Studio: international art (39.1907)

Henri Teixeira de Mattos

elder brother, to whom he
owes a heavy debt of grati-
tude, they allowed him to
enter the Academy of Art
in Amsterdam.

Here, in the schools, like
so many eager artists, the
youth, now seventeen, met
with difficulty and harassing
discouragement. The only
pupil in sculpture, he had
the large modelling-room
all to himself. Not only
'watching" by henri teixeira de mattos did he suffer this grave dis-

advantage that comes from

HE ART OF HENRI TEIXEIRA lack of emulation and the criticisms of fellow
DE MATTOS BY HALDANE students, but he was allowed no model, being

confined to the copying of casts of carved frames
of mirrors and the like. Worse still, he worked

T

MACFALL.

Born in Amsterdam on the 21st of December, without assistance and without guidance. How-
1856, Henri Teixeira de Mattos came of a thrifty ever, for lack of model, he was allowed to work
commercial stock which was hardly a promising in the evenings, now and again, in the life
parentage for the rearing of a lad of artistic aspira- classes of the professors of painting, standing
tions. And so it proved, for the youngster found outside the circle of students of painting and
himself at fifteen perched on an office stool in a drawing. To one of these professors, Allebe, he
bank. acknowledges a considerable debt for all his care

As a matter of fact, the art of the sculptor, of him at this time. As a matter of fact, how-
unlike that of the painter, scarcely existed in ever, during the year and a half he spent at
Holland, and the boy's aims must have reeked of these schools he learnt little but drawing; and,
madness to his kin. But the artistic temperament disgusted at last with his meagre training, he
takes hard killing. So it came about that the lad, being nineteen, betook himself to Rome. Even
instead of applying himself
with zeal to the forwarding
of letters and parcels, gave
himself up to sketching in
the ledgers and to model-
ling figures in the sealing-
wax that lay at his hand—
indeed, his manager soon
complained that he could
not supply the youth's
heavy demand for the
plastic stuff.

A couple of years saw
the young fellow at the end
of his commercial career—
his family realising that in
Henri there had come
amongst them one of those
difficult personalities that
bewilder with the fantastic
desire to make beautiful
things rather than money.
Influenced chiefly by his " homewards '' by henri teixeira de mattos

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