DOI Heft:
No. 72 (March 1899)
DOI Artikel:Mourey, Gabriel: The work of Gaston La Touche
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19231#0090
Gaston La Touche
THE DRAWING-ROOM IN GASTON LA TOUCHE'S HOUSE
everything is intense and burning, as he sees it
and feels it, and one pictures him by his works a
man of an excessively nervous, impressionable
nature. At the same time, as his pictures bear
witness, he possesses exquisitely graceful qualities,
a delightful delicacy and refinement, taste of the
most perfect sort, and a sense of proportion which
is thoroughly French. He is a "Romantic," with
all the exuberance of the school of 1830, yet with
the subtleties of expression that belong to our
incomparable eighteenth century, and a sensibility
altogether modern.
The story of his life is worth recording. He
told it me one summer day as we sat in the cool
shade of his studio at Saint-Cloud, attached to
his house, of which he is the architect. There is
nothing especially romantic in his career, but it
affords an example of an artistic life absorbed
completely by a passion for art—a rarer thing than
some might suppose.
"Yes," he said, "painting was always an idee
fixe with me. I was born with it, just as some are
born authors, or soldiers, or men of business. It
ls useless to oppose it, for all resistance would be
in vain in such a case. My parents, however, set
themselves against it, and I am grateful to them for
it; their opposition was all that was needed to
attach me the more closely to my own choice.
When I was ten years old I used to pass my play-
time daubing and dashing off sketches. They tried
kindness and they tried threats, they tried every-
thing ; but it was no use; I had to draw, just as
one has to eat and drink."
So when he was eleven his parents allowed him
to attend a drawing-class, at three francs a month, at
the school he attended. The drawing master was
called " Monsieur Paul," and his pupil never knew
his full name. Monsieur Paul was astonished at
young La Touche's aptitude, and, being a kind-
hearted and enthusiastic old man, he encouraged
the lad. One day La Touche showed him an ear
he had roughly painted. The professor clasped
him in his arms and, kissing him on the forehead,
exclaimed that " some day he would be un des rois
de la coulenr! " This was the only master he ever
had.
Then came the war; the general upset; the
flight into Normandy. The home was broken up,
79
THE DRAWING-ROOM IN GASTON LA TOUCHE'S HOUSE
everything is intense and burning, as he sees it
and feels it, and one pictures him by his works a
man of an excessively nervous, impressionable
nature. At the same time, as his pictures bear
witness, he possesses exquisitely graceful qualities,
a delightful delicacy and refinement, taste of the
most perfect sort, and a sense of proportion which
is thoroughly French. He is a "Romantic," with
all the exuberance of the school of 1830, yet with
the subtleties of expression that belong to our
incomparable eighteenth century, and a sensibility
altogether modern.
The story of his life is worth recording. He
told it me one summer day as we sat in the cool
shade of his studio at Saint-Cloud, attached to
his house, of which he is the architect. There is
nothing especially romantic in his career, but it
affords an example of an artistic life absorbed
completely by a passion for art—a rarer thing than
some might suppose.
"Yes," he said, "painting was always an idee
fixe with me. I was born with it, just as some are
born authors, or soldiers, or men of business. It
ls useless to oppose it, for all resistance would be
in vain in such a case. My parents, however, set
themselves against it, and I am grateful to them for
it; their opposition was all that was needed to
attach me the more closely to my own choice.
When I was ten years old I used to pass my play-
time daubing and dashing off sketches. They tried
kindness and they tried threats, they tried every-
thing ; but it was no use; I had to draw, just as
one has to eat and drink."
So when he was eleven his parents allowed him
to attend a drawing-class, at three francs a month, at
the school he attended. The drawing master was
called " Monsieur Paul," and his pupil never knew
his full name. Monsieur Paul was astonished at
young La Touche's aptitude, and, being a kind-
hearted and enthusiastic old man, he encouraged
the lad. One day La Touche showed him an ear
he had roughly painted. The professor clasped
him in his arms and, kissing him on the forehead,
exclaimed that " some day he would be un des rois
de la coulenr! " This was the only master he ever
had.
Then came the war; the general upset; the
flight into Normandy. The home was broken up,
79