International studio (21.1903/1904(1904))

HARVESTtNG

BY F. KA1.LMORGEN

line or two on a couple of artists, Marie Laroche
and Heinrich Otto, who have pubiished their
lithographs independentty.
Miss Laroche's drawings are noteworthy on
account of their simplicity of conception as distinct
from simpie execution. There are no studied
effects to be found in them; Miss Laroche never
strives to surprise and captivate us by making her
lithographs bear out refined or involved principles.
She has adopted the
straightforwardness of her
teacher, Hans Thoma,
and she is one of the
worthiest of his disci-
ples. For, whereas several
others imitate peculiari-
ties of drawing, especial
types, and particular
rules of composition that
they lind in Thoma's
works, she lives intel-
lectually a life like his,
and that is the extent of
imitation to which she
goes.
No one in Germany
has the gift of making a
few colours go a greater
way than Heinrich Otto.
With only three and
four stones he can achieve "BATHERs"

effects that seem to depend upon the use of
at least double as many. Conscious of this
talent, he chooses subjects in which he can
best bring it into play; yet he is never rnerely
clever, and his skill in the treatment of the
lithographic colour-technique is in no case
obtrusive. He is interested in all effects of
light that are in any way out of the common.
The lithograph called öfters a splen-
did example. We are introduced to a twi-
light scene with an autumn full moon rising
over hazy corn-ßelds; in the foreground a
weary field labourer, shouldering his scythe,
passes before the large haystacks. There is
a kind of strife between the light of the
scorching sun just sunk, which has rnade all
objects glare and glow, and the wan sheen
of the moon that robs them of their pronounced
outline—draws the colour out of them, as it were,
and leaves them only their different intensity of
darkness or brightness. This rare effect is pro-
duced by means of four stones only. In another
case, a -Ez/%
but two are used—a brown and a blue one, printed
on greenish paper. It is as if we could feel the
quiet of that empty byway, pervaded by the balmy
summer air, in the dead of the night, under a clear,
passive moon and a high, starry sky. The print
öfters a remarkable proof of the fact that it is
unnecessary to use sombre hues when one wants
to portray moonlight nights. Even the shadows
show a sort of transparency; and although it comes

BY I.UDWtG VON HOFMAX
315