French Art

The current exhibition of prints presented by the Carnegie Trust will remain on view at the National Art Gallery for about two weeks more. Italy, France. Holland. Flanders, Spain, England, Germany and America over a period of six hundred years are here represented, and so wide is the selection that a visit should afford much pleasure to all interested in art.

On the evening of March 16th, Dr. A. D. Carbery gave a commendably brier and informative address on French art to a small but appreciative audience, illustrating his remarks by references to examples in the exhibition.

Following the Flemish mediaeval art said the lecturer, French painting may be said to begin with Poussin in the 17th century. influenced by Raphael and the Classical tradition, Poussin spent most of his life in Italy, and his work synthesises the best features of the then dying Italian art. The 18th century, the age of reason, was a frivolous epoch in painting, typified by Watteau's romantic pastorales, figures in landscape, painstakingly drawn from life. Watteau learnt his exquisite colour from the many Rubens, done for Marie de Medici, in the Luxembourg. Chardin, a painter of genre, ran a close second, while Boucher, a favourite of La Pompadour, was a facile draughts, man. Greuze was an artist of vivacity; Fragonard, a strong and brilliant painter, is frequently represented by his silly, sentimental pictures for the fashionable world, which do him an injustice.

The 19th century opened with a return to Classicism, later evidenced in the Empire period. Corot, or course, is definitely a Romantic, though weak and at his best in the figure subjects that he did in Rome. Typical or the Barbizon School (who couldn't get their pictures into the Salon, so went into the country to be closer to nature) is Harpigny, who embodies the democratic spirit of the age. portraying the common people. And then came Realism with Courbet, a strong, almost coarse painter, whose flowers are delightful. Contemporary art was rounded by Manet, the most important artist or the 19th century, in Mr. Carbery's opinion; he was strongly influenced by Japanese colour prints and by photography.

Realism became Impressionism with the advent or Monet, Pissarro, Sisley and Renoir, who had been studying optics, and who brought in light and air to Manet's style, creating an artistic scandal by their adoption of Pointillism, or Divisionalism; which was taken still further by Signac and Seurat. Thence it has been carried to some extent to all modern painting, just as it was previously evident, in a lesser degree, even in the old Italian masters, and in Vermeer and others.

In both his opening and closing comments, Mr. Carbery considered that France had always been a strong civilising force by virtue of her artistic expression. Other phases of the exhibition will be dealt with by subsequent lecturers.

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