Studio: international art (54.1912)

Charles Cottet's Breton Pictures

CHARLES COTTET, PAINTER
OF BRETON LIFE AND
SCENES. BY ACHILLE
SEGARD.

With chestnut hair and beard, dark eyes, very
marked features, in figure of medium size with
active gesture and movements despite his big
shoulders, Charles Cottet is now forty years of
age. He is in the full tide of his strength and
talent, and the collective exhibition held some
few months ago (July 1911) in the Georges Petit
Galleries afforded a magnificent and most valuable
opportunity of forming a just appreciation of his
work and of judging the essential characteristics
of his art.

Four hundred paintings exhibited simultaneously,
upwards of a hundred drawings or etchings, and
over and above this the thirty or so important
pictures in the public galleries of France and
abroad—here is the material on which to base our
opinion of his talent. Few painters could make

so brave a show; few could submit to such a
severe test of their art. From 1883 (the date of
Cottet's debut) to 1911 is a career of twenty-eight
years; one had in the exhibition the entire work
of this period, and at once one felt that here was
a distinct personality. Seen in a wide and com-
prehensive glance, this ensemble gave an impres-
sion of force, of serenity, of grandeur, and of calm
and puissant tranquillity, and the visitor was con-
scious of being in presence of an immense ceuvre
methodically conceived and constructed by a will,
by an entity at once conscious of his ideal, stead-
fast in his purpose, sure of his resources and
means of expression, and following in logical
manner through the most diverse subjects and
emotions the essentials of his being and the
expression of certain deep and universal sentiments.

In any consideration of the work of Charles
Cottet, it will be found that the first classification
into which his work most readily falls is that based
on the different ranges of colour with which the
artist sets his palette. The most tender, the most