DOI Heft:
No. 109 (April, 1902)
DOI Artikel:Mourey, Gabriel: The art of M. Lucien Simon
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19875#0176
Lucien Simon
" LES MARGUILLIERS " BY I.UCIEN SIMON
people can't enjoy, art which people don't make a alarms them in their researches ; they do not fear
fuss about, is not art at all! to go so far as caricature even, provided it be
M. Lucien Simon shrugs his shoulders, and goes human and real. This, however, is not their sole
on with his work. Nothing disturbs his serenity, aim; that is to say, they possess the same faculty
or affects the sort of indifference with which he for perceiving and then fixing, by the means
seems to regard the things about him; for this of expression proper to their art, the essential
coldness is merely apparent, and hides an ardent features of what may be termed "the psychological
sensitiveness, a soul full of passion, and nerves grimace." In the one as in the other, there reigns
always a-quiver. The name of Gustave Flaubert a love of that which is human, a burning desire to
occurred to me a moment ago in this connection, reach the very heart of life, beneath its external
However arbitrary it may appear to compare a gestures, beneath its visible envelope. They never
painter's method of work with that of a writer—to particularise but to generalise the more broadly;
say nothing of the results that spring therefrom—I they devote themselves to the study of types simply
nevertheless can discover the most striking analogies to bring into more luminous relief the ordinary
between the author of " Madame Bovary " and the attributes of the human species,
painter of the Retour de la Mtsse a Penmarch, the Like Flaubert, again, M. Lucien Simon proceeds
Luttes dans le~ Finistere, the Cirque Forain, the by dint of elimination. From out a scene de moiurs,
Marguilliers, and the Procession. Their manner of a face, a bit of nature, he will retain only just so
feeling appears to me identical as is their mode of much as it is important to retain, neglecting all the
reproducing their sensations. Both are equally rest; but he will have observed it all; and thus it
bent on reality, both equally keen on discovering is that his pictures, which, so to speak, are reduced
good "documents"; nothing deters and nothing and concentrated to the minimum, are_really so
163
" LES MARGUILLIERS " BY I.UCIEN SIMON
people can't enjoy, art which people don't make a alarms them in their researches ; they do not fear
fuss about, is not art at all! to go so far as caricature even, provided it be
M. Lucien Simon shrugs his shoulders, and goes human and real. This, however, is not their sole
on with his work. Nothing disturbs his serenity, aim; that is to say, they possess the same faculty
or affects the sort of indifference with which he for perceiving and then fixing, by the means
seems to regard the things about him; for this of expression proper to their art, the essential
coldness is merely apparent, and hides an ardent features of what may be termed "the psychological
sensitiveness, a soul full of passion, and nerves grimace." In the one as in the other, there reigns
always a-quiver. The name of Gustave Flaubert a love of that which is human, a burning desire to
occurred to me a moment ago in this connection, reach the very heart of life, beneath its external
However arbitrary it may appear to compare a gestures, beneath its visible envelope. They never
painter's method of work with that of a writer—to particularise but to generalise the more broadly;
say nothing of the results that spring therefrom—I they devote themselves to the study of types simply
nevertheless can discover the most striking analogies to bring into more luminous relief the ordinary
between the author of " Madame Bovary " and the attributes of the human species,
painter of the Retour de la Mtsse a Penmarch, the Like Flaubert, again, M. Lucien Simon proceeds
Luttes dans le~ Finistere, the Cirque Forain, the by dint of elimination. From out a scene de moiurs,
Marguilliers, and the Procession. Their manner of a face, a bit of nature, he will retain only just so
feeling appears to me identical as is their mode of much as it is important to retain, neglecting all the
reproducing their sensations. Both are equally rest; but he will have observed it all; and thus it
bent on reality, both equally keen on discovering is that his pictures, which, so to speak, are reduced
good "documents"; nothing deters and nothing and concentrated to the minimum, are_really so
163