Studio: international art (24.1902)

An Armenian Etcher

This art of generalisation is one of the most
precious that the modern artist can possess, and
M. Edgar Chahine possesses it in the very highest
degree. Even when, as in another of his series of
engravings in which he studies the femmes elegantes
of Montmartre, of the Quartier Latin, of the
boulevards, or of the Rue Royale, he shows us
a variety of types, we realise that it is all humanity
itself he is depicting. Tn the Deux Brunes, in
Contraste, showing two women at a bar, one dark,
the other fair ; in his Gigolettes, sitting on a cafe
terrace ; in Far Niente, or in La Terrace, and in
Demoiselle au Tennis he shows himself to be
wonderfully qualified as a delineator of the fascina-
tions of modern womankind.

How delicate, how true, the art with which he
suggests the alluring smile of the lips, the inviting
glance of the eye. These, too, are real portraits,
for M. Chahine is, in the general sense of the word,
a portraitist before all else. And whether it be in
admirable plates like his Chateau Rouge, or his Dor-
tneurs sur un banc, wherein fatigue and misery are so
poignantly depicted, or in the exquisitely beautiful
Contraste, that I mentioned just now, he is always
capable of seizing and fixing humanity in its most
varied aspects, and in its most diverse manifestations.

Portraitist he is, even in his landscapes, such as
Saint Ouen, vu des fortifications, in which he marks
with as much care and study of character and
expression the essential features of a landscape, as
though they formed parts of the human face.
Nothing could be more keenly painful than this
Parisian faubourg setting, as the artist has seen and
presented it. Bring near it the portrait of The
Chemineau; the same hand engraved these two
amazing pages, with the same love of truth, the
same intense feeling.

M. Chahine's portrait of M. Alfred Stevens, M.
Anatole France, and M. Comely, are perfect things
both from the documentary and the artistic points
of view. Wonderful to note the skill with which
he traces the features of the old Flemish master,
his dignified, aristocratic air, the keenness of the
eye which has seen so much, the delicacy of the
hand which has wrought so many lovely works.
And in the portrait of M. Anatole France, how
well he has indicated the psychology of the great
writer, his invincible curiosity to taste and to
know everything, his light irony, his laughing
wisdom. All this is divined by the expression of
the eyes, the curve of the lip, the pose, and the
expression generally.

:

PORTRAIT OF M, ANATOLE FRANCE FROM AN ETCHING BY EDGAR CHAHINE

( By permission of M. Ed. Sagot,- Paris)

T95