Studio: international art (71.1917)

The late J. IV. IVaterhouse, R.A.

STUDY IN CHALK BY J. W. VVATERHOUSE, R.A.

not seek to be more than a means to an ship causes people to notice how his results

end, and that end the proper presentation have been achieved.

of the subject; and far greater is the achieve- But all this is for the student; the concern

ment of the artist who is so much a master of the general public is more with what Mr.

over his materials that he can, without ob- Waterhouse did than with the way in which

truding them, make them respond exactly to he did it. His claim to be counted among the

his intentions and give visible form to his best of our romanticist painters could scarcely

thoughts. be contested, for he had in a very high degree

For, after all, it is the underlying thought, the capacity to invest his paintings with the

the inspiring motive, that vivifies a picture, and right atmosphere of poetic suggestion, and it

it is for the presentation of that thought that was on the strength of his poetic sense that he

it exists. If the technique asserts itself the rose to the position which he occupied in British

motive is to some extent obscured and the art. He was accepted as an able painter with

authority of the picture is diminished ; if the picturesque fancies, a marked love of beauty,

mechanism is made too evident the reasons and an attractive feeling for colour, even by

which have set that mechanism at work are the people who had no particular leanings

apt to be forgotten. The real artist is the man towards the kind of picture that he produced ;

who has so complete a control over his mechanical but by that considerable section of the public

devices that he can prevent them from attracting which is ready to respond to the influence of

the attention of the people who look at his work, wholesome and dignified sentiment he was

the man who neither by the exaggeration of his acclaimed as one of the leaders of our modern

dexterity nor by the defects in his craftsman- school. To this section he made the strongest
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