DOI article:
Frantz, Henri: A great French landscape painter: Jean Charles Cazin
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43448#0026
fean Charles Cazin
i
“MARAICHERIE—VINCENNES” (1899) BY J. C. CAZIN
of the great masterpieces of Italian art may not
have had some part in the spiritual tendencies
of his earliest pictures. But Cazin’s real artistic
fatherland is the North of France, and more particu-
larly the coast of the Pas-de-Calais—Boulogne,
Wimereux, Equihen, Montreuil, Abbeville. It
was from the landscapes of this region, so simple
in line and in form, that he derived the inspira-
tion for some of his finest productions, which,
on account of their solid handling, the beauty of
their colour, are worthy to rank with the best
works of Ruysdael or of Hobbema. One should
make a special category for his twilight effects, for
in this respect Cazin is absolutely unique. There
is in his works of this character a depth of feeling
which no one else has equalled.
I should like to be able to speak at much
greater length about each one of Cazin’s pictures,
to try and describe the charm which is as it were
enshrined in every single one of them; but I
must forbear, and as a matter of fact the illustra-
tions comprise very characteristic and faithful
reproductions ot some ot the lamented master’s
most complete and finished paintings. It only
remains for me to say something about the
essential qualities of Cazin’s art and the particular
attributes by reason of which it arouses our interest
and captivates our affection.
It is as though his extreme sensibility of vision
and the absolute truth and accuracy displayed in
the rendering of light and of form are allied in Cazin
with a kind of idealisation of the subject of his
works. If Cazin paints a farmyard, if he depicts
for us a corner of a village in the moonlight, we
are at once convinced of the accuracy of the
presentment and our reason is satisfied by the
fidelity with which the objects are drawn ; but at
the same time there seems to emanate from the
picture an intangible but intense poetic feeling
which transforms and idealises the subject. So
in his art the painter appears to be at one and
the same time an apostle of Realism and also of
Idealism; and this I believe to be something
practically unique in the region of painting.
12
i
“MARAICHERIE—VINCENNES” (1899) BY J. C. CAZIN
of the great masterpieces of Italian art may not
have had some part in the spiritual tendencies
of his earliest pictures. But Cazin’s real artistic
fatherland is the North of France, and more particu-
larly the coast of the Pas-de-Calais—Boulogne,
Wimereux, Equihen, Montreuil, Abbeville. It
was from the landscapes of this region, so simple
in line and in form, that he derived the inspira-
tion for some of his finest productions, which,
on account of their solid handling, the beauty of
their colour, are worthy to rank with the best
works of Ruysdael or of Hobbema. One should
make a special category for his twilight effects, for
in this respect Cazin is absolutely unique. There
is in his works of this character a depth of feeling
which no one else has equalled.
I should like to be able to speak at much
greater length about each one of Cazin’s pictures,
to try and describe the charm which is as it were
enshrined in every single one of them; but I
must forbear, and as a matter of fact the illustra-
tions comprise very characteristic and faithful
reproductions ot some ot the lamented master’s
most complete and finished paintings. It only
remains for me to say something about the
essential qualities of Cazin’s art and the particular
attributes by reason of which it arouses our interest
and captivates our affection.
It is as though his extreme sensibility of vision
and the absolute truth and accuracy displayed in
the rendering of light and of form are allied in Cazin
with a kind of idealisation of the subject of his
works. If Cazin paints a farmyard, if he depicts
for us a corner of a village in the moonlight, we
are at once convinced of the accuracy of the
presentment and our reason is satisfied by the
fidelity with which the objects are drawn ; but at
the same time there seems to emanate from the
picture an intangible but intense poetic feeling
which transforms and idealises the subject. So
in his art the painter appears to be at one and
the same time an apostle of Realism and also of
Idealism; and this I believe to be something
practically unique in the region of painting.
12