be kept in accord with the actuality of its subject. For while it is
quite proper, and may be very necessary, to realise materials and
textures in a picture of actual life, it is manifestly no help, but
is a hindrance to the expression of the subject, when the same degree
of realism is given in an abstract subject or a mythological story.
In such a subject, where the appeal is to the imagination through
figures or persons whom we know to be unreal, it jars terribly to
find figures, draperies, and accessories painted with the realism of
still-life, so that we recognise the model, or question the material
of the dresses, and wonder where they were bought. Some convention,
some treatment, especially of the colour, in accord with the
sentiment, should, I think, be adopted in work of this kind.
The hardness and archaism of the early painters is acceptable to
us in these subjects, as we see in the “Primavera,” or the “Venus
rising from the Sea,” by Botticelli, because it does not lead us to
think of our treatment of nature. We are too far removed from the
early men, and their style of painting also becomes legendary, like
the story of their pictures. There is a consequent harmony between
subject and treatment. We may see this in the work of Burne-Jones.
Titian’s convention seems to be too near to nature, Tintoret’s is
less literal, but Michelangelo’s is the ideal one.
Whatever be the intention in a picture, the treatment should be in
accord with it. This seems self-evident; but often we see pictures
where a greater sense of reality, of unity, would be gained were
a less realistic treatment adopted, and the picture would be more
real if it were not so realistic. In painting real things, let us
be as real, as true to what we see in nature, as we can. And the
field is wide enough. But when we attempt subjects outside ordinary
experience, we are under the disadvantage, as compared with the
early painters, of not having the same naïve simplicity of mind
which carried them safely through very difficult themes. We are too
self-conscious, too critical, and cannot walk securely outside the
bounds of our ordinary experience; and we seldom see a Scriptural
theme, or an allegory, treated now in a way that we do not, in our
minds, challenge--however much we may admire its skill--on the ground
of its leaning towards a kind of realism that is inappropriate and
distracting, in the sense that the real interest of the picture
is not where it professes to be. As, in a picture of history, the
historical interest may be neglected, or overpowered, and altogether
secondary to the interest of the costumier; although it may be said
that from the painter’s point of view it does not matter, and that
good painting, as good painting alone, will always hold its own.
This is true; yet I cannot help feeling that painting of objects, as
an end in itself, is not fully satisfactory, and that true realism
consists in the impression of general truth produced by rendering,
not only the externals, but, by means of the externals, something
of the significance of the thing painted. We find this in all the
greatest art, and this should be the painter’s aim. He should give
his reading of the subject. He should, at the same time, by study and
by reference to what great artists have done, educate himself, so
that his reading of nature may not be an ignoble one.
It is impossible to draw the line and say where realism ends and
impressionism begins--that is, if we are not to confine the term
“impressionism” to a particular school of explorers in colour. I
do not think we should do so, as all art is so largely a matter of
personal impression; and one quality runs into another, from the old
conventions at one end of the scale to the extreme impressionist
at the other, whose impression is so personal that he alone can
understand it. But if we use the term in its accepted sense, as
denoting the work of a number of artists whose interest is in
recording effects of light, seeking to express nature truly and
disregarding old conventions, we have a very interesting development
of painting to consider.
There has always been impressionism in painting, but it was in the
recording of form and movement, and not of colour. The colour of the
older painters was more or less arbitrary, except in the case of a
few men. They did not study or seek to record the momentary effects
and changes of colour with the keenness they showed in studying form,
or light and shade. We know how they took trouble to give draperies
the effect of movement, or figures the sense of action. And it was
not until landscape painting had developed--until the time of Turner,
and since then--that some artists saw in the study of colour as
effected by light a new field, a little corner of nature which had
not been explored, where some fresh beauty might be found.
The old painters gained colour at the expense of light, suggested
sunlight by means of dark shadow, and the general effect of truth to
nature by a proportionate lowering of the scale of colour in nature.
Turner was the first to discard these methods, and to try and attain
in a higher scale of colour one more resembling nature, the fulness
and gradation of Nature herself; to get colour in the shadows as well
as in the lights. And in his finest works he did, I think, succeed
in giving this, not only as it had never been given before, but
with a delicacy which has not been equalled since; he was the first
and the greatest impressionist painter. He left no successor in
England, and it was not until some years after his death that Claude
Monet, and some other French artists who had been inspired by his
work, endeavoured to develop his principles, or perhaps it would be
more correct to say that they were influenced to study nature in the
direction indicated by Turner--the realisation of actual sunlight;
and their painting became brighter and brighter in the effort to
express its full brilliancy, or to suggest its effect, until it has
now reached the limits of what is possible in paint.
The impressionists have rendered sunlight with a truth of colour
and freshness new in art--if anything can really be said to be
new; for their method of painting in pure colours is but a kind
of magnified stippling, and one remembers the pictures of Eastern
sunlight by J. F. Lewis, in which a wonderful brilliancy is produced
by small touches of pure colour. One cannot help feeling that some
impressionist work in its extreme developments--where, in order to
get the full force of colour, the paint is laid on pure, unmixed,
and in separate spots--is, in spite of its beauty, disquieting and
violent; and that it is questionable if, after all, this method is as
true to nature as the older conventions of painting, where the effect
is more restful if less brilliant.
It is a fresh convention, that is all. One cannot say that it is
truer than others, for truth is infinite, and cannot be expressed
in any formula; it may be truer in a particular respect, but this
applies to the older conventions too. The impressionist methods make
evident to us, by the force of contrast, the beauty of the older
conventions, and many painters are returning to them as being more
true to the general look of nature, so far as it can be expressed
by paint; this may be taken as a reaction from impressionism, it
being felt to have reached its limit of expression. But we cannot
contentedly go back again to the old brown shadows and degraded
tones; something has been gained, and we may try to follow the
effective planning, the breadth and simplicity of the older painters,
and still to have our colours clear and true. It seems to me that
the work of Manet was in this direction.
I should like to touch briefly on the art of Japan, which has
influenced Western art in the last fifty years. It is a true style,
perfect and complete in itself; and there is no art more beautiful,
in the sense of simply giving pleasure by its decorative qualities.
It is frankly impressionist in its disregard of all but the things
chosen, is less diffuse and self-conscious than our art; more
concentrated, more vital. Its point of view is altogether different
from that of Western art. This difference is so great that Japanese
and modern European pictures cannot hang together on the same wall
harmoniously; the European work suffers. The two schools do not
agree, and one would say that it is impossible to combine their
points of view, were it not for the work of Whistler and Degas.
Whistler, in the portraits of his mother, of Miss Alexander, and
in his nocturnes, has entered into the spirit of Japanese art so
thoroughly as to gain from it something of his own, and to develop
his own art from its suggestions; and the work of Degas shows the
same influence in the unexpectedness of its arrangement and its
decorative balance and spacing.
There is something disquieting in the fact that Japanese art is so
beautiful, and at the same time so altogether different from ours, so
much so as to cause a momentary thought whether it is not finer. But
whether or no, we must keep on our own road, for our traditions and
practice do not lead us to render nature like the Japanese. Still,
we may study their work with great advantage; especially their fine
colour, and the way they make their pictures by simple masses of
colour or by silhouette, so that the effect is produced by the play
of colour against colour, or by harmony of colour, and not by light
and shade.
Our art appeals through representation or imitation, creating an
illusion of nature in its three dimensions; while the Japanese
representation of nature is not imitative, but selective, certain
things being chosen and the rest ignored. And their art seems, in
this respect, to have developed to its final perfection on the lines
of the earliest forms of art, without changing its direction. If we
go back to beginnings; to the Egyptian wall-paintings, to the Greek
vase-paintings, or to the earliest Italians, or even if we look
at the drawings of children, we find they are alike in this, that
they draw the thing they want to express, and leave out the rest.
The Japanese make their selection in the same way; their art has
developed, but has not changed.
But in our art this simple method of selection is no longer possible;
figures must have their backgrounds and surroundings, and the
appearance of nature must be studied in order to give, by light,
shade, or colour, the necessary emphasis to the principal parts.
We are agreed that this is the proper way to represent nature, but
the art of the Japanese brings home to us the fact that it is not the
only way; and we see from early pictures, such as the “Battle of St.
Egidio,” by Paolo Ucello, in the National Gallery, which is extremely
like a Japanese picture, that the Early Italian point of view was
very similar to that of the Japanese. Then I think we can realise
how much the appreciation of a work of art depends upon the accepted
convention of the moment; and this may help us to understand the
unaccountable neglect which has from time to time overtaken great
artists.
Our conventions serve the same end as the simple selection of the
Japanese, to give prominence to the thing desired; but it is not easy
to decide how far we should be absolutely frank before nature, as we
know we ought to be, and how much to depend on conventions. All that
we can do is to try and understand the reasons for conventions, we
may then be able to use them; and the underlying thing, I think, is
that imitation as an end is not enough--there must be some motive or
point in the picture to which it is necessary to give prominence; for
all art is based on selection.
The student’s greatest difficulty is to find himself; what it is
that he really wants to express; and he is naturally more influenced
by the present than by the past. His inclination is to think only
of the mode of to-day, of the work which surrounds him, rather than
to search for general principles. But he should try and arrive at
principles, and to that end study also the work of the old artists,
who have travelled the whole road; depending on nature for his
inspiration, while referring to them for guidance. For we train
ourselves to see and understand, by studying the work of the masters,
which help us to form our judgment before nature.
I have tried to put before you as fairly and with as little bias as
I can, some of the problems we have to consider; but it seems to me,
now that I am come to the end, that I am something like the innkeeper
who had but one wine in his cellar, which he made do duty for all
vintages, only changing the label on the bottle. Like the innkeeper,
I have given you the only wine I have, and, after all, the label
does not matter; nor does it matter, I think, what kind of label is
affixed to our work--whether it is realist, idealist, impressionist,
or what not. The important thing is that we do it as well as we can.
THE END
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