Studio: international art (23.1901)

Jean-Francois Raffaelli

who establish artistic reputations, and obtain for
their proteges and pupils the important commis-
sions given by the Municipalities and the State
—a gang of art politicians who remain as ever
the sworn foes of all progress, all originality, all
independence.

Of all the opponents of the Impressionist School
—the School of Renoir, of Claude Monet, of Sisley
—there is none more intolerant than a certain
Membre de l'Institut, who has been heard to
denounce their works as " the disgrace of French
art" ! There is thus a touch of delightfully piquant
irony in the fact that M. Raffaelli was once a pupil
of this great personage. What more striking
proof could one have of the pupil's originality of
temperament, in that, as all his works proclaim, he
has gone on his way wholly uninfluenced by the
Institut and its professors? Who that has seen
them can ever forget the extraordinarily striking
impression, the sense of novelty and freshness,
conveyed in these living pages of colour, wherein
the artist opens up to us the existence of the
working-man, the tramp, the humbler citizen of the
Parisian outskirts, with all its sadness, its pain, its
squalor and its irony ? Who before him had ever
thought of putting on to canvas these rag-pickers,
these hawkers of old clothes, these dog fanciers
and acrobats and street loafers, these orators
spouting at the street corners, these ragged beggars,
and these little shop-keepers, decked in "their
Sunday best"? Who had ever before deemed
them worthy of the painter's brush, or even of so
much as a passing glance? At first M. Raffaelli
saw and depicted this special section of humanity
in the most tragic light, and his wild, lonely back-
grounds were in full harmony with the moral and
material misery of his figures. La Route de la
Revolte, par la Neige ; La Rentree des Chiffonniers,
and the Vue de Gennevilliers (to name but three
of the artist's numerous productions) reveal this
gloomy view of things, and in their way are as
strongly characteristic of their author as are his
Chiffonnier allumant sa Pipe, his Loqueteux par
la Pluie et le Vent, his Buveurs d'Absinthe, Le
Cabaret de la mere Billon, and his Honi77ie venant
de voter un Rain.

Little by little, however, but without any decrease
of sincerity or of sharpness of vision, the artist's
manner became somewhat lighter, his range grew
wider, till at last he found room for smiles as well
as tears. While remaining faithful to his favourite
subjects, other types, other surroundings aroused
his curiosity. Leaving the dull and murky ban-
lieues, the pestilential banks of the Seine, the

mournful barrieres and fortifications, the painter
returned to Paris itself, and there, in the very heart
of the city, he cast his eager, restless glance on the
public gardens, the squares, the boulevards, the
broad and beautiful avenues, on the aristocratic
and intellectual rive gauche—the " West End " of
the capital. Thence sprang the Nourrices sur la
Place de la Concorde, the Place Saint-Sulpice, the
Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Ely sees, Sur le
Boulevard, Parisienne aux Champs-Elysees, a series
of views of Notre-Dame de Paris, the square of
La Trinite, and many other aspects of the city,
grave or gay, " fixed " in fine, delicate, clear touches,
delightful to the eye, charming in their luminous
fidelity, and all composed with evident amour and
pleasure. And even in the periodical excursions
he would make into the poorer quarters his original
pessimism now seemed somewhat softened as by
a ray of hope. Save in the Vieux Convalescents, in
the Salon of 1892, where the pitiless observation
of his earlier work is again noticeable—a painting,
moreover, which will continue to rank among his
best achievements—the artist shows unmistakable
signs of undergoing a change of feeling.

The artist's saner view of things is revealed
plainly in his joyous Route au Soleil, a brilliant
thing, instinct with the joie de vivre inspired by a
lovely day of sunshine. Then we have Le Vieux
Chiffonnier and the Cheval Blanc; this last an
absolute proof of his change of tone, his new-born
bienveillance.

This elevation of spirit and of vision, this
optimism, if so it may be termed, is endorsed by
M. Raffaelli's most recent works. The Portrait
de ma Fille Germaine (1896), his Jeune Fille se
?-egardant dans tine glace (1897), the Portrait de
ma Fille, the Portrait de Mile. Marie Louise
(United States, 1898), and the Jewie Fille aux
Bleuets mark a new and a genial epoch in the
artist's career. With maturity he seems to have
arrived at a sort of sweet philosophy, which, while
deep as before, regards life less sadly. Thus he
cannot be reproached with seeing things in a light
altogether different from that of his earlier days.
In the former, as in the latter, case he is entirely
sincere; and who shall blame him on this account ?
After all, an artist has to interpret what he sees
and what he feels. If it be true that a work of
art gains in depth and dignity in proportion as it
reveals the secrets of human sensibility, it is equally
true that the best equipped and the most fascinating
artist is he who is endowed with the richest vision
and is most capable of seizing impressions in their
most varied forms, quite apart from the means

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