Letters to the Editor of the Revue Française
My dear M****,
When you did me the honour of asking for a critical review of the Salon you said: ‘Be brief; do not produce a catalogue but a general survey, something like the account of a brisk philosophic walk round the exhibition.’ Well, your wishes will be fully satisfied; not because your programme fits in, which in fact it does, with my own conception of this boring type of article called a ‘Salon’; not because this way of tackling it is easier than the other, brevity always demanding greater efforts than prolixity; but simply because, especially in the present case, no other way is possible. Certainly, my quandary would have been more serious if I had found myself lost in a forest of original works, if the modern French temperament had suddenly undergone a change, and, in its purified, rejuvenated state, had put forth such vigorous and variously scented flowers that the result would have been a series of irrepressible Ohs and Ahs of astonishment, abundant praise, a flow of wordy admiration, and the need for new categories in the language of criticism. But fortunately (for me), nothing of that sort happened. No explosions; no unknown geniuses. The thoughts generated by the sight of this Salon are so simple, so ancient, so classic, that relatively few pages will, no doubt, be all I need to develop them. Do not be surprised, therefore, if banality in the painter has engendered commonplaces in the writer. In any case, you will lose nothing by that; for is there anything (and I am delighted to note that you agree with me in this), anything more charming, more productive, more positively exciting, than the commonplace?
Before I begin, allow me to express a regret that will, I believe, only rarely find expression. We had been told that we were to have some guests to welcome, guests not exactly unknown to us; for the Exhibition in the Avenue Montaigne had already introduced to Parisian exhibition-goers a number of those charming artists who had been unknown to them far too long. I had therefore looked forward eagerly to renewing my acquaintance with Leslie, that rich, naïve and noble humorist, one of the most vigorous embodiments of the British mind; with the two Hunts, one of them a stubborn naturalist, the other the ardent and determined creator of Pre-Raphaelitism; with Maclise, that bold master of composition, as impetuous as he is sure of himself; with Millais, that poet of minute detail; with J. Chalon, that mixture of Claude and Watteau, chronicler of lovely afternoon fêtes in the great Italian parks; with Grant, that natural heir of Reynolds; with Hook, who has the secret of filling his dreams of Venice with a magic light; with that strange Paton, who carries the mind back to Fuseli, and who, with a patience characteristic of another age, embroiders graceful visions of pantheistic chaos; with Cattermole, the painter of historical scenes in water-colour, and with that other astonishing artist, whose name escapes me, architect and dreamer, who builds, on paper, cities with bridges supported by elephants – colossi, under whose legs pass great three-masted schooners in full sail! Wall space had even been reserved for these friends of the imagination and of unusual colour effects, for these, the beloved of the bizarre muse; but alas! for reasons which are unknown to me, and which would, I think, be out of place in your paper, my hopes were disappointed. And so, tragic fires, gestures in the manner of Kean and Macready, intimate studies of the home, oriental splendours, reflected in the poetic mirror of the English mind, Scottish verdures, enchanting arbours, receding depths in water-colours, as spacious as a stage set and yet so small, we shall not gaze on you, not this time at least. Oh! enthusiastic representatives of the imagination and of the most precious faculties of the soul, were you so badly received at your first coming, and do you think us unworthy of understanding you?
And so, my dear M****, we shall have to content ourselves with France; and, believe me, nothing would give me more intense pleasure than to rise to lyrical heights in speaking of my own country’s artists; unhappily, in a critical mind with some experience, patriotism does not play an absolutely tyrannical role, and we have certain humiliating admissions to make. The first time I set foot in this Salon, on the very staircase, I met one of our most subtle and most esteemed critics, and to my first question, the question I could naturally be expected to ask, he replied: ‘Flat, mediocre; I have seldom seen so depressing a Salon.’ He was both right and wrong. An exhibition that can boast a large number of works by Delacroix, by Penguilly and Fromentin cannot be depressing; but looking at the thing as a whole I came to see that there was truth in what he said. True, mediocrity has always dominated the scene in every age, that is beyond dispute; but what is also as true as it is distressing is that the reign of mediocrity is stronger than ever, to the point of triumphant obtrusiveness. After allowing my gaze to wander round for some time on a crowd of platitudes brought to successful conclusions, so many bits of rubbish carefully licked over with the brush, so many stupid or specious things skilfully constructed, I was led, by the natural trend of my reflections, to consider the artist in the past, setting him alongside the artist of today; and then, as usual, at the end of my discouraging meditations, the terrible, the eternal ‘Why?’ arose inevitably before me. It would seem that meanness, puerility, incuriosity, the flat calm of fatuity have taken the place of ardour, nobility, and turbulent ambition, both in the fine arts and in literature; and that nothing, for the moment, gives us grounds for hope of seeing any spiritual flowering comparable with that of the Restoration. Nor am I alone in feeling oppressed by these sour reflections, believe me; and I shall prove it to you presently. I was accordingly saying to myself: in former days, what manner of man was the artist (Lebrun or David, for example)? Lebrun stands for erudition, imagination, knowledge of the past, love of grandeur. David, that colossus, maligned by a crowd of myrmidons, was he not also love of the past, love of grandeur, allied to erudition? And today, what is the artist, that ancient brother-in-arms of the poet? To answer that question well, my dear M****, we must not be afraid of being too harsh. Scandalous favouritism sometimes calls for a reaction of equal force. Despite his lack of merit, the artist is today, and for many years has been, simply a spoilt child. Just think of the honours, the money squandered on soulless and uncultivated men! For my part, I certainly do not support introducing into a given art means that are foreign to it; and yet, to give an example, I cannot help feeling some sympathy for an artist like Chenavard, always agreeable, agreeable, that is, like good books, and graceful even when most ponderous. At least with him (and what do I care if he be the target of art students’ jokes?) I know I can discuss Virgil or Plato. Préault has a delightful talent; it is his instinctive good taste that flings him on the beautiful like a beast of prey on its natural victim. Daumier is endowed with luminous good sense, and this colours his whole conversation. Ricard, in spite of the dazzling and disjointed nature of his talk, reveals at every turn that he knows a lot, and has done a lot of comparative study. There is no need, I think, for me to mention Eugène Delacroix’s conversation, which is an admirable mixture of philosophic solidity, light wit and burning enthusiasm. Beyond them I can remember no one worthy of conversing with a philosopher or a poet. Apart from them, you will scarcely find anyone but spoiled children. Tell me, I beg, I entreat you, in what drawing-room, in what tavern, in what social or intimate gathering you have ever heard any witty remark come from the lips of a spoilt child, any profound, brilliant, pregnant remark, a thought- or reverie-provoking one, in short a significant remark! If such a remark has been flung out in conversation, it may not have come from a politician or a philosopher, but certainly from a man of some unusual profession, a hunter, a sailor, a chair-mender; but from an artist, a spoilt child – never!
The spoilt child has inherited from his predecessors a privilege which was legitimate in their day. The enthusiasm that greeted David, Guérin, Girodet, Gros, Delacroix, Bonington, still sheds a kindly afterglow on his mean little person; and while good poets and vigorous historians painfully earn a living, the dunder-headed financier pays sumptuous prices for the spoilt child’s indecent bits of impertinence. And please note, that if such favours came the way of worthy recipients, I should not complain. I am not one of those people who begrudge a singer or a dancer who has reached the peak of her art a fortune earned by the hard work and the risks that are her daily portion. If I were, I should be afraid of falling into the pernicious ways of the late Girardin, of fraudulent memory, who one day reproached Théophile Gautier for setting a higher price on his imagination than a Sous-Préfet for his services. That, if you remember rightly, happened on one of those ill-starred days when a terrified public heard him talking in Latin: pecudesque locutae [and the beasts spoke]! No, I am not as unjust as all that; but it is a good thing to raise one’s voice and denounce present-day folly when a lovely picture by Delacroix could scarcely find a buyer at a thousand francs, and, at the very same time, the insignificant little figures of Meissonier were fetching ten or even twenty times more. But those happy days are over; now we have sunk even lower, and M. Meissonier, who, in spite of his merits, had the misfortune of introducing and popularizing the taste for the diminutive, is a veritable giant in comparison with our creators of little baubles today.
Imagination discredited, grandeur disdained, love (no, that word is too beautiful) – exclusive concentration on technique, such, I believe, are the main reasons, so far as the artist is concerned, for his decline. The greater the degree of imagination, the surer must be the corresponding mastery of technique, if the latter is to keep pace with the former in its adventurous flights, and to conquer the difficulties imagination eagerly seeks. And the surer his technical mastery, the less the painter should boast and make a parade of it, so that his imagination may shine with its full brilliance. Thus speaks wisdom, and wisdom adds: the man who has mere skill is a fathead, and the man with imagination who tries to do without skill is a lunatic. But simple though such things may be, they are above or below our present-day artist. The daughter of a concierge says to herself: ‘I shall go to the Conservatoire, I shall make my début at the Comédie-Française, and I shall speak the lines of Corneille, until such time as I win the same recognition as those who have been speaking them for a long time.’ And she is as good as her word. Most classically monotonous, most classically boring and ignorant she is too; but she has succeeded in what was perfectly easy, namely obtaining, by her patience, the privileges of full membership of the Comédie-Française troupe. And the spoilt child, the modern painter, says to himself: ‘What is this imagination they talk about? Something dangerous and tiring. What is the study and contemplation of the past? A waste of time. I shall be classical, not like Bertin (for the classical changes its place and its name), but like … Troyon, for example.’ And he does what he said he would. He paints away, and he stops up his soul, and he goes on painting until at last his manner is like that of the artist in fashion, and by his stupidity and skill he deserves the public’s favour and money. The imitator of the imitator finds imitators in his turn, and in this way each chases after his own dream of greatness, stopping up more and more tightly his own soul, and above all reading nothing, not even a cookery book, which could at least have provided him with a more glorious, if less lucrative, career. Once he has mastered the art of sauces, patinas, glazes, rubbings, gravies, stews (I am speaking of painting), the spoilt child starts striking attitudes, and repeats, with more conviction than ever, that all the rest is unnecessary.
Once upon a time a German peasant went to see a painter, and this is what he said to him: ‘Sir, I want you to paint my portrait. You will show me sitting at the main entrance of my farm in the big armchair I inherited from my father. You will paint my wife by my side, with her distaff; behind us, coming and going, my daughters preparing the family supper. To the left, you will depict the grand avenue, and emerging from it those of my sons who are returning from the fields, after having brought the cows back to the cowshed; others of them, with my grandsons, are busy putting the farm carts stacked with hay under cover. As I contemplate the scene, please do not forget the puffs of smoke from my pipe, tinted by the rays of the setting sun. I should also like the viewer to hear the sounds of the Angelus ringing from the church belfry close by. That is where we all got married, father and sons. It is important that you should paint the satisfied air I enjoy at that time of the day, as I look upon my family and my wealth, increased by the labour of another day.’
Loud cheers for that peasant! Without knowing it, he had understood painting. The love of his profession had heightened his imagination. Which of our fashionable painters would be worthy of executing that portrait, and which of them has an imagination on a level with that one?
My dear M****,
If I had time to amuse you, I could easily do so by thumbing through the pages of the catalogue, and extracting a list of all the ridiculous titles and laughable subjects that aim to attract the eye. That is so typical of French attitudes. The attempt to provoke astonishment by means that are foreign to the art in question is the great resource of people who are not painters born. Sometimes even, but always in France, this form of vice takes hold of men who are by no means devoid of talent, and who dishonour it, in this way, by an adulterous mixture. I could parade before your eyes the comic title in the manner of the vaudevillist, the sentimental title, lacking only an exclamation mark, the pun-title, the deep and philosophical title, the misleading or trap title such as Brutus, lâche César.
‘Oh ye depraved and unbelieving race,’ says Our Lord, ‘how long must I remain with you, how long shall I continue to suffer?’ This people, artists and public, has so little faith in painting that it is for ever trying to disguise it, and wrap it up in sugar-coated pills, like some unpalatable physick – and what sugar! Ye Gods! Let me pick out the titles of two pictures which, by the way, I have not seen: Amour et gibelotte [Love and rabbit fricassee]! How your curiosity is at once whetted, is it not? I am groping about in an effort to relate intimately these two ideas, the idea of love and the idea of a skinned rabbit dished up as a stew. You can scarcely expect me to suppose that the painter’s imagination has gone to the length of fixing a quiver, wings and an eye bandage on the corpse of a domestic animal; the allegory would really be too obscure. I am more inclined to think the title must have been composed, following the formula of Misanthropie et repentir [Misanthropy and repentance]. The true title should therefore be ‘Lovers eating rabbit stew’. Then comes the question: are they young or old, a workman and his girl friend, or an old soldier and his moll sitting under a dusty arbour? Only the picture could tell me. Then we have Monarchique, Catholique et Soldat! This title belongs to the high-falutin, paladin type, the Itinéraire de Paris à Jerusalem type (oh Chateaubriand, my apologies to you! the most noble things can become means for caricature, and the words of a leader of Empire for daubers’ squibs). The picture boasting this title must surely represent a personage doing three things at once: fighting, attending communion, and being present at the ‘petit lever’ of Louis XIV. Or could it be a warrior, tattooed with a fleur de lys and devotional pictures? But what is the good of losing oneself in speculation? The simple truth is that titles such as these are a perfidious and sterile means of creating an impact of surprise. And what is particularly deplorable is that the picture may be good, however strange that may sound. This applies to Amour et gibelotte too. And I noticed an excellent little group of sculpture, but unfortunately did not take down its number; and when I wanted to look up what the subject of the piece was, I read through the catalogue four times in vain. In the end you told me, of your kindness, that the piece was called Toujours et jamais. It really distressed me to see that a man with genuine talent could go in for the rebus sort of title.
You must forgive my having allowed myself a few moments’ amusement in the manner of cheap newspapers. But, however frivolous the matter may seem to you, you will nonetheless discover there, if you examine it carefully, a deplorable symptom. To sum up my thought in a paradoxical way, let me ask you, and those of my friends who are more learned than I in the history of art, whether the taste for the silly, the taste for the witty (which comes to the same thing) have always existed, whether Appartement à louer and other such alembicated notions have appeared in every age, to provoke the same degree of enthusiasm as today, if the Venice of Veronese and Bassano was affected by these sorts of logogriph, if the eyes of Giulio Romano, Michelangelo and Bandinelli were astounded by similar monstrosities; in short I would like to know whether M. Biard is eternal and omnipresent, like God. I do not believe it, and I regard these horrors as a special form of grace granted to the French. It is true that their artists inoculate them with this taste; and it is no less true that they in their turn call upon the artists to satisfy this need; for if the artist makes dullards of the public, the latter pays him back in his own coin. They form two co-relative terms, which act upon one another with equal force. Accordingly let us watch with wonder the rate at which we are moving downwards along the road of progress (and by progress I mean the progressive domination of matter), the wonderful diffusion, occurring daily, of commonplace skill, of the skill that may be acquired simply by patience.
In this country, the natural painter, like the natural poet, is almost a monster. Our exclusive taste for the true (so noble a taste when limited to its proper purposes) oppresses and smothers the taste for the beautiful. Where only the beautiful should be looked for – shall we say in a beautiful painting, and anyone can easily guess the sort I have in mind – our people look only for the true. They are not artistic, naturally artistic; philosophers, perhaps, or moralists, engineers, lovers of instructive anecdotes, anything you like, but never spontaneously artistic. They feel, or rather judge, successively, analytically. Other more favoured peoples feel things quickly, at once, synthetically.
I was referring just now to the artists who seek to astonish the public. The desire to astonish or be astonished is perfectly legitimate. ‘It is a happiness to wonder’: but also ‘It is a happiness to dream.’ If you insist on my giving you the title of artist or art-lover, the whole question is by what means you intend to create or to feel this impact of wonder? Because beauty always contains an element of wonder, it would be absurd to assume that what is wonderful is always beautiful. Now the French public, which, in the manner of mean little souls, is singularly incapable of feeling the joy of dreaming or of admiration, wants to have the thrill of surprise by means that are alien to art, and its obedient artists bow to the public’s taste; they aim to draw its attention, its surprise, stupefy it, by unworthy stratagems, because they know the public is incapable of deriving ecstasy from the natural means of true art.
In these deplorable times, a new industry has developed, which has helped in no small way to confirm fools in their faith, and to ruin what vestige of the divine might still have remained in the French mind. Naturally, this idolatrous multitude was calling for an ideal worthy of itself and in keeping with its own nature. In the domain of painting and statuary, the present-day credo of the worldly wise, especially in France (and I do not believe that anyone whosoever would dare to maintain the contrary), is this: ‘I believe in nature, and I believe only in nature.’ (There are good reasons for that.) ‘I believe that art is, and can only be, the exact reproduction of nature.’ (One timid and dissenting sect wants naturally unpleasing objects, a chamber pot, for example, or a skeleton, to be excluded.) ‘Thus if an industrial process could give us a result identical to nature, that would be absolute art.’ An avenging God has heard the prayers of this multitude; Daguerre was his messiah. And then they said to themselves: ‘Since photography provides us with every desirable guarantee of exactitude’ (they believe that, poor madmen!), ‘art is photography.’ From that moment onwards, our loathsome society rushed, like Narcissus, to contemplate its trivial image on the metallic plate. A form of lunacy, an extraordinary fanaticism, took hold of these new sun-worshippers. Strange abominations manifested themselves. By bringing together and posing a pack of rascals, male and female, dressed up like carnival-time butchers and washerwomen, and in persuading these ‘heroes’ to ‘hold’ their improvised grimaces for as long as the photographic process required, people really believed they could represent the tragic and the charming scenes of ancient history. Some democratic writer must have seen in that a cheap means of spreading the dislike of history and painting amongst the masses, thus committing a double sacrilege, and insulting, at one and the same time, the divine art of painting and the sublime art of the actor. It was not long before thousands of pairs of greedy eyes were glued to the peepholes of the stereoscope, as though they were the skylights of the infinite. The love of obscenity, which is as vigorous a growth in the heart of natural man as self-love, could not let slip such a glorious opportunity for its own satisfaction. And pray do not let it be said that children, coming home from school, were the only people to take pleasure in such tomfooleries; it was the rage of society. I once heard a smart woman, a society woman, not of my society, say to her friends, who were discreetly trying to hide such pictures from her, thus taking it upon themselves to have some modesty on her behalf: ‘Let me see; nothing shocks me.’ That is what she said, I swear it, I heard it with my own ears; but who will believe me? ‘You can see that they are great ladies,’ says Alexandre Dumas. ‘There are greater ones still!’ echoes Cazotte.
As the photographic industry became the refuge of all failed painters with too little talent, or too lazy to complete their studies, this universal craze not only assumed the air of blind and imbecile infatuation, but took on the aspect of revenge. I do not believe, or at least I cannot bring myself to believe, that any such stupid conspiracy, in which, as in every other, wicked men and dupes are to be found, could ever achieve a total victory; but I am convinced that the badly applied advances of photography, like all purely material progress for that matter, have greatly contributed to the impoverishment of French artistic genius, rare enough in all conscience. Modern fatuity may roar to its heart’s content, eruct all the borborygmi of its pot-bellied person, vomit all the indigestible sophistries stuffed down its greedy gullet by recent philosophy; it is simple common-sense that, when industry erupts into the sphere of art, it becomes the latter’s mortal enemy, and in the resulting confusion of functions none is well carried out. Poetry and progress are two ambitious men that hate each other, with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet along a pathway one or other must give way. If photography is allowed to deputize for art in some of art’s activities, it will not be long before it has supplanted or corrupted art altogether, thanks to the stupidity of the masses, its natural ally. Photography must, therefore, return to its true duty, which is that of handmaid of the arts and sciences, but their very humble handmaid, like printing and shorthand, which have neither created nor supplemented literature. Let photography quickly enrich the traveller’s album, and restore to his eyes the precision his memory may lack; let it adorn the library of the naturalist, magnify microscopic insects, even strengthen, with a few facts, the hypotheses of the astronomer; let it, in short, be the secretary and record-keeper of whomsoever needs absolute material accuracy for professional reasons. So far so good. Let it save crumbling ruins from oblivion, books, engravings, and manuscripts, the prey of time, all those precious things, vowed to dissolution, which crave a place in the archives of our memories; in all these things, photography will deserve our thanks and applause. But if once it be allowed to impinge on the sphere of the intangible and the imaginary, on anything that has value solely because man adds something to it from his soul, then woe betide us!
I know perfectly well I shall be told: ‘The disease you have just described is a disease of boneheads. What man worthy of the name of artist, and what true art-lover has ever confused art and industry?’ I know that, but let me, in my turn, ask them if they believe in the contagion of good and evil, in the pressure of society on the individual, and the involuntary, inevitable obedience of the individual to society. It is an indisputable and irresistible law that the artist acts upon the public, that the public reacts on the artist; besides, the facts, those damning witnesses, are easy to study; we can measure the full extent of the disaster. More and more, as each day goes by, art is losing in self-respect, is prostrating itself before external reality, and the painter is becoming more and more inclined to paint, not what he dreams, but what he sees. And yet it is a happiness to dream, and it used to be an honour to express what one dreamed; but can one believe that the painter still knows that happiness?
Will the honest observer declare that the invasion of photography and the great industrial madness of today are wholly innocent of this deplorable result? Can it legitimately be supposed that a people whose eyes get used to accepting the results of a material science as products of the beautiful will not, within a given time, have singularly diminished its capacity for judging and feeling those things that are most ethereal and immaterial?