DOI issue:
No. 195 (June, 1909)
DOI article:Frantz, Henri: The salon of the société nationale des beaux arts, Paris
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20967#0067
The Salon of the Society Nationale, Paris
these groups the foreign artists are in a very
small minority, and so hardly anywhere save at the
Grand Palais is it possible to see their work. So
it is always at the Salons, and there alone, that one
sees side by side products of the most diverse
talents and has an opportunity of appreciating as a
whole the trend of contemporary painting.
The distinctive feature of the Societe Nationale
this year is that it has received very many more
large compositions than usual. Many of these pic-
tures have not, it is true, much interest; such, for
instance, as M. Berteaux’s, which has a surface area
of 22 square metres (over 230 square feet), and
is destined for the great staircase at Nantes, and
several others as well. On the other hand, I have
lively recollections of three works among the
decorative paintings which are of the highest im-
portance.
Our attention is at first attracted by M. Besnard’s
large painting for the ceiling of a cupola. This
great artist has already executed three panels for
the ceiling of the Petit Palais. The first two, in
which Besnard depicts with bold symbolism La
Pensee and La Mature, figured at the Salon two
years ago ; the third, La Mystique, has not appeared
there at all; and now, in the fourth, which he calls
La Plastique, he shows us in a magnificent back-
ground of clouds—as it were an Olympus upon
the summits of the mountains—four large figures,
two of which, those in the foreground, are very
beautiful paintings of the nude. Besnard has here
depicted with his powerful
originality, the ancient and
symbolic legend of Paris
and the apple ; but Paris
is here at the same time
Apollo, god of the Arts,
grasping the mane of a
fiery, winged stallion,
which is one of the best
features of this masterly
conception. The work has
all Besnard’s customary
fine qualities — the very
striking colouring, that
beauty of style, and that
feeling for decorative effect
which are ever present in
all his paintings, but have
never been so completely
evinced as here.
In Room I. M. Rene
Menard shows the series
of paintings which were “la collation” by lucien simon
commissioned by the Government for the Ecole
de Droit—the most important so far of the pro-
ducts of his brush. These pictures appear to mark
the consummation of the painter’s art, for Menard,
now in the complete possession of his technique
and arrived at the full maturity of his talent, seems,
so to speak, to sum up his artistic achievements
in this work. As four of the panels have already
appeared in The Studio for April, 1909, we now
give the two others which side by side form the
centre of the decorative scheme. In them our
readers will recognise one of those beautiful land-
scapes of antiquity of which Menard holds the
secret. All here is of great nobility, and of the
classic breadth which connects Menard, through
his affinity with Poussin and Claude, with those
pure springs of beauty and lofty thought which
flow from Hellas.
M. J. Francis Auburtin continues, with much
distinction and merit, his series of large decorative
pictures. Disciple of Puvis de Chavannes, he seeks
above all for harmony and beautiful effects of
colour in mural painting. His large panel this
year is entitled EEssor. As he himself explains
in the catalogue, he has striven to express in the
four female figures the stages of human thought—
first dormant, then awaking, rising upward, and
finally taking flight into space, free, radiant, and
immortal. It is a beautiful symbol of a very noble
conception, treated with much power, and a subject
admirably appropriate for mural decoration.
45
these groups the foreign artists are in a very
small minority, and so hardly anywhere save at the
Grand Palais is it possible to see their work. So
it is always at the Salons, and there alone, that one
sees side by side products of the most diverse
talents and has an opportunity of appreciating as a
whole the trend of contemporary painting.
The distinctive feature of the Societe Nationale
this year is that it has received very many more
large compositions than usual. Many of these pic-
tures have not, it is true, much interest; such, for
instance, as M. Berteaux’s, which has a surface area
of 22 square metres (over 230 square feet), and
is destined for the great staircase at Nantes, and
several others as well. On the other hand, I have
lively recollections of three works among the
decorative paintings which are of the highest im-
portance.
Our attention is at first attracted by M. Besnard’s
large painting for the ceiling of a cupola. This
great artist has already executed three panels for
the ceiling of the Petit Palais. The first two, in
which Besnard depicts with bold symbolism La
Pensee and La Mature, figured at the Salon two
years ago ; the third, La Mystique, has not appeared
there at all; and now, in the fourth, which he calls
La Plastique, he shows us in a magnificent back-
ground of clouds—as it were an Olympus upon
the summits of the mountains—four large figures,
two of which, those in the foreground, are very
beautiful paintings of the nude. Besnard has here
depicted with his powerful
originality, the ancient and
symbolic legend of Paris
and the apple ; but Paris
is here at the same time
Apollo, god of the Arts,
grasping the mane of a
fiery, winged stallion,
which is one of the best
features of this masterly
conception. The work has
all Besnard’s customary
fine qualities — the very
striking colouring, that
beauty of style, and that
feeling for decorative effect
which are ever present in
all his paintings, but have
never been so completely
evinced as here.
In Room I. M. Rene
Menard shows the series
of paintings which were “la collation” by lucien simon
commissioned by the Government for the Ecole
de Droit—the most important so far of the pro-
ducts of his brush. These pictures appear to mark
the consummation of the painter’s art, for Menard,
now in the complete possession of his technique
and arrived at the full maturity of his talent, seems,
so to speak, to sum up his artistic achievements
in this work. As four of the panels have already
appeared in The Studio for April, 1909, we now
give the two others which side by side form the
centre of the decorative scheme. In them our
readers will recognise one of those beautiful land-
scapes of antiquity of which Menard holds the
secret. All here is of great nobility, and of the
classic breadth which connects Menard, through
his affinity with Poussin and Claude, with those
pure springs of beauty and lofty thought which
flow from Hellas.
M. J. Francis Auburtin continues, with much
distinction and merit, his series of large decorative
pictures. Disciple of Puvis de Chavannes, he seeks
above all for harmony and beautiful effects of
colour in mural painting. His large panel this
year is entitled EEssor. As he himself explains
in the catalogue, he has striven to express in the
four female figures the stages of human thought—
first dormant, then awaking, rising upward, and
finally taking flight into space, free, radiant, and
immortal. It is a beautiful symbol of a very noble
conception, treated with much power, and a subject
admirably appropriate for mural decoration.
45