DOI Heft:
No. 90 (August, 1904)
DOI Artikel:Jourdain, Frantz: Modern French pastellists: J. F. Raffae͏̈lli
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26962#0188
Modern French Pastellists
ODERN FRENCH PASTEL-
LISTS: J. F. RAFFAELLI.
BY FRANTZ JOURDAIN.
Like Minerva of the legend, emerging helmeted
and lance in rest, in full and immortal maturity,
from the brain of Jupiter, so M. Raffaelli has burst
into the world of art, without doubting, without
feeling his way, without showing the least hesitation
as to the road he intended to tread. Ancient
history left him cold ; he preferred the Jait divers,
the news of the day, the lively anecdote—his own
time, in fact—the landscape of life, the unchanging
and inspiring beauty of the Real. Never having
been intoxicated by the education taught at the
itcole des Beaux-Arts—which he had the inestim-
able good fortune to know by reputation only—the
artist has been spared from
offering the saddening and
frequent spectacle of a
young man, worn and
withered like an elder,
without vitality or initia-
tive, painfully stammering
a lesson learnt by rote,
copying works of which he
does not know the beauty,
atrophying himself over a
degrading task of sheer
routine, like a schoolboy.
Energetic and deter-
mined, M. Raffaelli as-
serted himself from the
very first, and took a place
of his own in the modern
school—the admirable
modern school, which, long
misunderstood, may by dint
of its brilliancy, its power,
its diversity, its respect for
truth, challenge compari-
sons with the most glorious
periods in the history
of humanity. The keen,
deep observation of this
Independent, who has
never rubbed his brushes
on any palette save his
own, fixes the charac-
teristics of a personality,
underlines the significant
points in a face, em-
phasises the definite
value of a tone, explains
146
the origin of the sentiments revealed in the features,
or the cause of this or that gesture—resumes, in a
word, by a few strokes of the brush, the psychology
of a human being. There is something of Daumier
and something of Zola in this rough and sometimes
brutal analyst, who ignores the pretty and the trivial,
who knows naught of concessions, -whose conscience
never fails.
Realising that in art beauty and ugliness have
no existence, and that talent, the omnipotent
magician, magnifies the most vulgar, even the
most repulsive, subject, whereas affectation dis-
honours the most admirable ideas, M. Raffaelli
turned straightway towards that kind of nature
which appealed to his temperament without obscur-
ing his vision by any foolish trifling with the em-
pirical formulae of the Institut. He was full of
‘FLOWERS AND FRUIT
FROM THE PASTEL P»Y I.
RAFFAELLI
ODERN FRENCH PASTEL-
LISTS: J. F. RAFFAELLI.
BY FRANTZ JOURDAIN.
Like Minerva of the legend, emerging helmeted
and lance in rest, in full and immortal maturity,
from the brain of Jupiter, so M. Raffaelli has burst
into the world of art, without doubting, without
feeling his way, without showing the least hesitation
as to the road he intended to tread. Ancient
history left him cold ; he preferred the Jait divers,
the news of the day, the lively anecdote—his own
time, in fact—the landscape of life, the unchanging
and inspiring beauty of the Real. Never having
been intoxicated by the education taught at the
itcole des Beaux-Arts—which he had the inestim-
able good fortune to know by reputation only—the
artist has been spared from
offering the saddening and
frequent spectacle of a
young man, worn and
withered like an elder,
without vitality or initia-
tive, painfully stammering
a lesson learnt by rote,
copying works of which he
does not know the beauty,
atrophying himself over a
degrading task of sheer
routine, like a schoolboy.
Energetic and deter-
mined, M. Raffaelli as-
serted himself from the
very first, and took a place
of his own in the modern
school—the admirable
modern school, which, long
misunderstood, may by dint
of its brilliancy, its power,
its diversity, its respect for
truth, challenge compari-
sons with the most glorious
periods in the history
of humanity. The keen,
deep observation of this
Independent, who has
never rubbed his brushes
on any palette save his
own, fixes the charac-
teristics of a personality,
underlines the significant
points in a face, em-
phasises the definite
value of a tone, explains
146
the origin of the sentiments revealed in the features,
or the cause of this or that gesture—resumes, in a
word, by a few strokes of the brush, the psychology
of a human being. There is something of Daumier
and something of Zola in this rough and sometimes
brutal analyst, who ignores the pretty and the trivial,
who knows naught of concessions, -whose conscience
never fails.
Realising that in art beauty and ugliness have
no existence, and that talent, the omnipotent
magician, magnifies the most vulgar, even the
most repulsive, subject, whereas affectation dis-
honours the most admirable ideas, M. Raffaelli
turned straightway towards that kind of nature
which appealed to his temperament without obscur-
ing his vision by any foolish trifling with the em-
pirical formulae of the Institut. He was full of
‘FLOWERS AND FRUIT
FROM THE PASTEL P»Y I.
RAFFAELLI