Art
Sisley and Pissarro
Jr is tactful on the part of Messrs. Knoedler to give us an exhibition in August of Pissarros and Sisleys. It gives me an excuse for reflecting on a strange habit, shared by these two well-known masters, which at this season particularly afflicts the British. A surprisingly larger number of people escape from their occupations in suburb or city about now, and take refuge in various peaceful but sporting occupations ; and there can be no doubt that sketching is one of the most favoured As an outdoor occupation it always seems to me to have all the disadvantages and none of the amenities of other types of picnicking. Why paintings are thought to be easier to do sitting in uncomfortable places where there is alleged to be "scenery " in the vicinity it is hard to say ; I refuse to believe that the scenery in any way helps. In the first place, in front of where I am sitting there never is any. There is always a lot of grass, it is true, and other vegetation ; but it always seems to look rather dusty and uninspiring ; there is never any recognizable shape about it, and the " scenery " and the " views " have an annoying way of hiding behind it.
It is astonishing what enormous expanses of distant land- scape can hide themselves behind quite low shrubs. There is in fact too much foreground in this country altogether, and I shall ask the Rural Preservation Board to have some of it removed. Sisley and Pissarro never seemed to mind about such things. But then of course they were not particular about composition, like me. I am so hard to please. Besides, their pictures are not fair. When I sit down and find a field of beetroots stretching before me to the horizon where from the car I had sighted such a beautiful bit of Constable's country, I feel the seriousness of the problem. I am not good at beet- roots : there were no beetroot classes at any of the art schools I have attended. Sisley and Pissarro do not seem to have wor- ried. This, I submit, is shirking. It is only after looking at a picture by one of them for quite a long time that a beetroot field can be identified as such at all, in fact, and sometimes I have suspected that there are cases where turnips have been substituted. But what is most unfair is that they do not tackle the problem squarely. One notices in their pictures at first sight nothing except very mixed colours, very fuzzy shapes and admittedly pretty but entirely meaningless brush strokes. True, there is also a general impression of being out-of-doors ; of the presence of what they call " nature " ; but anyone can do that. The photographs in Country Life, from that point of view, are much more appealing and have the advantage of not costing hundreds of pounds. Besides, one sees in Country Life a decent house or two and some well-developed properties ; country, in other words, that has some use and dignity, and that one wouldn't mind owning oneself : whereas no one wants cottages at Anvers.
Personally I should advise painters like Pissarro and Sisley either to go sketching in some better part, or else to drop doing landscapes and take to painting still lives. You can have flowers of any colour you like ; your subject is much more manageable then. At Tooth's Gallery in Bond Street there are two pictures by a M. Bonnard which show what I mean ; he obviously simply enjoyed dabbing on various rather pretty colours, and did it at home, without having to bother about scenery. Very sensible. Not ambitious of course, but no doubt it keeps him amused ; and it leaves those who really know a good bit of country when they see it, free to get on with their job, unimpeded by irrelevant considerations of what sort of dabs and smears are "good art" and what are not. The job that Sisley and Pissarro shirk is this question of beetroots. After all, the serious sketcher has to tackle first of all the problem of getting the available scenery on to the canvas. If there is nothing available but a beetroot field, either give up is my advice, or else get down to work and find the right colours to match the vegetation. Personally, in the ease of root crops, I advise giving up and moving on to where there is some good timber. In France this is a:mast hopeless. There is in fact only very little " scenery " at all, in the proper sense of the word, to be found in France, and that is no doubt the reason why the French went in so much for painting what they call " pleia
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