A certain importance attaches to the views on art of painters, and this
is the natural place for me to set down what I know of Strickland’s
opinions of the great artists of the past. I am afraid I have very
little worth noting. Strickland was not a conversationalist, and he had
no gift for putting what he had to say in the striking phrase that the
listener remembers. He had no wit. His humour, as will be seen if I
have in any way succeeded in reproducing the manner of his
conversation, was sardonic. His repartee was rude. He made one laugh
sometimes by speaking the truth, but this is a form of humour which
gains its force only by its unusualness; it would cease to amuse if it
were commonly practised.
Strickland was not, I should say, a man of great intelligence, and his
views on painting were by no means out of the ordinary. I never heard
him speak of those whose work had a certain analogy with his own—of
Cezanne, for instance, or of Van Gogh; and I doubt very much if he had
ever seen their pictures. He was not greatly interested in the
Impressionists. Their technique impressed him, but I fancy that he
thought their attitude commonplace. When Stroeve was holding forth at
length on the excellence of Monet, he said: “I prefer Winterhalter.”
But I dare say he said it to annoy, and if he did he certainly
succeeded.
I am disappointed that I cannot report any extravagances in his
opinions on the old masters. There is so much in his character which is
strange that I feel it would complete the picture if his views were
outrageous. I feel the need to ascribe to him fantastic theories about
his predecessors, and it is with a certain sense of disillusion that I
confess he thought about them pretty much as does everybody else. I do
not believe he knew El Greco. He had a great but somewhat impatient
admiration for Velasquez. Chardin delighted him, and Rembrandt moved
him to ecstasy. He described the impression that Rembrandt made on him
with a coarseness I cannot repeat. The only painter that interested him
who was at all unexpected was Brueghel the Elder. I knew very little
about him at that time, and Strickland had no power to explain himself.
I remember what he said about him because it was so unsatisfactory.
“He’s all right,” said Strickland. “I bet he found it hell to paint.”
When later, in Vienna, I saw several of Peter Brueghel’s pictures, I
thought I understood why he had attracted Strickland’s attention. Here,
too, was a man with a vision of the world peculiar to himself. I made
somewhat copious notes at the time, intending to write something about
him, but I have lost them, and have now only the recollection of an
emotion. He seemed to see his fellow-creatures grotesquely, and he was
angry with them because they were grotesque; life was a confusion of
ridiculous, sordid happenings, a fit subject for laughter, and yet it
made him sorrowful to laugh. Brueghel gave me the impression of a man
striving to express in one medium feelings more appropriate to
expression in another, and it may be that it was the obscure
consciousness of this that excited Strickland’s sympathy. Perhaps both
were trying to put down in paint ideas which were more suitable to
literature.
Strickland at this time must have been nearly forty-seven.