[Footnote P: _Marquet_. Par George Besson.]
The best picture by Marquet I ever saw was in the Grafton Gallery
exhibition of 1912. It represented a naked woman sitting in a
rocking-chair. Since then I have seen scores of things by him,
admirable, as a rule, and invariably brilliant, but never one that was
quite first-rate. And here comes M. George Besson, with an essay and an
album of photographs, to show us a few works which, surpassing anything
of which we had supposed him capable, emerge triumphantly from that
stream of clever variations on a theme which Marquet has made only too
much his own.
Anyone who compares these nudes with what Matisse was doing a dozen or
fifteen years ago will not fail to discover a common factor: neither
will he be surprised to learn that at one time these two artists were
treated almost as equals. Both achieved a strange and disquieting
intensity by bold simplifications and distortion, by concentration on
the vital movements and characteristics of the human body, and by an
absolute indifference to its literary and sentimental interest. "Lorsque
je dessine j'ai devant un homme les mêmes préoccupations que devant un
bec de gaz." That is well said: what is more, the saying has been put
successfully into practice. Such pictures as numbers 19, 25, and 27 are
entitled to a place beside those of no matter what contemporary.
Needless to say, the integrity of Marquet's vision has considerably
distressed those who have no taste for art; and from one of them,
Marquet's friend Charles-Louis Philippe, it drew a bit of art criticism
that ought not to be lost. "Le ciel me préserve," exclaims the author of
_Marie Donadieu_, "d'aimer d'un amour total un art dont l'ironie parfois
atteint à la cruauté! Et quand, tous les usages admis qui veulent qu'on
ne présente un homme que sous ses bons côtés, quand l'amitié même que
j'éprouve pour M. Marquet m'eussent engagé, à me taire, un devoir plus
impérieux me sollicitait, et j'aurais eu le sentiment de me rabaisser
moi-même en y manquant."
Not even an art critic can be expected to lower himself in his own
eyes by turning a deaf ear to the solicitations of imperious duty.
So Monsieur Philippe very honourably concludes his observations by
expressing the opinion that "il n'a pas droit à toute l'admiration des
hommes puisqu'il a été sans pitié."
The cry of this soft and silly sentimentalist has been neatly put by
M. Besson to the purpose of illustrating, and perhaps a little
exaggerating, the merits of a painter who is, assuredly, neither one
nor the other. Too clever by half, that rather is the fault with which
Marquet must be taxed. The artist who has given us a dozen first-rate
things--superb nudes, "felt" as solid, three-dimensional forms, and
realized as such--is always being forestalled by an astonishing
caricaturist who can knock you off something brilliant, rapid, and
telling while you wait for the boat. Always this brisk and agile person
is stepping forward in front of the artist and jotting down his neat
symbols in the space reserved for significant form. The landscapes
and boats and street-scenes of Marquet, with their joyously emphatic
statement, their lively contrasts, and their power of giving you the
pith of the matter in a few strokes, are about as valuable as the best
things of Forain. They are statements of fact, not expressions of
emotion. Marquet, the inimitable captor of life as it hurries by, is
not much better than a caricaturist; and as he becomes more and more
proficient in his craft he bothers less and less about that to which
it should be a means. The art of Marquet tends ever to become the
repetition of a formula.
Lately, in London, we have been looking at the works of Pissarro, and I
could wish that Marquet would look at them, too. Like him, Pissarro was
a painter of streets and landscapes who returned again and again to the
same motif. In the course of a long life he must, I should think, have
painted the Quai Voltaire, the Quai des Grands Augustins, and the Quai
St. Michel almost as often as Marquet has knocked them off. And if
Pissarro never invented a shorthand wherewith to make notes of what was
going on beneath his window, that was because Pissarro, for all his
impressionist theory, was less concerned with the transitory aspect
of things than with their æsthetic significance. He, too, approached
everything, men and women, trees, rivers, and houses, in the same
spirit: he approached them in the spirit of a painter. Never for the
ugliest harlot, the sorriest thief, or the most woebegone gas-jet did he
feel that whimpering, simpering, sentiment that Tolstoy frankly admired
and Philippe felt the want of. But always he seems to have seen his
motif with the finely disinterested passion of an artist. Now, the
passion of an artist is not to be jotted down: it has to be deliberately
transmuted into form.
If Marquet were as familiar with naked women as he is with the hats,
coats, and petticoats he sees from his window, doubtless by this time he
would have elaborated a set of symbols wherewith to record his sense of
them. Happily he is not: so, before the model, he finds himself obliged
to demand of the artist that is in him some plastic equivalent for his
intense and agitated vision. Thus goaded and disarmed he can produce
a masterpiece. And, therefore, were it for me to give advice, what
I should say to Marquet would be--throw away your sketch-book and
panel-box, and settle down in a studio, with a top light, a model or
two, and a six-foot canvas. Only, as this must be just what M. Lhote has
been telling him, naturally he would tell me to mind my own business.
His apologist, M. Besson, at any rate, has no patience with those who
would set artists in the way they should go. In this essay he gives them
a piece of his mind, and he does it so well and so gaily that it is a
pleasure to be scolded. First, he has a few words with "une dame,
que Gérome fit héritière de ses uniformes et qui devint la muse d'un
géomètre-arpenteur de certaine récente peinture." (Whom can he mean?)
Je connais l'atelier de Marquet, Madame, en marge de l'Atelier où
l'on esthétise, où l'on fabrique les manifestes et les novateurs de
génie. Marquet garde son rôle de peintre. Il n'est guère pour lui de
souci plus sérieux que le souci de sa liberté. Il veut être libre
pour peindre, libre même pour oublier la peinture, libre encore,
libre davantage pour n'être ni questionné ni consulté, pour ne
devenir ni un expert, ni un éducateur de sots.
Et voilà pourquoi, vous n'avez jamais fait de conférence en son
atelier.
And again:
Pour n'avoir jamais asservi son art à la construction d'un système,
pour avoir senti la vanité des théories, pour n'avoir pas fait tout
les pèlerinages d'oû l'on revient avec des règles, l'art d'Albert
Marquet donne une impression de peinture heureuse.
Of course M. Besson is right. Few in this world cut a more ludicrous
figure than art-masters; few things are more deplorable than propaganda.
Yet M. Besson should be careful: one thing there is more ridiculous
still, and that is counter-propaganda. Protestantism in art is
the devil; but the devil is not such a fool as to protest against
protestantism. He leaves that to the young bloods of the Rotonde and the
Café Royal. By all means let M. Besson claim liberty for his artist,
but, in doing so, let him beware of denying it to another, even though
what that other demands be "liberty of prophesying" or the right to
preach the gospel according to David.