In order to facilitate his artistic studies his parents sent him to
Paris, where he joined the art class of the beloved Boiscaudron. This
teacher’s influence on his pupils has been enormous. It must be
remembered that he also instructed Rodin and Lhermitte. The tuition was
free in the little class near the École de Médecine, and this studio
made hot war against the more conservative Beaux-Arts.
Cazin never seems to have considered his student days at an end. He was
perpetually learning; for ever pursuing his art as an inexhaustible
classic; seeking to discover and develop new technique; to test to the
uttermost his capacity. Later in life, when long past the student age,
he studied in Antwerp, and his fine figure, with noble head on which the
hair was already turning grey, was constantly seen in the museums, where
he wandered--enjoying the masterpieces he admired and understood.
He married, early, a woman who shared his artistic
[Illustration: THE WINDMILL]
tastes, and who herself has added to modern art. He exhibited his first
pictures in the salon of ’65-66, and was also among those men who were
in later years proscribed by the jury, and with his colleagues reaped
the singular benefit of popularity because of adverse criticism, and
became a founder of the new salon, known as the Champ de Mars. He had
apparently no feverish desire to rush before the public, to present
creations of his youth for criticism. Possessed of that rare patience
which can wait for fame, he did not choose to force a future, and put
off rather than sought a definite introduction to the world.
Meanwhile he matured his work, labouring at his canvases during that
fruitful period when hope is most sanguine and talent freshest; he
himself was only timidly appreciative of the work done in the interval
between his appearance in the salon of 1876 and that of 1887.
In 1887, a space of more than ten years from his début, he exhibited “Le
Chantier,” and from this time, with slight interruptions, down to the
date of his death, his abundant work never ceased to delight the public,
which accorded to Cazin the unusual mark of instantaneous favour. His
work has been seen constantly in England; it is very popular in
Holland, on the Continent everywhere, and he has enjoyed a marked
success in America.
Later followed “La Fuite en Egypte” (1877), “Le Voyage de Tobie” (1878),
“Le Départ” (1879), “Ismaël” (first medal, 1880), “Tobie” (1880),
“Souvenir de Fate” (1881), “Judith,” “Agar and Ismaël” (1883).
Then followed an interval when the public looked in vain for Cazin’s
name amongst exhibitors. Modern life failed to inoculate this meditative
artist with the fatal haste, the febrile, nervous desire to do
everything in a moment. Nothing disturbed his habits of study and the
slow working out of his ideas. He retired again from public notice to
mature his conceptions before showing them. Art and art alone took Cazin
hither and thither on his frequent capricious voyages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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