Page:Constable by C. J. Holmes.djvu/49

, but his pictures are built on a monochrome foundation in the manner of Claude, while the artist's natural taste prevents the modernity of the colour and handling from being obtrusive. Millet was the great modern master of chiaroscuro. Unity therefore came naturally to him, yet, to make certainty still more certain, his toiling figures and stern landscape are bathed in the warm atmosphere of the old masters.

Millet, indeed, is a standing refutation of the idea that the modern attitude towards nature is incompatible with traditional methods of painting. His peasants are more like real peasants than those of anyone else, while his landscape suggests the weather and the time of day with a simple directness that makes the work of other painters look fantastic or laboured. His brushwork is often rather clumsy, for he never quite mastered the heaviness of hand he inherited from generations of peasant ancestors, but it is clumsy only in comparison with that of the great painters of the past. In any collection of modern work it would become by contrast quite shapely and classical.

The efforts of Rousseau and Courbet towards absolute realism were continued by Manet and Monet. In many respects the results obtained by Monet may be regarded as final, for his painting imitates the light and colour of nature as exactly as is possible with the artistic materials hitherto discovered. Such a remarkable degree of accuracy could only be obtained by the sacrifice of all that was usually considered essential to good painting. Design became a matter of chance, because nature was not to be altered or adapted. Ordered harmony of colour, for the same reason, became almost impossible. Fine painting was discarded because the mixing of pigments on the palette or even on the canvas involved some loss of luminosity. In order to make the nearest possible approach to the pitch of natural sunlight, pure pigment had to be used. To retain this purity each tone in nature was analyzed into its chromatic components, and small pats of the primary colours were placed side by side direct on the canvas, in such proportions that their united effect would produce the complex tone required.

The method had certain advantages. It allowed strong effects of light and colour to be rendered with great vigour and accuracy, while the infinite number of small spots of paint suggested the natural vibration of the atmosphere. Whether Monet's work can 29