Young Lion

Critics who had snubbed the opening at Paris' Galerie Alex Gazelles last month yielded to word-of-mouth raves last week and hustled over to smart Rue du Faubourg St. Honore to join the crowds. Reported Le Figaro's Art Critic Andre Warnod: "It is amazing to see the prescience which seems to govern all these pictures, still lifes as well as landscapes." Said Les Nouvelles Litteraires: ". . . Prodigious. [The] designs show authority and the palette is astonishingly rich." Said the weekly Carrefour: "Our theorists will find it difficult to explain this phenomenon." The phenomenon was Artist Thierry Vaubourgoin, a bright-eyed, straw-haired youngster of eleven.

Thierry's work was so sure that many a viewer suspected trickery. One afternoon a fur-coated lady exclaimed: "I can't believe that this child has produced all these paintings without someone else's guidance." A messenger was sent to fetch a set of brushes, a dozen tubes of paint and a blank canvas. While the fascinated gallerygoers watched, young Thierry went to work, within two hours completed another exquisite still life.

Thierry finds it hard to remember when he was not drawing. The son of a French orchestra conductor and a violinist mother, he was too frail to begin school until he was eight, spent most of his time at home drawing with colored pencils. At six he got his first oils for Christmas, was soon begging his mother to take him to the Louvre and the Museum of Modern Art. There, she remembers, he showed a marked liking for Sisley and Cezanne, and adds: "Thierry also likes flower shops and jewelry stores. If I didn't drag him away, he would stand there for hours gazing at the displays." Thierry thinks painting as simple as his other enthusiasm, soccer. Says he: "I like colors and I like football. I paint the things as I see them. There is nothing to explain."

With the French press, radio and cinema tumbling over themselves to lionize Thierry, his show has become a sellout. All 52 paintings up for sale went for prices ranging from $100 to $150. In hailing his success, the weekly Arts topped the critical raves with a bit of sound advice: "Most of the canvases are beautiful. But why not leave the boy alone and let him develop his gifts instead of inflicting on him the ordeal of an exhibition."

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