THE ALPINE FLORA 



"The result is that which always awaits the con- 

 scientious artist, who looks at nature through his own 

 eyes and is content to tell that only which she has directly 

 revealed. This is the birth of original work; and la 

 Tlore alpine of Ph. Robert is original in the absolute 

 sense of the word. 



" Here we do not see conventional flowers, tortured 

 and deformed in the modern fashion, nor the splashy 

 flowers of impressionists. Alas for these splashy flowers 

 washed in with broad sweeps of a brush laden with water 

 and pigment ! Alas for the pretentious roses ! for the 

 blowsy chysanthemums on dull, half-toned backgrounds! 



"We have just the flower, represented beyond question 

 with art, and with art that is sensitive, conscious, 

 reasoned, but natural, scientific in precision, whose 

 standard is essential Truth, and which is unencumbered 

 by any passing illusions, save those that are due to 

 effects of light and shade or to the chance relations of 

 tone-values opposed to real and changing backgrounds. 



"In the same proportion is its artistic significance 

 enhanced. This synthesis, which neither deforms nor 

 exaggerates, which ever returns to the immanent and 

 ideal without sacrificing the true appearance of life, 

 clothes an intellectual penetration that is authoritative 

 and, as it were, final. It engraves itself upon the memory 

 a thousand times better than the most faithful of coloured 

 photographs, and thus acquires a genuine mission to 

 instruct. 



" But M. Robert aims still higher. He is seeking to 

 justify by fact the profoundly pregnant theory which 

 binds scientific truth close to aesthetic beauty the 

 beauty whose presentation is the goal of artistic effort. 



