DOI issue:
No. 63 (May, 1902)
DOI article:Mourey, Gabriel: The art of M. Lucien Simon
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22773#0183
Lucien Simon
“ LES marguilliers” BY LUCIEN SIMON
People can’t enjoy, art which people don’t make a
^ss about, is not art at all!
M. Lucien Simon shrugs his shoulders, and goes
°n with his work. Nothing disturbs his serenity,
0r affects the sort of indifference with which he
Seems to regard the things about him; for this
c°ldness is merely apparent, and hides an ardent
Sensitiveness, a soul full of passion, and nerves
always a-quiver. The name of Gustave Flaubert
occurred to me a moment ago in this connection.
However arbitrary it may appear to compare a
Painter’s method of work with that of a writer—to
Say nothing of the results that spring therefrom—I
Nevertheless can discover the most striking analogies
between the author of “ Madame Bovary ” and the
Painter of the Retour de la Messe a Penmarch, the
Unites dans le Finistere, the Cirque Forain, the
Marguilliers, and the Procession. Their manner of
feeling appears to me identical as is their mode of
reproducing their sensations. Both are equally
bent on reality, both equally keen on discovering
S°od “ documents ”; nothing deters and nothing
alarms them in their researches; they do not fear
to go so far as caricature even, provided it be
human and real. This, however, is not their sole
aim; that is to say, they possess the same faculty
for perceiving and then fixing, by the means
of expression proper to their art, the essential
features of what may be termed “ the psychological
grimace.” In the one as in the other, there reigns
a love of that which is human, a burning desire to
reach the very heart of life, beneath its external
gestures, beneath its visible envelope. They never
particularise but to generalise the more broadly;
they devote themselves to the study of types simply
to bring into more luminous relief the ordinary
attributes of the human species.
Like Flaubert, again, M. Lucien Simon proceeds
by dint of elimination. From out a scene de moeurs,
a face, a bit of nature, he will retain only just so
much as it is important to retain, neglecting all the
rest; but he will have observed it all; and thus it
is that his pictures, which, so to speak, are reduced
and concentrated to the minimum, are really so
163
“ LES marguilliers” BY LUCIEN SIMON
People can’t enjoy, art which people don’t make a
^ss about, is not art at all!
M. Lucien Simon shrugs his shoulders, and goes
°n with his work. Nothing disturbs his serenity,
0r affects the sort of indifference with which he
Seems to regard the things about him; for this
c°ldness is merely apparent, and hides an ardent
Sensitiveness, a soul full of passion, and nerves
always a-quiver. The name of Gustave Flaubert
occurred to me a moment ago in this connection.
However arbitrary it may appear to compare a
Painter’s method of work with that of a writer—to
Say nothing of the results that spring therefrom—I
Nevertheless can discover the most striking analogies
between the author of “ Madame Bovary ” and the
Painter of the Retour de la Messe a Penmarch, the
Unites dans le Finistere, the Cirque Forain, the
Marguilliers, and the Procession. Their manner of
feeling appears to me identical as is their mode of
reproducing their sensations. Both are equally
bent on reality, both equally keen on discovering
S°od “ documents ”; nothing deters and nothing
alarms them in their researches; they do not fear
to go so far as caricature even, provided it be
human and real. This, however, is not their sole
aim; that is to say, they possess the same faculty
for perceiving and then fixing, by the means
of expression proper to their art, the essential
features of what may be termed “ the psychological
grimace.” In the one as in the other, there reigns
a love of that which is human, a burning desire to
reach the very heart of life, beneath its external
gestures, beneath its visible envelope. They never
particularise but to generalise the more broadly;
they devote themselves to the study of types simply
to bring into more luminous relief the ordinary
attributes of the human species.
Like Flaubert, again, M. Lucien Simon proceeds
by dint of elimination. From out a scene de moeurs,
a face, a bit of nature, he will retain only just so
much as it is important to retain, neglecting all the
rest; but he will have observed it all; and thus it
is that his pictures, which, so to speak, are reduced
and concentrated to the minimum, are really so
163