Cotmania. Vol. IX. 1933-4

Summary in English

Monsieur Duthuit begins by commenting on the isolation of the art of the North, and its consequent lack of oriental richness. The Winchester School shows a faint reflection of the East, but without its warmth. The Gothic period is briefly dismissed, but it is noted that in the later school of manuscript illuminators—indifferently French or English—with their great elaboration, each page is a chef-d'œuvre, conceived for its own sake, and thus begins the reign of the picture treated as a separate work of art, apart from architecture. Then Holbein introduced the idea of the cabinet picture, and of the artist's workshop. He was followed in his " trade" by Nicholas Hilliard and Samuel Cooper. The vogue of miniatures. The Renaissance comes, but the race destined to found an Empire does not give birth to a great religious art which would have been worthy of its greatness. Instead we get Van Dyck and the portraitists. From them descends the plethora of talent in the eighteenth century. The luxurious and elegant effect of the main gallery at Turlington House. Easy to understand that the artists, of the period allowed themselves to be charmed and seduced by this world of fashion. How this democratic worldliness appeals to the French temperament, sick with logic. The distinction and tact of Georgian society, reproduced with such happy results by Gainsborough. In the rendering of costumes and scarves Reynolds sometimes reveals tones so new and rare that it would need a Manet or a Renoir to re-create them ; but generally he subordinates himself to the prevailing decorum. But a fete begins, in which, according to Monsieur Duthuit's fancy, Lawrence, Raeburn, Romney, Stubbs and Marshall, and finally Blake, play their somewhat fantastic parts. It is an art for gentlemen, produced by those who are not exactly gentlemen. Hogarth, however, is rather a disquieting personality, though the " Father of English Painting." Rowlandson and the grotesque ; the atmosphere of gin and graveyards. The promise of Zoffany, but Zoffany lacking in ambition. One begins to wonder if the spirit of England—country of tragedy and of power, of terror and love—will ever awake. A people so jealous of its liberty, so conscious of its power. Will an artist never free himself from patronage, and find his own soul? We must have patience. Gainsborough in his adolescence experienced those fearsome moments when the heart, in suspense, seems to beat in harmony with the heart of the universe, and the memory of those moments still haunted him when later he painted in secret, for his own pleasure. Etty, before he became a painter of fans, had felt the appeal of the flesh, and a certain bashful gaucherie makes his young nudes with their warm curves suffused in an amber light, all the more attractive. David Cox is waiting for recognition. Turner, in spite of his fireworks, loved the light so much that one day a fuse of his crossed the Channel and fired the explosion which cleared our vision. Constable lived with his work as a genius should, and the soil he tilled gave birth to green fields, veritable jewels in a waste land. Bonington, before he disappeared so regrettably early, sounded the notes of a chamber music in which we hear a presage of the future. In the end we cannot but recall and concur in the magnificent homage which Delacroix, at the end of his career, paid in his own name and in the name of all countries and epochs, to English painting.