PARTISAN REVIEW
artificial and calculated for literary effect. The confrontation of
unlike things, the search for contrasts, often bring out hidden char–
acteristics which might otherwise escape us. Conflict is so basic
in
the growth of personality that the search for a dualism
in
the
artist
may be extremely fruitful for interpretation; much of recent criticism
proceeds from this insight and the modernity of Fromentin's book
lies partly in its dialectical approach. But the final image he gives
us of Rembrandt is certainly distorted. We cannot accept
his
idea
that Rembrandt preserved throughout his life two opposed styles; this
is hard to reconcile with his known development as an artist.
As
happens often, a personal pattern of interpretation betrays its element
of arbitrariness when it leads to a false conclusion. There is an in–
structive example also in Fromentin's account of Rubens. In 1875
almost nothing had been established concerning the painting of Van
Noort, Rubens' first teacher, although romantic tradition pictured
him as a vigorous, exuberant nature, the proper master of Rubens
and Jordaens. Fromentin was impelled to reconstruct his features
according to the requirements of his general theory, and to furnish
him with hypothetical traits from which could be deduced in turn
the Flemish qualities of his receptive pupil. But we know today that
Van Noort was completely unlike the image in Fromentin, who
based himself on a single work now recognized as by Jordaens. Far
from being the opposite of the academic Van Veen, Van Noort was
a weaker follower of the same Romanizing tendency and could scarcely
have offered the young Rubens an example of natural robustness
and freedom in art.
Fromentin's Van Noort is a novelistic invention and reminds us
that his novel,
Dominique,
is also built on antithetic pairings of
characters. But the importance he gives to the dualism of personality,
whether resolved as in Rubens, or maintained as a permanent strug–
gle, as in Rembrandt, is more than a literary device; we suspect that
it arises from a conflict within Fromentin, a consciousness of his own
polarity. He was painfully aware that the shortcomings of his art
were rooted in
his
character, and came to understand more deeply
than others what the personality of an artist meant for his work. In
his
time it was often said that as painter and writer he had a
double nature, and that he alone was equally capable as both. Today,
we value the writer more than the painter and we
ask
ourselves
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