Since Cézanne

The brave douanier was hardly master enough to have great and enduring influence; nevertheless, the sincerity of his vision and directness of his method reinforced and even added to one part of the lesson taught by Cézanne: also, it was he who--by his pictures, not by doctrine of course--sent the pick of the young generation to look at the primitives. Such as it was, his influence was a genuinely plastic one, which is more, I think, than can be said for that of Gauguin or of Van Gogh. The former seemed wildly exciting for a moment, partly because he flattened out his forms, designed in two dimensions, and painted without chiaroscuro in pure colours, but even more because he had very much the air of a rebel. "Il nous faut les barbares," said André Gide; "il nous faut les barbares," said we all. Well, here was someone who had gone to live with them, and sent home thrilling, and often very beautiful, pictures which could, if one chose, be taken as challenges to European civilization. To a