Page:EB1922 - Volume 32.djvu/20

4 really notable work from an aesthetic point of view appeared. Designed as they were to excite hatred, cupidity, pity and self- sacrifice, their appeal could only in part be aesthetic, and, like the paintings, they showed little more than the application of familiar and matured methods to a special end. Yet by putting the production of the poster into the hands of artists, and by helping to revive and stimulate wood engraving and lithography, the war has had real influence on the graphic arts. Otherwise, its immediate effects have been small. It has quickened a move- ment towards expression of a national spirit in art, by throwing countries back upon their own resources, and by increasing a desire to assert national superiority. It may also have given a new impulse to the modern search for structure and design, by reducing life so much into terms of machinery and organization; and because of the depth and variety of the emotions it aroused, may have stimulated the tendency to use form and colour for the expression of personal feeling rather than for the reproduction of nature. Probably, too, by making a definite breach with 19th- century ideas, the war has cleared the way for the development of new aesthetic standards. But the most important modern move- ments in, art were in being before the war.

Impressionism. Of movements which attained full develop- ment in the igth century, impressionism in its purest form was still represented in France in later years by Claude Monet, in Belgium by Emil Claus, and in England by Lucien Pissaro. Of its many developments and adaptations, neo-impressionism based on the analysis of colour in nature into its constituent ele- ments, which are then placed by means of juxtaposed spots of paint upon the canvas, to be recombined by the eye survived in 1921 only in modified form. Paul Signac, one of its original expo- nents, had substituted for spots brick-like rectangles in his oil paintings, and increased use of line in his water-colours; while its conversion into pointillism (simply a method of applying in spots colour already mixed on the palette) was represented by Henri Martin and Henri le Sidaner. Paul Albert Besnard showed im- pressionism adapted to deal with such complicated problems as a mixture of twilight and artificial light; but with Wilson Steer the expression of subtle tone relations with a limited palette in- cluding black had superseded an impressionist technique. In England, indeed, the spectral palette and high key has been only a passing phase with most painters, and it is the impression- ism of Whistler and the earlier Manet, with its study of tone and decorative arrangement of silhouette, which has obtained most adherents. This was seen in its purest form in France in the work of Jacques Emile Blanche; but it provided a common basis for the members of the Glasgow school, such as Sir James Guthrie, E. A. Walton, Sir John Lavery and D. Y. Cameron; and brought into relation with them Sir William Orpen, whose use of colour and study of light otherwise connect him with the impressionists. Similarly J. S. Sargent's portraits carried on one side of the Manet tradition, though elsewhere he showed impressionist influence. Of the group of painters who, under the influence of Millet and Bastien-Lepage, carried the realism of Courbet and Manet into the field and workshop, the chief survivors in 1921 were' Lucien Simon and Charles Cottet in France, Max Lieber- mann in Germany, Joaquin Sorolla in Spain and Ettore Tito in Italy. In England the once prominent Newlyn group had fallen by 1921 into obscurity; in Sweden Anders Zorn, best known by his portraits and etchings, was dead; and the Hague School of Holland had no important living representatives.

Transition Painters. Between these representatives of the 19th-century outlook and those of the modern movement stand many painters combining in varying degrees characteristics of both groups, such as Sir C. J. Holmes (Director of the National Gallery from 1916), whose landscapes are marked by simplifi- cation and emphasis on structure. Transition to the modern point of view is also represented by the decorative painters, who have necessarily never fully accepted impressionism and realism. As early as 1892 the Rose Croix group had urged that painting should be idealist and monumental in character, with myth and allegory as its subject. These idea survive, despite impression- ist influences, in the balanced and harmonious compositions of

Rene Menard, whose descent is from Puvis de Chavannes, in the mural decorations of Henri Martin, and in the work of Aman- Jean, whose flowing arabesque relates him to the iSth-century decorators. Akin to these painters, but closer to the modern movement and more purely decorative in intent, is the broadly handled work of Jules Flandrin (b.iSyi). Another group of deco- rative painters take realism as a starting-point. Among these is Frank Brangwyn (b.iSb;), one of the few English painters with considerable European influence and reputation. His later work such as the eight mural paintings, symbolizing the dynamic forms of nature, for the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition shows how his dexterous and schematized art combines romantic and allegorical treatment of material drawn from the daily life of com- merce and industry with a sensuous materialism. A comparable figure is Ignacio Zuloaga (b.i87o), the leader of a group of Basque and Castilian painters, including Ramon and Valentine de Zubiaurre, Gustavo de Maeztu and Federico Beltran-Masses, representing the regionalist and consciously national character of modern Spanish art. Here a romantic conception of subjects drawn from contemporary Spanish life is given decora live form by emphasis on silhouette, simplification of form and broad masses of colour, often combined with a low horizon and a panoramic back- ground; though sometimes the realism degenerates into carica- ture and the decorative treatment into the production of card- board figures against a stage drop-scene. Augustus John (b.iSyg) in England is not romantic, but combines with the realism which finds most complete expression in his portraits a strongly decora- tive aim in the use of contour to enclose definite areas of colour, and distortions of the human figure in the interests of design. Similarly, the Munich decorative school, still represented in 1921 by its most important product, Franz Stuck (b.i863), inherits from Bocklin the realistic treatment of mythological and alle- gorical materials. Its once important and widespread influence has waned; but it forms part of the bridge between the archaeological and historical painting which formerly domi- nated Germany, and more modern movements. Allied thereto is the Swiss, Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918), by the emphasized contours and calculated distortions of his later work. But in his symbolic mystical outlook he resembles another important forerunner of the modern movement, Hans von Marees (1837- 1887), neglected in his lifetime but now the object of much adulation, who turned from Courbet and Manet to Rubens and Delacroix in developing a monumental decorative art based on three-dimensional form.

Another important divergence from the main trend of later 19th-century art is represented in France by H. G. E. Degas (1834-1917) and Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919). Their close association with the impressionists was reflected in the choice of subjects from contemporary daily life and at times in their use of colour; but here the connexion ends. Degas is a descendant of the great classic draughtsmen. A convinced realist, bitterly opposed to the romantic and symbolic, he never sought the ideal beauty of Ingres, but turned to use the more absurd and bizarre attitudes of everyday life. But his realism is syn- thetic, and represents the building-up, from many sketches and from a retentive memory, the essential character of a form or movement ; and his vision is classic in its impersonal, almost ironic, quality. So with his design, which, despite its apparent disre- gard of the rules of classical composition, yet shows a complete balance of strains and stresses round a pictorial centre, revealing the influence of Chinese and Japanese art. Round Degas centres a group of realistic draughtsmen, such as Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec (1864-1901), whose fevered and excited vision has inspired much modern work, Louis Legrand and J. F. Raffaelli. Jean-Louis Forain (b.i8s2), chiefly known for his political and social cartoons, has the critical and ironic spirit of Degas, but less power of design and feeling for colour. The later work of T. A. Steinlen (b.iSsg), likewise well known by his journalistic work, is significant of modern tendencies in the increased empha- sis given to the third dimension and the use of simplified forms. In England the realism and irony of Wa4ter Sickert (b.i86o) connect him with Degas, though his search for atmospheric