DOI issue:
Nr. 193 (April 1909)
DOI article:Segard, Achille: René Ménard: painter of classical landscape
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20966#0209
Rend Menard
looks at M. Menard’s sketch-books and innumer-
able drawings one finds testimony similar to that
of these manuscripts—so many erasures, so much
re-drawing, so many new beginnings. One finds
among these sketches the same tree drawn, perhaps,
twenty or thirty times with such scrupulous detail
that one would say it had been copied branch by
branch and leaf by leaf. Endless studies of cloud
effects, portions of ruins, or of little valleys are
to be found among the numberless pages of his
portfolio. And with regard to the nude model,
one conjectures that each movement, each posture,
and each member in particular has been made the
object of long and ever-renewed study.
It is easily seen that M. Menard’s pictures are
not painted direct from nature. They are imagina-
tive pictures, and not copies of reality. One feels
that they have been executed at leisure in the
quiet of the studio, under the complete control of
an ever-vigilant judgment. Take, for instance,
these nymphs in a decorative landscape, fair-haired
maidens disporting themselves on the seashore, or
placed like the Pensees du Lieu in a mountainous
country, or in a fallow dell clothed with all the
purple hues of autumn. The very nature of the
subject excludes the possibility of its being painted
from nature. These are imaginative pictures, but
they are nevertheless in no way in contradiction
to nature. They are beyond reality, yet intim-
ately allied to it. The whole is composed of parts
placed in juxtaposition in entire harmony. They
are transpositions of actuality; and that phase of
nature which each part examined separately will
be found to present is the more accentuated in
that the impression of the whole composition does
not detract from it. The method of work is there-
fore easily seen. Sparing himself no pains, M.
Menard makes out of doors hundreds of notes,
what literary men would designate as “jottings ”—
psychological memoranda. The preparatory work
then consists in going through these documents
and copying exactly the things seen and noted.
There finally remains the arraying of the facts by
an effort of the understanding, the intelligence of
taste, and the exercise of imagination. The subjects
of M. Menard’s pictures are made up of diverse ele-
ments. The nude model that he posed and painted
in the confines of his garden will be harmonised
in his memory with the autumn tints of a wood in
the hollow of a deep valley ; those Breton cliffs will
blend with a sea-effect noted in the Pas de Calais;
that shepherd drawn while crossing a field in France
will not present an incongruous appearance when
painted with a herd of cattle on Mount Hymette
(occasionally nature offers him the complete subject
for a picture, but such are by no means his best
works); that cloud effect
observed one afternoon
in the woods of Fontaine-
bleau will symphonise with
the truncated columns of
highest Corinth. One
sees, then, through what
a series of modifications
these finished composi-
tions must pass, in the
imagination of the artist,
before being put on
canvas.
In such a method of
work, memory, imagina-
tion and discernment must
play each an equal part.
When the imagination is
not found supported and
controlled by the memory,
the finished work ceases
to have communion with
nature. It becomes a
conventional picture, an
imagery more or less
pleasing, brilliant or agree-
183
PORTRAIT OF LOUIS MENARD
BY RENE MENARD
looks at M. Menard’s sketch-books and innumer-
able drawings one finds testimony similar to that
of these manuscripts—so many erasures, so much
re-drawing, so many new beginnings. One finds
among these sketches the same tree drawn, perhaps,
twenty or thirty times with such scrupulous detail
that one would say it had been copied branch by
branch and leaf by leaf. Endless studies of cloud
effects, portions of ruins, or of little valleys are
to be found among the numberless pages of his
portfolio. And with regard to the nude model,
one conjectures that each movement, each posture,
and each member in particular has been made the
object of long and ever-renewed study.
It is easily seen that M. Menard’s pictures are
not painted direct from nature. They are imagina-
tive pictures, and not copies of reality. One feels
that they have been executed at leisure in the
quiet of the studio, under the complete control of
an ever-vigilant judgment. Take, for instance,
these nymphs in a decorative landscape, fair-haired
maidens disporting themselves on the seashore, or
placed like the Pensees du Lieu in a mountainous
country, or in a fallow dell clothed with all the
purple hues of autumn. The very nature of the
subject excludes the possibility of its being painted
from nature. These are imaginative pictures, but
they are nevertheless in no way in contradiction
to nature. They are beyond reality, yet intim-
ately allied to it. The whole is composed of parts
placed in juxtaposition in entire harmony. They
are transpositions of actuality; and that phase of
nature which each part examined separately will
be found to present is the more accentuated in
that the impression of the whole composition does
not detract from it. The method of work is there-
fore easily seen. Sparing himself no pains, M.
Menard makes out of doors hundreds of notes,
what literary men would designate as “jottings ”—
psychological memoranda. The preparatory work
then consists in going through these documents
and copying exactly the things seen and noted.
There finally remains the arraying of the facts by
an effort of the understanding, the intelligence of
taste, and the exercise of imagination. The subjects
of M. Menard’s pictures are made up of diverse ele-
ments. The nude model that he posed and painted
in the confines of his garden will be harmonised
in his memory with the autumn tints of a wood in
the hollow of a deep valley ; those Breton cliffs will
blend with a sea-effect noted in the Pas de Calais;
that shepherd drawn while crossing a field in France
will not present an incongruous appearance when
painted with a herd of cattle on Mount Hymette
(occasionally nature offers him the complete subject
for a picture, but such are by no means his best
works); that cloud effect
observed one afternoon
in the woods of Fontaine-
bleau will symphonise with
the truncated columns of
highest Corinth. One
sees, then, through what
a series of modifications
these finished composi-
tions must pass, in the
imagination of the artist,
before being put on
canvas.
In such a method of
work, memory, imagina-
tion and discernment must
play each an equal part.
When the imagination is
not found supported and
controlled by the memory,
the finished work ceases
to have communion with
nature. It becomes a
conventional picture, an
imagery more or less
pleasing, brilliant or agree-
183
PORTRAIT OF LOUIS MENARD
BY RENE MENARD