ART
JUNE has burst like a rocket and scattered a little constellation of brilliant exhibitions over London. Let us take them in chronological order. First there is Matthiesen's assemblage of Constantin Guys. These lead naturally enough to some superlative Renoirs up the road at the Lefevre Gallery. Here one may see, not quite the whole story, for there are five paintings only from before 1880, but at least a good deal of it—from the unpleasant if historically interesting La Source of 1871 to a still life of the final year. It is undeniable that towards the end, crippled with arthritis, the old man found refuge in his formula. But such was his lack of pride, such was his faith and his goodness, that I confess myself incapable of criticism even before this last phase.
At Wildenstein's the most comprehensive exhibition of paintings by Vuillard that we have seen claims attention. A smaller talent than Renoir's, his was nevertheless in the direct line. Of especial interest are the remarkable early works, of that period between the Volpini exhibition and the break-up of the Nabis, a period which foreshadowed the radicalism of fifteen years later when the Fauves appeared as the second wave from the same pebble. The vermilion slab of a cheekbone in the centre head of the picture above the equally interesting self-portrait is a daring projection of then current theories. But note how the other head in the picture, on the right, is orthodoxly painted in the round. Vuillard lost his nerve. Soon after he withdrew to safer ground—retained the subject-matter and oddities of silhouette then fashionable, but overlaid flat pattern with a modified impressionism. At times his paint was an incrusted impasto like a roughcast wall ; at times a more fluid brush flickered over the pafterns and textures of carpet and wallpaper ; but to the end of his life he continued to paint the modest, intimate background of bourgeois existence with the most subtle tonal contrasts. To be sure, he also painted vulgar portraits in the worst academic tradi- tion, but the Place Vintimille of 1939 shows that he retained his sensibility to the end. He was at the height of his powers, however, between 1895 and 1905, and it was from this decade that the big, tapesty-like composition lent by H.H. Prince Bibesco, A Woman in White, dates. This is an astonishing evocation of the period, though personally I prefer some of the smaller paintings like the Roussel Family and Interior with Woman and Child.
From Vuillard, by an easy jump, to Matisse at the Victoria and Albert, in an exhibition of French book-decoration. Here may be seen again Picasso's exercises in virtuosity for Buffon, plates by Reuault for Passion and Cirque, and, I think for the first time publicly in London, pages from Matisse's Jazz, that jeu d'esprit written and
designed in the dark days of the war. M. H. MIDDLETON.
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