DOI issue:
Nr. 168 (March 1907)
DOI article:Uzanne, Octave: Gaston Hochard: A painter of French types
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20774#0240
Gaston Hochard
grouped and composed with extreme sim-
plicity, is, as it were, a very accurate and, so
to speak, final synthesis of the magistrate,
the general, the prefect, the minister, the
bishop, chaplain, gendarme, deacon, or cure
of France in these early years of the twentieth
century. The subsidiary personages, such as
mayors, municipal councillors, bandsmen,
firemen, conductors of choral societies and
shopkeepers, are studied with equal vigour,
and are thrown clearly into relief and light
with an extraordinary skill which gives a
typical and concrete summary of each in-
dividual. In these studies of provincial
official manners in the little towns of central
France, where the magistracy, the army, and
the clergy are continually rubbing shoulders,
and even in Paris itself, with its race-course
crowds, the painter always rises to the point
of giving most happily a synthetic repre-
sentation of these types of modern life.
Further, M. Hochard, who is enamoured of
-his palette, and an ardent seeker after
harmonies of colour, ever strives in his
entertaining canvases to regulate his chro-
matic chords much as does the musician in
choosing the key of his compositions. In each of
his pictures this conscientious artist sets himself to
arrange around a general dominant a series of
charming symphonic chords of colour. Thus it
THE SALON, PARIS ” BY GASTON HOCHARD
might be said that certain of his paintings are in
the major key and others in the minor. These
effects are carefully sought for and deliberately
chosen by the painter. Like the master com-
posers—like Whistler himself—he orchestrates his
motifs with all the maestria of the symphony writer.
BY GASTON HOCHARD
M. Gaston Hochard, who was elected an asso-
ciate of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts (late
Champ de Mars) is already a veteran as regards
success, both in Paris and in the provinces. Born
at Orleans about 1865—but inheriting Gascon,
Norman and Picardian blood through his parental
ancestors—he began by studying jurisprudence,
but abandoned the law to come to study in Paris,
first at the Raphael Collin Academy, and then at
the Academy of “La Palette,” where he had lessons
from Roll, Carriere, and Gervex. His studies here,
however, were of but secondary importance, and
they alone could never have given him that rare
and certain knowledge of painting, that skill in
technique which his works display. His principal
virtues as precise colourist, as draughtsman, as work-
man full of maitrise, he owes chiefly to steady toil,
to the determination he has always had to extract
from the great masters—Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and
others—the secret of their incomparable art. With
this'object in view he studied the ancients for more
“BOOKLOVERs”
grouped and composed with extreme sim-
plicity, is, as it were, a very accurate and, so
to speak, final synthesis of the magistrate,
the general, the prefect, the minister, the
bishop, chaplain, gendarme, deacon, or cure
of France in these early years of the twentieth
century. The subsidiary personages, such as
mayors, municipal councillors, bandsmen,
firemen, conductors of choral societies and
shopkeepers, are studied with equal vigour,
and are thrown clearly into relief and light
with an extraordinary skill which gives a
typical and concrete summary of each in-
dividual. In these studies of provincial
official manners in the little towns of central
France, where the magistracy, the army, and
the clergy are continually rubbing shoulders,
and even in Paris itself, with its race-course
crowds, the painter always rises to the point
of giving most happily a synthetic repre-
sentation of these types of modern life.
Further, M. Hochard, who is enamoured of
-his palette, and an ardent seeker after
harmonies of colour, ever strives in his
entertaining canvases to regulate his chro-
matic chords much as does the musician in
choosing the key of his compositions. In each of
his pictures this conscientious artist sets himself to
arrange around a general dominant a series of
charming symphonic chords of colour. Thus it
THE SALON, PARIS ” BY GASTON HOCHARD
might be said that certain of his paintings are in
the major key and others in the minor. These
effects are carefully sought for and deliberately
chosen by the painter. Like the master com-
posers—like Whistler himself—he orchestrates his
motifs with all the maestria of the symphony writer.
BY GASTON HOCHARD
M. Gaston Hochard, who was elected an asso-
ciate of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts (late
Champ de Mars) is already a veteran as regards
success, both in Paris and in the provinces. Born
at Orleans about 1865—but inheriting Gascon,
Norman and Picardian blood through his parental
ancestors—he began by studying jurisprudence,
but abandoned the law to come to study in Paris,
first at the Raphael Collin Academy, and then at
the Academy of “La Palette,” where he had lessons
from Roll, Carriere, and Gervex. His studies here,
however, were of but secondary importance, and
they alone could never have given him that rare
and certain knowledge of painting, that skill in
technique which his works display. His principal
virtues as precise colourist, as draughtsman, as work-
man full of maitrise, he owes chiefly to steady toil,
to the determination he has always had to extract
from the great masters—Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and
others—the secret of their incomparable art. With
this'object in view he studied the ancients for more
“BOOKLOVERs”