Anyone who compares these nudes with what Matisse was doing a dozen or fifteen years ago will not fail to discover a common factor:  neither will he be surprised to learn that at one time these two artists were treated almost as equals.  Both achieved a strange and disquieting intensity by bold simplifications and distortion, by concentration on the vital movements and characteristics of the human body, and by an absolute indifference to its literary and sentimental interest.  “Lorsque je dessine j’ai devant un homme les memes preoccupations que devant un bec de gaz.”  That is well said:  what is more, the saying has been put successfully into practice.  Such pictures as numbers 19, 25, and 27 are entitled to a place beside those of no matter what contemporary.

Needless to say, the integrity of Marquet’s vision has considerably distressed those who have no taste for art; and from one of them, Marquet’s friend Charles-Louis Philippe, it drew a bit of art criticism that ought not to be lost.  “Le ciel me preserve,” exclaims the author of Marie Donadieu, “d’aimer d’un amour total un art dont l’ironie parfois atteint a la cruaute!  Et quand, tous les usages admis qui veulent qu’on ne presente un homme que sous ses bons cotes, quand l’amitie meme que j’eprouve pour M. Marquet m’eussent engage, a me taire, un devoir plus imperieux me sollicitait, et j’aurais eu le sentiment de me rabaisser moi-meme en y manquant.”

Not even an art critic can be expected to lower himself in his own eyes by turning a deaf ear to the solicitations of imperious duty.  So Monsieur Philippe very honourably concludes his observations by expressing the opinion that “il n’a pas droit a toute l’admiration des hommes puisqu’il a ete sans pitie.”

The cry of this soft and silly sentimentalist has been neatly put by M. Besson to the purpose of illustrating, and perhaps a little exaggerating, the merits of a painter who is, assuredly, neither one nor the other.  Too clever by half, that rather is the fault with which Marquet must be taxed.  The artist who has given us a dozen first-rate things—­superb nudes, “felt” as solid, three-dimensional forms, and realized as such—­is always being forestalled by an astonishing caricaturist who can knock you off something brilliant, rapid, and telling while you wait for the boat.  Always this brisk and agile person is stepping forward in front of the artist and jotting down his neat symbols in the space reserved for significant form.  The landscapes and boats and street-scenes of Marquet, with their joyously emphatic statement, their lively contrasts, and their power of giving you the pith of the matter in a few strokes, are about as valuable as the best things of Forain.  They are statements of fact, not expressions of emotion.  Marquet, the inimitable captor of life as it hurries by, is not much better than a caricaturist; and as he becomes more and more proficient in his craft he bothers less and less about that to which it should be a means.  The art of Marquet tends ever to become the repetition of a formula.