DOI Heft:
No. 53 (August, 1897)
DOI Artikel:Bibb, Burnley: The work of G. Segantini
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18389#0168
The Work of G. Segantini
by the man upon the gray background of dreary
days, there is a pathos which helps one to
understand the gentle melancholy pervading
Segantini's art.
Solitude, that friend of the soul, was preparing
the fulness of it during the long winters, when
the little boy, alone in his garret, looked forth from
his small window, high up in the wall, upon the
roof peaks and a patch of sky, and listened for the
voices of the bells in the Campanile, while the
mystery of sadness grew in the little trembling
heart, and wistful fancies, his only playmates, wove
their sombre thread into his life.
His sweet mother but a tender memory, the
father gone from him, alone, a loveless little wight
among strangers and hardships, the boy learned to
find within himself a strength on which to lean.
In a letter to some questioner Segantini says :—
"The first time I took pencil in hand to draw was
when I heard a poor contadina sighing over her
dead child—Ah ! if I had but a picture of her !
she was so lovely."
And so his genius found its first awakening in
love and sympathy. Some time later we find him
again in Milan and attending the evening School
of Ornament, where he copied old aquarelles
and drew from bas-reliefs of Donatello, hardly
managing to subsist the while.
146
He was commissioned by a friendly druggist to
paint him a sign, and with some oil colours left
over from this he began making studies from
Nature.
What was the character of his thoughts at this
time, and what the intensity of emotion aroused in
him by art, may best be told in his own words,
which I quote from something he has sent me:
" It was a festa.
"With my elbows on the sill of my garret-
window I was looking out over the roofs and towers
of Milan in the light of the setting sun.
" For some days I had felt an undefined loneli-
ness. I was nineteen. An ardent desire for love
was burning in my brain.
" On that day I had listened to an instrumental
concert, and the music had excited my thoughts to
flights of almost drunken fancy, in which forms of
beauty twined and intertwined in rhythmic move-
ment, faded like smoke-wreaths, vanished in a rain
of roses. ... I was lulled in a dream of love.
When I went out into the air I felt exalted. A
smile shone upon my face. The faces I saw
seemed only kindly ones. ... In this condition
of mind I visited an exhibition of modern art.
The paintings seemed insignificant, mute. They
had no power to hold my thoughts. They were
the work of men who had seen things and copied
by the man upon the gray background of dreary
days, there is a pathos which helps one to
understand the gentle melancholy pervading
Segantini's art.
Solitude, that friend of the soul, was preparing
the fulness of it during the long winters, when
the little boy, alone in his garret, looked forth from
his small window, high up in the wall, upon the
roof peaks and a patch of sky, and listened for the
voices of the bells in the Campanile, while the
mystery of sadness grew in the little trembling
heart, and wistful fancies, his only playmates, wove
their sombre thread into his life.
His sweet mother but a tender memory, the
father gone from him, alone, a loveless little wight
among strangers and hardships, the boy learned to
find within himself a strength on which to lean.
In a letter to some questioner Segantini says :—
"The first time I took pencil in hand to draw was
when I heard a poor contadina sighing over her
dead child—Ah ! if I had but a picture of her !
she was so lovely."
And so his genius found its first awakening in
love and sympathy. Some time later we find him
again in Milan and attending the evening School
of Ornament, where he copied old aquarelles
and drew from bas-reliefs of Donatello, hardly
managing to subsist the while.
146
He was commissioned by a friendly druggist to
paint him a sign, and with some oil colours left
over from this he began making studies from
Nature.
What was the character of his thoughts at this
time, and what the intensity of emotion aroused in
him by art, may best be told in his own words,
which I quote from something he has sent me:
" It was a festa.
"With my elbows on the sill of my garret-
window I was looking out over the roofs and towers
of Milan in the light of the setting sun.
" For some days I had felt an undefined loneli-
ness. I was nineteen. An ardent desire for love
was burning in my brain.
" On that day I had listened to an instrumental
concert, and the music had excited my thoughts to
flights of almost drunken fancy, in which forms of
beauty twined and intertwined in rhythmic move-
ment, faded like smoke-wreaths, vanished in a rain
of roses. ... I was lulled in a dream of love.
When I went out into the air I felt exalted. A
smile shone upon my face. The faces I saw
seemed only kindly ones. ... In this condition
of mind I visited an exhibition of modern art.
The paintings seemed insignificant, mute. They
had no power to hold my thoughts. They were
the work of men who had seen things and copied