Before commenting on the very thoughtless utterances of two
distinguished men, I think I must--even at the risk of appearing to
attach over-much importance to my criticisms--reprint what I said
about _L'Absinthe_; for in truth it was I who first meddled with
the moral tap, and am responsible for the overflow:--
"Look at the head of the old Bohemian--the engraver Deboutin--a man
whom I have known all my life, and yet he never really existed for
me until I saw this picture. There is the hat I have always known,
on the back of his head as I have always seen it, and the wooden
pipe is held tight in his teeth as I have always seen him hold it.
How large, how profound, how simple the drawing! How easily and
how naturally he lives in the pose, the body bent forward, the
elbows on the table! Fine as the Orchardson undoubtedly is, it seems
fatigued and explanatory by the side of this wonderful rendering of
life; thin and restless--like Dumas fils' dialogue when we compare
it with Ibsen's. The woman that sits beside the artist was at the
Elysée Montmartre until two in the morning, then she went to the
_ratmort_ and had a soupe _aux choux_; she lives in the
Rue Fontaine, or perhaps the Rue Breda; she did not get up till
half-past eleven; then she tied a few soiled petticoats round her,
slipped on that peignoir, thrust her feet into those loose morning
shoes, and came down to the café to have an absinthe before breakfast.
Heavens! what a slut! A life of idleness and low vice is upon her
face; we read there her whole life. _The tale is not a pleasant one,
but it is a lesson_. Hogarth's view was larger, wider, but not so
incisive, so deep, or so intense. Then how loose and general Hogarth's
composition would seem compared to this marvellous epitome, this
essence of things! That open space in front of the table, into which
the skirt and the lean legs of the man come so well--how well the
point of view was selected! The beautiful, dissonant rhythm of that
composition is like a page of Wagner--the figures crushed into the
right of the canvas, the left filled up with a fragment of marble
table running in sharp perspective into the foreground. The newspaper
lies as it would lie across the space between the tables. The colour,
almost a monochrome, is very beautiful, a deep, rich harmony. More
marvellous work the world never saw, and will never see again: a maze
of assimilated influences, strangely assimilated, and eluding
definition--remembrances of Watteau and the Dutch painters, a good
deal of Ingres' spirit, and, in the vigour of the arabesque, we may
perhaps trace the influence of Poussin. But these influences float
evanescent on the canvas, and the reading is difficult and
contradictory."
I have written many a negligent phrase, many a stupid phrase, but the
italicised phrase is the first hypocritical phrase I ever wrote. I
plead guilty to the grave offence of having suggested that a work of
art is more than a work of art. The picture is only a work of art, and
therefore void of all ethical signification. In writing the abominable
phrase "_but it is a lesson_" I admitted as a truth the ridiculous
contention that a work of art may influence a man's moral conduct; I
admitted as a truth the grotesque contention that to read _Mdlle. de
Maupin_ may cause a man to desert his wife, whereas to read _Paradise
Lost_ may induce him to return to her. In the abominable phrase which
I plead guilty to having written, I admitted the monstrous contention
that our virtues and our vices originate not in our inherited natures,
but are found in the books we read and the pictures we look upon. That
art should be pure is quite another matter, and the necessity of
purity in art can be maintained for other than ethical reasons. Art--I
am speaking now of literature--owes a great deal to ethics, but
ethics owes nothing to art. Without morality the art of the novelist
and the dramatist would cease. So we are more deeply interested in the
preservation of public morality than any other class--the clergy, of
course, excepted. To accuse us of indifference in this matter is
absurd. We must do our best to keep up a high standard of public
morality; our living depends upon it--and it would be difficult to
suggest a more powerful reason for our advocacy. Nevertheless, by a
curious irony of fate we must preserve--at least, in our books--a
distinctly impartial attitude on the very subject which most nearly
concerns our pockets.
To remove these serious disabilities should be our serious aim. It
might be possible to enter into some arrangement with the bishops to
allow us access to the pulpits. Mr. So-and so's episcopal style--I
refer not only to this gentleman's writings, but also to his style of
figure, which, on account of the opportunities it offers for a display
of calf, could not fail to win their lordships' admiration--marks him
as the proper head and spokesman of the deputation; and his well-known
sympathies for the pecuniary interests of authors would enable him to
explain that not even their lordships' pockets were so gravely
concerned in the maintenance of public morality as our own.
I have allowed my pen to wander somewhat from the subject in hand; for
before permitting myself to apologise for having hypocritically
declared a great picture to be what it was not, and could not be--"a
lesson"--it was clearly incumbent on me to show that the moral
question was the backbone of the art which I practise myself, and that
of all classes none are so necessarily moral as novelists. I think I
have done this beyond possibility of disproof, or even of argument,
and may therefore be allowed to lament my hypocrisy with as many tears
and groans as I deem sufficient for the due expiation of my sin.
Confession eases the heart. Listen. My description of Degas' picture
seemed to me a little unconventional, and to soothe the reader who is
shocked by everything that lies outside his habitual thought, and to
dodge the reader who is always on the watch to introduce a discussion
on that sterile subject, "morality in art", to make things pleasant
for everybody, to tickle the Philistine in his tenderest spot, I told
a little lie: I suggested that some one had preached. I ought to have
known human nature better--what one dog does another dog will do, and
straight away preaching began--Zola and the drink question from Mr.
Richmond, sociology from Mr. Crane.
But the picture is merely a work of art, and has nothing to do with
drink or sociology; and its title is not _L' Absinthe_, nor even _Un
Homme et une Femme assis dans un Café_, as Mr. Walter Sickert
suggests, but simply _Au Café_. Mr. Walter Crane writes: "Here is a
study of human degradation, male and female." Perhaps Mr. Walter Crane
will feel inclined to apologise for his language when he learns that
the man who sits tranquilly smoking his pipe is a portrait of the
engraver Deboutin, a man of great talent and at least Mr. Walter
Crane's equal as a writer and as a designer. True that M. Deboutin
does not dress as well as Mr. Walter Crane, but there are many young
men in Pall Mall who would consider Mr. Crane's velvet coat, red
necktie, and soft felt hat quite intolerable, yet they would hardly be
justified in speaking of a portrait of Mr. Walter Crane as a study of
human degradation. Let me assure Mr. Walter Crane that when he speaks
of M. Deboutin's life as being degraded, he is speaking on a subject
of which he knows nothing. M. Deboutin has lived a very noble life, in
no way inferior to Mr. Crane's; his life has been entirely devoted to
art and literature; his etchings have been for many years the
admiration of artistic Paris, and he has had a play in verse performed
at the Théâtre Français.
The picture represents M. Deboutin in the café of the _Nouvelle
Athènes_ He has come down from his studio for breakfast, and he will
return to his dry-points when he has finished his pipe. I have known
M. Deboutin a great number of years, and a more sober man does not
exist; and Mr. Crane's accusations of drunkenness might as well be
made against Mr. Bernard Shaw. When, hypocritically, I said the
picture was a lesson, I referred to the woman, who happens to be
sitting next to M. Deboutin. Mr. Crane, Mr. Richmond, and others have
jumped to the conclusion that M. Deboutin has come to the café with
the woman, and that they are "boozing" together. Nothing can be
farther from the truth. Deboutin always came to the café alone, as did
Manet, Degas, Duranty. Deboutin is thinking of his dry-points; the
woman is incapable of thought. If questioned about her life she would
probably answer, _"je suis à la coule"_. But there is no implication
of drunkenness in the phrase. In England this class of woman is
constantly drunk, in France hardly ever; and the woman Degas has
painted is typical of her class, and she wears the habitual expression
of her class. And the interest of the subject, from Degas' point of
view, lies in this strange contrast--the man thinking of his
dry-points, the woman thinking, as the phrase goes, of nothing at all.
_Au Café_--that is the title of the picture. How simple, how
significant! And how the picture gains in meaning when the web of
false melodrama that a couple of industrious spiders have woven about
it is brushed aside!
I now turn to the more interesting, and what I think will prove the
more instructive, part of my task--the analysis of the art criticism
of Mr. Richmond and Mr. Crane.
Mr. Richmond says "it is not painting at all". We must understand
therefore that the picture is void of all accomplishment--composition,
drawing, and handling. We will take Mr. Richmond's objections in their
order. The subject-matter out of which the artist extracted his
composition was a man and woman seated in a café furnished with marble
tables. The first difficulty the artist had to overcome was the
symmetry of the lines of the tables. Not only are they exceedingly
ugly from all ordinary points of view, but they cut the figures in
two. The simplest way out of the difficulty would be to place one
figure on one side of a table, the other on the other side, and this
composition might be balanced by a waiter seen in the distance. That
would be an ordinary arrangement of the subject. But the ingenuity
with which Degas selects his point of view is without parallel in the
whole history of art. And this picture is an excellent example. One
line of tables runs up the picture from left to right, another line of
tables, indicated by three parts of one table, strikes right across
the foreground. The triangle thus formed is filled by the woman's
dress, which is darker than the floor and lighter than the leather
bench on which both figures are seated. Looking still more closely
into the composition, we find that it is made of several perspectives
--the dark perspective of the bench, the light perspective of the
partition behind, on which the light falls, and the rapid perspective
of the marble table in the foreground. The man is high up on the
right-hand corner, the woman is in the middle of the picture, and
Degas has been careful to place her in front of the opening between
the tables, for by so doing he was able to carry his half-tint right
through the picture. The empty space on the left, so characteristic of
Degas's compositions, admirably balances the composition, and it is
only relieved by the stone matchbox, and the newspaper thrown across
the opening between the tables. Everywhere a perspective, and these
are combined with such strange art that the result is synthetic. A
beautiful dissonant rhythm, always symphonic _coulant longours de
source_; an exasperated vehemence and a continual desire of novelty
penetrated and informed by a severely classical spirit--that is my
reading of this composition.
"The qualities admired by this new school are certainly the mirrors of
that side of the nineteenth-century development most opposed to fine
painting, or, say, fine craftsmanship. Hurry, rush, fashion, are the
enemies of toil, patience, and seclusion, without which no great works
are produced. Hence the admiration for an art fully answering to a
demand. No doubt impressionism is an expression in painting of the
deplorable side of modern life."
After "forty years of the study of the best art of various schools
that the galleries of Europe display", Mr. Richmond mistakes Degas for
an impressionist (I use the word in its accepted sense); he follows
the lead of the ordinary art critic who includes Degas among the
impressionists because Degas paints dancing lessons, and because he
has once or twice exhibited with Monet and his followers. The best
way--possibly the only way--to obtain any notion of the depth of the
abyss on which we stand will be by a plain statement of the facts.
When Ingres fell down in the fit from which he never recovered, it was
Degas who carried him out of his studio. Degas had then been working
with Ingres only a few months, but that brief while convinced Ingres
of his pupil's genius, and it is known that he believed that it would
be Degas who would carry on the classical tradition of which he was a
great exponent. Degas has done this, not as Flandren tried to, by
reproducing the externality of the master's work, but as only a man of
genius could, by the application of the method to new material.
Degas's early pictures, "The Spartan Youths" and "Semiramis building
the Walls of Babylon". are pure Ingres. To this day Degas might be
very fairly described as _un petit Ingres_. Do we not find Ingres'
penetrating and intense line in the thin straining limbs of Degas's
ballet-girls, in the heavy shoulders of his laundresses bent over the
ironing table, and in the coarse forms of his housewives who sponge
themselves in tin baths? The vulgar, who see nothing of a work of art
but its external side, will find it difficult to understand that the
art of "La Source" and of Degas's cumbersome housewives is the same.
To the vulgar, Bouguereau and not Degas is the interpreter of the
classical tradition.
'Hurry, rush, fashion, are the enemies of toil, patience, and
seclusion, without which no great works are produced.'
For the sake of his beloved drawing Degas has for many years locked
himself into his studio from early morning till late at night,
refusing to open even to his most intimate friends. Coming across him
one morning in a small café, where he went at midday to eat a cutlet,
I said, "My dear friend, I haven't seen you for years; when may I
come?" The answer I received was: "You're an old friend, and if you'll
make an appointment I'll see you. But I may as well tell you that for
the last two years no one has been in my studio." On the whole it is
perhaps as well that I declined to make an appointment, for another
old friend who went, and who stayed a little longer than he was
expected to stay, was thrown down the staircase. And that staircase is
spiral, as steep as any ladder. Until he succeeded in realising his
art Degas's tongue was the terror of artistic Paris; his solitary
days, the strain on the nerves that the invention and composition of
his art, so entirely new and original, entailed, wrecked his temper,
and there were moments when his friends began to dread the end that
his striving might bring about. But with the realisation of his
artistic ideal his real nature returned, and he is now full of kind
words for the feeble, and full of indulgence for the slightest
artistic effort.
The story of these terrible years of striving is written plainly
enough on every canvas signed by Degas; yet Mr. Richmond imagines him
skipping about airily from café to café, dashing off little
impressions. In another letter Mr. Richmond says, 'Perfect
craftsmanship, such as was Van Eyck's, Holbein's, Bellini's, Michael
Angelo's, becomes more valuable as time goes on.' It is interesting to
hear that Mr. Richmond admires Holbein's craftsmanship, but it will be
still more interesting if he will explain how and why the head of the
old Bohemian in the picture entitled "L'Absinthe" is inferior to
Holbein. The art of Holbein, as I understand it--and if I do not
understand it rightly I shall be delighted to have my mistake
explained to me--consists of measurements and the power of observing
and following an outline with remorseless precision. Now Degas in his
early manner was frequently this. His portrait of his father listening
to Pagan singing whilst he accompanied himself on the guitar is pure
Holbein. Whether it is worse or better than Holbein is a matter of
individual opinion; but to affect to admire Holbein and to decline to
admire the portrait I speak of is--well, incomprehensible. The
portrait of Deboutin in the picture entitled "L'Absinthe" is a later
work, and is not quite so nearly in the manner of Holbein; but it is
quite nearly enough to allow me to ask Mr. Richmond to explain how,
and why it is inferior to Holbein. Inferior is not the word I want,
for Mr. Richmond holds Holbein to be one of the greatest painters the
world ever knew, and Degas to be hardly a painter at all.
For three weeks the pens of art critics, painters, designers, and
engravers have been writing about this picture--about this rough
Bohemian who leans over the café table with his wooden pipe fixed fast
between his teeth, with his large soft felt hat on the back of his
head, upheld there by a shock of bushy hair, with his large battered
face grown around with scanty, unkempt beard, illuminated by a fixed
and concentrated eye which tells us that his thoughts are in pursuit
of an idea--about one of the finest specimens of the art of this
century--and what have they told us? Mr. Richmond mistakes the work
for some hurried sketch--impressionism--and practically declares the
painting to be worthless. Mr. Walter Crane says it is only fit for a
sociological museum or for an illustrated tract in a temperance
propaganda; he adds some remarks about "a new Adam and Eve and a
paradise of unnatural selection" which escape my understanding. An
engraver said that the picture was a vulgar subject vulgarly painted.
Another set of men said the picture was wonderful, extraordinary,
perfect, complete, excellent. But on neither side was any attempt made
to explain why the picture was bad or why the picture was excellent.
The picture is excellent, but why is it excellent? Because the scene
is like a real scene passing before your eyes? Because nothing has
been omitted that might have been included, because nothing has been
included that might have been omitted? Because the painting is clear,
smooth, and limpid and pleasant to the eye? Because the colour is
harmonious, and though low in tone, rich and strong? Because each face
is drawn in its distinctive lines, and each tells the tale of
instincts and of race? Because the clothing is in its accustomed folds
and is full of the individuality of the wearer? We look on this
picture and we ask ourselves how it is that amongst the tens and
hundreds of thousands of men who have painted men and women in their
daily occupations, habits, and surroundings, no one has said so much
in so small a space, no one has expressed himself with that simplicity
which draws all veils aside, and allows us to look into the heart of
nature.
Where is the drawing visible except in the result? How beautifully
concise it is, and yet it is large, supple, and true without excess of
reality. Can you detect anywhere a measurement? Do you perceive a
base, a fixed point from which the artist calculated and compared his
drawing? That hat, full of the ill-usage of the studio, hanging on the
shock of bushy hair, the perspective of those shoulders, and the round
of the back, determining the exact width and thickness of the body,
the movement of the arm leaning on the table, and the arm perfectly in
the sleeve, and the ear and the shape of the neck hidden in the shadow
of the hat and hair, and the battered face, sparely sown with an
ill-kempt beard, illuminated by a fixed look which tells us that his
thoughts are in pursuit of an idea--this old Bohemian smoking his
pipe, does he not seem to have grown out of the canvas as naturally
and mysteriously as a herb or plant? By the side of this drawing do
not all the drawings in the gallery of English, French, Belgian, and
Scandinavian seem either childish, ignorant-timed, or presumptuous? By
the side of this picture do not all the other pictures in the gallery
seem like little painted images?
Compared with this drawing, would not Holbein seem a little
geometrical? Again I ask if you can detect in any outline or accent a
fixed point from whence the drawing was measured, calculated, and
constructed. In the drawing of all the other painters you trace the
method and you take note of the knowledge through which the model has
been seen and which has, as it were, dictated to the eye what it
should see. But in Degas the science of the drawing is hidden from
us--a beautiful flexible drawing almost impersonal, bending to and
following the character, as naturally as the banks follow the course
of their river.
I stop, although I have not said everything. To complete my study of
this picture we should have to examine that smooth, clean, supple
painting of such delicate and yet such a compact tissue; we should
have to study that simple expressive modelling; we should have to
consider the resources of that palette, reduced almost to a monochrome
and yet so full of colour. I stop, for I think I have said enough to
rouse if not to fully awaken suspicion in Mr. Richmond and Mr. Crane
of the profound science concealed in a picture about which I am afraid
they have written somewhat thoughtlessly.
* * * * *
In the midst of a somewhat foolish and ignorant argument regarding the
morality and the craftsmanship of a masterpiece, the right of the new
art criticism to adversely criticise the work of Royal Academicians
has been called into question. I cull the following from the columns
of the _Westminster Gazette_;--
'Their words are practically the same; their praise and blame are
similarly inspired; the means they employ to gain their object
identical. So much we can see for ourselves. As for their object and
their _bona-fides_, they concern me not. It is what they do, not what
they are, that is the question here. What they do is to form a caucus
in art criticism, and owing to their vehemence and the limitation of
their aim, a caucus which is increasing in influence, and, to the best
of my belief, doing cruel injustice to many great artists, and much
injury to English art. It is for this reason, and this reason only,
that I have taken up my parable on the subject. I have in vain
endeavoured to induce those whose words would come with far greater
authority than mine to do so. I went personally to the presidents of
the two greatest artistic bodies in the kingdom to ask them to speak
or write on the subject, but I found their view to be that such action
would be misconstrued, and would in their position be unbecoming.'
The meaning of all this is that the ferret is in the hole and the rats
have begun to squeak already. Soon they will come hopping out of St.
John's Wood Avenue, so make ready your sticks and stones.
In April 1892 I wrote: 'The position of the Academy is as impregnable
as Gibraltar. But Gibraltar itself was once captured by a small
company of resolute men, and if ever there exist in London six
resolute art critics, each capable of distinguishing between a bad
picture and a good one, each determined at all costs to tell the
truth, and if these six critics will keep in line, then, and not till
then, some of the reforms so urgently needed, and so often demanded
from the Academy, will be granted. I do not mean that these six
critics will bring the Academicians on their knees by writing
fulminating articles on the Academy. Such attacks were as idle as
whistling for rain on the house-tops. The Academicians laugh at such
attacks, relying on the profound indifference of the public to
artistic questions. But there is another kind of attack which the
Academicians may not ignore, and that is true criticism. If six
newspapers were to tell the simple truth about the canvases which the
Academicians will exhibit next month, the Academicians would soon cry
out for quarter and grant all necessary reforms.'
I have only now to withdraw the word "reform". The Academy cannot
reform, and must be destroyed. The Academy has tried to reform, and
has failed. Thirty years ago the pre-Raphaelite movement nearly
succeeded in bringing about an effectual shipwreck. But when Mr.
Holman Hunt went to Italy, special terms were offered and accepted.
The election of Millais and Watts saved the Academy, and instead of
the Academy, it was the genius of one of England's greatest painters
that was destroyed. "Ophelia", "Autumn Leaves", and "St. Agnes' Eve"
are pictures that will hold their own in any gallery among pictures of
every age and every country. But fathomless is the abyss which
separates them from Sir John Millais' academic work.
The Academy is a distinctly commercial enterprise. Has not Sir John
Millais said, in an interview, that the hanging committee at
Burlington House selects the pictures that will draw the greatest
number of shillings. The Academy has been subventioned by the State to
the extent of three hundred thousand pounds, and that money has been
employed in arrogant commercialism. The Academy holds a hundred
thousand pounds in trust, left by Mr. Chantry for the furtherance of
art in this country; and this money is spent on the purchase of
pictures by impecunious Academicians, and the collection formed with
this money is one of the seven horrors of civilisation. The Academy
has tolerated genius when it was popular, it has trampled upon genius
when it was unpopular; and the business of the new art criticism is to
rid art of the incubus. The Academy must be destroyed, and when that
is accomplished the other Royal institutes will follow as a matter of
course. The object of the new art criticism is to give free trade to
art.