NOTE.--At least one French artist of great merit was un-represented at the Post-Impressionist Exhibitions--Georges Rouault, a fellow pupil with Matisse of Gustave Moreau. He stands alone in the movement as being a visionary, though, unlike most visionaries, his expression is based on a profound knowledge of natural appearances. The profile here reproduced (see Plate) will give an idea of his strangely individual and powerful style. (1920.)
DRAWINGS AT THE BURLINGTON FINE ARTS CLUB[49]
The Burlington Fine Arts Club have arranged a most interesting collection of drawings by dead masters. Abandoning the club’s usual method of taking a particular period or country, the committee have this time allowed their choice to range over many periods and countries, excluding only living artists, and admitting one so recently dead as Degas. This variety of material naturally stimulates one to hazard some general speculations on the nature of drawing as an art. “H. T.,” who writes the preface to the catalogue, already points the way in this direction by some _obiter dicta_. He points out that the essence of drawing is not the line, but its content. He says:
A single line may mean nothing beyond a line; add another alongside and both disappear, and we are aware only of the contents, and a form is expressed. The beauty of a line is in its result in the form which it helps to bring into being.
Here the author has undoubtedly pointed out the most essential quality of good drawing. I should dispute, rather by way of excessive caution, his first statement, “A single line may mean nothing beyond a line,” since a line is always at its least the record of a gesture, indicating a good deal about its maker’s personality, his tastes and even probably the period when he lived; but I entirely agree that the main point is always the effect of two lines to evoke the idea of a certain volume having a certain form. When “H. T.” adds that “Draughtsmen know this, but writers on art do not seem to,” he seems to be too sweeping. Even so bad a writer on art as Pliny had picked up the idea from a Greek art critic, for in describing the drawing of Parrhasios he says:[50]
By the admission of artists he was supreme in contour. This is the last subtlety of painting; for to paint the main body and centres of objects is indeed something of an achievement, but one in which many have been famous, but to paint the edges of bodies and express the disappearing planes is rare in the history of art. For the contour must go round itself and so end that it promises other things behind and shows that which it hides.