W. J. TURNER
THE FINE ARTS
AUGUSTE RENOIR
RENOIR is admired by almost all schools of taste, both conservative and radical, and naturally each school endeavours to claim him as its own. The impressionists, for instance, emphasise his adoption of the impressionist palette, his studies in the manner of Monet and Pisarro, his general preoccupation with atmosphere and sunlight; the anti-impressionists point out his deviation from the stippled technique, with its juxtaposition of the colours of the spectrum, his increasing interest in form and composition as contrasted with atmosphere, and his own disclaimer of adherence to the naturalistic principle: "Avec la Nature on fait ce qu'on veut et on aboutit necessairement a l'isolement. Moi, je reste dans le rang"; also the famous reply to the question, where one should learn painting: "Au musée, parbleu!"
The reflections upon art of even the greatest artist are not necessarily correct, and though an artist preaches one theory he may actually practise another. Nor are these brief and pithy utterances of Renoir's altogether unambiguous. In order to appreciate the real meaning of any statement of theory it is necessary to bear in mind the opposite view which it is combating. We cannot infer from Renoir's objection to the indiscriminate realism of the later impressionist doctrine that he was in favour of Cubism, for Cubism was not at the time under discussion. Nor does his reference of students to the old masters (au musée) imply in the least that he would abolish painting from nature. There is, in fact, not the slightest need to read into Renoir's simple, somewhat irritated replies any abstruse semi-metaphysical meaning. They will bear a very normal interpretation, which seems to me to be not only the true one, but also the truth. Renoir did not believe in the chaotic and uninspired painting of anything and everything, nor in the pretended complete severance with tradition and the past. He knew that the study of the old masters had assisted him in giving expression to his emotion, and he left the matter at that. Actually all his life long he painted from nature, and it is said that he hardly ever worked without a model. Indeed many of the intellectualists have been compelled to class Renoir as a "naïf," who was content with the unmediated charms of the external world, and never aspired to more deliberate abstract construction.
The Meaning of Impressionism
This distinction, however, between the realistic impressionist (Monet), the naïf (Renoir and the douanier Rousseau), and the intellectually constructive artist, such as Cézanne, is apt to be thoroughly misleading. It is true that the theory of impressionism, in its later developments, was a scientific formula calculated to fetter rather than help the artist, but it does not follow, nor is it by any means true, that Monet and Pisarro were not sometimes very fine artists. They elaborated a style which expressed admirably their own brisk and vivacious sentiment, and the result was neither photographic nor discontinuous with the past. Surely nothing but prejudice and the new pedantry of hybrid abstract design could deny æsthetic value to Monet's "Gare St. Lazare," and Pisarro's "Red Roofs," in the Luxembourg. Often, however, Monet's work is distinctly laboured and only differentiated from a photograph by the worried surface of the paint. He is more monotonous and uninspired than his contemporaries, but he is none the less the author of some remarkably good prose descriptions.
In short, impressionism has come to stand for two quite distinct things: one a genuine attempt to articulate an emotion connected with light and atmosphere, the other a scientific theory of colour and light. With the latter, few of the important impressionists were concerned. Seurat is the only one who seems to have been influenced to any noticeable extent and yet to have remained an artist. But with the former the whole group were more or less concerned, including Renoir and Cézanne. They all revolted from the old sombre colours, expressive of the worship of hoary antiquity, and astonished their contemporaries by plunging into the brightness of the present. Their different modes of reacting to this general tendency were the natural result of eminently desirable differences in temperament. This is the essence of the divergence between, say, Monet, Renoir, and Cézanne. For the very reason that they each possessed a personal vision their work differed, both technically and in its content. It simply is a misrepresentation to say that Cézanne indulged in Cubist deformations. To quote a biographer of Cézanne:—"Ce sont ses disciples, ses plagiaires qui raconte qu'il deforme. Ses deformations, que des cuistres voient si bien, eux qui ne sont pas peintres, ce sont des gestes, des attitudes, des contours vrais pour Cézanne. Il ne voyait pas autrement."