Modern Painting

by George Moore

"The qualities admired by this new school are certainly the mirrors of that side of the nineteenth-century development most opposed to fine painting, or, say, fine craftsmanship. Hurry, rush, fashion, are the enemies of toil, patience, and seclusion, without which no great works are produced. Hence the admiration for an art fully answering to a demand. No doubt impressionism is an expression in painting of the deplorable side of modern life."

After "forty years of the study of the best art of various schools that the galleries of Europe display", Mr. Richmond mistakes Degas for an impressionist (I use the word in its accepted sense); he follows the lead of the ordinary art critic who includes Degas among the impressionists because Degas paints dancing lessons, and because he has once or twice exhibited with Monet and his followers. The best way—possibly the only way—to obtain any notion of the depth of the abyss on which we stand will be by a plain statement of the facts.

When Ingres fell down in the fit from which he never recovered, it was Degas who carried him out of his studio. Degas had then been working with Ingres only a few months, but that brief while convinced Ingres of his pupil's genius, and it is known that he believed that it would be Degas who would carry on the classical tradition of which he was a great exponent. Degas has done this, not as Flandren tried to, by reproducing the externality of the master's work, but as only a man of genius could, by the application of the method to new material. Degas's early pictures, "The Spartan Youths" and "Semiramis building the Walls of Babylon". are pure Ingres. To this day Degas might be very fairly described as un petit Ingres. Do we not find Ingres' penetrating and intense line in the thin straining limbs of Degas's ballet-girls, in the heavy shoulders of his laundresses bent over the ironing table, and in the coarse forms of his housewives who sponge themselves in tin baths? The vulgar, who see nothing of a work of art but its external side, will find it difficult to understand that the art of "La Source" and of Degas's cumbersome housewives is the same. To the vulgar, Bouguereau and not Degas is the interpreter of the classical tradition.

'Hurry, rush, fashion, are the enemies of toil, patience, and seclusion, without which no great works are produced.'

For the sake of his beloved drawing Degas has for many years locked himself into his studio from early morning till late at night, refusing to open even to his most intimate friends. Coming across him one morning in a small café, where he went at midday to eat a cutlet, I said, "My dear friend, I haven't seen you for years; when may I come?" The answer I received was: "You're an old friend, and if you'll make an appointment I'll see you. But I may as well tell you that for the last two years no one has been in my studio." On the whole it is perhaps as well that I declined to make an appointment, for another old friend who went, and who stayed a little longer than he was expected to stay, was thrown down the staircase. And that staircase is spiral, as steep as any ladder. Until he succeeded in realising his art Degas's tongue was the terror of artistic Paris; his solitary days, the strain on the nerves that the invention and composition of his art, so entirely new and original, entailed, wrecked his temper, and there were moments when his friends began to dread the end that his striving might bring about. But with the realisation of his artistic ideal his real nature returned, and he is now full of kind words for the feeble, and full of indulgence for the slightest artistic effort.

The story of these terrible years of striving is written plainly enough on every canvas signed by Degas; yet Mr. Richmond imagines him skipping about airily from café to café, dashing off little impressions. In another letter Mr. Richmond says, 'Perfect craftsmanship, such as was Van Eyck's, Holbein's, Bellini's, Michael Angelo's, becomes more valuable as time goes on.' It is interesting to hear that Mr. Richmond admires Holbein's craftsmanship, but it will be still more interesting if he will explain how and why the head of the old Bohemian in the picture entitled "L'Absinthe" is inferior to Holbein. The art of Holbein, as I understand it—and if I do not understand it rightly I shall be delighted to have my mistake explained to me—consists of measurements and the power of observing and following an outline with remorseless precision. Now Degas in his early manner was frequently this. His portrait of his father listening to Pagan singing whilst he accompanied himself on the guitar is pure Holbein. Whether it is worse or better than Holbein is a matter of individual opinion; but to affect to admire Holbein and to decline to admire the portrait I speak of is—well, incomprehensible. The portrait of Deboutin in the picture entitled "L'Absinthe" is a later work, and is not quite so nearly in the manner of Holbein; but it is quite nearly enough to allow me to ask Mr. Richmond to explain how, and why it is inferior to Holbein. Inferior is not the word I want, for Mr. Richmond holds Holbein to be one of the greatest painters the world ever knew, and Degas to be hardly a painter at all.

For three weeks the pens of art critics, painters, designers, and engravers have been writing about this picture—about this rough Bohemian who leans over the café table with his wooden pipe fixed fast between his teeth, with his large soft felt hat on the back of his head, upheld there by a shock of bushy hair, with his large battered face grown around with scanty, unkempt beard, illuminated by a fixed and concentrated eye which tells us that his thoughts are in pursuit of an idea—about one of the finest specimens of the art of this century—and what have they told us? Mr. Richmond mistakes the work for some hurried sketch—impressionism—and practically declares the painting to be worthless. Mr. Walter Crane says it is only fit for a sociological museum or for an illustrated tract in a temperance propaganda; he adds some remarks about "a new Adam and Eve and a paradise of unnatural selection" which escape my understanding. An engraver said that the picture was a vulgar subject vulgarly painted. Another set of men said the picture was wonderful, extraordinary, perfect, complete, excellent. But on neither side was any attempt made to explain why the picture was bad or why the picture was excellent. The picture is excellent, but why is it excellent? Because the scene is like a real scene passing before your eyes? Because nothing has been omitted that might have been included, because nothing has been included that might have been omitted? Because the painting is clear, smooth, and limpid and pleasant to the eye? Because the colour is harmonious, and though low in tone, rich and strong? Because each face is drawn in its distinctive lines, and each tells the tale of instincts and of race? Because the clothing is in its accustomed folds and is full of the individuality of the wearer? We look on this picture and we ask ourselves how it is that amongst the tens and hundreds of thousands of men who have painted men and women in their daily occupations, habits, and surroundings, no one has said so much in so small a space, no one has expressed himself with that simplicity which draws all veils aside, and allows us to look into the heart of nature.

Where is the drawing visible except in the result? How beautifully concise it is, and yet it is large, supple, and true without excess of reality. Can you detect anywhere a measurement? Do you perceive a base, a fixed point from which the artist calculated and compared his drawing? That hat, full of the ill-usage of the studio, hanging on the shock of bushy hair, the perspective of those shoulders, and the round of the back, determining the exact width and thickness of the body, the movement of the arm leaning on the table, and the arm perfectly in the sleeve, and the ear and the shape of the neck hidden in the shadow of the hat and hair, and the battered face, sparely sown with an ill-kempt beard, illuminated by a fixed look which tells us that his thoughts are in pursuit of an idea—this old Bohemian smoking his pipe, does he not seem to have grown out of the canvas as naturally and mysteriously as a herb or plant? By the side of this drawing do not all the drawings in the gallery of English, French, Belgian, and Scandinavian seem either childish, ignorant-timed, or presumptuous? By the side of this picture do not all the other pictures in the gallery seem like little painted images?

Compared with this drawing, would not Holbein seem a little geometrical? Again I ask if you can detect in any outline or accent a fixed point from whence the drawing was measured, calculated, and constructed. In the drawing of all the other painters you trace the method and you take note of the knowledge through which the model has been seen and which has, as it were, dictated to the eye what it should see. But in Degas the science of the drawing is hidden from us—a beautiful flexible drawing almost impersonal, bending to and following the character, as naturally as the banks follow the course of their river.

I stop, although I have not said everything. To complete my study of this picture we should have to examine that smooth, clean, supple painting of such delicate and yet such a compact tissue; we should have to study that simple expressive modelling; we should have to consider the resources of that palette, reduced almost to a monochrome and yet so full of colour. I stop, for I think I have said enough to rouse if not to fully awaken suspicion in Mr. Richmond and Mr. Crane of the profound science concealed in a picture about which I am afraid they have written somewhat thoughtlessly.