United States or Denmark ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Unfinished though it was, I saw at once that I was brought face to face with what would some day be a famous work of art. The figures were grandly grouped; the heads were noble; the sky was full of air; the action of the whole scene informed with life and motion. I stood admiring and silent, while Müller told his tale, and Flandrin paused in his work to listen. "It is horribly unlucky," said he.
A few minutes before ten o'clock, wearing a soft felt hat and black frock coat adorned with the rosette of the Legion of Honor and carrying a rainproof coat over his arm, he left in a powerful automobile, which, by way of the Invalides, the Trocadero, and the Boulevard Flandrin, conveyed him to the station.
"And Flandrin, who is expecting the sketch," said I; "what of him?" Müller shrugged his shoulders. "Next to being beaten," growled he, "there's nothing I hate like confessing it. However, it has to be done so the sooner the better. Would you like to come with me? You'll see his studio."
It had seemed to him superfluous to try St. Germain-des-Près, for he held that church in horror. Besides the weariness inspired by its heavy, ill-restored shell, and the miserable paintings with which Flandrin loaded it, the clergy there were specially, almost alarmingly, ugly, and the choir was truly infamous.
Elise explained that Monsieur Carvin was the wreck of a genius. In his youth he had been the chosen pupil of Ingres and Hippolyte Flandrin, had won the prix de Rome, and after his three years in the Villa Medicis had come home to take up what was expected to be a brilliant career.
"Well next week, for the whole week." Guichet shook his head. He was engaged to Monsieur Flandrin l
As to the eighteenth century, it was not worth a thought; that century was the age of the belly and the bath-room; as soon as art tried to touch the Church it only made a washing-basin into a holy-water stoup. In our own time, again, there is nothing to note. Overbeck, Ingres, Flandrin all sorry jades harnessed willy-nilly to religious tasks by commissions from the pious.
Flandrin, delighted with Müller's sketch, put it, with many thanks and praises, carefully away in one of the great folios against the wall. "You have no idea, mon cher Müller," he said, "of what value it is to me. I was in despair about the thing till I saw that fellow this morning in the Café; and he looked as if he had stepped out of the Middle Ages on purpose for me.
An original thinker, too; but wanting that basis which alone makes original thinking of any permanent value." "But," said I, "he is evidently an educated man." "Yes educated as most artists are educated; but Flandrin has as strong a bent for science as for art, and deserved something better. Five years at a German university would have made of him one of the most remarkable men of his time.
Among other interesting facts, the author cites Premier Poincaré's declaration before the Chamber of Deputies, December 21, 1912: "I need not remark that in the Lebanon and Syria particularly we have traditional interests and that we intend to make them respected." Quoted by Senator E. Flandrin in his article "Nos Droits en Syrie et en Palestine," Revue Hebdomadaire, June 5, 1915.
Word Of The Day