Studio: international art (25.1902)

A Swiss Painter

This is apparent in that beautiful landscape scape of which he considers the best piece of
Les Nukes, which was painted last spring and work of the kind he has as yet painted. He has
exhibited a few months later at the Vevey Exhi- also completed a vast decorative panel which has
bition. This work has all the enchantment of an recently been placed in the new Palais du Parle-
evocation. A part of the higher summits is seen ment at Bern. The subject is a landscape of plain
purple with the last rays of. the setting sun, while and mountains representative of the historic soil of
the neighbouring peaks are already pale with that Switzerland, the cradle of the Swiss Confederation,
death-like whiteness which succeeds the " alpeng- The spirit in which this work is conceived, and the
liihn." From the depths of the valley rise the style in which it is executed, are worthy of the
clouds represented as a troop of exquisitely graceful highest praise. The artist has had recourse neither
human forms, dancing in the light upper air into to the arabesque nor to la formuJe symetrique.
which they will soon dissolve. The fairy, ephemeral The effect of the whole is produced by the realisa-
appearance of these forms,—as if they were indeed tion of the decorative value and possibilities of the
evolved out of such stuff as clouds are made of— great lines of a severe architectural Alpine landscape,
and their drifting there at that twilight hour against and the accords between colours powerful and yet
the background of the everlasting mountains is as dull as in a pastel.

admirably suggestive in conception as it is delicate Perhaps nowhere does the essentially Swiss cha-
and beautiful in execution. M. Giron has just racter of Mr. Giron's art come out more fully than
finished a picture, the Fete de Lutteurs, the land- in that delightful series of pictures he calls his

mountaineers, viz. : — Les
Vieux, La Lecture,

|HHHHBHBBHHHIHjjHH| L'Ardoisier, L'Accord,

i ,1.//,.^!, X \ Fillettes Valaisanhes; the

! numerous studies he has

| , , made of mountaineers for

BBP^BWP^SpBgl'■ jjt^Jk W ■ ''/ft,' his Fete de Lutteurs, and

in such a beautiful evoca-
tion of a national type as

leu >ie Unterwaldoise.
-, j

HEfflHsr V hMBf There can be no doubt

, that Mr. Giron is one of

the most remarkable of

, living Swiss portrait -

painters, and in many of
his portraits he has caught
and fixed with unerring
knowledge, feeling and

,,, - ' power the characteristi-

. cally Swiss physiognomy.

^HHK'.. £ ' • ■ \ , The Portrait de Madame

■|f|l§ m jB^^ jW AT. (page 89), one of the

!WWm § \ $ iBr^ 'M most exquisite he has

. ,.. ^......., done, holds a place apart.

As far as the material in

S? " ffrT 'IM^&I^S^ which he works is con-

I cerned, he says :—" I like

black for the variety and

iH Jf i " * . m M M /^HHj^H beauty of its aspects.

mm ■ JL 'j^H **$bfck-:^llil"l Several years ago 1 pro-

| J 'i^^^^^^^^B duced a curious resume

of the figure of a chimney-

Jk» "* ^"^^^^sSSBamSl^^ sweep, very black on a

black back-ground, the

t£" (Photograph by Hanfstaengl) by charles giron child, holding out a bright

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