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Do as you are told by Louis XIV, or Lenin, or David: only be sure that it is as you are told. M. Lhote, of course, does nothing of the sort. He respects the tradition, he takes tips from Watteau or Ingres or Cézanne, but orders he takes from no man. He is an artist, you see. In many ways this respect for authority has served French art well.
So, if an artist happens also to be a Frenchman and the combination is admirably common what is he to do? Why, look one way and row the other; which is what M. Lhote does. He paints delightfully personal and impenitent pictures, and preaches artistic Cæsarism and David, "the saviour of society."
Now, look at a picture by Baudry or Poynter and you will see the last word in painting by precept. The virtuous apprentice has stuck to the rules. He has done all that his teacher bade him do. And he has done nothing else. David ought to be pleased. Pray, M. Lhote, give him top marks.
M. Lhote had several good things to say, and he said them clearly; the thing, however, which he said most emphatically of all was that he, André Lhote, besides being a painter and a writer, is a Frenchman. He has a natural taste for order and a superstitious belief in authority. That is why he recommends to the reverent study of the young of all nations, David David the Schoolmaster!
It is as unpardonable to call a Frenchman "illogique" as to shout after the Venetian who has almost capsized your gondola "mal educato" M. Lhote is "logique" all right: but "logical" in France has a peculiar meaning.
It is the fashion, I know, not to take his influence seriously. No matter how clever a man he may be, Lhote they say is not a big enough painter to be a chief. It may be so I suspect it is yet we should not forget that, besides being intelligent and capable of drawing more or less plausible inferences from premises of his own choosing, Lhote can point to a practice by no means despicable.
They seem hardly to have guessed that what one sees is but a transitory and incoherent fragment out of which it is the business of art to draw permanence and unity. They set down what they saw, and it is a bit of good luck if what they saw turns out to have somewhat the air of a whole. Yet M. Lhote, preaching his crusade against disorder, picks out the Le Nain and sets them up as an example.
Thus it comes about that the second master to whom M. Lhote would put this wild and wilful age of ours to school is that mysterious trinity of painters which goes by the name of "Le Nain." I can quite understand M. Lhote's liking for the brothers Le Nain, because I share it. Their simple, honest vision and frank statement are peculiarly sympathetic to the generation that swears by Cézanne.
So the doctrinaire side of the movement persists, animated by Picasso, and schooled to some extent by Lhote.
Le Nain's personages are engaged in being independent as little as possible." No Bolshevism here: and what a lesson for us all! Let painters submit themselves lowly and reverently to David, and seventeenth-century peasants to their feudal superiors. Not that I have the least reason for supposing M. Lhote to be in politics an aristocrat: probably he is a better democrat than I am.
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