DOI Heft:
No. 105 (December, 1901)
DOI Artikel:Mourey, Gabriel: An Armenian etcher: M. Edgar Chahine
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19874#0203
An Armenian Etcher
Parisian life. This melancholy, too, has guided styled Distribution de soupe le Vendredi, he reveals
him in his choice of subjects, has led him straight himself in complete possession of his moral and
to the world of labour and poverty, with its tramps technical personality, a keen faculty of observation,
and mendicants and its outcasts. By such as these a perfect knowledge of mise-enpage, a rare appre-
he has been profoundly and painfully inspired. ciation of values, and a very special power of
The strange thing is, that he should at once have characterisation. All these and other things pro-
attained such absolute maitrise in handling subjects claimed thus early an artist of the highest order,
with which he must have been so unfamiliar— Since then, M. Chahine has etched plates as beauti-
subjects for the treatment of which his previous ful as this, but none more beautiful. The patience
studies would, it seems reasonable to think, have of the half-starved crowd that waits and waits—
altogether unfitted him. Strange, too, his skill in men, women and children, some sitting on the
the use of instruments the mastery of which usually kerb, others leaning against the wall, their legs weak
demands years of apprenticeship. In one of the with fatigue ; the dull uniformity of colour and
earliest—-if not actually the first—of his plates, attitude and gesture, the sort of fatalistic resignation
in the faces; and in the fore-
ground the figure of a man
in workman's blouse and
casquette, his features set as
though in secret revolt, and
marked by toil, and suffer-
ing, and poverty—all these
things are traced with
surest hand, because they
were seen clearly and sym-
pathetically, because the
methods of expression were
here in perfect accord with
the ideas and the feelings
of the artist who expressed
them.
This impression of things
strongly felt is present in
all M. Chahine's works,
and to this quality he owes
the greater part of his
success. His sensitiveness
has been in no way
hardened by acquaintance
with the sights amid which
he lives. It is sincerely to
be hoped he may never
growcallous and indifferent,
as has been the case with
so many others. May his
art retain that savour which
gives it so special a charm!
The astonishment he felt,
the emotion aroused in him
in the presence of hitherto
unknown types and sur-
roundings, had been ex-
perienced before, and just as
"L'lTALIENNE" FROM AN ETCHING BY EDGAR CHAHINE by another artist—I
(By permission of M. Ed. Sagot, Paris) refer to our own Steinlen.
190
Parisian life. This melancholy, too, has guided styled Distribution de soupe le Vendredi, he reveals
him in his choice of subjects, has led him straight himself in complete possession of his moral and
to the world of labour and poverty, with its tramps technical personality, a keen faculty of observation,
and mendicants and its outcasts. By such as these a perfect knowledge of mise-enpage, a rare appre-
he has been profoundly and painfully inspired. ciation of values, and a very special power of
The strange thing is, that he should at once have characterisation. All these and other things pro-
attained such absolute maitrise in handling subjects claimed thus early an artist of the highest order,
with which he must have been so unfamiliar— Since then, M. Chahine has etched plates as beauti-
subjects for the treatment of which his previous ful as this, but none more beautiful. The patience
studies would, it seems reasonable to think, have of the half-starved crowd that waits and waits—
altogether unfitted him. Strange, too, his skill in men, women and children, some sitting on the
the use of instruments the mastery of which usually kerb, others leaning against the wall, their legs weak
demands years of apprenticeship. In one of the with fatigue ; the dull uniformity of colour and
earliest—-if not actually the first—of his plates, attitude and gesture, the sort of fatalistic resignation
in the faces; and in the fore-
ground the figure of a man
in workman's blouse and
casquette, his features set as
though in secret revolt, and
marked by toil, and suffer-
ing, and poverty—all these
things are traced with
surest hand, because they
were seen clearly and sym-
pathetically, because the
methods of expression were
here in perfect accord with
the ideas and the feelings
of the artist who expressed
them.
This impression of things
strongly felt is present in
all M. Chahine's works,
and to this quality he owes
the greater part of his
success. His sensitiveness
has been in no way
hardened by acquaintance
with the sights amid which
he lives. It is sincerely to
be hoped he may never
growcallous and indifferent,
as has been the case with
so many others. May his
art retain that savour which
gives it so special a charm!
The astonishment he felt,
the emotion aroused in him
in the presence of hitherto
unknown types and sur-
roundings, had been ex-
perienced before, and just as
"L'lTALIENNE" FROM AN ETCHING BY EDGAR CHAHINE by another artist—I
(By permission of M. Ed. Sagot, Paris) refer to our own Steinlen.
190