DOI Heft:
No. 270 (September 1915)
DOI Artikel:Studio-talk
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21213#0293
Studio-Talk
STUDIO-TALK,
(From Our Own Correspondents.)
tONDON.—Those who have followed the
work of Mr. William P. Robins since he
exhibited his first plates at the New
—^ English Art Club four years ago cannot
have failed to note the large forward strides
made by this talented young etcher. If less
romantic in mood than his earlier plates, the
impressive examples of his more recent work
reproduced here show a greater knowledge of
nature, and a corresponding increase in technical
assurance, this assurance revealing itself most
eloquently in a clean and crisp line, and in the
judicious economy of its use. Mr. Robins’s
etchings are refreshingly free from all subterfuge
and surface brilliance; there is no striving for
mere “ effects ”—except for such as nature herself
deliberately offers in her steady moods. The
artist seems rather to direct his efforts towards
obtaining simplicity and breadth of design; not
less clear is his intention to give structure and
weight to his houses, trees, and soil, and to create
light and air above and around them. He seldom
draws the human figure, but he compensates for
its absence by the interest he takes in the per-
sonality of trees.
Mr. Robins’s craft perhaps, owes no little to
Rembrandt and John Cotman ; but its fresh vigour
is a test of his own individuality which aspires to
catch at the point of the etcher’s needle the English
countryside’s peculiar character wuth love and skill.
He finds most of his subjects in Hertfordshire,
where he lives, but a number of his plates represent
scenes in Suffolk (Constable’s country), and in
Holland. Special attention is drawm to his dry-
points, of which The Old Willow and The Brook
are among the most successful. The dry-point is
a difficult medium, and Mr. Robins’s success is all
the more notable. _
Mr. Robins was born in London in 1882. He
studied at the St. Martin’s School of Art—he is
now on its faculty—and at South Kensington
“ AN OLD BARN
FROM AN AQUATINT BY WILLIAM P. ROBINS, A.R.E.
(By permission of Alessrs. Colnaghi and Obach)
273
STUDIO-TALK,
(From Our Own Correspondents.)
tONDON.—Those who have followed the
work of Mr. William P. Robins since he
exhibited his first plates at the New
—^ English Art Club four years ago cannot
have failed to note the large forward strides
made by this talented young etcher. If less
romantic in mood than his earlier plates, the
impressive examples of his more recent work
reproduced here show a greater knowledge of
nature, and a corresponding increase in technical
assurance, this assurance revealing itself most
eloquently in a clean and crisp line, and in the
judicious economy of its use. Mr. Robins’s
etchings are refreshingly free from all subterfuge
and surface brilliance; there is no striving for
mere “ effects ”—except for such as nature herself
deliberately offers in her steady moods. The
artist seems rather to direct his efforts towards
obtaining simplicity and breadth of design; not
less clear is his intention to give structure and
weight to his houses, trees, and soil, and to create
light and air above and around them. He seldom
draws the human figure, but he compensates for
its absence by the interest he takes in the per-
sonality of trees.
Mr. Robins’s craft perhaps, owes no little to
Rembrandt and John Cotman ; but its fresh vigour
is a test of his own individuality which aspires to
catch at the point of the etcher’s needle the English
countryside’s peculiar character wuth love and skill.
He finds most of his subjects in Hertfordshire,
where he lives, but a number of his plates represent
scenes in Suffolk (Constable’s country), and in
Holland. Special attention is drawm to his dry-
points, of which The Old Willow and The Brook
are among the most successful. The dry-point is
a difficult medium, and Mr. Robins’s success is all
the more notable. _
Mr. Robins was born in London in 1882. He
studied at the St. Martin’s School of Art—he is
now on its faculty—and at South Kensington
“ AN OLD BARN
FROM AN AQUATINT BY WILLIAM P. ROBINS, A.R.E.
(By permission of Alessrs. Colnaghi and Obach)
273