The Moon And Sixpence 42.3

I will notdescribe the pictures that Strickland showed me. Descriptions of pictures arealways dull, and these, besides, are familiar to all who take an interest insuch things. Now that his influence has so enormously affected modern painting,now that others have charted the country which he was among the first toexplore, Strickland's pictures, seen for the first time, would find the mindmore prepared for them; but it must be remembered that I had never seenanything of the sort. First of all I was taken aback by what seemed to me theclumsiness of his technique. Accustomed to the drawing of the old masters, andconvinced that Ingres was the greatest draughtsman of recent times, I thoughtthat Strickland drew very badly. I knew nothing of the simplification at whichhe aimed. I remember a still-life of oranges on a plate, and I was botheredbecause the plate was not round and the oranges were lop-sided. The portraitswere a little larger than life-size, and this gave them an ungainly look. To myeyes the faces looked like caricatures. They were painted in a way that wasentirely new to me. The landscapes puzzled me even more. There were two orthree pictures of the forest at Fontainebleau and several of streets in Paris:my first feeling was that they might have been painted by a drunken cabdriver.I was perfectly bewildered. The colour seemed to me extraordinarily crude. Itpassed through my mind that the whole thing was a stupendous, incomprehensiblefarce. Now that I look back I am more than ever impressed by Stroeve'sacuteness. He saw from the first that here was a revolution in art, and herecognised in its beginnings the genius which now all the world allows.我不准备描写思特里克兰德拿给我看的那些画了。对绘画进行描述是一件枯燥乏味的事，再说，所有热衷此道的人对这些画早已了如指掌了。今天，当思特里克兰德对近代绘画已经产生了这么大的影响，当他同少数几个人首先探索的那块蛮荒之地已经测绘了详细地图之后，再有谁第一次看到他的画，早已有了心理准备了，而我则是破题儿第一遭看见这类作品，这一事实请读者务必记住。首先，我感到震骇的是他画法的笨拙。我看惯了的那些古老画师的作品，并且坚信安格尔是近代最伟大的画家，因此就认为思特里克兰德画得非常拙劣。我根本不了解他所追求的简朴。我还记得他画的一张静物，一只盘子上放着几只桔子，我发现他画的盘子并不圆，桔子两边也不对称，我就感到迷惑不解。他画的头像比真人略大一些，给人以粗笨的感觉。在我的眼睛里，这些头像画得象是一些漫画，他的画法对我说来也完全是新奇的。我更看不懂的是那些风景画。有两三张画的是枫丹白露的树林，另外一些是巴黎市街；我的第一个感觉是，这些画好象是出自一个喝醉酒的马车夫的手笔。我完全被弄糊涂了。他用的色彩我也觉得出奇地粗犷。我当时心想，这些绘画简直是一出没有谁能理解的滑稽戏。现在回想起来，施特略夫当时真称得起独具慧眼了。他从一开始就看到这是绘画史上的一个革命，今天全世界都已承认的伟大天才，他早在最初的那些年代就已辨视出来了。