THE CONQUEST OF COLOR

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE SERIES OF FRONTISPIECES IN COLOR, TYPICAL OF THE MODERN SCHOOL OF PAINTING, WHICH BEGINS IN THIS NUMBER

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HOUGH living under skies as radiant as those of Spain or Greece, we as a nation are strangely unresponsive to the appeal of color. Whether it be due to the rigorous mental cast of our pioneer settlers, to drab Puritan and gray Quaker, or to more deeply rooted circumstances, the fact remains that the typical American looks askance upon any degree of chromatic license. Sober of temper and habit, we have for over a century been closing our eyes to color in many of its most appropriate manifestations. There are two reasons why we have seen fit to place a virtual taboo upon frank, virile color effects. One is a certain provincialism incidental to isolation from the main currents of European culture.

once inhabited a brownstone mansion filled with old masters painted with brown sauce is no longer deemed the acme of aesthetic culture. Glance along the streets of our more progressive cities and you will note that many of those dingy façades have been refaced and heavy hangings discarded for filet or brightly figured chintz. The increased use of brick, limestone, and colored terra-cotta has enhanced the attractiveness

The other is the acute sensitiveness of the native nervous organism which shrinks from vigorous color stimuli and demands only soothing combinations. Such conditions have naturally tended to impair the inborn love of color so that, in due course, vivid tints have been banished as garish and offensive and minor tones alone considered the mark of good taste.

There remains however something to say on the other side of the case, for within the past generation matters have undergone a decided change. The worthy citizen who

of the modern building, while ominous portraits and lowering landscapes have given way to prints or canvases reflecting the true spirit of the out-of-doors. And not only must one thank architect and interior decorator for this awakening to the possibilities of color, but also the manufacturer, shopkeeper, dressmaker, and a score or more in kind. Each in his way is working toward the same end, and one cannot to-day pick up a magazine or glance from the

window without seeing evidence of what is assuredly a veritable renaissance of color.

Despite progress along divers lines, it is primarily the painter who has brought home to us the magic of color. While it is true that the older men were not infrequently rich, sumptuous harmonists, their conception of color was conventional and frankly oblivious to the subtler facts of nature or the accurate notation of natural phenomena. The exact coloration of objects as conditioned by varying effects of light and atmosphere was in brief the contribution of

ciety itself. The dissolution of the old, aristocratic régime, the rise of democracy, and the gradual ascendancy of the analytic and scientific spirit are the mile-stones of modern æsthetic achievement. Painting could not, in brief, attain truth and spontaneity of utterance until it forsook church and court and sought freedom in street, cottage, and sun-flecked field.

Some years since, when one of the leading magazines of the day decided to present to its patrons a series of the masterpieces of the older art, it enlisted the services of the most distinguished living engraver with his burin and block. The reproductions, which were in black-and-white, were as faithful to the spirit of the originals as was feasible with the means at hand. To-day however in wishing to place before the readers of SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE certain typical examples of the modern school, the method is different. Color being the chief attraction of these subjects, no pains have been spared to render the coloration of each painting in its primal purity and exactitude. The media employed are strictly mechanical, the main factors being the color sensitive negative and the process plate. In as far as possible the original values and even the actual brush marks of the artist have been retained. Unlike previous attempts, the always variable human equation is here re

the nineteenth-century painter, and as such takes its place in relative importance beside the discovery of perspective.

Realizing the sovereign truth that there is no such thing as color without light, painters from the days of Monet onward have devoted a large portion of their time and effort to depicting color not as something fixed and absolute, but as an ever-changing factor in each composition. Fitful and elusive, color nevertheless furnishes the dominant note, if not indeed the actual reason for existence of most latter-day painting. For the past half century the artist has virtually renounced museum and studio traditions and gone blithely forth into sun and air. Vision has been stimulated and clarified to such an extent that even the public surveys with indifference the murky concoctions so revered of our predecessors.

It is unnecessary here to recount in detail the gradual emancipation of the modern artist from the blight of bitumen and the belief that shadows were black. It has required close upon a century for painting to formulate its declaration of independence. You will meet in Fragonard and in Goya premonitions of the impending change, yet no such change could possibly have taken place without a corresponding change in so

duced to a minimum. Conforming to the spirit of the day, chief reliance has been placed upon scientific agency.

During the course of the ensuing months there will appear as the frontispiece to each issue of this magazine a modern painting, either European or American, reproduced in full color and accompanied by a short explanatory

note. The series begins with Goya and will conclude with a characteristic canvas from the brush of a young Irishman from County Dublin. With the periodic appearance of these subjects, which have been chosen for their intrinsic interest and appeal, it will be possible to follow in brief but logical sequence the development of the latter-day technic. One will, above all, be able to observe the increasingly important rôle that color plays in each successive composition. The romantic gamut employed by Goya, for example, in "The Forge," which is reproduced in the current number, gives place little by little to the analytic vision of Monet, the serrated surfaces of Segantini, or the ingenious use of flat color spaces seen in Orpen's "A Western Wedding." And not only are these paintings typical of the purely æsthetic considerations at issue, they also offer a constantly shifting

James McNeill Whistler. From the portrait by Fantin-Latour.

Édouard Manet.

From the portrait by Fantin-Latour.

panorama of the social and intellectual life of the day. The swart smiths of Goya's forge may be regarded as presaging the rising power of the industrial proletariat, while

in Orpen's diverting composition we note on more than one countenance a quizzical indifference to the dispensations of the church or the reputed bliss of plighted troth. Painting would indeed be but an effete and puerile pastime did it not, at each stage of its progress, mirror the particular temper and tendencies of its time.

Leaving Goya in the vanguard as the great virile force that shattered into bits the last remnants of eighteenth-century artifice and cleared the way for subsequent development, we are confronted by Edouard Manet, mundane and militant, the fugleman of the new epoch and the ardent champion of æsthetic progress. Manet's "The Balcony" has been chosen for reproduction because it marks his definite mastery of contemporary scene and character after certain brave but self-conscious attempts to cast aside the trammels of tradition. Received with contempt and derision at the Salon of 1869, the picture finally won its place in the Luxembourg Mu

charm of the Third Empire, it stands a veritable classic of the modern school.

Like Manet, a transitional figure, and never a conclusive exponent of the more advanced tendencies, we next envisage Whistler, who, in "The Music Room," displays greater virility and a more robust grasp of fact than is his wont. In this bright-toned bit of domestic genre you will perceive in happy combination the resolute firmness of Courbet and the pervasive appeal of Fantin. Whistler, the imperious individualist, the apostle of superæstheticism, had not as yet found himself, and hence this canvas, long absent in

Russia, should prove something of a revelation to those familiar only with the more insubstantial phases of his production. And with Whistler may be mentioned Degas, an equally isolated personality, and one who likewise never outgrew allegiance to the older school. Despite the actu

artists as Henri Martin, the painter of "Lovers," and certain of the younger spirits, found its equivalent in Italy, where, under the name of Divisionism, its most successful exponents are Previati and Segantini. For solidity of construction and sheer chromatic brilliancy there is indeed nothing in the entire range of modern art comparable to Segantini's mountain landscapes, a

ality of his themes-his lifelong devotion to the race-course and the corps de balletDegas remains at heart a classic. A certain antique purity of poise and rhythm always characterizes his slender steeplechasers and none too seductive exponents of the pas seul. Whereas the foregoing men employed color with felicity, and Degas with consummate science, they are not, in the full sense of the term, colorists. With Renoir we are, to the contrary, face to face with an artist whose work is conceived and created in color, and, though his schemes are occasionally wanting in subtlety and distinction, color is an essential factor in each composition. Despite the advance which the work of Renoir marks, it was the patient, cleareyed Monet who, by initiating the analysis of atmospheric effect and the division of tones, brought the vibrant out-of-doors within range of the modern palette.

Impressionism, together with its pendent.

typical example of which is found in "Spring in the Alps."

Among contemporary painters who have not practised the actual scientific division of tones, yet to whom light and color are primary considerations, may be counted Zorn, the dexterous Swede; Sargent, notably in his outdoor work; the Bavarian, Putz; and the brilliant young Slav, Nikolai Fechin, who has evolved a free, nervous technic quite his own. These men, together with Orpen, may broadly be classed as aca

demic luminists, and as such stand in a measure apart from the main formative currents of modern art. From them, as from the avowed reactionary Zuloaga, one derives however no little pleasure. They are, each and all, accomplished craftsmen who present their themes with masterly science and surety and a welcome absence of parti pris.

Notable as is the contribution of these latter men, it is to be hoped that we may, at some not too distant date, welcome the production of certain ardent pathfinders such as Cézanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh, who in fact may already be counted among the classic exemplars of the modern movement. Meanwhile, there is herewith offered a résumé of painting that extends over the span of a century and which, at every step, bears eloquent witness to that conquest of color which is so agreeably changing the aspect of contemporary life.

CHRISTIAN BRINTON.