Studio: international art (47.1909)

THE STUDIO

Leon lhermitte, painter

OF FRENCH PEASANT LIFE.
BY FREDERIC HENRIET.

The painter Leon Lhermitte holds high rank
among contemporary artists, and is one of whom
we can say without exaggeration that he enjoys,
at the present time, a world-wide reputation. This
he owes to the exceptional gifts with which Nature
has endowed him, but—and this is the more rare—
he has known how himself to foster those talents
by stubborn and unflagging labour, by a steadfast
effort which has never wavered, and by an ardent
and unceasing striving to attain his ideal, which
has carried him to the radiant summits of his art.

It is now forty-five years since Lhermitte first
attracted attention by his earliest contributions to
the Paris Salons. At one bound he leapt over all
those successive phases of convention which are to
every artist almost a law of nature; his talent took

at once its definite character, and so, although he
still continues to wield the brush with an ever-
young and virile hand, the moment seems to us to
have arrived in which to take a general survey of
his work, in order to draw therefrom a synthetic
appreciation of its aims and significance.

Lhermitte’s biography will not detain us long.
Like all fortunate people, those artists have no
history who combine with a passionate and single-
minded devotion to their art, the level-headedness,
the good sense, which preserves them from adven-
tures. We will therefore merely occupy ourselves
with the circumstances of his childhood, the con-
dition of his environment, and the hereditary
influences which may explain the native savour,
that touch of the soil, the charming rustic fragrance
which is inherent in all the productions of his
brush. At the same time we must not fail to try
and discover the part that his earliest aesthetic
sensations, experienced on his arrival in Paris, and

“la famille”

XLVII. No. 195.—June, 1909.

( Washington Gallery)

BY LEON LHERMITTE