Art britannique

Cet air triste qu’on trouve souvent chez les chiens, si bien représenté ici par le peintre, d’où vient-il ? Est-ce du fait de la liberté sauvage perdue, de la soumission millénaire à l’homme ?

Ce tableau figure parmi les centaines d’autres de l’art britannique, objet d’un musée entier de l’université de Yale. C’est énorme, on a l’impression d’en trouver plus que n’importe où à Londres, et tout ça dans une seule université. Comme si le musée d’art (Yale University Art Gallery) ne suffisait pas, un immeuble juste en face abrite cette magnifique collection. On la doit au milliardaire et mécène Paul Mellon. Tellement riche que là aussi il faut classer, entre les marines, les paysages, les portraits, les tableaux évoquant des pages d’histoire ou les grands mythes, le théâtre, l’opéra, et enfin les voyages, surtout l’Orient.

Toujours est-il que le musée dément l’affirmation négative sur l’art anglais d’une matrone allemande, très anglophobe (elle a des excuses, on est en 1915 ou 1916), personnage du roman de Somerset Maugham, Ashenden* dans le chapitre The Traitor:

It was amusing once to hear her before luncheon play one of those silvery little pieces of Debussy; she played it disdainfully because it was French and so light, but with an angry appreciation of its grace and gaiety. When Ashenden congratulated her she shrugged her shoulders.
‘The decadent music of a decadent nation,’ she said. Then with powerful hands she struck the first resounding chords of a sonata by Beethoven; but she stopped. ‘I cannot play, I am out of practice, and you English, what do you know of music? You have not produced a composer since Purcell!’
‘What do you think of that statement?’ Ashenden, smiling, asked Caypor, who was standing near.
‘I confess its truth. The little I know of music my wife taught me. I wish you could hear her play when she is in practice.’ He put his fat hand, with its square, stumpy fingers, on her shoulder.’ She can wring your heartstrings with pure beauty.’
‘Dimmer Kerl,’ she said, in a soft voice, ‘Stupid fellow,’ and Ashenden saw her mouth for a moment quiver, but she quickly recovered.
‘You English, you cannot paint, you cannot model, you cannot write music’
‘Some of us can at times write pleasing verses,’ said Ashenden,
with good-humour, for it was not his business to be put out, and, he did not know why, two lines occurring to him he said them:
‘Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,
Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Caypor, with a strange gesture, ‘you can write poetry. I wonder why.’
And to Ashenden’s surprise she went on, in her guttural English, to recite the next two lines of the poem he had quoted.

Ashenden, or The British Agent, 1928 

Étiquettes : Ashenden, George Stubbs, somerset maugham, The British Agent, WWI, Yale center for British Art, Yale University Art Gallery