Studio: international art (15.1899)

A Roumanian Painter

' A ROUMANIAN HERDSMAN " BY NICULAE GRIGORESCO

small gardens and grass sprouts up between the As I have already said, Grigoresco is nothing

stones of the flag-paved walks. Here, as in else but an artist, with the "naivete" of a child.

Roumania, Grigoresco did not restrict himself to His whole philosophy consists in stopping in front

depicting only the exterior of these delightful of a pretty subject and making a fine painting of it.

nooks and corners ; he observed and represented He has no theory on art, and does not care what

the special types that frequent these old walls : theorists write about it. Scientific researches into

beggars who hold out their wooden bowls at the composition of light are also unknown to him.

the doors of churches trying to soften the heart He obtains such luminous results by such simple

of the "kind Christian" by some pitiful tale; means that one can well understand the reason

old housewives fond of their kitchen and garden; why he sticks to his own method. The painters

children picking flowers or catching butterflies who have this primitive simplicity of feeling are

in the fields; little girls knitting as they walk those concerning whom it is the most difficult to

along highways; washerwomen on the banks of speak without very fully describing their works,

the river, with the linen hanging on cords They do not lend themselves to any other discus-

and flapping about in the drying wind. Some- sion than that which arises between the admirers

times he delights in simply reproducing some old and the detractors of their simple, spontaneous,

dilapidated piece of architecture that has lights and unreasoned works, or amongst the partisans of

suitable for showing up its mysterious grey tones; the most advanced and the most lach'ce school. If

or some deserted courtyard overgrown with weeds, it were absolutely necessary to find out with what

whose melancholy sadness and old-world charm other artist he has points in common, one would

remind one irresistibly of the best descriptive pages name the French painter, Adolphe Felix Cals. At

of Balzac, Loti, or Rene Bazin. any rate, M. Paul Lafond's remarks on the charac-

Last, but not least, Grigoresco is a flower-painter teristics of the French painter can be equally

of quite exceptional ability. In these paintings the applied to Grigoresco : the same deep feeling of

charm of his graceful touch, his bold brush-work, the masses, of the atmosphere and the harmony of

and his fine scheme of colouring are nowhere surroundings; the same love of truth, the same

more apparent, and quite make up for the loss of horror of conventionality, the same want of precise

interest caused by the lack of that exotism of outlines, so that " the heads and the hands of the

Roumanian art which so bewitches us in his work. figures remain confused with the whole painting ";