ust have
come somewhere about 1870. M. Vollard once asked him what he did during
the war. "Ecoutez un peu, monsieur Vollard! Pendant la guerre j'ai
beaucoup travaille sur le motif a l'Estaque." M. Vollard is too good a
patriot to add that during the war he also went into hiding, having
been called up for military service. Cezanne, I am sorry to say, was an
_insoumis_--a deserter. He seems to have supposed that he had something
more important to do than to get himself killed for his country. It was
not only in art that Cezanne gave proof of a surprisingly sure sense of
values. Some fulsome journalist, wishing to flatter the old man after he
had become famous, represented him hugging a tree and, with tears in
his eyes, crying: "Comme je voudrais, celui-la, le transporter sur ma
toile!" For a moment Cezanne contemplated the picture in terrified
amazement, then exclaimed: "Dites, monsieur Vollard, c'est effrayant,
la vie!" Useless to blame the particular imbecile: it was the world in
which such things were possible that filled him with dismay. I stretch
my hand towards a copy of the _Burlington Magazine_ and come plumb on
the following by the present Director of the Tate Gallery:

The truth is that the ecstasy of art and good actions are closely
interrelated, the one leading to the other in endless succession or
possibly even progression.

"Dites, monsieur Vollard, c'est effrayant, la vie!" [J]

[Footnote J: Since writing these words I learn that the director of the
Tate Gallery has been unable to find, in his series of vast rooms, space
for two small and fine works by Cezanne. It is some consolation to know
that he has found space for more than twenty by Professor Tonks.]

RENOIR [K]

[Footnote K: _Renoir_. Par Albert Andre. Cres et Cie.]

Renoir is the greatest painter alive. [L] There are admirers of Matisse
and admirers of Picasso who will contradict that, though the artists
themselves would probably agree. Also, there are admirers of M.
Bouguereau and of Sir Marcus Stone, there are Italian Futurists and
members of the New English Art Club, with whom one bandies no words.
Renoir is the greatest painter alive.

[Footnote L: This essay was written in 1919. He died in 1920.]

He is over forty: to be exact, he is seventy-seven years old. Yet, in
the teeth of modern theories that have at least the air of physiological
certainties, one must admit that he is still alive. A comparison between
the five-a