New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-01-14

/ One Of the most suggestive Of the
paintings in the Zuloaga exhibition.
| Just opened at the Duveen gallery, Is
, the big portrait of NJ. Maurice Barres.
/ We we'll remember the portrait of him
! that NJ. Jacques Blanche painted many
/ years ago--the daintiest imaginable i'm
preston of dandiacal young psyche
| logue. VI. Barres has changed since
} then. He has grown older and subtler.
/ He is no longer foppish. He has writ
( ten, among many interesting things,
I book about Toledo and FL Greco, and
we arc reminded Of this in Senior Zu-
/ loaca's painting. Book in hand. NJ.
/ Barres stands therein, posed amid
bleak rocks and looking across the
. Tagus at the city. What does he sym
/ bolze. this most modern of Parisians,
{ no longer the fashionable model Of NJ.
! blanche. but still correctly beglOved,
/ still the most urban, the most cosmo-
politan of figures? What, indeed, but
/ the very last word OF intellectual so
/ pbistication, the last word OF self-con-
scious, analytical habit. You have only
/ to substitute Senior Zuloaga for his
( friend in this picture and you begin to
! apprehend the key to the formers art.
( That is the first thing we have to
/ reckon with in his Interpretation of the
/ genius Of Spain, his sophistication, his
/ air of having come to his theme after
I contact with an eclectic civilization, his
! deliberate reconstruction OF an idea
/ from the outside-where another artist
might body il forth. from within, by the
! force of a kind of inner clairvoyance.
| But do not let us jump to conclusions.
/ The sophisticated artist ia not neces-
| sarily Inadequate. The trait may rank
! him. but il need not deprive his work
Of a certain arresting interest.
| Grant Senior Zuloaga the quality OF
his defect and there is no denying the
( force of his peculiar appeal. In the
/ preface which Mr. Christian Brnton
/ has written for the catalogue he quotes
/ some of the painters observations, as
/ follows:
/ ] realize that belong 10 another age that
3 I have remained sixteenth century person,
/ like the surroundings in which | grew up. !
| have horror of every manifestation OF mod
/ ernism | sbhor with all my beng
mere slsvish fidelity to fact-the stupid ana
1 seryile expedient Of those who are content
simply To cory nature. ] hold that the
/ painter is entitled 10 arrange. compose mag
I nifty and exalt those clements that 90 to make
up a given scene Docs not art exist
/ in the brain and heart as well az In the eye?
/ The longer ] live the more | detest those
/ trivial. snapshot effects without trace Of IN
divduaty. Of strangeness, or imaginative
/ force. We must simplify ourselves we must
: 90 back 10 the source Of things.
| paint only that which | like. in the way !
/ wish 10 paint it, and according 10 the dc
/ tstes OF my taste and temperament. Essen
TALLY and exclusively Spanish IN my sympa-
I thioa, | love my country with passionate
ardour and am unhappy anywhere and every
where else. 7 leave for Spain tomorrow. /
shall remain there all summer. going frat to
/ Rurgos, where I shall shut myself M in
/ Carthusian monastery and paint reiig Gus
pictures. shall put into my work emotion
only emotion, for trust that all else may dis
appearl
1t is an engaging manifesto, and, &C
cordng to his lights, Senior Zuloaga
has zealously lived up to IT, These
pictures Of his exactly express Just
such a hypothesis as may be inferred
/ from the foregoing passage. There is
/ nothing modern about them-that he is
conscious of. He arranges, composes
and magnifies those elements that go to
make up a given scene, and he does II
| i'm a mood which, if not suggestive OF
! the sixteenth century, is at all events