TRIALS OF AN ARTIST.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 24 November 1925, Page 5

TRIALS OF AN ARTIST.

JEAN GUIRAUD’S LIFE, STARVING IN THE STREET. A. sad .story, Avli-ich comes from Paris, reminds one afresh that of all careers a painter’s is one of the most uncertain. A man, whose fame is acknowledged, Avhose name is well known, fainted in the street from, hunger. His name is Jean Guiraud, and he is Avonthy to be remembered if only because of the noble fight he has fought for the sake of an ideal. When he was a small boy running about the Bordeaux streets he had one dream, to be an artist.

Artists, it seemed, were- specially privileged people, bom with silver spoons in their mouths, and Jean, the child of a railwayman, was the last person to hope to rank with them. The difficulties ahead seemed to allure him rather than repel; at every turn in his young manhood he met -and grappled with them. Jean’s mother, who- had a fruit stall in the Bordeaux market-place, secretly looked to the day when her boy might come home penniless. She worked on, good soul, and the seasons ran by until one took her to- her death, anti left her boy still fighting. lit the fulness of time Jean’s reward came. He won the Prix de Riome for a fine picture called the- “Passion of the Virgin.” Never could Jean explain to anyone the joy of that hour when his success was announced. The painting was hung in the School o,f Fine Arts in Paris, and people said : “Air, yes, Jean Guirand —a name to be remembered, that,” 1 Ten years -after he won the prize, Jean was awarded the Alphonse de Neuville prize. So much merit might have brought some luxury with it, one might think. It happened that in this stage of the world’s progress patrons of such pictures proved rare. No great commissions came along. Jean was reduced to doing odd jobs, painting signs and theatre scenery. The day came when no one wanted his work a-ti all.

The winner of the Prix de Rome was faced with starvation. ITe tried other means of employment; no one would take him. He tried to live on nothing at all, and after four days of fasting, passing down to the Rue Pigale, in Paris, he suddenly clutched at a- railing and fell fainting. Jean was picked up and taken care of. Paris was shocked to find that he was starving to death. The Academy of Fine Arts lias taken up his case, and Jean is being helped out of the dark place he had slumbered into back into the world of work and achievement again.