Studio: international art (27.1903)

Nicolas Gysis

spirits, their very souls." The beautiful lines of
Shelley instinctively recur to the memory when
he says they belong to " some world far from
ours, where music and moonlight and feeling
are one," so aptly do they describe the beautiful
Spring Symphony. The Pilgrimage has been three
times chosen as his subject by Gysis, and each
interpretation of it was more ideal, more full of
dignified melancholy. A young girl, desperately
and hopelessly in love with one to whom she
can never be united, is taken by her mother on
a pilgrimage to a little chapel at the top of a
hill. The enamoured maiden is carrying with
her a golden heart as an offering to the image
of the Virgin, as she climbs up the steep and
rugged path to the sanctuary. She is weak and
emaciated, and sinks down upon her Via Dolorosa,
whilst her mother, broken-hearted and helpless,
endeavours in vain to console and sustain her.
The surrounding landscape forms an admirable
setting to this Christian Ariadne, whose Theseus
has left her; it" is full of sympathetic sombreness
and sadness, and gives to the two figures some-
thing of supernatural gloom. The whole picture
is, in fact, a mystic poem, a pathetic dirge, a
classic lament in colour, and the deep bluish
greys and browns, which are the predominant
tones, are peculiarly appropriate to it.

Once launched in the new path, able to trans-
late into tangible form his most fanciful dreams,
his most intimate emotions, Gysis pressed on ever
more and more eagerly, a true pilgrim, in love with
his own aim. One grand composition now succeeded
another, varied by less ambitious work, such as
designs for bookbindings, posters, etc. Amongst
these some few must be selected for special com-
mendation—the Cover for the Illustrirter Zeitung
and that for Ueber Land und Meer; the Advertise-
ment of the Olympian games, a veritable master-
piece, with the seats of the stadium on one side,
on the back of which is seen a bas-relief of the
Parthenon, with the Genius of the city of Athens,
crowned with laurel leaves, listening to the beautiful
music drawn from the lyre by Time, who is seated
behind him, in praise of the glory of the ancient
town, devoted to the pursuit of noble games.
Beyond is seen the well-known Victory, and in
the background the Temple of Pallas gleaming
with glory as in an apotheosis. The Dawn of
the New Century, a picture in which white, diapha-
nous, and luminous figures, lit up as it were from
within, typify the hopes of progress, of happiness,
and peace, leading invisible humanity onwards to
an ideal aim ; whilst the " Gloria Immortalis,"

hovering above them all, draws her flaming sword
to strike down the beast typifying evil; Victory,
a winged figure, full of a majesty recalling that
of the best antique work, yet totally unlike the
many Victories which have come down to us from
the remote past; Narcissus, a dainty little painting
of refined and delicate colouring, in which the
beautiful boy of Greek mythology, so graceful and
so vain, gazes at his own image in the crystalline
waters of a brook; the fine group of Centaurs,
typifying the wild torrents dashing in angry foam
down the sides of the mountains; Cupid, whose
hands have been bound by a Centaur, so that he
may not be able to do any more mischief amongst
mankind ; and the charming chorus of Bacchantes,
lovely girls mad with joy and love, dancing grace-
fully together in a circle in the soft moonbeams,
which give to their rose-tinted flesh the appearance
of mother-of-pearl. The Triumph of Religion is a
superb figure, full of austere majesty; Glory rises
up proudly upon the crest of Psara, the famous
island, of which the heroic inhabitants laid down
their lives in a noble struggle for liberty ; the Con-
queror in the Olympian games, with his noble
head raised in conscious pride, as he paces along
upon the gleaming height of Olympus, his faultlessly
modelled nude limbs gleaming in the resplendent
atmosphere, with many another charming con-
ception, the enumeration of which would but weary
the reader.

In all his later pictures, with their harmonious
yet sombre colouring, their statuesque and noble
figures, which are yet never theatrical, though, to
quote the words of William Ritter, " they resemble
marble, alabaster and snow," Gysis is a faithful
interpreter of the Greek genius, a true descendant
of his Greek ancestors. There is, however, about
his work no servile imitation: no fictitious or
superficial resemblance to the work of others; he
is a true scion of the old stock, and, thanks to the
mysterious influences of heredity, it would seem
as if the very spirit of the past lived again in him,
for even as some time-worn monarch of the forest
puts forth new shoots " full of fresh and vigorous
sap, so has this modern artist produced original
work of real value. He is a visionary, no doubt
but his vision is not obscured by any false
preconceptions, his ideal creations are real, full
of beauty and of life, unshrouded by any fic-
titious atmosphere. He is an idealist and a
symbolist, but a symbolist who wields his brush
with an assured hand, who is confident of his own
powers, who has laid the foundations of his art
by hard study, and knows how to indulge in

203