Studio: international art (90.1925)

SIERRE (SWITZERLAND)

PEN DRAWING BY CHARLES
CLOS OLSOMMER

(By courtesy of C. M. Gere, Esq.)

SIERRE (Switzerland).—Charles Clos
Olsommer was born at Neuchatel in
1883, and is of Scandinavian origin. He
studied at Geneva first under Gustave de
Beaumont and then under James Vibert.
Vibert was a teacher who had a strong
symbolic feeling, but he merely taught
his students the technique of the craft and
left them to infer anything else. Many of
them never divined the deeper significance
of his art, but Olsommer found therein
something which had close affinity with
his own ideas. Painting seemed to him
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not merely a reproduction of the forms of
nature, but the vehicle of an idea. He has
a mystical mind; and his technical method,
which includes the conventionalising of his
figures, is somewhat akin to that of certain
of the great Primitives. Since the close of
his studies, Olsommer has lived in Alpine
solitude, the better to realise his concep-
tions, without being influenced by any
fashion. Besides his paintings, he has
specialised in minute figure drawings in
pen and ink, one of which we give on this
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