DOI issue:
Nr. 226 (December 1915)
DOI article:Biermé, Maria: Emile Claus, painter of sunshine
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43460#0140
Emile Claus
grass, and from the opposite bank the local rustics
gaze across at them. It is the children and the
old folks that the spectacle interests chiefly,—
those who are just embarking upon life and those
whose time draws near to leave it,—while the
fellow in the prime of manhood and the young
fresh-complexioned girl seated behind them con-
verse tranquilly without looking round. What,
indeed, matters it to them ? What is there apart
from their two selves—do they not possess all the
fulness of life ?
The works of Claus soon earned for the artist a
well-deserved renown. “By one great effort, at
a single stroke,” says Camille Lemonnier, “he
raised himself to the rank of the great portrayers
of Humanity and Nature.” All the same, Claus
was conscious that something was still lacking
from the accomplishment of his destiny—he knew
that his art had not yet discovered the road along
which to extend itself to the full. It so happened
that Claude Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro were
then coming to the front, and attracted by the
luminosity of their canvases, Claus set out for
Paris, where throughout several months he studied
their pictures and attended the discussions of those
who expounded the theory of Light. But their
words only half satisfied him. He felt the neces-
sity, so he said, of going to consult the great
master, that is to say, Nature, and in particular
Nature in his own fatherland. Camille Lemonnier,
who had presaged Claus’s true vocation, encouraged
him in his search, and invited him to stay at his
country house at La Hulpe in Brabant, where, as
the artist loves to tell, “ Camille Lemonnier and I
used to walk, arm in arm, in the sunlight.”
Lemonnier urged Claus to paint out in the open,
in full communion with Nature, and to clear his
colours so as to give the effect as of the very life of
the sunlight. With this the artist struggled and
wrestled, now shunning this light which beckoned
to him, now reapproaching, now fleeing from it
again, till at last the day arrived when he captured
and flung it, all palpitating with loveliness, into
his pictures. Well might Lemonnier then say:
“ Henceforth Light will be the life of his paintings
and of his own existence too”; and high up on
the front of the little white house with its border
of bright green like the hue of spring-time, shaded
“ WESTON,
84
HAMPSHIRE”
CHALK DRAWING BY EMILE CLAUS
grass, and from the opposite bank the local rustics
gaze across at them. It is the children and the
old folks that the spectacle interests chiefly,—
those who are just embarking upon life and those
whose time draws near to leave it,—while the
fellow in the prime of manhood and the young
fresh-complexioned girl seated behind them con-
verse tranquilly without looking round. What,
indeed, matters it to them ? What is there apart
from their two selves—do they not possess all the
fulness of life ?
The works of Claus soon earned for the artist a
well-deserved renown. “By one great effort, at
a single stroke,” says Camille Lemonnier, “he
raised himself to the rank of the great portrayers
of Humanity and Nature.” All the same, Claus
was conscious that something was still lacking
from the accomplishment of his destiny—he knew
that his art had not yet discovered the road along
which to extend itself to the full. It so happened
that Claude Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro were
then coming to the front, and attracted by the
luminosity of their canvases, Claus set out for
Paris, where throughout several months he studied
their pictures and attended the discussions of those
who expounded the theory of Light. But their
words only half satisfied him. He felt the neces-
sity, so he said, of going to consult the great
master, that is to say, Nature, and in particular
Nature in his own fatherland. Camille Lemonnier,
who had presaged Claus’s true vocation, encouraged
him in his search, and invited him to stay at his
country house at La Hulpe in Brabant, where, as
the artist loves to tell, “ Camille Lemonnier and I
used to walk, arm in arm, in the sunlight.”
Lemonnier urged Claus to paint out in the open,
in full communion with Nature, and to clear his
colours so as to give the effect as of the very life of
the sunlight. With this the artist struggled and
wrestled, now shunning this light which beckoned
to him, now reapproaching, now fleeing from it
again, till at last the day arrived when he captured
and flung it, all palpitating with loveliness, into
his pictures. Well might Lemonnier then say:
“ Henceforth Light will be the life of his paintings
and of his own existence too”; and high up on
the front of the little white house with its border
of bright green like the hue of spring-time, shaded
“ WESTON,
84
HAMPSHIRE”
CHALK DRAWING BY EMILE CLAUS