File:Fifty years of modern painting, Corot to Sargent (1908) (14793859623).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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nothing for Pissarrosintimate treatment of ordinary scenes; they saw no poetryin them, nothing worthy of so grand a thing as art; evenwhen the country-side was seen, as he saw it, and showed it,suffused with vibrating light. He devoted himself thus to painting direct from nature,seeking to record more and more subtly effects of light,going, indeed, at one time to the very extreme of technicalexperiment to accomplish this end, until he had reached theage of seventy years. Then an affection of the eyes, whilenot interfering with his sight, forbade him longer to paintin the open air. But he was not to be driven into retire-ment. He simply went to Kouen, and there from housewindows painted the streets, the cathedral, the bridges, thequays. Then he went to Paris and worked similarly there,and lastly to Dieppe and Havre. It is to such men as he that we owe the revelation of the beauty in our modern towns. They are often not beautiful rchitecturally, they are not beautiful as a whole and in
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THE IMPRESSIONISTS AND THEIR ALLIES 99 themselves. But there is beauty to be drawn from them,even though, for the most part, they be commonplace, dull,or even ugly and dirty. Monet and Pissarro had discoveredthe artistic possibilities of London, and when he could nolonger work in the fields, Pissarro did not forget the lesson.His town-scenes vibrate with light and movement; detail issacrificed to general effect; but even in Paris—one mightsay, rather, in Paris especially—it is the general effect, themovement, the sparkle, the vivacity, that count. Lookedat closely, most of the buildings are, in essential featuresami even in detail, mechanical—even if well-designed—re-petitions of each other; and to study them closely is soonto grow weary. In seaport-towns it is eminently the generalpicturesqueness of houses and shipping, under varying con-ditions of light, that we enjoy; and in going to Dieppe andHavre to paint such things there, Pissarro was obeying acommon human impulse, as

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