:2ii 



DISCOVHHY 



who was tr\'ing to sell magazines to the passengers. Out 

 of sheer pity he bought one of her wares. His charity 

 was amply rewarded. In the magazine he happened 

 to buy was an article, describing a compressed-air borer 

 in the Mont Cenis Tunnel, which gave him the clue for 

 his pneumatic brake. 



At least one valuable invention was the offspring of 

 sheer laziness. In 1846 a railway pointsman, who had 

 to attend to two station signals some distance apart, 

 decided to save himself the trouble of walking to and 

 fro between them by fastening the two levers together 

 with a long piece of wire. A broken iron chair 

 ser%'ed as counterweight. The wire ran on into his hut, 

 where he sat nightly by his fireside and worked the 

 two signals without setting foot outside. Presently 

 the railway authorities found it out, reprimanded the 

 lazy pointsman for his indolence, promoted and 

 rewarded him for his ingenuity, and adopted his 

 invention. 



Revolutionary Movements 

 in Modem Painting 



By Edward Liveing. B.A. 



Every great era of art and literature has been preceded 

 by a period of crude and restless experimentation. 

 It is in such a period, so far as one can judge, that we 

 are living at present. In music our ears are being 

 accustomed to those strange, weird discords that are 

 floating to us from Prague, Buda-Pest, and Vienna. 

 In literature we have been both blessed and plagued 

 by the rapid rise, especially since the war, of the 

 psychological novel, whose origin does not lie, as so many 

 critics have pointed out, merely in the development of 

 psycho-analysis, but goes as far back for its origins as 

 the great Russian novelists of the nineteenth century, 

 Dostoievsky and Turgeniev, and, somewhat later, the 

 delicately introspective studies of Tchehov and, in 

 France, the bitingly introspective tales of Guy de 

 Maupassant. The psychological novel is only part 

 of a general tendency in modern fiction to represent 

 life more truly and accurately in every detail. In 

 poetry we have had for more than a decade our 

 exponents of a similar realistic method, which found its 

 opportunity in the war and gave us the harshly power- 

 ful poems of Siegfried Sassoon and the impressionistic 

 verses of the Imagistes. 



It is in the art of painting, however, that the greatest 

 revolutions have taken place. Some of their creations 



have lately penetrated the portals of the Royal 

 Academy, and have also appeared side by side with 

 those of the "Academics " in that interesting Nameless 

 Exhibition held during May and June at the Grosvenor 

 Galleries. 



Too much praise and too much censure have been 

 showered on these new movements. Before pro- 

 nouncing judgment upon them, we need to discriminate 

 very carefully between their various branches and 

 tendencies. Nothing better has been done in this 

 direction than by Mr. Frank Ruttcr in The Edinburgh 

 Review ' of last April. To his enlightening article I am • 

 largely indebted for the following remarks, and I 

 heartily recommend it to those who desire further 

 knowledge about these new schools. 



It is an interesting fact that science has been the most 

 important factor in their origin. Science gave us 

 photography ; it also taught us that the colour of 

 light is not just yellow or white, and that the colour 

 of darkness is not merely black. Photography 

 destroyed the idea so long entertained by artists and 

 expressed by Sir Joshua Reynolds that painting was 

 the accurate presentation of " the forms which Nature 

 produces." Painters had to seek a new excuse for the 

 existence of their art, and it was this urgency that 

 evolved the school of Impressionism. 



Impressionism started in Paris soon after the Franco- 

 Prussian \\a.T. Its main ideas were to portray our 

 first, sudden impressions of scenes and objects, 

 accentuating the lines and features that we notice 

 immediately, and omitting details not assimilated by 

 our minds till later ; and, in the place of the former 

 whites and blacks for light and darkness, to substitute 

 their true colours discovered by the study of optics- 

 This is the reason why light is so often painted by the 

 Impressionists with blues and yellozvs, and darkness with 

 blues, greens, and purples. The two chief exponents of 

 Impressionism are Monet and Pissarro. The latter 's 

 pictures have been largely exhibited in England. 



Neo-Impressionism and Divisionism constitute a 

 more scientific development of Impressionism. They 

 were brought about by Seurat and Signan in the 

 nineties and aimed at a more scientific contrast of 

 colours. For instance, in order to obtain the colour 

 grey, the artists of these schools would place green and 

 violet side by side with each other, the colours blending 

 at a distance into the single required colour. 



Post-I mpressionism was, p>eculiarly enough, started 

 by an Impressionist,- Paul Cezanne (1839-1906.) His 

 desire was " to make of Impressionism something solid 



' The article referred to is " Extremes of Modem Painting, 

 1870-1920." 



» For a study of the work of this great artist see articles by 

 M. Maurice Denis in The Burlington Magazine. Nos. 82 and 83 

 (2/6 per number). 



