## CHAIM SOUTINE

How he acquired style is a mystery few artists
can explain. "How you came to be yourself" is a
mystery nobody explains. St. Paul, it is true, saw a
great light on that famous expedition to Damascus
but there is ground for suspicion that he was the
same forthright, outspoken individualist before he
acquired grace that he proved to be afterward. That,
indeed, must have been the reason he was "chosen".
All that executive ability, that crusading power,
might just as well be employed constructively, so
God thought, and immediately there was the great
light and Paul saw the path clear before him. But
he had qualities in the first place, so much it is safe
to assume.

Chaim Soutine, essentially, must have been
that way from the beginning. The frights, ignomies
and privations of his early years led him to protest
to heaven but he couldn't have protested with all
that opulence of rich color if he had not had it in him.
Color, more than any other sense that is valuable
in painting, is innate. It is not taught. But the vio-
lence of his methods, the utter defiance of all known
rules save the two that were so deeply part of him
that he could not dislodge them and so used them
as weapons in defying humanity, are undeniably
traceable to his early misfortunes.

It is Job over again; "After this, Job opened his
mouth and cursed his day". And Habbakuk; "Thou
didst march through the land in indignation, thou
didst thrash the nations in anger". And Jeremiah;
"And the young lions roared upon him and yelled,
and they made his land waste."

It is, in fact, all the indignant young men who
ever lived who have felt something fine within them
being ruined by circumstance; but none among the
painters of modern times has protested the point
with greater eloquence of color nor with such com-
mand of paint. The protest is so furious that certain
innocent people who come upon these paintings
unexpectedly may see only the fury in them, and
depart convinced that Soutine is a desperado and
a charlatan; but if they do, they will be missing
something quite extraordinary in art, for nowhere
else in these days can be located such a passionate
outpouring of feeling upon the part of a peculiarly
sensitive artist. "Style is the man", naturally, and
Soutine's misfortunes have formed his style, but
without his inborn gifts they would have been seen
as nothing.

Henry McBride

CATALOGUE

<table>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>1.</td>
      <td>FEMME EN BLANC COUCHEE DANS LA PRAIRIE</td>
      <td>1916</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>2.</td>
      <td>LE PETIT PATISSIER</td>
      <td>1927</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.</td>
      <td>PORTRAIT DE MADAME C.</td>
      <td>1927</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>4.</td>
      <td>FEMME EN ROUGE ENTENDUE SOUS UN ARBRE</td>
      <td>1932</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>5.</td>
      <td>FILLETTE EN ROUGE</td>
      <td>1934</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.</td>
      <td>CHARLOT</td>
      <td>1936</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>7.</td>
      <td>LE PEUPLIERS</td>
      <td>1936</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>8.</td>
      <td>RETOUR DE L'ECOLE APRES L'ORAGE</td>
      <td>1939</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.</td>
      <td>LE GRAND ARBRE</td>
      <td>1939</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>10.</td>
      <td>PAYSAGE D'AUTOMNE</td>
      <td>1939</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.</td>
      <td>FILLETTE A LA BARRIERE</td>
      <td>1939</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>12.</td>
      <td>FEMME DE PROFILE</td>
      <td>1939</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>