Not without significance is the Spanish nationality of Velasquez. In
Spain was the Point put upon Honour; and Velasquez was the first
Impressionist. As an Impressionist he claimed, implicity if not
explicity, a whole series of delicate trusts in his trustworthiness; he
made an appeal to the confidence of his peers; he relied on his own
candour and asked that the candid should rely upon him; he kept the
chastity of art when other masters were content with its honesty, and
when others saved artistic conscience he safeguarded the point of honour.
Contemporary masters more or less proved their position, and convinced
the world by something of demonstration; the first Impressionist simply
asked that his word should be accepted. To those who would not take his
word he offers no bond. To those who will, he grants the distinction of
a share in his responsibility. Somewhat unrefined, in comparison to his
lofty and simple claim to be believed on a suggestion, is the commoner
painter's production of his credentials, his appeal to the sanctions of
ordinary experience, his self-defence against the suspicion of making
irresponsible mysteries in art. 'You can see for yourself,' the lesser
man seems to say to the world, 'thus things are, and I render them in
such manner that your intelligence may be satisfied.' This is an appeal
to average experience--at the best the cumulative experience; and with
the average, or with the sum, art cannot deal without derogation. The
Spaniard seems to say: 'Thus things are in my pictorial sight. Trust me,
I apprehend them so.' We are not excluded from his counsels, but we are
asked to attribute a certain authority to him, master of the craft as he
is, master of that art of seeing pictorially which is the beginning and
not far from the end--not far short of the whole--of the art of painting.
So little indeed are we shut out from the mysteries of a great
Impressionist's impression that Velasquez requires us to be in some
degree his colleagues. Thus may each of us to whom he appeals take
praise from the praised: He leaves my educated eyes to do a little of the
work. He respects my responsibility no less--though he respects it less
explicitly--than I do his. What he allows me would not be granted by a
meaner master. If he does not hold himself bound to prove his own truth,
he returns thanks for my trust. It is as though he used his countrymen's
courteous hyperbole and called his house my own. In a sense of the most
noble hostship he does me the honours of his picture.
Because Impressionism is so free, therefore is it doubly bound. Because
there is none to arraign it, it is a thousand times responsible. To
undertake this art for the sake of its privileges without confessing its
obligations--or at least without confessing them up to the point of
honour--is to take a vulgar freedom: to see immunities precisely where
there are duties, and an advantage where there is a bond. A very mob of
men have taken Impressionism upon themselves in this our later day. It
is against all probabilities that more than a few among these have within
them the point of honour. In their galleries we are beset with a dim
distrust. And to distrust is more humiliating than to be distrusted. How
many of these landscape-painters, deliberately rash, are painting the
truth of their own impressions? An ethical question as to loyalty is
easily answered; truth and falsehood as to fact are, happily for the
intelligence of the common conscience, not hard to divide. But when the
_dubium_ concerns not fact but artistic truth, can the many be sure that
their sensitiveness, their candour, their scruple, their delicate
equipoise of perceptions, the vigilance of their apprehension, are
enough? Now Impressionists of late have told us things as to their
impressions--as to the effect of things upon the temperament of this man
and upon the mood of that--which should not be asserted except on the
artistic point of honour. The majority can tell ordinary truth, but they
should not trust themselves for truth extraordinary. They can face the
general judgment, but they should hesitate to produce work that appeals
to the last judgment, which is the judgment within. There is too much
reason to divine that a certain number of those who aspire to derive from
the greatest of masters have no temperaments worth speaking of, no point
of view worth seizing, no vigilance worth awaiting, no mood worth
waylaying. And to be, _de parti pris_, an Impressionist without
these! O Velasquez! Nor is literature quite free from a like reproach
in her own things. An author, here and there, will make as though he had
a word worth hearing--nay, worth over-hearing--a word that seeks to
withdraw even while it is uttered; and yet what it seems to dissemble is
all too probably a platitude. But obviously, literature is not--as is
the craft and mystery of painting--so at the mercy of a half-imposture,
so guarded by unprovable honour. For the art of painting is reserved
that shadowy risk, that undefined salvation. May the gods guard us from
the further popularising of Impressionism; for the point of honour is the
simple secret of the few.