Studio: international art (16.1899)

Gaston La Tone he

in this medium, a power all the more remarkable gifts in this direction so remarkable that one regrets
since he has only been painting in water-colours to see them ignored by the Government—let me
for a couple of years. Among his most typical cite LHiver, Le Printemps (in possession of
works I may mention his Charite Chretienne (1895, Mme. Pigny), La Paresse, La Chair (M. Renevey),
Magdeburg Museum), the five decorative panels La re7itrk an port (M. Charbonneau, of Rheims),
done for the Mairie of Saint-Cloud, representing L'LIiver (Mme. la Comtesse Recope), not for-
Les quatre Saisons, L'Allegoric de la Paix, L'Apo- getting the decorations in the Palais de \JAlliance
theose de Watfeau, a fine piece of colouring, with Francaise at Constantinople, representing Neptune's
a grace quite the eighteenth-century type, the basin at Versailles.

Reunion de Portraits (1896), Le Pelerinage breton, Strange personality—with its feverish intensity,
La Peche (1897. See "Art at the Salon du its dramatic evocations side by side with the
Champ de Mars"), La Fenetre, La Messe bre- supplest grace, the most poetic delicacy! Here
tonne, and La Tentation. (See " Paris Salons," we see a frenzy of gesture unchained like a whirl-
1898.) wind; here again all the smiling calm of the old

As for his decorative work—and La Touche has days of gallantry revealed in some corner of the

Trianons, amid the half-
lights of the tree shade.
But above all he loves an
orgie in reds. Then his
palette takes (ire; he is
seized with a sort of
exaltation and his brush
seems to sing.

A lovely thing in his
subdued manner is La
Barque, with a number of
Breton women seen in the
misty moonlight, sailing
over the phosphorescent
sea. Beautiful, too, is his
Portrait de Mme. La Touche
in Breton costume, broadly
conceived and as broadly
handled, with a truly
powerful sense of decora-
tive effect. What supreme
art, too, in Le Jet d'eaul
La Touche, the painter, is
here, as in many other
works — which, alas ! I
have no space to describe
—what our great Verlaine,
the poet, was in his Fetes
Galantes, and with some-
thing more of intensity and
colour.

I long to dwell on his
Infantes, three delightful
legendary princesses,
grouped around a basin of
red marble in a terraced
garden, with their strange
head - dresses and their
portrait of puvis de chavannes by gastox la touche gleaming silken shawls; to

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