Promenades of an Impressionist by James Huneker
page 59 of 324 (18%)
page 59 of 324 (18%)
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with the garrison of Neuf-Brisach, and taken to Dresden, where he was
confined in prison. After peace had been declared he resumed his studies at the Beaux-Arts. In 1877 he married--an important event in his art; thenceforward Madame Carrière and the children born to them were his continual models, both by preference and also by force of circumstances--he was too poor in the beginning to hire professional models. He spent six months in London, which may or may not account for his brumous colour; and in 1879, when he was thirty years old, he exposed in the Salon of that year his Young Mother, the first of a long series of Maternities. He was violently attacked by the critics, and as violently defended. During the same year he attempted to win the "prix de Rome" and gained honours for his sketch. Luckily he did not attain this prize; and, still more luck, he left the school. In 1884 he received an honourable mention for a child's portrait; in 1885 a medal for his Sick Child, bought by the State; in 1886 Le Premier voile was bought by the State and he was proposed for a medal of honour and--singular dream of Frenchmen--he was decorated in 1889. He died March 27, 1906. Not a long, but a full life, a happy one, and at the last, glory--"_le soleil des morts_," as Balzac said--and a competence for his dear ones. And it is to the honour of such writers as Roger Marx, Anatole France, Hamel, Morice, Mauclair, Verhaeren, Geffroy, that they recognised the genius of Carrière from the beginning. In 1904 Carrière was made honorary president of the Autumn Salon and was the chief guest of these young painters, who really adored Paul Cézanne, and not the painter of an illusive psychology. I wrote at that time: "Carrière, whose delicately clouded portraits, so intimate in their revelation of the souls of his sitters, was not seen at his best. He offered a large decorative panel for the Mairie of the Thirteenth Arrondissement, entitled Les Fiancés, a sad-looking |
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