 | Our
admiration of Turner lies in this sense of dissolution of tints laid onto a damp
base, a harmony already given by an overall haze, whereas our astonishment at
Winslow Homer's tropical water-colours is for their glare, a brilliance rapidly
indicated by not using more than two washes, one for color, the other for action. ...Hinkson's
best paintings are close to Homer's. In our time, and particularly in countries
far from the metropolis of taste, any such indebtedness is looked on as imitation,
but the history of great painting is a succession, more tactilely obvious than
in the other arts. It is one step, or one wrist, from Courbet to Manet. Real painters
are not afraid to learn. Picasso kept learning at ninety, as different as he was
from Velàsquez. The modern critic may say that he did not copy Velàsquez
but reinterpreted him, but I am not sure Picasso would have said it, since even
Picasso would not presume to interpret Velàsquez. |
|