Studio: international art (35.1905)

Count Sparres Etchings

MONTMARTRE CEMETERY FROM A PHOTOGRAPH

BY CLIVE HOLLAND

of the Butte. Its walls are decorated by them, and
there hang the little pictures, the personal works,
in a fraternal eclecticism, which was reflected in
the conduct and lives of its habitues. Here is no
cult of gilded mirrors, encaustic tiles, and modern
decorative fancies; merely plaster and wooden
walls, upon which hang tiny masterpieces by
painters of the past and present—those who have
“arrived,” and those who still have to do so.

At these soirees one may still find some of the
true Bohemians of the Butte, who have not yet
become respectable enough or sufficiently well-to-
do to migrate to the more fashionable resorts of
latter-day Bohemianism, “ L’Alouette,” “ Le Con-
servatoire de Montmartre,” and others.

In the “Quatz’ Arts,” with its fine and interesting
pictures, one may still meet with some of the better-
known poets and diseuses of Montmartre, while
hard by, in the Avenue Trudaine, is the old
“Grande Pinte,” renamed “ L’Ane Rouge,” which
contains an immense amount of Willette’s finest
work-in particular his Federee de la Rue du Tertre.

There are other cabarets, of course ; but few
nowadays are of account so far as true Bohemianism
and artistic comradeship of their habitues are
concerned.

There is one other aspect of Montmartre and
the Butte—night. Then, as the light dies away in
the west, leaving the wide Boulevard de Clichy

shadow-enshrouded, robbing the great Basilica of
its pink flush of dying day, rendering to the old
Rue St. Vincent a yet more potent witchery,
giving the Rue des Saules and the Cabaret des
Assassins a yet more sinister aspect, new Mont-
martre wakes up. The boulevards and newer
streets become more crowded, the older ones yet
more deserted. A myriad lights twinkle in windows
and shops; and, from below the Butte, looking
upward in the blue darkness, one can see nothing
of the squalor of mean streets, only the dark, im-
pressive mass of tangled houses, and the twinkling,
as it were, of captured stars.

The etchings of count

LOUIS SPARRE. BY GUSTAF
STRENGELL.

Count Louis Sparre’s etchings, which are
brought to our readers’ notice in this number of
The Studio, are based on subjects taken from the
old town of Borga, not far from Helsingfors.

“ THE CLOCK TOWER ” FROM AN ETCHING BY

COUNT LOUIS SPARRE

31