ART.
M. TISSOT'S RELIGIOUS PICTURES.
THERE is nothing new in M. Tissot's method of illustrating the Gospels. To free the sacred narrative from the conven-
tional forms of representation which have crystallised round it was the aim of Mr. Holman Hunt. Some years ago he made the experiment of clothing his religious pictures with the details of the land of Palestine as it exists now. No doubt the unchanging East makes this procedure possible in a way not to be attempted in the West. M. Tissot has done the same thing. He has lived in the Holy Land, and studied the places and people exhaustively. The present Exhibition is the result of his labours. The greater part consists of a series of some three hundred and fifty small water-colour drawings of minute finish. Judging these works from a purely artistic point of view, we must say at once that they are of little interest. Though they are the product of a highly trained draughtsman, they are not pictures, but merely illustrations.
Wearisome attention to detail marks every one of the series. The colour for the most part is dull and opaque, seldom rising to harmony, and often falling to discord. The works are crowded with precise and beautiful drawing. But the entire absence of that faculty of seeing the whole and leaving out the irrelevant, makes these pictures too often a mere chaos of facts spread before the spectator. A picture should be the summing-up of the judge, not the verbatim report of the evidence.
Throughout this long series remarkably little use is made of effects either of light and shade or of atmosphere. A dull tone is evenly spread over everything, no salience is given to individuals or groups by means of strong light or shade. The weather and the time of day seem the same throughout.
The most striking of these illustrations are those dealing with the Passion. They are of the same type of art as the cruci- fixes to be seen by the waysides in Italy, where terrible physical suffering is treated in the moat relentless fashion. Whether realistic painting is a fit way of dealing with such subjects may be more than doubted; it can only give the horror not the moral. Without the spiritual meaning can such terrible sights be elevating ?
Painters have approached the Gospels from two different sides. One method has been to try and realise the scene, to paint the incident as it happened, giving the outward appear- ance of the event. Others merely use the incident as a means of conveying the spiritual meaning. In the works of M.
Tissot the realisation of the scene from the realist's point of view is the aim. The higher imagination never comes into play. For instance, take the temptation in the wilderness, and compare M. Tissot's devil saying "Make these stones bread" with Tintoretto's picture in the Scuola di San Rocco. In the modem work, if it were not for the tradi- tional type of the face of our Lord, there would be nothing in the picture to distinguish it from an illus- tration of a book of travels in the East. At the mouth of a cave in a rocky mountain - side an old man is sitting and holding up two stones, while looking at him is another figure in repose. On the old man's face there is a look of extreme cunning and malevolence which is ex- pressed with great vigour. The extortion of backeheesh we should most likely take for his object if we had no label to the picture. Now think of the great imaginative work of Tintoretto. The gorgeous beauty of the fiend takes instant hold of the mind, as do the passion and vehemence with which the tempter makes a supreme effort to put forth the whole of
his might to attain no less an object than a victory over divine power. The unerring insight of genius of the highest
order saw that to make the figure of the devil ugly would but excite disgust or contempt in those who looked at the picture. But contempt and disgust destroy the feelings of awe and terror. To realise the extent of the triumph we must have felt the power of the foe. Tintoretto spared no resource of his art to make the figure of the tempter lay hold of the imagination. To the
force of a man in the plenitude of his bodily strength he added voluptuous feminine beauty. The frantic energy of the
outstretched arms shows the greatness of the effort. No less is this vehemence expressed by the upturned face. In this splendid winged figure the beauty of the angel is still to be seen, but become terrible by its fall. Did Milton, we wonder, see this picture, so like is it to his Satan P These are two very different renderings of the same scene. No doubt the modern may give us a truer picture of a Syrian wilderness, with its cave and rocky hills, and the costume of the epoch of the event. But, after all, which is the most eternally interesting to mankind, the aspect of the scene, or the triumph over temptation P Of course it is quite fair to urge that M. Tissot's aim is not to give a spiritual commentary, that he puts before us a picture of what would have been seen by some one living in Palestine at the time of our Lord. But with the greatest care and study how imperfect this must be. The recon- struction of the past in painting can never be more than an illusion. The painter is bound to paint not what was there, but what he thought may have been there. It is not a ques- tion between Tintoretto's imaginative rendering of the event and M. Tissot's actual representation. Both are works of invention, but one deals with the fundamental idea, the other with the physical envelopment. What has just been urged applies to all these illustrations, and accounts for their great want of impressiveness. They are not transcripts of fact, but the work of an imagination which is not of a high order. If this is realised it will be seen that there is nothing unreason- able in comparing them with the great works of religions art. But this will lead us to the conclusion that, owing to the necessities of the case, the realistic element must be faint and imperfect, and, whether we like it or not, we are bound to have creations of the artist's invention. This being so surely it is better to have the painter's thoughts about the subject unhindered by vain attempts to reconstruct the out- ward appearance of-
" The half-distinguished faces The clouded forms of long passed history."
The whole subject of religious art is a difficult one. The modern critical spirit finds it hard to assume the attitude of the early painters, who naturally represented Biblical events as if passing in their own day. Lucas Cranach painted Eve in the Garden of Eden in a straw bat. Veronese made the guests at the marriage of Cana in Galilee Venetians of his day. But seldom has this been attempted in modern times. In one instance, however, was this accomplished in a remarkable way. Uhde, in his picture of the Sermon on the Mount, has not shrunk from making the listeners Alpine peasants of to- day. The scene is laid in a pasture above a village at the foot of great mountains. Our Lord is sitting, while the people round are kneeling on the grass with sorrowfully bowed heads, only the little children are looking up at the Saviour. Deep reverence is expressed throughout this beautiful picture. Although this work justifies itself by the impressiveness of its deep feeling, it seems doubtful if this method can often be successful. The plan of reducing every- thing to the abstract was developed by the later painters of the Renaissance. Clothes became drapery, and the landscape backgrounds or architectural interiors were reduced to shadowy types. When this system was used by Michel- angelo it gave his great spirit full scope. His was a "soul that dwelt apart ; " the circumstances of place and time were bonds not to be endured by his titanic imagination. With Raphael too it succeeded. His perfect sense of beauty and harmony invested this abstract style with life, and kept him out of the arid wastes of the later painters who had not his gifts. These painters of the decadence reduced this style to a mere mannerism, and under their influence it became flat, stale, and unprofitable. So the modern religious painter finds himself in an unsatis- factory position. The critical spirit makes it almost impos- sible for him to use the people of his day as did the early Italians. He is thrown back on archeological realism with its petty research numbing the imagination, or on the abstract manner with its danger of empty unreality. The only English painter who has been able to use this last style, and to do great things with it, is Mr. Watts. But Mr. Watts deals with abstract ideas more than with events, and these can be best expressed by figures which stand apart from space and time. He is possessed of a splendid sense both of colour and of form, and beauty of the noblest kind interprets the great thoughts of the painter. No doubt there will always be controversy as to the proper way of painting religions pictures. Some minds dislike the abstract and demand the concrete. Again, by far the larger
part of mankind care much more for illustration than for imaginative art. These, if they cannot get their illustrations done on the spot, will always prefer pictures which have the appearance of having been so done. To this last class the pictures by M. Tissot will doubtless appeal. They know that actual representations are impossible, but these are as near as they can get. This apparent nearness is to them of much more value than qualities of profound imagination or high artistic attainment. Doubtless the interest of pictures giving a faithful likeness of a country such as Palestine will always be great. But this is a different thing from religious art. All pictures, when they deal with the past, must be the imaginings of the painter. And the mind that penetrates to the heart of things, and does not stop at the outside, will be the one the power of
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