Pointelin has received the usual honours France awards to her most distinguished citizens. He has been decorated with the Legion of Honour, is “Hors Concours” at the Salon, and received (amongst many other like trophies) the Gold Medals at the Exhibitions of 1889 and 1900. His work is to be found in many of the public galleries of the country, including the Luxembourg. The note of his art is a certain refinement and aloofness which is rarely found in contemporary Salons. Of him it may be said: “Through his brain, as through the last alembic, is distilled the refined essence of that thought which began with the gods, and which they left him to carry out.”
Some time ago the writer was painting by the edge of the Seine in company with Maxime Maufra, and the artist recounted the origins of his Impressionist tendencies. “I am directly influenced by Turner and Constable,” he said. “I admired and studied their works whenever it was possible during the time I spent as a commercial man in Liverpool twenty years ago. There is no doubt that Monet, Pissarro, and the others of that group, owe the greater part of their art to the genius of the great Englishmen, just as Delacroix and Manet were indebted in a previous generation.”
This testimony is interesting, as it comes from one of the leaders of the modern school of “La peinture claire,” the school of light, of life, and of movement. It is valuable in view of the fact that some of the artists who have profited most by the valuable example of our men of genius seem least inclined to acknowledge their debt. For instance, Pissarro writes: “I have read with great interest your article. I do not think, as you say, that the Impressionists are connected with the English school, for many reasons too long to develop here. It is true that Turner and Constable have been useful to us, as all painters of great talent have; but the base of our art is evidently of French tradition, our masters are Clouet, Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, the eighteenth century with Chardin, and 1830 with Corot.” This statement is somewhat at variance with facts as we know them, and does not agree with several letters from Pissarro in the writer’s possession previously quoted.
To attempt to record bright open-air effects, to struggle with all the thousand nuances of the atmosphere, the division of tones, the juxtaposition of colour, the general principles and technical practice adopted by the Impressionists, is to come under a ban. There is an old and well-beloved professor at the Beaux-Arts who taught the writer, a member of the Institute and Officer of the Legion of Honour, a man of much official influence, who, in a single phrase, has summed up the feeling of a large body in France with reference to the Impressionists. “They are a disgrace to French art,” he said bitterly. Such an irreconcilable attitude has compelled a section of the younger artists in France to adopt a style altogether opposite to that discussed in these pages, a reactionary manner in many cases opposed to their natural temperaments. They seek in Nature for the slightest cause which will give them reason for the use of black paint, forgetting that in a world charged with sun and iridescence the only absolute black that can be found is in the heart of a bean blossom, which is black only by the exclusion of the atmosphere. The slightest shadow they paint black, any dark piece of clothing is rendered in black. They have evolved a lugubrious funereal style and choice of subject which is sad, dull, inartistic, dyspeptic. This section of the art community has been named the “Nubians.”
Maxime Maufra is an adversary fighting this group of reactionaries, and perhaps his successful example may bring some of these erring ones back to the fold. He has the courage to paint in a light key, because he sees all nature in such a value, and by following the dictates of his artistic temperament he has become the exponent of a beautiful and personal art. He does not aspire to the position of a little Monet, but attempts to carry the master’s methods forward. Maufra maintains that Monet has by no means said the last word in Impressionism. Maufra and his friends are not content with the first illuminated corner presented by Nature, which, save for the sense of illumination, is probably uninteresting and ill-composed. They are equally attracted by beautiful rhythmic line, balance of form, by composition as well as by colour. The ethereal tints in nature which the pioneers were happy to reproduce, does not satisfy the younger men now that the fundamental laws of the Impressionists have been agreed upon.
AN ETCHING · MAXIME MAUFRA
ARRIVAL OF THE FISHING BOATS AT CAMARET · MAXIME MAUFRA
