International studio (57.1915/1916)

Emile Claus

silhouette of the distinguished Constantin Meunier,
at a moment when the latter was putting the finish-
ing touches to a drawing in his studio ; he had
caused his own home, “ Zonneschyn,” with its
garden, to live upon the canvas, and with it a copper
beech and venerable oak; but it had never occurred
to him to paint the portrait of his old fir-tree, daily
becoming more withered up by age. However, as
he passed by one day he seemed to hear the old
tree sigh : “ Claus, my friend, how much longer are
you going to forget me ? ” And Claus ended by
being moved by the plaint of the Vieux Sapin,
and at length determined to paint its portrait too.
Lovingly he enwrapped the old trunk in the last
rays of a glorious sunset, and while the bare
branches stretched upwards with an imploring
gesture the green buds at their extremities seemed
to hold out the promise of a renewal of life. Here
was a masterpiece in which one felt the resurrection
of the aged tree in and by the sunlight.
For many years Claus continued to live happily
at “Zonneschyn,” where the wind and the sun, the
river, the fields and the flowers, the cows in the
meadows and the little cottages of the hamlets,
bathed in turn in the stilly sunlight of the dawn,
in the veiled refulgence of the twilight, or in the
intoxicating ardour of the midday sun, sufficed
to satisfy his artistic soul, until one day they came
to tell him that the army
of the enemy was close at
hand and the time was
come for him to fly . . .
And so with hardly a
moment’s preparation he
came across to the land
of that wonderful painter
whom he worships almost
as a god — Turner, that
magician of light, that
superb rival of our great
Rubens, who himself
illumined the fair skin of
his women with the bril¬
liant light with which
Turner transfigured his
sea-pieces and landscapes.
Claus has tried to drown
his sorrows by striving to
capture, also, the light of
this country of mists; to
express it in those little
pastels, so rich and
harmonious in colour,
which he showed at the

International Society’s exhibition last spring,
and in the pictures he has painted in and around
London, such as March Sunshine, Leicester Square,
and in Hampshire, whence came The Village
Pond, Upton Grey, and A Wooded Hillside.
One finds this same light in the artist’s portrait
of himself (reproduced in The Studio, July 1915),
as it falls through the window upon his forehead,
while in his keen piercing eye we recognise the
whole will of the painter bent upon the search for
beauty, and the pre-occupation of expressing it in
his works. At the same time, too, can we not
perceive the shadow of that sorrow which veils his
anguished heart, as it does our own, with the
mournful tragedy of these present days ?
Exile, far from altering the art of Emile Claus,
has opened new fields to him, and he will have
a harvest of chefs-d'oeuvre to carry back with him to
his beloved fatherland—that fertile Flanders every
pulsation of whose life he loves; and where the
sunlight has in it none of that imperiousness such
as is characteristic of the Orient, but rather is
sweet and gracious, for it does not swallow up the
shadows, but lightens them; it never burns up the
soil, but renders it fruitful; it revivifies and only
dissipates the dew over meadows bathed in cloudy
vapours, in order again to adorn the earth with
glistening opals. Maria Bierme.


PAINTING BY EMILE CLAUS

COTTAGES, UPTON GREY

9°