'When in 1912 Mr. D. S. MacColl wrote an article in the Nineteenth Century, "A Year of Post-Impressionism," he received from Sargent the following letter:
My dear MacColl,
I have enjoyed reading your article on Post-Impressionism very much—I should think it would bring a good many people to their senses—I admire the certainty with which you have refrained from hinting at the possibility of bad faith on the part of people like Matisse or at the theory that I am inclined to believe that the sharp picture dealers invented and boomed this new article of commerce.
I think you have exactly weighed the merits of Cezanne and rather over-estimated the "realism" of Van Gogh whose things look to me like imitations made in coral or glass of objects in a vacuum. As to Gauguin, of course you had to deal with him for the sake of your argument, as if there were something in him besides rich and rare colour. Some day if we ever meet I should like to discuss with you the meaning of the word "values" and the word Impressionism.
Yours sincerely,
John S. Sargent.
In order to appreciate the value of Sargent's concurrence with Mr. MacColl's estimate of Cezanne, the following extract from the article may be quoted:
Cezanne was not a great classic; he was an artist often clumsy, always in difficulties, very limited in his range, absurdly so in most numerous productions, but "with quite a little mood" and the haunting idea of an art built upon the early Monet, at which he could only hint. He oscillated between Monet's earlier and finer manner, that of dark contours and broadly divided colour, and a painting based on the early Monet, all colour in a high key. In this manner he produced certain landscapes tender and beautiful in colour, but the figure was too difficult for him, and from difficulties he escaped into the still lifes I have spoken of, flattened jugs, apples, and napkins like blue tin that would clank if they fell. What is fatal to the claim set up for him as a deliberate designer, creating eternal images out of the momentary lights of the Impressionists, is the fact that his technique, remains that of the Impressionists, a sketcher's technique, adapted for snatching hurriedly at effects that will not wait.
It is clear that Sargent was from the first definitely hostile to the more advanced Post-Impressionists; he receded very little, if at all, from that position. He regarded the Cubists, their followers and offshoots with uncompromising disapproval. He did not consider that either they or even the great majority of Post-Impressionists, by slighting representation, were contributing in any way whatsoever, as was claimed for them by a leading critic, "to establishing more and more firmly the fundamental laws of expressive form in its barest and most abstract elements." He held that it could be more effectually and much more emotionally attained by representing also the visual and spiritual values of the thing seen.'
From page 193 of John Sargent, by the Hon. Evan Charteris, K.C., with reproductions from his paintings and drawings. Charles Scribner's sons, New York, 1927. '
My dear MacColl,
I have enjoyed reading your article on Post-Impressionism very much—I should think it would bring a good many people to their senses—I admire the certainty with which you have refrained from hinting at the possibility of bad faith on the part of people like Matisse or at the theory that I am inclined to believe that the sharp picture dealers invented and boomed this new article of commerce.
I think you have exactly weighed the merits of Cezanne and rather over-estimated the "realism" of Van Gogh whose things look to me like imitations made in coral or glass of objects in a vacuum. As to Gauguin, of course you had to deal with him for the sake of your argument, as if there were something in him besides rich and rare colour. Some day if we ever meet I should like to discuss with you the meaning of the word "values" and the word Impressionism.
Yours sincerely,
John S. Sargent.
In order to appreciate the value of Sargent's concurrence with Mr. MacColl's estimate of Cezanne, the following extract from the article may be quoted:
Cezanne was not a great classic; he was an artist often clumsy, always in difficulties, very limited in his range, absurdly so in most numerous productions, but "with quite a little mood" and the haunting idea of an art built upon the early Monet, at which he could only hint. He oscillated between Monet's earlier and finer manner, that of dark contours and broadly divided colour, and a painting based on the early Monet, all colour in a high key. In this manner he produced certain landscapes tender and beautiful in colour, but the figure was too difficult for him, and from difficulties he escaped into the still lifes I have spoken of, flattened jugs, apples, and napkins like blue tin that would clank if they fell. What is fatal to the claim set up for him as a deliberate designer, creating eternal images out of the momentary lights of the Impressionists, is the fact that his technique, remains that of the Impressionists, a sketcher's technique, adapted for snatching hurriedly at effects that will not wait.
It is clear that Sargent was from the first definitely hostile to the more advanced Post-Impressionists; he receded very little, if at all, from that position. He regarded the Cubists, their followers and offshoots with uncompromising disapproval. He did not consider that either they or even the great majority of Post-Impressionists, by slighting representation, were contributing in any way whatsoever, as was claimed for them by a leading critic, "to establishing more and more firmly the fundamental laws of expressive form in its barest and most abstract elements." He held that it could be more effectually and much more emotionally attained by representing also the visual and spiritual values of the thing seen.'
From page 193 of John Sargent, by the Hon. Evan Charteris, K.C., with reproductions from his paintings and drawings. Charles Scribner's sons, New York, 1927. '
