File:Fifty years of modern painting, Corot to Sargent (1908) (14773998885).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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ived apart from the life of his ownday. Released from the necessity of earning a livelihood,he could choose, we may say, in what age or ages he wouldlive. We have said of Rossetti that he existed in the pre-sent but lived in the past, and this was true also of Moreau.He fed his emotions and his imagination on the myths andlegends of the days long gone by, and then he set them forthin pictures that have no close parallel in the work of anyother single painter. He has often been compared to Burne-Jones, but we must at least add Rossetti to eke out the com-parison. We do not feel satisfied even then. We needsomething also that is akin to the spirit of William Blake,an intense imaginative realisation of life other than thatwhich is revealed by the senses. We may liken him to acomposite portrait of these three artists. The world he has conjured up is not an actual one, yethe has so realised it that it becomes credible, almost eveninevitable. It has burning suns and glittering stars, it has
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LA CHIMERE GUSTAVE MOREAU PAINTING IN FRANCE 219 gloomy forests and brilliantly hued flowers. The animalsthat inhabit it are such as we read of in ancient lore, andthe people in it are human, yet strangely different fromthe humanity we know, and dwell in halls of fabulousmagnificence. It is as if the painter had distilled beauti-fully shaped and coloured essences of familiar things. Tosay that he believed in this world of his imagination wouldbe inadequate. He lived in it—lived in the world withinthe world. This was what he saw. If the inner worldwere not like this, it was because his vision was too dim tosee the beauty of it in its full intensity. In this imagined world are gods, goddesses, and heroes—Jupiter, Apollo, Hercules, Orpheus, Odysseus, Penelope,Europa, Leda, Galatea, and many another. Here also areMoses and David, Buddha and Christ. There is nothinghere of the dry literalism that buries the spirit of the pastunder the letter of it. Yet how unfamiliar is the spiritthat

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