I. PAUL CEZANNE

After prolonged study of the art shown at the Paris Autumn Salon you ask yourself:  This whirlpool of jostling ambitions, crazy colours, still crazier drawing and composition—­whither does it tend?  Is there any strain of tendency, any central current to be detected?  Is it young genius in the raw, awaiting the sunshine of success to ripen its somewhat terrifying gifts?  Or is the exhibition a huge, mystifying blague?  What, you ask, as you apply wet compresses to your weary eyeballs, blistered by dangerous proximity to so many blazing canvases, does the Autumn Salon mean to French art?

There are many canvases the subjects of which are more pathologic than artistic, subjects only fit for the confessional or the privacy of the clinic.  But, apart from these disagreeable episodes, the main note of the Salon is a riotous energy, the noisy ebullition of a gang of students let loose in the halls of art.  They seem to rush by you, yelling from sheer delight in their lung power, and if you are rudely jostled to the wall, your toes trod upon and your hat clapped down on your ears, you console yourself with the timid phrase:  Youth must have its fling.

PROMENADES

And what a fling!  Largely a flinging of paint pots in the sacred features of tradition.  It needs little effort of the imagination to see hovering about the galleries the faces of—­no, not Gerome, Bonnat, Jules Lefevre, Cabanel, or any of the reverend seigneurs of the old Salon—­but the reproachful countenances of Courbet, Manet, Degas, and Monet; for this motley-wearing crew of youngsters are as violently radical, as violently secessionistic, as were their immediate forebears.  Each chap has started a little revolution of his own, and takes no heed of the very men from whom he steals his thunder, now sadly hollow in the transposition.  The pretty classic notion of the torch of artistic tradition gently burning as it is passed on from generation to generation receives a shock when confronted by the methods of the hopeful young anarchs of the Grand Palais.  Defiance of all critical canons at any cost is their shibboleth.  Compared to their fulgurant colour schemes the work of Manet, Monet, and Degas pales and retreats into the Pantheon of the past.  They are become classic.  Another king has usurped their throne—­his name is Paul Cezanne.

No need now to recapitulate the story of the New Salon and the defection from it of these Independents.  It is a fashion to revolt in Paris, and no doubt some day there will arise a new group that will start the August Salon or the January Salon.

“Independent of the Independents” is a magnificent motto with which to assault any intrenched organisation.

PAUL CEZANNE