Studio: international art (58.1913)

The Rouart Collection.—The Works of Daumier

have critics like Arsene Alexandre or Geffrey we consider the picture here reproduced entitled

testified to this artist's great genius ; in vain have Scene de la Revolution. It is a canvas 91 centimetres

certain of his most famous works been exposed to high and 70 centimetres wide, that is to say, in

view in public exhibitions; the fact remains that point of dimensions the most considerable picture

thefame of Daumier has only quite recently begun to of the collection, and the one which reached the

spread among the general public, and that the prices highest figure. One knows that Daumier, better

given for his works have for a long time been much than anyone, had the feeling and appreciation of

lower than they merited to be. But far-seeing as popular movements ; he has often transcribed with

he always proved himself, M. Henri Rouart very great poetry and powerful vision, scenes from the

early began to appreciate the genius of Daumier, Revolution, in particular in those lithographs of his

and sought after his works with avidity. Like which to day are so eagerly sought after. But one

many of his contemporaries he saw more in him would find with difficulty among his productions

than the powerful lithographer, the Balzac of any work more heroic than this one, which seems

caricature, in whose works we see file past all the to be sculptured, as it were, in colour. In this

characters of his day; he realised that in Daumier corner of a crowd depicted and idealised, or rather

w-e have an admirable painter who has created for carried to the sublime by this great painter, we find

himself an absolutely personal metier, and who has an epic force. All the figures seem to be carried

expressed with unequalled grandeur the passions away by a wave of frenzied enthusiasm. The

of his great soul. central figure is one of the painter's finest efforts.

In the Rouart Collection there were thirteen The young man with his arms stretched out in a

paintings by Honore Daumier giving a very com- superb gesture, his fair hair tossed by the wind, his

plete idea of the artist's talent and of the divers white shirt open across his chest, is, as it were,

sources of his inspiration. Daumier has been an image, a symbol of the Revolution itself. No

often called the French Michelangelo. Nothing less interesting, no less powerfully treated are the

seems more accurate than this appellation when personages who surround him, and who, like a

"au theatre" (water-colour) (Photo -brocedi E. Druet, Paris)' by honore daumier

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