We have seen that he was a supremely able
technician in his pot-boiling days and that the color and handling of
his early pictures were greatly admired by so brilliant a virtuoso as
Diaz. But this "flowery manner" would not lend itself to the expression
of his new aims and he had to invent another. He did so stumblingly at
first, and the earliest pictures of his grand style have a certain
harshness and ruggedness of surface and heaviness of color which his
critics could not forgive any more than the Impressionists, who have
outdone that ruggedness, can forgive him his frequent use of a warm
general tone inclining to brownness. His ideal of form and of
composition he possessed complete from the beginning; his mastery of
light and color and the handling of materials was slower of acquirement;
but he did acquire it, and in the end he is as absolute a master of
painting as of drawing. He did not see nature in blue and violet, as
Monet has taught us to see it, and little felicities and facilities of
rendering, and anything approaching cleverness or the parade of
virtuosity he hated; but he knew just what could be done with thick or
thin painting, with opaque or transparent pigment, and he could make his
few and simple colors say anything he chose. In his mature work there is
a profound knowledge of the means to be employed and a great economy
in their use, and there is no approach to indiscriminate or meaningless
loading.
Pages:
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62