Studio: international art (65.1915)

The Royal Academy Exhibition, igiy

f g ^ HE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHI-
I BITION, 1915.

There is happily scarcely any suggestion
in the present Exhibition of the Royal Academy
that everything is not as usual with the world.
Certainly there is no hint given by the show that
this country is going through an experience almost
without precedent in its history and is engaged
in what is actually a struggle for existence. The
collection which fills the galleries at Burlington
House is in all its main characteristics just the
same as those which have been seen there year
after year for a long time past—it has a perfectly
normal atmosphere and its particular features are
very much what any one would have expected who
knew the wayS of the Academy and the methods
of its chief supporters.

What deficiencies there are come not so much
from the unusual condition of public affairs as from
what may be called the ordinary course of events
in the art world. The recent deaths of artists like
Sir Alfred East and Sir Hubert von Herkomer
have left gaps which no one as yet has been able to
fill, and the absence from the exhibition this year
of such leaders of our modern school as Mr.
Waterhouse, Mr. Brangwyn, and Mr. Anning Bell
lessens the number of contributions to which in-
disputable places in the front rank can be assigned.
When artists like these are unrepresented we realise
very fully how we reckon on their help to make the
Academy exhibitions interesting and how much
the particular distinction of a show depends upon
the assistance given by a few men of outstanding
capacity.

But, on the whole, the Academy of 1915 has a
right to be remembered as being rather above the
average in general quality. If there are less works
which can be counted as striking illustrations of
what is best in the art of to-day, there are decidedly
not so many of those amateurish and inefficient
things which in other years have been used rather
too liberally to fill spaces on the walls. The visitor
to the Exhibition will find that if he is not so often
as usual stirred to the highest approval he will less
frequently be offended by the unwise tolerance of
the hanging committee ; and he will come away
with the conviction that there are in this country a
great many artists who have a sincere sense of
responsibility and an excellent command over
details of technical practice.

After all, it would be unreasonable to expect
more than this of an exhibition which only sums
up the achievement of a few months. An annual

show, in which are collected works fresh from the
studio, can never be a gathering only of master-
pieces. All our artists are not great masters, and
of those who are, some hold aloof altogether from
Burlington House and the others cannot always
be at their highest level of accomplishment. If
we have from the abler men who usually contribute
to these annual displays a reasonable proportion of
good things year by year, and if the rank and file work
with consistent sincerity and desire to do their best,
we get all that we can reasonably demand ; and if
there were never set before us an Academy exhi-
bition which fell below the level of the one presented
to us this year we should be doing well.

l’he more memorable pictures are not confined
to any one type of expression—there are some good
landscapes, a few notable figure pictures and several
portraits of the highest importance. Among the
landscapes, perhaps, there are less which reach the
highest rank than there have been in some recent
years. The most convincing in its power, both as
a record of Nature and as a piece of technical
achievement is Mr. Arnesby Brown’s Wide Marshes,
and there is another picture by him, The Raincloud,
which is hardly less remarkable. In both of them
he repeats previous successes, but the repetition
can be forgiven in view of the mastery with which
in each case the subject is handled. Mr. Sargent’s
vivid study, Master and Pupils, is another splendid
achievement; and Mr. Hughes-Stanton’s Noonday :
Equihen, France; The Dunes, Equihen, and
Eskdale, Cumberland; Mr. David Murray’s breezy
and luminous London Bridge, Sir Ernest Waterlow’s
Winter Toil, and the magnificent woodland subject,
Oak Trees on the Edge of Coats Common by Mr.
Oliver Hall are all deservedly prominent.

Then there are such sound performances as Mr.
J. L. Henry’s In the Fair Pastures of Flanders,
Mr. Lamorna Birch’s Round the Westring Corner
of the Wood, Mr. D. Y. Cameron’s sombre and
dignified The Ochils, Mr. Yeend King’s Shadow by
the Stream, Mr. Edward Stott’s The Sacred Pool,
Mr. Burleigh Bruhl’s November Noontide, Mr.
Coutts Michie’s Among the Dunes, Mr. Gwelo
Goodman’s masculine and decisive South African
La7idscape and Ben Nevis, Mr. R. Vicat Cole’s
The Woods of JVest Sussex, Mr. Moffat Lindner’s
delightful In Dutch Waters, the daintily imagined
Peace: A Summer Night in Italy by Mr. Walter
West, Mr. F. T. Carter’s October, and Under the
Bananas by Mr. Albert Goodwin.

A striking example of the imaginative treatment
of a landscape motive is Mr. Tom Mostyn’s large
decorative composition, The Garden of Peace, a

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