TALK ON ART

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 75, 30 March 1939, Page 17

TALK ON ART

POST-IMPRESSIONISM

EMPHASIS ON COLOUR

A talk on art was given at the National Gallery on Tuesday evening last by Mr. W. S. Wauchop, who took as his subject "The Post-impres-sionist Painters." He pointed out how those artistsx experimenting in colour brought a new technique in painting, involving a departure from the smoothness of traditional work, and a freer handling of subjects, so free, indeed, that the public could neither understand them nor forgive the artists. They studied colour by fleeting glances, so as to get the effect of light. They were concerned not with shapes so much as with colour. The longer one looked at an object the more conscious one became of its shape and of its own local colour. For example, the shadow from a green tree on a yellow road might at first glance appear purple. Cezanne, Degas, and Renoir were among the exhibitors at the first Impressionist Show. None of these three went far with the impressionists—they were concerned, in different ways, with the study of form as well as the study of light. The impressionists took, their subjects direct from Nature; Cezanne, Degas, and Renoir felt the necessity for control of the pictorial elements. Composition played an important part in their work. Cezanne made contributions to painting of the utmost importance. He was probably the first painter to eschew all suggestions of the picturesque in his choice of subject matter. The ruined cottage, the old peasant woman, the bent tree, and so on, had been considered the most suitable subjects for pictures. Today most people like pictures because they recalled past pleasures. Landscape had to be sentimental, as in Corot, or dramatic,, as in Turner. It should have a "mood." Cezanne and the other postimpressionists showed that there was beauty everywhere. They usually avoided the merely picturesque as dangerous. They did not revive a past enjoyment—they opened new vistas of pleasure. "Many of Cezanne's pictures," said Mr. Wauchop, "are about as picturesque as a backyard,1 as Jan Gordon says. But if one tries to understand them and becomes aware of their particular kind of beauty; they do not pall but grow in power. They help to an appreciation of all good painting and a keener delight in the old masters. His colours are admirably harmonised, with now and then a hint of the unexpected, which stimulates the interest. His line is careful, pleasing, and rhythmical. He has been criticised because at times he departs from the ordinary canons of drawing—at times he deliberately refuses to balance the twp sides of a bottle or jar. He does this deliberately 4o prevent the shape being too assertive in his composition just as the old masters darkened a tone in a picture if it was too prominent for their composition.

"He can draw most meticulously when-, it suits his purpose—indeed his drawing is meticulous. If he wishes to emphasise a shape he outlines it — here he .differs entirely from the Impressionists'. In 'his" still life group every object has a,purpose, and each is painted to give the proper amount of interest and no more. He paints with rigid discipline and a delicate technique—each stroke o* the brush being considered. His most important contribution to art is his discovery of the spatial value of colours—that yellows tend to come forward and blues and purples to recede in a canvas, and he is able to give, by careful consideration of his colours, a, greater sense of space in his pictures. He felt it was impossible to imitate Nature's colours—he had to translate them into plastic art and by ways not previously explored.

"Renoir was also interested in the study of light, but "he used it "to emphasise the solidity of his figures. He was interested in impressionism, but he evolved from this stage. He painted women, opulent in figure, rather than merely pretty. He goes back to the Greek worship of flesh. Cezanne reduces Nature to more or less flattened surfaces; Renoir uses plain surfaces to emphasise the spherical and cylindrical shapes, in which he delighted. He has a fine sense of line, too, and h.e understood how to design his picture within the limits .of his frame. Each of his pictures fills its space in a satisfying way. Cezanne was austere, Renoir sensual.

"Degas painted the life around him —the life of Paris mostly—ballerinas, washerwomen, singers at cafe-concerts, jockeys—these were among his delights, and he always painted with a sense of arrested motion. One feels the complete authenticity of his subject matter. He presented his people as he saw them."