Great Bastien Lepage, the year before his death, told me that it was his constant struggle to overcome bad habits formed in the École des Beaux Arts, whilst on the other hand, other temperaments have profited normally by the codes of the École.
Jules Breton is said to have left the School a failure, and to have afterwards wrought out his real success in the loneliness of his native fastnesses.
Besnard, in spite of being Prix de Rome, has had a sufficiently broad grasp and requisite assertive audacity to benefit by the Schools. He quickly assimilated such influences as served his purpose, intelligently discarding what might otherwise have hampered him. Besnard’s temperamental confidence, and at times his lack even of reverence, while possibly weakening to his inspiration from the point of view of poetical reserve and distinction assured his freedom and strengthened his audacious fecundity. He at times lacks tenderness, but he loves hard! and his are les défauts des grandes qualités.
Puvis de Chavannes, gentle, distinguished, noble and shy, was both personally and professionally the Grand Seigneur of modern art. He is full of restraint; thoughtful, reserved, a lover of style. There is no audacity in this painter’s work, which is at times wavering and even clumsy in expression, nevertheless Puvis de Chavannes is un dieu!
Rodin and Besnard are both masterly, constructive draughtsmen: the former invariably synthetic in execution and generally so in conception. Besnard reaches his apotheosis in La Fée. In the art of both men there is marvellous variety—both of motif and treatment. Rodin’s gigantic force is calm and sure; Besnard’s nervous—sometimes even boisterous as though he were naïvely rebelling against a moment of bashfulness!
If Rodin can be said to possess a fault, it is an occasional dominance of the grotesque: a probable result of an intense personality, too great originality. Besnard’s over-desire is similar; and he is more frequently garish, over-audacious in his experiments and his expression. A striking contrast to these painters is Cazin. His art is timid, caressing, poetic and tender. He lacks the nobility of aim of Puvis de Chavannes. He is intimate, domestic, directly in liaison with his painting.
He treats his art as something dear to his heart, peculiarly personal. He loved to fondle nature in her purring moments; in the soft hours of twilight, when the spirit of the landscape is moody, fleeting, gently sad submissive and persuasive.
ALEXANDER HARRISON.
Concarneau, April 1904.