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#0094
Gaston La Touche
pumpkins and cabbages. How far away all that
seems!"
La Touche goes on to tell me of his real start
in the Salon of 1875, where he was represented by
etchings and a sculptured medallion of Got. He
recalls the influence of naturalism on his first
efforts. Every Saturday he used to go to the
Nouvelle-Athenes, where he met Degas, Duranty,
Desboutin, and Manet. It was about this time
that Zola's L'Assommoir made its appearance. A
wave of realism was passing over art and letters
alike ; every one was sick of the shams and the
pretentious trivialities of the day, and there was a
longing for reality,'however brutal, however cruel
it might be. La Touche published an album of
forty dry-points, inspired by Zola's work—a series
in which one may discover many traces of his long
struggle to obtain recognition at the exhibitions,
may realise how he spent his time in the fields
among the peasantry, or in the mines among the
miners, that he might get their types and their
surroundings at first hand; how, in fact, he lived
his pictures before he painted them.
" I admit," he says, " that for years I was the
slave of this narrow view of things. I greedily
treasured up in my mind's eye all sorts of move-
ments and gestures with bits of landscape and
other real things ; for it would have seemed criminal
to me then to think of drawing or painting any
work of imagination. I, like my contemporaries,
despised pictures which in
the studios were described
as fails de chic. Nothing
counted save that which was
due to direct observation of
nature itself — work done
from the model; and nothing
on earth would have made
me act otherwise."
It was in this spirit that
he exhibited La Dame du
Sieme in the Salon of 1881,
the Enterrement (Pun Enfant
en Normandie (a work which
called forth a most eulogistic
article from Edmond About)
in 1882, then a series of
peasant scenes and realistic
works — absinthe - drinkers
and other subjects of every-
day life treated in a spirit of
fiercest realism, and emin-
ently calculated to epater le
bourgeois.
In 1884 he sent Un Vceu
de femme—a woman at a
chapel door, the day after
the putting into force of the
law for the expulsion of the
nuns, and La Legende du
Point d'Argentan, for which
he took a third-class medal.
It records the legend of the
tired lace-maker falling asleep
one night over her work,
and the Virgin coming and
finishing the task before the
wearied eyes reopen. In
1885 we had Napoleon LLP.
pumpkins and cabbages. How far away all that
seems!"
La Touche goes on to tell me of his real start
in the Salon of 1875, where he was represented by
etchings and a sculptured medallion of Got. He
recalls the influence of naturalism on his first
efforts. Every Saturday he used to go to the
Nouvelle-Athenes, where he met Degas, Duranty,
Desboutin, and Manet. It was about this time
that Zola's L'Assommoir made its appearance. A
wave of realism was passing over art and letters
alike ; every one was sick of the shams and the
pretentious trivialities of the day, and there was a
longing for reality,'however brutal, however cruel
it might be. La Touche published an album of
forty dry-points, inspired by Zola's work—a series
in which one may discover many traces of his long
struggle to obtain recognition at the exhibitions,
may realise how he spent his time in the fields
among the peasantry, or in the mines among the
miners, that he might get their types and their
surroundings at first hand; how, in fact, he lived
his pictures before he painted them.
" I admit," he says, " that for years I was the
slave of this narrow view of things. I greedily
treasured up in my mind's eye all sorts of move-
ments and gestures with bits of landscape and
other real things ; for it would have seemed criminal
to me then to think of drawing or painting any
work of imagination. I, like my contemporaries,
despised pictures which in
the studios were described
as fails de chic. Nothing
counted save that which was
due to direct observation of
nature itself — work done
from the model; and nothing
on earth would have made
me act otherwise."
It was in this spirit that
he exhibited La Dame du
Sieme in the Salon of 1881,
the Enterrement (Pun Enfant
en Normandie (a work which
called forth a most eulogistic
article from Edmond About)
in 1882, then a series of
peasant scenes and realistic
works — absinthe - drinkers
and other subjects of every-
day life treated in a spirit of
fiercest realism, and emin-
ently calculated to epater le
bourgeois.
In 1884 he sent Un Vceu
de femme—a woman at a
chapel door, the day after
the putting into force of the
law for the expulsion of the
nuns, and La Legende du
Point d'Argentan, for which
he took a third-class medal.
It records the legend of the
tired lace-maker falling asleep
one night over her work,
and the Virgin coming and
finishing the task before the
wearied eyes reopen. In
1885 we had Napoleon LLP.