We now come to those pictures which show Renoir’s intimate relation to Rubens through Boucher and Watteau: to his alfresco bathing figures. Some one has pointed out that his Baigneuses of 1885, one year after he had devoted himself to drawing, was inspired by Girardon’s lead-reliefs in the gardens at Versailles. The commentary is undoubtedly true; but even so, of what significance is it? Aside from the superficial fact that in the works of both appear bathing women in more or less abandoned poses, Renoir had nothing in common with the school of Largillière, Pater, Fragonard, Le Moyne, Santerre and Girardon. In all such observations one senses the restriction of the critic’s viewpoint to illustration. An artist may find inspiration in any visual form, but this form is of no more æsthetic importance to him than a photograph. In Picasso’s paintings of violin fragments we are scarcely permitted to deduce an inspiration from Stradivarius. Grotesque as this analogy may seem, it is applicable to the contention that Renoir stemmed from Girardon. For there is nothing whatever in Renoir’s bathing girls to suggest a psychological parallel between them and the leaden frieze at Versailles. If Renoir saw in that frieze an attractive pose, it was with an eye to its adaptability to composition. In Girardon there is only a pretty and sensual chaos. In Renoir we have a masterly organisation wherein the actual positions of the young women are not even remarked. Compare, for instance, Girardon’s version of the figure of the girl throwing water on her playmates, with the corresponding figure in Renoir’s drawing. The body of the former is without doubt a more faithful replica of its model; in Renoir it has become impossibly elongated and voluminous. Its head is too small; its back too long; its hips are too large—and yet withal it is an exquisite bit of rich form which has as concrete a tangibility as that of a real body. One cannot judge it by its contour; one must bury oneself in its very weight.
Had Renoir advanced no further than his masterly Baigneuse of 1884, he would nevertheless have gone down in history as a great artist. But compared with the same subject done in 1888, it appears stiff. We feel in it the rigidity of a master whose great qualities are without a directing intelligence. In the later canvas, Renoir is less preoccupied with details. As a result there is a greater plenitude of bulging form, a purer rhythm. And there is also an added movement caused by the linear harmony of the background, by the hair over the shoulder, and above all by the turning of the head so that its weight is shifted over a hollow. An apparently simple thing—this turning of a head. Yet Michelangelo’s genius, as well as that of all great artists, is dependent on the knowledge of when a head should be turned or a limb advanced. This knowledge is what transforms action into movement, tempo into rhythm, the static into the plastic, the dead into the living. It is the final penetration into composition; on it all æsthetic form is built. Renoir acquired it in his period of so-called dry drawing. Its dawn came in La Natte and Mère et Enfant. It was still developing in the Baigneuse; and in La Baigneuse Brune and Nu à l’Étoffe Vert et Jaune, both done after 1900, this knowledge was becoming sure of itself. Between 1884 and 1892, however, Renoir’s new strength was not wholly mastered. There was conscious effort in its employment. This is seen in La Fillette à la Gerbe and Les Filles de Catulle Mendès and in that otherwise miraculous canvas, Au Piano. In Le Croquet, 1892, he begins to exhibit, in his use of new means, the same prodigious adroitness he displayed in his earlier and slighter works. And in Les Deux Sœurs the effects of labour entirely vanish, and he once more paints with magistral unconcern.
From that time forward Renoir’s complete genius was but a matter of evolution. And here let it be remembered that his transcendent competency was the result of academic training, for of late we have heard many objections to this kind of discipline. We have been invited to behold the water-colour and crayon works of the untutored, assured that they were as fine as Matisse’s drawings. And we have been asked to accept, as a corollary, the statement that all painters are better off without the pernicious influence of schools. We have had modern paintings pointed out to us as examples of what inspiration and freedom from convention can do. We have heard the constantly reiterated assertion that academies cramp genius, restrict vision and force all expression into stipulated moulds. To concede to these extravagant assertions would be to ignore the history of great painting, for during all the significant epochs of art the school was at its zenith. Without it there could be no genuine achievement. No amount of mere inspiration has ever enabled an artist to paint an eminent canvas. No amount of uncontrolled emotionalism has ever permitted one to make an æsthetically moving work of art. No untrained man, no matter how high his natural gifts, has yet been able to record adequately his feelings. All the records of past accomplishment go to show that no person who has not been profoundly educated in the purely objective (not utilitarian) forms, and in the abstract qualities of painting, such as anatomy and technique, has succeeded in conceiving an artistic organisation.
The school has never obscured or dwarfed genius, nor is it probable it ever will. To the contrary it assists the truly great man in his self-fulfilment and weeds out the mediocre man. It turns the student’s thoughts to methods rather than to inspiration. It directs the attention of incompetent and merely talented persons, incapable of rising above its teachings, into side issues. Thus it relegates their work to the soupentes of the world: whereas, if they had been permitted to labour at random, they would only have choked the market of genuinely æsthetic production. The school teaches discipline, precision, and the control of wayward impulses, without all of which the greatest artist could only incompletely express himself. These are the things which Renoir felt he lacked; and in the midst of his career he halted long enough to acquire them. It may be argued that his was intelligent training, while that of the schools is unintelligent. But all discipline is beneficial to the artist. Only slavish minds, hopeless from the first, succumb to it. The fact that a man capitulates to academic training attests to an incompetency so great that, under no circumstances, however favorable, could it have arisen to a point capable of producing great art. Giotto, El Greco and Rubens passed through rigid training and rose above it. And the apprenticeship demanded of the old Egyptian, Chinese and Greek artists was longer and more tedious than any of our school courses today.
Renoir’s scholastic training was his salvation. With the advent of the twentieth century he struck his pace. All his qualities converged toward the construction of rhythm. In 1900 he painted a large and ambitious canvas of an attired maid combing a nude’s hair, La Toilette de la Baigneuse, which is more extended and conclusive than any of his previous works. The forms lean in opposition and complete each other. In them is a perfect poise which subjectively evokes an emotion of movement. Even the lights and darks are separated so as to give the strongest effect. The very hat and tree trunk are integral parts of the whole, and there is not a line in the picture which does not develop logically to a harmonic completion. The luscious plenitude of form is equalled only by the finality of the rhythm.
Another picture of the same period is the Baigneuses in the Vollard collection, a duplicate of his Baigneuses of fifteen years before. Now all the hardness is gone from the contours. The differentiation of texture between the flesh and water and foliage is absent. The lines are less angular and true, and both the distant nudes’ attitudes are changed. The first canvas recalled Ingres; but the second brings up Cézanne, for it is pure composition with every nugatory quality eliminated. It demonstrates the possibility of creating abstract unity in three dimensions with the objective reality at hand. The picture contains movement in the vital sense, and possesses a tactility as great as a Giorgione done with modern means. In fact, comparison of these two Baigneuses will straightway divulge the advantages that lie in modern methods. The first is extremely able, and has the unfinished foundation of a great composition. The second, because of what Renoir had learned of freedom, is as intense as a Rubens in that painter’s own manner; and in addition it has an emotional element to which the Antwerp master never attained.
Two years later this obsession to create form as an impregnable block, no matter in how many integers it might be divided, made him turn his attention to Daumier; and in Le Jardin d’Essoyes and his heads of Coco he surpasses even this master of organisation. Having assimilated this new influence Renoir added it to his own store of knowledge, and four years later painted his greatest picture, Le Petit Peintre. After this there was little more to be done in Renoir’s style unless he extended his vision to greater surfaces. This he has not done. But he has added other masterpieces to the ones already mentioned. His Ode aux Fleurs (d’après Anacréon), the two decorative Panneaux of the tambourine player and the dancer, Coco et les Deux Servantes, La Rose dans les Cheveux and La Femme au Miroir are all worthy of a place beside the greatest pictures of all time. In these last paintings nature’s form is transcribed in a purely arbitrary manner. Many of the parts are exaggerated to create greater projection or more perfect proportion in relation to the whole. Texture has developed into a unified surface, and simple linear balance has become poise in depth. The colouring has grown so subtle that it is impossible in many places to tell just what it is, for in it is a whole spectrum that makes it living.
| BAIGNEUSES, 1885 | RENOIR |