International studio (23.1904)

Giovanni Segantini

upturned by the plough, and their far horizons, vast
in sweep, but of so mournful a monotony.
After the lapse of several years, during which
Segantini drew from these sources alone the inspira-
tion of his pictures, he decided to abandon the
Lombard plains for the mountains of the Engadine,
where he was destined thereafter to reside, summer
and winter, up to the day of his death. With this
passage from the plains to the mountains his art
entered upon a third period, which has not a little
in common with the second, but in which the Alps
become the true protagonists of his new works ; and
here the extraordinary limpidity of the atmosphere
at this great elevation, and the dazzling reflection
of the sun upon the glaciers, induced Segantini to
study more and more that complicated problem of
light in painting with which the minds of so many
modern artists are perplexed.
From the time of his first picture, representing
the choir of S. Antonio in Milan, Segantini (know-
ing nothing as yet of how much had been done on
the same lines in France), experimented with the
prismatic division of colour, in order to obtain a
more radiant effect of luminosity on the canvas. He
reverted subsequently to this first instinctive, un-
certain attempt, modifying and perfecting it to a
greater and greater degree; his technique, however,
—which at first aroused such bitter censure, but
whose brilliant evocative power now appears indis-
putable—although in principle it is related to that
of the French divisionists, differs in application,
multi-coloured lines replacing their spots and dashes
of pure colour, in such a way that the composition
of the colours partly takes place on the retina, and
in part is already effected on the canvas.
To this third category of Segantini’s works, in
execution so audacious and so scientific, and
fraught with such deep poetic charm, belong the
Ploughing in the Engadine, Winter in Savognino,
Cows under the Yoke, Alpine Pastures, The Home-
coming, Spritig in the Alps, and various other works
of less importance.
That it may be realised how Segantini loved and
understood those Alps which he never tired of
portraying, the following extract from one of his
letters may suffice, in which some months before
his death he wrote to me with lyric enthusiasm of
the great triptych which he was preparing for the
Paris Exhibition:—
“ For more than fourteen years I have been
studying, from the nature of the high mountains,
the concords of an Alpine work, a composition of
sounds and colours which shall contain within itself
the various harmonies of the high Alps, comprehend-
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ing them in a single whole. Only one who, like
myself, has lived for months at a time above the high,
luminous Alpine pastures, in the azure days of
spring, and has listened to the voices that rise from
the valley, the faint indistinct harmonies of distant
sounds wafted up by the winds, making around us
a harmonious silence that extends upwards into the
infinite blue of space, shut in at the horizon by
chains of rocky mountains and by snowy glaciers,
can feel and understand the high artistic significance
of these concords.
“ I have always thought how greatly my mind is
engrossed by these harmonies of mass, line, colour
and sound; and how the mind which governs
them, and the minds which observe and hearken
to them, are really one—unified and completed in a
feeling of light, which accords with itself, and
forms the perpetual harmony of the high mountains.
I have always tried to reproduce this feeling, in
part at least, in my pictures; but I think that
because (for various reasons) very few people ex-
perience or comprehend it, our art is incomplete, and
represents only certain beautiful details, not that
entire harmony of beauty which lives and gives life
to nature. That is why I thought of composing a
grand work, in which I could include, as in a
synthesis, the whole great feelingof Alpine harmony;
and I chose the Upper Engadine for my subject,
because I had studied it most, and because it is the
most varied and rich in beauty with which I am
acquainted. Here the mountain-ranges and the
eternal glaciers blend with the dark-green of pine-
forests ; the blue sky is reflected in lakes and pools
a hundred times bluer than itself; and the fertile,
spacious pastures are everywhere intersected by
veins of crystal water descending from the clefts of
the rocks to make all things green and fresh where
they pass. Everywhere the rhododendrons bloom,
and everything is full of melody, from the twitter-
ing of little birds to the joyous carol of the lark,
from the gurgling of the streams to the bells of
distant herds, even to the humming of the bees.”
The works of Segantini’s last years, though
preserving a substantial identity with their pre-
decessors, as any keen-sighted observer may see,
mark the new orientation of their author’s mind
towards that symbolism which to-day exerts an
increasingly potent attraction for the minds of
artists. To this latest period of his art belong the
three beautiful drawings in colour intersected by
faint lines and spots of gold, entitled : The Punish-
ment of Luxury, The Unnatural Mothers, and The
Angel of Life ; and the three pictures : Grief Com-
forted by Faith, Love at the Fomitain of Life, and