International studio (33.1907/1908(1908))

Victor Rousseau, Sculptor

Future. The figures are seated, and are united
in a most harmonious movement.
“ The eldest of the three ” (writes M. Lam-
botte), “ suffering already from the realities of life,
takes refuge in the sadness of her deception. Full
of bitterness, and living again in an irrecoverable
past, she bends forward, motionless, with all the
scorn of her useless strength, and, nobly resigned,
is the incarnation of the contemplative life. The
second woman is represented in an instantaneous
gesture: leaning towards her younger companion,
she counsels an active life; but the maiden with
eyes closed to the external world remains wrapped
in her inviolate dreaming. The whole future, in
all its force, lies beneath her smooth brow, her fair
illusions are not yet vanished, the brutalite of the
present, no less than the rancour of the past, has
no effect upon her hopes. This work combines
with beauty of imagination a perfection which is
quite astonishing. The accuracy of proportions,
the nobility of gesture, the aristocracy of the types,
the harmony and the amplitude of the grouping,
together with the technical knowledge shown in
the realisation, combine to make up an etisemble
the charm of which is undeniable.”
No less remarkable than his imaginative works,
the portraits—and they are many—already pro-
duced by Victor Rousseau,
proclaim the deep and virile
nature of his marvellous
talent. Without exception
these portraits reveal some-
thing more than a mere
superficial and passing
aspect; they form—it has
been well said—“ plastic
interpretation of brains and
temperaments, and they
have a generalised but
definite resemblance which
counts for much more than
mechanical observation.”
One of his first successes
was the truly masterly bust
he did of Madame Fran-
<joise Rousseau—“thecom-
panion with the great heart
and the lofty mind, who
sustains and aids the artist’s
efforts with admirable con-
science.”
In his busts of children
the subtle sculptor has
taken a pleasure, one may
106

say, in following the complex modelling of these
faces, with their outlines at once so precise and so
indefinite. In his busts of women he has gladly
emphasised the delicacy of the features and the
suppleness of their movements, always displaying
proof of a most personal method of interpretation.
If, for instance, the small bust of Madame de
Gerlache in terra cotta and onyx, in its mode of pre-
sentation, recalls the French art of the eighteenth
century, it is nevertheless impossible to assert that
it brings back the memory of any particular work
of that period.
The same with a little bust of a young girl, in-
tended to form part of a decorative ensemble in the
style of the Italian Renaissance. It is so in-
geniously composed in all its parts that it never
brings to the mind any suggestion of copying or of
imitation.
In the reproduction of the bust of Mile. S. now
given (p. 108), one sees with what pleasure the
artist has displayed in definite fashion the curious
beauty of this young girl, the strange charm of her
ingenuous features, the suppleness of the graceful
curve of her neck.
But it is m the very fine bust of Constantin
Meunier, also reproduced here, that the young
sculptor has risen to the greatest height. Meunier


“ l’ete ”

BY VICTOR ROUSSEAU