Analyze the extract from the novel by J. Galsworthy “The Forsyte Saga”- “To Let”.

GOYA

LUNCH was over and Soames mounted to the picture-gallery in his house near Mapledurham. He had what Annette called “a grief”. Fleur was not yet home. She had been expected on Wednesday; had wired that it would be Friday; and again on Friday that it would be Sunday afternoon; and here were her aunt, and her cousins the Cardigans, and this fellow Profond, and everything flat as a pancake for the want of her. He stood before his Gauguin – sorest point of his collection. He had bought the ugly great thing with two early Matisses before the War, because there was such a fuss about those Post-Impressionist chaps.

Soames passed into the corner where side by side, hung his real Goya and the copy of the fresco “La Vendimia”. His acquisition of the real Goya rather beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested interests and passions which mesh the bright-winged fly of human life. The real Goya’s noble owner’s ancestor had come into possession of it during some Spanish war – it was in a word, loot. The noble owner had remained in ignorance of its value until in the nineties an enterprising critic discovered that a Spanish painter named Goya was a genius. It was only a fair Goya, but almost unique in England, and the noble owner became a marked man. Having many possessions and that aristocratic culture which, independent of mere sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the sounder principle that one must know everything and be fearfully interested in life, he had fully intended to keep an article which contributed to his reputation while he was alive, and to leave it to the nation after he was dead. Fortunately for Soames, the House of Lords was violently attacked in 1909, and the noble owner became alarmed and angry. “If” he said to himself, “they think they can have it both ways they are very much mistaken. So long as they leave me in quiet enjoyment the nation can have some of my pictures at my death. But if the nation is going to bait me, and rob me like this, I’m damned if I won’t sell the – lot. They can’t have my private property and my public spirit – both.” He brooded in this fashion for several months till one morning, after reading the speech of a certain statesman, he telegraphed to his agent to come down and bring Bodkin. On going over the collection Bodkin, than whose opinion on market values none was more sought, pronounced that with a free hand to sell to America, Germany, and other places where there was an interest in art, a lot more money could be made than by selling in England. The noble owner’s public spirit – he said – was well known but the pictures were unique. The noble owner put this opinion in his pipe and smoked it for a year. At the end of that time he read another speech by the same statesman, and telegraphed to his agents: “Give Bodkin a free hand.” It was at this juncture that Bodkin conceived the idea which saved the Goya and two other unique pictures for the native country of the noble owner. With one hand Bodkin proffered the pictures to the foreign market, with the other he formed a list of private British collectors. Having obtained what he considered the highest possible bids from across the seas, he submitted pictures and bids to the private British collectors, and invited them, of their public spirit, to outbid. In three instances (including the Goya) out of twenty-one he was successful. And why? One of the private collectors made buttons – he had made so many that he desired that his wife should be called Lady “Buttons.” He therefore bought a unique picture at great cost, and gave it to the nation. It was “part”, his friends said, “ of his general game.” The second of the private collectors was an Americophobe, and bought a unique picture “to spite the damned Yanks.” The third of the private collectors was Soames, who – more sober than either of the others – bought after a visit to Madrid, because he was certain that Goya was still on the up- grade. Goya was not booming at the moment, but he would come again; and, looking at that portrait, Hogarthian, Manetesque in its directness, but with its own queer sharp beauty of paint, he was perfectly satisfied still that he had made no error, heavy though the price had been –heaviest he had ever paid. And next to it was hanging the copy of “La Vendimia.” There she was – the little wretch – looking back at him in her dreamy mood, the mood he loved best because he felt so much safer when she looked like that.

He was still gazing when the scent of a cigar impinged on his nostrils, and a voice said:

“Well, Mr. Forsyde, what you goin’ to do with this small lot?”

That Belgian chap, whose mother – as if Flemish blood were not enough – had been Armenian! Subduing a natural irritation, he said:

“Are you a judge of pictures?”

“Well, I’ve got a few myself.”

“Any Post-Impressionists?”

“Ye-es, I rather like them.”

“What do you think of this?” said Soames, pointing to the Gauguin.

Monsieur Profond protruded his lower lip and short pointed beard.

“Rather fine, I think,” he said; “do you want to sell it?”

Soames checked his instinctive “Not particularly” – he would not chaffer with this alien.

“Yes,” he said.

(From “The Forsyte Saga” – “To Let” by J. Galsworthy)

IX. It is well known that Impressionism turned out to be a new page in the history of art, connected with the names of brilliant artists. Read the following article devoted to the Impressionist technique, Impressionist colour and palette and answer the questions after it. What is your personal attitude towards Impressionism and Impressionists? Do you have any favourite Impressionist artist and any Impressionist work?

WHAT IS IMPRESSIONISM?

If we look at the bottles in “A Bar at the Follies-Bergere” by Manet, we shall notice that the treatment of detail here is totally different from the treatment of detail by the painters of the Academy who looked at each leaf, flower and branch separately and set them down separately on canvas like a sum in addition. But all the bottles in Manet’s picture are seen simultaneously in relation to each other: it is a synthesis, not an addition. Impressionism then, in the first place, is the result of simultaneous vision that sees a scene as a whole, as opposed to consecutive vision that sees nature piece by piece. Let us suppose, for a moment, that we are staying at a house on the banks of the Seine opposite the church at Vernon. Let us suppose that, having arrived there in darkness the previous evening, we jump out of bed in the morning, open the window, and put out head to see the view. Monet’s picture “The Church at Vernon” shows us what we should see at the first glance; “the glance, that is to say, when we see the scene as a whole, before any detail in it has riveted our attention and caused us unconsciously to alter the focus of our eye in order to see that detail more sharply. Another way of putting the matter is to say that in an impressionist picture there is only one focus throughout, while in an academic picture there is a different focus for every detail. These two methods of painting represent different ways of looking at the world, and neither way is wrong, only whereas the academician looks particularly at a series of objects, the impressionist looks generally at the whole.

The Science of Colour

This way of viewing a scene broadly, however, is only a part of Impressionism. It was not a new invention, for Velasquez saw and painted figures and groups in a similar way, therefore impressionists like Whistler and Manet (in his earlier works) were in Morocco he wrote in his journal about the shadows he had seen on the faces of two peasant boys, remarking that while the sallow, yellow-faced boy had violet shadows, the red-faced boy had green shadows. Again, in the streets of Paris Delacroix noticed a black and yellow cab, and observed that, beside the greenish-yellow, the black took on a tinge of the complementary, that is to say, an opposing colour is evoked by the action of the human eye after we have been gazing at the said colour; consequently all colours act and react on one another. Delacroix discovered that to obtain the full brilliance of any given hue it should be flanked and supported by its complementary colour. He did not attain to full knowledge; it was left for a later generation to make nicer distinctions and to recognize that if violet is the right complementary for a greenish-yellow, an orange-yellow requires a turquoise blue, and so on.

The landscape painter, who whishes to reproduce the actual hues of nature, has to consider not only “ local colour’, but also ‘atmospheric colour”, but also “ atmospheric colour” and “illumination colour”, and further take into consideration “complementary colours”. One of the most important discoveries made by the later impressionist painters was that in the shadows there always appears the complementary colour of the light. We should ponder on all these things if we wish to realize the full significance of Monet’s saying, “The principal person in a picture is light”.

The Impressionist Palette

This new intensive study of colour brought about a new palette and a new technique. For centuries all painting had been based on three primary colours; red, blue and yellow, but primary colours in pigment, they were not primary colours in light. The spectroscope and the new science of spectrum-analysis made them familiar with the fact that white light is composed of all the colours of the rainbow, which is the spectrum of sunlight They learnt that the primary colours of light were green, orange-red, blue-violet, and that yellow – though a primary in paint was a secondary in light, because a yellow light can be produced by blending a green light with an orange-red light. On the other hand green, a secondary in paint because it can be produced by mixing yellow with blue pigment, is a primary in light. These discoveries revolutionized their ideas about colour, and the Impressionist painters concluded they could only hope to paint the true colour of sunlight by employing pigments which matched the colours of which the sunlight was composed, that is to say, the tints of the rainbow. They discarded black altogether, for modified by atmosphere and light, they held that a true black did not exist in nature, the darkest colour was indigo, dark green, or a deep violet. They would not use a brown, but set their palette with indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and violet, the nearest colours they could obtain to the seven of the solar spectrum.

The Impressionist Technique

Further, they used these colours with as little mixing as possible. Every amateur in water-colour knows that the more he mixes his paints, the more they lose in brilliancy. The same is true of oil paints. By being juxtaposed rather than blended, the colours achieved a scintillating fresh range of tones. And the transmission of light from the canvas is greatly increased. The Impressionists refrained, therefore, as much as possible from mixing colours on their palettes, and applied them pure in minute touches to the canvas. This device is known as optical mixture because the mixing is done in the spectator’s eye. Thus, whereas red and green pigment mixed on a palette will give a dull grey, the Impressionists produced a brilliant luminous grey by speokling a sky; say, with little points of yellow and mauye which at a distance gave the effect of a pearly grey.

Various names have been given to this technique. It has been called Divisionism, because by it the tones of secondary and tertiary colours were divided into their constituent elements. It has been called Pointillism, because the colour was applied to the canvas in points instead of in sweeping brush strokes. It has been called Luminism because the aim of the process is primarily to express the colour of light with all its sparkle and vibration. This last is the best name of all, because it serves to emphasise the new outlook of the new painters.

To the Impressionists shadow was not an absence of light, but light of a different quality and of different value. In their exhaustive research into the true colours of shadows in nature, they conquered the last unknown territory in the domain of Realist Painting.

(English. Language Skills. 34/2004 page 7-8)

Questions:

1. What is the essential difference in the treatment of detail in an Impressionist picture as compared with a picture painted by an academic painter?

2. What contribution did the Impressionists make to painting?

3. Why is Delacroix considered to be one of the pioneers in the analysis of colour?

4. Why did the Impressionist painters discard black?

5. Why did the Impressionists refrain from mixing colours on their palettes? How was colour applied?

6. How can one recognize an Impressionist painting?