Studio: international art (31.1904)

Victor Hugos Drawings

" la tour aux rats " from the drawing by victor hugo

ascended the Rhine from Cologne, Victor Hugo eagles' nests perched on sheerest rock, high above
reached Bacharach, two beautiful views of which the troubled waves of the stream below; these
he depicted. " Bacharach," he wrote, "is the cyclopean towers in ruins covered with vegetation,
most ancient bit of human habitations I have ever wherein he never fails to perceive the contrast be-
seen in my life." He tells, too, how he lived there tween Youth and Death—these are truly the chosen
in Rembrandtesque interiors, and it is the outside spots whence he evolves his imposing Burgraves.
of one of these most char-
acteristic abodes that he
has fixed with so much
precision of touch, and
such absolute " Tightness "
of values. From the
same town we have
another drawing : "Above
the Byzantine church, half-
way up, are the ruins of
another church of the
fifteenth century in red
sandstone, without doors
or window - frames, or
glass ... a magnificent
skeleton showing its proud
outline against the sky."

But it is the "burgs,"
even more than the
houses with their old
decrepit facades, that at-
tract Victor Hugo. These "burg de vianden" from the drawing by victor hugo

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