This outbreak of painting among the lower classes, which was called in France Part populaire has been fostered by the facilities for art study and by the exploitation of such painters by dealers. It has developed during the last twenty years following the suc cess of the douanier Rousseau, whose canvases were the remark able and unaffected expressions of a childlike vision. Following Rousseau, who was the first and most important of the "popular" painters, came Andre Bauchant, a farmer in Touraine, whose work with all its naivete is curiously reminiscent of the museums. His subjects are drawn from history and not from the daily life of his environment. He held his first exhibition in 1921 and was elected a member of the Salon d'Automne—an instance of the new liberal-mindedness of such institutions.
The early work of Utrillo—landscapes in the Parisian suburbs— painted with a direct and untutored naturalness might come under this category. Utrillo was the son of Suzanne Valadon, who had been an acrobat and had posed for Puvis de Chavannes and Renoir before taking up painting herself. Her own work was "popular" in feeling, although there is some trace of sophistication in it, due to the fact that she had seen so many paintings and known so many artists.
Other painters of Part populaire are Bombois, a navvy, who only recently felt the desire to paint. Like all primitive painters he excels in painting lights and reflections. His work has a certain purity of style that is certainly innate. Emile Boyer is a seller of fried potatoes. Unlike most "popular" painters, he dislikes anec dotal subjects. Le Gay, the agent and Emile Gody, the chimney sweeper, are other painters of the same class. Their work has a sincerity, a directness and freshness of vision and often a power of invention which gives it a value sometimes greater than that of the followers of the pretentious movements which have been described.
germs capable of development, is too recent either to be considered judiciously or to give birth to a genuine reaction.
The sane belief that each artist should seek the means of his own personal expression, contains within it an element of doubt— a fear that something is being missed. The tendency is towards forming groups or movements which actually more often than not act as a deterrent to free expression, committing the painter to certain doctrines and methods which do not truly represent his personality.
It is a period of transition. The lessons of the discoveries, reit erations, follies and suggestions of the immediate past are in process of being digested or repudiated. The main force inspiring the young is still Cezanne, but he has yet to be really under stood, the majority of the younger painters still being in the stage of imitation or misinterpretation.
So we have a number of young painters, of varying degrees and ability, groping for expression. Perhaps the note which is common to all their work is a certain Romanticism which has, per haps naturally, been evident since the World War. R. T. Boss hard (b. 1889), a painter of nudes, is an eclectic combining various influences going back to Courbet and not without some trace of futurism. Andre Beaudin (1895– ) is a decorative painter who might be described as a symbolist, who seems to derive from Odilon Redon and the Chinese, but who is still seeking a completely free means of expression. Jean-Francis-Laglenne (1898– ) is an interesting artist who owes much to Vuillard and something to Braque and Matisse; Auguste Mambour (born at Liege in 1896– ) whose nudes have weight and volume and sometimes an aggressive solidity, represents a classical strain developed through Cubism. Menkes expresses a kind of mysticism modified by Cubism. In the work of Roland Oudot (born about 1898) one sees the ideas of Renoir inoculated with the modern ideas of volume and, in his figure paintings, a remote echo of Le Nain. Terechkovitch, born at Moscow in 1902, an imitator of Van Gogh ; Pascin, born in Bulgaria (1885-193o), of Spanish and Italian parents; Suzanne Roger (born about 1899); Soutine, with a fondness for subjects of the kitchen and the butcher's shop; Halicka, (1894– ), whose work shows conflicting aims; Moise Kisling (1891– ) influenced by Picasso and Modigliani, may be numbered among the most successful of the younger artists. So rapidly have events moved that the painters of yesterday, who were regarded as innovators, have become old-fashioned to-day.