The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1895-04-18
AN UPHILL STRUGGLE.
Difficulties Which Beset the Path of
French Genius.

Carries was born at Lyons in 1856.
Ills father was cobbler. his mother
worllwonan. His education was of
the slightest. At twelve he was set to
coarse manual labor, then apprenticed
tc a builder. There. as he watched the
plasterers working at the stuccoed cell
ing. he often wistfully thought that
perhaps some day he too might have
the fortune to do such work as theirs.
He knew no higher ambition, and
could conceive of no higher art. At
twenty he went into the army for
the five years service of the poor. 1t
was there that his admirable talent
was discovered, and that through the
kindness of the colonel, at twenty-four
he set to work not as plasterer, but
as a sculptor.
Like every French artist, he attempt
ed course of academical training; but
he failed To profit by it; he felt his ma
ture and gifts had nothing in common
with the art around him. and could
gain no advantage from its influence
or study. lie Withdrew to work alone,
aided by the intelligent sympathy of
Jules Breton and one or two other art
lists who saw the admirable talent that
lay in the man a-+
With sure instinct, Carries at once
abandoned all idea of purely sculptural
work in stone or marble He sought
for a material he could transform, en-
rich, and beautify-w which would rive
scope to his deep inventive instincts,
his subtle sensuous enjoyment of tex
lures and color. and his early works
were those inarve lous bronzes, whose
patinas, glaucous green. deep or angry
purple, faded gold. trembling Gray,
were a revelation in brOnze-work and
have never been surpassed, if they
have been equaled. by the first bronze
workers in the world-the japanese
But as secrets that had seemed forever
lost were discovered by him, in him
grew the absorbing dream to wrench
fresh secrets from his strange fellow
workman the flame. lie would create
a material. richer and more sumptuous
than any, that should be his, and his
alone
In 1889 Carries obtained an order
from the Princesse de Seey- Montb eliard
Miss Singer for colossal decorative
door (ingres} His chance had come
He buried himself in the forests of the
Nievre. and like new Bernard Pal
issy. built rudimentary ovens, as rough
and crude as those of ancient Korea;
and there for eleven months. alone
with his worllmen, day and night Car
ries wrestled with problems it seemed
l,AnA1aES
solve In the eye of every sane cera-
mist his act was madness, and meant
ruin. But a sublime and mysterious
instinct led him on through toll and
WEAKNESS, heart breaking disappoint-
ment, hopeless failure, and reiterated
checks: and before year was over. the
workman, the plasterer, had shot
ahead of every living ceramist He
had discovered his inimitable gres
(stoneware) and the first-fruits of his
discovery were those admira bic busts.
statues, masks, and pottery in stone
ware exhibited in 1892.
Nothing can be more touching than
to see the series of essays which led
him to his triumph-the poor, coarse,
fragile. and almost comically gross
pots and potsherds of the beginning,
gradually month by month becoming
finer, denser, more exquisite in texture,
more marvellous in color, more sumptu-
Gus. rare and unique, until in the last
one, for the first time since the work
manship of the middle ages, one has
sensation of richness and magnificence
such as none of our poor tawdry,
gilded and cheap materials can ever
give. Never vitreous, never hard or
shiny, the close, fine epiderm of dim
enamel, as warm as flesh to the hand,
and as soft as skin to the eye, seems
the natural outgrowth of the gres, and
not applied upon it. It has all the
characteristics, not of dead matter, but
Of a living organic substance, natural
growth of some rare and precious kind;
and this strange fruit of the flame is
fruit indeed. Emile Hovelaque, in