Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

If we look at his landscapes, or his ‘Card Players’, or his portrait of himself, we do not think first of the light by which these things are seen, but rather of the weight, density, and solidity of the forms depicted. The art of Cézame is simpler and less complicated than that of Monet and Pissarro; his analysis of color is more summary, his expressions ruder and more forcible. His color is entirely his own, and the prevalence of browns in his pictures itself separates him from the other Impressionists; but this brown with him is not a convention, it is true to the color of the sun-scorched landscape of his home, of the South of France, in which he chiefly worked. His paintings may seem clumsy in handling beside the delicate work of Renoir and Sisley, but by reason of his whole-hearted sincerity and honesty of purpose they make a deep and strong impression. Cézanne was not a conscious revolutionary; his pronounced style was the result of a strong, incorruptibly honest mind struggling to express what his eye could see without any preconceived ideas as to the manner of expression. His private life was simple and uneventful, devoted to unremitting toil which was never recognized or honored. After studying in Paris he returned to the South of France, where he lived and married on an allowance of £12 a month made him by his father, a banker. After his father’s death he inherited a share of his fortune, but made little change in his manner of living. He did not paint to make money, but to learn more about Nature and life, and to express what he felt vaguely in his soul. It is related of him that after he had finished a study out-of-doors, he would often leave his painting against the nearest bush. With the last brush-stroke, his interest in the painting ceased: he had done all he could; and it was his wife who surreptitiously followed in his footsteps and garnered in the canvases so difficult at that time to sell.

Of Cézame it may truly be said that he did not paint to live, but lived to paint, and owing to his absorption in the act of painting, and his consequent detachment from life, he tended to paint human beings as if they were still life. So it comes about that some of Cézame’s most impressive paintings are simple pictures of still life. In his work, as M Duret has pointed out, ‘a few apples and a napkin on a table assume a kind of grandeur, in the same degree as a human head or a landscape with sea.’ In painting fruit Cézame seemed able to suggest the tremendous power of Nature, so that pears and apples spread idly on a dinner table become a revelation of the hidden forces of Nature which bring fruits to birth. It is only now and again in his figure paintings that we get a glimpse of the passion for humanity which warms the work of a Rembrandt.

This quality, however, is abundantly present in the work of his younger contemporary, Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90), who exclaimed in one of his letters, ‘I want to paint humanity, humanity, and again humanity.’ A Dutchman by birth, Van Gogh was slow to find his true vocation, and he was close on thirty before he began painting. His brief life is full of romance and pathos. Always of a fanatical temper, and the son of a Lutheran pastor, Vincent began to earn his living as assistant to an art dealer, but soon shocked his employers by his habit of quoting the Bible to prospective purchasers and pouring forth passionate sermons if they showed signs of purchasing pictures which he considered to be trivial and unworthy. For a few months he was a schoolmaster in England, but in 1877 he returned to Amsterdam, purposing to become a clergyman. He grew impatient in the dry atmosphere of a theological college; and set out as a misisonary to the mining district of Borinage, in Belgium. Here his ardent sympathies with the hardships of the workers soon got him into trouble with the authorities; he gave away all that he had wtih reckless generosity, and nearly starving himself, he began to relieve his emotions by drawing the people he could not help or comfort. Henceforward art claimed him, and though he had no prospect of being able to support himself in this way, he was encouraged to persevere, and entirely supported by his brother Theo, who had a good position in Paris. At first Van Gogh took Millet for his model, but after he had joined his brother at Paris in 1886 he was influenced by Pissarro and Seurat, and adhered to the neo-Impressionist ideals of painting. But in adopting their palette and technique Van Gogh showed his own individuality by using for the separation of color, not points or patches, but fine lines of pigment, lines whipped on with extraordinary nervous force and passion. His color touches are so alive that they have not inaptly been described as ‘wriggling little snakes.’ His portrait of himself with a beard shows his style of painting soon after he had learnt the secrets of Impressionism, and also reveals his own peculiar character. Van Gogh was not the inventor of a new technique; but he rapidly developed a distinctive style of his own, remarkable for its vehemance of attack. ‘He was the most passionate of painters, and the extraordinary intensity of his vivid impressions may be likened to our vision of things seen momentarily in the duration of a lightning flash.’

Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)