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PAINTING
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unity by study of tonal relations, and an incursion into the use of the spectral palette under the influence of Spencer Gore, bring him nearer the impressionists. He has played an important part in English art by transmitting French influence, coloured by his own personality, to a number of younger men. Henry Tonks (b.i862), professor at the Slade School, London, has also played an important part in moulding the younger generation. His realism and draughtsmanship relate him to Degas, his choice of subject at times to Renoir. Renoir, unlike Cezanne, to whom he is most immediately comparable, has inspired no particular group who call him master. He was first and last a painter, not the exponent or founder of an aesthetic creed. Rejecting Monet's principle of unconditional submission to nature, and holding that the work of a painter was not to reproduce a natural effect but to compose and construct, he grafted impressionism on to the tradition based on the Venetians and Rubens and revivified by Delacroix; forming an art in which solid form, simplified to its most expressive elements, and rhythmic flow of contour unite to give his work the plastic quality of a bas-relief. His colour, always daring and exuberant, in his later work becomes less naturalistic, and is dominated by the famous Renoir carnation, which gives his canvases a radiance in accord with his vision.

Etching and Engraving. In etching and engraving, broadly, the ipth-century tradition originating in Rembrandt and Goya still holds the field, represented by Georges Gobo in France, Otto Fischer in Germany, Sir Frank Short, Muirhead Bone and D. Y. Cameron in England. Confined as a rule to landscape or archi- tectural work, their work is chiefly notable for technical mastery. Representatives of the modern school, on the other hand, rarely realize the full possibilities of the medium. In Odilon Redon (1840-1916), however, a modern aim is united with the older craftsmanship in his search for a plastic equivalent of his emotion and dreams. He was one of the pioneers of that revival of lithog- raphy in which bodies such as the Senefelder Club, whose mem- bers include Joseph Pennell and Brangwyn, played a part. A more important revival is that of engraving upon wood, with which Auguste Lepere (1849-1918) was closely associated. His later woodcuts show a return from a technique imitating etching or engraving on metal to the older method of treatment in broad masses, the lights being obtained by cutting away the wood. In Paris and London societies of wood engravers have been formed whose members practise this traditional use of white upon black, which is also much favoured by such modern artists as Derain, Dufy, Friez, and Franz Marc in their book illustrations.

Contemporary Movements. The modern movement, some of whose characteristics appear in the transition painters already discussed, has been given various labels, such as post-impression- ism and expressionism, but its manifestations are so various that no one term can satisfactorily describe it. But these manifesta- tions have a common origin and character, in being a reaction against impressionism, with its aim of representing superficial appearance as a whole at a given time, without reference to shape or appearance as they are known to exist under the condi- tions; and in proposing to substitute form arranged into a coher- ent design, so making a new and independent reality and not a reproduction of nature. In this the modern movement claims to be a return to the tradition in painting represented by Raphael, Poussin, David and Ingres, as opposed to the romantics and realists; and to be breaking away from subordination to external and visible things, which are to serve only as a means towards expressing the artist's emotions. From this latter aspect of the movement arises the term " expressionism "; and divergence as to the kind and quality of emotion to be expressed is one cause of the differences between various modern groups. This general character of the movement helps to account for other distinctive features. Colour becomes less naturalistic, and is either used to emphasize the solidity of objects, is purely decorative, or assumes a mystical and symbolic character; and anxiety to avoid a trans- cript of nature has stimulated return to the subject picture, which calls for constructive effort. But the modern movement owes much to the impressionists. It was they who helped to dis- credit the formulas and aims of academic art; put powerful

weapons in the painter's hands by applying to art scientific dis- coveries regarding light and colour; and won recognition of the artist's freedom to express his personal vision of things. It was on this basis that the chief initiators of the movement built. These fall into two groups, the one including Cezanne, Seurat and Henri Rousseau, whose emphasis tends to be on structure and organized design; the other including Gauguin, Van Gogh and Gustave Moreau, in whom symbolist and expressionist elements are more marked.

Paul Cezanne (1840-1906) gives the key to understanding of his aims and methods by his own words, that he wished to remake Poussin according to nature, and to make of impressionism some- thing solid and durable like the art of the museums. His sympa- thies were all with the later Venetians, Rubens, Poussin, and the baroque masters such as the Caracci and El Greco, whose crafts- manship, bravura and well-organized design he admired. These sympathies found expression throughout his life, but are most evident in his earlier work. In this he used little colour; but under the influence of the impressionists, especially Pissarro, he extended his palette considerably (though still retaining black and the earth colours) and turned to a more intimate study of nature. But for him nature was only a starting-point. Contemplation of her, he held, reinforced by reflection and study of underlying causes, creates in the artist's mind a vision of the structure underlying the external, visible world, which to him becomes a series of organic relations between solid forms, which it is his business to realize on canvas. Cezanne's method was to establish the relations between the planes enclosing an object or group of objects by recording all the subtle differences in their colour due to differences in their relation to the light. But it is the form, not the light around it, which interests Cezanne. He worked slowly and painfully; but such was his desire for keeping every element of his work in correct relation that one alteration would often lead to complete repainting. The legend of Cezanne's technical incompetence is partly due to his constant self-depre- ciation and to the amount of work he left unfinished in despair or disgust. Though his ultimate rank as a painter is still in the balance, his influence underlies much of modern art.

Georges Seurat (1859-1891), like Cezanne, found inthei6th- and 17th-century masters the inspiration to recreate on canvas a world of three dimensions rather than copy that before his eyes. At the same time modern scientific research into colour led him to develop his well-known neo-impressionist technique, which has rather obscured his power of expressing structure and of welding form into balanced and monumental design. But he has exercised much influence, especially on the cubists, whose studio walls often carried reproductions of " Le Chahut," one of his last pictures.

Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), " le douanier," a very different figure was once an octroi official in Paris (whence his nickname). He is the true type of the primitive who tries to paint things as he knows them to be rather than as they appear. He used, for exam- ple, to measure his sitters with a footrule, and transfer these measurements to canvas. His work, which includes portraits, views of the suburbs of Paris, exotic landscapes based on recol- lections of military service in Mexico, and figure compositions, is marked by emphasis on solidity, precision of handling, adjust- ment of the relative size of objects according to their importance as elements in design, and at times by a symbolic element.

In contrast to Rousseau is Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), a strange figure bred in the strictest academic tradition, whose romantic spirit borrowed fire from Delacroix and Chasseriau, and who fed his imagination upon the myths of Greece and the East. He emerged from many years' retirement to become at the end of his life professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, where his influence helped to breed a group of young painters with sym- bolist tendencies. As a teacher Moreau always encouraged self- expression based on close study of the old masters. In his own work Moreau stood for the use of the plastic arts to express the emotions, and built up a decorative art, combining sombre rich colour and rhythmic linear arabesque.

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was more definitely a chef d'tcole than any of the group now under consideration. After an impres-