the scheme of things? He seems to stand outside the whole circle of
the utilities.
Why there is morality, why there is commerce, and why there is
science, and why there is religion; these questions are easy to
answer. But why there are painters, and sculptors, and poets, and
musicians, is another mystery; it is as if you asked me why there
are billions of suns rolling through illimitable space.
Among these august teachers the mere artist stands like another
Lucifer among the angels. And yet all these teachers, high and
mighty though they be, pay to the artist continual court, and would
fain make him one of themselves: would indeed rescue him as a very
wanton from his bad surroundings, and persuade him to live with
them always; and this partly because human nature is strong within
them, and they love the craft we practise, and partly because they
recognize that where men are gathered together the artist--that
is, the poet, the painter, the musician, and the sculptor--wields,
for good or evil, the mightiest power on earth. Where is the
theologian that the poet does not help? Where is the moralist? At
the present moment, here in this exhibition, it seems to me that,
in their astute way, the theologian, the moralist, and even the
metaphysician, all think that they have patched up an admirable
working arrangement with one of the greatest of our artists.
The titles “Love and Death,” “Time, Death, and Judgment,” “The
Temptation of Eve,” “The Penitence of Eve,” “The Contrition
of Cain,” etc., do perhaps explain the facts that in Scotland
Presbyterian ministers crowded the Watts’ Gallery; and also that
here in Dublin, for the first time in the history of our animated
city, a splendid collection of pictures has been shown, and the
voice of detraction and malignant criticism remains silent.
Well! do these pictures teach anything? Has Mr. Watts been
captured? Is he a theologian or a moralist, or a metaphysician? Or
is he merely a highly-gifted man, working out his salvation by way
of art?
Take his two pictures of Eve. In all this collection there are none
more poetical.
In the first of these, “The Temptation,” what have we? A woman
in the fulness of her magnificent animalism, and we have this
animalism in the moment of its highest provocation. She seems to
curl herself and to quiver with delight as she listens to the
whispers of the subtle serpent; how voluptuously she leans over
to the tempter, her body elastic with health and vitality. It is
womanhood; it is splendid animalism, as yet untouched by conscience
or doubt, and unchilled by the thoughts of death; all about her
summer flowers and rich perfumes. At her feet a leopard rolls,
itself a faint echo or reverberation of her vast personality.
It is the merest sophistry to call this moral teaching; it
celebrates the deliciousness of temptation as Pindar, the ancient
poet, celebrates the wine-cup. In both these pictures Watts
celebrates the beauty of the nude and the beauty of the flesh.
Leighton would have painted Eve grand and statuesque--a figure out
of the penumbra of that decorative world where nothing is quite
real. But this woman, colossal and demi-god though she be, is as
real as one of his portraits--that of J. S. Mill, for instance, or
the Earl of Ripon. She is so real, that you feel almost that you
could touch her golden flesh, and hear her cries and murmurs of
delight; while the other Eve is so realistically painted that it
might be said she weeps audibly.
Next take his picture of Paolo and Francesca. Of all pictures in
this gallery it is the most complete, possibly because his friends
liked it, and gave him the encouragement all artists need. It is at
once beautifully imaginative and a piece of charming decoration.
But these poor guilty lovers, these wrecks of humanity, these
fragments of tenuity, afloat on the winds like dead leaves, like
lightest gossamer, teach no moral lesson. This picture illustrates
afresh the sad fate of true lovers, and makes their punishment
tender and beautiful. I should like to have had John Knox’s opinion
of this picture. There was a certain grimness, a certain severity
in the painter. A meeting between these two champions would have
been interesting.
Yet we are so hemmed about with difficulty, and so bewildered by a
multitude of counsellors, and have got so much into the pestilent
habit of seeking guidance everywhere, that one must needs find a
moral even in the bosom of a rose.
Therefore--although it be quite unnecessary to the true
appreciation of art--I will, reluctantly as it were, entirely on my
own responsibility, pluck some moral guidance from imaginative art.
If morality frames for our guidance rules of conduct which, if we
do not obey, we are to be punished--if it bids us shun temptation
and remove temptation from our path and from the paths of all
the world--Art, on the contrary, seems to say, with all its
strength and with all its voices: “Seek temptation; run to meet
it; we are here to be tempted.” Art does not say--“Be happy, or
be miserable, or be wise, or be prudent”; but it says--“Live,
have it out with fortune, don’t spare yourself, be no laggard
or coward, have no fear.” And this also is part of the message:
“Abide where Watts lived, and where the true artist always
lived--on the high table-lands, in the unshaded sunshine of
intellectual happiness--never descending into the valleys, where
hang, mist-like, the languors and lethargies, the low miseries,
sensualities, and adulteries which afflict human nature when it is
defeated, discouraged, disintegrated.”
At the end of this room there is a large picture enormously
impressive--“Time, Death and Judgment.” To be impressive is itself
a great artistic merit; yet I do not think this a great picture;
there is, indeed, a fine arrangement of colour, and mass, and line,
yet behind it all there is no energy of conviction.
Time moves forward, a striding figure, carrying a scythe; beside
him walks Death, his wife, a weary woman, tenderly gathering into
her lap the flowers of life; above these two figures is Judgment.
These figures are vague and conventional as regards any meaning or
intention they might convey. If this picture has any meaning, it is
as if Watts had said to himself: “I am a figure-painter and will,
by my craft of figure-painting, translate into a picture the kind
of pleasing terror which is excited by watching a fine sunset or
listening to an oratorio.” This is not art, as Michael Angelo gave
it. Blake said a picture should be like a lawyer presenting a writ.
“Love and Death” seems much finer--it grips the attention at once.
Before the other picture we stand idly pensive; but here we want
to get at the root of the matter--to grope our way into the very
heart of the picture. There is the naked figure of Love, wavering,
falling backwards; and then Death, this huge bulk; draped, and
hooded, and horrid. Is it man? Is it woman? and its face is hidden;
and is this because it was in the thought of the painter that no
one has ever seen the face of Death except the piteous dead, who
carry their knowledge into the grave?
As regards a famous picture not in this collection--the picture
called “Hope”--I would say that pleasing though it be, it owes
its success mainly to its faults; and that people like it because
no one can say exactly what it means. A man who really lived by
hope--a Krapotkin or a William Morris--would find its vagueness
utterly displeasing.
England likes her artists to preserve a soft, indefinite touch,
because in her world of action and practical effort ideas must not
be pushed too far, and compromise rules. Art, on the contrary,
does not like half thoughts--she will have a positive yea or
nay. If thought is not pursued to its furthest bourne and limit,
the picture lacks energy, and is without effect. In Art, as in
everything else, energy is the true solvent.
In my mind, pictures of this kind are meant to hang in the rooms
of the idle rich--because intended for people who wish, without
effort, to indulge themselves--and see all things past, present,
and to come, rosily and smilingly, however falsely. There are
artists, poets, and painters--and in this case Watts is among
them--who seem to keep in stock a sort of pharmacopœia of drugs and
opiates and soothing mixtures to be served out as required. Michael
Angelo owed his terribleness, his black melancholy, to the fact
that in his pride he would not accept any soothing mixtures; he
faced all the facts of life.
Now, let me say a word in reply to those who are so ready to point
out defects in Watts’ technique. To find fault is easy--is at all
times easy. In this vivacious city it is a special accomplishment,
where, indeed, everyone has learned logic, but no one has learned
enthusiasm, and few care for the ideal or for poetry.
In answer to these people I would enter a plea of confession and
avoidance.
Granted all they say about these faults, I would ask, in all the
roll of English painters, is there one who would have given us that
magnificent Eve of the Temptation? How royally she leans forward as
she stoops to her fate: what swing and what pose in her movement.
In the strain, in the ecstacy of her sinning, every nerve and
every muscle seems to tremble. Not Millais, nor Leighton, nor Alma
Tadema--far more accomplished artists than Watts--could have done
it; nor Reynolds, nor Gainsborough, nor Vandyke. None of these men
had the technique to do what Watts has here done. Watts triumphs by
his technique.
But it has not been always so in Watts’ work. When not roused to
great exertion by his theme, he fell away into carelessness and
into haste. You see, this man who lived so long a life had such a
teeming mind that his hands could not work fast enough.
And here let me allude for a moment to Watts the man. All accounts
that have reached us represent him as singularly humble and modest.
It was so with Michael Angelo, and it is so with all men who work
among great ideas. When The Last Judgment was finished, and all
Italy burst into praise, and princes, cardinals, and poets, vied
with each other in presenting homage, Michael Angelo waved them
off with scorn. “If,” he said, “I carried Paradise in my bosom,
these words would be too much”; and he wrote in reply to one of
them: “I am merely a poor man, working in the Art God has given
me, and trying to lengthen out my life.” When an artist or poet
gives himself airs, puts on side, as we say, it is because, like
Lord Byron, he is working away from great ideas, and because in
all simplicity and good faith he finds nothing which asks his
reverence, nothing greater than his own fortunes and his own
sensations. Art for Art’s sake is for those who hate life, as many
poets do, or who hate ideas, as again many poets do. The great
artist is also a man like unto ourselves, and great personality is
the material out of which is woven all his Art.
Now, let me offer most respectfully a startling opinion. I think
that as a religious painter Watts failed; and that he failed
because he was bound to fail.
The spiritual world is as much with us as it was with the people
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; but we seek to explore
its recesses, by tabulated observation, by sequences of thought, by
scientific guesses, and carefully planned experiments: things not
to be expressed in pictorial or plastic forms, even though Michael
Angelo has said everything might be expressed as sculpture.
Is it that Nature never repeats herself? She has produced her
religious painter; his day is over; and Watts was trying to do what
was impossible.
In those far-off days people believed--and actually, with the most
vivid realisation, believed--at one and the same time in angels,
archangels, and saints, and gods, and goddesses, and prophets, and
sybils, and fiends of the under-world, and all the machinery of
the supernatural, including angels, such as that which Watts has
painted in the picture “Love and Life”; and the painter who painted
those images worked under the exacting criticism of an alert and
expectant people. Now, in place of these beautiful or terrible
personages, we have substituted the forces of nature.
Examine his picture called “Love and Life.” It is a vast subject.
The whole mind of the civilized world is groping a way among
its problems. But this picture is wholly inadequate. Life is
represented as a feeble mendicant sort of creature, blindly
stumbling up rocky stairs. This is a poor image of life. Milton
would have scorned it. Watts should have remembered his own “Eve.”
And “Love” is represented as a strong angel. It is precisely
because Love is not a strong angel that all the trouble is upon
us. If his picture of “Hope” should be placed in a lady’s boudoir,
this picture should hang in the cabinets of those who think life
is to be saved merely by the clasping of hands and turning eyes
heavenward.
In “Eve’s Repentance” there is a cold light bursting through the
blue clouds, and shining over the back and shoulders. We have here
the old Venetian harmony of blue and yellow and white; and because
of it, in some subtle way, we have an enhanced sense of the warmth
of the palpitating, naked flesh. But, bless you! this is not all.
By this light breaking through the clouds, Watts symbolizes that
there is redemption for sinners. And who is interested? Compare
this symbolism with that in Michael Angelo’s picture, where the
just-created and half-awakened Adam raises his arm in superb
languor to receive Divine knowledge by the touching of God’s
forefinger. I do not here include the picture “Love and Death,”
because it does not seem to me in any sense a religious picture.
It suggests no dogma nor mystical theory, nor is there any kind
of sentiment. The artist, by his labour, has placed before us in
monumental effectiveness certain facts now and always with us. It
is a great picture, but it is not a religious picture.
Watts is a portrait-painter beyond all praise; he is singular among
all painters for the interest he imparts to his subject. Before
most portraits people stand and say, “What dull things portraits
are! why are they ever exhibited?” or perhaps they say, “What a
clever painter! but what an ugly man to paint!” In presence of a
Watts we are interested in a face; we feel liking or aversion, or
a tantalizing curiosity.
In Watts’ portraits craftsmanship attains its perfection, because
here he worked in an atmosphere of exacting criticism; everyone
understands a portrait, and the stupidest is interested when it is
his own portrait.
When Watts painted his imaginative work, it was done in an
atmosphere of polite indifference. It is a strange paradox that
Watts lived surrounded by the most distinguished and intellectual
society of his time, and yet he worked in solitude. When he went
wrong, there was no one to tell him; and when he was right, equally
there was no response. They were interested in the artist, but not
in his art. This lofty-minded recluse, who laboured by his painting
to give the world great thoughts, impressed these cultivated
worldlings: they were interested in the man, but neither in his
thoughts nor in his pictures. At a private view in the Grosvenor
Gallery a friend of mine overheard Watts saying to a lady:
“Everyone is interested in my velvet coat, but no one asks me about
my pictures.”
It was not so in ancient Italy. When Michael Angelo, at the
imperious command of the impetuous Pope Julius, uncovered half his
work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he stood to receive
the judgment of a people who were superstitious, ignorant men of
violence, men of war, homicidal, but each one of them impassioned
for Art.
“Italy,” said the Spanish painter to Michael Angelo, “produces
the best Art, because Italians hate mediocrity.” We are clay in
the hands of the potter. We may affect to be proud and solitary
as Lucifer, but in vain; the artist gives that he may receive; to
seek sympathy and desire companionship is as instinctive as hunger
and thirst. To the true artist exacting criticism is comforting as
mother’s love; and, wanting this exacting criticism, Watts fell
away into slackness of work and of thought.
We can only say that had he lived in Dublin his fate would have
been worse. Indifference, however polite and respectful, is bad:
but destructive criticism kills.
There was once a small but mighty nation, now numerous as the sands
of the seashore, and no longer so interesting. To this nation was
born a poet, and they made him the poet of all time. They took him
and taught him all they knew--and they had great things to teach;
and when, at their command, he made great dramas, they stood at his
elbow; and everything they gave him he gave back to them tenfold.
England was then Shakespeare’s land.
The poet is always amongst us: the difficulty is how to find him;
he is like the proverbial needle in a bundle of hay.
But one thing is certain--logicians without love will not find
him; they leave a desolation, and call it peace--nay, they call it
culture. Critics of this sort will allow nothing to exist except
themselves. No; I am wrong. There is one thing they admire more
even than themselves--the _fait accompli_, a mundane success. Had
Watts been born in Dublin, he would have read for the “Indian
Civil,” and perhaps--passed.
J. B. YEATS, R.H.A.
1907.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] A report of a lecture delivered in the spring of 1907 at the
Hibernian Academy, Dublin.
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End of Project Gutenberg's Essays Irish and American, by John Butler Yeats