DOI article:
Dowie, Ménie Muriel: Wladlislaw's Advent
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21805#0110
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Wladislaw’s Advent
Upon a high point of an easel was hung a crown of thorns,
and beside this leaned a reed ; but Dufour explained that he had
abandoned that more conventional incident in favour of the
Temptation in the Wilderness, and explained at some length the
treatment that he contemplated of the said Temptation. No-
thing, of course, was to be as it had ever been before ; the
searching light of modern thought, of modern realism, was to be
let in upon this old illustration, from which time had worn the
sharpness long ago.
“ They must feel it ; it must come right down to them—to
their lives 5 they must find it in their path as they walk—
irrefutable, terrible—and the experience of any one of them ! ”
Dufour had said. “And for that, contrast ! You have here the
simplicity of the figure ; the man, white, assured, tense, un-
assailable. Then, here and there, around and above, the thousand
soft presentments of temptation. And these, though imaginatively
treated, are to be real—real. He was a man ; they say He had a
man’s temptations ; but where do we really hear of them ? You
will see them in my picture ; all that has ever come to you or
me is to be there. Etherealised, lofty, deified, but . . . our
temptations.”
“ And you see what a subject ? The advantages, the oppor-
tunities ? The melting of the two methods ? The plein air for
the figure, and all that Art has ever known or imagined outside
this world—everything a painter’s brain has ever seen in dreams—■
for the surroundings. Is it to be great ? Is it to be final ? Ah,
you shall see ! And yours is the face of all the world for it. You
are a re-incarnation. One moment so. I must have the head
trois quarts with the chin raised.”
Dufour talked himself to perspiration, so Wladislaw said, and
even I at third hand was warmed and elated.
Surely
Wladislaw’s Advent
Upon a high point of an easel was hung a crown of thorns,
and beside this leaned a reed ; but Dufour explained that he had
abandoned that more conventional incident in favour of the
Temptation in the Wilderness, and explained at some length the
treatment that he contemplated of the said Temptation. No-
thing, of course, was to be as it had ever been before ; the
searching light of modern thought, of modern realism, was to be
let in upon this old illustration, from which time had worn the
sharpness long ago.
“ They must feel it ; it must come right down to them—to
their lives 5 they must find it in their path as they walk—
irrefutable, terrible—and the experience of any one of them ! ”
Dufour had said. “And for that, contrast ! You have here the
simplicity of the figure ; the man, white, assured, tense, un-
assailable. Then, here and there, around and above, the thousand
soft presentments of temptation. And these, though imaginatively
treated, are to be real—real. He was a man ; they say He had a
man’s temptations ; but where do we really hear of them ? You
will see them in my picture ; all that has ever come to you or
me is to be there. Etherealised, lofty, deified, but . . . our
temptations.”
“ And you see what a subject ? The advantages, the oppor-
tunities ? The melting of the two methods ? The plein air for
the figure, and all that Art has ever known or imagined outside
this world—everything a painter’s brain has ever seen in dreams—■
for the surroundings. Is it to be great ? Is it to be final ? Ah,
you shall see ! And yours is the face of all the world for it. You
are a re-incarnation. One moment so. I must have the head
trois quarts with the chin raised.”
Dufour talked himself to perspiration, so Wladislaw said, and
even I at third hand was warmed and elated.
Surely