MODERN REALISM IN PAINTING.
The Little Sweep.
By Jules Bastien-Lepage.
MODERN REALISM IN PAINTING.
Much has been written about Jean François Millet, and mostly from two points of view. The picturesque surroundings of the plain of Barbizon and the peasant’s blouse have tempted the sentimental biographer to dwell on the personal note of poverty, which we now know was not the dominant one in Millet’s life. The picturesque writer has amplified, with more or less intelligence, reflections suggested by the subjects of his pictures. In all this, the painter’s point of view, which is, after all, the only one that matters, has, so far as its expression in print is concerned, been overlooked and omitted.
The important fact about Millet is not that he struggled with poverty, or that he expressed on canvas the dignity of labour, but that he was a great artist. As corollaries, he was a great draughtsman and a great colourist. He was gifted with the comprehension in its entirety of the import of any scene in nature which he wished to render. An unerring analysis enabled him to select what were the vital constituents of such a scene, and exquisite perceptions, trained by incessant labour, to render them in fitting terms in accordance with the tradition which governs the use of each material.
It may seem that the process here summarized is after all only that which governs all art production, and that the work of the second-rate and the ordinary differs only from that of the master in the degree of capacity exercised. But this is not so. It differs totally in kind. The conception, conscious or unconscious, of the nature and aim of art is in the two cases different, and, as a consequence, the practice is different.
It would be affectation to ignore that, for good or for evil, Paris is the art-centre of European painting, and that the most serious training in drawing and painting that is procurable on European lines is procurable in Paris. I should therefore consider it a service of great utility to serious art if it were possible to make clear the reasons for my conviction that the tendency of the mass of exhibition painting in France, and, by reflection, in England, has been in an inartistic direction, and has led inevitably to the sterile ideal of the instantaneous camera. And, on the other hand, that the narrow stream of purely artistic painting, that has trickled its more sequestered course parallel with the broad flood of exhibition work, owes its vitality to a profound and convinced reverence for tradition. For the illustration of that tradition I can find no more convenient source than the work of Jean François Millet, and for a typical monument of its disregard, the more fair to cite in that it is respectable in achievement, the work of Bastien-Lepage affords me a timely and perhaps the most appropriate example possible.
What, then, is the main difference? How did Millet work, and with what objects? How did Lepage work, and what is it he strove to attain?