THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY AT 111..6 NEW GALLERY.
THE Exhibitions of the International Society are always looked forward to with interest by those whose outlook is not limited by a parochial view of art. The present collection of pictures, drawings, and statues should enlarge the ideas of
the people who set down as unintelligible or wrong works the style of which is to them merely unfamiliar. Since its last Exhibition in England this Society has sustained the loss of its President. The place of Mr. Whistler has been filled by M. Rodin, and the Society is to be congratulated upon its choice, fur a more original and commanding figure in the world of art could scarcely have been found. The President has justified his position by contributing to the Exhibition by far the most imposing work to be found there. In the Central Hall Le Grand Penseur (No. 357) dominates its surroundings, not merely by its size or by the splendour of its technical achievement, but by its almost oppressive appeal to the imagination. Not only the name of the work points to a comparison with Michelangelo, but to suggest imitation would be as far from the truth as to deny the influence of the Florentine. The author of Le Grand Penseur can stand alone. This colossal statue. has the inestimable quality that every part of its body, though it is in profound repose, is filled with vital energy. There • is no portion of the mountainous form which is not brimming with life. This life is overshadowed, not• with a " pale cast of thought," but with a meditation so profound that eternal problems must be the theme of such an absorption. Another work of great interest by M. Rodin is the Torso of St. John (No. 338). This is a study in bronze, the results of which are embodied in the statue at South Kensington which the nation is fortunate enough to possess owing to private generosity.
The art of M. Fritz Thaulow is fortunately well known in England, and lovers of it will rejoice in the beautiful picture, The Diligence (No. 157). The village street lit with the lamps of the enormous and strange-shaped vehicle, and the last light in the sky from the dead sunset, are realised perfectly. There is no sense of effort, no straining after unusual effects of paint to express subtle and elusive qualities of light and colour. This artist paints snow in a manner hardly approached by others, and Le Degel (No. 241) is a brilliant example of his powers. The village street, with the half- melted snow after "the soil has smutched it," is made even beautiful by the magic of light. M. Thaulow also shows some etchings in colour. One of these, Mid Ocean (No. 102), is a masterly work. The rolling ship and the waves are splendid in drawing, while the red funnels give a distinction to the colour which is delightful. The representation of the water, as one would expect, is perfect. On this part of the print the artist has worked with a brush. There is also a delightful Old Gate (No. 97), in which the trees and the architecture are treated with fine decorative effect.
The Deuil Marin (No. 136) by M. Cottet is a work of great power. In looking at it one cannot help remembering how a realistic plein air painter of twenty years ago would have treated such a subject. How uninteresting and lifeless these three women in black, with their background of sea, would have been. But fortunately M. Cottet is a great deal more than a realist; he has the imaginative power which can select the important from the trivial in his materials, and he knows how to construct a pictorial effect which harmonises with and explains the emotional basis of his picture. The three women who sit in a row, and who fill the whole front of the picture, are admirable in their characterisation. There is no facile appeal to the sentiment of grief, but there is tragedy, not only in their impassive faces, but in the awful calm of the green sea whose heaving swell foams at the bases of the cliffs. The monster is quiet after its work of destruction. The artist shows in this picture that he has a vein of grim poetry. A wise latitude in these Exhibitions of the International Society enables pictures to be hung which have been seen in public before. This is the case with M. Monet's Le Dejeilner (No. 218), a picture painted in 1868, and so often alluded to in connection with the growth of the Impressionist school. Although the execution of the picture seems a little harsh and the colour cold, the knowledge displayed of effects of light is remarkable ; but there is no hint of the prismatic hues of the artist's later work. Another picture painted some time ago, but always welcome, is Mr. Whistler's fine sea-piece Valparaiso (No. 154). The pale tint of the jade-coloured sea and the warm tones of the sails and the sky make a harmony of surprising beauty which the painter seldom equalled. There is another quality possessed by this picture, and that is the charm of the paint surface, with its unobtru-
sive mastery of handling. So many pictures fail from the- artist seeming determined that at any rate his work shall not be tamely done. The consequence is that many pictures are beautiful in spite of the way they are painted. Mr. Whistler is reported to have said that a picture was unfinished as long as it suggested paint, and not air. Would that those who go to either extremes of roughness and smoothness might take this saying to heart! The unfinished portrait by the late President of the Society is not as fine a work as the wonderful lady in red and black shown in this Gallery last autumn: In Rose et Or : La Tulipe (No. 153) Mr. Whistler returns to his favourite pose. The lady stands with her back to us, and turns her head round, looking over her shoulder. It would seem as if the picture bad not been sufficiently advanced for the angularities of the attitude to have been overcome. The other work by this artist is the Symphony in White (No. 152), in which well-known picture beauty of colour and subtlety of tone make up for the somewhat strained and uninteresting figures.
Mr. Bertram Priestman has seldom done anything finer than his Moonrise (No. 205). This fine realisation of air and colour loses nothing from the painter's particular methods of handling, which sometimes make his pictures of solid objects appear a little too unsubstantial. In this work, which depends entirely on the luminous haze which glows in the sky and on the earth, there is a sense of completeness which is lacking in the larger work here by the same hand, The Lock Pool (No. 191). The best of the pictures shown by Mr. C. H. Shannon is The Toilet (No. 182). The modelling of the torso of the figure on thej right shows an appreciation of ideal form akin to that of Mr. Watts in its leaning towards sculpturesque qualities. The picture, while very sad and sober in colour, is very harmonious, but it has the distinction which this painter seldom fails to attain, though not always with such absence of visible effort as here. M. Zuloaga certainly astonishes us with his two pictures (Nos. 162 and 174). After the first surprise is over one cannot help feeling that in spite of the ability, there is too much of formula in the drawing and painting for these works to be permanently a delight.
Among the drawings in the South Room are some of the most interesting things in the Exhibition. There are many artists who succeed admirably with a small drawing, a pastel, a colour etching, a lithograph, or a water-colour, who betray a sense of effort when they paint large oil pictures. The sense of effort is just what we do not want in a work of art ; neither should we feel that a work would be better if only it were smaller. Then there are some subjects which are suitable to drawing rather than to painting. Of this nature are the biting and merciless satires on humanity of the late Felicien Rops, a number of whose colour prints and lithographs are to be seen here. The satire of some of these is only to be equalled by the beauty and delicacy of the workmanship. Satan servant l'ivraie (No. 70) is equally fine whether regarded as a piece of weird imagination or as a subtle perception of the effect of night over a great city. In this work Paris lies outspread as seen from a height, and over it strides a Satan of colossal size and skeleton-like thin- ness. He has the semblance of a peasant sowing seed, but the falling grains are little figures. Le Sphinx (No. 77) is a very powerful work, but in others the satire and horror are pushed to the extent of repulsiveness. Among such things works like the delicate studies of youthful faces in La Scandale (No. 72) come with a shock, though they exhibit the range of effects under the control of this artist. Two pastels by M. F. Luigini show great power and a fine sense of colour. The Impressions des Halles, Paris (No. 82) is alive with light and movement. The artist has drawn no individuals in the crowd, but the crowd itself. We feel its movement, and the constant rearrangement of its atoms into fresh groups La Vieille Eglise (No. 86) is totally different in character Where the other is bustling with life and sparkling with prismatic light, this quiet old country church is a scene of repose and rich restrained colour. The front of the building is finely observed and broadly rendered. The series of politicians by Mr. Phil May (Nos. 115-22) are evidence, if evidence were required, that the late artist was one of the most accomplished draughtsmen of our time. These drawings with washes of colour are marvels of execution; they combine the extremes of precision with the most broad and sweeping generalisation.
It would be absurd to pretend that there were no unworthy pictures in the present collection ; but these are not in sufficient quantity seriously to interfere with our enjoyment, and our thanks are due to the Society for providing such an interest- ing and memorable Exhibition. H. S.
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