Promenades of an Impressionist by James Huneker
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PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST BY JAMES HUNEKER mezzotints in modern music (1899) chopin : the man and his music (190» melomaniacs (190» overtones (1904) iconoclasts: a book of dramatists hme visionaries (1906) egoists! a book of supermen (190m promenades of an impressionist (19101 franz liszt. illustrated (1811) the pathos of distance (1918) new cosmopolis (1915) ivory apes and peacocks (1913) unicorns (1917) bedouins (1920) steeplejack (1920) variations (1921) LETTERS (1922) CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST BY JAMES HUNEKER NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1925 Copyright, 1910, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Printed in the United States of America Published March, 1910 TO FREDERICK JAMES GREGG Het U9 promenaHf our prejuHweau"—Stendhal (?) CONTENTS PACE I. Paul Cezanne i II. Rops the Etcher 24 III. Monticelli 38 IV. Rodin 5° V. Eugene Carriere 66 VI. Degas 7 6 VII. Botticelli 84 VIII. Six Spaniards . 96 " El Greco " " Velasquez " Goya Fortuny Sorolla Zuloaga IX. Chardin 152 X. Black and White 160 Piranesi Meryon John Martin Zorn Brangwyn Dauraier Lalanne Legrand Guys CONTENTS XI. Impressionism Monet Renoir Manet XII. A New Study of Watteau . XIII. Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec XIV. Literature and Art .... XV. Museum Promenades .... Pictures at The Hague The Mesdag Museum Hals of Haarlem Pictures in Amsterdam Art in Antwerp Museums of Brussels Bruges the Beautiful The Moreau Museum Pictures in Madrid El Greco at Toledo Velasquez in the Prado PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST I PAUL CEZANNE After prolonged study of the art shown at the Paris Autumn Salon you ask yourself: This whirlpool of jostling ambitions, crazy colours, still crazier drawing and composition — whither does it tend? Is there any strain of tendency, any central current to be detected ? Is it young genius in the raw, awaiting the sunshine of suc- cess to ripen its somewhat terrifying gifts ? Or is the exhibition a huge, mystifying blague? What, you ask, as you apply wet compresses to your weary eyeballs, blistered by dangerous proximity to so many blazing canvases, does the Autumn Salon mean to French art ? There are many canvases the subjects of which are more pathologic than artistic, subjects only fit for the confessional or the privacy of the clinic. But, apart from these disagreeable episodes, the main note of the Salon is a riotous energy, the noisy ebullition of a gang of students let loose in the halls of art. They seem to rush by you, yelling from sheer delight in their lung power, and if you are rudely jostled to the wall, your toes trod upon and your hat clapped down on your ears, you con- sole yourself with the timid phrase: Youth must have its fling. i PROMENADES And what a fling! Largely a flinging of paint pots in the sacred features of tradition. It needs little effort of the imagination to see hovering about the galleries the faces of — no, not Ge*r6me, Bon- nat, Jules Lefevre, Cabanel,or any of the reverend seigneurs of the old Salon — but the reproachful countenances of Courbet, Manet, Degas, and Monet; for this motley-wearing crew of youngsters are as violently radical, as violently secessionistic, as were their immediate forebears. Each chap has started a little revolution of his own, and takes no heed of the very men from whom he steals his thunder, now sadly hollow in the trans- position. The pretty classic notion of the torch of artistic tradition gently burning as it is passed on from generation to generation receives a shock when confronted by the methods of the hopeful young anarchs of the Grand Palais. Defiance of all critical canons at any cost is their shibboleth. Compared to their fulgurant colour schemes the work of Manet, Monet, and Degas pales and re- treats into the Pantheon of the past. They are become classic. Another king has usurped their throne — his name is Paul Cezanne. No need now to recapitulate the story of the New Salon and the defection from it of these Indepen- dents. It is a fashion to revolt in Paris, and no doubt some day there will arise a new group that will start the August Salon or the January Salon. "Independent of the Independents" is a mag- nificent motto with which to assault any intrenched organisation. 2 PAUL CEZANNE If riotous energy is, as I have said, the chief note of many of these hot, hasty, and often clever pic- tures, it must be sadly stated that of genuine orig- inality there are few traces. To the very masters they pretend to revile they owe everything. In vain one looks for a tradition older than Courbet; a few have attempted to stammer in the suave speech of Corot and the men of Fontainebleau; but 1863, the year of the Salon des Refuses, is really the year of their artistic ancestor's birth. The classicism of Lebrun, David, Ingres, Prud- hon; the romanticism of Gericault, Delacroix, Decamps; the tender poetry of those true Wald- menschen, Millet, Dupre, Diaz, Daubigny, or of that wild heir of Giorgione and Tiepolo, the mar- vellous colour virtuoso who "painted music," Monticelli — all these men might never have been born except for their possible impact upon the so-called " Batignolles " school. Alas! such in- gratitude must rankle. To see the major portion of this band of young painters, with talent in plenty, occupying itself in a frantic burlesque of second-hand Cezannes, with here and there a shallow Monet, a faded Renoir, an affected Degas, or an impertinent Gauguin, must be mortifying to the older men. And now we reach the holy precincts. If ar- dent youths sneered at the lyric ecstasy of Re- noir, at the severe restraint of Chavannes, at the poetic mystery of Carriere, their lips were hushed as they tiptoed into the Salle C&zanne. Sacred ground, indeed, we trod as we gazed and wondered 3 PROMENADES before these crude, violent, sincere, ugly, and bi- zarre canvases. Here was the very hub of the In- dependents' universe. Here the results of a hard- labouring painter, without taste, without the fac- ulty of selection, without vision, culture — one is tempted to add, intellect — who with dogged per- sistency has painted in the face of mockery, paint- ed portraits, landscapes, flowers, houses, figures, painted everything, painted himself. And what paint! Stubborn, with an instinctive hatred of academic poses, of the atmosphere of the studio, of the hired model, of "literary," or of mere dig- ital cleverness, Cezanne has dropped out of his scheme harmony, melody, beauty —classic, ro- mantic, symbolic, what you will ! — and doggedly represented the ugliness of things. But there is a brutal strength, a tang of the soil that is bitter, and also strangely invigorating, after the false, perfumed boudoir art of so many of his contem- poraries. Think of Bouguereau and you have his antith- esis in Cezanne — Cezanne whose stark figures of bathers, male and female, evoke a shuddering sense of the bestial. Not that there is offence intended in his badly huddled nudes; he only delineates in simple, naked fashion the horrors of some undressed humans. His landscapes are primitive though suffused by perceptible atmos- phere; while the rough architecture, shambling figures, harsh colouring do not quite destroy the impression of general vitality. You could not say with Walt Whitman that his stunted trees were 4 PAUL CEZANNE "uttering joyous leaves of dark green." They utter, if anything, raucous oaths, as seemingly do the self-portraits — exceedingly well modelled, however. Cezanne's still-life attracts by its whole- souled absorption; these fruits and vegetables really savour of the earth. Chardin interprets still-life with realistic beauty; if he had ever painted an onion it would have revealed a certain grace. When Paul Cezanne paints an onion you smell it. Nevertheless, he has captured the affec- tions of the rebels and is their god. And next season it may be some one else. It may interest readers of Zola's L'CEuvre to learn about one of the characters, who per- force sat for his portrait in that clever novel (a direct imitation of Goncourt's Manette Salomon). Paul Cezanne bitterly resented the liberty taken by his old school friend Zola. They both hailed from Aix, in Provence. Zola went up to Paris; Cezanne remained in his birthplace but finally persuaded his father to let him study art at the capital. His father was both rich and wise, for he settled a small allowance on Paul, who, poor chap, as he said, would never earn a franc from his paintings. This prediction was nearly verified. Cezanne was almost laughed off the artistic map of Paris. Manet they could stand, even Claude Monet; but Cezanne — communard and anar- chist he must be (so said the wise ones in official circles), for he was such a villainous painter! Cezanne died, but not before his apotheosis by the new crowd of the Autumn Salon. We are told by 5 PROMENADES admirers of Zola how much he did for his neglected and struggling fellow-townsman; how the novelist opened his arms to Cezanne. Cezanne says quite the contrary. In the first place he had more money than Zola when they started, and Zola, after he had become a celebrity, was a great man and very haughty. "A mediocre intelligence and a detestable friend" is the way the prototype of Claude Lantier puts the case. "A bad book and a completely false one, " he added, when speaking to the painter Emile Bernard on the disagreeable theme. Natu- rally Zola did not pose his old friend for the entire figure of the crazy impressionist, his hero, Claude.