Chats on Art with Mr. George Moore

The Mail, 3 August 1905, page 2, 1,430 words

The Prince of Wales’ Corot

“A Nice Picture – of the Tea-Tray Order”

I.

Mr. George Moore lives in a street which diffuses the sweet scent of the eighteenth century, a street which is tenanted by many noble ghosts and revives many great memories. If a visitor to Ely place be able to think in pictures, he may catch a glimpse of Curran’s ugly face, or of Flood’s broken beak, or of Grattan’s graceless figure, or of the courtly Charlemont, as they enter or leave old No. 12, or he may listen to the howling of the mob which tossed dead cats for remembrance on the coffin of the well-hated Clare as he was being taken on his last journey to St/ Peter’s Churchyard. More than a century’s summers have blossomed and faded since the men lived there and the rabble yelped there, and to-day Ely place is notable chiefly because it is the residence of Mr. George Moore, some mortals, and some snails which have the bad taste to dine on Mr. Moore’s hollyhocks. It is more than a little difficult to associate snails and hollyhocks with the famous novelist and critic. Snails he would look upon as tedious, and hollyhocks are really to suggestive of the back gardens of Brixton; yet, when I called upon Mr. Moore a few evenings ago to talk about Corots and Monets and Manets he was returning from an exciting chase after

Molluscs that had been ruining his [illegible word].

I might have been surprised had I not remembered that Keats took snuff! Why then, I asked myself, should Mr. Moore not hunt snails? My pilgrimage to Ely place had been undertaken with the object of getting a critic’s opinion of the merits of the canvas attributed to Corot which has been presented to the Dublin Gallery of Modern Art by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. The experts have spoken –  indeed, it may be said they have shouted – in favour of the picture, but the critic’s voice has been small and almost still. There is all the difference in the world between the views of the expert and those of the critic – the one belongs to the market-place, the other to the study. Mr. Moore is frankly hostile to the picture. He derides the opinion of the whole hierarchy of experts. It is not a Corot, he asserts, and even if his opinion could be refuted he holds that there is absolutely no sound reason in Art why this bantling of the master’s brush should be acquired for the Dublin Gallery.

“The picture has been known to me for a great number of years – many years,” Mr. Moore said, in reply to a remark I made. “My friend Mr. Forbes showed it to me and we then discussed it together, and I remember very distinctly saying to him: ‘Surely, you don’t mean to say that that is a Corot’? I also remember well that Mr. Forves said

He did not think it was so either.”

“How then,” I asked, “is it possible to account for its presence as a Corot in a collection such as that made by Mr. Forbes?”

“The fact is,” said Mr. Moore, “that the real reason Mr. Forbes bought the picture was because – like practically  everybody else who collects – he bought both good and bad. When a man collects the days seem long to him when he doesn’t buy something, and so Forbes bought all kinds and conditions of pictures, as it proved by his collection in the Grafton Gallery. There they are – good, bad, and indifferent – Italian, German, and Spanish.”

“Then,” I said, “it might be argued that Mr. Forbes was a man of uncertain – even indifferent –  taste?”

“Without the explanation that the man who buys finds the days long when he doesn’t buy Forbes collection would show that he had no personal taste in pictures. He bought everything –  all kinds. But he really had a very fine taste. He simply bought this picture as a curiosity. It was said that Corot once painted something like it. At least the person who sold it said it was a very interesting specimen, the only existing picture of Corot’s in that manner.

The Picture of course, is not a Corot.

It has no resemblance to Corot – absolutely none. The only thing Mr. Forbes bought it for was as a curiosity. In the same way he would have bought Corot’s boots as a curiosity. It would have been certain that Corot wore the boots, but in this case the boots were never worn by him.” With a disdainful sweep of his hand the critic consigned the experts to outer darkness and the gnashing of teeth, and in my mind’s eye I could almost see the gypsy who sits in the foreground of the picture which hangs on the wall of the Rotunda of the National Museum drop her pitcher into Lake Balaton and scurry off ashamed and alarmed into the merciful gloom of the trees. Why cannot they speak those silent folk? There they sit sphynx-like on a few inches of painted canvas and tease poor mortals out of thought. The gods and men and maidens of the Grecian urn immortalised by Keats are not more elusory than are the figures which find a place on the pseudo-Corot which hangs in Kildare street.

My mental expedition in Hungary suggested the “Mészöly theory,” and I asked Mr. Moore if the canvas might not be one of the numerous studies which, as Count Zichy says, the Hungarian artist made of Lake Balaton.

“It is very likely,” Mr. Moore answered lightly, “but I don’t think it really matters. It might be done by a hundred people. The only artist it is very unlike – indeed, absolutely unlike – is Corot.” In asserting that it is not a picture which proclaims its authorship Mr. Moore is in agreement with the experts  who have admitted that it is unlike anything else that has come from Corot’s brush. But he goes further than they. “It is,” he said to me,

“A Nice Picture – of the Tea-Tray Order”

but even if it could be proved to be a genuine product of the French master’s studio “it would be a ridiculous picture for the purpose for which it has been bought – for the founding of a Gallery of Modern Art in Ireland. For the purpose for which you would buy Corot’s boots or neckties as souvenirs of a great man,” he continued, “it is well enough. But what we want in Ireland in an Irish Gallery – if we want an Irish Gallery at all – are things characteristic of Corot. The picture is as out of place as, supposing it could be proved that I had written an absurd essay at school on the subject of Balzshazzar’s Feast, it would be to catalogue that amongst my books as a representative work.”

It is impossible to say how far the authorities who control the new Gallery will allow their opinions to be influenced by Mr. Moore’s unqualified indictment of their taste and their knowledge. Experts in the matters of art will differ from each other, until

Earth’s last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried,

And the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died.

The gentle art of forgery is a profitable one. All galleries, all collectors, are victimised. During recent years a big trade has been done in spurious canvases attributed to David Cox, and in France  the forging of pictures has become almost a national industry. It is possible, however, to reconcile an admission of the difficulties of collectors with a demand that when a good case has been made against a canvas which is to be purchased by public money and hung in a public gallery, it shall either be withdrawn, or hung with the label “Doubtful” or “Spurious.” A strong case has been made against the “Corot” which hangs in the Museum. It has not been authenticated, nor has the Hungarian picture been explained away. Until either of these things be done the Dublin canvas must be looked upon with suspicion, and, of necessity, the reputation of the new Gallery must suffer.

Mr. Moore had many interesting remarks to make about art forgeries in general, and the composition of the Commission that has been appointed to inquire into the affairs of the Royal Hibernian Academy, but these must be reserved for a second article. R.M.