Studio: international art (34.1905)

Constantin Guys

' a tivoli " by constantin guys

sculpture. In this art the minds of artists seem By striving in her art for expression ot the gentle

hemmed about with traditions—whether of Hellenic aspect of life which has appealed to her, even if

beauty, or of Florentine expressiveness, or of the there may be sometimes hesitation in her technique,

rebellion that in Rodin's art gives form to imprisoned her art is surely creating for itself its own atmosphere,

spirituality. Out of England sculpture is aware of and at the same time setting itself free from a

the fact that there can be an art as a flower growing cold scholasticism. T. Martin Wood.
near to all these things, concerned with neither of

them—a natural, even a domestic, art, embodying A FORGOTTEN ARTIST : CON-

what is quite transient, the movement of a woman /\ STANTIN GUYS. BY HENRI

in modern costume ; an art trivial often in its aims, / \ FRANTZ.

but not mean even then, because its inspiration

has been in triviality, and inspiration even of this The ardent curiosity of the amateur and the

kind is more valuable in its contribution to sculp- artist, in reverting to the men and the things

ture than are uninspired exercises in the classicism of the Second Empire, would seem this time to

of the Greeks, or insincere pretensions to the have attached itself definitely to the strange and

emotionalism of a Meunier or of a Rodin. The mysterious artist who styled himself Constantin

word big has entered the studios, to complete the Guys. An interesting exhibition, organised in the

ruin of more than one petit-maitre. spring of last year, in the Barbazanges Galleries,

The world now has been divided up into gardens ; wherein figured a large number of drawings and

and where the ancients tilled the ground, it is left water-colours lent from the Luxembourg and the

for us to grow our flowers. And we may not Carnavalet Galleries by experienced collectors,

make the past of art art's future. All this bears revealed to its full extent not only the power,

upon the subject in hand, upon Miss Levick's the diversity, and the vitality of this great talent,

sculpture, because in her art such conclusions have but—what is more important still—showed the

been arrived at, though, perhaps, unconsciously, influence exercised by this veritable precursor on

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