Modern Painting, Its Tendency and Meaning

ured stuffs of the East and South, the vases of China and Persia, the frescoes on the walls of Pompeii, the drawings and print

to simple designs, wholly obvious to the most rudimentary mind. The ancients were content with a representation of a natural object, the likeness of a familiar animal, the symmetry of an ornamental border, an effigy of a god in which their abstract conceptions were given concrete form. At th

understand why they were no longer in accord with him; and they, finding him in turn unfathomable, considered him either irrational or given over to fantastic buffoonery. So long had they been the dictator of his vision that his emancipation from their prescriptions left them astounded and angered at his audacity. The nobles then, feeling it incumbent upon them to defend this new luxury of art, stepped into the breach, and for a time the people blindly patterned their attitude on that of their superiors. Later came the disint

young painter had had numerous clashes with his academic master, and the latter had prophesied for him a career as reprehensible as Daumier's. Spurred on by such incompetent rebukes, Manet determined to launch himself single-handed into the vortex of the ?sthetic struggle. This was in 1857. For two years thereafter he put in his time to good purpose. He travelled in Holland, Germany and Italy, and copied Rembrandt, Velazquez, Titian and Tintoretto. These youthful preferences give us the key to his later developments. In 18

e, is, like L'Enfant a l'épée and also Les Parents de l'Artiste, the issue of immaturity. Such paintings are little more than the adroit studies of a highly talented pupil inspired by the one-figure arrangements of Velazquez, Mazo and Carre?o. Where Manet improved on the average student was in his realistic methods. While he did not present the aspect of nature in full, after the manner of Daubigny and Troyon, he stated its generalisations by painting it as seen through half-closed eyes, its parts accentuated by the blending of details into clusters of

and economies, unlike those in Le Buveur d'Absinthe, constitute a genuine inclination toward emphasising the spontaneity of vision. By presenting a picture, free from the stress of confusing items, the eye is not seduced into the by-ways of detail, but permitted to receive the image as an ensemble. This impulse toward simplification was prefigured in his Angelina now hanging in the Luxembourg Gallery. Here he modelled with broad, flat planes of sooty black and chalky white, between which there were no transitional tones. While in this Manet was imitating the externals of Daumier, he failed to approach that master's form. Consequently he ne

he academic judges were allowed a hearing. Whistler, Jongkind, Pissarro and Manet here made history. Manet sent Le Bain, which, through the insistence of the public, has come to be called Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe. But despite the precedent of Giorgione's Rural Concert (the Concert Champêtre in the Louvre), it was looked upon only as the latest manifestation of degeneracy in a man who gave every promise of becoming a moral pariah. The nude, contrasted as it was with attired figures, was too suggestive of sheer nakedness. Had the nude stood alone, as in Ingres's La Source, or among other

cessity to take the step toward this simplification of light. Were colour to be used consistently in conjunction with his technique, it must be spread on in large flat surfaces. By diffusing his light the opportunity was made. He might have omitted the element of colour from his work and contented himself with black and white, as in the case of Courbet; but he was too sensitive to its possibilities. He had observed it in the Venetians and Franz Hals, as w

ss. This attitude marked a decided step in advance of Courbet. Manet painted single figures and simple images devoid of all anecdotal significance, out of his pure love of his medium and his sheer delight in tone and contour. In other words, he represented the modern spirit which repudiates objects conducive to reminiscence, and cares only for "qualities" in art. His intentions were those of Courbet pushed to greater f

the salient characteristics of his chosen theme. This was illustration with the arrière pensée of organisation. Daumier struck the average between these two and conceived his subject in the form he was to use. Courbet minimised the importance of objects as such by raising them all to the same level of adaptability: but he invariably chose, as with an idée fixe, his subjects from the life

w have become interested in the forces of nature rather than in nature's mien. Manet, by his consummation of theme, foreshadowed the concern with abstractions which has now swept over the world of ?sthetics. Zola, like him in other ways, never equalled him in this. L'Assommoir and Fécondité portrayed only the extremes of realism. Manet painted all things with equal pleasure. Here again is evident the continuation of that mental attitude which Courbet introduced into painting. The qualities in Manet which inclined toward abstraction have secured him the reputation for bei

sts and early primitives, the appreciation of such works demands no intellectual operation. Their recognisable subjects only set in motion a simple process of memory. The Olympia, Manet's most popular painting, illustrates the type of picture which appeals strongly to minds innocent of ?sthetic depth. Its mere imagery is alluring. As pure decoration it ranks with Puvis de Chavannes. But in it are all the mistakes of the later Impressionists. Manet consciously attempted the limning of lig

ess, or rather the solidity, of the néant which lies behind. Courbet called the Olympia "the queen of spades coming from her bath." Titian, had he lived today, would have styled it a photograph. Goya (who is as much to blame for it as either Courbet or Titian) would have considered its shallowness an inexcusable vulgarity. In painting it undoubtedly Manet's intention was to modernise Titian's Venus Reclin

d in view in relation to the public; but his conceptions were spontaneous and were recorded without deliberation. He painted with but little thought as to his method. This fact is no doubt felt by the public and held in his favour by those who believe in the involuntary inspiration of the artist. But art cannot be judged by such childish criteria. Can one imagine Giotto, Michel

s. Thus was Courbet not only made effeminate but popularised. Compare the superficially similar pictures, Le Hamac of Courbet and Manet's Le Repos. In the former the movement in composition accords with the landscape and is carried out in the pose of the woman's arms and in the disposition of the legs. The figure in the latter picture is little more than an ornament-a symmetrical articulation. Manet has here translated the rhythm of depth into linear balance. In this levelling process all those qualities which raise

by Mitsuoki. Even details and texture were eliminated from it. It was a statement of his theories reduced to their bare elements. Yet, though exaggerated, the picture was representative of his aims. A pattern to him was form. Courbet's ability to model an eye was the cause of Manet's repudiating the painter of L'Enterrement à Ornans. The two men were ant

h begins in the lower right-hand corner at the reclining man's elbow, runs upward to his cap, and is then carried out in the shadow and light of the foliage so that it meets the line ascending from the other side. The base of these two converging lines is formed by another line which runs from the man's elbow along his extended leg. This is the picture's important triangle. But a secondary one is formed by a line which begins at the juncture of the tree and shadow in the lower right-hand corner, extends along the cane and the second man's sleeve to his head, and then drops, by way of the large nude's head and shoulder, to the basket of fruit at the bottom. This angularity of design is seen in the work of all primitive-minded peoples, and is notably conspicuous in the early Egyptians, the archaic Greeks and the Assyrians of the eighth century B.C. It is invariably the product of the static i

ER SUR L'

nd Manet must have gloried in it. One critic of the day wondered why oysters and a cut lemon lay on the breakfast table. But we wonder why a cat with fluffy fur is not there also. Castagnary suggested that Manet, feeling himself to be the master of still-life, brought every possible texture into a single canvas for purposes of contrast and because he delighted in the material quality of objects. But the reason goes deeper. Manet was a superlatively conscious technician, and that sacrée commodité de la brosse, so displeasing to Delacroix, was his greatest intoxication. Hals also was seduced by it. Later, when the new vision of light was communicated to Manet by the Impressionists, h

de Maximilien and the Course de Taureaux. Even in Les Bulles de Savon, the Rendez-vous de Chats, Le Clair de Lune and Le Bar des Folies-Bergère-canvases in which is exhibited Manet's greatest opposition of tones-the ensemble is expressive of monotony. Real repose, however, is something much more recondite than uniformity or tedium. It is created by a co

s. He may have unearthed this illustrative point; certain it is he did not originate it. Yet no matter how slight his departures, we enjoy his pictures for their inherent ?sthetic qualities, and not for their approximation to nature. Manet made many mistakes, but this was natural when we remember that in the whirlpool of new ambitions one is prone to forget the lessons of the past. On

ssibilities of realism. In art every genuine method is consummated before a new one can take its place. Michelangelo brought architecture to its highest point of development; Rubens, linear painting; the Impressionists, the study of light; Beethoven, the classic ideal in music; Swinburne, the rhymed lyric. In fact, only after the épuisement of a certain line of endeavour, is felt the necessity to seek for a new and more adequate means of expression. Manet helped bring to a close a