[] Velasquez, by De Beruete, 1902.
[NOTE 18. PAGE 49]
It will always be a matter of surprise that so much popularity was secured by the light sketches of the Barbizon School, considering their general insignificance from the point of view of art, and the conspicuously artificial means adopted for their exploitation. Some of the artists of this school, having accomplished many studio works of merit, acquired the habit of painting in the open air. By this method it is impossible to execute a comprehensive natural scene, and the painters did not attempt the task, but they produced numberless sketchy works of local scenes under particular atmospheric conditions. They laboured honestly and conscientiously, and their sketches were put out for what they were and nothing more. The paintings would probably have retained their place as simple studies had not some commercial genius conceived the idea of putting them into heavy, gorgeous, gilt frames. With this embellishment they were successfully scattered round the world, mostly in the newer portions, much to the general astonishment. The raison d'être of the frames puzzled many persons, though it was frequently observed that the pictures do not look well unless surrounded by ample gold leaf. Thus, C. J. Holmes, Director of the London National Gallery, and an authority on impressionism, notes[a]:
Barbizon pictures are almost invariably set in frames with an undeniably vulgar look. Yet in such a rectangle of gilded contortion a Corot or a Daubigny shows to perfection: place it in a frame of more reticent design, and it becomes in a moment flat, empty, and tame.
The purpose of this frame is obvious. The eye is caught by the dazzling glitter, and feels immediate relief when it rests upon the quiet grey tone of the painting, the pleasurable sensation resulting therefrom being mistaken for involuntary appreciation of the beauty of the work.
As finished paintings these Barbizon sketches are novel, but as studies they are not, for similar work has been executed for two or three centuries, and particularly by the Dutch artists of the seventeenth century. In every considerable collection of drawings such sketches may be found, and there is scarcely a Barbizon painter whose work was not anticipated by a Dutch master. One has only to examine the drawings in the public art institutions of Europe by De Molyn, Blyhooft, Jan de Bischop, Lambert Doomer, Berghem, Avercamp, and others, to find examples which, if executed now, might easily be taken for works by the Barbizon masters.
[a] Notes on the Science of Picture-Making.
[NOTE 19. PAGE 52]
In recent times attempts have been made to upset the dictum of Aristotle as to the imitative character of the arts generally, exception being taken in respect of music and architecture. The first objection as to music arose with Schopenhauer, though he does not appear to have been quite certain of his position. He stated that while the other arts represent ideas, music does not, but being an art it must represent something, and he suggested that this something is the "Will," the term being used in the Schopenhauer philosophical sense, that is to say, implying the active principle of the universe, not being God. This means nothing at all from the point of view of art, and cannot even be seriously considered. The most notable essay on the subject since Schopenhauer is from the pen of Sidney Colvin who places music and architecture in a non-imitative group by themselves, the former on the principal ground that "it is like nothing else; it is no representation or similitude of anything whatever"; while architecture, he says, "appeals to our faculties for taking pleasure in non-imitative combinations of stationary masses."[a] But what Aristotle meant is that the arts are imitative in character, and not that they necessarily attempt to produce works of similitude with nature, this being evident from the fact that he pointed out that the higher works of art surpass nature, and he divided poetry and painting into three sections, of which the first is better than life, and the third inferior to it.
The musician in producing his art proceeds in precisely the same way as the poet or painter. He takes natural signs and rearranges them in a new order, producing a combination which is not to be found complete in nature, but every sign therein is natural and must necessarily be so. The higher the flight of the poet, or musician, or painter, or sculptor, the farther is the result from nature, but nevertheless the whole aim of the musician, as of the poet, is to represent emotional effects or natural phenomena beyond experience in life, as the great sculptor represents form and expression, and the great poet besides these things, every abstract quality, passion, and emotional effect, above this experience; but he cannot do more; he cannot represent something outside of nature, and so must imitate, that is, in the sense of representation.