Modern Painting (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van Dine

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      It was not until 1862 that Manet, as the independent and professional painter, was felt. Up to this time his talent and capabilities had outstripped his powers of ideation. But with the appearance of Lola de Valence the man’s solidarity was evident. This picture was exposed with thirteen other works at Martinet’s the year following. It was hung beside the accepted and familiar Fontaineleau painters, Corot, Rousseau and Diaz; and almost precipitated a riot because of its informalities. In these fourteen early Manets are discoverable the artist’s first tendencies towards simplification for other than academic reasons. Here the abbreviations and economies, unlike those in Le Buveur d’Absinthe, constitute a genuine inclination toward emphasising the spontaneity of vision. By presenting a picture, free from the stress of confusing items, the eye is not seduced into the by-ways of detail, but permitted to receive the image as an ensemble. This impulse toward simplification was prefigured in his Angelina now hanging in the Luxembourg Gallery. Here he modelled with broad, flat planes of sooty black and chalky white, between which there were no transitional tones. While in this Manet was imitating the externals of Daumier, he failed to approach that master’s form. Consequently he never achieved the plasticity of volume which Daumier, alone among the modern men, had possessed. However, despite Manet’s failure to attain pliability, these early paintings are, in every way, sincere efforts toward the creation of an individual style. It was only later, after his first intoxicating taste of notoriety, that the arriviste spirit took possession of him and led him to that questionable and unenviable terminus, popularity. One can imagine him, drunk with eulogy, reading some immodest declaration of Courbet’s in which was set forth that great man’s egoistic confidence, and saying to himself: “Tiens! Il faut que j’aille plus loin.”

      The famous Salon des Refusés, called by some critics of the day the Salon des Réprouvés, gave Manet his chance to state in striking fashion his beliefs in relation to æsthetics. For whereas mere realism could no longer excite the animosity of the official Salon jury, as it had done twenty years before, immorality—or, as Manet chose to put it, franchise—could. Therefore Manet was barred from the company of the Barbizon school and the other favourites of the day. In the Salon des Refusés, which must be held to the credit of Napoleon III, those painters who had suffered at the hands of the academic judges were allowed a hearing. Whistler, Jongkind, Pissarro and Manet here made history. Manet sent Le Bain, which, through the insistence of the public, has come to be called Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe. But despite the precedent of Giorgione’s Rural Concert (the Concert Champêtre in the Louvre), it was looked upon only as the latest manifestation of degeneracy in a man who gave every promise of becoming a moral pariah. The nude, contrasted as it was with attired figures, was too suggestive of sheer nakedness. Had the nude stood alone, as in Ingres’s La Source, or among other nudes, as in Ingres’s Le Bain Turc, the picture would have caused no comment. Its departures in method were not extravagant. The scene is laid out of doors, yet it bears all the evidences of the studio conception; and those lights and reflections which later were brought to such perfection in the pictures of the Impressionists and Renoir, are wholly absent. But in one corner is a beautifully painted still-life of fruits, a basket and woman’s attire, which alone should have made the picture acceptable. This branch of painting Manet was to develop to its highest textural possibilities.

      From this time on Manet no longer used the conventional chiaroscuro of the academicians. Instead he let his lights sift and dispel themselves evenly over the whole of his groupings. This mode of procedure was undoubtedly an influence of the Barbizon painters who had done away with the brown sauce of the soi-disant classicists. In his rejection of details and his discovery of a means whereby effects could be obtained by broad planes, Manet was forced by necessity to take the step toward this simplification of light. Were colour to be used consistently in conjunction with his technique, it must be spread on in large flat surfaces. By diffusing his light the opportunity was made. He might have omitted the element of colour from his work and contented himself with black and white, as in the case of Courbet; but he was too sensitive to its possibilities. He had observed it in the Venetians and Franz Hals, as well as in nature; and in its breadth and brilliance he had recognised its utility in enhancing a picture’s decorative beauty. Even the colour of Velazquez was at times sumptuous. Manet, because his simplicity of manner permitted a liberal application of colour, was able to augment its ornamental power. It is true that today his large and irregular patches of tints appear grey, but, to his contemporaries, their very extension made them seem blatant and bold.

      Courbet remained in great part the slave to the common vision of reality. In his efforts to attain results he sacrificed little. This, in itself, delimited his accomplishments. Nature to him appeared nearly perfect, and he painted with all the wonderment of a child opening its eyes on the world for the first time. On the other hand, Manet realised that nature’s forces become objective only through an intellectual process. This attitude marked a decided step in advance of Courbet. Manet painted single figures and simple images devoid of all anecdotal significance, out of his pure love of his medium and his sheer delight in tone and contour. In other words, he represented the modern spirit which repudiates objects conducive to reminiscence, and cares only for “qualities” in art. His intentions were those of Courbet pushed to greater freedom. Unlike his master he was a virtuoso of the brush. His very facility perhaps accounts for his satisfaction with flat decoration, for it concentrated his interest on the actual pâte and thereby precluded a deeper research into the psychology of æsthetic emotion. But in his insistence on the æsthetic rather than the illustrative side of painting he carried forward the ideals which were to epitomise modern methods.

      In this lay the impetus he gave to painting. Even with Rubens the necessities of the day forced him, in his choice of themes, to adopt a circumscribed repertoire, the subjects of which he repeated constantly. In him we have mastery of composition with the substance as an afterthought. Delacroix conceived his canvases in the romantic mould, and adapted his compositions so as to bring out the salient characteristics of his chosen theme. This was illustration with the arrière pensée of organisation. Daumier struck the average between these two and conceived his subject in the form he was to use. Courbet minimised the importance of objects as such by raising them all to the same level of adaptability: but he invariably chose, as with an idée fixe, his subjects from the life about him. Manet cared nothing for any subject whether traditional or novel. That he generally chose modern themes was indicative of that new mental attitude which recognises the unimportance of subject-matter and urges the painter to abandon thematic research and utilise the things at hand. He made his art out of the materials nearest him, irrespective of their intrinsic topical value.

      This was certainly an important step in the liberating of art from convention. It proclaimed the right of the artist to paint what he liked. Courbet would have painted goddesses if he had seen them. Manet would have painted them without having seen them, provided he had thought the result warranted the effort. Courbet, the father of naturalism, extended the scope of subject-matter, while Manet tore away the last tie which bound it to any tradition, whether Courbet’s or Titian’s. After him there was nothing new to paint. It is therefore small wonder that artists should now have become interested in the forces of nature rather than in nature’s mien. Manet, by his consummation of theme, foreshadowed the concern with abstractions which has now swept over the world of æsthetics. Zola, like him in other ways, never equalled him in this. L’Assommoir and Fécondité portrayed only the extremes of realism. Manet painted all things with equal pleasure. Here again is evident the continuation of that mental attitude which Courbet introduced into painting. The qualities in Manet which inclined toward abstraction have secured him the reputation for being a greater generaliser than Courbet whose brutal naturalism could not be dissociated in the public mind from concrete and strict materialism. For this contention there is substantiation of a superficial nature. But a mere tendency toward generalisation, with no other qualifications, does not indicate greatness. In fact, were this purely literal truth concerning Manet conclusive, it would tend to disqualify him in his claim to an importance greater than Courbet’s. Carrière is an example of a painter who is general and nothing more. Manet had other titles to consideration.

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