Mr. Mounh al-Rassi is rich in his many-sided personality: he is the linguist, he is the man of letters, and he is the quiet artist who would gladly devote himself, did his time permit, to art alone.
From this last angle, it pleases us that Mr. Mounh al-Rassi should answer this set of questions — together with some drawings by his brush.
Q — When did you begin painting, and has your activity in producing it varied from one time to another?
A — I began painting before I learned my letters, and in that I did not depart from the rule of instinct in most children, who are drawn to expressing themselves by drawing. But the extent of my inclination toward art began to show itself in my resistance to the will of those in charge of my education, for they used to scold me for being distracted from my lessons by drawing; I would steal opportunities to decorate my books, my papers, and the walls of the house in
which I was born and raised in the village of Ebel el-Saqi. The traces of my childhood are still on those walls and in some of those books that have survived to this day.
As for my activity in artistic production, it would leave me for a time and then return, as the circumstances of toiling for a livelihood required. No sooner do I lay the brush aside for a spell than an insistent longing draws me back to it, and I take it up anew with a keener zeal and a more profitable understanding.
Q — Did you study painting at a school or under a master of art, and do you belong to a particular school of art?
A — At twenty I traveled to England, and I seized the opportunity of my presence there and entered the evening art school in the city of Manchester, where I remained nine years, spending my evenings in study at the hands of well-known masters, among them Dawson, Dodd, Wheelock, and others. I kept company with a number of professional artists and passed no small share of my leisure in their studios — which reminds me now of my friend Moussa Ayoub, of Syrian origin, who enjoys in London a wide fame and a distinguished standing in artistic circles. I confined most of my reading to the books and magazines devoted to art, which are plentiful in English, and so I followed its developments over thirty years; and during my stay in the land of the English, and during my journeys to the various coun
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