Wynford Dewhurst

“ It is pleasant to imagine that these artistic explorations somewhat dulled the misery of their exile. They worked and copied in the public and private galleries, they painted by the riverside, and in the streets and parks. With enthusiasm they absorbed the technique of Turner and Constable, perhaps of Watts, and the result is to be seen in Claude Monet’s Haystacks, in Pissarro’s street scenes, in Sisley’s landscapes, in the luminous work of Guillaumin and d’Espagnat, in the canvases of Vuillard, Maufra, and many followers. Their style was revolutionised, their ideals changed. ”

“ In the canvases of Vincent Van Gogh, Gauguin, Claus, Maufra, d’Espagnat, Liebermann, Harrison, Besnard, Le Sidaner, and many others of the later school, will be found not only colour, rich light, and subtly strong harmonies, but a feeling for beauty of line, composition, rhythm of movement. Our admiration for the great men of 1870 must not blind us to the fact that there are others; the road is not barred, and many of the followers are of great strength. ”

“ The Modern Impressionist, too, is a worshipper of light, and is never happier than when attempting to fix upon his canvas some beautiful effect of sunshine, some exquisite gradation of atmosphere. Who better than Turner can teach the use and practice of value and tone? In triumph he fixed those fleeting mists upon his immortal canvases, immortal unhappily only so long as bitumen, mummy, and other pigment abominations will allow. ”

“ He is not a painter for the love of painting itself, and does not revel in colour for colour’s sake. He is no analyst of the shimmering effects of a summer’s sun. That side of Impressionism has never appealed to him. ”

“ Personally one may say that the Giverny work is the most triumphant exposition of the methods of Impressionism. If the series known as Les Cathédrales be added, one may safely challenge the most critical. It is natural that Giverny should inspire the finest harvest, for, after years of experimental residence, it is here that Monet finally settled in 1883. The dominant note in the Giverny paintings is one of joy in the beauty of life and nature. They are the works of an inspired genius, who never forgets that Beauty is the mission of Art. ”

“ Since then I have endeavoured, by precept and by example, to preach the doctrine of Impressionism, particularly in England, where it is so little known and appreciated. It has always seemed to me astonishing that an art which has shown such magnificent proofs of virility, which has long been accepted at its true value on the Continent and in America, should be comparatively neglected in my own country. A stimulating propaganda being needed, I invaded for a short time the domain of the writer on art, a sphere of activity for which I feel myself none too well equipped. ”

“ Claude Monet is in the possession of undiminished vigour, and the list of his works will yet receive the names of many fresh triumphs. A life of strenuous labour, unflagging perseverance in the pursuit of a high ideal from which he has never flinched, the production of a long series of magnificent canvases—these great qualities of true and inspired genius merit and receive our deepest admiration, our most sincere and genuine homage. ”

“ Impressionist! One need feel no surprise that the superficial observer dubs him thus; for nowadays every painter whose work is luminous and bright, and devoid of bitumen, earns and deserves the title! The truth is that Claus, without adapting his style to any special method, is mainly concerned that his works shall be as full of atmosphere as possible, that his touch shall be as free and his colour as pure as he can make them. ”

“ From an absurd pseudo-classical style (the effect of teaching from men like Couture and Munkacsy) , together with unlimited use of bitumen and black, a national school of painting has been evolved which follows “la peinture claire,” giving promise that in time it will travel, as regards purity of colour and brilliance of effect, far beyond the bounds Monet has restricted himself to. Work “en plein air” is the vogue, and no longer the exception, whilst the sun is recognised at his true worth in the universal scheme of nature. ”

“ Monet is the greatest living painter of water. Witness the Matins sur la Seine, views painted from the river bank, from the artist’s houseboat, anchored in mid-stream, and on the various islands of the backwaters 44between Vétheuil and Vernon. The handling is free, loose, and masterly. Never has art expressed, through the hands of a craftsman, anything finer or more virile; never were ideas more frankly expressed, more freshly and more brilliantly executed. ”

“ She excelled above all in two branches of her art—an exquisite draughtsmanship and a most luminous and poetic sense of colour. Technical difficulties never discouraged her. She was one of those rare and fortunate individuals who can intuitively surmount any problem and consequently hardly require a teacher. Madame Eugène Manet was an artist to her finger-tips. Her work is charged with a feminine charm sympathetic to the temperament of any painter. Her canvases are iridescent poems in paint, and she possessed many qualities in common with her illustrious ancestor. ”

“ They do their best not to have any, so that the great man, in order to exist, must needs possess a power of attack greater than the force of resistance developed by millions of individuals.”
It has long been granted, even by the bitterest of his opponents, that Monet possesses a few at least of the attributes of genius—the capacity for turning out large quantities of work, an almost unparalleled fertility of invention, imagination, and originality, and above all that priceless gift to the artist—the supreme power of creation. ”

“ In all these decorations one finds colour and composition as original as bizarre, harmonious yet forcible. All students of modern painting should not fail to see these works, the most striking in execution of the last few years. The artist’s atelier is also always open to connoisseurs, and it will be found to be crowded with sketches and pictures in progress, each one unmistakably the handiwork of a master craftsman. ”

“ For his work the writer has always had deep sympathy, and this feeling has strengthened since the days when he copied the works of the master now in the Luxembourg. There can be no better method of studying any artist, and specially is it needed in the case of such a painter as Carrière. It is only during the long patient hours spent in trying to reproduce in facsimile these strange elusive pictures that one can grasp their technical qualities, their poetic intention, their thoughtful nature, and can fully recognise the fine achievement of the artist. ”

“ If the greatest art is to represent an impression of Nature at her best, then the work of Didier-Pouget is great. “It is truly worth while being a painter to have produced any one of these,” writes the critic of “Le Temps.” The artist loves best to represent Nature in her peaceful moods, and generally seeks the solitudes of the exquisite hills, valleys, and rivers of the Tarbes countryside, or the rich watershed of La Creuse. ”

“ Impressionism, in those works which represent it at its best, is a kind of painting which tends towards phenomenism, towards the visibility and the signification of things in space, and which wishes to grasp the synthesis of things as seen in a momentary glimpse.... One has now the right to say, without provoking an outcry, that it has been given to the people of the present time to witness a magnificent and phenomenal artistic evolution by this succession of canvases painted by Claude Monet during the past twenty years. ”

“ In the solid paint crayons we have an addition to the working tools of the artist which is of notable importance. This is not his only gift to France, for it is he who practically resuscitated the beautiful but dying art of etching in colours. In this work he was ably seconded by Miss Mary Cassatt. He is not only an artist but an actor, a musician, an orator, a sculptor, an etcher, a pastellist, an illustrator, and a man of letters. He is a fine example of the pioneer temperament. No sooner is success achieved in one branch of energy than he is in chase of another idea. ”

“ They each have sought harmonies of line and colour, and though distinct in personality and unlike in methods, they have produced wonderfully similar effects. One of the most impressive of Le Sidaner’s works is La Table in the Luxembourg. Here is the unmistakable Impressionist technique. In the courtyard of a country house is spread a table, white with napery, upon which stands a glowing opalescent lamp. A calm summer moon diffuses a gentle light over the whole scene. No human figures disturb the peaceful atmosphere, yet the sentiment of their presence pervades the place. ”

“ From the balconies of the Savoy Hotel the French master has watched the tidal ebb and flow of the great grey river, with its squalid southern banks shrouded day by day in white mist and brown smoke, the warehouses and chimneys coated in a veil of soot, the legacy of ages. The autumnal fogs, which harmonise discordant tones, round off harsh outlines, cloak the ugly and create the beautiful, are to the foreigner London’s greatest charm, although to the inhabitant they are a deadly infliction. ”

“ On the contrary, we stay to admire, not the technical gymnastics of the artist, but the subtle superhuman manner in which the soul of the sitter has been transferred to the canvas by the brush of a man of rare genius.
His lithographs too are marvellous. Should any reader carp at the use of such word let him carefully examine the portrait-studies of Anatole France, Rodin, Verlaine, Daudet, Geffroy, Madame Carrière, and the artist himself, also the Christ at the Tomb, the Théâtre de Belleville, Maternité, and many others. The more these great works are studied the more real they become. ”

“ The new to-day is old to-morrow, the exotic becomes classic, and one more page is added to the history of the evolution of art.
Nothing is more amazing than to read in the daily and weekly press of the “pernicious influence” and decadence of modern French art, criticisms the more astonishing as the present age is one of universal travel and liberal ideas. French art is in no such parlous state, and never, at any period of its history, displayed stronger signs of vitality. Never was its activity greater, nor its influence, poetry, and gaiety better for the general good of the nation. ”

“ The nude, he writes, has become well-nigh incapable of artistic treatment. Even the more naïve are beginning to see that the well-known nymph exhibiting her beauty by the borders of a stream can be endured no longer. Let the artist strive as he will, he will not escape the conventional; he is running an impossible race. ”

“ The municipality of Paris yearly expends large sums of money in securing the best available skill for decorating the public buildings in its charge. In this laudable custom it is followed by every town of any importance throughout the country. Lavishly patronised by the Government, the municipalities, wealthy private collectors, and the sentiment of the people generally, artists thrive in France and multiply. In whatever respect—if any—in which France may be found lagging behind the nations, in Art she must by the very reason of things remain supreme, for Art is a part of her daily life. ”

“ In the old days, Claus was accused of being an ‘Impressionist,’ and such he is to a certain degree just as any one may be without disrespect to the glorious traditions of the painter’s art. He is an Impressionist to this extent—that he possesses the gift of feeling with the utmost keenness the true meaning of Nature in all her manifestations ”

“ Each part is truer than ever before, and unless one have a specially developed sense of ‘ensemble’ in this very special matter of values in and affected by sunlight, one gets from Monet an impression of actuality so much greater than he has ever got before, that one may be pardoned for feeling, and even for enthusiastically proclaiming, that in Monet realism finds its apogee. Monet paints absolute values in a very wide range, plus sunlight, as nearly as pigments can be got to represent it. ”

“ Because we know and judge and appreciate and feel the measure of truth with which objects in shadow are represented; we are insensibly more familiar with them in nature than with objects directly sun-illuminated, the value as well as the definition of which are far vaguer to us on account of their blending and infinite heightening by a luminosity absolutely overpowering. ”

“ In the art literature of the past we read of Delacroix and the decadence, of Corot and the downfall, of Monet and the abyss. There are still living in France aged and honoured professors, members of the Institute and of the Salon juries, who believe that the teaching of Claude Monet has been a national calamity. They hold that art no longer exists, having been destroyed by these dreadful innovations. ”

“ Since that date, in the manner of viewing nature, in the choice of subject, in the style, composition, technique, and colour of pictures, the main trend of German art has been completely altered. Until quite recently Teutonic artists delighted in the allegorical. The output of fabulous monsters, fauns, unicorns, satyrs, was enormous. Every young painter turned his hand to the production of these fantastic mythological subjects. Happily a saner view of the mission of art has come over the land, and the fauns and satyrs are being gradually relegated to oblivion. ”

“ Shadow is not a part of the landscape where light ceases, but where it is subordinate to a light which appears to us more intense. In the shadow the rays of the spectrum vibrate with different speed. The third conclusion resulting from this: the colours in the shadow are modified by refraction.... The colours mixed on the palette compose a dirty grey.... Here we touch on the very foundations of Impressionism. The painter will have to paint with only the seven colours of the spectrum, and discard all the others; that is what Claude Monet has done boldly, adding to them only black and white. ”

“ Vincent Van Gogh requires mention as a painter who practised the methods of Impressionism to their extreme limit. A Dutchman who lived in France, Van Gogh, a man of great talent, committed suicide after a most unhappy life. Like his own personality, these canvases are exotic, though at times displaying a more tender note. Had fortune been less unkind he would have developed into a great artist, for nature had endowed him with a rich genius. ”

“ In the peace of Giverny we leave the great painter. He is one of the few original members of the Impressionist group who has lived to see the almost complete reversal of the hostile judgment passed upon his canvases by an ill-educated public. Now he is able to enjoy not only the satisfaction of having his principles acknowledged, but also the receipt of the material fruits of a world-wide renown. Not often do pioneers succeed so thoroughly.
Success in the sale-room is not always the same thing as artistic success, but some information as to the prices Monet now commands may prove of value. ”