THE HISTORY OF MODERN PAINTING.*
THE task Dr. Mather has set himself, concluded in this third volume, naturally becomes more difficult as more recent times are embraced, down to the very latest modes in painting. An author who undertakes so vast a subject lays himself open to endless criticism, and it would be easy to fastea upon the mistakes, the omissions, the exaggerations, the errors of proportion, so as to make the book appear a worthless one. It is fair to warn the reader that many such faults do exist, and to put him on his guard against a good deal of the plausible philosophy, with its explanations of how this or the other " movement " came about. But when all is said, the book has merits. As a kind of geographical indicator, a description of the field, in which we may turn from one country to another, and with the aid of the illustrations have some idea of the " claims " that have been pegged out and worked in different regions, the book fills a place not otherwise occupied. The matter of arrangement and order has bothered the author a good deal, or perhaps has troubled him too little, with the result that the grouping under a superficial look of logic is really unreasonable and incon- venient. Thus in Vol. IL we find certain of the Preraphaelites dealt with under the head of "Realism," and must await Vol. III. for the chapter that treats of Rossetti under the bead of "The New Idealism." The distinction certainly holds as between Mr. Holman Hunt and Rossetti, but it would have been more convenient, in treating a group of painters so closely related in many respects, to follow the thread of time, and point out the individual divergencies of the group. These two painters were as different as could well be in their temperament and ideas, yet they painted in the same " school " in such a sense that their pictures to the end of time would be hung together in a gallery rather than apart.
The whole section under which Rossetti comes in for treat- ment is a case of strained or careless grouping. It is called " The New Idealists " and is introduced by this general formula :—" After Naturalism had taught artists to work upon the impressions of external reality in an independent manner, a transition was made by some who interpreted the impressions of their inward spirit in a free creative fashion,
• The History of Modern Painting. By Richard Mutter. Vol. III. London Henry sad Co.
nnborrowed from the old masters." A phrase like " after Naturalism had taught artists," shows that his terms are getting the better of a writer and becoming a kind of mythology. In the stress of conflict between living schools, names like " Naturalist" are given or accepted in all good faith, but a historian, reviewing the field of battle with greater calmness, ought to see how relative a matter is " Naturalism " or " style " as the case may be. The Naturalist of one generation has the look of a student of style to the next ; artists did not look at Nature for the first time in the nineteenth century, and the freest creations or " impressions of the inward spirit " are very closely tied to souvenirs of Nature or else of old paintings. Some one new fact in Nature or some one principle of exclusion in style becomes
the ground of battle from time to time, but it is by no means the whole of the outer world and the inner spirit that are engaged. Perhaps the worst example of arrangement in the book is chap. 48 in this section. To give it its place a " new idealism in colour" is supposed as a movement, and artiste so
unrelated in derivation and style as Whistler and Monticelli are grouped together under this rubric. The excuse appears to be that both have influenced the recent " Glasgow School," whose works have been so warmly received at Munich. But to arrive at these painters a whole set of dropped stitches has to be taken up, and we are led wondering through the history of painting in Scotland. This treatment would be proper to a consecutive account of Scottish painters ; but if a chapter sets out from the idealism of colour it does not properly in- clude Thomas Feed, Peter Graham, John MacWhirter, nor, perhaps, does the end quite justify the large style of the proceedings.
Let us take one particular instance where Dr. Muther's superstition about " movements " leads him to treat two artists with ludicrous disproportion. He says of Bastien Lepage :—" What was experimental in Manet ripened in him to easy mastery. He was the first who overcame in himself the defiant hostility of vehement youth, and attained truth and beauty. For him the new technique was a matter of course." Then Dr. Mather refers to the disparagement of Bastien Lepage's art by a cooler recent criticism, and goes on :—
"But such critics forget that it was just those amiable con- cessions which helped the principles of Manet to prevail more swiftly than would have been otherwise possible. All the forms and ideals of the Impressionists, to which no one, outside the ring of artists, had been able to reconcile himself, were to be found in Bastien Lepage, purified, mitigated, and set in a golden style. He followed the cctaireurs, as the leader of the main body of the. army which has gained the decisive battle, and in this way he. has fulfilled an important mission in the history of art."
No misunderstanding could be more complete. The " prin- ciples " of Manet, as Dr. Mather understands them, may cover the work of both painters, but the important matter is that in the case of Manet, the painter was gifted with a masterly power of drawing and painting, which he applied, indeed, to somewhat novel material ; in the follower we find the material novel, but the treatment that of an infinitely smaller mind and gift. Compare, even on the evidence of rough black and white reproductions, the pictures of Manet given in the book with those of Bastien Lepage, and you will be able to estimate the difference between a photographic ideal of drawing and relief, and that of a painter. Manet's figure takes its place, and asserts itself like something created and intended,—simple, pertinent, com- plete. Bastien Lepage's figures have the accidental trivialities and indiscretions of the photograph. He popularised Millet and Manet—that is, vulgarised them—and the army he led has carried on the movement to its extreme of degradation. A passage like this places Dr. Mather as a critic, and we have purposely insisted on such weakness, because his book is likely for many years to fill a place on the shelves of the reference library, and taken with due caution, will, with its facts and its bibliography, fill that place usefully enough.
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