DOI article:
Segard, Achille: A French painter: Lucien Simon
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43450#0108
Lucien Simon
impression I make a rapid sketch in my note-book
of the large masses of the composition, and the
next day in the studio I execute the picture from
memory.” It is interesting to know this, for we are
thus shown how a fine work may be conceived and
executed. And the declaration is the much more
valuable when it concerns an artist such as Lucien
Simon, who, one feels, distrusts his memory and
his imagination and what he may possess of fancy.
Almost invariably his pictures proclaim clearly that
they have been executed face to face with his
subject, to which he has wholly submitted himself.
It is to this extreme severity that his work owes, no
doubt, its accent of truth, its force and its precision.
If we may venture to speculate as to the further
evolution of an artist who is now in the fullest
possession of his means of information and execu-
tion, one may hope that the art of Lucien Simon
will later on, while retaining the same precision and
the same exactitude of observation, be found to be
fraught with a little more freedom and liberty ; but
without doubt it will be due to
At the same time none of the pictures of Lucien
Simon lead one to believe that, correctly speaking,
he has the decorative sense. In this respect again
one touches upon a limitation to his talent. Many
of his admirers have misunderstood this question,
and have been rather apt to confuse the decorative
execution which it is not possible to deny to him
with a sense of decoration.
The essential quality of a decorative painting is
that of having been conceived with a view to a
particular position, of being adapted to that position,
of forming a part of its environment, and of so
associating itself with its place that it becomes im-
possible to remove it without detracting first from
its own beauty and secondly from the special
attractiveness of the architectural ensemble for
which it was created. The idea of the picture
should spring from the wall for which the artist is to
execute his work. Any painted work which is hung
upon that wall may be a magnificent work of art, but
the simple fact that one may place it there, may
the methodical cultivation of that
most precious faculty which
Lecocq de Boisbaudran in his
famous book designates as “ la
memoire pittoresque.” Up to the
present his development has been
in profundity, and he has de-
veloped specially neither his
imaginative nor his inventive
faculties. He has observed and
seen things with a penetrating and
sustained attentiveness, with in-
tentness and with ardour, but he
has so far only concerned himself
with painting what his eyes have
clearly seen.
The very numerous pictures
which the artist has executed with
his wife or his daughters for sub-
ject should not strictly speaking
be designated as portraits. In
this series of works the psycho-
logical interrogation of the
physiognomy of the model is not
the principal motif. These paint-
ings are interpretations of senti-
ment in which the faces play a
part, but in the rigorously exact
sense of the word they are not
portraits. They may more ap-
propriately be classed as decora-
tive works.
“EN BRETAGNE.” FROM THE WATER-COLOUR DRAWING BY LUCIEN
SIMON
96
impression I make a rapid sketch in my note-book
of the large masses of the composition, and the
next day in the studio I execute the picture from
memory.” It is interesting to know this, for we are
thus shown how a fine work may be conceived and
executed. And the declaration is the much more
valuable when it concerns an artist such as Lucien
Simon, who, one feels, distrusts his memory and
his imagination and what he may possess of fancy.
Almost invariably his pictures proclaim clearly that
they have been executed face to face with his
subject, to which he has wholly submitted himself.
It is to this extreme severity that his work owes, no
doubt, its accent of truth, its force and its precision.
If we may venture to speculate as to the further
evolution of an artist who is now in the fullest
possession of his means of information and execu-
tion, one may hope that the art of Lucien Simon
will later on, while retaining the same precision and
the same exactitude of observation, be found to be
fraught with a little more freedom and liberty ; but
without doubt it will be due to
At the same time none of the pictures of Lucien
Simon lead one to believe that, correctly speaking,
he has the decorative sense. In this respect again
one touches upon a limitation to his talent. Many
of his admirers have misunderstood this question,
and have been rather apt to confuse the decorative
execution which it is not possible to deny to him
with a sense of decoration.
The essential quality of a decorative painting is
that of having been conceived with a view to a
particular position, of being adapted to that position,
of forming a part of its environment, and of so
associating itself with its place that it becomes im-
possible to remove it without detracting first from
its own beauty and secondly from the special
attractiveness of the architectural ensemble for
which it was created. The idea of the picture
should spring from the wall for which the artist is to
execute his work. Any painted work which is hung
upon that wall may be a magnificent work of art, but
the simple fact that one may place it there, may
the methodical cultivation of that
most precious faculty which
Lecocq de Boisbaudran in his
famous book designates as “ la
memoire pittoresque.” Up to the
present his development has been
in profundity, and he has de-
veloped specially neither his
imaginative nor his inventive
faculties. He has observed and
seen things with a penetrating and
sustained attentiveness, with in-
tentness and with ardour, but he
has so far only concerned himself
with painting what his eyes have
clearly seen.
The very numerous pictures
which the artist has executed with
his wife or his daughters for sub-
ject should not strictly speaking
be designated as portraits. In
this series of works the psycho-
logical interrogation of the
physiognomy of the model is not
the principal motif. These paint-
ings are interpretations of senti-
ment in which the faces play a
part, but in the rigorously exact
sense of the word they are not
portraits. They may more ap-
propriately be classed as decora-
tive works.
“EN BRETAGNE.” FROM THE WATER-COLOUR DRAWING BY LUCIEN
SIMON
96