Imports
Goya : Drawings from the Prado. Introduction by Andre Malraux. (Skira : Horizon. 42s.) A HANDSOME book is a delight, a welcome present. A useful book ranks a little higher ; one is thankful to have bought it. But the
book that is both beautiful and indispensable, bought, borrowed and destined to be stolen, arouses another kind of feeling altogether. One at least of the specimens of international enterprise which have recently appeared is of this rarest kind. In this collection, produced in Switzerland, that part of Goya's series of independent drawings which remains in the Prado is for the first time reasonably arranged and well reproduced. The result is admirable, and M. Malraux's commentary is a little inflated, slightly strained by the effort of standing beside so immediate and crushing a manifestation. His method is a literary one ; the meaning which he reflects is of a kind that Goya himself is well enough able to supply. Analysis is cautiously skirted. There is no venturing upon such unpopular yet revealing investigations as Mr. Frederick Wight has recently attempted. The occasion still waits ; until we have more precise study of subjective as well as stylistic circumstances, the whole of the artist's intention, the nature of this fantastic freedom which yet retained so deep a bond with life, is unlikely to emerge.
The essay on Fouquet is serious and substantial, and its typo- graphy, instead of subjecting the eye to an elegant battering in the manner of M. Skira, takes the suitably reticent and classic form of Holbein Verlag. Fouquet has recently been illustrated a little more completely, but no writer has bettered either the scholarship here or the understanding of the humane style of the artist and his circle. Half a paragraph is devoted to his expression of a country and a
faith, but it is enough; more comprehending or moving estimate has appeared. The seection from the unequal existing remnants of Swiss stained glass is more of a luxury. But as such it has a particular technical interest ; it is the best example of colour collotype at present available in England, and the reputation of the process proves to be well founded. The swallow is welcome although it seems that we cannot hope for the summer.
There is a gap, as we know to our cost, between neutral and ex-belligerent standards, and the book on Bosch unluckily comes from the wrong side of it. Nevertheless it does something to fill a bigger gap in the English literature than any other book on the list. Symbolism provides M. Combe with a happy hunting-ground, and the other levels on which the painter's work must be understood are barely touched. Moreover, our star translators cannot be everywhere, and the English version here, with its " volets " and " xylographies," gives the pages a solidity which only the profoundly interested are likely to penetrate. The book remains a serious addition to the avail- able material, unlike the offerings remaining to be considered.
When next the functions of U.N.E.S.C.O. come under discussion a start might be made with the regulation by international agreement of the publication of books op Van Gogh. In one reproduction after another the oriental postman undergo,es a new transformation, bleary, blanched or gaudy. This French collection follows a familiar tradition ; each picture is endowed with the mechanical brightness which has in the past done such service to the painter's popularity and so much injury to his reputation with serious students. The Italian, on the other hand, is dingy and untidy. It is difficult to think of a book whose value is so far below its price. Yet the Rembrandt volume is even more regrettable. A note informs us that the responsibility of the author of the introduction ends with his text, and on this at least he is to be congratulated. Anyone who
thinks that a distaste for colour is an occupational eccentricity' of reviewers should turn up his favourite masterpiece in this book. Almost certainly he will find it utterly traduced. Admittedly, few works descend to quite this depth of infernal fantasy. The book is an exception, not least in the fact that the monochrome plates are almost equally wretched. (The method, the double-tone lithography recently used here in a series of popular histories, is unique in combining the disadvantages of every process.) We are warned that the result is " not primarily addressed to the expert " ; if it is the intention to exploit the uncritical enthusiasm for art in this country, publishers may well beware. Where discernment lingers it will take many exemplary volumes to efface the impression of one like this. ' De Yrome Bosch a Rembrandt turns out to be a modest anthology of pictures up to the, time of Hobbema and Aert de Gelder drawn from the national collections of Holland. It has no particular plan except the excellent one of recalling the pleasures of the most delightful of museums. To those who prefer the contemporary academic machine driven at full throttle with an open exhaust, Primo Conti may be recommended. What freak of the precarious monetary balances it is that tips such books as this upon us, neither useful nor beautiful but complete with a London imprint and a text in restaurant English, remains obscure. Is it possible that publishers have over- looked how much of value is still beyond our reach?
LAWRENCE GOWING.
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