In diction, as well, all relative values are thrown to the winds. In
the criticism of Turner we find English patriotism at its high-water
mark. We read that “the range of his powers was so vast that he covered
the whole field of nature and united in his own person the classical
and naturalistic schools.” Even this palpable overstatement could be
forgiven, since it has a basis of truth, if a little further we did
not discover that Turner’s _Crossing the Brook_ in the London National
Academy is “probably the most perfect landscape in the world.” In this
final and irrevocable judgment is manifest the supreme insular egotism
which characterizes nearly all the art articles in the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_. This criticism, to take merely one example, means that
_Crossing the Brook_ is more perfect than Rubens’s _Landscape with
Château de Stein_! But the Encyclopædia’s summary of Turner’s genius
surpasses in flamboyant chauvinism anything which I have yet seen
in print. It is said that, despite any exception we may take to his
pictures, “there will still remain a body of work which for extent,
variety, truth and artistic taste is like the British fleet among the
navies of the world.” Here patriotic fervor has entirely swallowed all
restraint.
Over a page is devoted to Constable, in which we are informed that his
“vivid tones and fresh color are grafted upon the formulæ of Claude
and Rubens.” This type of criticism is not rare. One frequently finds
second-rate English artists compared not unfavorably with the great
artists of other nations; and it would seem that the English painters add
a little touch of their own, the imputation being that they not seldom
improve upon their models. Thus Constable adds “vivid tones and fresh
colors” to Rubens’s formula. Another instance of this kind is to be found
in the case of Alfred Stevens, the British sculptor, not the Belgian
painter. (The latter, by the way, though more important and better-known,
receives less space than the Englishman.) The vigorous strength of his
groups “recalls the style of Michelangelo, but Stevens’s work throughout
is original and has a character of its own.” I do not deny that Stevens
imitated Michelangelo, but, where English artists are concerned, these
relationships are indicated in deceptive phraseology. In the case of
French artists, whose biographies are sometimes written by unbiased
critics, the truth is not hidden in dictional suavities. Imitation is not
made a virtue.
Let us now turn to Watts. Over two pages are accorded him, one page being
devoted largely to eulogy, a passage of which reads: “It was the rare
combination of supreme handicraft with a great imaginative intellect
which secured to Watts his undisputed place in the public estimation
of his day.” Furthermore, we hear of “the grandeur and dignity of his
style, the ease and purposefulness of his brushwork, the richness and
harmoniousness of his coloring.” But those “to whom his exceptional
artistic attainment is a sealed book have gathered courage or consolation
from the grave moral purpose and deep human sympathy of his teaching.”
Here we have a perfect example of the parochial moral uplift which
permeates the _Britannica’s_ art criticism. The great Presbyterian
complex is found constantly in the judgments of this encyclopædia.
So important a consideration to the _Britannica’s_ critico-moralists
is this puritan motif that the fact is actually set down that Millais
was devoted to his family! One wonders how much influence this domestic
devotion had on the critic who spends a page and a half to tell us
of Millais, for not only is this space far in excess of Millais’
importance, but the statement is made that he was “one of the greatest
painters of his time,” and that “he could paint what he saw with a force
which has seldom been excelled.” Unfortunately the few who excelled
him are not mentioned. Perhaps he stood second only to Turner, that
super-dreadnought. Surely he was not excelled by Renoir, or Courbet, or
Pissarro, or Monet, or Manet, or Cézanne; for these latter are given very
little space (the greatest of them having no biography whatever in the
Encyclopædia!); and there is no evidence to show that they are considered
of more than minor importance.
Perhaps it was Rossetti, a fellow Pre-Raphaelite, who excelled Millais
in painting what he saw. Rossetti’s _The Song of Solomon_, as regards
brilliance, finish and the splendor of its lighting, “occupies a great
place in the highest grade of modern art of all the world.” Even Holman
Hunt, one of the lesser Pre-Raphaelites, is given over a full page, and
is spoken of in glowing terms. “Perhaps no painter of the nineteenth
century,” we read, “produced so great an impression by a few pictures”
as did Hunt; and during the course of the eulogy the critic speaks of
Hunt’s “greatness.” Can it be that the naïf gentleman who wrote Hunt’s
biography has never heard of Courbet, or Manet, or of the Impressionists,
or Cézanne? After so sweeping and unreasoned a statement as the one
concerning the great impression made by Hunt’s pictures, such an extreme
conclusion is almost inevitable. Or is this critic’s patriotic vanity
such that he considers an impression made in England as representative
of the world? Even to intimate that the impression made by Hunt’s
pictures was comparable to that made by _L’Enterrement à Ornans_ or _Le
Déjeuner sur l’Herbe_, or that the Pre-Raphaelites possessed even half
the importance of Courbet and Manet, is to carry undeserved laudation to
preposterous lengths.
Here as elsewhere, superlatives are used in such a way in describing
unimportant English painters that no adequate adjectives are left for
the truly great men of other nationality. It would be difficult to find
a better example of undeserving eulogy as applied to an inconsequent
British painter than that furnished by Brangwyn, whose compositions,
we are astonished to learn, have “a nobly impressive and universal
character.” Such a statement might justly sum up the greatness of a
Michelangelo statue; but here it is attached to the works of a man who at
best is no more than a capable and clever illustrator.
The foregoing examples by no means include all the instances of how
English painters, as a result of the liberal space allotted them and the
lavish encomiums heaped upon them by the _Encyclopædia Britannica’s_
editors, are unduly expanded into great and important figures. A score
of other names could be mentioned. From beginning to end, English art is
emphasized and lauded until it is out of all proportion to the rest of
the world.
Turn to the article on _Painting_ and look at the sub-title, “Recent
Schools.” Under “British” you will find twelve columns, with inset
headings. Under “French” you will find only seven columns, without
insets. Practically all the advances made in modern art have come out
of France; and practically all important modern painters have been
Frenchmen. England has contributed little or nothing to modern painting.
And yet, recent British schools are given nearly twice the space that is
devoted to recent French schools! Again regard the article, _Sculpture_.
Even a greater and more astonishing disproportionment exists here. Modern
British sculpture is given no less than thirteen and a half columns,
while modern French sculpture, of vastly greater æsthetic importance, is
given only seven and a half columns!
VI
NON-BRITISH PAINTING
If the same kind of panegyrics which characterize the biographies of
the British painters in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ were used in
dealing with the painters of all nationalities, there could be made
no charge of either unconscious or deliberate injustice. But once we
leave Great Britain’s shores, prodigal laudation ceases. As if worn
out by the effort of proving that Englishmen are pre-eminent among the
world’s painters, the editors devote comparatively little space to those
non-British artists who, we have always believed and been taught, were
the truly significant men in painting. Therefore, if the _Britannica’s_
implications are to be believed, England alone, among all modern
countries, is the home of genius. And it would be difficult for one not
well informed to escape the impression that not only Turner, but English
painting in general, is “like the British fleet among the navies of the
world.”
A comparison, for instance, between English and French painters, as
they are presented in this encyclopædia, would leave the neophyte with
the conviction that France was considerably inferior in regard to
graphic ability, as inferior, in fact—if we may read the minds of the
_Britannica’s_ editors—as the French fleet is to the British fleet. In
its ignorant and un-English way the world for years has been laboring
under the superstition that the glories of modern painting had been
largely the property of France. But such a notion is now corrected.
For instance, we had always believed that Chardin was one of the
greatest of still-life painters. We had thought him to be of exceeding
importance, a man with tremendous influence, deserving of no little
consideration. But when we turn to his biography in the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_ we are, to say the least, astonished at the extent of our
over-valuation. He is dismissed with six lines! And the only critical
comment concerning him is: “He became famous for his still-life pictures
and domestic interiors.” And yet Thomas Stothard, an English painter who
for twenty-five years was Chardin’s contemporary, is given over a column;
James Northcote, another English contemporary of Chardin’s, is given half
a column; and many other British painters, whose names are little known
outside of England, have long biographies and favorable criticisms.
Watteau, one of the greatest of French painters, has a biography of only
a page and a quarter; Largillière, half a column; Rigaud, less than half
a column; Lancret, a third of a column; and Boucher has only fifteen
lines—a mere note with no criticism. (Jonathan Boucher, an English
divine, whose name follows that of Boucher, is accorded three times the
space!) La Tour and Nattier have half a column each. Greuze, another one
of France’s great eighteenth-century painters, is given only a column and
a half with unfavorable comment. Greuze’s brilliant reputation seemed
to have been due, “not to his requirements as a painter” but to the
subjects of his pictures; and he is then adversely accused of possessing
that very quality which in an English painter, as we have seen, is a
mark of supreme glory—namely, “_bourgeois_ morality.” Half a column only
is required to comment on Horace Vernet and to tell us that his most
representative picture “begins and ends nowhere, and the composition
is all to pieces; but it has good qualities of faithful and exact
representation.”
Fragonard, another French painter whom we had always thought possessed
of at least a minor greatness, is accorded no more than a column,
less than half the space given to B. R. Haydon, the eighteenth-century
English historical painter, and only one-third of the space devoted
to David Wilkie, the Scotch painter. Fragonard’s “scenes of love and
voluptuousness,” comments that art critic of the London _Daily Mail_, who
has been chosen to represent this French painter in the Encyclopædia,
“are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his color and the
virtuosity of his facile brushwork.” Alas! that Fragonard did not possess
the “grave moral purpose” of Watts! Had his work been less voluptuous he
might have been given more than a fourth of the space devoted to that
moral Englishman, for surely Fragonard was the greater painter.
Géricault, one of the very important innovators of French realism, is
given half a column, about an equal amount of space with such English
painters as W. E. Frost, T. S. Cooper, Thomas Creswick, Francis Danby
and David Scott; only about half the amount of space given to John
Gilbert, C. L. Eastlake, and William Mulready; and only one-third of the
space given to David Cox. One or two such disparities in space might be
overlooked, but when to almost any kind of an English painter is imputed
an importance equal to, if not greater than, truly significant painters
from France, bias, whether conscious or unconscious, has been established.
Again regard Poussin. This artist, the most representative painter of his
epoch and a man who marked a distinct step in the evolution of graphic
art, is given less than half a page, about equal to the space devoted to
W. P. Frith, J. W. Gordon, Samuel Cousins, John Crome, William Strang,
and Thornhill; and only half the space given to Holman Hunt, and only
one-third the space given to Millais! There is almost no criticism of
Poussin’s art; merely a statement of the type of work he did; and of
Géricault there is no criticism whatever. Herein lies another means by
which, through implication, a greater relative significance is conferred
on English art. Generally British painters—even minor ones—are criticised
favorably, from one standpoint or another; but only now and then is a
Frenchman given specific complimentary criticism. And often a Frenchman
is condemned for the very quality which is lauded in a British artist.
Of David it is written: “His style is severely academic, his color
lacking in richness and warmth, his execution hard and uninteresting in
its very perfection,” and more in the same derogatory strain. Although
this criticism may be strictly accurate, the same qualities in certain
English painters of far less importance than David are made the basis for
praise. The severely academic style in the case of Harding, for instance,
becomes an “elegant, highly-trained” characteristic. And perfection of
execution makes Birket Foster’s work “memorable for its delicacy and
minute finish,” and becomes, in Paul Wilson Steer’s pictures, “great
technical skill.”
Ingres, truly one of the giants of his day, is given little or no
criticism and his biography draws only a little over half the space which
is given to Watts (with his “grave, moral purpose”), and only a trifle
more space than is given Millais, the Pre-Raphaelite who was “devoted to
his family.” In Guerin’s short biography we read of his “strained and
pompous dignity.” Girodet’s biography contains very adverse criticism:
his style “harmonized ill” with his subjects, and his work was full of
“incongruity” even to the point sometimes of being “ludicrous.” Gros,
exasperated by criticism, “sought refuge in the grosser pleasures of
life.” Flandrin also is tagged with a moral criticism.
Coming down to the more modern painters we find even less consideration
given them by the _Britannica’s_ editors. Delacroix, who ushered in
a new age of painting and brought composition back to art after a
period of stagnation and quiescence, is nailed to France as follows:
“As a colorist and a romantic painter he now ranks among the greatest
of French artists.” Certainly not among the greatest English painters,
for Constable is given more space than Delacroix; and Turner, the other
precursor of the new era, is “like the British fleet among the navies of
the world.”
Courbet, the father of modern painting and the artist who revolutionized
æsthetics, is given half a column, equal space with those contemporaries
of his from across the Channel, Francis Grant, Thomas Creswick and George
Harvey. Perhaps this neglect of the great Frenchman is explained by
the following early-Victorian complaint: “Sometimes, it must be owned,
his realism is rather coarse and brutal.” And we learn that “he died
of a disease of the liver aggravated by intemperance.” Courbet, unable
to benefit by the pious and elegant _esthétique_ of the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_, was never deeply impressed by the artistic value of
“daintiness and pleasantness of sentiment,” and as a result, perhaps, he
is not held in as high esteem as is Birket Foster, who possessed those
delicate and pleasing qualities.
The palpable, insular injustice dealt Courbet in point of space finds
another victim in Daumier whose biography is almost as brief as that
of Courbet. Most of it, however, is devoted to Daumier’s caricature.
Although this type of work was but a phase of his development, the
article says that, despite his caricatures, “he found time for flight
in the higher sphere of painting.” Not only does this create a false
impression of Daumier’s tremendous importance to modern painting, but it
gives the erroneous idea that his principal _métier_ was caricature. The
entire criticism of his truly great work is summed up in the sentence:
“As a painter, Daumier, one of the pioneers of naturalism, was before his
time.” Likewise, the half-page biography of Manet is, from the standpoint
of space, inadequate, and from the critical standpoint, incompetent. To
say that he is “regarded as the most important master of Impressionism”
is a false statement. Manet, strictly speaking, was not an Impressionist
at all; and the high place that he holds in modern art is not even
touched upon.
Such biographies as the foregoing are sufficiently inept to disqualify
the Encyclopædia as a source for accurate æsthetic information; but when
Renoir, who is indeed recognized as the great master of Impressionism,
is dismissed with one-fifth of a page, the height of injustice has been
reached. Renoir, even in academic circles, is admittedly one of the great
painters of all time. Not only did he sum up the Impressionists, close
up an experimental cycle, and introduce compositional form into the
realistic painting of his day, but by his colossal vision and technical
mastery he placed himself in the very front rank of all modern painters,
if not of ancient painters as well. Yet he is accorded just twenty-seven
lines and dismissed with this remark: “Though he is perhaps the most
unequal of the great Impressionists, his finest works rank among the
masterpieces of the modern French school.” Critical incompetency could
scarcely go further. We can only excuse such inadequacy and ignorance
on the ground that the Encyclopædia’s English critic has seen none of
Renoir’s greatest work; and color is lent this theory when we note that
in the given list of his paintings no mention is made of his truly
masterful canvases.
Turning to the other lesser moderns in French painting but those who
surpass the contemporaneous British painters who are given liberal
biographies, we find them very decidedly neglected as to both space and
comment. Such painters as Cazin, Harpignies, Ziem, Cormon, Bésnard,
Cottet and Bonnot are dismissed with brief mention, whereas sometimes
twice and three times the attention is paid to English painters like
Alfred East, Harry Furniss (a caricaturist and illustrator), Francis
Lathrop, E. J. Poynter, and W. B. Richmond. Even Meissonier and Puvis de
Chavannes draw only three-fourths of a page. Pissarro and Monet, surely
important painters in the modern evolution, are given short shrift. A few
brief facts concerning Pissarro extend to twenty lines; and Monet gets
a quarter of a page without any criticism save that “he became a _plein
air_ painter.” Examples of this kind of incompetent and insufficient
comment could be multiplied.
The most astonishing omission, however, in the entire art division
of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ is that of Cézanne. Here is a
painter who, whether one appreciates his work or not, has admittedly
had more influence than any man of modern times. Not only in France
has his tremendous power been felt, but in practically every other
civilized country. Yet the name of this great Frenchman is not even
given biographical mention in the great English Encyclopædia with its
twenty-nine volumes, its 30,000 pages, its 500,000 references, and its
44,000,000 words. Deliberately to omit Cézanne’s biography, in view of
his importance and (in the opinion of many) his genuine greatness, is
an act of almost unbelievable narrow-mindedness. To omit his biography
unconsciously is an act of almost unbelievable ignorance. Especially is
this true when we find biographies of such British contemporaries of
Cézanne as Edward John Gregory, James Guthrie, Luke Fildes, H. W. B.
Davis, John Buxton Knight, George Reid, and J. W. Waterhouse. Nor can the
editors offer the excuse that Cézanne was not known when the Encyclopædia
was compiled. Not only was he known, but books and criticisms had
appeared on him in more than one language, and his greatness had been
recognized. True, he had not reached England; but is it not the duty of
the editor of an “international” encyclopædia to be aware of what is
going on outside of his own narrow province?
Any encyclopædia, no matter what the nationality, prejudices or tastes
of its editors, which omits Cézanne has forfeited its claim to universal
educational value. But when in addition there is no biographical mention
of such conspicuous French painters as Maurice Denis, Vollatton, Lucien
Simon, Vuillard, Louis Le Grand, Toulouse-Lautrec, Steinlen, Jean Paul
Laurens, Redon, René Ménard, Gauguin, and Carrière, although a score of
lesser painters of British birth are included, petty national prejudice,
whether through conscious intent or lack of information, has been carried
to an extreme; and the editors of such a biased work have something
to answer for to those readers who are not English, and who do not
therefore believe that British middle-class culture should be exaggerated
and glorified at the expense of the genuine intellectual culture of other
nations.
Modern German painting fares even worse than French painting in the
pages of the _Britannica_; and while it does not hold the high place
that French painting does, it is certainly deserving of far more
liberal treatment than that which is accorded it. The comparatively few
biographies of German artists are inadequate; but it is not in them
that we find the greatest neglect of German achievements in this branch
of æsthetics: it is in the long list of conspicuous painters who are
omitted entirely. The _Britannica’s_ meagre information on German art
is particularly regrettable from the standpoint of American readers;
for the subject is little known in this country, and as a nation we are
woefully ignorant of the wealth of nineteenth-century German painting.
The causes for this ignorance need not be gone into here. Suffice it to
say that the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, far from fulfilling its function
as a truly educational work, is calculated to perpetuate and cement
our lack of knowledge in this field. It would appear that England also
is unacquainted with the merits of German graphic expression; for the
lapses in the _Britannica_ would seem even too great to be accounted for
on the grounds of British chauvinism. And they are too obvious to have
been deliberate.
Among the important German painters of modern times who have failed to be
given biographies are Wilhelm Leibl, the greatest German painter since
Holbein; Charles Schuch, one of Germany’s foremost still-life artists;
Trübner, who ranks directly in line with Leibl; Karl Spitzweg, the
forerunner and classic exponent of German _genre_ painting as well as the
leading artist in that field; Heinrich von Zügel, one of the foremost
animal painters of modern times; and Ludwig Knaus who, though inferior,
is a painter of world-wide fame. Furthermore, there are no biographies
of Franz Krüger, Müller, Von Marées, Habermann, and Louis Corinth. When
we recall the extensive list of inferior British painters who are not
only given biographies but praised, we wonder on just what grounds the
_Britannica_ was advertised and sold as an “_international_ dictionary of
biography.”
It might be well to note here that Van Gogh, the great Hollander, does
not appear once in the entire Encyclopædia: there is not so much as a
passing reference to him! Nor has Zorn or Hodler a biography. And Sorolla
draws just twenty lines in his biography, and Zuloaga less than half a
column.