DOI issue:
No. 60 (March, 1898)
DOI article:Studio-talk
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18391#0134
Studio- Talk
follow needlework rather than high art. But it is
no use protesting. They will never be convinced.
At the Art Nouveau we have had a very meri-
torious display of water-colours, thirty in number,
by Mr. Charles H. Pepper, a young American artist,
domiciled here, whose works appeal with equal force
to artist and to amateur alike. For the most part
they consist of Zealand landscapes and Zealand
types ; and, to my mind, this is his best work.
Mr. Pepper has seized with the utmost skill the
leading characteristics of the country and its in-
habitants, and has translated them with exquisite
art. His compositions reveal, moreover, a decora-
tive sense of rare originality. His feune fille au
Pont, his Laporte verte, and his Jeune fille en blanc,
for instance, may be taken as representing him at
his best, for they are full of charming, delicate ob-
servation, admirable in decorative treatment and in
subtlety of colouring. The name of Mr. Charles
H. Pepper is one to remember, for his work has
rich promise in it.
treatment which further accentuates their originality.
They have a feeling for life and colour and move-
ment. Their sketches and studies reveal to us not
the conventional Spain, but the Spain of to-day in
all its vivid, moving reality; and they are sad and
tragical, these pictures, somewhat in the style of
those by our own Steinlen.
M. Ricardo Canals, in his Couple de Cafe-Concert,
his Modele d'Artiste, his Concert Espagnol, his La
Danse du Tango, and his La Danse de Sevillana,
shows us a Spain unknown to most of us, a
thoroughly characteristic national life, marked by
types of misery and vice and poverty, which cling
to one's memory, for one feels they are real and
closely studied. M. Nonell-Monturiol does not
adhere so closely to reality, but rather makes it
uglier, more fantastic, more terrifying. His series of
drawings in colour of cretins, or idiots, is impressive
in the highest degree, from the intensity of expres-
sion and the revelation of physical and mental dis-
tress conveyed therein. It is a dark view of lower
humanity, recalling some of the sombre scenes of
I have referred on a previous occasion to M.
Henri Riviere's series of coloured lithographs,
published by M. Eugene Verneau under the title
of Les Aspects de la Nature. The set of twelve
plates, which is now complete, was recently ex-
hibited in the Salle des Depeches at the Theatre
Antoine. Riviere, by the way, is engaged in the
preparation of a display of Ombres chinoises for
this theatre, after the style of those which proved
so successful on the little stage of the Chat Noir.
These Aspects of Nature are really worthy of long
and close study, both from the standpoint of the
art they reveal, and also from that of technique
pure and simple. I do not believe it is possible
to attain a higher degree of perfection in the
printing of lithographs in colour, or to secure
more suppleness and spontaneity in mechanical
reproduction. _
The exhibition of the works of MM. Nonell-
Monturiol and Ricardo Canals at the galleries
of the late Le Bare de Bouteville was a genuine
revelation. The artists in question are two young
Spaniards of the Impressionist School. Only
the other day they were quite unknown, but their
unquestionable ability has now been revealed
suddenly and in most striking fashion. They have
undoubted gifts, a thoroughly modern faculty of
observation in the first place, an acute naturalism,
with something wild and fantastic in vision and
116
follow needlework rather than high art. But it is
no use protesting. They will never be convinced.
At the Art Nouveau we have had a very meri-
torious display of water-colours, thirty in number,
by Mr. Charles H. Pepper, a young American artist,
domiciled here, whose works appeal with equal force
to artist and to amateur alike. For the most part
they consist of Zealand landscapes and Zealand
types ; and, to my mind, this is his best work.
Mr. Pepper has seized with the utmost skill the
leading characteristics of the country and its in-
habitants, and has translated them with exquisite
art. His compositions reveal, moreover, a decora-
tive sense of rare originality. His feune fille au
Pont, his Laporte verte, and his Jeune fille en blanc,
for instance, may be taken as representing him at
his best, for they are full of charming, delicate ob-
servation, admirable in decorative treatment and in
subtlety of colouring. The name of Mr. Charles
H. Pepper is one to remember, for his work has
rich promise in it.
treatment which further accentuates their originality.
They have a feeling for life and colour and move-
ment. Their sketches and studies reveal to us not
the conventional Spain, but the Spain of to-day in
all its vivid, moving reality; and they are sad and
tragical, these pictures, somewhat in the style of
those by our own Steinlen.
M. Ricardo Canals, in his Couple de Cafe-Concert,
his Modele d'Artiste, his Concert Espagnol, his La
Danse du Tango, and his La Danse de Sevillana,
shows us a Spain unknown to most of us, a
thoroughly characteristic national life, marked by
types of misery and vice and poverty, which cling
to one's memory, for one feels they are real and
closely studied. M. Nonell-Monturiol does not
adhere so closely to reality, but rather makes it
uglier, more fantastic, more terrifying. His series of
drawings in colour of cretins, or idiots, is impressive
in the highest degree, from the intensity of expres-
sion and the revelation of physical and mental dis-
tress conveyed therein. It is a dark view of lower
humanity, recalling some of the sombre scenes of
I have referred on a previous occasion to M.
Henri Riviere's series of coloured lithographs,
published by M. Eugene Verneau under the title
of Les Aspects de la Nature. The set of twelve
plates, which is now complete, was recently ex-
hibited in the Salle des Depeches at the Theatre
Antoine. Riviere, by the way, is engaged in the
preparation of a display of Ombres chinoises for
this theatre, after the style of those which proved
so successful on the little stage of the Chat Noir.
These Aspects of Nature are really worthy of long
and close study, both from the standpoint of the
art they reveal, and also from that of technique
pure and simple. I do not believe it is possible
to attain a higher degree of perfection in the
printing of lithographs in colour, or to secure
more suppleness and spontaneity in mechanical
reproduction. _
The exhibition of the works of MM. Nonell-
Monturiol and Ricardo Canals at the galleries
of the late Le Bare de Bouteville was a genuine
revelation. The artists in question are two young
Spaniards of the Impressionist School. Only
the other day they were quite unknown, but their
unquestionable ability has now been revealed
suddenly and in most striking fashion. They have
undoubted gifts, a thoroughly modern faculty of
observation in the first place, an acute naturalism,
with something wild and fantastic in vision and
116