Master Art

This is probably a preliminary study for a large-format painting from 1905, where a child is added to the ladder’s right, and the boy holding his apron open to receive the fruit is at far left. There is also another preliminary study or copy known, in oils, which comes over (as does this first study) as much more spontaneous than the definitive painting. Lemmen, after a neo-impressionist phase, had applied his great talent and devotion to the decorative arts, especially typography and graphic design, accomplishing important innovations until his integrity had come to clash with hard economic reality. When, after 1900, he returns to painting, he brings along his decorative ambition and talent. One could call this preliminary study ‘typographical’. The garden wall here is not as in the final version a many-colored tapestry; the geometrical rows of brick constitute a sort of grid against which the apple tree and the figures emerge as floral motifs. While the painting nearly transforms the garden into a fin-de-siècle interior, the study here is full of late-summer sun. In the watercolor what is of prime importance for Lemmens is to make the joy of life’s simple things tangible and close. In the painting this has become but a memory, evoked with some difficulty.