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"Teutonizing"

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CONTRIBUTION of some value and much strikingness to current pedagogical discussion has been made by one of the Rhodes scholars newly landed from Connecticut at Oxford, and looking about him in so very wide-awake a way as to insure that for him at least the experiment of expatriation is likely to be successful. This simple Rhodian finds that the indigenous and hereditary Oxonian has his advantages over the transplanted American. The first and greatest of these is the Briton's greater range of literary culture. "It is a fact that in general reading the more studious Oxonian" (meaning the more studious of the Oxonians) "has us at his mercy; in every form of classical scholarship except that of painstaking investigation of minute obscurities, a favorite pastime in Germany and America, we are 'down and out."" He goes on to say that the Briton equally knows more about at least the literary side of painting, sculpture, and music. The American at Oxford can very imperfectly recoup himself for his ignorance of what everybody is there presumed to know by allusions to chemistry or analytic geometry, which are as recondite to the Briton as the Briton's subconscious possessions are to him; for he is aware that in these things he himself is but a smatterer. One hopes that this Rhodian overstates the case, and indeed it is plain that there is a personal equation to be allowed for. Surely he speaks only for himself when he declares that the ordinary "American collegian is not clear whether Titian and Murillo were sculptors, painters, or musicians. But the inferiority in general culture which he manfully confesses for himself might equally be confessed, doubtless, by most of his colleagues on the Rhodes foundations. He tells, in effect, the same story in 1905 that Emerson told in 1847, and independently arrives at much the same explanation, the want of leisure and the want of "access to books" for the studiously minded American boy, compared with the liberty of "browsing in a library" which the English boy of the class which finds its way to Oxford has enjoyed from childhood. This is a want that

the present Rhodian, whom one infers to have been brought up among the ordinary surroundings of a New England village, has doubtless felt more keenly than the "minister's son" that Emerson was to the sixth and seventh generation. Assuredly there is, on either side of the water, no satisfactory scholastic substitute possible for the inestimable advantage of having been brought up in "a reading family."

All the same, it is by no means satisfactory to hear Emerson's complaint repeated, and with aggravation, after almost sixty years. "They read better than we do, and write better." And this in spite of the facts that there is, one may say, no express teaching of English literature in England, where a knowledge of it is assumed as a "by-product" of home reading plus classical culture, and a great deal of express teaching of it in the United States. One may almost say that our inferiority comes because of this latter fact. The classics are taught in Great Britain as matters of literary culture. In America, under the influence of Germany, they are increasingly coming to be taught, as our Rhodian intimates, as matters of "linguistic investigation.” And similarly, though not identically, with English. When an American professor, necessarily of German university training, assures mankind that "there is such a thing," such a grewsome thing, "as a science of English literature," the American who has not sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, shudders at the announcement and pities the professor's pupils. When a translation of a German professor's lectures on the science of history appears from an American press, written in a jargon which indicates that the translators have taken pains to forget all the idiomatic English they ever knew, one sees that Teutonizing has been carried very far. We are worse off than in Emerson's time insomuch as our lack then was of an inculcation of the humanities, whereas the condition which now confronts us is of an express inculcation of what may fairly be called the inhumanities. All which goes to show that Cecil Rhodes may have builded considerably better than he knew.

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FRENCH PAINTING AT THE BEGINNING
OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

I

T is not necessary to go back to the beginning of the century to trace the impulses which give character to painting at present. David' and Gros2 are more remote than Raphael and Titian. The struggles of the Classicists and Romanticists, of Ingres3 and Delacroix are over, and (it may be said parenthetically) the pictures declare it a drawn battle, with an equal list of brilliant achievements on both sides, though the critics, especially those who take their opinions mainly from what has been written rather than from what has been painted, are apt to claim a complete victory for the long-haired young enthusiasts who wrote and talked so volubly against the academic servitude.

Courbet's pictures occupy a less assured place in the galleries than those of the men just mentioned, but he comes nearer to being a living influence of the modern school; and that more by his weaknesses than by his strength. He first did without qualities, which up to his time had been considered indispensable in art. A certain emotional and poetic view of the essence of the subject rather than its exact, momentary reality, a rendering of it for pictorial purposes into an arrangement of mass or line which holds harmoniously within the rigid lines of a frame, and a knowledge of the details, gained by previous observation and tradition, so that they were represented not as they stood for the instant before the painter, but as he knew them to be or wished them to appear; all of this Courbet shook off. Coming from a little town where there were few pictures to be seen and reaching Paris at a time when the air was full of revolt against accepted tradition, with a narrow mind and enormous self-conceit, the works of other masters had almost no effect on him. He painted for the

1 Jacques Louis David (1748-1825).

most part directly from nature with no subsequent working over, with no previous conception of what his picture should be like and with no care for anything save immediate external appearance. All was alike to him, the cool green landscapes of the Jura, the coarse female types of Paris, a dead stag or a laborer breaking stones.

He was by no means the first to paint directly from nature, but before him, artists had always been controlled by knowledge of, and sympathy for the subject and by admiration for former work, trying even as they worked to fit their subject to an individual, artistic conception. Corot,' for instance, worked much out in the open air but he selected effects which had for him a special charm and copied them with a mind deeply influenced by the classical landscapes of Claude and Poussin. The qualities of sympathy with his subject, feeling for balanced composition or beautiful line, and acceptance of the great traditions of the past, which Courbet lacked, were great qualities. That he succeeded without them was partly due to the spirit of the time which was in revolt against old formulas and eager for some new things, but mainly to his clear direct vision of the subject before him and his superb technique which covered his canvases with strong, pure color laid on in a peculiar solid, rich impasto.

This strength of handling was reproduced by the abler of his admirers and there are bits in the early work of Manet which seem to show the very touch and sign manual of the earlier master. Yet even from the beginning Manet's work shows a different viewpoint. Courbet had been content to paint anything he saw and the conservative public were often shocked by the realistic representation of subjects which had not previously been considered suitable for reproduction in art, but Manet, a far more intellectual man,

2 Antoine Jean Gros, made Baron Gros in 1830 (1771- went further and, for the display of his tech

1835).

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nique, of set purpose chose odd and question

1 Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875).
2 Édouard Manet(1832-1883).

able subjects. At first he re-edited some of the "motifs" of the old masters, setting them in the most uncompromising modern surroundings, and for the display of breadth of brush work, simplifying the masses of light and shade by eliminating detail. Later he began to look about him for subjects which had not been treated before and which in their uncompromising modernity should support his reputation as an innovator, novelty of subject being put forward as a merit in itself.

These ideas spread widely among the more adventurous of the younger men. They were all painting nature "as they saw it," any actual visible object was subject for a picture and any variation from, or arrangement of, the visible presence was “chic" and anathema. There was in all this much heedless and vociferous following of a popular fashion, but there was also much deep and serious study of the actual aspects of nature. And the freedom from tradition of rigid training enabled the stronger men to "see it" in a surprising variety of ways. To some, and they were in the direct line of the development indicated by Manet, the sunlit landscape as they came out upon it made their studio walls seem dark and blank. No pictures yet painted seemed adequately to represent such brilliancy. They keyed their canvases up to the brightest point, they felt out the distinction between the warm shadows cast by the cold, studio north light, and the cool blue shadows resulting from yellow sunlight and they disintegrated their lights into touches of pure color which should suggest to the beholder the dazzle of the sun. others, the landscape seemed less brilliant; with long looking their eyes had become accustomed to its brightness, and to them nature seemed illuminated by a diffused light surrounding and softening all objects to the same tone and filled with a multitude of details of earth and leaf and stone, very subtly varied in delicate color. The weaker men took up the movement according to their lights, some copied landscapes with the old studio palette of brown shadows, but more learned the purple or blue formulas of open air work and applied them indiscriminately to everything.

To

The vagaries of pointillistes or luministes were the results of attempting to paint sunlight and landscape as it is. But besides these natural and as one may say logical

influences from within, French art has been strongly affected by influences from without; not artistic or intellectual, but social or financial. Painting of old was a suspected trade, looked at askance by solid citizens. The general levelling tendency of the century weakened the prejudice somewhat but the great blow was given to it twenty-five years or so ago. There had been a rapid industrial advance all over the world and the possessors of newly acquired riches, among other ways of spending them, turned to picture buying. Orders came to Paris from all over the world but especially from America. For the first time in the history of the world one may say (for a few individual exceptions do not count) painters tasted the joys of wealth. There was a great rush of all sorts of youths to learn the desirable art. Previously, pupils had been received into studios in a sort of patriarchal fashion after personal introduction by some friend of the family, or on rare occasions some beginner sought out a painter whom he admired and tremblingly submitted his work and asked to be received in his studio. It was always considered a favor. The master as a rule received no payment but in return exercised despotic authority and expected implicit obedience. The pupils were no more in number than he could know intimately and it was quite within his office to criticise, if he saw fit, their morals, their literary taste or their politics, and in matters concerning art his word was not to be questioned; the subjects to be painted, the preparation of the canvas, the handling, must all conform to the traditions of the atelier. When the great influx of pupils came it swamped the old schools.

The temper of the time was against tradition and discipline; and the belief that the Romantic school, and the Barbizon school and the Realistic school had succeeded by refusing the old training united with the natural self-confidence of youth so that there was no complaint when much was thrown overboard which had previously been considered indispensable to an artistic education. The study of the antique, the copying of old paintings, the assisting the master in his larger works, became rarer and rarer. Even sketches and studies of composition were for the most part perfunctory. All energy was devoted to the study of the living model and one may almost say to the drawing of it, for thorough instruction in painting requires both time and

patience which were lacking, and for the most part the student was allowed to put on what color he liked in any way he liked. There is no doubt but that the old method often forced men into grooves and set them to reproducing without feeling or knowledge a set type of picture, nor that the new freedom often originated work of freshness and original charm. Under all systems of training men with exceptional talent have produced admirable work and those without it have turned out poor stuff whose type changes with the system but not its quality. The characteristic result of the modern training, however, was that it turned out a multitude of men who could draw from the model extremely well and could paint a little, but who beyond that had no idea of what they were to produce, except that it ought to bring them fame and fortune.

The annual Salon was the arena where they were to display their mastery and there they sent the things which they had been trained to do- studies of nude models (sometimes so-called, sometimes labelled "Nymph" or "Venus"), studies of costumed models, combinations of them in compositions, tricked out with facile historical details, studies of peasants in their local costumes and portraits of every description by the tens of thousands, but especially to these trained draughtsmen with no further idea of how a picture was to be made, the teachings of the Naturaliste and Pleinairiste school commended themselves. They did not know what to paint or how to paint it, and a great and distinguished body of critics told them to paint anything as they saw it. And here an additional influence came in which has not hitherto had sufficient importance given to it. Photography was perfected, so that instead of being a slow and elaborate process only to be practised in a studio upon a sitter with his head wedged into a painful support, it could be employed anywhere, upon any subject indoors or out. Painters did not as a rule employ photographs to work from, but they began to take their ideas of nature, not from nature itself nor. through the pictures of the old masters, but from photographs. The distinction is very great.

The naturalist school declared that the literal copying of nature was the highest art, and here was a process that relieved the artist of the labor of personal observation. A good photograph is an absolute, indisputable reproduction in line and mass of the external

world; all of the problems of foreshortening, perspective, construction, multiplicity of detail, over which for generations artists have struggled are triumphantly and impeccably solved. It was the ideal at which so many of the old masters declared they aimed, but how lamentably did their best efforts fall short of the real thing! Take the most successful of them, the Dutch still-life paintings, the landscapes of the Fontainebleau school or even the works of Velasquez, which his contemporaries declared to be not painting but nature, would a photograph from any of them ever be supposed to be taken from life? Yet in looking over the illustrations in the magazines and salon catalogues of to-day how puzzling it is to tell whether art or nature furnished the original. Surely this is a remarkable development and moreover a very recent one, for it has come about within the last thirty years, and one might almost date it specifically from the paintings of BastienLepage1 (which is not to deny his great and original talent). As before said, artists did not copy photographs; they were far too skilful draughtsmen to need such aid, but they looked at them and unconsciously copied the photographic style as an earlier generation had copied the manner of Raphael. The even, neutral tone, the absence of composition or balancing of light and shade to make the picture fit in the frame, the elaborate reproduction of all detail, however trivial, were all characteristic of the new school and fitted exactly the training of the new academies. With good school draughtsmanship and industry the whole world could be turned into pictures of the photographic type. Individual feeling could be dispensed with and even skill in the use of the materials of the craft. For photography was a double influence; not only were pictures inspired by what had been photographed, but they were painted to be themselves photographed in turn and were known and judged not by themselves but by their reproductions which were spread over the whole world. Oil color as a medium, as a material capable of giving a peculiar charm of surface was entirely lost sight of. Never before probably since painting began has there been produced such a wilderness of canvas so devoid of distinction, of technique and of personal artistic feeling as has made up the bulk of the French Salon of the Champs Élysées for the past quarter of a century.

1 Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884).

It is not pretended that this description represents in any way the best of French art, but it is not unfair of the work of the rank and file among the artists, the men who without strong personal initiative followed the training and impulses of their time, and the best of the younger men felt its influence. The older ones trained under different influences, with different ideals and different habits of life stand like relics of a past age. They are dropping off year by year; but take half a dozen names of the living and dead at random; Meissonier, Harpignies, Puvis de Chavannes,3 Bouguereau, Gustave Moreau,5 Bonnat." There seems no possible similar. ity of work or character among them until they are compared with their successors and then it is felt that they are all in a certain class to which the others do not belong. Their work has dominated the salon and not been dominated by it. With the latter men, those who finished their studies in the seventies, it is not so. Take the very best of them, a man like Dagnan-Bouveret, a man of the highest character, sincere and modest, and see how the popular current has forced him from his small earlier works filled with the truest poetry and feeling into painting huge religious subjects, which call aloud to the beholder to admire the depth of their emotion. They are still works of art, but in the men less strong and modest the collapse has been complete, and huge Roman orgies or mediæval massacres recompensed with medals and decorations have perverted real though not great talents.

The dreary dulness beneath the labored attempts to attract of the picked men of the schools, aroused the contempt and derision of the anti-academic faction which always exists, and which claims to succeed by genius rather than by work. Their theories gained special support in the eighties by the growing success of men like Monet and Sisley.9 The more advanced spirits of the ateliers declared that even accurate drawing could be advantageously neglected in order to develop a sense of light or a feeling for spots, or a

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distinctly personal handling of paint. When they entered the salon they had new methods of attracting attention beside hugeness of canvas and strangeness of subject. The technique of Manet and his followers was forced to its ultimate limits. Pictures were made to stand out by unusual lightness or darkness of tone, brilliancy and strangeness of color or eccentricities of brush-work, the lentillistes and the vermicellistes became recognized artistic sub-species and the purple cow eating blue grass against a green sky was not wholly a myth. The poster school of art developed, suppressing all detail and concentrating itself in one simple vivid appeal to the eye. The old school disapproved of the new as was natural, for the two represent a permanent difference of artistic temperament which has always existed.

Finally there came an open rupture and the new salon of the Champs de Mars was started, to encourage originality and feeling as against uninspired industry, and except in cases where personal ties or interests interfered the distinction was pretty clearly maintained, for the salons were mutually exclusive and if an artist sent to one he was not permitted to send to the other.

One manifest result of the schism was to increase still further the number of pictures annually displayed, the new salon even doing away with the rule of the old which limited each exhibitor to two pictures and permitting instead its favored ones to send as many as they would.

It was a selection from this enormous mass of work, a sifting out of the better element which the exposition in Paris in 1900 was to display; and while it was measurably successful yet it gave a vague sense of disappointment. The modern movements which had been started with so much enthusiasm and confidence seemed to have led nowhere. A notable and regrettable feature was the failure of those who as young men were gaining success and fame a dozen years before, to make good their early promise. Their endurance was amazing. Those who were the pillars of the exhibition of 1878 still held their old place with no trace of weakness and often with a distinct advance, and there was still about their work a sureness of conception, an authority that grows more and more rare. SAMUEL ISHAM.

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