Studio: international art (19.1900)

Studio- Talk

About his actual methods of painting there is STUDIO-TALK.

comparatively little to be said. He is not a • ,

m(,.i,,„- ■ „ , c (-from out man Correspondents.)

mecnanician who uses a scientific sequence of r /

processes, and carries his pictures stage by stage T ONDON.—We give two illustrations ot
to their final form. The underpaintings and landscapes by Mr. Theophile de Bock,

preparations that many men employ as necessary long an intimate friend of the late

aids to the building up of a pictorial composition —^ J. Maris. De Bock was born in 1851
play no part in his scheme of working, and he at the Hague, and he received his

puts no dependence upon cartoons or sketches artistic education from Weissenbruch and Van
made to scale, in which the distribution of all Borselen. He has also studied a great deal in
the parts of his design is fixed before he begins France, both at Fontainebleau and at Barbizon
upon the actual canvas. Slight drawings in black and it has been his happy lot to win gold medals
and white, or rough notes in colour, may occasion- at Paris, Dresden, Munich, Barcelona, and Berlin,
ally precede an important undertaking ; but A fine exhibition of his work is now on view at the
generally the charcoal sketch upon his canvas Holland Fine Art Gallery. It comprises some
serves as the first shaping of his intention. Over singularly good oil paintings and some bold
this comes a painting that is as expressive as it can drawings in conte crayon and water-colour. There
be made, a straightforward statement of the facts is not an uninteresting work in the whole collection,
before him that conceivably may be complete and it is instructive to note, here and there, how
enough to need no further touches. But
if it fails to satisfy him, another paint-
ing is superimposed, and this in its turn
disappears beneath another until the
time comes when he has arrived at a
result that he can approve as truly repre-
senting his view. Each painting is made
without reference to what is beneath it;
he has, that is to say, no intention to
use what he has already done to help
in the evolution of the ultimate picture,
and he does not scruple to destroy a
previous day's work if it falls short of
what he knows he can do.

It is this method that gives to his
pictures their characteristic freshness,
that aspect of having been set down
in a few moments of happy inspiration,
which has been from the first among the
most notable qualities of his productions.
Such a mode of practice is what might
have been expected of him. He would
not care to go through a slow evolution,
during the stages of which he would be
in danger of losing the vitality of handling
and the frankness of assertion that above
all he craves to retain. It is really
inspiration under which he works, in-
spiration of the kind that is possible
only to the man who, as he has done,
has so stored his mind with accurate
knowledge and understanding of art
that he can be the severest critic of his
own performance.

A. L. Baldry. " berke.nlaan" by th. de bock

119