Philip de Laszlo: Study at L'Academie Julien, Pt. 2

"Madonna of the Rose" by Dagnan-Bouveret

Philip de Laszlo wrote: "In the studio we were given six mornings to make studies of a given size. I think this was an excellent idea. The student was obliged to see and to understand the whole body, not only from the point of view of character or colour, but of movement also. Later, when I was in Munich, we sometimes painted the same head for three weeks. I admit that it is an advantage to study the subject thoroughly, but if too long is spent there is a danger of the students seeing too many details and not feeling the whole enough. 

Compared with Paris the whole atmosphere of Munich was heavy with knowledge, too much thoroughness, which interferes to a certain degree with the freedom of the spirit. Paris after Munich was like spring, full of hope. It was intellectual champagne!

As time went on, the walls of my humble room became more and more crowded with the studies which I hung up, and early in the mornings, while I was washing, I used to look at them with an extremely critical eye, searching for development, and having in mind the study which I had to send in at the end of each term to the Ministry of Education in Hungary.

It was during my student days in Paris that Dagnan-Bouveret painted his two most famous pictures. The first was the 'Recruited Peasants Marching with the Flag' ['The Recruits']. It was painted in the open and was wonderful in colour and tone. The second showed Mary holding the infant Christ, the divine light breaking through her shawl which covered the child. It was lovely in harmony, clean in colour, full of depth, the expression of the real artist soul. 

Yes, in those days Dagnan was our ideal. He expressed the modern healthy tendency in art - to paint an open air subject on the spot, and not in the studio. Very few pictures that I have seen since have reached his standard. 

After studying for some time under Lefebvre I worked under Benjamin Constant. He had great feeling for portraiture, although he was not strong in individualization, but besides this, what I liked about him was that he was a gentleman. Lefebvre was a good French bourgeois in spirit, solid, thorough and an excellent draughtsman. He understood the value of pure line to express the character and movement of the body, and for those qualities I had a great admiration. I spent two terms at Julien's and then returned to Budapest."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Portrait of a Painter" by Owen Rutter.)