1892.
Before sitting down to paint a landscape the artist must make up his
mind whether he is going to use the trees, meadows, streams, and
mountains before him as subject-matter for a decoration in the manner
of the Japanese, or whether he will take them as subject-matter for
the expression of a human emotion in the manner of Wilson and Millet.
I offer no opinion which is the higher and which is the lower road;
they may be wide apart, they may draw very close together, they may
overlap so that it is difficult to say along which the artist is
going; but, speaking roughly, there are but two roads, and it is
necessary that the artist should choose between them. But this point
has been fully discussed elsewhere, and I only allude to it here
because I wish to assure my readers that Mr. Steer's exhibition is not
"Folkestone at low tide" and "Folkestone at high tide".
In all the criticisms I have seen of the present exhibition it has
been admitted that Mr. Steer takes a foremost place in what is known
as the modern movement. I also noticed that it was admitted that Mr.
Steer is a born artist. The expression, from constant use, has lost
its true significance; yet to find another phrase that would express
the idea more explicitly would be difficult; the born artist, meaning
the man in whom feeling and expression are one.
The growth of a work of art is as inexplicable as that of a flower. We
know that there are men who feel deeply and who understand clearly
what a work of art should be; but when they attempt to create, their
efforts are abortive. Their ideas, their desires, their intentions,
their plans, are excellent; but the passage between the brain and the
canvas, between the brain and the sheet of paper, is full of
shipwrecking reefs, and the intentions of these men do not correspond
in the least with their execution. Noticing our blank faces, they
explain their ideas in front of their works. They meant this, they
meant that. Inwardly we answer, "All you say is most interesting; but
why didn't you put all that into your picture, into your novel?"
Then Mr. Steer is not an abortive genius, for his ideas do not come to
utter shipwreck in the perilous passage; they often lose a spar or
two, they sometimes appear in a more or less dismantled condition, but
they retain their masts; they come in with some yards of canvas still
set, and the severest criticism that can be passed on them is, "With a
little better luck that would have been a very fine thing indeed." And
not infrequently Mr. Steer's pictures correspond very closely with the
mental conception in which they originated; sometimes little or
nothing has been lost as the idea passed from the brain to the canvas,
and it is on account of these pictures that we say that Mr. Steer is a
born artist. This once granted, the question arises: is this born
artist likewise a great artist--will he formulate his sensation, and
give us a new manner of feeling and seeing, or will he merely succeed
in painting some beautiful pictures when circumstances and the mood of
the moment combine in his favour? This is a question which all who
visit the exhibition of this artist's work, now on view in the Goupil
Galleries, will ask themselves. They will ask if this be the furthest
limit to which he may go, or if he will discover a style entirely his
own which will enable him to convey all his sensation of life upon the
canvas.
That Mr. Steer's drawing does not suggest a future draughtsman seems
to matter little, for we remember that colour, and not form, is the
impulse that urges and inspires him. Mr. Steer draws well enough to
take a high place if he can overcome more serious defects. His
greatest peril seems to me to be an uncontrollable desire to paint in
the style of the last man whose work has interested him. At one time
it was only in his most unguarded moments that he could see a
landscape otherwise than as Monet saw it; a year or two later it was
Whistler who dictated certain schemes of colour, certain harmonious
arrangements of black; and the most distressing symptom of all is that
Mr. Brabazon could not hold an exhibition of some very nice tints of
rose and blue without inspiring Mr. Steer to go and swish water-colour
about in the same manner. Mr. Steer has the defect of his qualities;
his perceptions are naïve: and just as he must have thought seven
years ago that all modern landscape-painters must be more or less like
Monet, he must have thought last summer that all modern water-colour
must be more or less like Mr. Brabazon. This is doubly unfortunate,
because Mr. Steer is only good when he is Steer, and nothing but
Steer.
How much we should borrow, and how we should borrow, are questions
which will agitate artists for all time. It is certain, however, that
one of the most certain signs of genius is the power to take from
others and to assimilate. How much did Rubens take from Titian? How
much did Mr. Whistler take from the Japanese? Almost everything in Mr.
Whistler already existed in art. In the National Gallery the white
stocking in the Philip reminds us of the white stockings in the
portrait of Miss Alexander. In the British Museum we find the shadows
that he transferred from Rembrandt to his own etchings. Degas took his
drawing from Ingres and his colour--that lovely brown!--from Poussin.
But, notwithstanding their vast borrowings, Rubens is always Rubens,
Whistler is always Whistler, and Degas is always Degas. Alexander took
a good deal, too, but he too remained always Alexander. We must
conquer what we take. But what Mr. Steer takes often conquers him; he
is often like one suffering from a weak digestion, he cannot
assimilate. I must except, however, that very beautiful picture, "Two
Yachts lying off Cowes". Under a deepening sky of mauve the yachts
lie, their lights and rigging showing through the twilight. We may say
that this picture owes something to Mr. Whistler; but the debt is not
distressing; it does not strike the eye; it does not prevent us from
seeing the picture--a very beautiful piece of decoration in a high key
of colour--a picture which it would be difficult to find fault with.
It is without fault; the intention of the artist was a beautiful one,
and it has been completely rendered. I like quite as well "The Casino,
Boulogne", the property, I note with some interest, of Mr. Humphry
Ward, art critic of the _Times_. Mr. Humphry Ward must write
conventional commonplace, otherwise he could not remain art critic of
the _Times_, so it is pleasant to find that he is withal an excellent
judge of a picture. The picture, I suppose, in a very remote and
distant way, may be said to be in the style of Wilson. Again a
successful assimilation. The buildings stand high up, they are piled
high up in the picture, and a beautiful blue envelops sky, sea, and
land. Nos. 1 and 2 show Mr. Steer at his best: that beautiful blue,
that beautiful mauve, is the optimism of painting. Such colour is to
the colourist what the drug is to the opium-eater: nothing matters,
the world is behind us, and we dream on and on, lost in an infinity of
suggestion. This quality, which, for want of a better expression, I
call the optimism of painting, is a peculiar characteristic of Mr.
Steer's work. We find it again in "Children Paddling". Around the long
breakwater the sea winds, filling the estuary, or perchance recedes,
for the incoming tide is noisier; a delicious, happy, opium blue, the
blue of oblivion.... Paddling in the warm sea-water gives oblivion to
those children. They forget their little worries in the sensation of
sea and sand, as I forget mine in that dreamy blue which fades and
deepens imperceptibly, like a flower from the intense heart to the
delicate edge of the petals.
The vague sea is drawn up behind the breakwater, and out of it the
broad sky ascends solemnly in curves like palms. Happy sensation of
daylight; a flower-like afternoon; little children paddling; the world
is behind them; they are as flowers, and are conscious only of the
benedictive influences of sand and sea and sky.
The exhibition contains nearly every description of work: full-length
portraits in oil, life-size heads, eight-inch panels, and some
half-dozen water-colours. A little girl in a starched white frock is a
charming picture, and the large picture entitled "The Sofa" is a most
distinguished piece of work, full of true pictorial feeling. Mr. Steer
is never common or vulgar; he is distinguished even when he fails. "A
Girl in a Large Hat" is a picture which became my property some three
or four months ago. Since then I have seen it every day, and I like it
better and better. That hat is so well placed in the canvas; the
expression of the face and body, are they not perfect? What an air of
resignation, of pensiveness, this picture exhales! The jacket is done
with a few touches, but they are sufficient, for they are in their
right places. And the colour! Hardly do you find any, and yet there is
an effect of colour which few painters could attain when they had
exhausted all the resources of the palette.