RENOIR
ON THE TERRACE
The race speaks in him. It is inexplicable that he should not have met with startling success, since he is voluptuous, bright, happy and learned without heaviness. One has to attribute his relative isolation to the violence of the controversies, and particularly to the dignity of a poet gently disdainful of public opinion and paying attention solely to painting, his great and only love. Manet has been a fighter whose works have created scandal. Renoir has neither shown, nor hidden himself: he has painted according to his dream, spreading his works, without mixing up his name or his personality with the tumult that raged around his friends. And now, for that very reason, his work appears fresher and younger, more primitive and candid, more intoxicated with flowers, flesh and sunlight.
VII
THE SECONDARY PAINTERS OF IMPRESSIONISM—CAMILLE PISSARRO, ALFRED SISLEY, PAUL CÉZANNE, BERTHE MORISOT, MISS MARY CASSATT, EVA GONZALÈS, GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE, BAZILLE, ALBERT LEBOURG, EUGÈNE BOUDIN
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Manet, Degas, Monet and Renoir will present themselves as a glorious quartet of masters, in the history of painting. We must now speak of some personalities who have grown up by their side and who, without being great, offer nevertheless a rich and beautiful series of works.
Of these personalities the most considerable is certainly that of M. Camille Pissarro. He painted according to some wise and somewhat timid formulas, when Manet's example won him over to Impressionism to which he has remained faithful. M. Pissarro has been enormously productive. His work is composed of landscapes, rustic scenes, and studies of streets and markets. His first landscapes are in the manner of Corot, but bathed in blond colour: vast cornfields, sunny woods, skies with big, flocking clouds, effects of soft light—these are the motifs of some charming canvases which have a solid, classic quality. Later the artist adopted the method of the dissociation of tones, from which he obtained some happy effects. His harvest and market scenes are luminous and alive. The figures in these recall those of Millet. They bear witness to high qualities of sincere observation, and are the work of a man profoundly enamoured of rustic life. M. Pissarro excels in grouping the figures, in correctly catching their attitudes and in rendering the medley of a crowd in the sun. Certain fans in particular will always remain delightful caprices of fresh colour, but it would be vain to look in this attractive, animated and clear painting for the psychologic gifts, the profound feeling for grand silhouettes, and the intuition of the worn and gloomy soul of the men of the soil, which have made Millet's noble glory. At the time when, about 1885, the neo-Impressionists whom we shall study later on invented the Pointillist method, M. Pissarro tried it and applied it judiciously, with the patient, serious and slightly anxious talent, by which he is distinguished. Recently, in a series of pictures representing views of Paris (the boulevards and the Avenue de l'Opéra) M. Pissarro has shewn rare vision and skill and has perhaps signed his most beautiful and personal paintings. The perspective, the lighting, the tones of the houses and of the crowds, the reflections of rain or sunshine are intensely true; they make one feel the atmosphere, the charm and the soul of Paris. One can say of Pissarro that he lacks none of the gifts of his profession. He is a learned, fruitful and upright artist. But he has lacked originality; he always recalls those whom he admires and whose ideas he applies boldly and tastefully. It is probable that his conscientious nature has contributed not little towards keeping him in the second rank. Incapable, certainly, of voluntarily imitating, this excellent and diligent painter has not had the sparks of genius of his friends, but all that can be given to a man through conscientious study, striving after truth and love of art, has been acquired by M. Pissarro. The rest depended on destiny only. There is no character more worthy of respect and no effort more meritorious than his, and there can be no better proof of his disinterestedness and his modesty, than the fact that, although he has thirty years of work behind him, an honoured name and white hair, M. Pissarro did not hesitate to adopt, quite frankly, the technique of the young Pointillist painters, his juniors, because it appeared to him better than his own. He is, if not a great painter, at least one of the most interesting rustic landscape painters of our epoch. His visions of the country are quite his own, and are a harmonious mixture of Classicism and Impressionism which will secure one of the most honourable places to his work.