DOI Artikel:
Segard, Achille: Etchings of Flanders by Victor Gilsoul
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21214#0058
Etchings of Flanders
“l’yser devant nieuport (SOIR) ”
bourg in Paris and at Crefeld in Germany. A
need for sincerity, an impulse towards scrupulous
accuracy and desirable truth led the artist back
again to direct study of nature and to copying
reality. Works such as those by which he is
represented in the gallery at Barcelona, Spain and
at Buenos Ayres afford proof of a tempered but
undeniable realism.
The recent work of the artist is the outcome of
a perfect equilibrium maintained between the
demands of objective truth and the inward emotion
which discriminates, which selects from the natural
data, and modifies the relationships between differ-
ent parts in order to give greater intensity to the
general character.
In the etchings which we reproduce this equi-
librium is apparent. Here are characteristic land-
52
BY VICTOR GILSOUL
scapes of that unhappy country Belgium, to-day
delivered over to devastation. From one point of
view nothing could be more accurate than this
Beguinage de Dixmude, this Pont snr /’ Yser d
Dixmude, or the Yser canal at Nieuport, the Vieille
place a Ypres, this landscape and old bridge at
Dixmude, or again Les Halles at Ypres now
destroyed. But this exactitude is nothing. What
gives a peculiar value to these plates is the filial
sentiment, full of tenderness and respect, which this
Belgian painter bears for his native land, the
aesthetic sense which selects, under all circumstances,
the most characteristic and the most touching
aspects, and, finally, the sobriety, the energy, and
the simple beauty of execution which makes of this
excellent painter a very great etcher.
Achille Segard.
“l’yser devant nieuport (SOIR) ”
bourg in Paris and at Crefeld in Germany. A
need for sincerity, an impulse towards scrupulous
accuracy and desirable truth led the artist back
again to direct study of nature and to copying
reality. Works such as those by which he is
represented in the gallery at Barcelona, Spain and
at Buenos Ayres afford proof of a tempered but
undeniable realism.
The recent work of the artist is the outcome of
a perfect equilibrium maintained between the
demands of objective truth and the inward emotion
which discriminates, which selects from the natural
data, and modifies the relationships between differ-
ent parts in order to give greater intensity to the
general character.
In the etchings which we reproduce this equi-
librium is apparent. Here are characteristic land-
52
BY VICTOR GILSOUL
scapes of that unhappy country Belgium, to-day
delivered over to devastation. From one point of
view nothing could be more accurate than this
Beguinage de Dixmude, this Pont snr /’ Yser d
Dixmude, or the Yser canal at Nieuport, the Vieille
place a Ypres, this landscape and old bridge at
Dixmude, or again Les Halles at Ypres now
destroyed. But this exactitude is nothing. What
gives a peculiar value to these plates is the filial
sentiment, full of tenderness and respect, which this
Belgian painter bears for his native land, the
aesthetic sense which selects, under all circumstances,
the most characteristic and the most touching
aspects, and, finally, the sobriety, the energy, and
the simple beauty of execution which makes of this
excellent painter a very great etcher.
Achille Segard.