Studio: international art (76.1919)

The Art of Miss Sibyl Meugens

THE ART OF MISS SIBYL MEUGENS. Process of development. She is no product of

BY MALCOLM C SALAMAN the schools> for of trainmg in the ordinary

sense she has had little or none. Mr. Stephen

TO look at a number of pictures by Miss Haweis taught her how to draw, and then, in
Sibyl Meugens is to come face to Paris at Colarossi's, for three years she drew
face with an daily from the living

artistic per-______ .__________ model in the croquis

sonality that is singu-____________________, ' classes, with no master

larly arresting in its 11 T <_> _r^fv>'5_* _&_• *"_E^ I to teach her, but learn -

pictorial expression. ing all she could from

Here, you see at once, II the criticisms of her

is something unusual, fellow - students. For

something to wonder t the next four years

about, for here is a she was unable to

strange compelling U ^ _j^?%vg|3 practise art, but the

quality that you fee] lllliilf f __2_____S while she trained her-

is beauty. Undoubt- j; |bHl '^^.^H self to think pictori-

has found inspiration (Wt!K$^| mentally, and conceiv-
in the art of the Far S __['__' - 5 __! ing colour-harmonies
East, and she would Bl 11 and decorative de-
seem to base her |g:_P^signs. When at length
practice on the old j H:: ;/]1*^B she took up her brush
Chinese dictum that Hk SiflfiB and her oil - paints,
"a picture is a j ^■K/^'l ^ ^__t^ ?"^SbB was *° Procmce a
you ask her to what B |.| | j iMr'. 3 still-life pictures, many

cies from her native , through her rare sen-

nurse which have sibility to the har-

influenced her tern- monies of form and

peramental attrac- |- '.____ _____ colour, and the exqui-

tion toward, the mys- • -^fl site quality of her

terious. She will tell painting, Miss Meugens

you too, after some could quicken a group

persuasion, that her of inanimate objects

personal ideal of pic- " lao-xsze and confucius holding argument " with beauty. She de-
ture-making is to use water-colour by sibyl meugens lighted in drawing the

for decorative har- shapes and painting

mony the Eastern conventions of suggestive the textures of lovely things, china, glass,
line and space and flat tone, and inform these fabrics, flowers, and her pictures found their
with the ideality and psychological significance way into several notable collections,
of the Western tradition, so fusing intellectual Now a change has come over the spirit of her
with artistic emotion. But she has reached art ; she has shifted her pictorial point of view,
this conception of her art through an unusual She conceives her pictures still in terms of

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