DOI Heft:
No. 133 (April, 1904)
DOI Artikel:Hind, Charles Lewis: Ethical art and Mr. F. Cayley Robinson
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19881#0254
F. Cayley Robinson
ETHICAL ART AND MR. F. is an impressionism of movement as well as of
CAYLEY ROBINSON. BY C. colour; men who had been drawing the figure for
LEWIS HIND. years m French and English studios ; men of their
o-wn time, sensitive and alert to the life passing
A distinguished critic of literature, winnowing around them. And one morning I knocked at the
the true meaning of the word "adventurers" from door of the gaunt studio, built on the verge of the
the false, remarked, " It is an adventure—an Atlantic Ocean, where Mr. Cayley Robinson was
immense adventure—for me to write this little working eight hours a day.
article." To enter an artist's studio, to see on Let me describe a few of the pictures that I saw
walls and easels the work he has been preparing, in that first impressionistic glance round the walls,
through many months, for an exhibition, and to a glance telling me that the author of them was
realise in those first few, fresh moments of quick one of those inward-looking brooders, seeing things
comprehension the quality and trend of his sympathetically in soft neutral shades, who live
personality is also, to the critic of art an adventure, their own interior life, not minding much whether
possibly an immense adventure. Circumstances they live in the twentieth century or the twelfth,
were propitious for the adventure of my first visit The pictures were small, wrought carefully and
to Mr. Cayley Robinson at St. Ives, where he had minutely, recalling the pre - Raphaelite days of
been working all the winter. I had associated Rossetti and Millais, not in the least reflecting the
day by day with the men in that Cornish colony, vivid, ever-shifting present of Mancini and Zuloaga.
who were painting pictures for the summer exhibi- They were grouped temporarily in sections, under
tions, a score and more of artists, modern, adept, such general titles as Night, Mariners, A Winter
trained observers of skies, seas, and the painting Evening, The Little Child Found.
lands of the world, catching their spring beauty, or Under the first section I saw a small drawing of
their autumn's opulence : men who knew that there a star-sown sky. Beneath, seated on the ground,
silent, motionless, gazing
up in rapt and reverent
wonder, were three
figures clad in Eastern
robes, possibly Chal-
daeans, expressing that
emotion of dumb won-
der before the mysterious
laws of the universe that
unites all the centuries,
the last with the first.
In the tempera paint-
ing, Mariners (p. 240),
I saw an old seaman,
the personification of
those who, from age
to age, go down to the
sea and conquer her,
salt-encrusted, his beard
blown by the wind, his
keen eyes peering ahead,
while he steers the boat
with firm hands. He
knows the seaman's craft,
he typifies ripeness, a life
that the world has fash-
ioned into a hardy fear-
lessness ; while the young
sailor by his side, a
from the pastel by a. i>. roll ' .
(In the Collection of M. Marnier) bandage round his head,
235
ETHICAL ART AND MR. F. is an impressionism of movement as well as of
CAYLEY ROBINSON. BY C. colour; men who had been drawing the figure for
LEWIS HIND. years m French and English studios ; men of their
o-wn time, sensitive and alert to the life passing
A distinguished critic of literature, winnowing around them. And one morning I knocked at the
the true meaning of the word "adventurers" from door of the gaunt studio, built on the verge of the
the false, remarked, " It is an adventure—an Atlantic Ocean, where Mr. Cayley Robinson was
immense adventure—for me to write this little working eight hours a day.
article." To enter an artist's studio, to see on Let me describe a few of the pictures that I saw
walls and easels the work he has been preparing, in that first impressionistic glance round the walls,
through many months, for an exhibition, and to a glance telling me that the author of them was
realise in those first few, fresh moments of quick one of those inward-looking brooders, seeing things
comprehension the quality and trend of his sympathetically in soft neutral shades, who live
personality is also, to the critic of art an adventure, their own interior life, not minding much whether
possibly an immense adventure. Circumstances they live in the twentieth century or the twelfth,
were propitious for the adventure of my first visit The pictures were small, wrought carefully and
to Mr. Cayley Robinson at St. Ives, where he had minutely, recalling the pre - Raphaelite days of
been working all the winter. I had associated Rossetti and Millais, not in the least reflecting the
day by day with the men in that Cornish colony, vivid, ever-shifting present of Mancini and Zuloaga.
who were painting pictures for the summer exhibi- They were grouped temporarily in sections, under
tions, a score and more of artists, modern, adept, such general titles as Night, Mariners, A Winter
trained observers of skies, seas, and the painting Evening, The Little Child Found.
lands of the world, catching their spring beauty, or Under the first section I saw a small drawing of
their autumn's opulence : men who knew that there a star-sown sky. Beneath, seated on the ground,
silent, motionless, gazing
up in rapt and reverent
wonder, were three
figures clad in Eastern
robes, possibly Chal-
daeans, expressing that
emotion of dumb won-
der before the mysterious
laws of the universe that
unites all the centuries,
the last with the first.
In the tempera paint-
ing, Mariners (p. 240),
I saw an old seaman,
the personification of
those who, from age
to age, go down to the
sea and conquer her,
salt-encrusted, his beard
blown by the wind, his
keen eyes peering ahead,
while he steers the boat
with firm hands. He
knows the seaman's craft,
he typifies ripeness, a life
that the world has fash-
ioned into a hardy fear-
lessness ; while the young
sailor by his side, a
from the pastel by a. i>. roll ' .
(In the Collection of M. Marnier) bandage round his head,
235