By John La Farge.
the value of mystery in the haze; and finally he correlates the beauties of contrasted forms and spaces and the varying brilliance and softness of the coloured light. As I said, it is a decorator’s vision, and the same in their different degrees of sketchiness is revealed in the water-colour drawings made at the same time. They are so many notes and records of a mind perpetually intent on decorative problems.
Recently he wrote a short but exceedingly suggestive appreciation of Puvis de Chavannes, suggestive most of all because of its conscious and unconscious implication of his own experience and desires with those of a brother master in decoration. In their moral and mental elevation there is much affinity between the two men: Puvis, a Burgundian by birth, by education a Lyonnais, simultaneously, therefore, romantic and logical; La Farge, of French descent with romantic and adventurous associations, yet influenced by the vital practicalness of American environment. Both have sought to reconcile their respect for tradition with their interest in the living present; and to recognize the limitations imposed both by their medium and by their own individual personality, disciplining themselves to accept the inevitable and to carry their personal development to its farthest possibility. Its manifestations in each case are widely different: the robust Puvis detaching himself more and more from the material and tending to an extreme of spiritual refinement; the frailer physique of La Farge reaching out farther and farther toward the interpretation of spirit by means of material splendour. The differences were personal and local; but in the quality of their minds and their attitude toward art there is an unquestionable affinity between these two preëminent master decorators.
If I read La Farge’s art aright, it is the product of a wide and penetrating vision, simplified by selection; the theme is then comprehended in its vital significance, and all the force of his imagination is assembled to embroider it with a web of elaborate orchestration.
III
JAMES A. McNEILL WHISTLER
WE are already far enough away from the middle of the last century to gain a fair perspective of it. In matters of belief and feeling, it was a period of little faith and less initiative. Men moved forward with their faces turned backward,—in the religious world, seeking ideals in mediævalism; in art, also, borrowing their motives from the past. It was a time of rediscovery, of revivals; less of new birth or growth than of new assimilations. Velasquez, for example, was found to exist; so, also, Rembrandt; and Caucasian civilization became conscious of an Oriental art from farther round the globe than the Levant or even India. Japan was discovered. Today these three names represent potent influences in art. A few years ago their significance was not appreciated beyond the studios; still a few years farther back, and scarcely even there. It was Whistler’s discernment that early recognized their worth; his genius that utilized the significance so uniquely. How he did it is characteristic of himself, but equally of the modernity of which he is so consummate a representative.
And what of this modernity? Intrinsically it is not a new thing, though taking on some special colour from its particular time of reappearance, being indeed a culture of manners rather than of convictions. It is analytical, for it is part of, or compelled by, the contemporary scientific movement; it is intolerant of restraint, except such as it chooses for itself; is callous when not personally interested, and finds its interest in subtleties; its faith is self-found and felt to be honoured by the discovery; in scope not so much broad and embracing as diffused and discriminating; for depth, it substitutes a carefulness about many things, and for sincerity a nice tactfulness. It is polished, dainty in taste and manners, seeking the essence of life in its most varified appeal to the senses, even sometimes in abnormal depravity. It is, in fact, the very antithesis of brawn and muscle, of hard and wholesome thinking, of the bourgeoisie and Philistinism, through which a comfortable world is provided for modernity to bask in, either as a rarely delicate exotic or a upas tree.