THE NATURALISTIC MOTIVE IN MODERN

PICTURES.

BY EDWIN FAGG, F.R.S.L.

[Read November 22nd, 1922.]

If we consider nineteenth century painting, we see that it was to a great extent in unison with the contemporary romantic and poetic impulse, the words 66 nature " and "landscape" becoming synonymous; and in spite of landscape painting taking at times apparently a secondary place in public esteem, yet its breadth and lighting gradually modelled the condition of all pictures, obliterating the distinction between the so-called figure and landscape painters. Also, far from progressively affirming Sir Joshua Reynolds' comprehensive definition of nature, that is, including " the internal fabric of the mind and imagination," the ideal of the natural appeared to shrink to a purely optical value. There was a continuous inquisition into the qualities of appearance over a range of momentary values alien to the placed spirit of a Claude or the seventeenth-century Dutch Masters; who were, however, never wholly out of view. Otherwise painting certainly illustrated romantic enthusiasm ; literally the lovely vagaries and primitive chaos" of the Schlegel manifesto, to the last phases of which contemporary Post-Impressionism opposes something forcible and severe in form.

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As in poetry, the intimate bond between nature and the soul of man was recognised; but the novelty lay in the isolation of the interest. The actual increase in apparent familiarity is not without qualification. In medieval poetry and painting the natural is delightfully humanised, and birds, beasts, saints, angels and devils play in concert. Birds perch. near an enthroned Madonna, or from a twig contemplate a saintly martyrdom; and some perky little spaniel trying to attract the attention of St. Jerome is not less intimately natural than the dogs of Landseer. And if we consider, for instance, Italian landscape as a whole we are amazed at its complexity, its simple grasp of the very spirit of landscape, its trees and flowers, its rich variety and limitless patterns. But mainly it was a background. With the nineteenth century it became without disguise a main interest. But this in its turn was treated relatively as a background, since Impressionistic forms approximated to distant silhouette. To this, contemporary Post-Impressionism among other things opposes a sense of volume and foreground considerations. Theoretically, I think that is the situation.

There is, of course, also the complete rejection of natural form at certain extremes, very much on the same plea as with blank verse at times; that is, its abuse as a form. But just as in letters, the "intellectual romantics in rebellion against life imagining a hero in whom their defiance is manifested," use such forms comparatively and not exclusively, so one would imagine that a similar principle must hold good in painting.

But the assumed identity of fact and its expression

in paint undoubtedly is a nuisance obscuring more real issues; and although as a matter of theory it may be conceded that for the artist objects exist only as experiences or as the occasion of them, and in spite of the obvious limitations of pigment, a popular confusion of expressive with purely imitative values survives with reference to painting; and by way of strengthening this misconception, now and then the painter may receive some particularly handsome testimonial to an unsuspected accuracy certified by unimpeachable authority.

For instance, recently Dr. Sprigge told us of the greater accuracy of the painter as compared to the novelist in matters of disease, of his notable preference for leprosy and rickets, marred only by his unaccountable oversight with regard to the possibilities of cleft palate; and it is on record that Professor Charcot, the great neurologist, saw the picture in Genoa, by Rubens, of St. Ignatius casting a devil out of a young girl, and was "so impressed by the accuracy of the delineation of acute hysteria that he was led to study the subject from the medico-artistic point of view."

In the face of the enthusiasm aroused by these considerations, critical authority may seem a little tame in its opinion that a good picture is merely one that takes its place unobtrusively on a wall; but although it may not sound sufficiently exciting, probably the necessity provides the painter with as much excitement as he feels he needs. A glance at the walls of any gallery confirms the decorative purpose of the painter, even taking precedence of the naturalistic.

If, however, we divide the function of painting

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into decoration and illustration, we find the division convenient rather than essential; the brush, surface and pigment conspiring automatically towards the decorative; like the simple full blacks in a Bewick wood block, sometimes the mechanical necessity and artistic desire are in unison. Even if we take the obviously naturalistic and decorative forms of painting, as in Courbet's and in Whistler's seascapes, for instance, we see really only decoration on different bases; the natural is still dominated by the pattern of the whole in spite of the difference in content. In Courbet this is the weight and stress of the wave; in Whistler the delicate charm of colour; but each demands instinctively certain forms and certain exclusions in the interests of a coherent, that is, a decorative form.

If we take the originating impulse in painting as a conviction concerned with objects, feelings, ideas, or observation indifferently, and not with any one of these things necessarily, and note that the conviction has varied in expression from being mainly an extension of political and religious considerations to the emotional and intellectual expression of the individual, both the progressive and imitative factors become more reasonably proportionate to the main value. For instance, it is more essential to regard Turner as the embodiment of different considerations, than merely as a progression from Claude. Notwithstanding the obvious and necessary connection in the craft of picture making, Turner's conception of objective sublimity is far removed from Claude's desire to give a sense of landscape without its particularities. The separate values remain distinct,

and we would not have them compromise each other, the values not being scientific but poetic; representing a different balance between the mind and the senses, not something merely true.

The progressive, imitative and utilitarian hypotheses obscured the value of Constable and Cotman; and even now it is doubtful whether the unique personality of Cotman is appreciated; for when antiquarian and tourist preoccupations were in the ascendant his exquisite sensibility preserved a serene chastity of spirit, and a robust sense of delicate values delivered in decisive unassailable forms. Like nature itself, some of his water-colours are a parable of apparently effortless expression. But his generation, possibly comprehending natural history, did not comprehend his unobtrusive water-colour; nor Constable's grasp of ample spaces over which pass great shafts of light, or appreciate his sense of a world not neatly definable. While Ruskin credited him with the vision of an intelligent stag, Constable really showed himself akin to the poets, his contemporaries, who practically one and all gave a spiritual interpretation to the natural; for Constable, in spite of his romantic affection for tree and cottage, "rotting posts and the noise of water escaping from mill-dams,” made indeed these things his foothold, but expressed them as subordinate to and in the atmosphere of a vaster world.

As with Claude, there is an absence of irrelevant intimacy which is the condition of the expression. The romantic movement was naturalistic with an unprecedented intimacy; but "the office of the graphic arts remains the same-to arrange a sensuous present