File:Fifty years of modern painting, Corot to Sargent (1908) (14750991296).jpg

Identifier: fiftyyearsofmode00phyt (find matches)
Title: Fifty years of modern painting, Corot to Sargent
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Phythian, John Ernest, 1858-
Subjects: Painting Painting
Publisher: London, G. Richards
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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Text Appearing Before Image:
Applied to easel-pictures Chavannes' method is hardly
adequate, though his picture The Poor Fisherman thrust
into rather than placed in a miscellaneous crowd of pictures
in the Luxembourg, is not finally to be judged amid such
incongruous surroundings. It may be taken—to refer to
the subject of it—as an allegory of humanity, with difficulty
winning a subsistence by land or by sea, yet toiling on in
patience and in faith. The babe is asleep on the grass; an
older child gathers flowers; the fisherman silently prays that
he may get that which will feed them all. Another of his
pictures, The Beheading of John the Baptist, shows clearly
that, although in a moment the headsman will have severed
the Baptists head from his body, the victory lies with him,
not with his murderers. The Reapers needs no comment.
The limitations of Chavannes' technique have often been
urged against him. He was not a great master of the
brush; in aiming at simplicity he became rudimentary.
This is what has been said of him. But the means he used
Text Appearing After Image:

THE REAPER PUVIS DE CHAVANNES

PAINTING IN FRANCE 225

were well adapted to the end he had in view. It is idle to
compare him with Raphael or Rubens, and say that he did
not paint as they painted—and this has been done—unless
it be to point out that without having the technical skill
and resource possessed by these painters Chavannes has pro-
duced works which are of great beauty within their limits,
and which, also, touch the strings of new emotions and
evoke strains that are silent when we are before the works
of the masters with whom, in point of technique, he may
not compare.
The art of Moreau was so emphatically the expression of
an exceptional individuality that we hardly expect to see it
repeated with only minor variations. That of Chavannes
was simpler in its derivation, and departed less from cus-
tomary methods and ideas, and his name comes to our lips
when Ave see the work of other, younger painters. His
influence is plainly seen in the mural paintings executed in
the Pantheon and elsewhere,

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