Months after the above was written the London correspondent of the “Chicago Tribune”—Nov. 2, 1913—wrote as follows about the post-impressionist exhibition in the Grafton Galleries:
Many of the pictures which would have provoked happy laughter three years ago now look quite ordinary. The public is inured to them as much as it is inured to Whistler or Degas, and in a little time some of them will be dealers’ pictures, just like the works of the Barbizon school.
There is, for instance, nothing extraordinary about the “Interior of a Café,” by VanGogh, except its quiet excellence. It is all seen as justly and yea as newly as a character in one of Tolstoi’s novels. One feels that any one could have painted it who had had the luck to see it so.
The “Boats at Anchor,” also by VanGogh, is merely a sound but not very interesting impressionist picture, and his flower piece is even academic in a delightful way. Cézanne’s “Boys Bathing” is one of those works on which the art of modern painters like M. Friesz is based.
It looks like a representation of something seen instantaneously, and yet at the same time it is all designed like a work of Nicholas Poussin’s.
M. Matisse’s “Joaquina” is timidly skied, but it is not in the least infuriating, like his famous gentleman in pajamas. Indeed, his method here justifies itself at first sight, for by no other means, one feels, could he have expressed the vitality of his sitter so simply and intensely.
M. Friesz’s “Garden at Coimbra” is one of the pictures that would have astonished us all three or four years ago, but which now looks only pleasant and simple. So are the works of M. Marquet and M. Doucet, and even M. Herbin no longer seems a bad joker. The “Polka” and “Waltz” of Mr. Severini, the futurist, are quite agreeable to the eye, if it refuses to allow itself to be puzzled by the mind; but, if futurist paintings can be academic, they are a little academic, or at least systematic. One feels that any one could be taught to do them pretty well in a studio.
Among the water colors there are some pleasant works by M. Doucet and some remarkable experiments by M. Pechstein. The color prints of M. Manzana are more Chinese than Japanese in spirit, especially the print of horses; and the lithographs of M. Matisse may help some earnest beginners to see some merit in his painting. At any rate, any one who looks at them must see that he can draw.
The exhibition contains a good deal of rubbish, but far less than most exhibitions of what is considered orthodox art.