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International studio — 14.1901

DOI Heft:
No. 56 (October, 1901)
DOI Artikel:
D'Anvers, N.: Robert Weir Allan and his work
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22775#0327

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R. IV. Allan

Royal Academy, where it attracted considerable
attention on account of its vivid truth of atmos-
pheric effect. In spite of these successes, however,
the young artist felt very strongly that he needed
something more in the way of instruction and
experience than he could gain in Scotland, and he
took what was then the somewhat bold step of
going, not, as most of his fellow-countrymen did,
to London, but straight to the fountain-head of art
production, Paris, where he worked hard in the
atelier of Julian and at the 6cole des Beaux Arts,
under Cabanel,' forming friendships amongst his
fellow-students which have lasted his life-time.

Of a deeply interesting personality, with a rare
power of winning the hearts of those with whom he
was brought in contact, Robert Allan as a young
student is remembered with warm affection by
many who knew him in the good old days when
hope was strong and all things seemed possible to
those who could work and wait. Much has been
written on student life in Paris, a subject which
appears to exercise an irresistible fascination on
all readers, whether they belong to the initiated or
to the outside world, but it is rare indeed for an
artist to tell the story of his own early struggles.
Could the great wielders of the brush use the pen

with equal effect, their simple narratives of what
actually came under their own observation would
be far more interesting than any imaginary tale,
however finely conceived.

As the wife of one of Robert Allan’s fellow-
students, it was the privilege of the present writer
to be admitted into the inner circle of the little
community of English-speaking artists who in the
early eighties were still keeping up the traditions
of hard work and frugal living which were, as a
rule, inseparable from the probation time even of
the most gifted. What careful yet careless days
those were ! How ready all the young fellows
were to rejoice in each other’s successes and to
condole with each other in their far more numerous
disappointments, for students met on equal terms
from the Beaux-Arts, where Cabanel, Gerome and
Lehmann were then teaching, and from the ateliers
of masters of aims and methods so different as those
of Carolus Duran, Laurens, Henner, Lefebvre,
Robert Fleury, Boulanger, Bougereau, and the
Austrian, Munkacsy.

Outside the academic world, Bastien Lepage,
whose tragic end was even then rapidly approach-
ing, was the special idol of the students, every-
thing he produced and everything he did being

“MARKET MORNING, ANTIBES”

BY R. W. ALLAN

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