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, implicitly if not
explicitly, 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 with 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 with all its extreme--let us hope its
ultimate--derivatives 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 several forms and under
a succession of names, 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 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 should not trust
themselves for truth extraordinary. They can face the general judgement,
but they should hesitate to produce work that appeals to the last
judgement, which is the judgement within. There is too much reason to
divine that a certain number of those who aspire to differ 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. If the artistic temperament--tedious
word!--with all its grotesque privileges, becomes yet more common than it
is, there will be yet less responsibility; for the point of honour is the
simple secret of the few.