The Monticelli-Van Dongen trial, which Excelsior reported on yesterday, raises a little unexpected psychological issue. A cousin of the painter Monticelli has just sued MM. Van Dongen, Camille Mauclair, Henri Lapauze and Jean Desthieux a libel suit, because they had felt sorry for the embarrassment that this great aftist had experienced at the end of his life. The plaintiff believes that this alleged poverty was only a legend, and that such a legend is detrimental to the memory of his relative.

This is new. Formerly, “at the time when, one did not arrive”, the painters, and, in general, all the artists, willingly prided themselves on their impecuniosity, Proudly accepted poverty seemed to be the obligatory companion. unrecognized genius. Michelangelo. proclaimed with satisfaction—but he boasted—that he had no money. And for Baudry, any painter who spent more than twenty sous for his dinner had to be placed in the vile herd of amateurs who betray the muses for a basely alimentary purpose,

This haughty conception of the relationship between art and money, as we can see, is no longer fashionable. Today, it is defaming an artist to believe him incapable of having known how to fill his woolen stocking. The court will appreciate this new psychology. In the meantime, may we be permitted to modestly insinuate that the two opposing camps are perhaps exaggerating. Poverty is certainly not a vice, but it is not necessarily a virtue. Like youth, it is not a merit, a superiority: it is a fact of which it is very foolish to blush, but from which it is perhaps not much wiser to draw excessive vanity,

EMILE