Des l’instant ou votre tableau s’est trouve installe parmi les chefs-d’oeuvre des maitres anciens, nous avons eu la joie de constater qu’un de nos contemporains avait pris place d’emblee parmi les grands maitres de la tradition europeenne.

They said not a word too much.

TRADITION & MOVEMENTS

Much to its embarrassment, the National Gallery finds itself possessed of that superb picture Les Parapluies; and as the director at last feels obliged to exhume those masterpieces which, for so many happy months, he and his colleagues have had, albeit in the dark, to themselves, we can now see Renoir amongst his peers.  He is perfectly at home there.  Renoir takes his place quite simply in the great tradition; and when Cezanne, who is still too cheap to be within the reach of a national collection, has attained a price that guarantees respectability he, too, will be seen to fit neatly into that tradition of which he is as much a part as Ingres or Poussin, Raphael or Piero della Francesca.

That Cezanne was a master, just as Poussin and Piero were, and that he, like them, is part of the tradition, is what all sensitive people know and the wiser keep to themselves.  For by stating the plain fact that Renoir, Cezanne, and, for that matter, Matisse are all in the great tradition of painting one seems to suggest that the tradition is something altogether different from what most people would wish it to be.  If one is right it follows that it is not simply the counter-movement to the contemporary movement; indeed, it follows that it is not a movement at all.  This is intolerable.  An artist, seen as the protagonist of a movement, the exponent of a theory, and the clue to an age, has a certain interest for all active-minded people; whereas, seen merely as an artist, which is how he must be seen if he is to be seen in the tradition, he is of interest only to those who care for art.  The significant characteristics of an artist, considered as the representative of a movement, are those in which he differs most from other artists; set him in the traditions and his one important characteristic is the one he shares with all—­his being an artist.  In the tradition a work of art loses its value as a means.  We must contemplate it as an end—­as a direct means to aesthetic emotion rather—­or let it be.  Tradition, in fact, has to do with art alone; while with movements can be mixed up history, archaeology, philosophy, politics, geography, fashions, religion, and crime.  So, by insisting on the fact that Matisse, Cezanne, Poussin, Piero, and Giotto are all in the tradition we insist on the fact that they are all artists.  We rob them of their amusing but adscititious qualities; we make them utterly uninteresting to precisely 99.99 per cent. of our fellow-creatures; and ourselves we make unpopular.