! That barbarian! The amiable director suggested
instead the name of Claude Monet. Time had enjoyed its little
whirligig with that great painter of vibrating light and water, but
Monet blandly refused the long-protracted honour. Another anecdote is
related by M. Duret. William II of Germany in 1899 wished to examine
with his own eyes, trained by the black, muddy painting of Germany,
the canvases of Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Cezanne, and Manet, acquired
by Director Tschudi for the Berlin National Gallery. He saw them all
except the Cezanne. Herr Tschudi feared that the Parisian fat would be
in the imperial fire if the Cezanne picture appeared. So he hid it. As
it was his Majesty nodded in emphatic disapproval of the imported
purchases. If he had viewed the Cezanne!

At first blush, for those whose schooling has been academic, the
Cezanne productions are shocking. Yet his is a personal vision, though
a heavy one. He has not a facile brush; he is not a great painter; he
lacks imagination, invention, fantasy; but his palette is his own. He
is a master of gray tones, and his scale is, as Duret justly observes,
a very intense one. He avoids the anecdote, historic or domestic. He
detests design, prearranged composition. His studio is an open field,
light the chief actor of his palette. He is never conventionally
decorative unless you can call his own particular scheme decorative.
He paints what he sees without flattery, without flinching from any
ugliness. Compared with him Courbet is as sensuous as Correggio. He
does not seek for the correspondences of light with surrounding
objects or the atmosphere in which Eugene Carriere bathes his
portraits, Rodin his marbles. The Cezanne picture does not modulate,
does not flow; is too often hard, though always veracious--Cezannes
veracity, be it understood. But it is an inescapable veracity. There
is, too, great vitality and a peculiar reserved passion, like that of
a Delacroix _a ribbers_, and in his still-life he is as great even as
Manet.

His landscapes are real, though without the subtle poetry of Corot or
the blazing lyricism of Monet. He hails directly from the Dutch: Van
der Near, in his night pieces. Yet no Dutchman ever painted so
uncompromisingly, so close to the border line that divides the rigid
definitions of old-fashioned photography--the "new" photography hugs
closely the mellow mezzotint--and the vision of the painter. An
eye--nothing more, is Cezanne. He refuses to s