Studio: international art (15.1899)

Studio- Talk

completed, and shall also have to notice the paint-
ings in the chapel of the same castle, to be exe-
cuted after his own designs on commission from
the Government, by Willy Spatz, the subject
chosen being the influence of Christianity on man-
kind. S.

—^ ARIS.—There are some lovely surprises
■ in store for us over the ornamentation
s*~~^ of the Palais des Champs-Elysees, if
one may judge by the following fact,
which I commend to the attention
of all who have any clear ideas on the subject of

SAINT-VINCENT-DE-PAUL BY M. FALGUIERE

282

decorative art! It is generally admitted nowadays
that a work of applied art should, so far as is
possible, be executed by its author. This being
admitted, what is to be said of a Commission
which entrusts to a painter, M. Joseph Blanc, the
cartoons for a low-relief stoneware frieze, to be
executed by three sculptors—three Prix de Rome
men, if I am not mistaken? Their names need
not be mentioned, for it were useless to particularise
artists capable of undertaking such a job.

But, after all, why complain? For there are
infinite possibilities in the idea. One of these
days we shall see some artiste a toict /aire—some
jack-of-all-arts—exhibiting to the public the Joconde
and the Source of Ingres in high- or low-relief
pottery with metallic sheen.

This is what is called " doing decorative art."
Quite useless to protest, however; for these are the
ideas of a whole series of Commissions and Sub-
commissions in whose hands have been placed the
arrangement of the great Fete Foraine which is to
mark the end of the century. This matters little
so far as the mere temporary details are concerned.
It would be well, however, if their ranks were
reinforced by a few persons possessing definite
and exact opinions, since it is also a question of
raising memorials intended to be permanent.

Very poor, and futile too, is the Falguiere Exhi-
bition in the Nouveau-Cirque Gallery — strange
place for an artistic display ! At the same time
we are indebted to the organiser, M. Ivanhoe
Rambosson ; for, amid all these sketches and un-
finished " bits," there are two works of the highest
interest. The one shows us what the sculptor M.
Falguiere might have become had he remained
faithful to the concentrated, expressive manner of
which his head of Saint- Vincent-de-Paul is a perfect
example; the other work, his Balzac scheme,
demonstrates once more the extent of the injustice
meted out to Rodin's much-discussed statue. Fal-
guiere's scheme suggests in quite exaggerated
fashion that of Rodin, and this, perhaps, is its
highest merit. In this case the figure is seated;
in the other Balzac was erect—that is all the differ-
ence there is. This being so, M. Falguiere would
surely have been well advised to hold aloof from
the matter, and decline the commission offered by
the Societe des Gens de Lettres.

But I am wrong in saying there is only one
difference between the two Balzacs—that of pose;