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#0182
Lucien Simon
Nowhere else are to be seen human kind in
more perfect accord with their surroundings. The
" bigoudens," as they are called, are short and
heavily built, with an impassibility of feature quite
Asiatic. They are at once mystics and brutes,
deeply religious and basely passionate. The pro-
minent cheek-bones, the narrow eyes, the hue of
their complexion, their dress—especially that of the
women-folk—reveal their Thibetan and Mongolian
descent. In the embroideries they wear, in their
clothes, in the strangely-pointed form of the head-
dress beneath which they hide their hair, one dis-
covers styles similar to those in use for centuries
past among the Central Asian peoples. Look at
them in M. Lucien Simon's pages, with their
instinctive gestures and expressions, with soulless
glance, furtive and dull, with features strongly
accentuated, the frontal arch of no depth, the nose
flat, the head over-broad. All the stigmatic signs
of degeneracy are to be read in their features and
in their clumsy attitudes. See them grouped
round the wrestlers in these Luttes, Finis fere*
amid the grandiosely weird surroundings of the
desert in which they exist; see them on the move,
as in Retour de la Messe; j in repose, as in Jour de
Pardon and Cabaret Breton ; % see them again,
a motley crowd, curiously picturesque, in La
Diseuse de bonne Aventure and Le Chien savant.
How bizarre and still how real ! How forcefully
and how truly the artist has fixed the several types,
making them move in their proper atmosphere,
and reproducing the peculiarities of their manners.
These qualities are to be found in equal intensity
in the portraits painted by M. Simon and in his
studies of provincial and Parisian bourgeoisie.
Among the upper classes, more or less cosmo-
politan, and stamped by fashion with its own uni-
formity, characteristic traits are effaced, feelings
are hidden beneath a mask of coldness. In
middle - class circles, wherein the cares of
life have developed the will, wherein education
* See The Studio, Vol. xvii., page 8.
t See " Art in 1898," page 18.
X See The Studio, Vol. xix., page 94.
" LE MENHIR "
BY LUCIEN SIMON
169
Nowhere else are to be seen human kind in
more perfect accord with their surroundings. The
" bigoudens," as they are called, are short and
heavily built, with an impassibility of feature quite
Asiatic. They are at once mystics and brutes,
deeply religious and basely passionate. The pro-
minent cheek-bones, the narrow eyes, the hue of
their complexion, their dress—especially that of the
women-folk—reveal their Thibetan and Mongolian
descent. In the embroideries they wear, in their
clothes, in the strangely-pointed form of the head-
dress beneath which they hide their hair, one dis-
covers styles similar to those in use for centuries
past among the Central Asian peoples. Look at
them in M. Lucien Simon's pages, with their
instinctive gestures and expressions, with soulless
glance, furtive and dull, with features strongly
accentuated, the frontal arch of no depth, the nose
flat, the head over-broad. All the stigmatic signs
of degeneracy are to be read in their features and
in their clumsy attitudes. See them grouped
round the wrestlers in these Luttes, Finis fere*
amid the grandiosely weird surroundings of the
desert in which they exist; see them on the move,
as in Retour de la Messe; j in repose, as in Jour de
Pardon and Cabaret Breton ; % see them again,
a motley crowd, curiously picturesque, in La
Diseuse de bonne Aventure and Le Chien savant.
How bizarre and still how real ! How forcefully
and how truly the artist has fixed the several types,
making them move in their proper atmosphere,
and reproducing the peculiarities of their manners.
These qualities are to be found in equal intensity
in the portraits painted by M. Simon and in his
studies of provincial and Parisian bourgeoisie.
Among the upper classes, more or less cosmo-
politan, and stamped by fashion with its own uni-
formity, characteristic traits are effaced, feelings
are hidden beneath a mask of coldness. In
middle - class circles, wherein the cares of
life have developed the will, wherein education
* See The Studio, Vol. xvii., page 8.
t See " Art in 1898," page 18.
X See The Studio, Vol. xix., page 94.
" LE MENHIR "
BY LUCIEN SIMON
169