Studio: international art (47.1909)

The New English Art Club

men who properly estimate the value of present-
day achievement among the true supporters of that
sound tradition which is one of the best assets of
the British School. As a member of the Royal
Institute of Painters in Water Colours, to which he
was elected in 1882 when the fusion between the
Old Dudley Gallery supporters and the Institute
was arranged, he has helped by the consistent
quality of his contributions to keep up the standard
of pure water-colour work as it was practised by
the greater masters in the past.

It is possible that some of the distinctive
character of Mr. Cotman’s paintings is due to the
fact that his training was carried out entirely in
this country. Unlike so many of the artists of our
times he has not studied abroad and has limited
his excursions beyond the confines of the British
Isles to merely sight-seeing expeditions. His visits
to foreign Galleries have not affected his manner
of regarding nature, and have not
aroused in him any desire to de-nation-
alise his technical methods. He is a
successor, legitimate and direct, of the
painters who a century ago built up
the British School and put it in a
position of commanding importance,
and though he has not hesitated to
look at modern life with the eyes of
the modern man he has accepted the
responsibilities of this succession with
all needful respect for the past. He
has, too, followed the example of some
of the most characteristically British
masters—Constable among them—by
making himself to a great extent a
painter of a district. Round his native
place he has found a remarkable variety
of subjects which have attracted him
by the opportunities they have afforded
of studying nature under specially
engaging conditions. He has re-
sponded readily to the inspiration of
the scenery in the Eastern counties, to
the peculiar seductiveness of the flat
landscape with its dimly suggested
distance and expansive sky; he has felt
and yielded to the appeal which a
country of this type makes to the
imaginative painter, and of this appeal
he has evidently been conscious, even
when he has wandered far from his
favourite haunts near home in search
of fresh material.

A. L. B.

T

HE NEW ENGLISH ART CLUB’S
SUMMER EXHIBITION.

In arranging for their summer exhibition
to be held in the galleries of the Royal Society of
British Artists in Suffolk Street, the executive of
the New English Art Club took a wise step,
for there the qualities which essentially denote the
club came into fuller view than at any of their
exhibitions for some time past. Of all societies of
exhibiting painters this one could least afford to
cramp itself for space even for the sake of exhibiting
in such a romantically unpretentious place as their
former gallery. One must have distance for the
revelations of Mr. Wilson Steer’s art, and, indeed,
for appreciation of the aims which inspire the
club as a whole. Canvas after canvas enters
into a contest with the difficulties of sheer
problems of lighting, to which everything, especi-

VERY INTENT

BY F. G. COTMAN

( The property of Joseph Jennens, Esq.)

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