ADVENTURES OF A PAINTER.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1331, 8 January 1912, Page 3

ADVENTURES OF A PAINTER.

- FELIX ZIEM'S STRANGE CAREER AS HE TOLD IT. NONAGENARIAN ARTIST. ' ' Ziem, , who has died far on in his ninety-first year, bad more than sovcnlyliye years working at his art, more, than sixty years of recognition (writes the Paris' correspondent Of the "New Turk Post"). Such a man might well have stories to fell of the worthies he had known; and he was never unwilling to tell (hem. /Hut he was endless in telling his own story, and it was the best of nil.

J lis father was a Croat, who came, into France as a soldier of the allied armies against .Napoleon. The country and the -wine and women pleased him so well that, after Waterloo, he settled down in Burgundy and married a lass of Bcaune, where Burgundy wine has its' market. There his son Felix was born, in February, 1821. He amazed his' mother by seeing wild things in the sunlight; but. his father recognised the gipsy strain in him. So they let him go up to Dijon with nu architect when he was only fifteen. He, worked at his drawing and at landscape three years; and then, though he carried off tho first prize, he failed to win "the bourse which would have let him go to Paris and study art. He took his master's offer and accompanied him on a bridge-building expedition to Aix in Provence. There he saw the real sunlight,' and he never got over it.

Soon he found ho could sell bis flashing water-colours in neighbouring Marseilles for a dollar or two apiece—and turned definitely to his career. One of the first friends he made was Pagnnini. At nineteen Ziem went to live with him in bis,villa at Nice. Ziem had a pretty touch of his own on the violin, and he soothed the dying master by playing over and over to him his favourite pieces. The last night he played on till morning the strains which Paganini loved—beside his dead body. Abducts a Gypsy Girl. Next he went with the Russian Prince Gagarine on a crazy journey through wild Italy, and the wilder Russia of tbose days. This ended after two years by Zienr's abducting a gypsy girl from a fair. To escape the tribe au'd'-its vengeance, he hurried back to Burgundy, paying his way, as he said, with -his ready water-colours. In spite of his father's secret admiration, this was not quite the thing for respectable France, and ho took back the gypsy girl to.-her band—and joined it, to make his

peace. • ■ • ' Theophile Gautier, who took infinite enjoyment in listening to Ziem, always maintained that the riotous young Frenchified Croat eventually. turned brigand,: of the old-fashioned, romantic type. X T o one will ever 'know'how ninth of Theophile's Orient was seen-by him through the'eyes of this mad.young painter. Pirate or not, Ziem wound up. in Naples with such' watercolours of the Levant as no Western.eye had seen before—and with the beginning of his famous collection of Oriental things,, including, the jewelled copy of the Koran, which he always insisted he had from the Sultan for restoring a troupe of Circassian girls,' whom he had carried off to. .Italy. ■•■-. ■ • Then, about 1845, he: began, those long stays in Venice which were to lay the groundwork, of his fame. There be was impressed by the way in which Guardi, a painter born to the place, had put its suushiuo on. his pictures. At Slarseilles the. painter Monticelli persuaded- him that ho -had something in him beyond impecunious romance. The two men. were nearly of aii age and by this time their pictures had' crept up from a'dollar of selling price to a'hundred. :" Ziem. now ventured to face Paris,-for which ho needed more than a pirate's daring. Fora longtime his high-coloured painting failed to win him recognition.'He tell iir iove with; tho work of Bonihgton, •the young-Englishman of French breeding, who had not lived to see the triumph of the new art ho helped to form. Decamps, who was already independent, took an interest in this sun painter;,and-at last, in''lßl9,-Feiix Ziem had three pictures hung in the consecrating Salonscenes of Rome, Venice, and Constantinople. , '

. Hung Out a'Water-Colour. .Meanwhile.he had'been living chiefly on his wits, not without adventure. He used to tell the story of the little money ho brought back from his Eastern raids disappearing at a single throw in" a Paris gambling-house. The concierge lent him a Ijed for the empty room which he had rented; and he hung one of his water-colours at Ihe street door to advertise himself. . When ho offered his.work to-the dealers, all promptly refused because- he was unknown.

■ The' actress Rachel lived, on a lower floor of the house, and one day Arsene Houssaye, favourite of tlio grand world end theatre director, calling upon her .there, noticed- the water-colour at the door.•••He was pleased, and climbed up the stairs'to ask for more. It was the end .of obscurity, if not of adventure. Houssaye presented the painter he had discovered to Thcophile Gautier and the others who made artistic reputations at that time. In this way. the Salon was opened to him; and then orders and honours began. Before this - happened, however, Ziem oiice more'broke awav from civilisation. The Revolution of 1818 chased out the King and proclaimed tho Republic. Ziem, who ' inherited hatred of all such politics from his Croat father of the.Allied Armies, threw a. brigand's cloak from Deearaps's studio models over his shoulders, put on his hat, and marched into the streets crying, "Down with the Republic!".and flourishing a real yataghan in the faces of the astonished crowds. Ho said he was fired on. At least, he found it wise "to retire to Marseilles for a time. It must have been about this lime that Turner, then in his last rears, met Ziem and encouraged him by liking hispainting. .' ■ Ziem came back to" Paris to exhibit at the Salon, and/in ISSI, when he was thirty, ho won a third medal. The next year he had a first medal, and the Goncourt brothers noted in their diary.: "Ziem is the painter of the-Adriatic,-of palaces and domes and cupolas and campaniles and bell-turrets standing together like ant-hills, and of waters speckled like trout with rose colour and.blue and tender green." The War Against Prussja. In his own' notes Ziem wrote, "Recognised at - thirty by Millet, Rousseau, Corot, Diaz." But he never aligned himself with the Barbizon men. Rousseau, somewhat frightened at the glare of cologrs from the Bosphorus and lagoons of, Venice, counselled Ziem to go and work in'the mists of. Holland; and to this day his Dutch scenes rank with his Venetian lights as his choicest work. He said humbly of himself: "I recognised myself at fifty." This was in the* war against Prussia; and the painter did his duty at tho guns and was wounded for France. He. also notes that he had had a money success from the age of forty, and adds pathetically. "Tranquil atlast" The oid brigand spirit was strong iu him at an age when most painters la.y asidc their brushes. Ho learned that copies of his work were being sold under his name. Like Henner, he said to himself: "Two can play at that game." The story goes that Henner, when he had a new picture to paint, disposed twelve canvasses all round his studio and placed the same dab of paint in the same tone on each, so that wheu he was through he had.twelve instead of one. The surplus he' sold for export—and genuine Hcnners they were. Ziem simply mcreased his production—commercialised it. perhaps— splashed the living tints somewhat care-lessly—-and so, of course these genuine Ziems cannot represent him at his lxst. ■ For -more than half a century . Ziem lived a few months each year in a house on the heights of Montniartrc, barred to alt but his chosen friends. It was not there, but in the attic studio of his poor years that Chopin composed the Funeral March. Zieni and his comrades, with the spirits of youth to which nothing i* sacred, were executing a spectre ballet with the bed-sheets thrown around them. Chopin strangely moved, sat down at the piano, and began those tobbiii? chords which have accompanied Ziem liim-elf.to the tomb. "We our ibuce." he said; "and listened in silence till Chopin ceased- playing." One Last Adventure. All the iilliu.-piUible mouths Ziem ha.-, gassed-in ■ the. aim-bias of the.' ■ Eivifira,

until this year, when death has overtaken him. Ho was to end his life with yet ivuatlicr adventure; for last, spring lu's death was announced to the press, and he had the. keen delight of rending all the obituary notice and the endless anecdotes, genuine and not, which people wrote about him.

In the.se years of age, besides storytollijijj and painting, he passed his time meditatively, reading over the old philosophers. When the years struck eighty, ho wrote to a friend: "It is idle to speak and explain away things which belong to pure feeling, which science can nu more define than it ran the many and unceasing miracles which go on passing beneath my eyes. If ay (!od, most 'aigh, will and deign to pardon ns if we have offended him!" And he went, on to say: "All my labours in search of lwauly prove, by so many connections, Hie immeasuroabloncss of the Infinite, broken as if is and measured and figured in each puliation of our being." For (he last few months he could no longer move about. He sat, patient and silent. He said: "I have come to tho hour when it is more useful to talk with one's self than with others." Death came to him peacefully; and friends, new and old, followed his. funeral from tho old church in the very old street of the Abbesses, to the march of Chopiu.