Post-Impressionist and Futurist Exhibition

Nr. of pages: [PDF page number: 17].
Holding Institutions: Victoria & Albert National Art Library, online: Fondazione Memofonte

Frank Rutter: Foreword, 5 p.

„FOREWORD
THIS exhibition is an attempt to set forth in a coherent and so far as possible in a chronological order examples of various schools of painting which have made some noise in the world during the last quarter of a century. The loose way in which the term „post-impressionist“ has been used to cover a number of varying, and in some respects contradictory movements, has naturally confused a public seldom inclined to push very far its analysis of modern painting.
Now the French Impressionist movement of 1870 was based on two great principals:
1. The instantaneous vision of a whole scene as opposed to the consecutive vision that seen nature piece by piece;
2. The substitution of a natural chiaroscura of colour based on the solar spectrum for a conventional chiaroscura of tone based on black and white.
The first was not a new discovery, it was a principle more or less recognised by most of the old masters, a principle which urged Titian, Rembrandt and others to give more breath and less detail in their painting as they grew older, a principle which has intuitively prompted art lovers all the whole world over frequently to prefer a sketch to a „finished picture“.
The second was essentially a new discovery, though earlier painters, and especially Delacroix, had been moving in that direction. The change, amounting to a revolution, brought about by the adoption of this principle showed itself markedly in the painting of shadows. Whereas formerly painters were apt to ask of a grey whether it was merely light or dark, these impressionist painters went further and asked if it was a purplish gray, a blue gray, a greenish gray, and so on. This research into the colour of light and especially into the colour of shadows, begun by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Sisley, was further developed by Seurat and Paul Signac, the leaders of the neo impressionist movement. The school which sought to give the brilliance of light by the juxtaposition of touches of pure, undegraded pigment, had offspring in the groups known as The „Divisionists,“ „Pointillists,“ and „Intimists.“ The two former were dogmatic in their methods, the last adopted the divisionist principles only so far as these suited their subject and their own tempraments. But all these schools aimed at truth [p. 1]
to nature, and many of the leading members have painted the colour of light and shadow with a truth and brilliance never before attained in the history of art.
Camille Pissarro has been appropriately chosen as the starting point for this exhibition. Both in his landscapes and in his figure subjects the two great principles of French Impressionism came to their full fruition. While as the master of Gauguin and Van Gogh he unconsciously brought into being the painters who, with Cézanne, were to be the parents of most that is known as „post impressionism.“
The „Divisionists“ are represented in this exhibition by Signac, Cros, and the Belgian artist M. Theo van Rysselberg. It is interesting to note that the last, in his recent work has abandoned his former dogmatic pointillism touch.
MM. Bonnard and Vuillard are accepted masters of „Intimist“ painting in France, but in England another turn has been given to the movement. M. Lucien Pissarro, eldest son of Camille Pisssarro, brought to England the priciples of French Impressionism. Mr. Walter Sickert, once a pupil of Whistler, had already acquainted himself in Paris with the art of the earlier impressionists, and these two quietly working in London and attracting to themselves congenial spirits, have produced the highly promising group of painters associated with the name of Camden Town. Allowing for individual and racial temperament differences, Messrs. Spencer Gore, Gilman, Ginner and others of this group, might with least confusion be regarded as the „intimists“ of England.
It must always be remembered that classification at best is but a clumsy and inexact contrivance, and art is so much the affair of the individual that any attempt to classify artists in courting disaster. Nevertheless there are colser affinities between some artists than others, though strict classification is impossible when we are dealing with all the ramifications of modern painting. Mention must now be made of three artists exceedingly hard to classify.
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) was numbered in his lifetime among the Impressionists, with whom he exhibited ; but to-day he is commonly regarded as the Father of Post-Impressionism. The unique position he holds between the older and younger schools is best explained by his own words:–„I wish to make of impressionism something solid and durable like the art of the old [p. 2]
masters.“ Whereas most of his comrades were pre-occupied with rendering of transitory, fugitive effects of light, Cezanne seemed concearned with expressing in terms of colour the eternal verities of things themselves. His art was more simple, less complex than that of Monet and Pissarro ; his analysis of colour was more summary, his expression more vigorous and forcible. Cézanne has had and still has an immense influence on modern painting. Weaker disciples are apt to imitate his superficial mannerisms and his defects rather than his qualities, but others have learnt from him to have the courage of their own vision and give that „plain, forcible statement of things seen“ which distinguishes much of the best contemporary French work, including notably the paintings of Albert Marquet. Attention may here be called to the remarkable group of young aquarellists who have been influenced by Cézanne as well as by Pissarro. Hitherto, France has had individual artists in water colours of great distinction, like Jaquemart, but never a great water colour school. The growth of this school in the present century is foreshadowed by the brilliant drawings of MM. Asselin, Ludovic Rodo, Doucet, Picard Le Doux, Paul Emile Pissarro, and other young artists represented in this exhibition.
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90), in turn a shop-assistant, a schoolmaster and a missionary, only began painting in 1885, and was at first influenced by Pissarro and Seurat whom he met in Paris soon after he left Holland in 1886. His comparatively early river scene (No. 15) in this exhibition in a typical neoimpressionist painting. He rapidly developed a very distinctive style of his own, remarkable for its vehemence of attack, fierce strokes of paint being rained almost like blows on the canvas. He was the most passionate of painters, and the extraordinary intensity of this vivid impressions has been likened by a sympathetic conoisseur to our impression of „things seen momentarily in the duration of a lightning flash.“ His work has had an influence on modern art hardly inferior to that of Cézanne. His colour is of a high order and pitch, showing a fine sensibility for the splendour of pigment.
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) learnt painting from Camille Pissarro, whose style he emulated closely in his earlier works. His mother was a Creole, and he was born with a passion for the tropics, and in 1891 he sailed for Tahiti where he sought to paint primitive [p. 3]
folk in a primitive style. Gauguin was not a realist, but an idealist and he found his ideal among the unspoilt barbarians of the Pacific. When a literary friend quarrelled with his ideal, Gauguin replied, „Your civilization is your disease, my barbarism is my restoration to health.“ This sentence gives us the clue to the movement known as „Fauvism,“ which to a great extent was influenced by the examples of Gauguin.
Philosophers can easily make out a case for regarding the whole of modern European civilization as a disease. „If our life is deseased,“ said some young painters of Paris, „our art must be deseased also, and we an only restore art to health by starting it afresh like children or savages.“ The old masters were swept aside by these young revolutionaries who sought inspiration from the rudimentary art of savage and barbaric nations. Forcible, child-like scrawls began to appear in the Paris exhibitions, and these earned the authors the nickname '''fauves''' (wild beasts), a term which was accepted by the painters as fitly embodying their hatred of the tame and conventional. M. Henri Matisse has good claims to be regarded the leader of this '''fauviste''' movement, which has a salient merit in so far as it aims at simplicity and at securing a maximum of expression with the most rigig economy of means.
The weakness of the '''fauvist''' group is that too many of its members have derived their impetus from art rather than from nature. The figures Cézanne and Gauguin are the parents of many fauvist pictures, and apart from M. Matisse, the most original of all, the fauves may be sub-divided according to the masters by whom they have most been influenced. Serusier is perhaps the most gifted of those influenced by Gauguin; Doucet and Friesz of those influenced by Cézanne.
Loosely attached to this group are English and American artist like J. D. Ferguson and Miss Rice who have been encouraged by the freedom of the fauves to follow their own instinctive live for bright colour and pattern. Generally the '''fauviste''' movement may be regarded as an extreme emotional reaction against the too coldly intellectual tendencies of other painters. Art is always swinging between emotion and intellectuality, and painters who keep the balance between the two are rare.
How cubism grew out of fauvism may be studies by the curious in three photographs of works my M. Pablo Picasso. This young [p. 4]
Spanish artst accomplished in early youth a series of masterly drawings and etchings in orthodox styles. Later he developed the angular style sen in this „Lady with a Fan.“ The transition from this to „Head of a Lady with a Mantill,“ (No. 74) is easy to follow, and here we have the beginnings of cubism. But after this comes the „Portrait if M. Kahnweiler,“ (No. 73). Although the father of cubism M. Picasso disclaims being a cubist himself, he calls himself a realist. According to the artist, his latest works show „things as they are and not as they appear“; that is to say they do not show '''one''' aspect of objects but a number of sectional aspects seen from different standpoints and arbitrarily grouped together in one composition. Of many artists whom Picasso has influenced Herbin is undoubtedly one of the most gifted and original, his work having a charm of bright colour which the almost monotone paintings of M. Picasso do not posses.
This idea of the sectional statement of divers aspects of different things has been developed, with an accent on the expression of movement, by the group of Italian painters known as the „Futurists,“ and though there is strong evidence that Signor Severini developed his own style independently of Picasso–as Segantini did of Monet–the majority of the futurists have been more or less influenced by Picasso. A similar development in Paris has been given the name of '''„Orfeism,“''' and of this movement M. Delaunay is the protagonist. That „cubism“ and „futurism“ have already stirred English artists is shown by the contributions of Mr. Wyndham Lewis, Mr. Wadsworth, Mr. Nevinson and others,
This foreword has seemed necessary to emphasise, even at the risk of boredom, the fact that all „post-impressionism“ is not a development of „impressionism.“ Much is a reaction against the stern intellectual discipline which true impressionism necessitates. Movements so contrary and so numerous cannot be swallowed whole however they are labelled, and the work of each individual artist must be studied and analysed if justice is to be done to the various groups and fusions of groups concealed under the term „Post-Impressionism.“
FRANK RUTTER.“

"Most of the Exhibits are for sale.", n.p. (before first cat. no.)

No date given in catalogue. Date information taken from E. Fry, Cubism, New York 1966, p. 185, cited in: