Modern Painting, Its Tendency and Meaning

stem from first impulses and be formed on the differentiations of the past. Those men who declare themselves primitives and seek to acquire the eyes and minds of the Ph?nicians or Aztecs are a

of their own epochs and push the frontiers of the mind's possibilities further into the unknown. These latter comprise the maligned vanguard of heroic thinkers who fight the battles for their weaker followers. Often, however, these fo

fetters and take his place beside the masters of the past. Some painters have more arduous fights than others, for the odds against them are greater. Rubens and Delacroix seemed the pampered favourites of a high destiny: Courbet and Renoir had to cleave and chisel each step of the way through the adamant of public suspicion. The world appears incapable of recognising either an intensification or a modifi

he soon saved enough money to give himself an education in the art which had now become with him a conscious instinct-painting. From his earliest youth he had evinced a discontent with the slow-moving minds about him, and it was natural that he should first look upon art through the eyes of his great revolutionary contemporary, Courbet. His earliest work, of which Le Cabaret de la Mère Anthony and Dia

he rhythm of surface lines which he alone of all his contemporaries recognised in Courbet. In Lise, painted in 1867, a year after his Diane Chasseresse, both of these early penchants are evident. Black is the keynote of his sunlight; and while in conception the canvas is akin to Manet, it is a Manet made dexterous and masterly. It contains a balance and a linear rhythm of which that painter was ignorant. Lise is one of the few Renoirs into w

the tree's slanting branches in the right-hand upper corner. On the left, the outline of the man's right leg and arm and hair forms another curve which bends back the line of the opposing curve of the woman's dress, and completes the figure of the pyramid. But the first curve, the force of which is seemingly ended at the woman's waist, is continued in the outline of the light tonality which begins at the man's right elbow, curves outward to the frame, then inward, and ends on the upper frame a little to the left of the man's head. Furthermore

riennes, an ambitious essay to compete with Les Femmes d'Alger dans Leur Appartement. Intrinsically the picture was a failure, but it taught its creator more than he had heretofore learned concerning colour and drawing. In it are discernible indications of the formal unconventionalities and the chromatic brilliancies which later were to be such dominant qualities in Renoir's work. Although for two years he had used Impressionistic methods, it was through this picture that Dela

colour, had brought him back to those rich and full little designs he had painted on china between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. In this early training alone lies the explanation of his later matière which has for so long puzzled the critics. Many attribute his colour effects to Watteau. But Renoir had developed his technique before he knew the older master. Years previous he had been intensely interested in the very material of his models. In Le Ménage Sisley, La Baigneuse

ess through which all great men must pass. Only by sitting at a master's feet can one acquire the knowledge that informs one which influences should be utilised and which cast aside. One cannot learn from experience the total lessons of many men, each one of whom has given a lifetime to the study of a different side of a subject. If these men are to be surpassed their life work must be used as a starting point. Reno

utes which the Impressionists, preoccupied with objectivity, were too busy to attempt. And in addition he displayed a technique so perfect in its adaptability to any expression, that its mannerisms were completely submerged in the picture's total effect. These were the qualities which Renoir was to develop to so superlative a degree. He had begun to express form in 1870 in his Portrait de Dame. Two years later in his Delacroix adaptation he had branched out into colour. And in his very first canvases there was rhythmic balance of lines. In 1876 all these tendencies coalesced. In consequence Renoir blossomed forth free from aggressive influenc

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ed it only with occasional flashes of colour. Today we know that it is not a technical necessity, that pure colours, in fact, when properly used, can produce the most solid forms. But whereas we have been able to profit by the teachings of Cézanne and the Synchromists, Renoir had to learn this fact by bitter experiments in a new element. In La Balan?oire, done in the same year as the Moulin de la Galette

to the eye. If we are to compare Renoir to English painters at all, let us designate Hogarth and Romney, although any such comparative method of criticism is apt to lead at once to misunderstanding. However, even these two men are distinctly inadequate as measures for Renoir. In the graphic arts Englishmen exhibit no feeling for rhythm. Indeed, it may correctly be said they possess no graphic arts. Rhythm is a factor which has made itself felt only in their poetry, and here it can hardly be called more than a divisio

nt development in this field are of initial significance in judging his later work. In 1878 he had evidently foreseen the cul-de-sac into which the natural distribution of light would lead. The very volatility and translucency of illumination and its matter-dispelling qualities, constituted the greatest drawback to its use in the creation of form. In other words its sheer beauty nullified the deeper aims of painting. In two decorative Panneaux of reclining nudes, done in the same year, Renoir makes his first attempt to escape from the

given him a complete knowledge of their naturalistic effect. He knew it was impossible to make them remain on the same plane with the surrounding shadow, and he understood the reasons for this phenomenon. It was not therefore remarkable that, in his later method of applying them, he was sure of his results. As soon as he realised that sunlight dispersed matter by obscuring some points and accentuating others, he knew that by an intelligent employment of this factor of luminosity he could at will accentuate certa

s you will before his pictures, it follows you, for it is the illumination of that part of the picture nearest the eyes of the painter. Where a form is full, there Renoir contrives to have a light fall. This artifice may strike us today as childish, since we have outgrown our concern with light; but let us remember that from the beginning the depiction of lights and shadows had been a fixed practice

her they are in light or shadow, or both. Thus he created the actual impression of volume we all get before a moving form. This arbitrary disposition of light and shadow also gave fullness and intensity to his form, and accentuated the poise, so subtle and unexpected, we feel in even his slightest works. But while this was the secret of his attainment of volume, the compositional use to which he put this volume requires another explanation

d those abstract organisations of colour which always afterward haunted him. Later he learned all the tricks of the day in the school of the realists, and succeeded in surpassing his masters. Next he studied the Impressionists and went beyond them also. Then he co-ordinated his knowledge and established his individual greatness. This period of his development gave France much of its finest painting, and his Baigneuse done at this time is an

the critic's viewpoint to illustration. An artist may find inspiration in any visual form, but this form is of no more ?sthetic importance to him than a photograph. In Picasso's paintings of violin fragments we are scarcely permitted to deduce an inspiration from Stradivarius. Grotesque as this analogy may seem, it is applicable to the contention that Renoir stemmed from Girardon. For there is nothing whatever in Renoir's bathing girls to suggest a psychological parallel between them and the leaden frieze at Versailles. If Renoir saw in that frieze an attractive pose, it was with an eye to its adaptability to composition. In Girardon there is only a pretty and s

ight is shifted over a hollow. An apparently simple thing-this turning of a head. Yet Michelangelo's genius, as well as that of all great artists, is dependent on the knowledge of when a head should be turned or a limb advanced. This knowledge is what transforms action into movement, tempo into rhythm, the static into the plastic, the dead into the living. It is the final penetration into composition; on it all ?sthetic form is built. Renoir acquired it in his period of so-called dry drawing. Its dawn came in La Natte and Mère et Enfant. It was still developing in the Baigneuse; and in La Baigneuse B

We have had modern paintings pointed out to us as examples of what inspiration and freedom from convention can do. We have heard the constantly reiterated assertion that academies cramp genius, restrict vision and force all expression into stipulated moulds. To concede to these extravagant assertions would be to ignore the history of great painting, for during all the significant epochs of art the school was at its zenith. Without it there could be no genuine achievement. No amount of mere inspiration has ever enabled an

andom, they would only have choked the market of genuinely ?sthetic production. The school teaches discipline, precision, and the control of wayward impulses, without all of which the greatest artist could only incompletely express himself. These are the things which Renoir felt he lacked; and in the midst of his career he halted long enough to acquire them. It may be argued that his was intelligent training, while that of the schools is unintelligent. But all discipline is beneficial to

lette de la Baigneuse, which is more extended and conclusive than any of his previous works. The forms lean in opposition and complete each other. In them is a perfect poise which subjectively evokes an emotion of movement. Even the lights and darks are separated so a

ed Ingres; but the second brings up Cézanne, for it is pure composition with every nugatory quality eliminated. It demonstrates the possibility of creating abstract unity in three dimensions with the objective reality at hand. The picture contains movement in the vital sense, and possesses a tactility as great as a Giorgione done with modern means. In fact, comparison of th

tle more to be done in Renoir's style unless he extended his vision to greater surfaces. This he has not done. But he has added other masterpieces to the ones already mentioned. His Ode aux Fleurs (d'après Anacréon), the two decorative Panneaux of the tambourine player and the dancer, Coco et les Deux Servantes, La Rose dans les Cheveux and La Femme au Miroir are all worthy of a place beside the greatest pictures of all time. In thes

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f Hankwan. Later his pictures began to flow rhythmically in simple lines as in the Head of a Chinese Lady by Ririomin. Then they began to extend into depth, and as early as 1881 they surpassed Titian. From then on they approached steadily to the completeness of a modernised Rubens. That Renoir never reached that master's greatness is due, not to h

ared with Renoir's personal accomplishments, that one may visualise this artist as a raindrop on a window, which, as it flows downward, consumes and embodies all those in its path. Courbet, Monet, Delacroix and Manet, had they no other claim on posterity than as instructors of Renoir, would not have lived in vain. The Chinese, the Greeks, the Renaissance, even that full Indian sculpture in the Chaitya of Karli of the eleventh century B.C.-are all within him. That they are temperamental affinities rather than direct influences