International studio (31.1907)

Leon Frederic, Belgian Painter

his apprenticeship was not destined to be of long
duration. Alexandre Robert, the ‘ romantic ’
painter, was a friend of the Frederic family, and
said he to the father : ‘ Make your boy a decorator
if you like, but for goodness sake let him learn the
elements of decoration, that is to say, drawing; and
I know of no better school to teach him the art of
drawing, which is of the first importance, than the
Academic.’ Thus it came about that for a couple
of years Leon Frederic attended the Academy
classes. At that period Jean Portaels had under
his charge a second set of pupils, who attended his
atelier libre. And it was under the discipline of
Portaels that Frederic learned to paint, until the time
when the class was disbanded. Then he was free
to continue his artistic education with Ernest
Slingeneyer.”
Frederic then went up for the Prix de Rome, but
was “ploughed” in the preliminary. Neverthe-
less, his father, being of opinion that a stay in
Italy was the complement of all artistic education,
gave him permission to visit the classic home
of painting, and his visit had a considerable
influence over the young artist. As Octave
Maus in “L’Art Moderne ” very justly remarks :
“ If I had to fix the spiritual ancestry of Leon
Frederic I should be inclined to seek it, on the
one hand, among the Italian masters of the six-
teenth century—Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, or some
other such painter equally frank and thoughtful;
on the other, among the old Flemish painters ■
who were passionately fond of the direct study
of Nature, and who, from sheer joy of painting,
discovered in the intimate life around them
sources of inspiration which were constantly
being renewed. The Italians would seem to
have bequeathed to him, together with a regard
for harmony of setting, an inclination in the
direction of the mystic charm of womanly and
childish beauty. From the others he derives
that love of the beings and the things around
him, which he reproduces unceasingly with the
most scrupulous exactitude, being convinced
that in point of beauty Nature is unsurpassable,
and that the greatest work of art cannot attain
to the splendour of an open flower, a field of
corn waving in the breeze, a bird of variegated
plumage, a hurrying of the clouds, a stream
flowing between grassy banks. Eugene Fro-
mentin, in ‘ Les Maitres d’Autrefois,’ has
observed that Italian art is ‘ at home ’ through-
out Europe, save in Belgium, whose spirit it
has distinctly influenced but never conquered,
and in Holland, which formerly made a sem-
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blance of consulting it, and finally passed it by.
This is true in so far as it relates to Mabuse, the
first Flemish painter to visit Italy, to Van Orley,
to Floris, to Coxie, and it was the same with
regard to Frederic. The double, and apparently
contradictory, influence he underwent invests his
art with a very special character. At once
idealistic, and yet strongly impregnated with
reality, it expresses eternal symbols in the most
ordinary language of life. The types by which
he is inspired are taken at random and placed
on the canvas in all their simple truth of
attitude and gesture and feature, with a savour
of rusticity at times somewhat acrid, in strong con-
trast with the nobility of the parts assigned to them.
As a poet, Leon Frederic mentally transposes the
visions which Nature offers, and, doubtless, when a
young mother appears before him in the fields,


“ LE CERISIER FLEURI ” BY LEON FREDERIC