Interesting as are Mr. Craig's suggestions, and wellfounded as may be
his protest against the excessive ornamentation to which we are too
prone nowadays, there is no reason to fear that his principles will
prevail. The art of the scene-painter is too welcome, it is too plainly
in accord with the predilections of the twentieth century, for it to be
annihilated by the fiat of a daring and reckless innovator. It will be
wise if the producers should harken to Mr. Craig's warnings and curb
their tendency to needless extravagance; but we may rest assured that a
return to the bareness of the Attic theater or of the English theater in
the time of the Tudors is frankly unthinkable now that the art of
scene-painting has been developed to its present possibilities. In
fact, the probability is rather that the scene-painters will continue to
enlarge the boundaries of their territory and to discover new means and
new methods of delighting our eyes by their evocations of interesting
places.
[Illustration: The set of 'OEdipe-Roi' (at the Theatre Francais)]
[Illustration: The set of the 'Return of Peter Grimm' From the model in
the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University]
Perhaps they would be more encouraged to go on and conquer new worlds if
there was a wider recognition of the artistic value of their work. Altho
De Lutherbourg and Clarkson Stanfield won honorable positions in the
history of painting by their easel-pictures, the art of scene-painting
does not hold the place in the public esteem that many of its
practitioners deserve. Theophile Gautier, often negligible as a critic
of the acted drama, was always worth listening to when he turned to
pictorial art; and he was frequent in praise of the scene-painters of
his time and of scene-painting itself as a craft of exceeding difficulty
and of inadequate appreciation. Probably one reason why the
scene-painter has not received his due meed of praise is because his
work is not preserved. It exists only during the run of the play which
it decorates. When the piece disappears from the boards, the scenes
which adorned it vanish from sight. They linger only in the memory of
those who happened to see this one play--and even then, in fact, only in
the memory of such spectators as have trained themselves to pay
attention to stage-pictures. For the scene-painter there is no
Luxembourg; still less is there any Louvre. As Gautier sympathetically
declared, "it is sad to think that nothing survives of those
masterpieces destined to live a few evenings only, and disappearing
from the washed canvas to give place to other marvels, equally fugitive.
How much invention, talent, and genius may be lost--and not always
leaving even a name!"
It is pleasant to know that at the Opera in Paris a formal order of the
government has for now a half-century prescribed the preservation of the
original models--the little miniature sets which the scene-painter
submits for the approval of the manager and the dramatist before he
begins work upon the actual scene. These models are always upon the same
scale, and in the gallery connected with the library of the Opera a
dozen of these models are set up to be viewed by visitors. Of course no
tiny model, however cleverly fashioned, can give the full effect of the
scene which has been conceived in terms of a huge stage; and yet the
miniature reproductions do not betray the scene-painter as much as an
engraving or a photograph often betrays the painter. Whatever its
limitations, and they are obvious enough, the collection of models at
the Opera is at least an attempt to retard the oblivion that Theophile
Gautier deplored, and to provide for the scene-painter a substitute,
however inadequate, for the Louvre and the Luxembourg.
(1912.)