Let us be equally just to Zola; let us notice, too, how amusingly he sets off Cézanne. Both were greatly gifted men: neither was the man of intelligence and talent, the brilliant man with the discursive intellect, who carries his gift about with him, takes it out when and where he pleases, and applies it where and how he likes. Zola, when he was not using his gift, posed as an artist, a saint, or simply "a great man"; but he never contrived to be anything but a bourgeois—a "sale bourgeois," according to Cézanne. Cézanne was all gift: seen as anything but a painter he looked like a fool. At Aix he tried to pass for a respectable rentier; he found no difficulty in being silly, but he could not achieve the necessary commonplaceness. He could not be vulgar. He was always an artist.

Instead of telling us so much about Zola and tutti quanti M. Vollard might have told us more about Cézanne's artistic development. What, for instance, is the history of his relations with Impressionism? The matter is to me far from clear. Cézanne began his artistic life amongst the Impressionists, he was reckoned a disciple of Pissarro; yet it is plain from his early work that he never swallowed much of the doctrine. Gradually he came to think that the Impressionists were on the wrong tack, that their work was flimsy and their theory misleading, that they failed to "realize." He dreamed of combining their delicate vision, their exquisite sensation, with a more positive and elaborate statement. He wanted to make of Impressionism "quelque chose de solide et de durable comme l'art des Musées." He succeeded. But at what moment did his dissent become acute, and to what extent was he aware from the first of its existence? Towards the end of his life he took to scolding the Impressionists, but one fancies that he was never very willing that anyone else should abuse them. "Regardez," said he to a young painter who had caught him coming out of church one stormy Sunday morning, as he pointed to a puddle touched by a sudden ray of sunlight, "comment voulez-vous rendre cela? Il faut se méfier, je vous le dis, des Impressionnistes_..._Tout de même, ils voient juste!"

The critical moment in Cézanne's life—if in such a life one moment may without impertinence be thought more critical than another—must have come somewhere about 1870. M. Vollard once asked him what he did during the war. "Ecoutez un peu, monsieur Vollard! Pendant la guerre j'ai beaucoup travaillé sur le motif à l'Estaque." M. Vollard is too good a patriot to add that during the war he also went into hiding, having been called up for military service. Cézanne, I am sorry to say, was an insoumis—a deserter. He seems to have supposed that he had something more important to do than to get himself killed for his country. It was not only in art that Cézanne gave proof of a surprisingly sure sense of values. Some fulsome journalist, wishing to flatter the old man after he had become famous, represented him hugging a tree and, with tears in his eyes, crying: "Comme je voudrais, celui-là, le transporter sur ma toile!" For a moment Cézanne contemplated the picture in terrified amazement, then exclaimed: "Dites, monsieur Vollard, c'est effrayant, la vie!" Useless to blame the particular imbecile: it was the world in which such things were possible that filled him with dismay. I stretch my hand towards a copy of the Burlington Magazine and come plumb on the following by the present Director of the Tate Gallery:

The truth is that the ecstasy of art and good actions are closely interrelated, the one leading to the other in endless succession or possibly even progression.

"Dites, monsieur Vollard, c'est effrayant, la vie!"[J]

Footnote J:[ (return) ] Since writing these words I learn that the director of the Tate Gallery has been unable to find, in his series of vast rooms, space for two small and fine works by Cézanne. It is some consolation to know that he has found space for more than twenty by Professor Tonks.

RENOIR[K]

Footnote K:[ (return) ] Renoir. Par Albert André. Crès et Cie.

Renoir is the greatest painter alive.[L] There are admirers of Matisse and admirers of Picasso who will contradict that, though the artists themselves would probably agree. Also, there are admirers of M. Bouguereau and of Sir Marcus Stone, there are Italian Futurists and members of the New English Art Club, with whom one bandies no words. Renoir is the greatest painter alive.

Footnote L:[ (return) ] This essay was written in 1919. He died in 1920.