DOI Heft:
No. 90 (September, 1900)
DOI Artikel:The work of Arnesby Brown
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19785#0245
The Work of Arnesby Brown
THE WORK OF ARNESBY call for nothing more than reasonable accuracy
BROWN °f vislon and a decent command over the tricks
of the painter's trade.
It is interesting to see how great a hold Really, there is in process of development a
the spirit of romanticism is gaining upon a con- phase of art practice that is not entirely referable
siderable section of the British School. Among to earlier authorities. A century or so ago the ro-
the younger painters, especially, the inclination manticist was an artificial designer who lived in a
to substitute for pure realism a certain naturalistic world of his own creating, and set himself up as
sentiment is extremely evident. This sentiment being practically independent of Nature. He had
is expressed partly in their manner of choosing certain rules laid down that he considered himself
the particular types of subjects with which they bound to observe, and so long as his productions
occupy themselves, and partly in their significant satisfied these conventions it was quite immaterial
preference for a decorative freedom of method whether or not he showed that he had a capacity
over that pedantic exactness by which the for noting and recording natural effects. All this
executive devices of the imitative artist are was changed when it became the fashion to be
usually distinguished. The naturalism that these strictly and formally realistic, and to admit no
younger men affect is of an essentially abstract principle that did not involve the closest possible
kind. It is based upon and controlled by the regard for mere actuality. The realists, with
closest study of Nature; but it is concerned rather their creed that everything must be painted
with the larger subtleties of the open air, with the exactly as it appeared, without selection and without
gradations of tone masses, with the harmonising modification or rearrangement, professed to look
of aerial colour, and with the working out of down upon the pretty artifices of the romanticist,
problems of illumination, than with the obvious and denied him the right to be taken seriously
facts and commonplaces of modern life that They posed as the men who were upholding the
THE WORK OF ARNESBY call for nothing more than reasonable accuracy
BROWN °f vislon and a decent command over the tricks
of the painter's trade.
It is interesting to see how great a hold Really, there is in process of development a
the spirit of romanticism is gaining upon a con- phase of art practice that is not entirely referable
siderable section of the British School. Among to earlier authorities. A century or so ago the ro-
the younger painters, especially, the inclination manticist was an artificial designer who lived in a
to substitute for pure realism a certain naturalistic world of his own creating, and set himself up as
sentiment is extremely evident. This sentiment being practically independent of Nature. He had
is expressed partly in their manner of choosing certain rules laid down that he considered himself
the particular types of subjects with which they bound to observe, and so long as his productions
occupy themselves, and partly in their significant satisfied these conventions it was quite immaterial
preference for a decorative freedom of method whether or not he showed that he had a capacity
over that pedantic exactness by which the for noting and recording natural effects. All this
executive devices of the imitative artist are was changed when it became the fashion to be
usually distinguished. The naturalism that these strictly and formally realistic, and to admit no
younger men affect is of an essentially abstract principle that did not involve the closest possible
kind. It is based upon and controlled by the regard for mere actuality. The realists, with
closest study of Nature; but it is concerned rather their creed that everything must be painted
with the larger subtleties of the open air, with the exactly as it appeared, without selection and without
gradations of tone masses, with the harmonising modification or rearrangement, professed to look
of aerial colour, and with the working out of down upon the pretty artifices of the romanticist,
problems of illumination, than with the obvious and denied him the right to be taken seriously
facts and commonplaces of modern life that They posed as the men who were upholding the