The Barbizon men continue to hold one's attention by a splendid Troyon. It is one of the best of his canvases I have ever seen. The little Diaz alongside of it is also typical of this very luminous painter, who often attains a lusciousness of colour in his work not reached by any other of the Barbizon men.
Fortuny, in an Algiers picture, shows the same brilliant technical quality which is so much in evidence in a small watercolor in the preceding gallery. Jules Bastien-LePage's studio nude seems very unhappily placed in a naturalistic background into which it does not fit, and Cazin's big canvas, while very dignified, hardly comes up to the level of his repenting "Simon Peter", in the other gallery. Pelouse's landscape, of singularly beautiful composition and colour, should not be overlooked. It is alongside the Cazin.
While almost all the pictures referred to so far are of the French school, there are three pictures of the older German school - two Lenbachs, one a very accurately drawn portrait of the German philosopher Mommsen, and the other a portrait of himself. They show this powerful artist in two different aspects. While the Mommsen is one of his later, broader pictures, the portrait of himself is of an earlier date, showing the artist as the serious student he has always been. Adolph Schreyer, another German, with his Bedouin pictures, was the pet of the art lovers in his day, and pictures like this can be found in almost every collection in the world.
The miscellaneous sculpture in this gallery is full of interest and gives one a good suggestion of the great mass of small modern sculpture found throughout the galleries. Mora's Indian figures are particularly interesting from their originality of theme. Mora tries hard to be unconventional, without going into the bizarre, and succeeds very well.
Gallery 61.
The difference of appearance in the four older galleries discussed and the one now visited is so marked as to lead one to believe that our investigations have not been conducted in the proper chronological order. All the art of the world, up to and including the Barbizon school, is characterized by a predominant brown colour which, on account of its warmth, is never disagreeable, although sometimes monotonous. The daring of the Englishman Constable in painting a landscape outdoors led to the development of a new point of view, which the older artists did not welcome. Constable and the men of the Barbizon school realized for the first time that outdoor conditions were totally different from the studio atmosphere, and while the work of such men as Corot, Millet, Daubigny, Rousseau, and Diaz is only slightly removed from the somber brown of the studio type, it recognizes a new aspect of things which was to be much farther developed than they ever dreamed. Just as Constable shocked his contemporaries by his - for that time - vivid outdoor blues and greens, so the men of the school of 1870, or the impressionists, surprised and outraged their fellowmen with a type of picture which we see in control of this delightfully refreshing gallery. We can testify by this time that Constable, although much opposed in his day, seems very tame to us today, and caution seems well advised before a final judgment of impressionism is passed. The slogan of this gallery seems to be, "More light and plenty of it!" The Monet wall gives a very good idea of the impressionistic school, in seven different canvases ranging from earlier more conventional examples to some of his latest efforts. One more fully understands the goal that these men, like Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, and others in this gallery were striving for when, in an apparently radical way, they discarded the attitude of their predecessors, in their search for light. It is true they encountered technical difficulties which forced them into an opacity of painting which is absolutely opposed to the smooth, sometimes licked appearance of the old masters. Many of these men must be viewed as great experimenters, who opened up new avenues without being entirely able to realize themselves. They are collectively known generally as impressionists, though the word "plein-airist" - luminist - has been chosen sometimes by them and by their admirers. The neo-impressionists in pictorial principle do not differ from the impressionist. Their technical procedure is different, and based on an optical law which proves that pure primary colours, put alongside of each other in alternating small quantities, will give, at a certain distance, a freshness and sparkle of atmosphere not attained by the earlier technical methods of the impressionistic school, which does not in the putting on of the paint differ from the old school. Besides, this use of pure paint enabled them to have the mixing of the paint, so to speak, done on the canvas, as the various primary colours juxtaposed would produce any desired number of secondary and tertiary colours without loss of freshness. In other words a green would be produced, not by mixing yellow and blue on the palette, but by putting a yellow dot and a blue dot alongside of each other, and so ad infinitum. According to the form of their colour dots they were called pointillistes, poiristes, and other more or less self-explanatory names. The service of these men to art can never be estimated too highly. The modern school of landscape painting particularly, and other art involving indoor subjects, are based entirely on the principles Monet discovered to the profession.
Pissarro, on either end of the wall opposite the Monet, appeals more in the new method of the neo-impressionists than Monet, by reason of much more interesting subjects. The one Pissarro on the right is of the first order from every point of view, demonstrating the superiority of the neo-impressionistic style applied to a very original and interesting subject. "The River Seine," by Sisley, is also wonderfully typical of this new style, while of the two Renoirs, only the still-life can really be called successful. There is an unfortunate fuzziness in his landscape which defeats all effect of difference of texture in the various objects of which this picture is composed.
There are a number of canvases in this gallery which have nothing to do with the predominating impressionistic character of the gallery. The Puvis de Chavannes gives one a very fine idea of the idealistic outlook of this greatest of all modern decorators. His art is so genuinely decorative that to see one of his pictures in a frame seems almost pathetic, when we think how infinitely more beautiful it would look as part of a wall. Eugène Carrière is very well represented by a stately portrait of a lady with a small dog. Carrière's mellow richness is entirely his own and rarely met with in any other artist's work.
On the west wall opposite the Puvis four very different canvases deserve to be mentioned. In the center a young Russian, Nicholas Fechin, displays a very unusual virtuosity in a picture of a somewhat sensual-looking young creature. Aside from the fascination of this young human animal, the handling of paint in this canvas is most extraordinary, possessing a technical quality few other canvases in the entire exhibition have. There is life, such as very few painters ever attain, and seen only in the work of a master. This work is not entirely a Nell Brinkley in oil, either. I confess I have a strange fondness for this weird canvas.
The international character of this gallery is most pronounced. Directly above the Fechin, Frits Thaulow, the Norwegian, justifies his reputation as the painter of flowing water in a picture of great beauty. Gaston La Touche faintly discloses in a large canvas his imaginative style, carried so much farther in his later work. Joseph Bail, the Frenchman, got into this gallery probably only on the basis of size, to balance the La Touche on the other side. To all appearances Bail has very little in common with the general modern character of this gallery. Nevertheless his canvas has merit in many ways.