International studio (15.1901/1902(1902))

Le Sidanet

enchanted me ; also to Italy, thanks to a bourse
de voyage bestowed on me for a third medal gained
at the Salon des Champs-Elysees. Italy simply
turned my head, especially Florence, which
astounded me, as you may guess. Oh, the delicious
hours I spent in the Convent of San Marco
copying the face of the Virgin in Fra Angelico’s
Annunciation ! How greatly I preferred the
simple grace of Fra Angelico and Giotto to the
cleverness, the perfect knowledge of Titian and
Veronese and Tintoret !”

It was at Bruges, as we strolled at dusk along
the sleepy canals, that M. Fe Sidaner talked thus
to me of his past, and what he said in no way
surprised me, for, knowing his work intimately, I

had always guessed that he had a preference for
those artists who are somewhat disdainfully styled
“primitive.” To hear him recall, after so many
years, the remembrance of the hours he passed in
the companionship of the adorable frescoist of San
Marco enabled one to understand his artist’s soul
to its very depths.

In a word, Fe Sidaner regards life with the same
clear, ingenuous eyes, the same sense of the simple
poetry of things as did the good monks of the
13th and 14th centuries, holding converse, like
St. Francis, with birds and fishes and flowers;
only—whether for good or ill—without that touch
of faith burning in his breast which lit the way for
these holy personages. It is not the divine side of
things which interests and
inspires M. Fe Sidaner,
but the human. When
he selects for his subject
an ancient perron, with
mouldering steps and rusty
railings and moss-covered
stones, he thinks less of
the actual picturesque
beauty therein than of the
countless human beings
whose feet—now light with
joy, now heavy with sorrow
—have crossed this thres-
hold. Fe Sidaner, I take
it, is a sort of mystic
without faith.

Recall for a moment the
first picture he displayed
at the Champs-Elysees in
1887, Apres l'Office — the
humble, devout congrega-
tion leaving church on a
grey autumnal Sunday,
with the leafless trees
quivering in the damp air ;
or again, his La Prome-
nade des Orphelines, the
little group of children
wandering about on the
dull sands under the
charge of a white-clad
sister of Saint Vincent de
Paul — the little orphan
girls in their sad-looking
grey dresses, relieved only
by ribbons of blue and
green and red. In the
background, beneath the