French Art | Page 8

narrow round they move! How their
imaginativeness is limited by their artificiality! What a talent, what a
genius they have for artificiality. It is the era par excellence of

dilettantism, and nothing is less romantic than dilettantism. Their
evident feeling--and evidently genuine feeling--is feeling for the
factitious, for the manufactured, for what the French call the
_confectionné_. Their romantic quality is to that of the modern
Fontainebleau group as the exquisite _vers de société_ of Mr. Austin
Dobson, say, is to the turbulent yet profound romanticism of Heine or
Burns. Every picture painted by them would go as well on a fan as in a
frame. All their material is traditional. They simply handle it as enfants
terribles. Intellectually speaking, they are painters of a silver age. Of
ideas they have almost none. They are as barren of invention in any
large sense as if they were imitators instead of, in a sense, the
originators of a new phase. Their originality is arrived at rather through
exclusion than discovery. They simply drop pedantry and exult in
irresponsibility. They are hardly even a school.
Yet they have, one and all, in greater or less degree, that distinct quality
of charm which is eternally incompatible with routine. They are as little
constructive as the age itself, as anything that we mean when we use
the epithet Louis Quinze. Of everything thus indicated one predicates at
once unconsciousness, the momentum of antecedent thought modified
by the ease born of habit; the carelessness due to having one's thinking
done for one and the license of proceeding fancifully, whimsically,
even freakishly, once the lines and limits of one's action have been
settled by more laborious, more conscientious philosophy than in such
circumstances one feels disposed to frame for one's self. There is no
break with the Louis Quatorze things, not a symptom of revolt; only,
after them the deluge! But out of this very condition of things, and out
of this attitude of mind, arises a new art, or rather a new phase of art,
essentially classic, as I said, but nevertheless imbued with a character
of its own, and this character distinctly charming. Wherein does the
charm consist? In two qualities, I think, one of which has not hitherto
appeared in French painting, or, indeed, in any art whatever, namely,
what we understand by cleverness as a distinct element in
treatment--and color. Color is very prominent nowadays in all writing
about art, though recently it has given place, in the fashion of the day,
to "values" and the realistic representation of natural objects as the
painter's proper aim. What precisely is meant by color would be

difficult, perhaps, to define. A warmer general tone than is achieved by
painters mainly occupied with line and mass is possibly what is
oftenest meant by amateurs who profess themselves fond of color. At
all events, the Louis Quinze painters, especially Watteau, Fragonard,
and Pater--and Boucher has a great deal of the same feeling--were
sensitive to that vibration of atmosphere that blends local hues into the
ensemble that produces tone. The ensemble of their tints is what we
mean by color. Since the Venetians this note had not appeared. They
constitute, thus, a sort of romantic interregnum--still very classic, from
an intellectual point of view--between the classicism of Lebrun and the
still greater severity of David. Nothing in the evolution of French
painting is more interesting than this reverberation of Tintoretto and
Tiepolo.
By cleverness, as exhibited by the Louis Quinze painters, I do not mean
mere technical ability, but something more inclusive, something
relating quite as much to attitude of mind as to dexterity of treatment.
They conceive as cleverly as they execute. There is a sense of
confidence and capability in the way they view, as well as in the way
they handle, their light material. They know it thoroughly, and are
thoroughly at one with it. And they exploit it with a serene air of
satisfaction, as if it were the only material in the world worth handling.
Indeed, it is exquisitely adapted to their talent. So little significance has
it that one may say it exists merely to be cleverly dealt with, to be
represented, distributed, compared, and generally utilized solely with
reference to the display of the artist's jaunty skill. It is, one may say,
merely the raw material for the production of an effect, and an effect
demanding only what we mean by cleverness; no knowledge and love
of nature, no prolonged study, no acquaintance with the antique, for
example, no philosophy whatever--unless poco-curantism be called a
philosophy, which eminently it is not. To be adequate to the
requirements--rarely very exacting in any case--made of one, never to
show stupidity, to have a great deal of taste and an instinctive feeling
for what is