File:Meissonier, his life and his art (1897) (14590961098).jpg

Identifier: meissonierhislif00meis (find matches)
Title: Meissonier, his life and his art
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Meissonier, Jean Louis Ernest, 1815-1891 Gréard, Octave, 1828-1904
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Publisher: New York : A. C. Armstrong
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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they considered it, and consequently theyhad only to fall into a perfectly natural attitude, and the painter seizedit. People talk of the good old times. A well-merited title, to mythinking! My house and my temperament both belong to anotherage ! You will scarcely ever, in an old picture, see people cross-leggedas you constantly do in modern ones. 192 MEISSONIER Why was the idea of faithfully copying what he sees before his eyes,which seems so natural, nowadays, one which for so many )-ears neveroccurred to the artist ? Yet there does not seem to have been any absolute determinationnot to copy Nature, for even in the case of those artists who have gonefarthest from her, we find gestures, expressions, details of all kindswhich prove she must have been consulted ; and, further, we can traceand follow more and more, as time goes on, the efforts made to ap-proach her. In the most ancient monuments of art,—sculpture, mosaic,stained glass, frescoes,—however barbarous, natures impress is
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\ v^ LANDSCAIE. (Sketch in Wash.) always to be found ; the observation is naive, familiar even. Does thatmake it identical with ours ? No ; our great preoccupation, our mostearnest effort, is to reproduce things in relief, to endue themwith all their own life and truth. . . . We would almost have ourmarble yield to the touch like flesh ; would have men think it blood,and not mere colour, which imparts the admirable tone in certainpictures. But can we believe those divine masters. Leonardo, Correggio,Titian, and Rembrandt, were not prompted above all by that same The Guide. (baroness 1)1 ^lIiMl ■; toLLECMON.)

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