Studio: international art (56.1912)

Lucien Simon

remove it and carry it to no matter what other site,
proves it to be an easel picture whatever its
dimensions. The truly decorative work is executed
for a definite place, and may not be therefrom
removed without risk to its life and beauty.

M. Lucien Simon on two occasions has received
important commissions. The first time he was
entrusted with the decoration of the semicircular
lecture theatre in the Veterinary School at Lyons.
He worked upon this task for a year. He com-
pleted the designs and then destroyed them!
Desirous of making another attempt, he accepted a
commission to decorate one of the salons of the
Direction des Beaux-Arts in the Rue de Valois.
He made an endless number of preparatory works,
sketches, and designs, and lastly renounced the task.
Does this imply a lack of imagination—is this due
to the fact that he no longer felt himself supported
by the presence of the model and of visible reality ?
It may be, for there is no doubt that Lucien Simon
is before all a realist. Of this he gives proof in the
whole of his work, even in his nudes. At the
same time in regard to this branch of
his activity we feel it incumbent on us
to explain ourselves clearly regarding a
word which has been much abused.

Realist ! With this title it has been
thought possible to excuse all the ugli-
ness, all the baseness, and all the
vulgarity of certain kinds of work. But
if there are among contemporary artistic
productions any works of lofty character,
severe and quite devoid of any sugges-
tion of vulgarity, those of Lucien Simon
are among them. One of these, for
example, represents the model lying on
a bed. Her legs are crossed, one foot
is drawn up near her body, with the
knee in the air. The head lies among
her fair hair on an orange-yellow pillow
of restrai ned tone, near a straw-coloured
scarf of tender hue, and the whole bed
is covered with a rich velvet of rather
intense violet colour. All this stands
out against a blue-tinted background,
relieved towards the left of the picture
by an Alsatian shawl of black material
edged with a little deep purple and
yellow silk. In the presence of this
nude model it is manifest that the artist
has seen first of all the general colour of
the flesh against the blue background,
against this quiet violet shade and this
pale yellow and orange. The figure is
ioo

beautiful, the lines of the body are fine and har-
monious, and of this the painter has been sensible.
He has before all appreciated the quality of tone,
the colour of the skin bathed in light, and con-
sciously or not his preoccupation has been first of all
to discover the elements composing these harmonies
and juxtapositions of colour, and then to transcribe
them with scrupulous fidelity.

It is in this care for exactitude that Lucien Simon
is a Realist. His visual emotion is purely objective.
Among other elements from which it is derived is
that feeling of pleasure which may be compared
to the delight of an observer who decomposes light
by means of a prism in order to discover of what
it is made and then watches the different colours
of the spectrum recompose themselves before his
eyes in the ambient atmosphere. It is the pleasure
of an analyst, of an observer, of a painter.

This, then, is the impression that is given by a
consideration of the artist’s oeuvre. Lucien Simon
has developed in depth of feeling. In his work he
has expressed an important part of his inward life.

PORTRAIT OK MLLE L. SIMON. FROM THE OIL PAINTING BY

LUCIEN SIMON