Since Cézanne | Page 3

disciples, were in the trenches. Modigliani owed something to Cézanne and a great deal to Picasso: he was no doctrinaire: towards the end he became the slave of a formula of his own devising--but that is another matter. Modigliani had an intense but narrow sensibility, his music is all on one string: he had a characteristically Italian gift for drawing beautifully with ease: and I think he had not much else. I feel sure that those who would place him amongst the masters of the movement--Matisse, Picasso, Derain, Bonnard, and Friesz--mistake; for, with all his charm and originality, he was too thoughtless and superficial to achieve greatly. He invented something which he went on repeating; and he could always fascinate simply by his way of handling a brush or a pencil. His pictures, delightful and surprising at first sight, are apt to grow stale and, in the end, some of them, unbearably thin. A minor artist, surely.
[Footnote B: He was at work, however, by 1906--perhaps earlier.]
Though Paris is unquestionably the centre of the movement, no one who sees only what comes thither and to London--and that is all I see--can have much idea of what is going on in Germany and America. Germany has not yet recommenced sending her art in quantities that make judgement possible, while it is pretty clear that the American art which reaches Europe is by no means the best that America can do. From both come magazines with photographs which excite our curiosity, but on such evidence it would be mere impertinence to form an opinion. Of contemporary art in Germany and America I shall say nothing. And what shall I say of the home-grown article? Having taken Paris for my point of view, I am excused from saying much. Not much of English art is seen from Paris. We have but one living painter whose work is at all well known to the serious amateurs of that city, and he is Sickert. [C] The name, however, of Augustus John is often pronounced, ill--for they will call him Augustin--and that of Steer is occasionally murmured. Through the _salon d'automne_ Roger Fry is becoming known; and there is a good deal of curiosity about the work of Duncan Grant, and some about that of Mark Gertler and Vanessa Bell. Now, of these, Sickert and Steer are essentially, and in no bad sense, provincial masters. They are belated impressionists of considerable merit working in a thoroughly fresh and personal way on the problems of a bygone age. In the remoter parts of Europe as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century were to be found genuine and interesting artists working in the Gothic tradition: the existence of Sickert and Steer made us realize how far from the centre is London still. On the Continent such conservatism would almost certainly be the outcome of stupidity or prejudice; but both Sickert and Steer have still something of their own to say about the world seen through an impressionist temperament. The prodigious reputation enjoyed by Augustus John is another sign of our isolation. His splendid talent when, as a young man, he took it near enough the central warmth to make it expand (besides the influence of Puvis, remember, it underwent that of Picasso) began to bear flowers of delicious promise. Had he kept it there John might never have tasted the sweets of insular renown: he would have had his place in the history of painting, however. The French know enough of Vorticism to know that it is a provincial and utterly insignificant contrivance which has borrowed what it could from Cubism and Futurism and added nothing to either. They like to fancy that the English tradition is that of Gainsborough and Constable, quite failing to realize what havoc has been made of this admirable plastic tradition by that puerile gospel of literary pretentiousness called Pre-Raphaelism. Towards these mournful quags and quicksands, with their dead-sea flora of anecdote and allegory, the best part of the little talent we produce seems irresistibly to be drawn: by these at last it is sucked down. That, at any rate, is the way that most of those English artists who ten or a dozen years ago gave such good promise have gone. Let us hope better of the new generation--recent exhibitions afford some excuse--a generation which, if reactionarily inclined, can always take Steer for a model, or, if disposed to keep abreast of the times and share in the heritage of Cézanne as well as that of Constable, can draw courage from the fact that there is, after all, one English painter--Duncan Grant--who takes honourable rank beside the best of his contemporaries.
[Footnote C: The Irish painter O'Conor, and the Canadian Morrice, are both known and respected in Paris; but because they have