. C6 
 

 LlL r\ 
 
A 
 
 RUSSIAN PAINTER'S 
 
 IMPRESSIONS 
 
 OF THE WAR 
 
 SCENES FROM RUSSIA 
 
 AND FRANCE 
 
 By 
 
 Leon Gaspard 
 
 Text, b. 
 
 James B ?Xi arrington 
 
 Reprinted from the 
 March number of 
 Scribner's Magazine 
 
y'o? 
 
 ^ 
 
 ©CUJ26267 
 Copyright, 1916, by Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 m 23 19(6 
 
Cussack i imoch in his cuat <jf lamb's skin 
 
 A RUSSIAN PAINTER'S IMPRESSIONS OF 
 
 THE WAR 
 
 SCENES IN RUSSIA AND FRANCE BY LEON GASPARD 
 
 By James B . 
 
 THE great pictures of the present war 
 will be painted when it is over, when 
 time has healed old wounds, when 
 the world has again adjusted itself to the 
 conditions of peace. The artist-histori- 
 ans of the future will have had time to 
 think upon the great significant aspects 
 of this war, with the idea of giving pic- 
 VoL. LIX.— 31 
 
 C a r r i n g t o n 
 
 torial permanency to the new conditions 
 that have made it ditiferent from all the 
 wars the world has known. The aero- 
 plane and the motor will have their place, 
 and instead of the rushing crowds of 
 helmeted and plumed cuirassiers stand- 
 ing high in their stirrups shouting and 
 waving their swords, with the splendid 
 
 281 
 
282 
 
 A Russian Painter's Impressions of the War 
 
 impetus of Meissonier's 1807, there will 
 be scenes of artillery duels, shells burst- 
 ing over seemingly placid hillsides, long 
 lines of trenches, ditches dug in the heart 
 of the brown old earth, lined with rows 
 of riflemen and machine guns, and the 
 
 ist since the world began — "It was the 
 glory of war that was the theme of the 
 earlier paintings; the exaltation of the 
 sovereign, the conqueror, forms the chief 
 motive of the war picture of antiquity. 
 The monarch was the hero before whose 
 
 Cossack Vagor, whose great ambition is to capture the Kaiser. 
 
 pitiful scenes on the ground that lies be- 
 tween the trenches when the fight is over. 
 War has lost its glamour, become a grim 
 test of waiting, of preparedness, of supe- 
 rior machinery and organization. In the 
 January Scribner, 191 5, there appeared 
 an article on "War and the Artist," by 
 Rufus Fairchild Zogbaum. It dealt with 
 the wars of the past, wars that were mem- 
 orable, but wars that, with the knowledge 
 of the present world's war, will be almost 
 forgotten. War has appealed to the art- 
 
 terrible sword all foes gave way, to whom 
 victory came to his personal might and 
 prowess." 
 
 The present war has, as never before, 
 enlisted the services of artists in the act- 
 ive part of the war itself. Hundreds of 
 them have answered the call of their 
 countries and gone to the front to serve 
 in the trenches, and an appeal is being 
 made now for money and clothing for 
 their families and children left behind. In 
 the recent exhibition of work by French 
 

 283 
 
284 
 
 A Russian Painter's Impressions of the War 
 
 artists on the firing line, in the gallery of 
 the Museum of French Art in the Scribner 
 Building, there were many interesting 
 sketches in water-color, pastel, pencil, and 
 pen-and-ink of scenes at the front. Pic- 
 tures of camps, of men in the trenches, 
 of destroyed villages, of the wounded. 
 
 and many others that have come from 
 the front, there has been no time for elab- 
 orate composition, for grandiose arrange- 
 ment, for the presentation of heroics. In 
 their very simplicity and directness, their 
 humanness, their visualizing of the things 
 that the war means to many men who 
 
 
 A little German corporal, prisoner in Russia. 
 
 It was Verestchagin who best made 
 known, in his massive canvases, the real 
 horrors of war. He was a grim realist 
 who spared no one's feelings. Said Mr. 
 Zogbaum: " I do not think there is much 
 beauty in the canvases of the Russian 
 painter Verestchagin, but no one could 
 deny the strength and power of his merci- 
 less handling of the savage and unhappy 
 side of war." 
 
 In the sketches of the French artists, 
 
 simply stand and wait, lies their power, 
 their appeal to the sympathies. 
 
 Hanging in the Vanderbilt Gallery of 
 the winter exhibition of the National 
 Academy of Design in New York was a 
 small picture by a young Russian artist 
 now in America, whose name is probably 
 unknown to all but a few who have been 
 familiar with the annual shows at the Paris 
 Salon. The picture is entitled " Le Retour 
 de Kermesse," and depicts a group of 
 
,^ 
 
 
 /%«. 
 
 >'.. 
 
 "^ ^ 1i\ .^ 
 
 
 German prisoners passing through Vihia, Russia. 
 
 Russian peasants. It is strikingly rich in 
 color, with the reds and blues and yel- 
 lows and greens of the very picturesque 
 Russian costumes relieved with patches 
 of snow, and attracted the notice of 
 both laymen and artists by the skilful 
 way the painter has arranged and har- 
 monized the significant spots of strong 
 
 color. No one could possibly mistake it 
 for the work of any one but a native 
 Russian. It has the qualities that have 
 made the work of the few really distin- 
 guished Russian painters so notable. 
 Leon Gaspard is known to his own coun- 
 trymen as one of the foremost of the 
 younger Russian painters of to-day, and 
 
 285 
 
2S6 
 
 A Russian Painter's Impressions of the War 
 
 for a number of years he has been a regu- 
 lar contributor to the French Salon. He 
 has recently come to America, after some 
 most exciting experiences in following the 
 armies in the war zones, including a fall 
 in an aeroplane with which he was acting 
 
 He says that the big Siberian Cossack 
 Timoch, who was in charge of a hundred 
 men, was the real master of their destinies, 
 for from him only would they take orders; 
 so far as they were concerned he had all 
 the power of the Czar himself, or the most 
 
 Ypres, 1915. Senegal soldiers after receiving first aid. 
 
 as observer and narrowly escaped being 
 killed. He has brought with him a re-.. 
 markable series of small paintings and 
 sketches of scenes he has witnessed in 
 Russia and France. They have all the 
 truth and directness of work done mani- 
 festly from nature. They are not in any 
 sense studio compositions, imaginary 
 things done from memory, or from field- 
 notes. They are literal transcripts in 
 color of actual scenes done on the spot. 
 His one wish now is to forget the war 
 as he has known it; he does not even like 
 to talk of it. His impressions are too full 
 of its horrors. 
 
 begilded general at the front. Fie was a 
 genial giant, with a typical Russian peas- 
 ant's fondness for the national drink. 
 On being presented, after a very special 
 request, with a bottle of vodka, no cork- 
 screw being handy he gave the bottom 
 of the bottle a slap with his big hand and 
 the cork departed like a bullet from a 
 rifle. Cossack Yagor was about twenty- 
 five years old, and quite a different type 
 — the sort of Cossack that we read about, 
 a wild savage of the steppes, the Cossack 
 as he appears in our Wild West shows. 
 His one ambition was to capture a Ger- 
 man, and each one he captured, or saw 
 
A Russian Painter's Impressions of the War 
 
 287 
 
 captured he fondly hoped might be the 
 Kaiser. 
 
 "The last good-bys " is no doubt typical 
 of similar scenes that have occurred all over 
 Europe; only here is the background of 
 winter snow and the characteristic Rus- 
 
 soldiers, and would no doubt much rather 
 be back in the trenches tighting for the 
 fatherland. 
 
 The march of the German prisoners 
 through the streets of Vilna is another 
 scene that is being repeated again and 
 
 German prisoners in the north of France. 
 
 sian costume. There are the same sweet- 
 hearts and wives and little children, the 
 same heart-breaks, the same feeling that 
 many will never come home again. The 
 group in the foreground are saying good- 
 by to the entraining troops. The little 
 German corporal, a prisoner of war (the 
 artist says one of the youngest German 
 corporals in Russia), is a pathetic small 
 figure, but there is something sturdy and 
 fine in the spirit of the youngster. One 
 can imagine him having rather a good 
 time as a prisoner, so far as his treatment 
 is concerned. But he seems to take him- 
 self very seriously as one of the Kaiser's 
 
 again in both armies. ]\Iany of these pris- 
 oners will be probably numbered for a long 
 while among the missing, and it may be 
 many months before those at home will 
 know that some of them may come back 
 again. It is a forlorn procession, but gay 
 in its outward aspects, with the bright 
 colors of the costumes. 
 
 None of the troops in the trenches are 
 more picturesque than the famous Sene- 
 gals of the French army. They are brave 
 fighters, inured to hardships and ready 
 to smile over their wounds. Hardly any 
 of them know more than a few words of 
 French, but these few have signified much 
 
■ i 
 
 Senegal SI ildlii s resting in a garden of a hospital in northern France. 
 
 to them and they seem never tired of re- 
 peating them. They evidently have a 
 great admiration, as has all the world, 
 for the famous French seventy-fives, and 
 lying on the ground with their crutches 
 beside them they will repeat again and 
 again: " Soixante-quinze, tres bon, tres 
 bon, poom poom, poom, poom, poom, 
 ah ! " It afforded them much amusement 
 also to hold their hands up above their 
 heads and call out: "Camarade, cama- 
 rade, pardon!" imitating the Germans 
 who asked for mercy when they surren- 
 dered. Their one great ambition is to 
 recover from their wounds so they can go 
 back again to the fighting line: "Boche, 
 pas bon." 
 
 M. Gaspard's work has long been ad- 
 mired among French artists ; a well-known 
 Parisian critic writing of his pictures in 
 the Salon of last year said: "The work 
 of Leon Gaspard is a most truthful and 
 signilicant document of the habits and 
 costumes of the moujiks, workmen, Jews, 
 vagabonds, and poor wretches of the Rus- 
 sian country." They are animated docu- 
 ments, too, taken from life with realistic 
 sincerity. Many of the scenes are made 
 
 brilliant by their landscape backgrounds 
 of snow. The artist has been his own 
 best teacher, and his methods are dis- 
 tinctly individual, though he has had the 
 advantages of a Paris schooling, hav- 
 ing studied under both Bouguereau and 
 Toudouze. Before everything he is a 
 realist, never forsakes nature and life, 
 and his pictures are not studio-made but 
 are done in the open, directly from his 
 models as they happen to pass. They 
 are admirably composed, and he has a 
 fine sense of color. All of his pictures, 
 even the very small sketches, have the 
 brilliancy and beauty of a fine old mo- 
 saic. His palette is a simple one, as he 
 employs only pure colors. The finished 
 sketches retain the freshness, brilliancy, 
 and transparency of pastel and water- 
 color. M. Gaspard was born in Vitebsk, 
 Russia. He spends his winters mostly 
 in Russia on the open steppe and his 
 summers chiefly in Paris. He has ex- 
 hibited at the Salon d'Automne and Aux 
 Artistes Frangais, and is represented in 
 the Luxembourg. All of his paintings, 
 contrary to those of most Russian artists, 
 are quite small. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 ,llli:|lilllll!l1lff|!l'llir'lll!lli 
 
 020 935 077 4 
 
. C6 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 020 935 077 4 
 
 Holllnger Corp. 
 pH8.5