DOI issue:
No. 47 (February, 1897)
DOI article:Mourey, Gabriel: A dream painter: M. L. Lévy-Dhurmer
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18388#0018
A Dream Painter
" MATERNITE FROM A PAINTING BY L. LEVY-DHURMER
fidelity to life. Few painters of the human face, so Look at Maternite ! It is the soft summer twi-
far as my knowledge goes, have succeeded in put- light hour, the heavens full of limpid brightness, and
ting into their work more drawing, more thought, on the horizon, behind the palatial outlines and the
more feeling, or more character. The true inward- lofty campaniles, a mass of purest gold, reflected in
ness of the human being is here revealed with the mirror of the lagoons. Seated on a throne the
genuine expression. These symbolical personages Virgin holds in her arms the divine Bambino.
of his—legendary and fairylike as they are—live their What tenderness in the Mother's attitude, as she
own individual lives ; and although we only see them bends in all eagerness and attention over the little
for a moment in that life, just in the attitude and form of the Child-Christ! What delightful delicacy
just at the particular phase of it which the artist has in the way she holds Him with her pure and lovely
chosen as best suited to reveal them to our intelli- hands. And He—there is nothing of the conven-
gence, yet it is easy enough to conjure them tionally divine about the Child, who is human
up as they were before, and as they were after, that infancy itself, in loose swaddling-clothes, with un-
precise instant, for we have penetrated into their formed baby head, and plump little hand playing
very souls, into the inner mystery of their being. with the Mother's lips. When one thinks how
Their fleeting forms have displayed to our eyes the banal, how traditional the subject might have been
eternal qualities within them. made, it is refreshing to see the quite original note
3
" MATERNITE FROM A PAINTING BY L. LEVY-DHURMER
fidelity to life. Few painters of the human face, so Look at Maternite ! It is the soft summer twi-
far as my knowledge goes, have succeeded in put- light hour, the heavens full of limpid brightness, and
ting into their work more drawing, more thought, on the horizon, behind the palatial outlines and the
more feeling, or more character. The true inward- lofty campaniles, a mass of purest gold, reflected in
ness of the human being is here revealed with the mirror of the lagoons. Seated on a throne the
genuine expression. These symbolical personages Virgin holds in her arms the divine Bambino.
of his—legendary and fairylike as they are—live their What tenderness in the Mother's attitude, as she
own individual lives ; and although we only see them bends in all eagerness and attention over the little
for a moment in that life, just in the attitude and form of the Child-Christ! What delightful delicacy
just at the particular phase of it which the artist has in the way she holds Him with her pure and lovely
chosen as best suited to reveal them to our intelli- hands. And He—there is nothing of the conven-
gence, yet it is easy enough to conjure them tionally divine about the Child, who is human
up as they were before, and as they were after, that infancy itself, in loose swaddling-clothes, with un-
precise instant, for we have penetrated into their formed baby head, and plump little hand playing
very souls, into the inner mystery of their being. with the Mother's lips. When one thinks how
Their fleeting forms have displayed to our eyes the banal, how traditional the subject might have been
eternal qualities within them. made, it is refreshing to see the quite original note
3