International studio (16.1902)

A Swiss Painter

Amongst this group, Charles Giron occupies a
deservedly distinguished position. Mr. Giron is at
once a landscapist and portrait painter. In each
of these branches of painting he has produced work
of an unmistakably high order, and in each it is a
Swiss landscape or a Swiss physiognomy in which
he finds inexhaustible subject-matter for artistic
treatment. lake many other Swiss artists, he has
studied for several years in Paris, where he
exhibited his L'Education de Bacchus in the Salon
of 1879. For this work, to employ his own words,
“I was designated for the ‘ Prix du Salon’ just
long enough for the discovery to be made that I
was not a Frenchman, and therefore not entitled to
receive it.” Since then honours have come to him
alike from Paris, Gand and Munich, but he wears
them lightly, his one absorbing passion being love
of his art for its own sake. “ I have obtained
some success,” he says, “ but have never dreamt ol
flaunting it in the eyes of the world, as is the
custom. This has disconcerted both the public
and the critic, who feel little inclined to run after a
fellow who deliberately seeks the bye-paths rather
than the high road, just because he desires liberty.”
In this spirit he has quietly worked on for the last
ten years in his own country, exhibiting only from
time to time, now in Paris, then in Munich, and
anon in Switzerland, the beautiful and mature
results of his work. As a landscapist, his subject
by predilection is the mountain in all its aspects, as
seen through an ever-changing Alpine atmosphere.
“ In 1885,” he says, “ I undertook some studies for
the execution of a vast canvas, in which I desired
to evolve in a new vision all that is dear to me in
the high mountains, their colossal architecture,
the brilliancy of the glaciers, the play of the
clouds, the blue atmosphere fading away in the
depths of the valleys. This work, to the studies
for which I have applied myself at intervals for a
long time past, is not yet finished, and I am not in
haste to finish it. It is often a refuge to me from
the common turpitude of existence. Perhaps I
shall never finish it . . . What then ! I paint for
myself.” This confession not only reveals to us
the artist’s passion for his favourite subject, but also
his frank delight in his art.
Of Mr. Giron’s treatment of mountain-landscape
his Paysans et Paysage, which was exhibited at the
Salon of 1885, is an admirable example both as to
composition and colour, and is of an essentially
Alpine character. It evoked the praise of critics,
specially for its fine rendering of the light, and the
blueness of the atmosphere, peculiar to Alpine
valleys. As in Paysans et Paysage so in the Cime
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de PEst, a small picture exhibited in the Swiss
section of the Paris Exhibition in 1900 ; and in the
Chaine de V Oberland, the same profound feeling
for mountain-landscape is manifested. Mr. Giron
is at home in these higher altitudes, he seems there
to have gained the freedom he desired, and the
significance of the eternal character of the moun-
tains, the shifting lights and shadows upon their
rugged walls, the marvellous sunset transfigurations
of their snow-clad summits, the subtle beauty of
the atmosphere in their valleys appeal not only to
his sense of form and colour, but to his imagina-
tion, for he has a touch of the poet in his nature.


PORTRAIT BY CHARLES GIRON
( Photograph by Braun)