DOI Heft:
No. 229 (May 1912)
DOI Artikel:Mobbs, Robert: A Swiss artist: Edmond G. Reuter
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21156#0314
Edmond G. Reuter
PAINTED TAPESTRY SCREEN
complete expression for himself in his art, and the
quiet atmosphere of his Geneva home, decorated
and adorned with the beautiful works of his own
hands, bear witness to this.
Looking round that home—a veritable artist’s
retreat—one cannot help feeling how apposite in
this case might be the words Walter Pater employs
in describing Verrocchio : “ He was a designer, not
of pictures only, but of all things for sacred or
household use, making them all fair to look upon,
filling the common ways
of life with the reflexion
of some far-off brightness.”
M. Edmond Reuter is a
decorative artist of this
lineage. There can be
no doubt that one can
trace in his work the in-
fluence of Ruskin, the
English Pre-Raphaelites
and William Morris, but
his work is no copy ot
theirs. He felt as they
did long before he came
in contact with them, and
was naturally drawn to
them by certain deep
affinities of nature and
taste. But this in no sense
takes away from the in-
dividual character and
value of his work. If he
employs the same language painted tapestry soreen
he does so in his own way,
and with the ease of perfect
mastery.
There has been a great
deal of the aping of medise-
valism in modern art, but
few are the modern artists
in whom a mediaeval soul
with its naivete, its passion
for the grotesque and
strangely beautiful, has re-
appeared. M. Reuter is
amongst these few. To con-
sider either the man or his
work leads one almost to
believe in metempsychosis.
Here is an artist who, living
at the beginning of the
twentieth century, thinks
and feels “ medisevally/’and
who has produced during
a long series ot years a work touched with the
mediaeval spirit.
He has now reached a ripe old age, and the
time is fitting for a survey of a career that has
been consistent throughout and of an ensemble of
work as varied as it is beautiful, achieved with
an almost religious singleness of aim and purpose.
M. Reuter was born at Geneva in 1845. He
had one inestimable advantage in his childhood—
his parents looked with favour upon his first,
BY EDMOND G. REUTER
BY EDMOND G. REUTER
29I
PAINTED TAPESTRY SCREEN
complete expression for himself in his art, and the
quiet atmosphere of his Geneva home, decorated
and adorned with the beautiful works of his own
hands, bear witness to this.
Looking round that home—a veritable artist’s
retreat—one cannot help feeling how apposite in
this case might be the words Walter Pater employs
in describing Verrocchio : “ He was a designer, not
of pictures only, but of all things for sacred or
household use, making them all fair to look upon,
filling the common ways
of life with the reflexion
of some far-off brightness.”
M. Edmond Reuter is a
decorative artist of this
lineage. There can be
no doubt that one can
trace in his work the in-
fluence of Ruskin, the
English Pre-Raphaelites
and William Morris, but
his work is no copy ot
theirs. He felt as they
did long before he came
in contact with them, and
was naturally drawn to
them by certain deep
affinities of nature and
taste. But this in no sense
takes away from the in-
dividual character and
value of his work. If he
employs the same language painted tapestry soreen
he does so in his own way,
and with the ease of perfect
mastery.
There has been a great
deal of the aping of medise-
valism in modern art, but
few are the modern artists
in whom a mediaeval soul
with its naivete, its passion
for the grotesque and
strangely beautiful, has re-
appeared. M. Reuter is
amongst these few. To con-
sider either the man or his
work leads one almost to
believe in metempsychosis.
Here is an artist who, living
at the beginning of the
twentieth century, thinks
and feels “ medisevally/’and
who has produced during
a long series ot years a work touched with the
mediaeval spirit.
He has now reached a ripe old age, and the
time is fitting for a survey of a career that has
been consistent throughout and of an ensemble of
work as varied as it is beautiful, achieved with
an almost religious singleness of aim and purpose.
M. Reuter was born at Geneva in 1845. He
had one inestimable advantage in his childhood—
his parents looked with favour upon his first,
BY EDMOND G. REUTER
BY EDMOND G. REUTER
29I