Chapter 2

Among the other bigger pictures in this small gallery, a very poetic Cazin, "The Repentance of Simon Peter," commands attention by a certain outdoor quality which faintly suggests the Barbizon school. One does not know what to admire most in this fine canvas. As a figural picture it is intensely beautiful, and merely as a landscape it is of convincing charm. It is to my mind one of the finest paintings in the exhibition, and a constant source of great pleasure.

The big Tissot offers few excuses for having been painted at all. It is nothing but a big illustration - all it tells could have been said on a very small canvas. There is no real painting in it, nor composition - nothing else, for that matter. The two Monticellis on the same wall make up for the Tissot. Rich in colour and design, the one to the left is particularly fine. The Van Marcke on the same wall is typical of this painter's methods, but does not disclose his talent for very interesting pictorial compositions, for which he was known.

On the opposite wall an older Israels gives lone a good idea of the earlier period of this great Dutch painter, justly counted as one of the great figures of the second half of the last century. While of recent date, his art belongs to the older school - without attaching any odium to that classification. The Barbizon school, the most important of the last century, is very fitly represented by two charming and most delicate Corots on either side of the Israels. The one to the right is particularly tender and poetic. While by no means an attempt at a naturalistic impressionistic interpretation of nature, like a modern Metcalf, for instance, their suggestive power is so great as to overcome a certain lack of colour by the convincingness of the mood represented. Daubigny and Rousseau, of that great company of the school of 1825, are merely suggested in two small and very conscientious studies.

Gallery 62.

This will always be remembered as the gallery of the "Green Madonna". Whatever caused this "Green Madonna" to be honored by a Grand Prix at Paris will always remain one of those mysteries with which the world is laden. Of all disagreeable colour schemes, it is certainly one of the least appealing ever put upon a canvas. It is hardly a scheme at all, since I do not believe the juxtaposition of so many different slimy greens, nowhere properly relieved nor accentuated by a complementary red, can ever be called a scheme. Technically speaking, the canvas is well painted, but it is hardly worthy of the attention its size and subject win. Dagnan-Bouveret has rendered good service as a teacher and also as a painter of animal life, but in this canvas he surely is not up to his best.

The Barbizon men continue to hold one's attention by a splendid Troyon. It is one of the best of his canvases I have ever seen. The little Diaz alongside of it is also typical of this very luminous painter, who often attains a lusciousness of colour in his work not reached by any other of the Barbizon men.

Fortuny, in an Algiers picture, shows the same brilliant technical quality which is so much in evidence in a small watercolor in the preceding gallery. Jules Bastien-LePage's studio nude seems very unhappily placed in a naturalistic background into which it does not fit, and Cazin's big canvas, while very dignified, hardly comes up to the level of his repenting "Simon Peter", in the other gallery. Pelouse's landscape, of singularly beautiful composition and colour, should not be overlooked. It is alongside the Cazin.

While almost all the pictures referred to so far are of the French school, there are three pictures of the older German school - two Lenbachs, one a very accurately drawn portrait of the German philosopher Mommsen, and the other a portrait of himself. They show this powerful artist in two different aspects. While the Mommsen is one of his later, broader pictures, the portrait of himself is of an earlier date, showing the artist as the serious student he has always been. Adolph Schreyer, another German, with his Bedouin pictures, was the pet of the art lovers in his day, and pictures like this can be found in almost every collection in the world.

The miscellaneous sculpture in this gallery is full of interest and gives one a good suggestion of the great mass of small modern sculpture found throughout the galleries. Mora's Indian figures are particularly interesting from their originality of theme. Mora tries hard to be unconventional, without going into the bizarre, and succeeds very well.

Gallery 61.

The difference of appearance in the four older galleries discussed and the one now visited is so marked as to lead one to believe that our investigations have not been conducted in the proper chronological order. All the art of the world, up to and including the Barbizon school, is characterized by a predominant brown colour which, on account of its warmth, is never disagreeable, although sometimes monotonous. The daring of the Englishman Constable in painting a landscape outdoors led to the development of a new point of view, which the older artists did not welcome. Constable and the men of the Barbizon school realized for the first time that outdoor conditions were totally different from the studio atmosphere, and while the work of such men as Corot, Millet, Daubigny, Rousseau, and Diaz is only slightly removed from the somber brown of the studio type, it recognizes a new aspect of things which was to be much farther developed than they ever dreamed. Just as Constable shocked his contemporaries by his - for that time - vivid outdoor blues and greens, so the men of the school of 1870, or the impressionists, surprised and outraged their fellowmen with a type of picture which we see in control of this delightfully refreshing gallery. We can testify by this time that Constable, although much opposed in his day, seems very tame to us today, and caution seems well advised before a final judgment of impressionism is passed. The slogan of this gallery seems to be, "More light and plenty of it!" The Monet wall gives a very good idea of the impressionistic school, in seven different canvases ranging from earlier more conventional examples to some of his latest efforts. One more fully understands the goal that these men, like Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, and others in this gallery were striving for when, in an apparently radical way, they discarded the attitude of their predecessors, in their search for light. It is true they encountered technical difficulties which forced them into an opacity of painting which is absolutely opposed to the smooth, sometimes licked appearance of the old masters. Many of these men must be viewed as great experimenters, who opened up new avenues without being entirely able to realize themselves. They are collectively known generally as impressionists, though the word "plein-airist" - luminist - has been chosen sometimes by them and by their admirers. The neo-impressionists in pictorial principle do not differ from the impressionist. Their technical procedure is different, and based on an optical law which proves that pure primary colours, put alongside of each other in alternating small quantities, will give, at a certain distance, a freshness and sparkle of atmosphere not attained by the earlier technical methods of the impressionistic school, which does not in the putting on of the paint differ from the old school. Besides, this use of pure paint enabled them to have the mixing of the paint, so to speak, done on the canvas, as the various primary colours juxtaposed would produce any desired number of secondary and tertiary colours without loss of freshness. In other words a green would be produced, not by mixing yellow and blue on the palette, but by putting a yellow dot and a blue dot alongside of each other, and so ad infinitum. According to the form of their colour dots they were called pointillistes, poiristes, and other more or less self-explanatory names. The service of these men to art can never be estimated too highly. The modern school of landscape painting particularly, and other art involving indoor subjects, are based entirely on the principles Monet discovered to the profession.

Pissarro, on either end of the wall opposite the Monet, appeals more in the new method of the neo-impressionists than Monet, by reason of much more interesting subjects. The one Pissarro on the right is of the first order from every point of view, demonstrating the superiority of the neo-impressionistic style applied to a very original and interesting subject. "The River Seine," by Sisley, is also wonderfully typical of this new style, while of the two Renoirs, only the still-life can really be called successful. There is an unfortunate fuzziness in his landscape which defeats all effect of difference of texture in the various objects of which this picture is composed.

There are a number of canvases in this gallery which have nothing to do with the predominating impressionistic character of the gallery. The Puvis de Chavannes gives one a very fine idea of the idealistic outlook of this greatest of all modern decorators. His art is so genuinely decorative that to see one of his pictures in a frame seems almost pathetic, when we think how infinitely more beautiful it would look as part of a wall. Eugène Carrière is very well represented by a stately portrait of a lady with a small dog. Carrière's mellow richness is entirely his own and rarely met with in any other artist's work.

On the west wall opposite the Puvis four very different canvases deserve to be mentioned. In the center a young Russian, Nicholas Fechin, displays a very unusual virtuosity in a picture of a somewhat sensual-looking young creature. Aside from the fascination of this young human animal, the handling of paint in this canvas is most extraordinary, possessing a technical quality few other canvases in the entire exhibition have. There is life, such as very few painters ever attain, and seen only in the work of a master. This work is not entirely a Nell Brinkley in oil, either. I confess I have a strange fondness for this weird canvas.

The international character of this gallery is most pronounced. Directly above the Fechin, Frits Thaulow, the Norwegian, justifies his reputation as the painter of flowing water in a picture of great beauty. Gaston La Touche faintly discloses in a large canvas his imaginative style, carried so much farther in his later work. Joseph Bail, the Frenchman, got into this gallery probably only on the basis of size, to balance the La Touche on the other side. To all appearances Bail has very little in common with the general modern character of this gallery. Nevertheless his canvas has merit in many ways.

Foreign Nations

France

A discussion of the impressionistic school makes it almost imperative to continue our investigation by way of the French Section. France is easily to modern art what Italy was to the art of the Renaissance or Greece to antiquity. Almost all countries, with the exception of those of northern Europe, have gone to school at Paris. It becomes quite evident at first glance that a certain very desirable spaciousness in the hanging of the pictures contributes much toward the generally favorable impression of this section of the exhibition, though it is hard to understand why this fine effect should have been spoiled by the pattern used on the wall-covering. It seems unbelievable that a people like the French should so violate a fundamental principle, which a first-semester art student would scarcely do. The otherwise delightful impression of the French section, so excellently arranged, is considerably impaired by this faux pas. There is no chronological succession in evidence in the hanging of pictures in the six galleries of this section, and old and new, conservative and radical, are hung together with no other consideration than harmonious ensemble.

Gallery 18.

In the western end of the section presided over by a decorative painting of some aras among orange trees (over the west door), a beautiful, almost classic canvas by Henri Georget commands immediate attention. The poetic idealism of this decorative landscape, together with a fine joyousness, give it unusual character. Alongside of it a very intelligently painted little canvas by Albert Guillaume shows the interior of an art dealer's shop. The agent is making Herculean efforts to bamboozle an unsuspecting parvenu into buying an example of some very "advanced" painting. The canvas is fine persiflage in its clever psychological characterization of the sleek dealer and the stupid helplessness of the bloated customer and his wife, who seem hypnotized by the wicked eye in the picture. As a piece of modern genre in a much neglected field, it is one of the finest things of recent years. On the extreme left of this wall a very fine bit of painting of an Arabian fairy tale by E. Dinet deserves to be mentioned.

Almost opposite this small canvas Lucien Simon has a large picture painted with the bravura for which he is famous. The atmosphere of this fine interior is simply and spontaneously achieved, and the three figures of mother, nurse and balky baby are excellently drawn. The still-life by Moride, to the left of this picture, shows all the earmarks of the modern school without sacrificing a certain delicacy of handling which is often considered by many modern painters a confession of weakness. A fine Dutch canvas on the extreme left of this wall, by Guillaume-Roger, attracts by a fine decorative note seldom found in pictures of French easel painters.

The east wall of this gallery is distinguished by a number of fine landscapes by different men. Beginning on the left side of the door Jules-Emile Zingg presents two tonally skillful winter landscapes of great fidelity, while on the right is Henry Grosjean's delicate atmospheric study of a broad valley floor. A decorative watercolour of the Versailles Gardens, by Mlle. Carpentier, commands admiration by reason of its fine composition as well as by the economical but effective technique of putting transparent paint over a charcoal drawing. The sculpture in this gallery is of no great moment. Like much of the modern French sculpture it is very well done in a technical sense without disclosing great concentration of mind.

Gallery 17.

A variety of subjects continues to impress one in this gallery. Portraits, landscapes, and historical subjects, with here and there a genre note, make the general character of the French exhibit, showing at every turn the great technical dexterity for which French art has long been celebrated. There is no picture of outstanding merit in this gallery, unless one would single out a very sympathetic, simple landscape by Paul Buffet and the Lucien Griveau landscape called "The Silver Thread," diagonally opposite, a canvas of rich tonality and distinctive composition.

Gallery 16.

An adjoining gallery toward the east has a great number of excellent pictures to hold the attention of the visitor. To begin with the figure painters, the Desch portrait of a little girl in empire costume appeals by its genuinely original design. The carefully considered pattern effect of this canvas is most agreeable and well assisted by a very refined colour scheme. Although a trifle dry, the quality of painting in this canvas is the same as that which makes Whistler's work so interesting. This painting is one of the great assets of the French section, and to my mind one of the great pictures of the entire exhibition. Balancing the Desch canvas, one finds another figural canvas of great beauty of design, by Georges Devoux. "Farewell," while of a sentimental character, is strong in drawing and composition. It is very consistent throughout. Everything in the picture has been carefully considered to support the poetic, sentimental character of the painting, which is admirably delicate and convincing without being disagreeably weak.

Jacques-Emile Blanche is represented in this gallery by his well-known portrait of the dancer Nijinski. A certain Oriental splendor of colour is the keynote of this canvas, which is much more carelessly painted than most of Blanche's very clever older portraits. On the opposite wall Caro-Delvaille shows his dexterity in the portrait of a lady. The lady is a rather unimportant adjunct to the painting and seems merely to have been used to support a magnificently painted gown. There is a peculiar contrast in the very naturalistically painted gown and the severe interpretation of the face of the sitter. Ernest Laurent's portrait of Mlle. X is typically French in its loose and suggestive style of painting, and easily one of the many good portraits in the gallery.

Among the landscapes Andrè Dauchez' "Concarneau," Charles Milcendeau's "Washerwomen," on the opposite wall, and last but not least, Renè Mènard's "Opal Sea" - a small picture of great beauty - deserve recognition. Pierre Roche has a statuette of Loïe Fuller in this gallery which is conspicuous by its daring composition and simple treatment.

Gallery 15.

Entering this gallery, the first canvas to attract one's attention, by reason of its boldness of composition and colour, is a large Lucien Simon called "The Gondola." The versatility of this artist is well brought out by another picture of a baby, about to be bathed, previously referred to, and by a third canvas, of "The Communicants," near "The Gondola." Simon seems to have no difficulty in using several mediums and styles of expression equally well, as a comparison between "The Gondola" and "The Communicants" will easily prove. This former picture is the more original of the two technically, in colour as well as in composition. It is in danger of losing one's sympathy by a badly selected frame. Near it hangs a trifolium of virgins, of very anaemic colour. The drawing, however, is so very sensitive in this canvas that it makes good for the unconvincing anaemic colour scheme.

The gem of this gallery is a small landscape of Amédée-Julien Marcel-Clément, of extraordinarily fine composition. A fine decorative quality is its chief asset, and its sympathetic technical handling adds much to the enjoyment of this picture. Bartholemé's kneeling figure in the center of the room is of wonderful nobility of expression and entirely free from a certain extreme physical naturalism so often found in modern French sculpture.

Gallery 14.

Passing into the next gallery, where figural pictures predominate, a very swingy composition of a Brittany festival, by Charles-René Darrieux, is most conspicuous, for the forceful handling and the fine quality of movement which characterize the procession of figures rhythmically moving through the picture. Of the two large nudes on the same wall, one, a Besnard, is vulgarly physical, although well painted, and the other too insipid to make one feel that the French penchant for nudes is sufficiently justified. Le Sidaner's poetic evening recommends itself for the quiet intimacy with which it is handled. Herrmann Vogel's portrait of a gentleman in a chair, also on the east wall, while not very spontaneous in handling, is interesting nevertheless in its composition and the psychological characterization of the sitter. Most of the other pictures in this gallery have really not enough individual character to single them out, no matter how high their general standard may be.

Gallery 13.

The last and smallest of the French galleries is given over to some recent phases of French art. After looking at the serious work of the French in the other galleries, a first-hand acquaintance with this medley of newest pictures is hardly satisfactory. There is a feeling of affected primitiveness about most of them, particularly in a small canvas of a bouquet of flowers in a green vase, which is the acme of absurdity. If Odilon Redon wanted to be trivial, he has achieved something quite wonderful. Certain ultra-modern manifestations of art are never more intolerable than when seen together in large numbers, as in this gallery. Still, the French section can well afford some of these experimenting talents, since the general character of their other work is so high. Maurice Denis' canvas of a spring procession, in just a few silvery tones, is really lovely; the large number of decorations by him, all around on the second line, scarcely comes up to the beauty of this small canvas.

The French representation deserves much credit for a great number of reasons, not least for an astounding versatility, always accompanied by technical excellence.

Italy

Going over into the Italian galleries, the first impression is that while there are certain groups of pictures of a very high order, the general standard of this section is not quite so high as in the French Department. The Italians seem to have the advantage over the French in regard to the selection of a background for their galleries. They made no such mistake as putting a Pullman car floor pattern on the wall, and the general effect is one of calmness. As in the French section, the work of the modern painter seems superior to sculptured work of the same period. The work of Tito and of Mancini, among the painters, stands out in this Italian collection.

Gallery 21.

Tito, whose work can be found in a group of five pictures in this gallery, has a very pronounced decorative sense, which he employs with great ease in a group of five most excellent pictures. To students of technical procedure his work is worthy of study. His under-painting is done in tempera, and sometimes the complete work, as in the cattle picture, is done in this medium, which, by an application of varnish, is then transformed into an oil. The most interesting pictures in his group of five are the two on the right of his wall. The mythological subjects underlying both canvases have a classic note, but their refreshing colour scheme removes these pictures from any classic affiliation. The woodland scene, enlivened by a few hilarious centaurs pursuing nymphs, is tremendously sure in handling and very gorgeous in the many golden browns and greens which control the colour scheme. The kneeling Venus alongside is unusually alluring in its blue and gold tones, and is one of the really fine pictures in the exhibition. While the Venus and the Centaurs are the backbone of the Italian section, Tito's "Blue Lady" is very chic and, as a colour arrangement of blue-blacks and flesh colour, most decorative. The canvas in the center, evidently belonging to an older period of the artist, has nothing of the direct method of the accomplished master, although in composition it has a certain bigness. Tito's art has the full and rich expression of an original personality.

The landscapes in this gallery, of which there are a goodly number, are all typically Italian in their artificiality of colour and in a certain sweetness which makes them lose in one's estimation the longer one studies them. Clever as they are technically, they do not convince and they do not reflect a thorough knowledge of the spirit of outdoors. All one admires in the Barbizon men - the lyric feeling of a Corot or the more dramatic note of a Rousseau - is missing in the modern Italian landscape as seen in these pictures. They are flippant in their catchy technique and in the absence of any thought.

Gallery 22.