Mr. Steer's Exhibition

The Speaker, 3 March 1894. pages 249-250, 1,776 words

For the next six months picture-dealers will send out invitation cards to view a collection of sketches by Mr. So-and-So while travelling in Norway; a collection of sketches by Mr. So-and-So while cruising round the coasts of Greece; a collection of sketches by Mr. So-and-So while salmon-fishing in Scotland. It matters very little whether such pictures are executed from nature or from photographs, the result is practically the same; it is not art, it is topography.

Before sitting down to paint a landscape the artist must make up his mind whether he is going to use the trees, meadows, streams, and mountains before him as subject-matter for a decoration in the manner of the Japanese, or whether he will take them as subject-matter for the expression of a human emotion in the manner of Wilson and Millet – the innocent happiness of a May morning, with dew bright on the flowers and grasses – an impression of the sadness of twilight on a river.

I offer no opinion which is the higher and which is the lower road; they may be wide apart, they may draw very close together, they may overlap so that it is difficult to say along which the artist is going – but, speaking roughly, there are but two roads, and it is necessary that the artist should choose. But this point has been fully discussed on former occasions, and I only allude to it here because I wish to assure my readers that Mr. Steer's exhibition is not "Folkestone at low tide" and "Folkestone at high tide."

In all the criticisms I have seen of the present exhibition it has been admitted that Mr. Steer takes a foremost place in what is known as the modern movement. In this I entirely concur. I also noticed that it was admitted that Mr. Steer is a born artist. The expression, from constant use, has lost its true significance; yet to find another phrase that would express the idea more explicitly would be difficult – the born artist, meaning the man in whom feeling and expression are one.

The growth of a work of art is as unexplainable as that of a flower. We know that there are men who feel deeply and who understand clearly what a work of art should be; but when they attempt to create, their efforts are abortive. Their ideas, their desires, their intentions, their plans, are excellent; but the passage between the brain and the canvas, between the brain and the sheet of paper, is full of shipwrecking reefs, and the intentions of these men do not correspond in the least with their execution; their ideas wither and are lost in the execution; and noticing our blank faces, they explain their ideas in front of their works. They meant this, they meant that. Inwardly we answer, "All you say is most interesting; but why didn't you put all that into your picture, into your novel?"

Then Mr. Steer is not an abortive genius, for his ideas do not come to utter shipwreck in the perilous passage; they often lose a spar or two, they sometimes appear in a more or less dismantled condition, but they retain their masts; they come in with some yards of canvas still set, and the severest criticism that can be passed on them is, "With a little better luck that would have been a very fine thing indeed." And not infrequently Mr. Steer's pictures correspond very closely with the mental conception in which they originated; sometimes little or nothing has been lost as the idea passed from the brain to the canvas, and it is on account of these pictures that we say that Mr. Steer is a born artist. And once we grant that high title, the question arises, Is this born artist likewise a great artist – will he formulate his sensation, and give us a new manner of feeling and seeing, or will he merely succeed in painting some beautiful pictures when circumstances and the mood of the moment combine in his favour? And true lovers of art who visit the exhibition of this artist's work, now on view in the Goupil Galleries, will ask themselves what further developments Mr. Steer's talent will take. They will ask themselves if this be the furthest limit to which he may go, if he will discover a style entirely his own which will enable him to convey all his sensation of life upon the canvas.

There are very few young men whose work suggests any such question.

The fact that Mr. Steer does not draw well, and that he never will draw well, does not affect me in the least. For none will deny that it is better for him whose medium is colour to be a colourist rather than a draughtsman. Mr. Steer draws well enough to take a high place indeed if he can overcome more serious defects. His greatest peril seems to me to be an uncontrollable desire to paint in the style of the last man whose  work has interested him. At one time it was only in his most unguarded moments that he could see a landscape otherwise than as Monet saw it; then it was Whistler who dictated certain schemes of colour, certain harmonious arrangements of black; and the most distressing symptom of all is that Mr. Brabazon – an elderly amateur, who does a little, and does that little charmingly – could not hold an exhibition of some very nice tints of rose and blue without inspiring Mr. Steer· to go and swish water-colour about in the same manner. Mr. Steer has le défaut de ses qualités; his perceptions are naive: and just as he must have thought seven years ago that all modern landscape-painters must be more or less like Monet, he must have thought last summer that all modern water-colour must be more or less like Mr. Brabazon. This is doubly unfortunate, because Mr. Steer is only good when he is Steer, and nothing but Steer.

How much we should borrow, and how we should borrow, are questions which I cannot go into here. Suffice it to say that one of the most certain signs of genius is the power to take from others and to assimilate. How much did Rubens take from Titian? How much did Whistler take from the Japanese? Degas took his drawing from Ingres and his colour – that lovely brown – from Poussin. But, notwithstanding their vast borrowings, Rubens is always Rubens, Whistler is always Whistler, and Degas is always Degas. Alexander took a good deal, too, but he too remained always Alexander. We must conquer what we take, and Mr. Steer does not seem to conquer; he is merely influenced. It is like a man who swallows, but who cannot assimilate. Mr. Steer hardly ever gains from what he takes; I repeat he is only good when he is Steer, and nothing but Steer.

I must except that very beautiful picture, "Two Yachts lying off Cowes." Under a fast-deepening sky of mauve the yachts lie, their lights and rigging showing through the twilight. We may say that this picture owes something to Mr. Whistler; but the debt is not distressing; it does not strike the eye; it does not prevent us from seeing the picture – a very beautiful piece of decoration in a high key of colour – a picture which it would be difficult to find a fault with. It is without fault; the intention of the artist was a beautiful one, and it has been completely rendered. I like quite as well (1) "The Casino, Boulogne," the property, I note with some interest, of Mr. Humphry Ward, art critic of the Times. Mr. Humphry Ward must write conventional commonplace, otherwise he could not remain art critic of the Times, so it is pleasant to find that he is withal an excellent judge of a picture. The picture, I suppose, in a very remote and distant way, may be said to be in the style of Wilson. Again a successful assimilation. The buildings stand high up, piled high up in the picture, and a beautiful blue envelopes sky, sea, and land. Nos. 1 and 2 show Mr. Steer at

his best – that beautiful blue, that beautiful mauve, is the optimism of painting. Happy dreams; such colour is to the colourist what the drug is to the opium-eater – nothing matters, the world is behind us, and we dream on and on, lost in an infinity of suggestion. This quality, which, for want of a better expression, I call the optimism of painting, is a peculiar characteristic of Mr. Steer's work. We find it again in (11) “Children Paddling." Around the long breakwater the sea

winds, filling the estuary, or perchance recedes, for the incoming tide is noisier – a delicious, happy, opium blue, the blue of oblivion…. Paddling in the warm sea-water gives oblivion to those children. They forget their little worries in the sensation of sea and sand, as I forget mine in that dreamy blue which fades and deepens imperceptibly, like a flower from the intense heart to the delicate edge of the petals. The vague sea is drawn up behind the breakwater, and out of it the broad sky ascends solemnly in curves like palms. Happy sensation of daylight; a flower-like afternoon; little children paddling; the world is behind them too; they are as flowers, and are conscious only of the benedictive influences of sand and sea and sky.

The exhibition contains nearly every description of work – full-length portraits in oil, life-size beads, eight-inch panels, and some half-dozen water-colours. A little girl in a starched white frock is a charming picture, and the large picture entitled "The Sofa" is very fine work, full of true pictorial feeling – a most distinguished piece of work. But Mr. Steer is never common or vulgar; he is distinguished even when he fails. (42) "A Girl in a Large Hat" is a picture which became my property some three or four months ago. Since then I have seen it every day, and I like it better and better. That hat, so well placed in the canvas; the expression of the face and body – are they not perfect? What an air of resignation, of pensiveness, this picture exhales! The jacket is done with a few touches, but they are sufficient, for they are in their right places, And the colour! Hardly do you find any, and yet there is an effect of colour which few painters could attain when they had exhausted all the resources of the palette. G.M.