaps Nature’s gift, her reward to him who, in spite of discouragement and the world’s scorn, has for forty years been her faithful, adoring disciple. ”

“ He has dared to portray by his art that which poet, musician, painter, have not waited to confess is an inspiration to all creation; and is it not possible that those who are so hasty to malign and criticise Rodin do not understand him? At all events in his latest productions he shows no sign of temporising, and chooses unflinchingly to be an expositor in stone of the passions, the sensations, and crises of humanity as he apprehends them. ”

“ The head, superb and massive, is lifted and backward inclined; the lips are parted, the eyes, deep-set, caverns of thought under heavy brows, look out at the defile of humanity which the romancer so keenly studied to immortal results. This Balzac is moqueur, rêveur, student, analyst; and the genius which has—roughly if you will—mightily modelled the Titian of literature, has finely comprehended, with the kinship of greatness, the type of the immortal Parisian. ”

“ In these studies Besnard has indeed played with his conception, ringing its changes to endless and infinite variety. Death, the skeleton, pursues his prey in every imaginable state of society—in the streets, in the crowd, to the lonely individual, to the lovers’ embrace, to the man and wife before the altar, he lurks behind a pillar to seize the solitary passer-by, he appears in the ball-room, jogging elbows with the débutante, he rescues the beggar and menaces the rich man. ”

“ PREFACE The source of art is the fountain of Love: the winged spirits, Painting, Sculpture, and Poetry, spring from it hand in hand. With affectionate leave-takings and cries of joy at their liberation, they soar into space, the angel of Music out-winging the rest because of more lambent fibre, but she is no more vital nor pulsating than her sisters. ”

“ But it is sufficient for the serious, unprejudiced observer to come once and look, to return and gaze, in order to recognise that he is before a masterpiece—the effigy of a human being appearing as in life from a flowing garment, symbol of the art of the romancer, the robe of imagination with which he enveloped his analyses. ”

“ But between Phidias and Rodin, between pure Greek and the complex modern, there is a great gulf fixed. The times demand, crave, insist upon and generate, another spirit. The ancients portrayed divinity in the mystic ideal clothed in ideal form; this modern portrays humanity, with its warring desires, its breath, span, happiness of love. ”

“ Whether the lover be brutal and aggressive (Courbet and at times Besnard) , shy and distinguished (Puvis de Chavannes) , dreamy and caressing (Corot and Cazin) , alert and pulsating (Sargent, Zorn) , retiring and retrospective (Millet-Lobre) , nobly dominating (like Rodin, who says “il faut planer”) —or varied in impulse—one might say capricious—like Whistler, Bastien Lepage and Monticeli—the obsession of the motif will infallibly assert itself in convincing form, the vital impulse of loyal desire will in every case assume masterly shape, and if sequent be great. ”

“ He at times lacks tenderness, but he loves hard! and his are les défauts des grandes qualités.
Puvis de Chavannes, gentle, distinguished, noble and shy, was both personally and professionally the Grand Seigneur of modern art. He is full of restraint; thoughtful, reserved, a lover of style. There is no audacity in this painter’s work, which is at times wavering and even clumsy in expression, nevertheless Puvis de Chavannes is un dieu!
Rodin and Besnard are both masterly, constructive draughtsmen: the former invariably synthetic in execution and generally so in conception. ”

“ The death of this great frescoist and painter leaves a place unfilled. He has had no equal, no predecessor, and his successor is not easy to name. To produce this original genius, whose grandiose, sublime, yet simple{6} productions appeal not only to the artist and the critic, but to the peasant, who stands long and enthralled before the Ste. Geneviève of the Panthéon, is the creation of half a century, and due to peculiar circumstances of time and race. He was a great man as well as a great painter; his temperament full of sun and humour, his soul calm and of crystalline clearness. ”

“ Will amateurs learn one day that rules of rhetoric cannot teach the scribbler how to write a lyric?—that the atelier cannot impart the sign to make brush and palette create that which is none other than the individuality of the painter? Cazin’s tender, mysterious treatment, Corot’s profound tranquillity, Turner’s golden flame, the genius of the masters, are their technique. ”

“ The jurors and the judges are forgotten. Puvis de Chavannes, however, is remembered, with the distinguished company of the Refused—Courbet, Dupré, Baryé, Troyon, Rousseau, Diaz, Millet, Corot. It was not until he had produced a great number of his masterpieces that his success was determined—his genius recognised. He then ceased to be the individual, the sport of vulgar pen and brush, and became the symbol of his work as the flag is of patriotism. He became a gift, a force, a glory, which France before his death revered, and which she justly honours. ”

“ Close together—at the top of a long line of stone steps—are seated a man and woman. Age has claimed them; they are old. But the woman still leans upon the man. What this fresco portrays of union, of inseparableness, of devotion, is not easy to express in words. There is no hint of melancholy in this winter scene, in this study of old age which Besnard has seen fit to accentuate, which he has chosen for his principal panel, and on which the newly married couple must meditate. ”

“ And although to Rodin has been attributed mastery in all arts save that in which he is absolutely maître, of his drawings, his designs, his ceramics, bear the touch of genius,—he is par excellence the sculptor. No critic can observe certain groups without conceding mastery to him in his art. ”

“ Below medium height, strongly, powerfully built, his head lionesque, his eyes keen, deep-set, and very brilliant, we see him when at work in the white long blouse he wears in his atelier, Rue de l’Université. The vast room is filled with groups completed and others in different stages of advancement, chiefly innumerable casts for the “Porte de l’Enfer.” Around Rodin are his stone-cutters, achieving from blocks of marble the contours of the models in clay before their eyes. A fine, clinking sound, a “tin-tin,” fills the place to echo as the penetrating instruments tap the hard surface. ”

“ Needless to say how admirable is the technique in these sketches, the fresh vigorous work of a man whose spirit alone was in the subject, whose ambition chafed for the leisure to create in what to him was the great province of art, the picture, the oil-painting.
It was in the early part of his career that he added to the glory of the modern poster. Artists of distinction in London and Paris have not hesitated to employ their talent in street-wall decoration. In France, Steinlen has many rivals amongst favourite painters of the day, most notably Léandre, Willette, Cheret. ”

“ Paris, appreciative of her distinguished son, has confided to him the most important of the decorations now under the city’s consideration—the ceiling of the Théâtre Français and the cupola of the Petit Palais. Let the amateur of art, whose list is already long, add these mural decorations which are now in process of construction, and it will be seen that the art of interior painting is not extinct in France, and that these tasks have been happily consigned to the man best fitted at present to perform them. ”

“ Genius is Love, Talent is the sure perception of essentials combined with the power of expression. Talent, coupled with genius, produces the Love-Child that men call a Masterpiece.
The love-child in Art is the most perfect of all human creations, whether the artist lover be conventional or academic, or rebellious against form and schools, or capricious and eccentric. Emerson said: “Write above your door the word, ‘Whim.’” This, Alfred Stevens, Besnard, Dégas, and the great sculptor{viii} Carries would have applauded, and above all—Whistler! ”

“ I produce a great deal, I work very hard, of course I am ambitious, and at times know discouragement, when my conception is so far behind my power of expression. I take often two months to do a picture and work and correct my canvases enormously. There are days when the mystery that should surround an idea is absent. Those are the days that I say one sees too clearly, and at that time I do not paint. Je ne pioche pas, which means ‘I do not dig away at my work.’ I have produced enormously and I owe my success to myself and my work alone. ”

“ His is a happy, vigorous genius, sane and normal, utterly devoid of much of the weakness marking modern French art.
As soon as the painter of mural decorations leaves{153} the domain of myth and contiguity to his subjects, he is on dangerous ground. Pure imagination is too personal, too largely of the painter’s own time—dying with his death and needing the very spirit of the age to interpret it, and when modern subjects become the choice for decorations, they should have for their principal scheme that which will appeal to the mass and be of general interest. ”

“ Already this square, unbeautiful room with its green-covered benches has altered in character. The greatest forces of the world, the greatest beauty of the world, have penetrated it through these interpretations of a master. ”

“ In the vast presentation of subject, in the numberless examples of cause and effect, demand and supply, representative of the tide reached by commerce, industries, and arts in this nervous, intense modern civilisation, there is nothing worthier of note than the work of Rodin, the sculptor, to whom France at last has seen fit to give general recognition. ”

“ It recalls in character and distinction the little picture of Gambetta’s room done by Cazin, and it is only the great masters who thus wonderfully fill small bits of canvas with whole histories of life. Besnard has called his study “La Mort”—a miserable little mansard room au sixième in a third-class hotel—the meagre furnishings are a chair, table, and iron bed on which lies the dead figure of a woman. At the door the voluble concierge, half curious and half touched, ushers in a young man, no doubt the lover of the wretched creature beyond all the questions of life ”

“ The work, in point of view of modelling and drawing, is absolute perfection. This treatment of the nude has the strength and power of marble with the addition of colour. In none of Besnard’s paintings is the luminous quality more striking. There is in it an opalescence and vibration, it possesses the softness of old paintings, and alone in a gallery of masterpieces would give Besnard the right to first rank. ”

“ On the skeleton scaffolding the builder becomes a speck, infinitely far from his fellows; the apprentice goes chattering gaily along with her companions,—again we have the attractive girl of the people, whose class in France is distinct, and whose personality is so agreeable. Steinlen touches with his happiest, lightest stroke the gay figure of youth and charm. ”

“ The art of ceramics always strongly interested him, and he has proved himself a clever exponent of it.
For a Frenchman he travelled widely, making many trips to Holland and Flanders, Italy and England. He was keenly appreciative of the art with which these countries teemed, and studied with benefit to his own methods the Flemish and Dutch masters as seen in the Pays Bas—his imagination impressed by the sober stretches of Netherland landscapes, by the velvet seductiveness of Italian hillsides and golden towns, and the misty loveliness of English country. ”

“ Each man and woman intends to be an arriviste without being a plodder and scholar. There is great pressure toward ultimate success; desire for originality. Imitation of methods and technique is not sympathetic. Above all there is a marked absence of the genius which carries men to the pinnacle Besnard has reached. Apprenticeship is not{110} to the taste of the modern student! Of people who put paint on canvas there are legion—of painters few—and in France, Degas and Besnard head the list. ”

“ No one who has seen the two young horses in their stalls forgets this live and graceful picture, with its animation and verve, its interesting anatomical study and the treatment of colour and tone. The animals are admirably drawn and the blue and crimson and violet of the scheme are Besnard’s own. This bold and eccentric production added much to the reputation of the painter and was one of the most remarked pictures at the Chicago Exposition. It is now owned by the Count Rajinski (Russia) and is a veritable chef d’œuvre. ”