Monday, Feb. 25, 1952
19th Century Reporter
Constantin Guys could sketch, with equal ease, a cavalry charge or a crinolined cocotte. As a war correspondent in the Crimea, he turned out sheaves of detailed drawings of battles and camp life. As a Parisian artist-about-town, he caught the elegant manners and shady morals of his contemporaries. Although he lacked Daumier's satiric bite and Rowlandson's ribald bounce, Guys's quick eye and facile technique made him one of Europe's ablest 19th century reporters. Last week, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth, some of the best of Guys's reporting was on display in a Paris gallery.
Guys's artistic career got off to a slow start. After brief service alongside Lord Byron in the War for Greek Independence, followed by 14 years' wandering through Europe and the Middle East as soldier and adventurer, at 36 Guys decided to take up drawing. His first tries, according to his friend, Poet Charles Baudelaire, were "gloomy scratchings . . . He sketched like a barbarian, like an infant." But Guys stuck to it, and ten years later was good enough to get assignments as an artist-reporter for the Illustrated London News. "Do as you please with the landscape," he once wrote his editors from the Crimean battlefront. "Put in a snowstorm if you want." But, he insisted, "please respect the uniforms as I've drawn them. They are absolutely exact."
Guys was no less exact when he turned to studies of Parisian life. Each night, from memories of daytime excursions, he worked on sketches of promenading beauties and dandies, coachmen and soldiers, Paris streets and fashionable salons. But few outside a small circle of friends knew or appreciated Guys's Paris sketches. Hundreds of drawings piled up in his studio or were peddled unsigned for a franc or less.
In 1880, 78-year-old Guys stumbled into Paris' Musee Carnavalet, sold the curator some 300 of his drawings for $50. Later he wrote his friend, Photographer Felix Nadar, "They aren't worth anything, I know. If you'd like two or three hundred, I'd be glad to send them over to you."
Guys's estimate of his work was overmodest. Since his death in a charity clinic in 1892, museums and private collectors have begun to collect his drawings. Last week Paris critics had compared him with Rembrandt and Goya, and labeled him "one of the most sumptuous draftsmen of the French school."
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