Studio: international art (38.1906)

The Salon of the Societd Nation ale

the night sky, has placed mixed groups of human
couples and fauns in the boat that glides over the
rippling water. Another important decorative work
in the Salon was the Orphee, by M. Auburtin,
which was acquired by the Government immediately
after the opening of the exhibition. Auburtin has
here set his name to one of his finest works. In a
vast landscape with shores washed by the sea,
where the silhouettes of pine-trees remind us of
Greece, Orpheus, the weeping poet, sounds the
chords of his lyre, while charmed tigers come
hastening round him. From this subject, which
has so often attracted artists, Auburtin has known
how to draw very novel effects. Here is indeed a
painting which will admirably adorn one of our
public buildings, so often dishonoured by pitiable
daubs.

When we pass from grandiose decoration to
portraiture, we must this year regret the abstention
of Mr. Sargent and of M. de la Gandara. M.
Lucien Simon had a very powerful and luminous por-
trait of children in the setting of a clear horizon, seen
through the great glass bays of the painter’s dining-
room at Benodet. In his exhibits of 1906 M.
Woogh confirms his previous successes, while M.
Ablett had two graceful portraits of women. Mr.
Frieseke is always on the look-out for unstudied

attitudes and gestures; no one' is less content with
the hackneyed; and if his women are occasionally
a little inconsistent, we must none the less praise
the painter’s efforts towards a living art, in a genre
where convention usually rules. Other interesting
portraits were that of the Duchesse d’ Uzls by Guirand
de Scevola, and that of the Emperor William by
Borchard, who showed us this monarch in a novel
aspect of intimacy and good-humour. Besnard’s
portrait of M. VAmbassadeur Barrere in full
dress, standing in the Carracci Gallery of the
Palazzo Farnese, forms a superb decorative
fantasia, while being at the same time a most faith-
ful portrait of the diplomatist. The portrait of
Mme. M., with her children grouped around her
amid the enchantments of a beautiful garden, is
full of those fine qualities of colouring which
belong to this painter, now the greatest glory of the
French school. The CardinalMathieu by Carolus-
Duran must on no account be overlooked, any more
than the other portrait of a man by the same artist,
who seems to have recovered in Rome the fine
qualities of his youth.

Among other portraits, those by Mme. de
Boznanska, MM. Faivre, Bracquemond, W. G.
von Glehn, Hugh de Glazebrook, Prinet, Guignet,
Jeanniot, Blanche, and Mr. John Lavery were all

“LE BOULEVARD POISSONNlfcRE, PARIS

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BY FREDERIC HOUBRON