HOVELTY IN ART

Evening Star, Issue 19186, 1 March 1926, Page 10

HOVELTY IN ART

MALIGNED MASTERPIECES OF THE PAST 'l'he storm that lias been raging over Mr Epstein’s panel in the Hudson memorial in Hyde Park has illustrated afresh how difficult, it is for contemporary criticism to reach agreement about a work of art which has unaccustomed and disconcerting elements (Mr I). S. Mac Coll writes in ‘ John o’ London’s Weekly’). A reference made in the course of that discussion to the reception in 1850 of a famous PreRaphaelite picture, Millais’ ‘ Carpenter's Shop,’ has suggested to the editor that the theme might bo developed a little farther for the readers of this paper. That picture had a particularly bad Press. ‘The Times’ called it “revolting,” “ loathsome,” and “ disgusting ” ; the ‘Athenaeum’ “recoiled with loathing and disgust.” Charles Dickens, in ‘ Household Words,’ called it “ mean, odious, repulsive, and revolting,” and said that the Virgin’s figure was “so horrible in her ugliness that she would stand out as a monster in the vilest cabaret in France or the lowest, gin shop in England.” Ail this only meant that Millais’ Scottish girl model differed from the accustomed types, and that there was .something shocking to the habits of eye and mind of the spectator in the intimate humanity of the scene That “revolting” picture is now one of the treasures of the Tate Gallery, and the Trustees and National Art Collections Fund had to collect a ransom of £IO,OOO to place it t berry Millais and his fellow Pre-Raphaelites won their way into public fa\or, but their new. or’ rather renewed, way of seeing, once accepted, proved to be a barrier against comprehension when the next challenge of an unexpected kind was made. In the ’eighties Whistler exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery some of his ‘Nocturnes.’ In place of the wealth of detail and rigorous defuntibn in ‘ Primitive ’ or Pre-Raphaelite painting, those showed a London swamped in night and mist and enveloped by the blue atmosphere wduch_ resulted frm looking out over the river from under yellow gas lamps, Ruskm, who had been a doughty champion of Millais and his group, turned and rent the newcomer, accused him of Cockney impudence,” and of throwing a pot of paint in the face of the. public and charging some hundreds of pounds for doing it. Again Time has brought m his revenges: twenty years ago the National Art Collections Fund had to pay thousands instead of hundreds for one of those potfuls of paint, and so popular has it become that when the Undoicrmincl Railways wished to advertise the Tate Gallery with a poster it was the “Battersea Bridge” that they chose. Everyone can see nocturnes now. In modern France recognition of the original artist has been no more prompt and easy than with us. Whistler was one of the group who in the ’sixties were excluded from the annual Salon, ami had to exhibit apart. Another or the group was the great French painter, Edouard Manet. Within the memory of my generation lt_ was wi th the greatest difficulty that his pictui es could win their way into the Luxembourg Museum, the Tate Gallery of Paris. The State, lavish in purchases, never bought them; the much-abused ‘ Olvmpia ’ was purchased by subscription and under pressure admitted: it has now been transferred to the Louvre, where it shines out in the beauty of its design and color, making most of the nineteenth-century gallery look shabby by comparison. Another‘French painter of genius. Degas, had no bettor luck. In ]B9A a picture of his was shown at the Grafton Gallery in London. Its subject was an engraver and his model seated at a table in a cafe. *An Cafe ’ was the original title, but for this had been substituted ‘ L’Absinthe,’ because glasses of that aperitif were before them. The equivalent in England would have been a couple taking tea. But the word was enough; vice and degradation were read into the scene, and the papers were filled with the denunciations of virtuous Britons, chiefly artists, for it is official artists who are always the bitterest enemies of the new-comer. The English owner quailed and parted with the picture, and it is now one of the choicest things in the Camondo bequest at the Louvre. It would bo easy to multiply examples. Rodin, the. French sculptor, was for much of bis life a pariah in official circles; the first statue bo sent to the Salon, the ‘ Age ot Bronze ’ (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum), was excluded because il was so close to life that it was judged to be a cast; liis statue of Balzac was repudiated by the literary committee who had commissioned it because they thought it unlike life, and a dull, frock-coated figure by another sculptor substituted. A whole museum is now devoted to Rodin in Paris. If wo go back to earlier days, and to the landscape which is a chief glory of English painting, wo find appreciation equally slow. Wilson had a struggle to live; Gainsborough’s landscapes ac-

cumulated on his hands; Constable line! to make both ends meet by portrait painting, Creme and Cotman bv teaching. And if we go back farther still we find the Florentines stoning Michael Angelo’s ‘ David,’ and the painters ol Venice puzzled and disapproving over the work of 'Tintoretto; 'Titian himself troubled the critics with bis later work; Rembrandt went out of fashion as his work gained in depth. Nor is it only upon their first appearance that artists snllcr from the blind or blinkered eye. The old becomes difficult and obscure when the now is in vogue. Whole periods of architecture, sculpture, and painting have fallen into oblivion because of the time’s concentration upon something else. Gothic art underwent that eclipse, as classic art once and again. 'The sculptures of the Parthenon themselves, when ' they were brought to London, were frowned upon by the connoisseurs of the day, whose taste had been formed upon a degradation of the tradition. Our grandfathers had to recover the great period of Italian painting from Giotto _to Botticelli, and the art which their fathers admired is now being brought out of the lumber room, dusted, and scrutinised. In the days before museums were so numerous and so large these forgettiugs on the part of tho world were easier than now. Hut I must not stray beyond my text. It is clear enough that immediate contemporary judgments are frequently reversed. That does not mean, however, that the criticism was or altogether without justification. The early attacks on Keats’s poetry, for example, fastened on n real weakness, a “ lush ” element which Keats himself came to recognise and to correct. A final decision depends on whether the weakness, negative or eccentric, outweighs toe positive merits. An illustration from what happens in another order of “ taste ” will make this clear. In Greece the ordinary wine, owing to the way in which' it is preserved, lias a strong taste of rosin, and is known as “ resinata.” Anyone who drinks it for the first time is aware chiefly of this feature, and is justified in saying “What nasty stuff!” But as he continues to drink he comes to neglect the disagreeable threshold flavor and to enjoy the wine. The dislikes of people for Various kinds of excellent food and drink often mean that they stumbled on the threshold and never passed it. So with pictures. An initial discomfort may pass away so completely that it becomes difficult to recall it. A habit of mind inapplicable to the work of art before us is overcome and the beauty slips through the fence. _ It would be a mistake, however, because of such experiences to jump to the conclusion that what is disconcerting at first sight is necessarily good, and that, perhaps, is a greater temptation at present than an offhand condemnation. The critics have so often been wrong in the past that they have become timid and nervous; they are tempted to think that because a drawing looks wrong it must be right, and that the incomprehensible must be profoundly significant. The safe rule is to be patient, but never to pretend; to be certain of one’s own sensation; that the resin is unpalatable, but that the wine, if we can win through to it and do really like it, is good.