“We can start from any point and arrive at the sublime, and all is proper to be expressed, provided our aim is high enough. Then what you love with the greatest passion and power becomes a beauty of your own, which imposes itself upon others. Let each bring his own. An impression demands expression, and especially requires that which is capable of showing it most clearly and strongly. The whole arsenal of nature has ever been at the command of strong men, and their genius has made them take, not the things which are conventionally called the most beautiful, but those which suited best their places. In its own time and place, has not everything its part to play? Who shall dare to say that a potato is inferior to a pomegranate?
“Decadence set in when people began to believe that art, which she (Nature) had made, was the supreme end; when such and such an artist was taken as a model and aim without remembering that he had his eyes fixed on infinity.
“They still spoke of Nature, but meant thereby only the life-model which they used, but from whom they got nothing but conventionalities. If, for instance, they had to paint a figure out of doors, they still copied, for the purpose, a model lighted by a studio light, without appearing to dream that it had no relation to the luminous diffusion of light out of doors—a proof that they were not moved by a very deep emotion, which would have prevented artists from being satisfied with so little. For, as the spiritual can only be expressed by the observation of objects in their truest aspect, this physical untruth annihilated all others. There is no isolated truth.
“The moment that a man could do something masterly in painting, it was called good. If he had great anatomical knowledge, he made that pre-eminent, and was greatly praised for it, without thinking that these fine acquirements ought to serve, as indeed all others should, to express the thoughts of the mind. Then, instead of thoughts, he would have a programme. A subject would be sought which would give him a chance to exhibit certain things which came easiest to his hand. Finally, instead of making one’s knowledge the humble servant of one’s thought, on the contrary, the thought was suffocated under the display of a noisy cleverness. Each eyed his neighbour, and was full of enthusiasm for a manner.”
Bastien-Lepage.
Bastien-Lepage we had judged from reproductions, but we find lately, on seeing some of his work, that we had all along misjudged him, thinking him a much greater painter than he really is. This study of Bastien-Lepage has been a revelation to us of the quite misleading and dangerous power of reproductions of a painter’s work in black and white. All the black and white reproductions that we have seen of this painter’s work give the impression of much greater work than the originals really are, and we would caution all our readers against judging of any painter’s or sculptor’s work by a reproduction by any method, from etching to cheap wood-cutting, for they may be woefully misled. We feel sure these reproductions—no matter of what kind—will have a very harmful effect on art, and will give quite wrong opinions of work; and they are, no matter of what kind, whether etching, engraving, photo-etching, woodcut, or photograph, to be strongly condemned. Bastien-Lepage is not even always strong in drawing, and his sentiment is often false, untrue, and brutal, and not nearly so fine as Courbet’s sentiment, yet Courbet’s preceded him; he was but a follower, where Courbet was a leader.
Breton and Lhermitte.
Of the older living painters, Jules Breton and Lhermitte stand out as strong men; but Breton has long ago been passed, and Lhermitte is not the man he was, but some of Lhermitte’s work will live always. There is a remarkably fine Lhermitte in the Luxembourg, which every one should try and see. Both are naturalistic painters. Of other living painters much might be written, for they, in our opinion, represent the acme of painting and its highest development. We feel that we never saw painting done to perfection until we saw the Paris Salon, and we strongly recommend all readers of this book, after they have studied the pictures and sculptures here referred to, and have some insight into nature, to make without fail a yearly pilgrimage to the French Salon, where they will see painting at its highest development, though of course there is much bad work in the Salon, as at other exhibitions.
The marvellous pastel work, aquarelles, and charcoal drawings will all show them how immeasurably behind France, England is in all the pictorial arts. Englishmen do not know what drawing is—therein lies the cause of their failure. This very year we went to the Academy the day after seeing the Salon, and what a fall was there!
Of living French painters the work the student should carefully study is that of Meissonier,[[9]] Cabanel, Carolus Duran, Pelouse, Protais, Detaille, Perrandeau, Doucet, Petitjean, Busson, Landelle, Appian, Cazin, Harpignies, La Touche, Lansyer, Le Roux, C.M.G., Abraham, Anthonissen, Moreau de Tours, Nys, Nobillet, Marinier, Michel M. Japy, Carne, Vallois, Jan-Monchablon, Joubert, Boucher, J. F., Cabrit, Durot, Poithevin, Beauvais, Denant, Dufour, and many others whose names we forget for the moment, but, be it said, all naturalistic painters to a marvellous degree.