DOI Heft:
Nr. 339 (August 1925)
DOI Artikel:Gerard, Helen: Brass of the Venetians
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19985#0372
mceRnACioriAL
"la terrazza al lido" In the permanent gallery at the Carnegie Institute by italico brass
that I thought I saw in the flair of his technique
a result of his Parisian training, he corrected me.
"I am a direct descendant of the Venetians. If
you find anything to note in my work, it is not
what I learned under Laurens or others at Paris
or at Munich, but from the old Venetians." All of
them he has studied with ardore, as the Italians
say, from Jacopo Bellini and his greater son,
Giovanni, to Giorgione, Titian, Palma il Vecchio,
Tintoretto, Tiepolo—there is flair for you—Cana-
letto, Longhi, Guardi, especially this last.
He was born in 1870, the year that the modern
state of Italy was created; but born at Gorizio,
city of the Venezia Giulia "unredeemed" by the
Frankfort treaty, when the third Napoleon, while
ceding the Venetian capital to Italy, left to his
imperial Austrian cousin the key-stone of that
Veneto which the first Buonaparte had seized to
spite the republic of the Adriatic. An intimate
bearing on the painter, this chapter of history, so
remote from our American thought, so vital to all
Venetians, especially to those Italians of the
provinces obliged to remain non-Italian for yet
another half-century.
This Gorizian boy, Venetian at heart, resolved
early to be a painter. Art was at its lowest ebb
in Venice as in all Italy, so he must needs study
at Munich and at Paris. The Venetian heart was
revealed in the painter's first Parisian success,
which received honorable mention in the Salon
des Champs Elysees when he was twenty-two
years old, a canvas painted upon the lagoon
among the Chioggia fishermen; and it reappeared
forthwith at the inaugural exhibition of the Vene-
tian International in 1892.
"Venice," Brass wrote me, "exerts an irre-
sistible fascination upon me. I feel myself a part
of her and have dedicated all of my art to making
her live yet another time upon my canvases, with
all her brio, in all her melancholy, with the Mend-
ings of one into another of all her gamut of delicate
color; to express the characteristic and charming
traits of her people who so perfectly and magnifi-
cently fit into and stand out against the back-
ground of her palaces, mirrored in lagoon and sky."
The"Burattinaio" (Puppet-Show Man) in the
Modern Gallery of Rome is not only a study of the
well-remembered old fellow with a wooden leg
three seventy-two august 19
"la terrazza al lido" In the permanent gallery at the Carnegie Institute by italico brass
that I thought I saw in the flair of his technique
a result of his Parisian training, he corrected me.
"I am a direct descendant of the Venetians. If
you find anything to note in my work, it is not
what I learned under Laurens or others at Paris
or at Munich, but from the old Venetians." All of
them he has studied with ardore, as the Italians
say, from Jacopo Bellini and his greater son,
Giovanni, to Giorgione, Titian, Palma il Vecchio,
Tintoretto, Tiepolo—there is flair for you—Cana-
letto, Longhi, Guardi, especially this last.
He was born in 1870, the year that the modern
state of Italy was created; but born at Gorizio,
city of the Venezia Giulia "unredeemed" by the
Frankfort treaty, when the third Napoleon, while
ceding the Venetian capital to Italy, left to his
imperial Austrian cousin the key-stone of that
Veneto which the first Buonaparte had seized to
spite the republic of the Adriatic. An intimate
bearing on the painter, this chapter of history, so
remote from our American thought, so vital to all
Venetians, especially to those Italians of the
provinces obliged to remain non-Italian for yet
another half-century.
This Gorizian boy, Venetian at heart, resolved
early to be a painter. Art was at its lowest ebb
in Venice as in all Italy, so he must needs study
at Munich and at Paris. The Venetian heart was
revealed in the painter's first Parisian success,
which received honorable mention in the Salon
des Champs Elysees when he was twenty-two
years old, a canvas painted upon the lagoon
among the Chioggia fishermen; and it reappeared
forthwith at the inaugural exhibition of the Vene-
tian International in 1892.
"Venice," Brass wrote me, "exerts an irre-
sistible fascination upon me. I feel myself a part
of her and have dedicated all of my art to making
her live yet another time upon my canvases, with
all her brio, in all her melancholy, with the Mend-
ings of one into another of all her gamut of delicate
color; to express the characteristic and charming
traits of her people who so perfectly and magnifi-
cently fit into and stand out against the back-
ground of her palaces, mirrored in lagoon and sky."
The"Burattinaio" (Puppet-Show Man) in the
Modern Gallery of Rome is not only a study of the
well-remembered old fellow with a wooden leg
three seventy-two august 19