The Galleries of the Exposition | Page 7

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