International studio (31.1907)

A man-Jean s Pastels

But the poetry of the painter dominates all this
and ennobles it, so that the most elaborate frills
and furbelows assume the dignity of drapery.
Thus is modern life promoted to the more elevated
rank of a dream.
With her strange, feline, rather kittenish ex-
pression — gracefully tender, elegantly familiar,
enigmatically sweet, clever, voluptuous and roguish
■—with her air of happy or mischievous irresponsi-
bility, as the lively pupil of her eye sparkles
beneath the arch of her brow, and her mouth
opens like a scented flower to show the enamel of
her white teeth — the favourite heroine of the
pastellist is a sister or at least a near relative of the
sirens or muses of the painter, of his delicate pallid
Venetians, of his pensive ladies of fashion, and of
that exquisite Petite Tete a la Rose which adorned
the Salon of 1898, or that feminine dream Sous la
Guirlande, which was among the most delicately
coloured crayons of 1906.
Beside a mysterious Far-niente which reveals the

white throat or shows the bare arm pressing upon
a cushion, his Violoniste sits erect and dreamy.
With a poet like this even sensuality is sentimental,
purely intellectual, slightly neurasthenic. After the
forcible art of the impressionists this delicate art
may be defined as the convalescence of style.
And our modern restlessness is reflected on all
these faces. The compassionate portraitist sym-
pathises with his models. Contemporary woman
is interpreted by a thinker who can translate soul
into form. A secret seems to hover around these
fortunate lives : the pleasing anxiety of expectation
or the bitter joy of remembrance. The garden
appears a gloomy Cythera ; it is no longer as in
former days : “ File des doux secrets et des fetes du
caeurS
Thus the artist in his bright and peaceful
studio, filled as he is with the joy of his art, is not
oblivious of the sad multitude of those who will
never have any ideal beyond that of their daily
bread. Raymond Bouyer.


“ FAR-NIENTE
29O

BY AMAN-JEAN