International studio (80.1925)

mceRHACionAL

SAN DIIiGO HILLS BY -MAURICE URAUN

PAINTER o/~EAST and WEST

ast and West, if they
are only so far apart
as Connecticut and
California, usually do not
meet amiably as the main
sources of a landscape
painter's inspiration. This
is true in case he desired to paint them intimately
rather than as a traveler records his superficial
impressions. Maurice Braun, having lived many
years on both the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts,
is equipped by experience to paint each familiarly,
and he is further enabled by his manner of ap-
proach to do justice to their quite different types
of landscape. This method of approach involves
an unusual effacing of himself from his work, of
his personal mood, as well as an earnest effort to
let nature speak for herself. He has been able to
get at the fundamental qualities in both because
he is not burdened with the idea that art is solely
"a way of looking at things" and that nature
only provides a theme. He has even said that he

deliberately avoids origi-
nality of style, which is a
brave assertion to make
when a personal manner of
expression and even man-
nerisms attract more than
a fair amount of attention.
This avoidance of a mannered style on Braun's
part has kept his eyes first on nature and then on
the development of his art, which in his case has
been content to play the part of handmaid. To
the stylist whether in prose or painting, the man-
ner of expression is apt to usurp some of the place
that rightfully belongs to content. There is
greater flexibility in the art. which is not too much
given to style. Flexibility is the quality which
Braun has preeminently. He adapts himself to
each change of scene and does not look at a
Connecticut meadow through eyes adjusted to
the scale of California.

Maurice Braun was born at Nagy Bittse in
Hungary in 1877 and arrived in New York when

Maurice Braun makes art
subservient to nature in his
renderings of landscapes of
Connecticut and California

HELEN 60MST06K

MARCH 1925

Jour eighty-five