The Moon and Sixpence - Penn State University

The Moon and Sixpence
stales one’s admiration for him: the Cretan, sen- which succeeding writers, with more or less dosual
and tragic, proffers the mystery of his soul cility, have followed. For a long time no critic has
like a standing sacrifice. The artist, painter, poet, enjoyed in France a more incontestable author-
or musician, by his decoration, sublime or beauity, and it was impossible not to be impressed by
tiful, satisfies the aesthetic sense; but that is akin the claims he made; they seemed extravagant;
to the sexual instinct, and shares its barbarity: but later judgments have confirmed his estimate,
he lays before you also the greater gift of him- and the reputation of Charles Strickland is now
self. To pursue his secret has something of the firmly established on the lines which he laid
fascination of a detective story. It is a riddle which down. The rise of this reputation is one of the
shares with the universe the merit of having no most romantic incidents in the history of art. But
answer. The most insignificant of Strickland’s I do not propose to deal with Charles Strickland’s
works suggests a personality which is strange, work except in so far as it touches upon his char-
tormented, and complex; and it is this surely acter. I cannot agree with the painters who claim
which prevents even those who do not like his superciliously that the layman can understand
pictures from being indifferent to them; it is this nothing of painting, and that he can best show
which has excited so curious an interest in his his appreciation of their works by silence and a
life and character.
cheque-book. It is a grotesque misapprehension
It was not till four years after Strickland’s which sees in art no more than a craft compre-
death that Maurice Huret wrote that article in hensible perfectly only to the craftsman: art is a
the Mercure de France which rescued the un- manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a
known painter from oblivion and blazed the trail language that all may understand. But I will al-
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