Studio: international art (17.1899)

Emile Claus

the children’s portrait painter of Antwerp. He
was ingenious enough to paint them in costume,
and all through the winter his studio was thronged
with' pierrots and toreadors, milkmaids and snow
fairies, marquises and Cinderellas, whose trappings
of satin and velvet, gold and muslin, attracted his
clever brush.

In 1879 Claus made a long stay in Spain and
Morocco, but, alas ! the works he brought back
were of the traditional Oriental kind, lacking in
delicacy and luminosity, and full of hard contrasts.
His pictures were clever enough in their way, for,
at any rate, he was an artist to the finger-tips.
But they had no originality, and were obviously
produced under the influence of the style of
Charles Verlat. However, a change was at hand,
and his famous Combat de Coqs en Flandre (1880)
showed him in a new light. Although, to a certain
extent, he remained true to the antique methods
in which he had been trained, there was evident in
his work a striving after truth and a remarkable
keenness of vision. This last-named picture is a

‘ PONTON D’AFSNE ”

*5°

(In the Dresden Museum)

beautiful piece of realism, the various types stand-
ing out in infinite variety of temperament, and
expression, and attitude, and gesture. This picture
may be said to have ended his first manner, for
from this date began the course of evolution which
ultimately resulted in the brilliant manifestation of
the artist’s real personality, before which every one
bows respectfully to-day.

Great as had been his success in Antwerp,
Claus, in 1883, changed his style completely. At
last his eyes were opened, and he realised the
barrenness of all his previous efforts. Despite the
manifest danger, Claus never hesitated. His first
impressions were those implanted in him in his
native place, and thither he repairs, leaving Antwerp
and all his successes behind him. Once home, he
cuts himself off from the past, provides himself, so
to speak, with another vision and another palette,
learns to handle his brush in another manner,
looks around him, studies for himself, trains his
eye methodically, and seeks to penetrate the
mysterious laws of light. Picture him, in the midst
of Nature, like a man of
primitive times, regarding
all around him with an in-
genuous simplicity, purged
of all the conventional ideas
which, for so many years,
had sullied and deformed
it. He works unceasingly
from morning to night,
bending over his canvas like
a labourer on the soil, and
little by little the veil is
lifted.

From stage to stage he
progresses—La recolte du tin
(1883); Ferme en Flandre:
Matinee de fuin (T884);
Quand flenrissent les Lych-
nis (1885)Profitant du vent
(r886); Le vieux Jardinier
(1887), now in the Liege
gallery; and in the same
year Pique-Nique; Soleil
couchant; Sarcleuses de lin
en Flandres, at present in
the Antwerp Gallery; La
vieille Lys (October r888)
and Aprls le travail; La
Rentr'ee des Vaches (1889).
With each successive work
his style grows broader and
more supple, approaches

BY EMII.E CLAUS