Gaston Le Bourgeois: The Sincere Art of an Animal Sculptor

The work of Gaston Le Bourgeois imposes itself so cordially on the attention, with such strong, healthy, and frank qualities, that one immediately feels won over by it to the artist who conceived and created it. There are certain works of art that engender sympathy and immediately create bonds between their author and their spectator, a category to which his sincere sculptures belong.

An Artist Forged by the Land

Even if one does not yet know the work of Mr. Gaston Le Bourgeois, it commands attention with such strong, sound, and honest qualities that one feels immediately captivated by it, and by the artist who conceived and realized it himself. This is an increasingly rare occurrence today. Has it often happened to you, while walking through the Salons, to encounter a painting or a statue that made you want to know its creator? I doubt it.

This is of no importance, you might say. Indeed, I do not claim to make such an impression or desire a criterion for judging the value of a work of art. I only wish to state that there exists a certain category of artworks that generate sympathy and immediately create a connection between their author and the viewer. To admire does not always mean to love, and the best proof that intelligence cannot replace sensitivity is the large number of superior minds who remain perfectly insensitive to art.

Artistic culture is a special kind of cultivation, for the acquisition of which the faculties of reason are no more sufficient than those of the will. Here too, there are "imponderables" and their mysterious activity.

Sobriety, first and foremost, a sense of the essential—that quintessentially French gift of using only the smallest number of words, only those words strictly necessary, to express a feeling or an idea. These words are consequently the most expressive, the most laden with meaning, and at the same time the clearest. This, if I am not mistaken, is one of the dominant qualities of Mr. Le Bourgeois. You will never see him use formulas or resort to the elocutionary devices that constitute the entire science of artistic or literary rhetoric manuals.

He loathes speaking for the sake of saying nothing, or disguising his sensations, his feelings, and his ideas. He has a horror of useless developments, of phraseology, of redundancy; he is ignorant of the art of pleasing, in the lesser sense of the word. We must not forget that he came from the common people and is still connected to them by every fiber of his being; he has not uprooted himself. While cultivating his mind, he has preserved the candor and frankness, the integrity and simplicity of the true common people—the people from whom so many of our great writers, great artists, and great statesmen have sprung.