French author-illustrator team Claude Clément and Frédéric Clément (no relation) - who subsequently collaborated on the breathtakingly beautiful The Voice of the Wood (Le luthier de Venise) - took the work of Japanese photographer Teiji Saga, specifically, his photographs of swans in winter, as an inspiration for this lovely picture-book, originally released as Le Peintre et les Cygnes sauvages. The tale of a celebrated painter named Teiji, who, when he sees a flock of swans flying overhead, is so enraptured by their beauty that he sells all his worldly goods, and sets off to follow them to their winter home, it has immense visual and narrative appeal.

I'm not sure, really, why my library catalogues The Painter and the Wild Swans as a folktale, as it is an entirely original creation, but I am glad to have run across it, as I greatly admire Monsieur Clément's art (I own a copy of The Voice of the Wood, as well as Hélène Tersac's somewhat surreal picture-book, The Animals' Ball, which he illustrated), and found the story serenely engaging. Really though (and this is no disparagement of Claude Clément), I'd enjoy a laundrey list, if Frédéric Clément had illustrated it! Obviously inspired by Japanese art here, he delivers winter vistas of astounding beauty, some of them with the little surreal details - the series of mountain scenes, for instance, in which the two peaks eventually become the robe of an old man - I have come to expect. All in all, this was a delight - well worth the time of any picture-book lover with a taste for beauty! ( )

Wonderful, haunting images. This could be perfect motivation for a young artist. ( )

Explores what motivates a great painter---portraying beauty and not fame and fortune---and his realization that seeing great beauty is more important than portraying it. Japanese calligraphy appears throughout the book, including the page at the end with a poem by Teiji. It's not clear to me if Teiji is the artist in the story or a real person; the book is dedicated to the photographer, Teiji Saga, and a painter, Rudo Krivos. The author and illustrator share a last name but are not related to each other.

SPOILER: Realizing this, he becomes the embodiment of that beauty---wild, white swans. Fortunately he buys the boat from the fisherman instead of insisting that the man row him to the island: the boat capsizes, the painter manages to swim ashore, and turns into a swan. A poem at the end of the book tells of a man become swan who looks back on his human life. Interesting art work, with swirls that are branches and swan outlines. ( )

tender, haunting, elegant art ( )