Whether the pictures in the Royal Academy be bad or good, the
journalist must describe them. The public goes to the Academy, and the
journalist must follow the traffic, like the omnibuses. But the
public, the English public, does not go to the Salon or to the Champ
de Mars. Why, then, should our newspapers waste space on the
description of pictures which not one reader in fifty has seen or will
see? I suppose the demon of actuality is answerable for the wasted
columns, and the demon of habit for my yearly wanderings over deserts
of cocoa-nut matting, under tropical skylights, in continual torment
from glaring oil-paintings. Of the days I have spent in those
exhibitions, nothing remains but the memory of discomfort, and the
sense of relief experienced on coming to a room in which there were no
pictures. Ah, the arm-chairs into which I slipped and the tapestries
that rested my jaded eyes! ... So this year I resolved to break with
habit and to visit neither the Salon nor the Champ de Mars. An art
critic I am, but surely independent of pictures--at least, of modern
pictures; indeed, they stand between me and the interesting article
ninety times in a hundred.
Only now and then do we meet a modern artist about whom we may
rhapsodise, or at whom we may curse: Claude Monet is surely such an
one. So I pricked up my ears when I heard there was an exhibition of
his work at Durand Ruel's. I felt I was on the trail of an interesting
article, and away I went. The first time I pondered and argued with
myself. Then I went with an intelligent lady, and was garrulous,
explanatory, and theoretical; she listened, and said she would write
out all I had said from her point of view. The third time I went with
two artists. We were equally garrulous and argumentative, and with the
result that we three left the exhibition more than ever confirmed in
the truth of our opinions. I mention these facts, not, as the
ill-natured might suppose, because it pleases me to write about my own
sayings and doings, but because I believe my conduct to be typical of
the conduct of hundreds of others in regard to the present exhibition
in the Rue Laffitte; for, let this be said in Monet's honour: every
day artists from every country in Europe go there by themselves, with
their women friends, and with other artists, and every day since the
exhibition opened, the galleries have been the scene of passionate
discussion.
My own position regarding Monet is a peculiar one, and I give it for
what it is worth. It is about eighteen years since I first made the
acquaintance of this remarkable man. Though at first shocked, I was
soon convinced of his talent, and set myself about praising him as
well as I knew how. But my prophesying was answered by scoffs, jeers,
supercilious smiles. Outside of the Café of the Nouvelle Athènes,
Monet was a laughing-stock. Manet was bad enough; but when it came to
Monet, words were inadequate to express sufficient contempt. A shrug
of the shoulders or a pitying look, which clearly meant, "Art thou
most of madman or simpleton, or, maybe, impudent charlatan who would
attract attention to himself by professing admiration for such
eccentricity?"
It was thus eighteen years ago; but revolution has changed depth to
height, and Monet is now looked upon as the creator of the art of
landscape painting; before him nothing was, after him nothing can be,
for he has said all things and made the advent of another painter
impossible, inconceivable. He who could never do a right thing can now
do no wrong one. Canvases beside which the vaguest of Mr. Whistler's
nocturnes are clear statements of plain fact, lilac-coloured canvases
void of design or tone, or quality of paint, are accepted by a
complacent public, and bought by American millionaires for vast sums;
and the early canvases about which Paris would not once tolerate a
word of praise, are now considered old-fashioned. My personal concern
in all this enthusiasm--the enthusiasm of the fashionable
market-place--is that I once more find myself a dissident, and a
dissident in a very small minority. I think of Monet now as I thought
of him eighteen years ago. For no moment did it seem to me possible to
think of him as an equal of Corot or of Millet. He seemed a painter of
great talent, of exceptional dexterity of hand, and of clear and rapid
vision. His vision seemed then somewhat impersonal; the temper of his
mind did not illuminate his pictures; he was a marvellous mirror,
reproducing all the passing phenomena of Nature; and that was all. And
looking at his latest work, his views of Rouen Cathedral, it seems to
me that he has merely continued to develop the qualities for which we
first admired him--clearness of vision and a marvellous technical
execution. So extraordinary is this later execution that, by
comparison, the earlier seems timid and weak. His naturalism has
expanded and strengthened: mine has decayed and almost fallen from me.
Monet's handicraft has grown like a weed; it now overtops and chokes
the idea; it seems in these façades to exist by itself, like a
monstrous and unnatural ivy, independent of support; and when
expression outruns the thought, it ceases to charm. We admire the
marvellous mastery with which Monet drew tower and portico: see that
tower lifted out of blue haze, no delicacy of real perspective has
been omitted; see that portico bathed in sunlight and shadow, no form
of ornament has been slurred; but we are fain of some personal sense
of beauty, we miss that rare delicacy of perception which delights us
in Mr. Whistler's "Venice", and in Guardi's vision of cupolas,
stairways, roofs, gondolas, and waterways. Monet sees clearly, and he
sees truly, but does he see beautifully? is his an enchanted vision?
And is not every picture that fails to move, to transport, to enchant,
a mistake?
A work of art is complete in itself. But is any one of these pictures
complete in itself? Is not the effect they produce dependent on the
number, and may not this set of pictures be compared to a set of
scenes in a theatre, the effect of which is attained by combination?
There is no foreground in them; the cathedral is always in the first
plane, directly, under the eye of the spectator, the wall running out
of the picture. The spectator says, "What extraordinary power was
necessary to paint twelve views of that cathedral without once having
recourse to the illusion of distance!" A feat no doubt it was; and
therein we perceive the artistic weakness of the pictures. For art
must not be confounded with the strong man in the fair who straddles,
holding a full-grown woman on the palm of his hand.
Then the question of the quality of paint. Manet's paint was beautiful
as that of an old master; brilliant as an enamel, smooth as an old
ivory. But the quality of paint in Monet is that of stone and mortar.
It would seem (the thought is too monstrous to be entertained) as if
he had striven by thickness of paint and roughness of the handling to
reproduce the very material quality of the stonework. This would be
realism _à outrance_. I will not think that Monet was haunted for a
single instant by so shameful a thought. However this may be, the fact
remains that a _trompe-l'oeil_ has been achieved, and four inches of
any one of these pictures looked at separately would be mistaken by
sight and touch for a piece of stonework. In another picture, in a
haystack with the sun shining on it, the _trompe-l'oeil_ has again
been as cleverly achieved as by the most cunning of scene-painters. So
the haystack is a popular delight.