Studio: international art (28.1903)

Studio- Talk

Here is a composition
dealing with simple life, a
composition which, from the
point of view of execution,
colour and harmony of
purpose, leaves little or
nothing to be desired.
But this is not all. It is,
so to speak, an artistic
resume of the life and his-
tory of the old city, and
that strongly portrayed
national type gathers dig-
nity from his alliance with
the generations who helped
to make one of the main
interests of the city, and
from his relationship
to that eventful past
suggested by the Cathe-

portrait group by aimee kapin dral and the Mountain.

This picture was exhibited
at the Swiss National

to whose work we hope to have the opportunity Exhibition, opened a year or two ago in Geneva,
of referring in forthcoming numbers of The and was afterwards purchased by the Federal
Studio. She is a fine example of that singleness Government. '
of devotion which characterises the born artist.

Her art is the all absorbing interest of her life. It Mdlle. Rapin is unmistakably one of the best
is not without its limitations, but within those Swiss portraitists, working for the most part in
limitations the artist has known how to be true to pastels, her medium by predilection ; she has at the
herself. Drawing her inspiration direct from Nature, same time modelled portraits in bas relief. We are
she has held on her independent way, steadily faithful not only impressed by the intensely living quality
to the gift she possesses of evoking a character in of her work as a portraitist, but by the extraordinary
a portrait, or of making us feel how the common power with which she has seized and expressed the
task, when representative of genuine human effort individual character and history of each of her
and touched with the poetry of national tradition, subjects. To realise that she possesses the secret
of religion and of nature, becomes a subject of this branch of art we have but to study, amongst
of noble artistic treatment. She has kept unim- others, such portraits as those of her mother, of the
paired that merveilleux frisson de sensibilite which Genevese philosopher Ernest Naville, of the
is one of the most precious gifts of the artistic Genevese physicist Raoul Pictet, of the sculptor
temperament, and which is quick to respond to the Jules Salmson, of Count Szymanowski, or of
ideal in the real. There are some artists who, Dr. Reverdin. Mdlle. Ra[ in has exhibited with
though possessed of extraordinary mastery over the success at the Paris salons, at Berlin, Munich, and
materials of their art, bring to their work a spirit in her own country. Her richest reward, however,
which beggars and belittles both art and life; there she finds in single-hearted devotion to her art.
are others who seem to work with an ever present R. M.

sense of the noble purpose of their vocation, and

the pathos and dignity of existence. Mdlle. Rapin 7* K ADRID. — In December the first
belongs to the second category. Her L'Horloger / \ / 1 official exhibition of the year was
is an example of this. A Genevese watchmaker is / V 1 opened, and proved—a strange thing
bending to his work at a bench covered with tools. in Spain—in no way below the ex-

Through the window of the workshop one perceives pectations of the general public. Spain never
in the blue distance Mount Saleve, and nearer the possessed either a national landscape painter nor a
time-honoured towers of the Cathedral of St. Pierre, corresponding school; its excursions in this line
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