Renoir. But their reasons for such a comparison are superficial, and go
no further than the fact that both painters dealt with feminine themes
in a similarly intimate manner. No genuinely artistic likeness can be
found between Mrs. Siddons, for instance, and the Ingenue. The one is
merely a spirited portrait without composition or tactility: the other
is an exquisite bit of form and colour, which we feel would be as solid
to the touch as it appears to the eye. If we are to compare Renoir to
English painters at all, let us designate Hogarth and Romney, although
any such comparative method of criticism is apt to lead at once to
misunderstanding. However, even these two men are distinctly inadequate
as measures for Renoir. In the graphic arts Englishmen exhibit no
feeling for rhythm. Indeed, it may correctly be said they possess no
graphic arts. Rhythm is a factor which has made itself felt only in
their poetry, and here it can hardly be called more than a division of
interval, or tempo. Rossetti in his paintings is seemingly more
conscious of its power than any other Englishman, and occasionally
attempted to produce it by the primitive device of curved lines. But,
after all, Rossetti was Italian. On the whole Renoir and the English
artists are two fundamentally dissimilar to be estimated relatively. The
finest qualities of Renoir's art grew out of his instinct for fluent
movement, for intense undulations, for hot gorgeous colour, for freedom
from all traditional prescriptions.
The evolution of these instincts was by no means a mechanical one. After
he had amalgamated the leading qualities of his art, his interest would
often reveal itself more strongly in one direction than another. Thus
many of his canvases show a retrogression toward emphasis of light;
others toward form; still others toward linear rhythm. Yet no matter
which one of these qualities predominated, the others also remained
intact. More importance, however, attached to his preoccupation with the
treatment of light. His experiments and consequent development in this
field are of initial significance in judging his later work. In 1878 he
had evidently foreseen the cul-de-sac into which the natural
distribution of light would lead. The very volatility and translucency
of illumination and its matter-dispelling qualities, constituted the
greatest drawback to its use in the creation of form. In other words its
sheer beauty nullified the deeper aims of painting. In two decorative
Panneaux of reclining nudes, done in the same year, Renoir makes his
first attempt to escape from the naturalism of light. The use of light
is here restricted to a colour force which serves only to bring form
into relief. From that time on, although he had many struggles with its
power over him, he had conquered its insidious influence. It became his
servant, whereas before it had been his master. In his earlier canvases,
wherein sunlight had played a leading part, he had placed the sun
patches, gleaming and vibrant, wherever they naturally fell. After 1878
he began placing them arbitrarily on points where formal projection was
needed.
The subtle manner in which he constructed and posed these patches
precluded any discovery of his reasons for altering their natural
location. But Renoir was not fully satisfied, and soon abandoned this
phase of _pleinairisme_. Later the spots of sunlight appeared on cheeks,
shoulders, knees, or any other salients which called for powerful
relief, thereby losing their flat and detached appearance. This
moulding of them into intense aggregations had much to do with Renoir's
fullness of form. His long experience had given him a complete knowledge
of their naturalistic effect. He knew it was impossible to make them
remain on the same plane with the surrounding shadow, and he understood
the reasons for this phenomenon. It was not therefore remarkable that,
in his later method of applying them, he was sure of his results. As
soon as he realised that sunlight dispersed matter by obscuring some
points and accentuating others, he knew that by an intelligent
employment of this factor of luminosity he could at will accentuate
certain parts of his canvas and obscure others. This knowledge led him
naturally to create his own light, irrespective of how it actually
existed. This was an important step toward its complete abrogation, and
brought arbitrary means in painting just so much nearer. He had already
distorted volumes for purposes of organisation in the same manner that
he now distorted light. Indeed every great painter has taken this
liberty with form; but each one has to learn the device anew in its
relation to his own separate vision.
There are few shadows, as such, in Renoir. We find darks and lights in
scintillating succession, but we may search in vain, even in his
canvases of 1878 or 1879, for those shadowed outlines which are the
result of light. If light there is, it is only the light which springs
from our own eyes--light which seems to come from the direction of the
beholder, like the reflection of a light in water. Move as you will
before his pictures, it follows you, for it is the illumination of that
part of the picture nearest the eyes of the painter. Where a form is
full, there Renoir contrives to have a light fall. This artifice may
strike us today as childish, since we have outgrown our concern with
light; but let us remember that from the beginning the depiction of
lights and shadows had been a fixed practice, and that their tones had
formed the only basis for chiaroscuro. With the Impressionists light
became the _atout_ of painting. Renoir made of it a vital form-creating
element. Herein we have its evolution: first, a convention; next, an
obsession; last, a utility. So were the aesthetic possibilities of light
exhausted, just as the aesthetic possibilities of the human form were
exhausted by Michelangelo.
In this last step of liberating light from convention, Renoir approached
nearer to nature than any antecedent painter. After all, a human being
in the sunlight appears to us as a solid moving mass. Only those who
look upon nature as a flat pattern of shades and lights are misled by
sun patches. So, in Renoir's adapting the source of light for the
purpose of producing solidity of form, we are cognisant of the
palpability of his figures whether they are in light or shadow, or both.
Thus he created the actual impression of volume we all get before a
moving form. This arbitrary disposition of light and shadow also gave
fullness and intensity to his form, and accentuated the poise, so subtle
and unexpected, we feel in even his slightest works. But while this was
the secret of his attainment of volume, the compositional use to which
he put this volume requires another explanation--one which has its roots
in the very depths of the man's genius. There had never been such form
in the French school as that which Renoir gave it in 1880. The Tete de
Jeune Fille and Les Enfants en Rose et Bleu, done about this time, must
have been the despair of even the sculptors of his day. And these were
but the beginning. Many phases of his art were yet to be emphasised and
developed before the Renoir we know today was to be perfected.
It was in 1884 that he began to "_apprendre le dessin_." For four years
he continued this self-training in the precision of draughtsmanship. As
a boy he had begun his painting in a manner more competent than the most
advanced style of the average artist, as is evidenced by the able use of
colour as design in his early porcelains. And although he was driven to
this work by necessity, the incident was a salutary one. It turned his
thoughts toward those abstract organisations of colour which always
afterward haunted him. Later he learned all the tricks of the day in the
school of the realists, and succeeded in surpassing his masters. Next he
studied the Impressionists and went beyond them also. Then he
co-ordinated his knowledge and established his individual greatness.
This period of his development gave France much of its finest painting,
and his Baigneuse done at this time is an undoubted masterpiece. His
reversion to the rudiments of drawing was the result of a burning desire
to develop rhythm and form. His technical difficulties had been
conquered at an early date: he needed only dexterity in drawing to
achieve his end. Not only did Renoir attain to his objective, but, by
comprehending the principle of the placements and displacements of
volumes, he learned the advantages of line accentuation in obtaining
movement.
We now come to those pictures which show Renoir's intimate relation to
Rubens through Boucher and Watteau: to his alfresco bathing figures.
Some one has pointed out that his Baigneuses of 1885, one year after he
had devoted himself to drawing, was inspired by Girardon's lead-reliefs
in the gardens at Versailles. The commentary is undoubtedly true; but
even so, of what significance is it? Aside from the superficial fact
that in the works of both appear bathing women in more or less abandoned
poses, Renoir had nothing in common with the school of Largilliere,
Pater, Fragonard, Le Moyne, Santerre and Girardon. In all such
observations one senses the restriction of the critic's viewpoint to
illustration. An artist may find inspiration in any visual form, but
this form is of no more aesthetic importance to him than a photograph. In
Picasso's paintings of violin fragments we are scarcely permitted to
deduce an inspiration from Stradivarius. Grotesque as this analogy may
seem, it is applicable to the contention that Renoir stemmed from
Girardon. For there is nothing whatever in Renoir's bathing girls to
suggest a psychological parallel between them and the leaden frieze at
Versailles. If Renoir saw in that frieze an attractive pose, it was with
an eye to its adaptability to composition. In Girardon there is only a
pretty and sensual chaos. In Renoir we have a masterly organisation
wherein the actual positions of the young women are not even remarked.
Compare, for instance, Girardon's version of the figure of the girl
throwing water on her playmates, with the corresponding figure in
Renoir's drawing. The body of the former is without doubt a more
faithful replica of its model; in Renoir it has become impossibly
elongated and voluminous. Its head is too small; its back too long; its
hips are too large--and yet withal it is an exquisite bit of rich form
which has as concrete a tangibility as that of a real body. One cannot
judge it by its contour; one must bury oneself in its very weight.
Had Renoir advanced no further than his masterly Baigneuse of 1884, he
would nevertheless have gone down in history as a great artist. But
compared with the same subject done in 1888, it appears stiff. We feel
in it the rigidity of a master whose great qualities are without a
directing intelligence. In the later canvas, Renoir is less preoccupied
with details. As a result there is a greater plenitude of bulging form,
a purer rhythm. And there is also an added movement caused by the linear
harmony of the background, by the hair over the shoulder, and above all
by the turning of the head so that its weight is shifted over a hollow.
An apparently simple thing--this turning of a head. Yet Michelangelo's
genius, as well as that of all great artists, is dependent on the
knowledge of when a head should be turned or a limb advanced. This
knowledge is what transforms action into movement, tempo into rhythm,
the static into the plastic, the dead into the living. It is the final
penetration into composition; on it all aesthetic form is built. Renoir
acquired it in his period of so-called dry drawing. Its dawn came in La
Natte and Mere et Enfant. It was still developing in the Baigneuse; and
in La Baigneuse Brune and Nu a l'Etoffe Vert et Jaune, both done after
1900, this knowledge was becoming sure of itself. Between 1884 and 1892,
however, Renoir's new strength was not wholly mastered. There was
conscious effort in its employment. This is seen in La Fillette a la
Gerbe and Les Filles de Catulle Mendes and in that otherwise miraculous
canvas, Au Piano. In Le Croquet, 1892, he begins to exhibit, in his use
of new means, the same prodigious adroitness he displayed in his earlier
and slighter works. And in Les Deux Soeurs the effects of labour entirely
vanish, and he once more paints with magistral unconcern.
From that time forward Renoir's complete genius was but a matter of
evolution. And here let it be remembered that his transcendent
competency was the result of academic training, for of late we have
heard many objections to this kind of discipline. We have been invited
to behold the water-colour and crayon works of the untutored, assured
that they were as fine as Matisse's drawings. And we have been asked to
accept, as a corollary, the statement that all painters are better off
without the pernicious influence of schools. We have had modern
paintings pointed out to us as examples of what inspiration and freedom
from convention can do. We have heard the constantly reiterated
assertion that academies cramp genius, restrict vision and force all
expression into stipulated moulds. To concede to these extravagant
assertions would be to ignore the history of great painting, for during
all the significant epochs of art the school was at its zenith. Without
it there could be no genuine achievement. No amount of mere inspiration
has ever enabled an artist to paint an eminent canvas. No amount of
uncontrolled emotionalism has ever permitted one to make an aesthetically
moving work of art. No untrained man, no matter how high his natural
gifts, has yet been able to record adequately his feelings. All the
records of past accomplishment go to show that no person who has not
been profoundly educated in the purely objective (not utilitarian)
forms, and in the abstract qualities of painting, such as anatomy and
technique, has succeeded in conceiving an artistic organisation.
The school has never obscured or dwarfed genius, nor is it probable it
ever will. To the contrary it assists the truly great man in his
self-fulfilment and weeds out the mediocre man. It turns the student's
thoughts to methods rather than to inspiration. It directs the attention
of incompetent and merely talented persons, incapable of rising above
its teachings, into side issues. Thus it relegates their work to the
_soupentes_ of the world: whereas, if they had been permitted to labour
at random, they would only have choked the market of genuinely aesthetic
production. The school teaches discipline, precision, and the control of
wayward impulses, without all of which the greatest artist could only
incompletely express himself. These are the things which Renoir felt he
lacked; and in the midst of his career he halted long enough to acquire
them. It may be argued that his was intelligent training, while that of
the schools is unintelligent. But all discipline is beneficial to the
artist. Only slavish minds, hopeless from the first, succumb to it. The
fact that a man capitulates to academic training attests to an
incompetency so great that, under no circumstances, however favorable,
could it have arisen to a point capable of producing great art. Giotto,
El Greco and Rubens passed through rigid training and rose above it. And
the apprenticeship demanded of the old Egyptian, Chinese and Greek
artists was longer and more tedious than any of our school courses
today.
Renoir's scholastic training was his salvation. With the advent of the
twentieth century he struck his pace. All his qualities converged toward
the construction of rhythm. In 1900 he painted a large and ambitious
canvas of an attired maid combing a nude's hair, La Toilette de la
Baigneuse, which is more extended and conclusive than any of his
previous works. The forms lean in opposition and complete each other. In
them is a perfect poise which subjectively evokes an emotion of
movement. Even the lights and darks are separated so as to give the
strongest effect. The very hat and tree trunk are integral parts of the
whole, and there is not a line in the picture which does not develop
logically to a harmonic completion. The luscious plenitude of form is
equalled only by the finality of the rhythm.
Another picture of the same period is the Baigneuses in the Vollard
collection, a duplicate of his Baigneuses of fifteen years before. Now
all the hardness is gone from the contours. The differentiation of
texture between the flesh and water and foliage is absent. The lines are
less angular and true, and both the distant nudes' attitudes are
changed. The first canvas recalled Ingres; but the second brings up
Cezanne, for it is pure composition with every nugatory quality
eliminated. It demonstrates the possibility of creating abstract unity
in three dimensions with the objective reality at hand. The picture
contains movement in the vital sense, and possesses a tactility as great
as a Giorgione done with modern means. In fact, comparison of these two
Baigneuses will straightway divulge the advantages that lie in modern
methods. The first is extremely able, and has the unfinished foundation
of a great composition. The second, because of what Renoir had learned
of freedom, is as intense as a Rubens in that painter's own manner; and
in addition it has an emotional element to which the Antwerp master
never attained.
Two years later this obsession to create form as an impregnable block,
no matter in how many integers it might be divided, made him turn his
attention to Daumier; and in Le Jardin d'Essoyes and his heads of Coco
he surpasses even this master of organisation. Having assimilated this
new influence Renoir added it to his own store of knowledge, and four
years later painted his greatest picture, Le Petit Peintre. After this
there was little more to be done in Renoir's style unless he extended
his vision to greater surfaces. This he has not done. But he has added
other masterpieces to the ones already mentioned. His Ode aux Fleurs
(d'apres Anacreon), the two decorative Panneaux of the tambourine player
and the dancer, Coco et les Deux Servantes, La Rose dans les Cheveux
and La Femme au Miroir are all worthy of a place beside the greatest
pictures of all time. In these last paintings nature's form is
transcribed in a purely arbitrary manner. Many of the parts are
exaggerated to create greater projection or more perfect proportion in
relation to the whole. Texture has developed into a unified surface, and
simple linear balance has become poise in depth. The colouring has grown
so subtle that it is impossible in many places to tell just what it is,
for in it is a whole spectrum that makes it living.
[Illustration: BAIGNEUSES, 1885 by RENOIR]
[Illustration: BAIGNEUSES, 1902 by RENOIR]
Renoir was a man who fundamentally was not revolutionary, an artist who
was shown the way by others, a genius who culminated a great and febrile
epoch. His beginnings were imitative of the painters of his day. He
climbed the ladder from dark to light, from the stiff to the mobile. His
first works under Courbet and Manet were no better than those of
Hankwan. Later his pictures began to flow rhythmically in simple lines
as in the Head of a Chinese Lady by Ririomin. Then they began to extend
into depth, and as early as 1881 they surpassed Titian. From then on
they approached steadily to the completeness of a modernised Rubens.
That Renoir never reached that master's greatness is due, not to his
lack of acute and complete vision, but to his restriction of it to small
works. A composer who writes a symphony in which each minute part is an
intimate factor of the whole, is greater than he who writes only an
overture whose entirety is no greater than one of the symphony's
movements. Renoir, in so far as he went, was as great as the greatest.
One cannot think of a Renoir canvas merely as a painting. It is a new
and visually complete cosmos. In looking at his work the intelligence
enters a world in which every form has interest, every line completion,
every space a plasticity: in short, a world in which everything is
visibly interrelated. A host of influences have been read into Renoir,
and indeed there were many in his development. But they were only the
steps by which he mounted to high achievement. So unimportant are the
works of most of these other men when compared with Renoir's personal
accomplishments, that one may visualise this artist as a raindrop on a
window, which, as it flows downward, consumes and embodies all those in
its path. Courbet, Monet, Delacroix and Manet, had they no other claim
on posterity than as instructors of Renoir, would not have lived in
vain. The Chinese, the Greeks, the Renaissance, even that full Indian
sculpture in the Chaitya of Karli of the eleventh century B.C.--are all
within him. That they are temperamental affinities rather than direct
influences none can deny; but, strange as it may seem, he has traits
which directly recall each one of them. They all have the ineradicable
germ of genius in them; and that germ, being changeless and eternal,
lies at the root of all aesthetic creation. For this reason a great man
belongs to all time. He embraces all the results of the struggles which
have gone before. In the possession of Renoir we have no apologies to
make to antiquity, any more than in having produced Cezanne must we
abase ourselves before the artists who are yet to come.
VI
PAUL CEZANNE
The dilettante, avid for accounts of an artist's eccentricities, will
find abundant and varied material of this nature in half a hundred books
written by critics of almost every nationality on that astounding and
grotesque colossus, Cezanne. Perhaps no great artist in the world's
history has been so wantonly libelled, maligned and ridiculed as he. Nor
has there ever been a painter of such wide influence so grossly
misunderstood. Cezanne has been endowed with most fantastic powers,
dismissed with a _coup d'esprit_ for attributes he never possessed, and
canonised for qualities he would have repudiated. Like Michelangelo he
has been both the admiration and the mystery of critics. And he is at
once the idol and the incubus of present-day artists. His letters alone
have formed the technical basis of one great modern art school. A
fragmentary phrase of his mentioning geometrical figures was seized upon
by a Spaniard and made the foundation for another school. His mention of
Poussin drove a horde of Scandinavians, Austrians and Bohemians to a
contemplation of that artist. Cezanne's very limitations have been the
inspiration for an army of hardy imitators who believe it is more vital
to imitate modernity than to reconstruct the past. Indeed it may be
said that all art since Impressionism is divided into two groups, one
which endeavours to develop some quality or qualities in Cezanne, the
other which attempts the anachronism of resuscitating the primitive art
of a simple-minded antiquity. For even this latter group, Cezanne is in
part responsible. Did he not say that we must become classicists again
by way of nature? And did this not give reactionary and servile minds
ample excuse to cling with even greater passion to a dead and rigid
past? In his great sense of order his disciples saw only immobility;
their minds, redundant with parallels, harked back to the Egyptians.
Thus has he been emulated: but, among all these branches shot out from
the mother trunk, it can be stated incontestably that only one has
understood him, has penetrated beneath the surface of his canvases, has
realised his true gift to the art of the future. And this one, strangely
enough, is the furthest removed from imitation.
Cezanne's biography is of value to the art student, for it embodies in
concrete form the factors which motivated his aesthetic apperceptions. By
Cezanne's biography is meant, not the distorted interpretations of the
incidents of his life, now so well known, or the superficial conclusions
deduced by his biographers from hearsay; but those actions and
temperamental characteristics which are impartially set down at first
hand by Emile Bernard. To this chronicler we are indebted for
practically all the authentic personal anecdotes of the artist. He had
always admired Cezanne, and in 1904 a personal friendship was
established between them, which endured until the latter's death. After
Cezanne had overcome parental objections and had definitely decided on
an artist's career, he spent much of his time in Paris. Many influences
entered into his early life. He had met Zola at school and had been
intimate with him. Through him he had become acquainted with Manet, and
while he appreciated Manet's friendliness, he could never understand
that artist's great popularity. He preferred Courbet as a painter, and
studied him sedulously. His great influence, however, came from
Pissarro. For that persuasive Jew's memory he always harboured a deep
respect.