Studio: international art (54.1912)

Felix Ziem

THE DOG AN A, VENICE FROM THE OIL PAINTING BY FELIX ZIEM

pictures for a trifle he started once more for the Venice. The latter was a decided success. It

South and for Venice, where he again lived his aroused general enthusiasm in critical and artistic

romantic life. What he wanted now was a closer circles and the Comte de Morny, then the leader

insight into the habits, movements and picturesque of fashion and good taste, followed one of his

dress of the natives that filled up the scene. On generous impulses and when standing before the

one of his many visits he hired a small shop near the Evening at Venice then and there decided to

Rialto and set up as a dealer in all sorts of bric-a- purchase it, and paid the artist a handsome price,

brae, lace, embroidery, fancy cloth, and cheap This consecrated his success, as it was now talked

jewels. He at least got enough custom to pay about in all the salons.

the rent, and what was best of all the shop The following year his pictures Feast at Venice

served as a surreptitious atelier for catching the and View of Antwerp were purchased by the

natives at their best. He had a lad at the door, State. It was the year of the Universal Exhibi-

and his business was to keep all the handsome tion and this further success helped to begin to

young women who peeped into the shop talking. make his name famous abroad. From that

The more they talked and the longer they thus moment poverty and the destitution of his earlier

unconsciously posed the better for the artist. He days fled for ever from his atelier. We find him

was quietly at the back of his shop sketching them, almost every year either at Venice or at Constanti-

and thus he had his models as well as his atelier nople, and he is even able to travel to the Far

for practically nothing. How different these days East, to Egypt first and then to Colombo and back

were from those of forty years later when at the again to Holland, to England and Scotland. Ziem

fall of the famous Campanile he was offered continued to send to the Salon until 1868, and

100,000 francs for a painting of the ruins ! then suddenly ceased to exhibit. He had had

But fame unexpectedly awaited him and he some differences with the leaders of the Salon at

deserved it for his courage and perseverance. He the time, the official recompenses were withheld

exhibited two paintings in the Salon of 1854, one and the usual bickerings between artists were the

the Port of Marseilles, and the other Evening at result. But he could afford to be entirely inde-

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