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180 ENGLISH POST-IMPRESSIONISTS
The Impressionists, in rebellion, used form and
colour to register their visual impressions ;
they belong to the age of science and state
facts without comment. But every romantic
or impressionist painter who happened to be
an artist also used form and colour as means of
expressing and provoking pure aesthetic emo-
tion. It was not his fault if he flew in the
face of party principles ; he was an artist
and he could not help it. Cezanne was not
only a very great artist ; he was what is
almost as rare, a thoughtful one. So, in his
later periods, he came to use form and colour
solely as means of expressing and provoking
those extraordinary emotions that arise from
the contemplation of real or imagined form.
His theory quarrels with no vital school of art
that has ever existed. He merely sifted the
grain from the chaff, the relevant from the
irrelevant.
The Lake, by Cezanne, is therefore the most
aesthetic document in this exhibition
important
besides being the best picture. Cezanne set
modern art on the right road. The revolutionary
doctrine he bequeathed to Postis
Impressionism a truth as old as the Neolithic
Age the truth that forms and colours are of
themselves significant. The Italian Futurists
are at the opposite pole to Post-Impressionists
because they treat form and colour as vehicles