Studio: international art (5.1895)

Art at the Champ de Mars

life, in the presence of this genial vision ! One
feels as though entranced in a dream of peace and
happiness, like those two noble statues full of deep
thought and sweetness and goodness, which the
painter has placed on either side of the central door,
framed by those splendid pieces of decoration,
Recueillement and Etude.

And the significance of this admirable canvas
seems to me to touch still greater heights. The
spirit of Genius floating in the heavens is surely the
type of the Old World, of Greece herself, Mother
of Beauty, and of all the serenity of the ages, bear-
ing light into the newer world, into this civilisation
of yesterday, with its violence and its audacity, its
too great love for the fresh materialities of science
and of progress. Truly the words of peace and
joy fall from the lips of the Messenger of Light, as
the artist himself expresses it. The Messenger
comes with his triumphal procession across the vast
space of blue, youthful ever despite the ages. And
as he passes, the sea itself in deference grows calm.
This is the world he might have looked on at his
birth, this fair stripling, in the days when Pheidias
with his chisel evoked from out the mastered
material that splendid race of gods. Bow we
must in respect before the young fresh beauty of
this work in which the great artist has so master-
fully brought before us the eternal power of the
Ideal.

M. Eugene Carriere.—A tumultuous gesti-
culation of shadowy forms in a thick cloud of
smoke, seen through the twilight of a rainy evening
—such is the picture called Theatre Populaire.
The eye grows tired as it tries in vain to discern
anything of form and of fancy in this great canvas.
It is simply chaos, swarming with strange figures.
It might indeed be summarily described as merely
a rough studio sketch on an exaggerated scale,
for there are many parts of it in which through
the heavy atmosphere simply nothing can be dis-
tinguished. And this is what some critics call a
masterpiece, full of meaning and running over with
life. I am sorry I cannot agree with them, and
more than sorry to see an artist of M. Carriere's
ability condescend to a success of this kind. I
cannot but remember some of his pictures of
former years—charming works, full of subtle
delicacy, and strangely attractive by very reason
of the subdued light this artist so greatly affects,
and from which he has produced such ingenious
and stirring results. His mistake this year is solely
due to exaggeration of this method.

M. Albert Besnard.—A mad riot of colour, a
sort of delirious effervescence, causing a sensation
88

of giddiness, characterises his Marche aux chevaux,
environs d'Alger. As in his Port d1 Alger, one must
needs marvel at the power both in scheme of
colour and in observation shown by an artist
whose works seem to quiver with imagination and
truth, as seen through his personal artistic tem-
perament. With what acuteness, what accuracy,
he has noted the attitudes of these horses; what
admiration he shows for the supple grace of these
splendid animals, so strongly and yet so gracefully
built! There is in these creatures all the poetry
of the wild rush for the freedom of the desert, and
these skies of gold, and flame and dazzling blue,
which shine from out his pictures, fill one's eyes
with enchanting, astonishing, intoxicating delight.

M. Aman-Jean.—Here is a sober, conscientious
artist of high artistic and moral worth, with a per-
ception at once distinguished and delicate, gravely
scrupulous in all that concerns mind and fancy.
He invests his portraits with a lofty dignity, which
his refined and graceful manner enables him to
realise to perfection. La Jeune Fille au Paon, and

the portraits of Mile. M. J. L., M. de M-,

and Colonel de K., strike one as masterly efforts,
of scholarly depth, and dignified choice of effects ;
of real simplicity and with none of the trickiness
common among the popular portrait-painters, the
Carolus Durans and the Doucets, for instance.
A true and delicate appreciation of values, a sur-
prising ease in painting stuffs, and in giving each
material its proper character, a rare gift for har-
mony and composition—such are the qualities—
uncommon qualities, one must admit—which M.
Aman-Jean possesses. There is no clap-trap in
his art, which aims at being subtle without
obscurity, broad without carelessness, deep with-
out effort. In him we have, beyond doubt, one of
the masters of the near future.

M. Charles Cazin.—No one succeeds better
than M. Cazin in reproducing the very soul of a
landscape, the nice variations of atmosphere, the
infinite play of pure light, the poetry that lies in
ancient habitations, in the grey high-roads, in the
trees at twilight, in the green turf and in the dry
grass ; none realises better the melancholy of the
calm eventide. He has the gift of investing Nature
with sadness, and Nature he loves wherever he
finds her wild, and humble and simple and un-
pretentious. Then with what tenderness he calls
her forth, with what a loving hand he lifts the veil
which hides her inmost thoughts. He endows
with a personality of their own the trees, the hills,
the very windings of the soil, the clouds, as they
seem to unite in a concert of familiar voices, to