International studio (60.1916/1917)

Henri Harbignies: In Memoricim

Dumas, then Minister of the Interior—to leave
for Paris, where, with an allowance of 150 francs
a month, which made him, like Manet, in the eyes
of his studio comrades, a veritable fils de famille,
he became a pupil of Achard, the landscape
painter and etcher. He was then twenty-seven.
A curious example of an artist who made a tardy
beginning with the serious study of the principles
of art and whose development was remarkably
slow, Harpignies did not begin to paint his first
pictures or to exhibit seriously until he was well
over thirty. Having worked with Achard from
1846 to 1849, he went, at his master’s suggestion,
to Italy, where, in Rome, Naples and Capri, he

artist himself was well aware of this and cast aside
his pinceaux for flat brushes. But the perfect
handling of these came only through long
practice. Early evidence that he was mastering
their use is seen in the pictures which he painted
about 1856 on the plains bordering the Rhine.
Corot and Theodore Rousseau were the two
great sources whence the art of Harpignies sprang.
The poetry of the one, the strength and correctness
of design of the other constantly inspired him until
he had formed a style which was wholly his own.
But development, as I have said, was remarkably
slow. It was not until he was forty-seven—in 1866
— that he received his first medal for a picture,

spent two years.
Italy, as Harpignies
often used to tell those
who went to see him at his
studio in the Rue Coet-
logen, in Paris, exercised
a great influence on his
talent and imagination.
“It was Rome which
formed, created, sustained
me—and which sustains
me still; it is to Rome
that I owe not only my
most noble emotions but
also my finest inspira-
tions,” he told his friends.
“ That is what should be
said above everything,
so that all who desire to
learn can go there and,
face to face with beauty,
realise how enchanting
it is.”
So far so good; but it
was not until much later
that the artist wholly
benefited by his visions
and the spirit of Italy.
Viewing his work as a
whole, it is easy to detect
that he was for a long
time hampered, like all
the landscape painters of
the First Empire, by the
tools at his disposal, to
wit the very fine brushes
then used, and which
resulted in a petty and
cold interpretation of
Nature. Moreover, the


“winter woodland scene in the ALLIER ”
WATER-COLOUR BY HENRI HARPIGNIES
(Zoubalof Collection, Petit-Palais, Paris)