International studio (40.1910)

Mr. Robert A fining Bell

"the archers" {Theproperty of IV. H. Kendal, Esq.) by Robert anning bell, r.w.s.

even more than of life, it is true that facilis est bon work of which the bulk of " imaginative"

descensus Avemi, but it is also true of art work, paintings are but a larger edition, justifies the

even more than of life, that to reach anything of attitude of contempt to everything done away

the heart's desire there must be less and less from Nature, still assumed by some schools, but

dependence upon externals and more and more growing rarer, as men begin to divine that the

trust in the inward vision; for the imaginative view experiences of emotion and so of art cannot be

is the temperamental one, that of eyes raised to limited. But the old academic attitude in regard

see things in their own way—and none the less to imaginative subjects, the constant and hopeless

so, if unconsciously, since consciousness in such attempt to reconcile the luxuriance and extrava-

things is the embarrassing curse of the self-analy- gance of the imagination with the few studio

tical, giving the mind a part it has to live up to, properties at hand, cannot be justified so easily,

without enabling it to do so any better. The difficulties of this question have arisen through

A respect in which Mr. Bell's work has been one type of artist trying to lay down laws for

further perfecting itself in recent years is in the another type. The laying down of laws should

character of colour. In decorative pictures we be left to critics. Truth in the realms of fancy
see only too often the essential decorative motif goes in dread of a danger far greater than facile

obscured by a naturalism in the treatment of generalisation ; it is ever in danger of succumbing

colour which is out of keeping. In his latest to the academic point of view through fear of

designs there has been more sympathy than ever asserting its independence of fact in its own

between drawing and colour. Design, colour, dominion and in spite of the philistine who, hav-

touch, in the decorative picture, should all be ing no familiarity with the coin of this realm, is

part of one condition of mind, and in that relate ever confusing the market.

to each other. This seems very obvious; but Since Mr. Anning Bell is always decorative in

much of the satisfaction derived from Mr. Bell's his art, we have written as if decorative and

designs is derived from the fulfilment of this re- imaginative art were the same; and of course it is

quirement—one that is so rarely fulfilled in con- true that those things which escape actuality

temporary work. For few painters have cultivated altogether can only be rendered in symbolism,

the habit, in the absence of the instinct, of seeing His art will help one to think of symbolism in its

outline and pattern of colour in unison. wider sense, as embracing the greater realities

Nothing in art perhaps wears the appearance of which begin where a so-called realist would have

artificiality like a spurious naturalism transported exhausted his subject. T. M. W.

to art which can never be natural, in the ordinary -

sense of the term. But because of this independ- The Curator of the National Art Gallery of New

ence of Nature in the usual sense, it is the South Wales informs us that the picture called The

especial temptation of the decorative and imagina- Castellan, by the late E. J. Gregory, R.A., which was

tive artist to be superficial. The superficiality reproduced in our issue for November last, belongs

which supplants observation in that sort of bon- to that gallery and not to the Adelaide Gallery.
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