Art
Exceptional Paintings.
ILsxv artists are not at their best when they arc at their most typical. This may help to explain why artists often choose as their favourites from among their own works those which other judges consider to be below their highest achievement. For an artist is likely to admire those works in which his &ins and intentions are expresSed most clearly, those, in other words, which arc most typical of him. But often an artist may have a moment of vision in which he produces something quite remote from his normal aims, something which may have certain qualities which seem almost to have got there by mis- take. TheSe qualities may be of great value, but if they are not the objects of the. artist's regular pursuit he may be less aware of their merits than he is of those of his:ordinary works. Violently personal artists sometimes reach their highest point in uncharacteristic paintings for a different reason. An artist possessing one particular gift in a very marked degree may exploit it to the exelusion of other aspects of his art, and sometimes in a moment of forgetting his particular talent he may create a work whose greater balance puts it in a class above his normal productions.
These, principles are well exemplified at the exhibition which is at present' being held at the Lefevre Galleries, containing • French' paintings of the nineteenth century, from Ingres to Ceramic. The exhibition contains some forty canvases, mast of them of the first importance, but few of them typical of the familiar styles of their artists. This hardly applies to the small, but lovely, Roger delirrant Angelique of Ingres (21),
though it might be maintained that the colour is more attrac- tive than is usual with this painter. Delacroix is represented by two small paintings which show him up in a better light than his more familiar big historical compositions. Dalacroix . never really mastered the grand style of composition which he so much admired in llubens, and his large paintings are . almost always unhappy in design and often weak in drawing. On the other hand, on a small scale these defects are less in evidence and his supreme merits as a colourist captivate the eye unhindered. The three paintings by Corot in the exhibition are typical of his best rather than of his most familiar style, and Cie early landscape I 711e d'Amay (8) is a miraculocs ren- dering of a restrained sun-effect. Pure Impressionism is hardly represented. Two of the Monets are pre-Impressionist, and the third, La Debdrle a Liwaeourt (27), painted in 1880, achieves its brilliant effect of snow by almost traditional means. The one Pissarro shows that even a whole-hearted Impressionist could at times impose an order on nature and not merely put down a direct record of his feelings. The most remarkable contrast is provided by the two paintings by van Gogh. In one, Arles, soleil couchant (19), the 'artist's love of raw colours and whirling paint has degenerated into mere vulgarity. In the other. Eifel de Mule (20), van Gogh has achieved a restraint, both in colour and in handling, which is exceedingly rare in his work. The painting is executed in the most subdued tones, but this very fact gives it a magic quite unlike the qualities which we generally associate with van Gogh. The rendering of falling rain is a tour de force, and this painting must be put in that very small class of works in which van Gogh achieveS greatness as opposed to immediately, but only temporarily, moving-effects. Seurat is an artist who at the end of his life carried his particular ideas to an almost ton logical conclusion. La Parade is probably his most typical work, but in it he has too obviously been playing an elaborate intellectual game. When lie was a little less self-conscious and calculating he produced better work, such as the Baignade in the Tate Gallery, or the small landscape, Port-en-Bessin (39). in the present exhibition. Here, keeping closer to nature, he has attained to higher art.
One can never fairly speak of a typical Renoir. His style varied too often for one to pin down sonic works as more characteristic than others. In this exhibition his development can be traced from the early Impressionist Paysage a Berneval (34), painted in 1874, to the succulent Baigneuses (38) of 1916, the intervening stages being represented by five other paintings. Cezanne is at his prettiest in Le Vase du Jardin (6), at his most serious in his self portrait (4), and the remarkable Enurement (8) shows him in his early mood of admiration for Delaeroix. Gauguin's Offrande (18) is less exotic and more carefully modelled than usual, and his landscape, Tahiti (17), has escaped the tapestry-like quality which spoils many of his works in this kind. In fact almost every great French artist of the nineteenth century is brilliantly, if not always characteristically, represented in this exhibition.
During the nineteenth century European painting was French painting. Since the War Paris has remained the artistic centre of Europe, but the painting produced there has become cosmopolitan owing to the influence of Spaniards like Picasso, Italians like ('hirico and Germans like Max Ernst. These foreign influences have broken up much of the old tradition and have in its stead set up Surrealisme. Max Ernst is at present holding his first one-man show in England at the Mayer Gallery in Cork Street, the owners of which am carrying on their intention of keeping London au fail with the latest activities in Paris. Ernst is an artist who relies freely on his imagination and even in an apparently con- ventional painting like L'Homme el la Femme (8) there are certain passages of fantasy. Rut this painting is a complete answer to those who say that Ernst cannot draw in a realistic manner. This artist has clearly been attracted by the fantastic shapes and colours of flowers, shells and butterflies and out of them he weaves peculiar and moving compositions which appeal at least as much by the objects presented as by the methods of presentation. In other eases Ernst makes
more obvious use of cubist patterning, as in the Buveur entoure de trois Serpents (9), but even in these paintings the literary implications are in evidence. Ernst is a full-blown . Surrealiste, but his work has a coherence which makes it more comprehensible to a traditionally minded public than the scribbles of Masson or the meanderings of Miro.
Mr. Duncan Grant has at last appeared before the public in a mood not of frivolity but at least of lightness. His water- colours and sketches at present on view at the galleries of Messrs. Agnew are very different from his more familiar oil paintings. Many of them, being designs for stuffs, make a purely decorative appeal and would perhaps be more success- ful when executed in their intended medium. On the other hand some of the sketches for paintings have a freshness and charm which is sometimes lacking in the finished works, and the rough pen and wash sketches show an astonishing gift for witty observation and free, calligraphic line. - This exhibition proves Mr. Grant to be a master of greater versatility than one had supposed from the works which he has shown
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