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"But," cry Seurat and Signac, "an infinitely purer and more beautiful tone than could have been obtained by any artificial blending of the colours on the palette a tone that is the exact equivalent of one of Nature's tones, for it has been obtained in exactly the same way." Truly a subject difficult to write about in English.
While Van Gogh was slowly perishing of a mad ecstasy for light, covering up a natural Dutch realism with fierce attempts at prismatic relationship, always with the rhythms in a state of ecstatic ascendency; and Seurat had come upon the more satisfying pointillism as developed by himself; somewhere in amid all these extravagances men like Robinson were trying to combine orthodoxy of heritage and radicalist conversion with the new and very noble idea of impressionism.
Professor Clausen is a temperate critic, MacColl a brilliant, revolutionary one. The critical temper in either man is not dogmatic. Seurat, the French Neo-Impressionist, has defended his theories; indeed, the number of talented Frenchmen who paint well and write with style as well as substance is amazing.
The Pointillists have to-day almost abandoned this transitional theory which, in spite of the undeniable talent of its adepts, has only produced indifferent results as regards easel pictures. Besides Seurat and Signac, mention should be made of Maurice Denis, Henri-Edmond Cross, Angrand, and Théo Van Rysselberghe.
At any given moment the best painter in England is unlikely to be better than a first-rate man in the French second class. Whistler was never a match for Renoir, Degas, Seurat, and Manet; but Whistler, Steer, and Sickert may profitably be compared with Boudin, Jongkind, and Berthe Morisot.
After a strict examination I was able to detect some differences, and I began to recognise the well-known touch even through this most wild and most wonderful transformation. Yes, owing to a long and intimate acquaintance with Pissaro and his work, I could distinguish between him and Seurat, but to the ordinary visitor their pictures were identical.
Seurat died very young, and one cannot but regret this death of an artist who would have been very interesting and capable of beautiful works. Those which he has left us bear witness to a spirit very receptive to theories, and leaving nothing to chance. The silhouettes are reduced to almost rigorously geometrical principles, the tones are decomposed systematically.
Consider Rain, Steam and Speed the Great Western Railway, that vision of a locomotive dashing across a bridge in chromatic chaos. Or the Sea Piece in the James Orrock collection a welter of crosshatchings in variegated hues wherein any school of impressionism from Watteau's Embarkment to Monet's latest manner or the pointillisme of Signac and Seurat may be recognised.
The first who painted thus was a Frenchman named Seurat, who tried it after closely studying experiments made in light and colour by Professor Rood, of Columbia University. After him came Pissarro, and then Monet. America also has such a painter, Childe Hassam, but nobody is so grotesque as Monet.
His parents still had six children left, all of whom were normal and healthy except a girl of twelve, who only weighed 18 pounds and bore marks of old age. There was a "living skeleton" brought to England in 1825 by the name of Claude Seurat. He was born in 1798 and was in his twenty-seventh year. He usually ate in the course of a day a penny roll and drank a small quantity of wine.
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